[ Page 6153 ]

The House resumed at 6:36 p.m.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: In Committee A, I call the estimates for Education, Skills and Training, and in this House, I call second reading debate of Bill 47.

FORESTS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 1997
(second reading continued)

It's not just forest companies that felt the negative force of the Forest Practices Code in many ways. All too often what's forgotten is the agriculture industry and the effects they have felt, and the ranching industry, with the grazing leases and the difficulties they've had trying to conform to this mass of bureaucratic red tape that the NDP have invented and called the Forest Practices Code. We can look at mining. Across the whole province almost every major industry has been affected negatively by this code more than positively.

I don't think anybody in this House would say that all of the Forest Practices Code is bad. I, for one, don't think so. There are some very good parts in the Forest Practices Code, and that's why we supported it in 1994 when we debated it, but we just couldn't seem to get through to the government, to the NDP, to those folks over there, that they didn't always know what was best in the forest for the forest companies, for agriculture, for ranching, for mining or oil and gas.

They always knew best, and the hard part to take is that we have taken this long from the time the bill went in -- over two years, with two studies, one by industry and one by government, and with countless hours of someone going through paper and permits -- trying to figure out what would be better and what would be worse. That time could have been spent productively doing the work of the province, but here we are in 1997 with a bill before us that has some 65 pages, over 200 changes to the Forest Practices Code and 160 sections, some of them being totally repealed, some of them being amended. It's a sad day in British Columbia.

I want to talk just briefly about the oil and gas industry. I can remember saying to ministers of Forests that something had to be done, because the oil and gas industry was having tremendous difficulties trying to get permits to go out and do work. Whenever an opposition would bring forward to the government some issues surrounding the idiosyncracies of the Forest Practices Code, we were always told to go away. They said: "You guys just want to ruin the forest. You don't want to look after the forest."

It got down to being so ridiculous that in wintertime in the oil and gas industry, when it's frozen in the north, little creeks that don't run most of the summer or only run during spring breakup have to have culverts installed. You push the dirt over top of the culvert so you can cross the so-called creek, and then comes springtime, and you have to go back and take the culverts out. I mean, that's how ridiculous and how finite the Forest Practices Code is with the regulations expected of industry.

The government has in fact listened to the mining industry, at least, because they've revised parts of the Forest Practices Code to reflect what goes on in mining. To their credit, they finally relented, but not before they put the mining industry through the same paces that they did the forest industry. They almost drove most of the mining industry out of the province.

I can tell you that much of the oil and gas industry has left the province, too, waiting for a time when there's a government in place that will bring some common sense to some of these issues. We have to look at all these issues across the province and think about the jobs they have cost. We have to think about the investment this has cost British Columbia.

I know the minister can get up and say that we've had good investment and we've had good growth and everything, but that's not to say what we could have had. What could we have attained? Can you imagine what we could have attained if we had a government that would listen a bit, not only to industry but to the men and women who work in those industries? If we had had a government that would have listened a little. . . .

They are listening a bit now, with some of these changes, but it almost took the forest industry to come to its absolute knees financially before this government would finally listen and bring in an act to change some of the ridiculous parts of the Forest Practices Code. When you think about the time it takes someone -- a whole host of people -- to go through and draft this kind of legislation that repeals and amends and changes, and when you think about all the good productive time that's gone into dealing with this Bill 47, the Forest Statutes Amendment Act, it would be absolutely staggering if we knew the costs. That's something the government will never tell us.

There are some things in the code that industry does agree with, and finally the government has listened. I listened intently to the minister's opening remarks on changing the number of plans from six to three so that we can finally get away from what Mr. Sitter of Interfor calls lurch logging. That's lurching around the province from cutblock to cutblock, not knowing for sure whether you could really go in and cut the trees.

Finally the government is listening. At one point it was so bad you couldn't get permits through the Ministry of Forests at all. We were hauling timber from Saskatchewan, Alberta, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories to keep our mills in British Columbia operational. It's a sad statement, but that's what happened.

It took this long for this government to decide that they had to rewrite some of the code so the companies could stop lurch logging and could start planning for the future. This government always talks about planning, but they certainly didn't allow the industry to plan very well when they brought in the Forest Practices Code the way it was brought in.

As I said earlier, over 200 changes are contemplated in this bill. It's difficult to speak to the philosophy and principles of 200 changes to the Forest Practices Code, other than to say: "We told you so, but you were too smart to listen." That's unfortunate. It's unfortunate for all the people who lost their jobs in the ensuing time. It's unfortunate for all the men and women who now don't have good jobs. It's unfortunate for the investment in British Columbia that we could have had if we had had a government that was willing to listen, instead of bowling ahead with micromanagement of the forest industry, our number one job generator, the engine of the province. To almost snuff out that engine before they realized that they had to bring in some changes is really sad. It's sad that we even have to stand here and talk about it.

[ Page 6154 ]

[6:45]

In closing -- and a few of them have woken up; I notice a few little heckles from over there -- I would like to say that I am glad that the present minister has finally listened. It's a little late, but better late than never, I guess. I think it got to the point where it was an absolute necessity, and that's the other sad part. The government didn't listen and say: "Yes, we have to change." They waited and waited and they pushed and pushed until they almost stopped the engine, until they had the forest industry in such disarray that it didn't know what it was doing any more. The ministry itself was not sure what was happening, where it was going to happen or when it was going to happen.

But I say -- my last comment -- that had they just listened a bit in 1994. . . . They didn't have to take all the advice that was offered to them. I don't say that they had to, because no one on this side of the House knew all the ramifications, either. Had they just listened to a little bit, had they just said or just reacted in the way this House should work -- you look at all 75 members from different parts of the province and take the best parts that those members can bring forward. . . . That's how you deal with these issues, instead of "I know best" all the time. That's the way this government has operated from day one: "I know best, and the rest of you don't know. You just go away."

Bill 47 is proof that this government doesn't always know best. It should be a good lesson to all the other ministers of this government that they should pay attention from now on, not just to industry, not just to opposition, but also to the men and women who work in the industries that they're affecting negatively. They should start looking at it in a better fashion. Then just imagine what this province could do. Imagine what the entrepreneurs in the province could do were they just given some room to move, to be able to do their work -- and they do it well. We've got the expertise, the people, the entrepreneurship. All we need is some leadership from this government, leadership that doesn't take three years to bring in 200 changes to a draconian bill that brought us regulations that are absolutely three feet deep.

When you think about the regulations, now someone's going to have to go and change all those. Think about all the policy books. They come in the mail regularly. We just keep piling them in the corner. The pile gets higher and higher every year. Someone will now go back and take that whole pile and rewrite them. And guess what. They'll send us all new books because of the changes in this.

That's not the way to do it, and that's not the way to run the province. Consulting with the industry and with the people who work in the industry is the way to do it. Listening to others is the way to do it. It's sad to say that the government hasn't listened. If you think about the labour bill, Bill 44, the consultation that went on with the labour bill was sad, to say the least. All they did was consult with the unions, no one else. We don't really care about anyone else.

Fortunately, maybe the Minister of Forests has learned, because he's brought forward some amendments, but this NDP government collectively has not learned. They have not learned how to govern, how to work with people. Otherwise, they wouldn't have brought Bill 44 in and then have to take it off the order paper.

It's a sad way to do business, and it's a sad way for a government to run a province that's as rich and as wealthy and as good a place as British Columbia is to live. Hopefully this is a lesson for the future: that we start looking a little closer, taking some time at the front end before we bring in the legislation and try to bring in things that will work to the benefit of all -- not just government, but industry and the men and women who work in industry. Only that way are we going to be able to continue to provide the services to the people of British Columbia that we provide today.

With that, I'll take my place and listen to others who will discuss what they think about Bill 47, the Forests Statutes Amendment Act.

J. Wilson: Back in '93 and '94, I wasn't in this House, but I was observing what was going on with the development of the code. As the paper began floating down to the level we were at, it started to pile up. It piled and piled, and it looked like it would never end. Well, the bill was passed. We had a small mountain of paper on this code. Then all the appendages to the code began showing up, and the pile of paper grew into an enormous mountain of paper.

The point is that no one was able to understand all of the material that was in this code. Everyone you talked to had a different opinion and a different idea. Even people within the ministry became frustrated, because they could only understand a small portion of the vast quantity of information and material that was being pushed at them every day.

We had one comforting thought, one comforting idea, one comforting statement from the Premier of this province. He stood up and said: "This code is for the protection of the industry. It will ensure your jobs in the future. It will bring peace to the forest industry. It will get rid of the war in the woods, and not one job will be lost in the forest industry." I remember those words very clearly. Some of us said: "Well, that sounds very good, but somehow we don't believe what we hear."

So what has happened? Have we lost one job in the forest industry? No, we have not; we have lost thousands of jobs in the forest industry. The problem was with the code. It was designed by a government that didn't have the best interests of the people who work in the industry at heart. It didn't have the best interests of the industry at heart. The interest it had at heart was to control -- absolute, total control from the top down.

When you go out and saw down a tree, this government feels that there should be someone there watching you to make sure you do the job properly. If you don't, it's an infraction, and there has to be someone on site to issue a ticket, if it's necessary. It's not good enough for the government to realize that perhaps industry does know a little bit about what they do. Give them some rules to go by, and let them get the job done. They have been at it for a long time. They know how to do it. If we know what the result is that we're looking for in the end, that is what counts, not the road we take to get there, not the tax dollars that are unnecessarily spent to achieve a job that could be done at a fraction of the cost with the same results in the end -- not a bit of difference. It has been proven time and time again in other countries.

With that, I would like to take a look at some of the things I see in Bill 47, these 200-and-some amendments to the Forest 

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Practices Code. It does a few things that are necessary. It has reduced some of the permitting. It has taken it from six to three, and hopefully what will happen is that we will end up with a more stable supply of wood, rather than having permits come through a week ahead of the time that we need them. Sometimes they were there a day ahead, but when a mill was out of wood and waiting for permits, they just couldn't get them in place. They would come in sometimes just a day or two before they were out in the yard. You can't operate this way. This is why we had to go out of province to find a large portion of our fibre.

Perhaps this will remedy that. Perhaps now we can look six months or a year ahead and do some planning. We won't be trucking equipment all over the country, chasing a little bit of wood here and a little bit of wood there. No doubt it will help the contractors with their costs, and it will add some security of supply for the mill.

However, I've read this over, and as the minister has explained, it is going to reduce the burden on the ministry staff. Enforcement will be more streamlined. I would like to believe that, but when I hear that perhaps we can get more people out of the office and more people out in the field to monitor what's going on, that tells me that perhaps enforcement will be beefed up.

The other thing that I see in here is that even though the small operator is addressed in some areas, the potential is there to download more responsibility onto the small operator. This won't help in the long run in the cost of the logging.

One thing that I see is that cash sales that can be issued directly by a district manager have gone from 300 to 500 cubic metres. The rationale is that there are times when you have to be expedient and move on these things, because there could be a loss of value. By the same token, I believe that if you were to advertise it, the difference in time would be something like two weeks. That point becomes debatable then. Should we wait two weeks, or should we get in there today and remove this? In some cases, it works fine to issue a cash sale, and in other cases, there's nothing wrong with putting it up for bid.

One thing that I have noted in this bill is to do with the establishment of the commission and the powers given to the commission. These are powers that are just as. . . . They are powers that you would give to a Supreme Court judge; the commission is basically the equivalent of the Supreme Court. How are we going to appoint the people that sit on this commission? Will they be political appointees that lack knowledge in their field? They're required to make a decision that affects the lives of people, and their decision is binding. The only appeal is to take it to the Supreme Court. Is this what we're doing here?

[7:00]

What the industry today is looking for is cost savings. They need cost savings. They have been brought right to the brink of disaster in the industry. They need cost savings in order to go out and operate. Their overhead, their cost of operating, has gone up 75 percent since the code came into place. We have to reduce that. Yet I don't feel that the amount that we are reducing it through this paper shuffle will be sufficient to get the job done.

I guess the best way I could describe this bill, in my mind, is to get into the driver's seat of a semi and head down the road -- say down the Fraser Canyon. Suppose you were driving a truck down the canyon, and all of a sudden you met two semis side by side, passing, coming down a grade. What do you do? You look at it, and it says FRBC right across the front. Well, you've got to get out of there, so you pull her to the right, you slam on the brakes, and by golly, you end up right on the brink. You're kind of teetering there. So you get on your cell and start hollering. You phone the government and say: "Man, we need help here. We're in a bad situation. This FRBC has just put us off the road." The government says: "We'll be right there. Don't worry." They come out with their little tow truck and they hook onto you, and what have they got to pull you out with? They've got a thread. They hook onto you with a thread and say: "Oh, don't worry. We'll get you out of there." In the meantime, you're holding your breath and just hoping that another storm doesn't come up the canyon, because you know darned well it's just going to blow you over the edge.

That is what we have here: a reactionary bill, a reflex bill. We have a problem. We'll correct the problem today, and tomorrow the problem will still be there. One slight downturn in the industry, and we're going to be looking at another 200-some-odd or 300 amendments to the Forest Practices Code.

Unless we go back and implement a real results-oriented code, we are never going to get out of the situation that we're in today in the industry. With that, I will hand it over to the member for Shuswap, I believe it is.

The Speaker: I'll just remind the member that it is not his prerogative to hand it over to anybody. But I'll now recognize the member for Shuswap on the debate.

G. Abbott: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sometimes we do have the sense of a relay race here, so I guess a handoff metaphor may be appropriate at some moments. But we do indeed all jealously guard your prerogative to actually formally pass it on.

I'm very pleased to rise and join in this debate on Bill 47. Forestry is, by some distance, the most important industry in my riding of Shuswap. Indeed, I think it continues to be by far the most important industry in this province. I think that a healthy forest industry is clearly very critical to a healthy economy in this province. I think our role or our responsibility as legislators is to do what we can to ensure that we continue to build a healthy forest industry in this province and, hopefully, have a healthy forest industry for our grandchildren down the line, as well.

Without a healthy forest industry, we can't be sure that we can protect those key responsibilities of health and education. The dollars that are generated in this province by forestry are very much critical to maintaining the health and education programs that I think we all cherish. Bill 47, I think, is a step in the right direction, and I'm pleased to offer a few comments on it tonight.

We in the B.C. Liberal Party have long maintained that while the principles which underlie the Forest Practices Code are good, its implementation has been inordinately complex, 

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convoluted and bureaucratic. In its present form, as some other members have noted, the Forest Practices Code is process-oriented rather than results-oriented. I think, as others have indicated as well, there is a critical need here to reverse that: to produce a code which is results-oriented, not process-oriented.

We had a good discussion today about another very large bill in this House, Bill 46, which eliminates the unnecessary regulation of local government by the provincial government. I think that in some respects there are some similarities between Bill 46 and Bill 47. I hope we have all, as British Columbians, come to realize that we can't afford to chase paper around. When we get into paper-chasing exercises, it takes away critical resources that would be better devoted to building this province and to ensuring that we have sound health and education programs far into the future. As one member noted, Sweden provides us with something of a prototype of how to proceed here: a small, results-oriented code that guides the way but doesn't try to second-guess the professionals at every turn.

Clearly, since 1994 the Forest Practices Code has produced harvest delays, which have been a considerable problem to the industry and to its workers. It has produced an onerous paper burden, and it has produced unnecessary expenses that have undermined the forest industry here in British Columbia. This, in turn -- and I think in conjunction with a number of other regressive government policies -- has become a major disincentive to new investment in British Columbia. When you have a disincentive to new investment, you have a disincentive to new jobs in British Columbia. And I hope that on all sides of the House here, we are very much committed to creating an economic environment where people want to bring in new investment and create new jobs.

B.C. Liberals have also long said that we should give the industry, its contractors, its professional foresters and its workers a very clear idea of the goals and objectives which they should achieve under the code. We have also said that the code should put in place appropriate penalties, should these goals and objectives not be achieved. However, we should not at every turn attempt to micromanage or second-guess the details of every prescription of every professional forester in meeting these objectives. Government doesn't do that for other professional groups; nor should we do it for professional foresters. Again, these are costs which are not only costs to the industry but costs to the government. These are costs which are unnecessary, in large measure, and we should be looking at trying to use those resources to better advantage in building this province.

The most frequent complaint about the Forest Practices Code that I've heard from forest companies, from contractors and from workers is the high cost and in some cases the outright absurdity of the Forest Practices Code. The Forest Practices Code is central to skyrocketing timber extraction costs; these have hurt, and in some cases crippled, forest enterprises in this province. In a very direct way, these delays and these costs have put people out of work in this province. In the Shuswap and the Columbia areas of British Columbia, we got a firsthand look last fall at what the impact of the code and related policies are on the forest industry, when we saw the crisis emerge at Evans Forest Products in Golden and in. . .

An Hon. Member: Right.

G. Abbott: Are you denying that the crisis occurred, hon. member? I mean, I'd be a little surprised if you did that. The problems at Golden and Sicamous and Malakwa were very real. I think that if the member wants verification of that, he can ask the member for Columbia River-Revelstoke, who was very much involved in the issue there, as well.

Interjection.

G. Abbott: Well, it's one of the reasons, hon. member, and I think it's one of the reasons that we're debating this bill tonight. The code does not operate in isolation. To suggest that it does, I think, would be wrong. I think what happens is that the code intersects with a range of factors, and each of these in turn serve to undermine the viability of forestry in the province. There was very much discussion last fall, obviously, in Revelstoke, Malakwa and Golden about the reasons they were going through the heart-wrenching difficulties they were experiencing. Some 700 people were out of jobs, and it was very questionable for a couple of months when and if they would be back to work. People, I think to their credit, sat down in a very civilized way and talked about why the region was going through the problems it was and why Evans Forest Products was experiencing the difficulties that it had. They didn't approach this in a partisan way, and I think the member for Columbia River-Revelstoke would agree with me very strongly on this point. Whether it was representatives of the company or representatives of the IWA or citizens or business people, they sat down in a remarkably open and civilized way and talked about how the company got into the predicament that it had and talked about ways in which things could be changed so that they would not face these periodic threats to their livelihood.

Much of the discussion focused on the high cost of extracting timber as the central problem precipitating the crisis in Golden and Malakwa. In particular, the discussion focused on the high cost of extracting timber in the Golden TSA. There are a number of factors that came into play there, and I think that by the end of the process, by the time the restructuring agreement had been included, there was quite wide agreement about what needed to be done. Again, the Forest Practices Code was something that came into play there, and it intersected, as I noted, with a number of other factors. For example, the terrain in the Golden TSA is, no matter how you slice it, going to be a challenging operating environment for the forest companies to work in. It's a problem that would be obvious, I think, to anyone who's travelled through the area. The terrain relative to most in British Columbia is very challenging. This means that when the code in its original form was applied in the Golden TSA, costs literally skyrocketed. The costs of roadbuilding, for example, because of grades and that kind of thing, were substantially increased. As well, as you can imagine -- again, because the terrain -- it costs more because you have to put more miles of road in to access timber than you might in more gentle terrains in other parts of the province.

One of the points that stuck with me and that I found particularly dramatic in our discussion was that in the Golden TSA some 80 percent of the logging was done either by helicopter or, more commonly, by high-lead logging, both of which are, as you might imagine, far more expensive than conventional ground-skid logging. So again, because of the intersection of an issue which is always going to be there, terrain, and the Forest Practices Code, the costs were particularly difficult for the industry to bear. I think that that's a fact. Perhaps the government would disagree with me on that point, but I think that the fact that we have a Bill 47 before us, which goes some distance to, hopefully, resolving some of 

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these concerns, is evidence that the government itself is in agreement that it was a particular problem in the Evans situation.

[7:15]

Just to note some of the consequences of the intersection of these factors and the Forest Practices Code, the average cost per cubic metre for fibre in the interior is somewhere around $79. With Evans Forest Products, particularly in the Golden TSA, they are looking at significantly higher costs -- about $109 per cubic metre. So there's a big gap there in terms of the cost of extracting fibre in the Golden TSA, and it's something that has to be addressed. Again, I think that the Forest Practices Code is one of those issues that has to be looked at in terms of reducing that differential in costs and bringing the cost down and making Evans Forest Products viable in the long term.

At the time of the crisis with the weak pulp market back in September, October, November, I believe that Evans Forest Products was looking at a return -- if indeed they could move the pulp at the time -- of about $12 per cubic metre. So obviously if it costs you close to 110 bucks per cubic metre to extract and you're looking at a return of about $12 per cubic metre, the losses per cubic metre are enormous. It's a difficult problem to get around, and revising the Forest Practices Code and reducing the extraction costs is one of the ways to do it.

All of these factors and indeed some others, such as stumpage rates, entered into the crisis at Evans Forest Products, and the Forest Practices Code was a major contributor to that crisis. Evans Forest Products, I think, provided a painful but clearly necessary wake-up call on the detrimental effect of the onerous, bureaucratic and counterproductive implementation of the Forest Practices Code. Clearly what we need to do is move as soon as possible to a streamlined code which is geared, as I noted, to results rather than process.

The bill that we're debating here tonight, Bill 47, certainly is a constructive step in the right direction. There is much more that needs to be done -- much, much more. But it is a constructive step in the right direction. It's for that reason that I'll be supporting Bill 47.

K. Krueger: As I launch my brief discourse, I want to make it clear that I have seen very little opportunity to speak very much at all about gambling expansion or gambling addiction in this matter. Indeed, nobody would want me to, least of all me, because the matter at hand is tremendously serious and has to do with the way a lot of people make their living and the many problems that they've had trying to do that, not only in my constituency but all around this province.

I know that the Forests minister is familiar with many of those problems. I found him to be a practical man who is willing to address problems as I bring them to his attention. I know that the problems brought to his attention have been absolutely legion. This bill is an attempt to begin to bring some sanity. . . . Perhaps sanity is too strong a word, although certainly it wouldn't be considered too strong by many of the people in the forest industry that I liaise with constantly.

To them they've been through an absolutely insanely horrendous exercise in trying to comply with all of the many requirements of the Forest Practices Codes while dealing with the super-stumpage issue. They found themselves caught in a vice between overtaxation, from their point of view, and overregulation, from pretty well everyone's point of view, I think, obviously including this government, which in tabling these amendments to the Forest Practices Code is moving -- as the member for Shuswap said -- at least a step in the right direction.

A number of the official opposition MLAs went on a tour of the northwest of the province just before this session started. We started in Kitimat and went through Terrace and Hazelton and Smithers and Burns Lake, and we heard the same things everywhere we went: that people were at the point of desperation -- of actual breakdown, emotionally, financially, economically and every which way. Largely they laid the blame for that at the doorstep of the Forest Practices Code. They had been trying to live with it -- and trying very hard -- for the last couple of years. Of course, where they found themselves was in the situation where Repap B.C. was going under, and the government had unaccountably seemed to drop them and all of their needs but allowed the banks to protect their interests, while some of the small contractors were owed upwards of $1 million -- and smaller amounts, but very large to the individuals concerned. It was to the point that many of them were in danger of losing all the equity, all the assets, that they'd built up over a lifetime of working. They were devastated by it and extremely angry as a result.

As I say, they put the blame for that squarely at the feet of the Forest Practices Code. They related one example after another of the impractical ways that the Forest Practices Code restricted their business and forced them to waste their time and money and energy and resources on doing things -- taking steps in the forest -- that made absolutely no sense at all. You've heard the member for Peace River North give some examples of those: having to put in culverts where everyone knows no water will ever run and where the roads will actually have to be decommissioned before the ground ever thaws, let alone allowing water to run. Of course, we've seen major forest companies getting into dramatic financial difficulties, and Evans Forest Products and Repap B.C. are only two of the first dominos to fall. This may well be too little too late, but at least it is indeed a step in the right direction.

I know that individuals and operations throughout my constituency of Kamloops-North Thompson have come under tremendous pressure because of the restrictions and requirements of the Forest Practices Code. Some of the things, of course, that have happened around British Columbia are the disappearance of many forest industry jobs -- 5,500 workers losing their jobs in 1996 alone. Since the signing of the jobs and timber accord, jobs have been lost in 100 Mile House, in Lillooet, in Powell River, and at least 2,300 direct forest jobs were lost as a result of the Skeena Cellulose mill closures in Prince Rupert, Terrace, Smithers and Hazelton.

I have to say, for the record, that the member for Bulkley Valley-Stikine is sitting across there with his face down in his 

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book, saying things like: "Dream on, dream on." I'm telling you, hon. Speaker, I believe that he's dreaming if he thinks that there's a chance in the world that anybody would ever allow him to be the MLA for Bulkley Valley-Stikine again, because he has been so ineffective as he reads his books and doesn't speak up and things like this happen to his constituents and the people who try to create jobs in his constituency.

The Canadian Bond Rating Service has cut MacMillan Bloedel's credit rating because, of all things, their high-cost coastal timber tenures were deemed a liability by the bond-rating service. That was reported on May 3, 1997. The forest industry is expected to lose $450 million this year after having lost $250 million last year, according to the Financial Post on March 5, 1997. We see problem after problem created by this Forest Practices Code. A report that forest sector costs have risen by 75 percent as a direct result of the Forest Practices Code and super-stumpage. . . . So the Forest Practices Code is believed to have cost industry a billion dollars, making them less competitive and less able to provide jobs that used to support families throughout this province.

I think of a woman who said to us in Smithers that she just couldn't believe what has happened in British Columbia during the term of this NDP government -- how it used to be a country up there in the northwest where jobs were abundant, where the abundance of hydroelectricity, the easy access, the availability of natural resources and the openness of government to development gave people the opportunity to write their own ticket and to create a lifestyle for themselves and their families that they could really enjoy, and where they had horizons and opportunities and it was an absolute joy to live in that part of British Columbia. It isn't anymore, because of the NDP and the Forest Practices Code and the simple mismanagement of this province by this government. The NDP promised greater certainty for forest workers and forest-dependent communities when the Forest Practices Code was first announced. But instead, what has been delivered is unemployment to many forest workers and many people in the forest industry.

We believe that Bill 47 is a step in the right direction. I'm going to be voting for it, and many of my colleagues will as well, I believe. But it doesn't really go quite far enough -- not nearly far enough.

It does a number of things that we've been advocating. We believe that the rules under which people operate in the forests should be much more results-oriented. People in industry should be told what the goals are, what the measurements will be, and be allowed to use their expertise, their resources, their employees to work toward those goals. It's called empowerment. Businesses and enterprises throughout the world have learned to empower their employees in the last part of this century, and it works. People are intelligent. People who work on the ground know how to do things right, how to achieve the desired results. They don't need an encyclopedia of rules spelled out for them, and it's only destructive to do that to them. Why not, instead, lay out what the desired results are, reward those who achieve them and, certainly, penalize those who appear to have disregard for the environment or for the desired results?

This act seems to provide for the implementation of a new and more efficient Forest Renewal B.C. program delivery model, and that's a good thing. There are things that I'm concerned about, like the monetary administrative penalties to be paid into a special fund controlled by the Ministry of Forests for rectifying environmental damage. I trust that the Forests minister and his ministry will have control of that fund, because there are too many of these funds in this province that are ostensibly set up for certain purposes, like the levy that people are charged when they buy new tires to get rid of the old tires in the province, presumably, and the levy they charge for buying new batteries to get rid of old batteries. That's what they believe, but when these matters are audited, it's determined that nobody is actually doing anything with those old tires or those old batteries -- or not enough -- and the funds are getting rolled into general revenue and spent on friends and insiders and patronage appointments all too often.

Fishing licences are another example of that. I appear to be digressing here, and I'll stop momentarily, Mr. Speaker. But people are charged for fishing licences, and they're told that the habitat conservation fund will benefit. Then they find that only a small percentage of those funds actually goes into that allotment. So we've got to watch out. And I'm warning the Forests minister to watch out for that wriggle room that the Premier asks for -- the tendency of the Finance minister to say that he doesn't actually expect British Columbia to believe him. Well, there's a reason he doesn't expect that; it's based on his past performance -- and perhaps his intentions for the future, as well.

The minister himself often enough characterized the way this government does finance as a "sideways shuffle." I appreciate that candour, because certainly that's what we've seen. We've seen Forest Renewal B.C. taking over what used to be government operations paid for through the government's budget in Parks and in Forests and in Environment. And that's wrong. Government should be upfront about how it's spending the public's money and resources and should provide for openness and accountability. These sideways shuffles are not the proper way to do business. It's wrong that 30 percent of what used to be reported on this province's books has now been shuffled off sideways and hidden in Crown corporations such as FRBC.

So we turn, then, to the question: what doesn't this bill do? Well, I'm afraid one thing it doesn't do is give us any evidence at all that the NDP has learned anything about actual consultation. It's a word we hear an awful lot. Indeed, the Premier, the other day, when Bill 44 was hoisted, said that you'd think he'd learn. That was his quote: "You'd think I'd learn." And you would think he'd learn, because consultation is how things work out better in the 1990s -- and will in the next millennium, as well.

[7:30]

But we see a lot of things missing from this code. There is no mention of the road structures report, green-up issues, average block size, community watersheds, visual-quality objectives and their impacts on the annual allowable cut, or clarifying what biodiversity is. How is this government going to deal with endangered species? There is no mention of the 5 percent reduction in annual allowable cut with the purchase- 

[ Page 6159 ]

or sale-transfer of licences -- a big issue in Repap's problems. There's no mention of the forest sector's eligibility for $50 million per year of FRBC code funding.

We'd love to see genuine consultation. In fact, I'm going to read a couple of quotes from 1994 from colleagues of mine in this very House. Wilf Hurd, who I can name now, because he has unfortunately departed from this House. . . . We believe he was a tremendous contributor -- and so does the Premier; he said so on the day that Mr. Hurd left. Wilf Hurd said this on July 5, 1994. He was earnestly trying to propose amendments to the legislation of the day to try to avoid some of the problems that we have been talking about. He said: ". . .the motion for second reading of Bill 56 be amended by deleting the word 'now' and substituting the words 'six months hence'. . .which I think will allow for the kind of consultation that this government seems intent on avoiding with respect to this bill."

Honestly, it often seems that this government doesn't really want consultation, and that's why things happen like the gambling expansion announcement on March 13, before this session even started and certainly without due consultation with the public. I'm really not branching off into that, Mr. Speaker. It's just an example that things could have been done so much better. So many problems could have been avoided if a genuine consultation had taken place.

The member for Delta South said, also, on the same date -- July 5, 1994. . . . He moved an amendment that "the motion for second reading of Bill 56 be amended by deleting all the words after 'that' and substituting the following: 'Bill 56 not be read a second time, but that the subject matter be referred to the Select Standing Committee on Forests, Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources' " -- once again, a plea from the official opposition to this government and to the same people who are in cabinet now to actually use the select standing committees of the Legislature. Allow us to meet, allow us to work on the issues, allow us to bring the benefit of all the input we receive from our constituencies and to be genuine working committees, so that when legislation is actually passed in this House, it's workable legislation that's going to accomplish the things that British Columbians, and indeed the government, are looking for.

We know that the NDP doesn't want to fall on their face the way they've unfortunately done in the forest industry. They don't want to grind one of the major industries of this province to its knees and force people to go bankrupt before they finally, shamefacedly, bring in amendments when they could have had proper and sound legislation right from the beginning with that consultation process. So once again we see an example of the wisdom of the members of the official opposition -- the member for Delta South in this case -- pleading that the government actually use the tools at its disposal. These members sit here frustrated at the way things are conducted in this House, when they really want to work on those committees. I sit on -- well, I'm supposed to sit on -- two select standing committees of this Legislature, and neither one of them has ever had a meeting yet, since I've been an MLA. When we tell people that around this province, they just can't believe it. It's no way to do business anywhere, let alone when you're looking after the interests of four million people and all their descendants and all those who want to immigrate to British Columbia -- and will immigrate here.

We see that the NDP are just now beginning to understand the problems that have been created through their style of management and through the type of legislation that they've obliged the people of British Columbia to labour under. But they're still not actually understanding how those problems were created in the first place. Consultation is the key. That's absolutely what this government and the New Democratic Party have to begin to practise. If they'd listen to us and allow us to participate in the consultation, that would be great. But if they don't want to, then they could at least use some outside experts to teach them how to genuinely consult and listen to the people of B.C. We'll feed our input that way, as we've had to do with the proposed no-fault insurance legislation and the draconian changes to the Labour Code through Bill 44. There are many other ways that we've had to use back-door routes to try and bring to the government's attention, very forcefully, that the people of British Columbia will be hurt by the directions they're thinking of taking and will not stand for it. We don't want to see them put through the pain. It would be a lot quicker, a lot easier for all concerned -- and we could do our jobs more efficiently -- if we were involved in the process throughout. That's what we're asking for.

I look at some of the things that the government side said back when they were introducing the Forest Practices Code. The present Finance minister, then the Forests minister, said: "The Forest Practices Code will replace a mishmash of statutes, regulations and guidelines, many of which were overlapping, contradictory or unenforceable, and which created costs and confusion for those who tried to live by them." He said that May 30, 1994, in second reading of the Forest Practices Code. Of course, what was created was a new mishmash, a new overlapping and a new chaos that people found much more unworkable than the previous one. He created a new and worse set of problems, again, because there wasn't proper consultation.

On April 12, 1995, an NDP news release -- by the same minister, now the Finance minister -- said: "There is now a strong up-to-date set of rules backed by enough staff for planning and enforcement to provide certainty for the forest sector." What became certain was that they were going broke. They couldn't afford it; it was unworkable. There may have been enough staff for planning and enforcement. I'll give you an example. In my constituency, these people who used to make their living salvage-logging are on welfare. They would go out to where a forest fire had taken place or where a blowdown had happened, and they would log that timber. It was productive timber; it was good fibre. The mills wanted it; they had sales for it. But they couldn't get anybody to process the paper for them to actually allow them to get onto the land to pull the logs out and take care of them. Nobody was questioning their record or their ability or their equipment; there was just nobody to look after them because apparently all the staff were looking after planning and enforcement.

I give the Forests minister credit. He was as frustrated by that as I was. I spoke with him during the last session in this House; he had one of his ministerial assistants talk with me. But even he himself, with all the power that he has, wasn't able to circumvent this bizarre regulation, this encyclopedic rulebook. The result was that months and months dragged by, until one individual became so impatient that he went out and started pulling those logs out without a permit. Well, sure enough, the ministry, which didn't have any staff to come out and look at what he wanted to do and write him a permit, had a guy there within an hour to staple seizure notices on his logs, and he was charged. He is a citizen who just wanted to get off welfare and be employed doing the things he'd always done and was qualified to do, and who told me: "A guy in a 

[ Page 6160 ]

Forestry pickup used to come around and just write me a permit on the spot. They see the logs are down; they see that I didn't drop them there. They see they ought to be pulled out, and they let me do it."

Well, there was a happy ending to this after some obviously very tough times for one individual involved. I know the minister did some moving and shaking, and it was good. Those people went to work eventually, and they worked all last winter. When I talked to the individual that had been charged, I said: "Look, they mean it when they staple that notice on your logs. Don't fool around with that. Let them have the logs when they come for them." He said: "They're welcome to them. That one load of logs that my wife and I pulled out in two days with a pickup truck is worth more than the welfare cheque they paid me for all of last month, and I'm glad to pay them back." Now he's working, and that's a good thing.

But that's just one instance in a whole province, and we know that sort of inane result occurred all over the province. It wasn't this Forests minister that created the problem, and we appreciate that he's working now to try and roll back some of the difficulties. But let's, please, have some genuine consultation around this. Let's really put the legislative committee on forestry to work and allow them to have genuine input and bring on some more amendments to the Forest Practices Code as soon as possible and in the next session. And let's not try to spell it all out to people. In future, let's be more results-oriented. Let's come on into the 1990s and get ready to march into the next century. Let's let people do what they're good at.

There were significant questions raised by the official opposition in 1994 and 1995, when all, or many, of these problems could have been headed off. Again, Wilf Hurd is quoted on May 30, 1994, in Hansard at second reading of the Forest Practices Code, saying: ". . .at this point there are more questions than answers. There are questions about cost and about the impact on the annual allowable harvest." And he went on to say, in a press release the same day: "New Forest Practices Code standards must not come at the expense of jobs in British Columbia." And of course they did; that's what happened. If people can't afford to do business, then they're not going to be sustaining the jobs they had, let alone creating new jobs.

In closing, I think I'll just mention a couple of things. The fact that Liberals asked in 1994 that economics be included as a consideration under the Forest Practices Code. . . . Now that's finally happening, and we're pleased to see it. I'm going to give the last word to Wilf Hurd, who isn't here to speak for himself, and he's not the type of guy who'd say "I told you so," in any event. But what he did say in a news release on July 5, 1994, talking about a legislative session similar to the one that we've just been through, where we would really have liked to have been doing the people's business. . . . But because of the way business is brought on in this House, because of the fact that we aren't included in the planning process even for what legislation we're going to be working on or for when things are going to happen, because we know there hasn't been a genuine consultation process, we have to resort to using the few crude tools that we're still allowed by this government. Sometimes we're obliged to debate until 2:30 in the morning, and people get so punchy they start talking about the dogs they grew up with and so on. Those things happen because after 10 o'clock at night especially, it's pretty unreasonable to expect business to actually be getting done in an efficient way.

That's what was happening when this Forest Practices Code was introduced, and this is what Wilf Hurd had to say on July 5, 1994:

"We made numerous efforts to adjourn at a reasonable time and were ignored. The Forests minister tabled a record 80 amendments to the code without giving anyone an opportunity to examine them. All 80 were passed without proper debate because the government has the majority. The forced-march approach to democracy is ridiculous."

[7:45]

You know, the government over there talks about jobs and producing jobs. The Forest Practices Code did produce jobs for the forest industry in my community -- unfortunately, in a very negative way. What I understood was that the regulations and all the rules and everything else that went into the Forest Practices Code stood about three or four feet tall in someone's office -- paperwork to go through -- and forest industries, small industries, had to hire three or four people in their offices just to go through all of these forms and the rigamarole and paperwork around trying to get their work done.

It was ridiculous. It was not a positive impact on the industry, and in addition to that, it was known to produce harvest delays, paperwork, unnecessary expenses, and it basically became very onerous and bureaucratic for the industry. I got to know terms. I don't pretend to know a lot about the forest industry. I think the thing I should know and I do know is how important it is for my community, but I got to know terms like "extraction rates" and "stumpage fees" and "TSAs" and all of that kind of terminology. One thing that sticks in my mind is how mismanaged the whole Forest Practices Code and the implementation that came with it were by this government.

I wonder all the time why it takes a crisis for this government to act. Why does it have to take a crisis for this government to act? From the few meetings I had with forest industry 

[ Page 6161 ]

people in my riding, I found that they were in a crisis situation. This government, the policies of this government and the way they implemented the Forest Practices Code almost drove the industry to the brink of disaster.

The Premier does his polls, the government does its polls, and they realize that -- guess what -- jobs are important to the people of B.C. They pay for all these expensive polls, and they realize that, because that's at the top of people's minds in B.C. They realize: "Well, just a minute. Where can we find jobs? Oh, gee, for the last three years people have been telling us that the Forest Practices Code is causing more paperwork, more bureaucracy and less jobs. Now we want to say that we're interested in jobs -- in keeping jobs and producing jobs -- so maybe we had better make some changes to the Forest Practices Code." Why did it take three years? Why did it take two to three years?

Interjections.

S. Hawkins: I don't know if I want to go by their numbers. Why did it take this long before they came to a realization that changes needed to be made? Why did it take that long? What I understand is that the opposition has been saying for years that this is wrong. This is wrong, and we need to make some positive changes.

We're glad to see that the government woke up, but we're not glad to see that it was because of a crisis. It just amazes me over and over again, because it's not just in this ministry; it's in other ministries that I've noticed this, too. I've observed this. I'm hopeful. I go through this bill and I look at it -- it just amazes me how thick it is -- because I know that it's a start and they're trying to make positive changes. I understand by members who know more than I do about this that it doesn't go far enough.

I hope the government will take steps and listen to people, listen to real people whose jobs are affected by this industry. I hope it's not just a ploy to try to prop up the Premier's image; I hope that's not what it is. I hope there's a very real concern for people who are affected by the forest industry, who depend on the forest industry, whose jobs depend on the forest industry. I hope it's not just a cosmetic change, because if that's what it is, then I have less confidence in what this is trying to achieve than I had before.

I'm hoping this is a step in the right direction. I hope that the Forests minister shows leadership and sits down with the forest industry, with the stakeholders, and has very real consultation. I heard other members on this side of the House talk about consultation, which I won't get into in great detail here. I hope there's going to be some real political will and not just cosmetic changes to the Forest Practices Code to make this work.

We do want to see people in our community working. We do want to see that, and we hope the government has learned a lesson from this. We hope the government has learned a real lesson from this. Over and over again, it seems to me that it takes a crisis before the members on that side of the House act, before cabinet acts.

We hope this will provide some real change, some real positive change, for the industry and for people in my community. I will be supporting the bill. I look to the minister to provide the leadership and the positive direction that, hopefully, we'll get from this bill.

The Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the minister's comments close second reading debate.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I have listened -- much against my better judgment sometimes -- to every word from the opposite side. I was moved to leave the chamber, but I resisted the temptation. I wanted to be able to rebut virtually every point they made.

The last item that was debated here was consultation. About two years ago, we heard from the opposite benches. We certainly heard from real people -- I don't know about the opposite benches. We certainly heard that people were tired of consultation on land use, on the Forest Practices Code, on land claims. They were tired; there was too much. Now people have forgotten that. But let me straighten the record on consultation on the Forest Practices Code, lest anybody read what's in Hansard from the opposition -- that there wasn't consultation.

The need for a code went back to before we were government. Industry asked for a code. They wanted it written down consistently. When we became government, we put together a draft discussion paper and draft rules and distributed them in November '93 for discussion. We had open houses, stakeholder workshops and first nations information centres throughout B.C., from November '93 to January '94. We had reader response forms; real people were able to fill those in. Written submissions were received and analyzed up to January and March.

An Hon. Member: You didn't listen.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: Yes, we did listen. There was a summary of the public input released in May '94, and we put that out. We introduced the legislation, and then we brought out draft regulations, standards and field guides, all of which were available for public review, all taking several years. In fact, it took quite a number of years to bring it into effect. It was finally on June 15 of this year that the code was fully implemented. It took two years to phase it in.

But even before we finished phasing it in, we had listened to people, and we began corrective measures. One year into a two-year implementation of the code we started the process of fine-tuning it to make sure that it was response with experience. To say that there wasn't consultation is absolutely wrong.

With respect to these changes, these changes began with the operational planning review back in August. There was a paper put out around December, and people had a chance to comment. There were hundreds of groups and individuals that commented. We did listen. We don't need to put a committee on the road to learn. Every MLA can write to us. The officials tell us what people are saying. I talked to people on the doorstep in the last election campaign, and I asked them: "What about the code?" They said: "Yeah, we like it." I asked: "Well, what about not going to work when it's wet?" People grumbled because it was change.

What members opposite forget is that we had just come out of an era when there was a lot of ripping and tearing. If we hadn't brought in a tough code that was written down and was therefore enforceable -- not vague objectives with no rules -- if we didn't have the public process implicit in the regulations where people had a chance to do it, we wouldn't have better judgments out there. In fact, I submit to you that the protest we're seeing today in the Slocan Valley resulted in some arrests, yes. But we have plans in place for logging in watersheds, which we wouldn't have if we hadn't had the land use planning, the timber supply review and the Forest Practices Code. Yes, it was a lot. We had to bring industry and 

[ Page 6162 ]

the public up to the same speed. Previous governments hadn't listened to the early warnings about the fact that we needed to do a better job of planning in our forests.

Several of the members opposite asked for more regulation on visual-quality objectives, on $50 million. They want it put in here, things that we want to spend on code costs. They want the road regulations put into the legislation. They asked for the green-up provisions to be put into the legislation. They want biodiversity written into the legislation.

This side rejects that. We'll put out guidebooks that we can change with policy and regulation. You ask about the road regulations. We will change it with regulation and policy, but we won't, like some member over there asked for, straitjacket the industry any further than has to be done. They would have them straitjacketed around road regulations and green-up and biodiversity. We're not going to do that.

This legislation is all about a more flexible code. I'm proud of the fact that we are bringing it in scarcely weeks after the code was fully implemented through a two-year transition program.

People forget that we have to have enforcement. It has to be enforceable, and people wanted the regulations written down so that they could be enforced, so that people knew what the regulations were. Of course, there are going to be changes needed, and change is going to bring about some concern. But to say that it's a job-killer. . . . I just read the Price Waterhouse report -- the industry's own report -- on the industry. What did they say? There are about 1,500 more jobs this year than last year. When I look at the statistics on the amount of wood cut. . . . The wood is coming out.

Yes, it's a little harder, and you can't work when the weather's bad because you're going to ruin the soil. But for members to suggest that the code was for anything other than the people working in the industry and communities. . . . I submit to you that it was for people, for the future and for generations to come. It was to protect the forests for productivity. In fact, the protected-areas strategy leaves blueprints of the forests, as they grew naturally in this province, that brought us this abundance. That economic blueprint is still there so that it can inform planning decisions in the future and right now, so that we have timber forever.

The members opposite have every opportunity in the debate to suggest what these regulations might be. They could write to us when they listen to people in their ridings and talk to people. They can tell us and inform us of what those regulation changes are. But I don't get much mail from the opposition. I get a lot of rhetoric, but I don't get any concrete suggestions. If members opposite ever went on the road in a legislative committee, they might be challenged to do the job that they're supposed to be doing now -- put it in writing and put down some concrete suggestions about where and when you should put in culverts and under what soil conditions you should log. I would suggest that they'd realize that you can't put all of that into regulations in a different way. But let them try, hon. Speaker; we would like to see it.

You know the simplistic comparison to Sweden? There's hardly an old-growth tree in Sweden. They have nowhere near the complexity of forest ecosystems we have here, the diversity of the types of trees that grow. They have a much simpler regulatory system, yes, but the types of forests and terrain are much less diverse, and most of it is private land. Here we are protecting the public land for many uses -- more than just timber production.

I'm glad to remind the member from Peace River that he did vote for it last time around. Many members opposite. . . . We certainly know that the Liberals voted against the tough enforcement provisions, because they didn't want us to be able to enforce this code. Well, I suggest to you that we have to have the rules there. This makes it simpler. This makes the implementation much more cost-effective. I suggest to you that we will probably bring in revisions in the future. Any government would have to; it is a living code.

I look forward to detailed debate in committee stage. But I think that the people of the province would do well to remember the kinds of signals they put to us, the war in the woods where we had huge areas of land deferred because we didn't have the Forest Practices Code to govern how we would conduct forestry on the land base. Now we have zoning, and we have the Forest Practices Code to apply to the zones.

Planning is better and the results are better. I think that when faced with boycotts internationally, we can say to the people who work in the forest industry. . . . We can tell the customers, as I have in letters to companies who buy our products, that we have a high standard of forest practices in this province. They're even higher because of this code, because people will be able to devote the resources, both in industry and in government, to ensure that the planning is the best and the results are the best.

With that, I move second reading.

[8:00]

Bill 47, Forests Statutes Amendment Act, 1997, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I call committee stage on Bill 33.

BC BENEFITS STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 1997

On section 1.

M. Coell: Just a couple of comments. The bill that we're debating in committee stage, Bill 33, is really three very short bills -- identical in that they affect income assistance programs, Youth Works and disability benefits. If the minister is agreeable, it would be my thought that we would spend some time talking about the first one and the effects on people and the effects on government, and keep the questions to that section -- not waste time dealing with the other two sections. They are identical, and I think the questions that will be arising from those will be addressed in the first section, if that is agreeable to the minister.

Hon. D. Streifel: Hon. Chair, to the critic opposite, I think that would be a wise suggestion and a valuable use of our time.

M. Coell: The first question on section 1. . . . I realize that this bill is generated as a reaction to changes in federal legislation that have also been dealt with in other provinces in Canada. I think most British Columbians agree with the principles of the bill, in that parents are the first line of responsibility for their children -- whether they're married, separated or divorced -- and that can be achieved through this bill.

[ Page 6163 ]

I think that for interest, there are a number of ways that this bill could have appeared on the floor of the Legislature -- one being as a reaction to the federal government's legislation, another being the government looking to save money, or the other being a way of forcing spouses to support their children financially after a marriage or relationship breakup. I just wonder whether the ministry had conducted any research or done any consultation with clients using the system prior to developing this legislation. I'm thinking of focus groups or interviews with people who might have access to that system prior to the legislation being drafted.

Hon. D. Streifel: As a matter of fact, the Premier's forum -- before the current Premier's time; the previous Premier -- that was held around these issues addressed this and made a recommendation that will stand on the record. In fact, that's where the recommendation came from.

The member made a comment as to coupling with the federal guidelines now and that other provinces have, as well. We are, as I understand it, the first and only province at this time to fully adopt those federal financial support guidelines in this manner. Although other provinces do have similar programs around family maintenance, there are some things about our program that are unique and that we would, through the process of committee stage, maybe explore and maybe not.

I'm sure the members opposite are very aware of those areas in our legislation that are quite different from other provinces and, I would say, quite different in attitude and approach, whereby the families in our legislation take precedence over government when it comes to attachment to moneys that are owed. Families take precedence over government to stay in line, I suppose, longer to receive moneys that are in arrears. So that's the main differences I wanted to. . . . We're a little bit off section 1, but I just want to point out some of the differences, as the member alluded to initiatives in other provinces.

M. Coell: I thank you for that clarification. I think it's important when legislation comes forward like this that it's not just a reaction -- that people have been consulted. It appears that this has been the case. I think that will help the legislation be successful.

I thank the minister for allowing his staff to brief the members of the opposition on the bill. That's extremely helpful.

One of the areas that I have some concern with is section 1, where the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council may make regulations governing assignment of maintenance orders. I just wonder whether you're expecting to bring in more legislation with regard to this bill or whether that would be done through regulation as need be. Whether you find the bill is working or whether there need to be changes to it, would you see that done by regulation or by further legislation?

Hon. D. Streifel: In fact, it treads a bit into hypothetical or future policy, but I think it's a fair question. This piece of legislation will be passed and enforced. This section allows us to make adjustments or changes as needed, by regulation. But I don't want to presuppose that changes are in the works until in fact we get the opportunity to test the waters, to make. . . . I think we're on the right track with this. It fits within what the needs of our clients in particular are, certainly the children of the clients. That's where we're at with it. I don't want to get into protracted possibilities of future stuff. But in fact, the member is correct when he indicates that this would give us the opportunity to make changes in the future.

V. Anderson: Would the minister indicate, in section 1, why it's changed from a voluntary-assignment-of-rights program to a compulsory assignment-of-rights program?

Hon. D. Streifel: For the hon. members, there are far too many cases -- "cases" in the literal sense -- on income assistance where the non-custodial parents won't pay, won't support their children. It is the obligation of parents to support their children. I don't think I'm going to get very much of an argument from the members opposite on that issue.

Through this manner of the mandatory assignment, we'll be able to help apply for orders and help to monitor those orders and ensure that the non-custodial parent is in fact living up to their obligations of being a parent, supporting their children.

V. Anderson: The minister mentioned that he had been in consultation with groups about the development of this. What low-income groups -- End Legislated Poverty, Federated Anti-Poverty Groups -- did you consult about changing from the voluntary to the compulsory? I know that in my own past experience there were many single women with children who were very concerned that it not be a compulsory program, for a number of personal and family concerns. So I'm wondering what consultation the minister had with the low-income groups and what responses he found from them.

Hon. D. Streifel: The development of this legislation came through the Premier's Forum on New Opportunities for Working and Living. There was a wide variety of presentations there from the academic community, the advocacy community, business and labour -- all made presentations. That's what developed this piece of legislation.

V. Anderson: I notice that the minister said the communities, then business, then labour. I was asking specifically what low-income groups were represented -- End Legislated Poverty, Federated Anti-Poverty Groups. What low-income groups were represented? What presentations did they make?

Hon. D. Streifel: At the Premier's forum, End Legislated Poverty was represented there, and representatives from the disability community. Margaret Mitchell was there, I understand, making a presentation on behalf of low-income communities, as well. That was the process that was used to develop this legislation.

M. Coell: On section 1, the repeal of voluntary assignment, how will that be achieved? You have, I suspect, 10,000 people possibly in a position that would be voluntary assignment of rights now -- could be, possibly not. Do you intend on signing them all up right now or doing it slowly? How about the people coming onto the stream right now? Would they be signed up or put in the batch with the rest of the people who are on assistance?

Hon. D. Streifel: As I understand it, there are sections of the act as we go along that would maybe be more appropriate. . .to try to stick within the standing orders on this bill. I realize, hon. Chair, that it's going to be very difficult to move away from almost second-reading-like discussion on this bill. It's very principled, however you look at it. It's going to be 

[ Page 6164 ]

tough to stay within the bounds of order, to stay section by section. Phase-in provisions come up later in the bill, under another section, if the member would like to wait until then. Or if we could sneak it past the Chair, we can try it now.

M. Coell: I was trying to sneak it by the Chair. I think that fits section 1, in that you're dealing with voluntary. . . . But I'm quite happy to deal with it in section 3, where it's a little bit more specific, if you wish.

[8:15]

On section 3.

M. Coell: Hon. Chair, I'll try to rephrase my question to fit section 3 because of your harsh ruling.

With the repeal of voluntary assignment of rights, you're going to have, all of a sudden, a group of people who will have to be brought into the new mandatory assignment of rights. I just wonder whether you intend to try to sign all of those people up in a six-month period or whether you intend to do that staggered over a period of years. How are you going to treat new people coming into the system? Do they go to the front of the line or the back of the line, with regard to the new program?

Hon. D. Streifel: Well, those folks that are with us now on voluntary assignment will in fact be included in the mandatory provisions. There doesn't seem to be a difficulty there. With new individuals that come on to apply for income assistance, the information will be taken as part of the intake system to determine whether or not there's a maintenance order outstanding or achievable. The existing, the others -- I guess it's over 40,000 -- will be phased in over a period of time. It could be as long as three years that the phase-in could happen. It would be very difficult to deal with everybody all at once. We found that out on other provisions when we were dealing with large numbers. So we'll do the phase-in, and it could take as long as three years. I think it's achievable, and it's certainly worthwhile.

M. Coell: The categories of persons not eligible for income assistance are of some interest to me in that I wouldn't want to see someone who has children excluded. I just wonder whether the minister could go over those categories for me. What I'm looking for is: could there be someone who would be excluded and their children would be excluded as well, and that would allow the children to fall through the cracks?

Hon. D. Streifel: I'll try this for the hon. member, for the exclusion. . . . For instance, single, childless males or single, childless females who have never been married or lived in a common-law relationship would be exempted from assigning rights. Obviously there are no rights there to assign. Those are the kind of "for instances" on the exemption side. I don't think it would extend any exemptions. I don't know if we have any indication that we would be extending any exemptions to those that may be in a position to be required to support kids. I don't think that happens. It's just those that don't have kids. It's pretty tough to assign maintenance rights if there are no children to maintain.

M. Coell: Thank you for that clarification. That's helpful.

In this program, where someone is assigning their maintenance moneys over to the government, is there a possibility that if you found an individual wasn't capable of saving, wasn't capable of managing money, that the government would actually manage some savings for that person? Or is that not seen as part of this act at all?

Hon. D. Streifel: Let me attempt to get some clarification from the member. The question, I think, pertained to somebody that may have difficulty managing their money and is assessed a maintenance assignment to be paid over, and they just can't seem to get it together. They can't value their expenditures in a week or on a month-by-month basis. The question being: would we help with that budgeting process? Probably not; I would think no. First of all, they're not our clients, so we don't have any kind of a relationship with them in these circumstances if they're working. It would be possible, I would suppose, to be referred off to an agency, because there are agencies out there that help individuals manage their funds. Or perhaps through the court structure, the courts may recommend that the individual go and take some lessons on how to budget or whatever. But I can't see us getting involved at that level on behalf of an individual who's not one of our clients, because we don't generally deal with those who are not our clients -- if that helps.

M. Coell: I guess my thought was that they may start out as your client and move out of the system. It may show an area where some coordination could be helpful with the new Ministry for Children and Families, so that you would have some counselling available -- financial counselling -- as well as just the payment and the collection of funds. I only mention that as an area where you may find some individuals fall into that category.

Hon. D. Streifel: I have a feeling that the member is approaching a discussion area that's actually beyond this bill. I'm trying to fit myself into where we would go. If someone leaves our system, then they're out of our system, and the money is actually paid to the family maintenance enforcement program which pays us -- or pays our client through us. I'm trying to be as open as I can to stretch a relationship, but I don't think I can do it. I believe this is outside the scope of this bill.

M. Coell: I can accept that in that the change of the ministry. . . . A Social Services ministry bill would have had the tie between financial aid workers, social workers, counsellors and that sort of thing. That's an area which maybe I can pursue in estimates for Children and Families, and I will do that.

With regard to assignment of maintenance fees through maintenance orders, is there a limit on how much the government will spend to secure that maintenance order? I'm thinking you may have to go to court. Are there legal fees contemplated? And if there are, is there an upper limit at which the government would finally say: "No, we can't afford this maintenance order"?

Hon. D. Streifel: Actually, the cost of chasing a maintenance order. . . . We have a contract with the Attorney General's ministry to cover these kinds of costs, but I believe the success of this program will be measured not in how often we have to go to court but in a lot of ways how often we don't have to go there, because there will be interventions along the way on behalf of our clients. It's possible to come to an 

[ Page 6165 ]

agreement outside the courts -- mediation within the federal guidelines -- and I expect that a lot of that will be taking place. But as we work on a. . . . If we have trouble pursuing an order, obviously we will work with the Attorney General's ministry on behalf of our clients to pursue it through the courts through the contract we have with the Attorney General.

M. Coell: I would presume that as well as forcing people to take the responsibility for their children seriously -- and financially seriously -- there may be a benefit to the provincial government budget. I just wonder whether the ministry has done any calculations as to what the net effect of this program would be in the first year, second year or third year of operation.

Hon. D. Streifel: Well, with the number of initiatives that we've undertaken in this ministry, beginning with the former minister, then the current Minister of Health and carried on under me. . . . A number of our initiatives are designed to move people off the welfare caseloads, either in whole or in part, and to attach support that's there for them from other means and measures. In fact, that then becomes a cost saving, but it's not at all times the primary driver.

In this case, yes, we expect. . . . Our early estimates, based on early implementation -- I guess as of June -- would have been up to $7 million this year. But it will be somewhat reduced this year, because we're now at the end of July, putting this legislation through the House. In year three, at full implementation, we expect to see a cost saving of $15 million in this program.

I don't think it's exactly fair, though, to characterize it as a cost saving to government. I believe it's a transferring of financial support for children from government to their parents. That's what's very, very important about this legislation. If you have children, you have an obligation to support them. We now have some guidelines federally in order to do this, and why should. . . ? In the final analysis, I guess, the taxpayer doesn't want to do it. It's tough enough out there. It's the parents that should support their children. So, in fact, the cost saving described is, in reality, a transferring of financial responsibility to parents from the government.

M. Coell: I appreciate those comments.

There are two other areas that I wish to canvass. In section 3, section 24.1(5), it says that while an assignment of maintenance rights is in effect, the person who made the assignment is not entitled to exercise any of the assigned rights that the government would have. I just wonder what sort of consultation would take place with clients after they had signed over their maintenance rights to the government. What is planned as ongoing communication or consultation with that client?

Hon. D. Streifel: In fact, the family maintenance workers have a very close one-on-one relationship with the clients, and that would be the process that would flow through the enforcement of these orders and the increased financial support for the families. It's just a natural. . . .

I don't think we can get through this bill, actually, without complimenting our family maintenance workers and the good work -- the very intuitive, supportive, caring work -- they do on behalf of our clients in order to ensure that the client is respected and supported and that the children receive their due in financial support from their parents. So it's a very close, one-on-one relationship.

[8:30]

Hon. D. Streifel: Of course, there is a provision in the act that the mandatory maintenance order may be or could be waived -- will be waived -- if there's danger to the family, either the mother, the custodial parent. . . . Way over 90 percent are mothers and/or their children. The family maintenance workers are very well trained in the detection and in the acceptance that this is a reality for some folks out there, and there will be no mandatory assignment.

I think I'll leave the answer at that. We have a very good track record. Our workers are well trained and have a very, very good track record, and I have full confidence in them and in their ability to manage this end of this piece of legislation.

V. Anderson: For clarification. . . . I understood the minister to say that the maintenance program is run by the Attorney General's department and that it's contracted from your ministry to them. If that's the case, what is the relationship or supervision or interaction between. . . ? Monitoring might be the better word. If it's run by another ministry, what's the monitoring done by your ministry in making that contract?

Hon. D. Streifel: We're now in the process of working out a protocol agreement with the Ministry of Attorney General where we -- the two ministries -- will work together on behalf of the client. It's not something where the client gets caught up in the middle. We will be putting together a relationship with the Ministry of Human Resources and the Ministry of Attorney General, much like what the Ministry of Human Resources family maintenance workers have with the clients. It will be a close-on relationship with the Ministry of Attorney General to ensure that this program is successful, without catching the clients in the middle as a go-between or a pull bar.

Our whole interest here is to support children or to have children supported financially by their parents. If we can work with the Attorney General as the Attorney General is adopting the federal guidelines, it allows us to do that. It's a unique opportunity for us.

V. Anderson: It's helpful and reassuring to know how that process will take place.

Under section 3, section 24.1(1), the first statement is: "The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations governing the assignment of maintenance rights and the recovery of the amount of income assistance provided in place of maintenance. . . ." Might the minister just explain the meaning of "the recovery of the amount of income assistance provided in place of maintenance"?

Hon. D. Streifel: Say there is an individual on income assistance, and they have a monthly maintenance payment -- we'll use an example I was just given, fresh in my mind -- of 

[ Page 6166 ]

$200 a month. The family gets $200 a month in maintenance, and they get the balance from income assistance and top-up. If the payment doesn't come one month, the Ministry of Human Resources makes that payment in order to maintain the family's income, to stabilize and bridge over to a time when we can reattach the maintenance money on behalf of the client.

V. Anderson: If I understand the minister correctly, they're saying that once established, the amount that's supposed to come from maintenance -- and the amount that would come from maintenance and the amount that you might provide to top it up to the maximum -- then would come automatically every month to the family. If the maintenance hadn't arrived, then the government would be in debt until they collected that. Is that what they're saying? But the family wouldn't be out at any point.

Hon. D. Streifel: Yes, that's exactly correct. It's one of the other aspects of this program that is unique. It's not like this in every other province -- that we will do the bridging. We will ensure that the money flows on a regular, stable basis -- amount and time -- to the family that is on maintenance as well as income assistance. That's going to be a tremendous support for these families that are just struggling by on meagre means as it is. It will be a huge support to know that at least their income is stable. We will fill or backstop the lost payments until such time as it can be corrected.

V. Anderson: Under section 3, section 24.1(5) says: "While an assignment of maintenance rights is in effect, the person who made the assignment is not entitled to exercise any of the assigned rights" -- over the page to (a) -- "except to the extent authorized in writing by the minister." Could the minister suggest what kind of authorization of assigned rights he might be assigning back to a person who has already assigned the rights over, if I understand that rightly?

Hon. D. Streifel: If an individual comes to us and applies for income assistance, and they already have a court date set for a hearing to determine an assignment of maintenance, we would likely let that process flow, rather than stopping it and starting all over again. That would be a waiving of the provisions of this bill at that time, just to let what's in process happen.

V. Anderson: If a person has a complaint or question about the propriety of some kind of decision that's made in this area, is there a right of appeal? Who do they appeal to? Is there a process for that on the decisions of the minister, the actions that are being taken or how their rights are being handled?

Hon. D. Streifel: If I understand the member, we're dealing with the effect on a client on income assistance. Certainly there would be an administrative appeal if an individual doesn't like the decisions that have been made on their behalf. If there is a denial of benefits, of course, there would be the appeal process available as well. I think that's the area the member was targeting in the question.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

M. Coell: In section 4, section 15.1(1)(a), it says: ". . .prescribing categories of youth who are not eligible for a youth allowance unless they and their dependants assign to the minister any maintenance rights. . ." and then there's a list of them. I wonder if the minister could comment. If you're dealing with a youth -- say a 16-year-old, not living at home but covered by a maintenance order, who wishes to get into a Youth Works program -- do they sign that maintenance order over? How would you do that with a youth who isn't legally able to sign a binding legal document?

Hon. D. Streifel: There's a little confusion dealing with youth. The member referenced a 16-year-old and Youth Works in the same comment, and Youth Works is for 19-to-24-year-olds. If the member needs clarification, we should just pass this section and get on with life.

M. Coell: Yeah, that is helpful to me. So in this section, you're only going to be dealing with people aged 19 to 24 coming into a maintenance agreement. The area I was concerned about is probably taken care of in the last section, then. The children of parents who are living on the street is what I was looking at, to see how they would be part of a potential agreement. I think the minister has probably answered that for me before, so I'm happy with this section now. There may be another question.

V. Anderson: I was just noting that in the section 15.1(5) it's again the question of not being able to exercise rights. I guess it's the same thing as before, so I'll let that one go.

Sections 4 and 5 approved.

On section 6.

V. Anderson: In section 6, section 1(1)(a), it's talking about "any minister." Is this written so that it takes into account the variety of ministries under which some of these programs may be operating? Is that what they're trying to do in section 6?

Hon. D. Streifel: Yes, that's correct. The Youth Works act is under MOEST, so that answers the question.

Section 6 approved.

On section 7.

M. Coell: This is on the enforcement of maintenance orders, and I would be interested in hearing the minister's comments on how these orders will be enforced. You have someone who has signed over their rights to the ministry, and then the person, for whatever reason, refuses to pay or doesn't continue paying their cheques to enforcement. What will your ministry do? Is your ministry contracting with another ministry or an outside agency to enforce that order?

[8:45]

Sections 7 to 17 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. D. Streifel: I move the committee on Bill 33 rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

[ Page 6167 ]

Motion approved.

The House resumed; G. Brewin in the chair.

Bill 33, BC Benefits Statutes Amendment Act, 1997, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. J. MacPhail: I call Committee of the Whole to debate Bill 25.

FISH PROTECTION ACT

On section 1.

C. Clark: I want to start our discussion of Bill 25, which is a fairly extensive bill, with some discussion of the definitions. The first thing I'd like to bring to the minister's and chamber's attention is that the bill does not provide a definition of fish, which I think is interesting. It does provide a definition of fish habitat and sensitive streams. We know that there's other legislation which identifies even cattle. Interestingly, for the minister's information, that definition in one of the acts defines cattle as goats, sheep and cattle.

So I wonder why, in this case, the minister has decided not to include a definition of fish in the act. I would think that would avoid, perhaps, any future legal questions that might be raised and provide clarity for the courts in any future discussion of the act. In many respects, there certainly will be new questions that are raised by the act which would need to be addressed by the courts. So given that, perhaps the minister could just tell us briefly about the definition of fish.

Hon. C. McGregor: The reason we're calling them fish is because they're not goats, sheep and cattle. They are indeed fish. It covers all species of fish, regardless of what they appear to look like in the province. Legal counsel advised us it was not necessary to have a definition.

C. Clark: There are, as the minister is aware, other kinds of aquatic life whose habitat might be affected by a water licence on a watercourse. Sometimes definitions, as I've pointed out, are very broad indeed, and sometimes they're very narrow. Was it the minister's intent to specifically include those other kinds of aquatic life, other than what we would normally in our day-to-day discussions define as fish? Is that an intention on the part of the minister? Perhaps she could discuss it.

Hon. C. McGregor: It's not meant to cover things like mollusks, bivalves, mammals or any other thing. It's meant to cover fish.

C. Clark: I suppose to people who aren't familiar with environment issues -- and I see a few of them in the chamber, particularly on the other side of the House -- it might seem a silly question to ask to define fish. But that's a common thing that is done in legislation -- giving a strict, clear definition to the terms we use -- in order to provide clarity and direction for the courts, because after all, legislation is meant to be interpreted by the courts. As I pointed out, there are some broad definitions.

So just for the record, there has been some suggestion from interest groups that perhaps fish should include other kinds of aquatic life -- shellfish or other aquatic animals. Can the minister tell us, at least, why she decided to specifically exclude those types of aquatic creatures, whose habitat might also be very seriously affected and whose existence in a given waterway might be very seriously undermined by water licensing?

Hon. C. McGregor: I think the reason we designated fish in this act is that we were interested in protecting fish.

The Chair: The member continues.

C. Clark: Thank you, hon. Chair. I should tell you, hon. Chair, that it's really my fervent hope that we can get through this bill reasonably quickly. I'm hoping it's not the minister's intent to hold it up and drag it out by refusing to answer questions. I can assure her that I'm not trying to entrap her; I'm not trying to trick her. There is no reason for her necessarily to try and avoid answering questions. I don't want to drag the proceedings out this evening. I suspect, though, that if we have to search for every answer fairly deeply and probe everything very closely, it is going to take some time to do that. I would certainly like to be able to avoid doing that.

So when the minister says she wants to protect fish, I understand that. But the point I am trying to make and the thing I'd like her to understand is that definitions in legislation are there to provide clarity for the courts. This legislation specifically did not have a definition of fish. I don't pretend to have the breadth of knowledge that the minister's officials have about this act; that's precisely why I'm asking this question.

I simply am asking, when the ministry decided not to include a definition of fish in the act, if it was their intent to specifically exclude the other aquatic life whose habitat might be adversely impacted by water licences and the issuance of water licences. It's a fairly simple question. I'm quite hopeful that the minister will answer it, so that we can get on to the next question.

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes.

C. Clark: That wasn't so hard.

My next question is still on the definitions section, and that's about the bank-to-bank dams. I did have a briefing with the ministry about this bill, and we did discuss the definition of bank-to-bank dams. One of the things I would like to briefly explore is whether there are any applications for bank-to-bank dams on the books with the ministry at the present time, which the change here might affect.

Hon. C. McGregor: That kind of application would likely be covered by the Environmental Assessment Act. I'm not aware of any such applications at this time.

C. Clark: To help us measure the impact that this act will have on future applications, could the minister tell us when the last application was made to the ministry, or the board which reports to her ministry, for a bank-to-bank dam in British Columbia?

Hon. C. McGregor: I appreciate that the member would like to know the answer to that question. We don't have it at hand, but I would also remind the member that it isn't specifically related to the definitions under the act. The question she has is a legitimate one, and certainly one that we could discuss out in the corridor.

[ Page 6168 ]

C. Clark: I can certainly raise that question, probably even later in our discussion of this act. I know that there will certainly be portions of the act to which that question might be more relevant and directly applicable, if we want to go on a "be careful about where we mention different issues. . . ."

The "sensitive stream" designation expressly excludes, unless otherwise designated, the tributaries of those waterways that might be designated. It's a marvellous idea for the government to designate streams as sensitive for the purposes of this act. Clearly that will provide some measure of protection to the fish that use that for their habitat. The issue here, though, by specifically excluding the tributaries, is that much of the spawning for fish is done not in the main stem of the stream but in the tributary.

Many people would argue that in order to really adequately protect fish habitat, we need to protect the places where the fish spawn, and in many cases, that's not in the main stem of the river but in the tributary. The definition of sensitive streams specifically excludes those tributaries. I wonder if the minister could first comment on that and maybe just tell us how she believes this might still protect fish habitat fully without including the tributaries in the definition.

Hon. C. McGregor: The member misreads the definition, because in fact it does automatically include the tributaries. It only excludes the tributaries if they are so named.

C. Clark: The minister is quite right. I'm looking at the protected rivers in section 4. I apologize for that.

I'll leave my comments for this section for the moment, because I suspect we'll be able to discuss many of the issues contained in the definitions in other parts of the act.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

On section 3.

[9:00]

Hon. C. McGregor: Yes, indeed, there was consultation, particularly as a part of the recently announced fisheries agreement we have with the federal government. These matters were fully explored at that table. We've also had a legal opinion that ensures us that this is consistent with the federal legislation.

J. van Dongen: There is comment made, though, that there is overlap. People who specialize in reviewing environmental legislation have commented that there is overlap in certain sections. I'll give you an example.

Section 21 of Bill 25, for example, appears to duplicate section 36(3) of the federal Fisheries Act. That's one example; there are other examples given. I want to raise the point that there's a real need to coordinate efforts in this area. I know about the memorandum of understanding with the federal government, but I'm concerned that we do have a proliferation of legislation. I hope that in the implementation of this legislation everything is done to ensure streamlining of efforts by both governments.

Hon. C. McGregor: I would agree with the member's comments in terms of the need to continue to work with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on potential overlap between our legislative mandates and theirs. That assurance has been given as a part of our negotiations, and obviously it is something that we're going to have to work with very closely -- particularly at the field level, in my view -- in how we manage our legislative mandate and how DFO manages theirs.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

Hon. C. McGregor: I move the amendment standing in my name in Orders of the Day.

[SECTION 4(1)(e), by adding "the West Road River, commonly known as" before "the Blackwater River".]

On section 4 as amended.

C. Clark: Again I will note, as we discuss this section, that only the main stems of the listed rivers are protected, not the tributaries. Perhaps the minister could comment on that for us at this stage. Why is the explicit protection in the legislation only provided for the main stem of the river? I would think that if the intent was to protect fish habitat quite fully and completely, the tributaries where the fish spawn would also be worthy of explicit protection in the legislation.

Hon. C. McGregor: It is true that it doesn't name tributaries, but that doesn't mean that tributaries couldn't be added. Other rivers and, potentially, tributaries could be added to the list through amendment and through the nomination process. If there were any consideration of dams on the tributaries of those rivers, it would have to go through an environmental assessment process, which would take into consideration the effects on fish and fish habitat and the water licensing process as well.

C. Clark: I know that the old system would still kick in -- or not, as the case may be -- for the tributaries should a bank-to-bank dam be proposed for one of them. It strikes me as incongruous that the minister would include the rivers but not the tributaries where the fish spawn, if the intent of this bill is indeed to protect fish.

The rivers that are listed are explicitly named because the minister has decided -- quite rightly -- that they should be treated specially in the legislation and not simply be subject to the old way of doing things. When it comes to bank-to-bank dams, these rivers and this fish habitat will be protected. It appears to me that the minister should consider going the full way and really make a sincere effort when it comes to these waterways and include on that list -- rather than specifically exclude from that list -- the tributaries where the fish spawn.

I want to specifically ask the minister why the Nechako isn't listed here. There are a number of very significant rivers, of course, and the Nechako is one of those rivers. I wonder if 

[ Page 6169 ]

the ministry had any specific reason not to include one of the really very important rivers for fish habitat in our province and certainly one that has been threatened quite seriously in the past.

Hon. C. McGregor: In just discussing this with staff, apparently the consultation groups included the Heritage Rivers Board and first nations, as well as our own staff. The Nechako was not identified by any of those groups, and that's why it doesn't appear on the list. However, that's not to say that it could not appear on the list if it were nominated by one of those groups. We are looking at creating a process through which we consider the public's advice on issues, as well as scientific analysis.

However, the member does point out that the Nechako has a lot of very important fish values, and it could certainly be protected as a sensitive stream. That would provide additional protection to that resource, if it were so designated.

C. Clark: I know that any stream or waterway in British Columbia could be added to the list in the future. It seems to me that the quick, easy way right now would be to add them in the legislation as it stands.

It sounds like the ministry has gone through some kind of a process to determine what waterways would be included on the list. It's interesting -- curious -- to me that the Nechako, which, as the minister knows, is a river whose fish values have been the subject of a great deal of public debate -- probably more than any other waterway in British Columbia in the last few years -- and, of course, the source of some public policy as well, and some movement on the part of the government and an election issue. . . . So it's curious that it's not on the list, that it wasn't raised by the stakeholder groups that were consulted.

That leads me to my next question, which is: what was the process through which the ministry arrived at this list? What groups were consulted? I wonder if the minister could just outline that for us.

Hon. C. McGregor: Internally, within the staff, they did an examination of the rivers that were suggested. We had Fisheries biologists working on it, and they looked very carefully at the fisheries values on those rivers. That was a major consideration in promoting the names on this list.

In fact, I think the member would note that it's important that we take care in how we nominate these rivers. We want to make sure that, with the ones we start with, we get it right. We can add more when we take the time to really carefully examine some of the other possibilities. We can certainly subsequently amend the legislation.

C. Clark: I want to wholeheartedly agree with the minister that we do need to be cautious about what rivers and waterways we might include in the legislation. We need to ensure that it's done right in the first place, and future changes can be made.

What I am curious about, though, is how the list was developed. The minister did note that staff looked at rivers that were suggested. I wonder if she can outline for us, or maybe go a step back and tell us, who suggested the rivers and how they got to the stage of input to the staff.

Hon. C. McGregor: I believe I answered that question earlier when I indicated the Heritage Rivers Board and first nations, as well as our own staff.

C. Clark: I guess the minister did answer it earlier. I was hoping for a little more detail, though. If I need to ask the question more specifically, maybe the way to put it would be: was there a process which was in place, or how did that process of seeking input from the Heritage Rivers Board and from first nations work? There is a whole plethora of first nations out there, and there is one Heritage Rivers Board, which I suspect has a group that it consults -- or maybe doesn't. What I'm trying to get a sense of here is how broad the consultation was and whether it was conducted in an organized manner. Perhaps the minister could comment on that.

Hon. C. McGregor: In terms of first nations, we consulted with the Nisga'a as well as the First Nations Summit. I indicated earlier that the Heritage Rivers Board put forward a list of their nominations. They are, in fact, a group that has great interest in the heritage and cultural values of rivers across our province, so they were a group from which we invited some nominations -- and, again, our staff, who have intimate knowledge of rivers important for their fisheries value as well as for other cultural and heritage values.

C. Clark: I appreciate the minister's answer.

It's interesting -- just as interesting as the fact that the Nechako, which has been the source of so much public debate, isn't on the list. I note -- and the minister can correct me if I'm wrong -- that there doesn't appear to be a single river on Vancouver Island on the list here. I think that my reading of that is correct. Is that because the ministry hasn't determined that any of those major waterways on Vancouver Island are threatening fish habitat? Or is there a logical reason for that?

Hon. C. McGregor: There was certainly no deliberate intention to not include Vancouver Island. Again I would point out to the member that there certainly is an opportunity to amend the list to include other rivers, and some of those may well be on Vancouver Island.

[9:15]

The minister noted, too, that after the limited consultation that occurred, staff had an opportunity to consider and make final recommendations about what would be included on the list, and noted as well that that discussion included the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to some extent. I suspect that it would be DFO that provided some of the science on which this decision must have been based.

I wonder if the minister could comment on that and tell us if DFO did indeed provide the scientific basis for this list, and give us a sense of how much science went into the decision-making process for the preparation of the list.

Hon. C. McGregor: Only if our Fisheries officials used as part of their evidence knowledge they had of work that DFO had done.

C. Clark: Maybe I was incorrect there. Was there consultation at all with DFO in the preparation of the list?

Hon. C. McGregor: No.

[ Page 6170 ]

C. Clark: Did the ministry go out and prepare any scientific data on which to base this decision, or were there other works that might have been referenced other than DFO science to ensure that the list was based on more than just pulling the names out of a hat -- you know, taking a list of the biggest rivers in the province, the ones where we issue the most fishing licences or something?

What I'm trying to get at here is that I'm trying to figure out the method by which staff determined which would finally be on the list. We know that there was a very limited consultation that went on for nominations to be forwarded to the ministry. We know that the ministry referred, to a very, very limited extent, to some DFO science that might be out there. I'm trying to determine what other factors might have gone into staff's decisions when they prepared the final list and recommended it to the minister. Perhaps she could tell us what other aspects of the rivers the ministry looked at.

Hon. C. McGregor: I appreciate that the member thinks that perhaps we should have used DFO as a source for our legislation or for input into our legislation, but this is provincial legislation, and we felt no compelling reason to consult with DFO. This is our jurisdiction, and this is our legislation. Where we believe there might have been some overlap and impact on legislation that falls outside of our mandate, then obviously we had to look very carefully at how we crafted that to make sure, as the member for Abbotsford noted, that we weren't overlapping in terms of legal jurisdiction. In our ministry, we have a great deal of knowledge around rivers in our province, and we used that knowledge to make our list.

C. Clark: Well, never let it be said that I think that the Ministry of Environment should depend solely on DFO to manage its fish. I would never say something like that. Certainly I'm a big believer that the province should take over responsibility for fish when indeed it proves that it's capable of doing so.

I am, however, interested. . . . I know that the ministry doesn't go out there and duplicate a lot of the science that the DFO does. It seems quite reasonable for the ministry, as the minister said, to depend on DFO for some of the science that it may have prepared. I don't get the sense from the minister's comments that the provincial Ministry of Environment has gone out and prepared scientific evidence on which it might have based the development of this list. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong; I'll ask the minister to perhaps confirm that or correct me on that, and also to perhaps tell us what other factors the ministry used to determine the number of rivers that would be on this list. I assume that there must have been more than science -- which there doesn't appear to be a lot of -- and the recommendations of the very limited consultation that occurred.

Hon. C. McGregor: There was a variety of criteria that were used, inclusive of the scientific evidence that is well represented within the body of knowledge we have within the ministry. As I pointed out before, one of the reasons we talked with the Heritage Rivers Board is that we are concerned with cultural values, as well. So it's not just the scientific values but cultural, social, economic and ecological values. All of those formed part of the criteria in terms of an evaluation.

C. Clark: I would hate to leave this section of the act with the sense that the ministry sort of just put it together out of a brainstorming session in the boardroom one day, when people threw out names of rivers and they took a quick straw poll around the table. I would ask the minister to change my view about that and make sure that I don't leave with the wrong impression about it.

Maybe she could tell us if the ministry established a framework or some kind of formal criteria through which they would determine which rivers would be on the list. For example, did they say: "Well, you get two points for a specific cultural value, you get five points if there's a certain amount of navigation that goes on, and you get a couple more points if you have a certain number of fishing licences that are issued on the river each year"? I don't know how such a formal process might work, but I hope I've given the minister some sense of what I'm trying to get at here. Perhaps she could comment.

Hon. C. McGregor: What one might be able to describe as a working group within the ministry developed the list. They used an inventory of values, and I've explained generally to the member what they are. If she would like a copy of the document that the staff used to evaluate the nominations, we can certainly provide her with that.

J. van Dongen: Tonight it looks like I will probably be cast in terms of representing the interests of other players besides fishers, like farmers, ranchers, private property owners, developers, etc. I'll try and do that as constructively as possible.

I want to draw the minister's attention to section 4(1)(p), which refers to the possibility under section 13(2)(a) of cabinet, I guess, designating a stream as a protected river. I guess my first question really ties in with the critic's questions, and maybe I won't belabour it and will look forward to the criteria that cabinet may be using to make that designation of streams. We can talk about it when we get to 13(2)(a), but there doesn't seem to be much there in terms of what process or criteria cabinet may follow. I just want to register that concern.

The reason I'm concerned is. . . . Well, first of all, let me ask the minister this question: once a stream is designated under section 4(1)(p) as a protected river, does that mean that there is no possibility of putting any sort of dam, however small -- say, for irrigation purposes -- in a stream? I wonder what the repercussions of that designation would be in terms of someone -- say, a farmer -- wanting to put a small dam in a stream for irrigation purposes.

Hon. C. McGregor: A number of irrigation dams don't go bank to bank, so if it were not to go bank to bank, then it would be permitted. If it were to go bank to bank, it would be prohibited.

J. van Dongen: In that case, then, in terms of bank to bank, does that mean that the water flow would be completely restricted? Is that what "bank to bank dam" means -- that it's a total blockage of water flow?

Hon. C. McGregor: I read from the definition earlier in the act: "a structure that is capable of impounding or storing water and that spans a stream from bank to bank. . . ."

J. van Dongen: Maybe the minister could clarify it, then. If a partial dam is put into a stream where there's still a flow of water over the top, would that be allowable when a stream is designated as a protected river?

Hon. C. McGregor: As long as it's bank to bank, it would not be permitted.

[ Page 6171 ]

J. van Dongen: I'm curious why, under section 4(2), a designation that would be made by regulation cannot be reversed other than where this protection is changed by an act. I really don't understand why there isn't a parallel situation there, because the way I read subsection (2), it means that if cabinet decides, by regulation, to designate a stream, the only way it could be reversed is by legislation.

Hon. C. McGregor: This is modelled similarly to the Park Act, and it's designed to create a high level of protection. When we make those references under the Park Act, we talk about the highest level of protection, because you must come into the Legislature to amend. That is duplicating that highest assurance in terms of the level of protection, so it requires a conscious decision on the part of a government to come and amend the legislation to remove it.

J. van Dongen: That being the case, I guess I just want to register concern on behalf of other users of water, who may have an equally legitimate interest, that there's going to have to be a lot of care taken in terms of designation of streams. I say that because. . . . To use an example that I'm familiar with in the lower mainland, we have in my own area a stream designated as Page Creek. To most farmers it is just another ditch, but it's designated as a creek. It's considered a fish-bearing creek, etc., and the farmers, together with local government, have a system of irrigation dams in that ditch network. I think it's just an example of where cabinet, in making designations under (p), is going to have to be very careful to consider the interests of other users.

Hon. C. McGregor: I think the member's comments point to the reason why we've taken great care in keeping the list of rivers as short as possible. As he points out, it is a very serious act to put them in the legislation at this level, because indeed, as you point out, we will have to come back to this chamber were we wanting to remove one of those rivers. So it points to the reason why we must take very great care in designation of protected rivers.

C. Clark: It is very true that the ministry does need to be careful and cautious and to take everything into consideration when it designates a river or a stream as protected. I would suspect, though, that few would think of the Nechako as just another ditch. I don't think people would be likely to mistake that river for something other than it is, which is a rich, fish-bearing, valuable waterway for all British Columbians.

I have expressed my curiosity about the fact that it's not on the list, given that it's so important to British Columbia. I'm also concerned that there doesn't appear to have been a set of criteria that the ministry adhered to when preparing the list. I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that it was the product of a brainstorming session or something around a committee table one day, where people threw out their favourites, and this is what we got at the end.

[9:30]

Hon. C. McGregor: This act has been under development for more than two years. Last year we did a lengthy consultation with a number of stakeholders, when it was described as the fish habitat protection act. We took those comments under advisement in developing our act for this year, which is the Fish Protection Act, and continued some of that consultation as we finalized this act.

C. Clark: I would be remiss if I didn't pass on the comments that I hear from both environmental groups and industry groups. They say that although -- well, at least in the case of the environmental groups -- there was limited consultation at the very beginning when the act was initially considered under a long-previous minister -- two ministers ago, I suppose -- they saw the door slammed shut, and consultations stopped very quickly and early into the process.

They have expressed concern, and I think it's quite legitimate, that they were really cut out of the process after the very beginning, after the very early stages of the bill's development. I think that both in the case of the environmental community and in the case of industry, their lack of input into this bill is evident. The fact that the minister can't point particularly to any set of criteria that might have been used by the ministry to develop this list, I think, speaks to that, as well.

Could the minister tell us, though, if there were any consultations with Alcan about this bill?

Hon. C. McGregor: Well, there are two things I would like to say in response to the member's last question. Her repeated reference to the fact that we had no criteria has no basis in fact. I made quite clear to the member that we would provide her a copy of the specific criteria so that she could have an opportunity to look at it. And it bothers me, to a great degree, the manner in which the member repeatedly refers to her own inventions of responses from this side of the House. I would urge her to listen more carefully to my responses, so that we don't do that.

I'd also remind the member that consultation on legislation needs to be done very carefully. In fact, in this very session I heard criticism from the other side of the House of the Minister of Labour for engaging in an active consultation on legislation prior to it being introduced in this House. Clearly we have obligations as a government in how we draft legislation. Our consultation is broadly based in nature. We are not required, nor should we be required, to have each segment of an act reviewed by a stakeholder group. I appreciate that that might be the way the member opposite believes it should be done. That is not the way it is done on this side of the House.

C. Clark: Yes, I think this current session of the Legislature has quite clearly established that this government does have a very limited definition of consultation. I think the new Minister of Municipal Affairs could probably speak to that quite clearly, as could the current -- and maybe quite soon, former -- Minister of Labour. He could also speak to this government's very limited view of consultation and, really, to their limited interpretation of how it should occur.

I asked the minister, though, earlier about applications for bank-to-bank dams, and she quite rightly told me that I was raising it in the wrong section of the legislation. Could the minister tell us now how recently an application for a bank-to-bank dam went before the ministry?

Hon. C. McGregor: The application of this provision is to future dam applications.

[ Page 6172 ]

C. Clark: Yeah, I certainly appreciate that, and I understand that. The reason I raise that question is because the application of this bill will presumably affect future applications for bank-to-bank dams. I am hoping to get a sense of how that will occur -- what impact that will have when it comes into effect. The way one normally makes that judgment is by looking at what has occurred in the past, which is why I asked about the last time that the ministry received an application.

I guess the second question would be: how did the ministry consider that application in the past? I'll make it clear to the minister this time that I'm quite specifically asking that question so that I can get a sense of how this bill will impact on future practice by judging what has occurred in the past.

Hon. C. McGregor: As I pointed out to the member earlier, I find that some of her questions are quite interesting. I wouldn't mind doing the research to find out the answers, but I don't believe that they are relevant to this particular section. As I've pointed out, this is for future applications.

C. Clark: I'm asking this question again. I believe I asked it in estimates, and I think the minister said -- I'd have to go look at Hansard -- that she would be prepared to get that information for me then, too. So I will look forward to it with even more anticipation, given that we've had to ask for it a couple of times. We'll get it in duplicate. Who knows? Maybe it's already in the mail. The cheque's always in the mail with this government, that's for sure.

The reason I'm interested, of course, in the bank-to-bank dam issue is because I suspect that there aren't any applications for bank-to-bank dams, or I suspect that if there are any applications for bank-to-bank dams, it may number in the great number of one. The reason that I'm interested in that information is because I don't suspect that the banning of bank-to-bank dams is going to have a huge impact. I don't think there's going to be an enormous change. Certainly it provides a level of protection that wasn't there in the past. If it's not going to mean that no new dams are built because nobody's planned any new dams anyway, then it's nice to have the protection, but it would certainly be a mistake to overstate how important that protection is, or at least -- I should correct that -- how different that protection is from what already exists. If you're banning something that doesn't happen, it's nice, I guess, but it doesn't make a whole bunch of difference. That's what I'm trying to get at here in my questioning of the minister. I can see her consulting with her officials. Perhaps she could comment on that.

Hon. C. McGregor: I appreciate the member's concern that maybe it's not a significant matter to her. I think it is significant. It is saying that we are making a commitment that there will be no dams on these protected rivers. I think that's a fairly significant action on the part of government. I would suggest to the member that there might be those who work in other jurisdictions -- in particular, our American counterparts -- who they look with quite a bit of envy to the kind of planning we're putting in place at this point in time to avoid the kind of degradation that's gone on in other jurisdictions as a result of major production of dams on virtually every major river and tributary that they have.

So it is very significant. It's showing a strong commitment to fish protection and fish habitat protection, and I take it very seriously.

C. Clark: I'll be very simple about this; I'll make this question very simple. I'm sure this is one that the ministry will have the answer for, because in including these particular waterways on the list, the ministry must have done some research into the uses to which those waterways were put. That must have happened. Otherwise they wouldn't be allowed on the list, if the minister didn't give them careful and cautious consideration, which is what she said the legislation is intended to do. Maybe if we just narrow it down a bit, the minister could tell me if there are any applications, or if the ministry is aware of anyone intending to lodge any applications, for major bank-to-bank dams on the rivers that are listed in this legislation specifically.

Hon. C. McGregor: I believe the member asked this question earlier, and I suggested to her that if there were, they would be in front of the environmental assessment process. I'm not aware of any such applications.

C. Clark: I appreciate that the minister makes my point for me, which is simply that there aren't any applications for bank-to-bank dams. While this legislation may have an effect some time far in the future, it's certainly not going to have an impact currently. It's not going to mean a dramatic change tomorrow from today, which is simply the point I'm trying to make with the minister. Having made that point, I'll see if my colleagues have any comments on this section.

Section 4 as amended approved.

On section 5.

C. Clark: I'd like to offer an amendment, which I have provided both to the minister and to the Clerks' Table. I will first speak to it and then read it into the record, if that's acceptable to the Chair.

The Chair: There's no need to read it into the record. It will be part of the recording of the act.

On the amendment.

C. Clark: I'll simply speak to it, then.

The intent behind this amendment is to ensure that the bill doesn't just allow the ministry to review future water licences but to give the ministry the power to review or to give it explicit power in this bill to review, to have a look back at existing water licences, particularly the major water licences. It was with a great deal of concern that we discovered, in the estimates process, that with the licence-by-licence review to which the ministry often refers with regard to the major water licences in British Columbia, there aren't set criteria, there aren't strict time lines, there isn't the opportunity for public input, and most of all, there isn't a firm requirement in legislation to ensure that water use plans that mimic the natural hydrological cycle on waterways in British Columbia actually come as a result of this licence-by-licence review that's ongoing.

It appears to me that the review the ministry has agreed to participate in is sorely lacking. It lacks parameters, it lacks legislative legitimacy, I suppose, and it's really sort of haphazard. The ministry has undertaken its first review leading to its first water use plan at the Cheakamus while it's still developing criteria for future reviews.

The minister wasn't able to establish in Committee of Supply what those firm criteria were, and it was with a great deal of concern that I realized that the review that has been 

[ Page 6173 ]

undertaken is sorely lacking. Worst of all, the public needs to know that there will be water use plans that come out as a result of the licence-by-licence review. The fact is that the problems that the minister says this bill is trying to address are most evident in the existing water licences. The problems that this bill will address in new water licences will be, I'm certain, far less grave than the problems that occur as a result of existing water licences that are already out there.

[9:45]

What we need to do is look at those existing licences, because it's those existing licences. . . . One major licensee holds 32 licences in British Columbia. According to the study done by that licensee itself, there were something like 11 fish stocks they could identify that were threatened in those rivers. Now, I am not going to suggest here that those fish stocks they identified are threatened solely because of the fact that there are water licences on those waterways. But the fact is that we don't know, and this legislation won't make any attempt to find out.

Surely we should be going to look at the problem -- the big problem -- that exists, rather than just taking care of whatever might happen in the future. There are a whole raft of licences out there that have not been enforced in the past. And if they have been enforced, many times they haven't respected fish values, because the licensee hasn't even been asked to. You can't necessarily blame the licensee for that.

I don't think the ministry can even point to water licences that were amended in the past to protect fish values, except in the very, very recent past. There are still a whole raft of licences out there that need to be looked at. They don't need to be looked at in just a secret, closed-door process with the ministry and the licensee and perhaps another jurisdiction. They need to be looked at with a guarantee of public input. The public needs to be able to participate in that process in a real, meaningful way.

When I say a meaningful way, this multi-stakeholder process must also include the expectation that at the end of it, there will be a water use plan. Because without the water use plan at the end of it, all that consultation will be for nothing.

So first we need the commitment on the part of the government to go and ensure that it will fix the problems that have become endemic -- not just because of the licensees, certainly, because in many cases the ministry has failed to pay attention to its basic responsibilities with regard to water licensing. That's the first thing we need to do.

We saw the situation on the Cheakamus, where the licensee diverted in excess of 51 percent of the water that it was licensed to divert. Not only did it do that, but it paid the ministry for the extra water that it diverted. The ministry knew what was happening on that river, and the ministry didn't act.

The ministry finally moved to start this licence-by-licence review, which I don't think is a real firm process, which doesn't include the public in a meaningful way and doesn't guarantee the outcome of a water use plan. But the water licence brought in was issued to the licensee in the fifties, and it is important to note that that water licence included a clause that required the provincial water comptroller to implement a minimum-flow order for the protection of fish on that river. It was never done, and it still has not been done. The ministry -- the office of the water licenser -- has still failed to implement that order.

What I would like to see as a part of this legislation is a commitment from the minister to go and address what must be systemic problems in her ministry. The minister has said that they will bring in this licence-by-licence review and that they've started it. It's sort of a haphazard process, as far as we know. If the minister is truly committed to doing that, then she should put that in the legislation.

She should include in the legislation her firm commitment to look back at existing licences -- the existing major licences, at least, because I appreciate that with 40,000 licences, many of them enormous and many of them tiny, it's much too large a task for the ministry to undertake. But perhaps to even look back at the major licences. . . . Start at the top, start at the biggest one, and work your way down. That would certainly speak to the sincerity of the minister when she says she wants to protect fish in British Columbia.

But instead, she has explicitly avoided the opportunity to require the government to look back at existing water licences and ensure that they are living up to their obligations -- more importantly, ensuring that the ministry is living up to its obligations and fulfilling its duties. She explicitly failed to do that -- to include a look-back clause. That's what I'm encouraging her, with this amendment, to do today, and I hope that she'll consider it, because clearly it will tell people that she is sincere, that this isn't just window-dressing in a press release and that she's sincere about protecting fish in this province by looking at those licences. Not only should she make it clear that she wants to look at those licences, she should put it in the legislation if she means it. If she really means it, where she should put it is in the legislation.

Second, she should ensure that the public has an opportunity to be involved. The minister has made lots of commitments about allowing the public to be involved, but so far they haven't been involved in this, which is the only process that's really got going. There hasn't been a real, meaningful, codified way for the public to be involved in the process, and surely that's important.

I know that this government takes a dim view of real consultation. I know it thinks consultation means announcing to people what you've done after you've done it. I'm hoping that this minister will at least say: "I'm going to break with the pack. I'm going to do something that's just completely different from the rest of my NDP colleagues in cabinet. I'm going to make a commitment to consult." Gee, that would be a big change for this government.

Maybe the minister is prepared to stand out from the pack. Maybe she's prepared to say they want real consultation. If she is, then she should say: "Not only will we include a look-back clause in this legislation for existing water licences, but we will ensure that the process includes a multi-stakeholder process where people can actually be involved and have some say."

If fish, fish habitat and that resource are important, surely they belong to the public, not to the government and not to the major licensees. That resource belongs to the public, so let 

[ Page 6174 ]

them have a say. There's nothing to be particularly scared of. They pay for the government, so why shouldn't they have a say in how it's run? I know it's a radical change for this government, but it's never too late to try. Maybe in the dying days of this session, the minister might like to consider doing that.

Interjections.

C. Clark: Hon. Chair, maybe I'll sit and ask you to restore order in the House.

The Chair: The member continues.

C. Clark: Thank you, hon. Chair. I was pleased to give everyone the opportunity to restore themselves to order in the House as we carry on with this debate.

There's a third principle that the minister needs to consider, I think. The essence of this amendment is to ensure. . . .

S. Hawkins: Point of order, hon. Chair. I'm trying to listen to the member. I think she has some very important points to make. I think the member for Alberni should have them from his own chair. I've been told that many times.

The Chair: Thank you, Okanagan West. Hon. members, those who wish to speak do so from their own seats.

C. Clark: I'm so pleased that the House returned to its normal, civil proceedings.

The third principle that the minister shouldn't be afraid of is to include in the legislation. . . . Once she has agreed that we should look back at existing water licences and that there should be public consultation and a multi-stakeholder process as part of that, surely she would also agree that a multi-stakeholder process -- public input -- should be meaningful. The way to ensure that it is meaningful is to put into the legislation a real requirement that this consultation will. . . .

Interjections.

The Chair: Hon. members, the noise level is rising. It makes it very difficult to hear the speakers.

C. Clark: I'd hate to take up too much time discussing this, but of course, I know that it has elicited so much interest from the other members of the House -- and particularly from the member for Alberni. Perhaps I could continue.

The last principle that the minister should not be scared of embracing is a requirement that this bill, this multi-stakeholder process, will have as its outcome water use plans for each of the major licensees -- each of these major water licences on the waterways that they look at. That has to be something essential to this bill, because the minister has said they want to have water use plans, and lots of previous ministers have said that they want water use plans. In fact, there have been requirements in licences that there should be minimum flow regimes, which have never been lived up to by this minister or any previous ministers.

We need to ensure that the legislation has a meaningful outcome from these consultations. There need to be water use plans put together that include the stakeholders, the ministry and other jurisdictions. That is essential to this legislation. In moving this amendment, I would suggest to the minister that this is a way for her to show people that she and her government are indeed committed to protecting fish habitat and fish values in British Columbia. Anything less, I think, will demonstrate that this government lacks commitment, that it's failing in its resolve and that fish values and this important public resource in British Columbia will continue to be put at risk by a lack of government action.

So with that, I would move first my amendment and, second, that the committee rise, report progress. . . .

The Chair: Hon. member, you can't move two motions at the same time. You move one motion at a time.

Hon. C. McGregor: Nice try, member.

I'd like to respond in generalities around some of the principles that the member spoke to -- and, I think, quite rightly -- and to many of the processes we need to engage with as a government in terms of reviewing water licences. As the member well knows, we have in place a process through which we will be reviewing all of Hydro's major licences. That review was announced last fall by the previous Minister of Environment.

In fact, the member gave us a lot of very good information, I might point out, during the estimates process as a part of the Ward report that had been done in terms of determining priorities. It was a process that she described as independent, scientifically based and one we should pay attention to. Indeed, we have paid attention to it and have identified the priority areas that were identified in the Ward report, in a three-year time line for completion of those water licence reviews. The member also knows that we have a five-year time line for the review of all Hydro water licences.

[10:00]

Our review will also, as the member points out, discuss and explore fully the hydrology of rivers, the ways in which to move releases towards patterns which mimic the natural flow. That's a very important part of the review process.

As the member's amendment points out, we should consider management practices and mitigation measures. We will be engaged in considering those as a part of the review process.

The member takes a great deal of time to talk about the issue of public involvement, and I couldn't agree more. In fact, both the water use planning process and the recovery planning process will involve the public. The legislation gives the public the mechanism through which they can actually initiate the planning process -- not simply participate in it but be those who initiate that process as a result of their concerns.

I'd also point out that the amendment does present some practical solutions for us. We aren't sure quite what she means by "major licensees." There are 45,000 existing water licences that might be subject to this review, over 4,000 applications in the queue. There are more than 20,000 industrial and irriga-

[ Page 6175 ]

tion licences alone, and hundreds of those could be considered major water users. So the sheer volume of what her amendment might suggest makes it difficult for us to agree to.

I did mention the public consultation process. I would point out that the member's amendment does no more than create a process and does not in fact lead to any sort of a look-back over previous practice -- it cannot affect previous practice -- and that there are tools, through our review, to engage in such a review of water flows and licences.

The member is aware that we are engaging in this work that is ongoing in government, and she understands that the review is ongoing at this time. For these reasons, as well as the fact that the amendment is out of order on the grounds that it will place a financial obligation on the Crown, I would ask that the Chair then rule the amendment out of order.

The Chair: Hon. members, the Chair is going to make a ruling on the amendment, and the ruling is that it is indeed out of order. It imposes a mandatory obligation on the Crown and involves the expenditure of public funds, which is the prerogative of the Crown. So the amendment is now out of order.

C. Clark: I will make my second motion now -- that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

The committee, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Committee of Supply A, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. C. McGregor: Hon. Speaker, I'd like to advise the House that we'll be sitting tomorrow.

Hon. C. McGregor moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 10:06 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

The committee met at 6:39 p.m.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
EDUCATION, SKILLS AND TRAINING
(continued)

V. Anderson: I'd like to ask the minister just three capital questions, if I could, about Vancouver-Langara. One is about the state of Magee school, on the reconstruction; on Churchill, in their planning; and on Walter Moberly Annex. There's three of them. I wonder if he could update where they are. I know there were promises a long time ago. I'm wondering what state those three are at this point.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Magee Secondary has been approved and authorized to go to tender in the amount of $20.2 million. Moberly Elementary has also been approved and authorized to go to tender in the amount of $5.2 million. So I expect the school district to be dealing with tendering in the very near future and beginning construction, one suspects, within weeks rather than months.

The third one, Sir Winston Churchill, is a much more complex process. Staff advise it's now in planning. It'll be an extended planning process, because you've got a reduced area to work with, construction costs, defining scope. They advise it could take as much as 12 months to complete the planning process on Churchill. There's money allocated for that planning process in this year's capital budget.

V. Anderson: Good news is always good, even if it's late coming. It's always anticipated.

I'd like to take a few minutes, then, and raise some questions that have been raised with me. One that came this week has to do with microwave towers on top of school buildings in Vancouver. It was in the paper a week ago about a microwave tower that was on a church, and it's right next door to the school. At the time I didn't connect it to the schools, but apparently there had been a microwave -- Cantel or B.C. Tel, one of those -- tower on Killarney for some time. But the plan was to put one on Douglas, and the parents there have got together and have been making petitions and going to the school board.

I wonder if the minister has heard of this or if he has any comment, because they're worried about emissions from this, and apparently the church tower one is right next to the school on Victoria Drive. They are quite concerned about this. Has the minister heard of this or had anything to do with it yet so far? It's raising a fair bit of interest.

Hon. P. Ramsey: This is a new issue for me. This is a school district decision about whether to allow placement of it on the school, and I assume the school district would consult both with parents and with a medical health officer and others to ascertain if there is any health risk.

V. Anderson: I know it's a school involved, but I raise it because it will end up on the minister's doorstep sooner or later; they all do. Forewarned is forearmed, so. . . . This was just to give you a heads-up on this one at this point.

Let me just take a couple of excerpts out of letters. These are typical of a whole host of letters that have come from the people in the riding. One is familiar, and others may not be quite as familiar. This one is from Vancouver, and this comes from a whole pack of letters which are similar to this one from different schools and people:

"On April 3, 1997, 136 staff assistants and 88 other VSB CUPE-15 employees, including special education assistants (SEAs), clerks, secretaries, programmers, library assistants, alternate program workers, technicians, telephone operators and many more were notified that they would lose their jobs. These cuts were justified on the basis of a massive 'restructuring and downsizing,' which will effectively gut or eliminate major departments which provide support to direct services to students and support for special care curriculum, and programs for social equity and antiracism, first nations students, art programs, and others."

[ Page 6176 ]

[6:45]

V. Anderson: I'll just share a few of these. I've only picked the most critical, in a sense, because you have heard a great deal of the others.

This one comes from a person who is a home instruction teacher at the Vancouver Hospital burn unit and will be let go because of the cuts. She expresses her worry about the kids who will really need this service during the time they're in the burn unit. So that one has come, a very special one. And a very similar one is:

"I am writing as a concerned parent of a child who has a rare birth disorder called Sotos syndrome. It is a compilation of complications, the most major being very severe learning disabilities. Encompassed in Sotos syndrome is ADD, muscular weakness, gross and fine motor skill difficulty and varying degrees of mental impairment. She attends Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith Elementary in Vancouver. She is integrated into a grade 3 class but is only at mid-term level of a grade 1. For the past three years, she has had a teacher's assistant working with her, but only for half of the school day. It has taken nearly three years to achieve this advancement, and I am appalled at the proposed budget cuts, as these cuts will drastically alter the course of my child's education."

Hon. P. Ramsey: I think I have seen some of those letters; I think some of them were addressed to me. I seem to remember them. Others are probably just to the member. If there are ones addressed to the member that he'd wish ministry staff to respond to and if he'd provide them to me, I'd be glad to have ministry staff respond directly to the concerns raised by his correspondents.

Let me just say a couple of general things. As the member, I think, is very much aware, we ask school districts to do the actual allocation of budgets that we provide them. Vancouver's budget has risen significantly in the last six years, nearly 15 percent since '91-92, at a time when enrolment increased by around 10 percent. I recognize that inflation and other pressures affect school board services. We've asked all school boards to make reductions that don't affect direct classroom services, and the configuration of services is, of course, the responsibility of the school district.

Specific concerns. . . . As I say, I'd be very pleased to have the ministry respond to letters that the member has received.

V. Anderson: Yes, a couple of those are addressed to me personally. I will highlight just two more for you, because I think people need to know that it has been reflected back. This one says:

"I am deeply concerned about the dismantling of the ESL program support team, effective September 1997. This group of four committed professionals has been determined advocates for ESL students throughout the province. By their dedicated outreach, teachers and administrators from all over B.C. have been provided with invaluable expertise and the opportunity of networking. Support, programs and services provided by this team have helped teachers actively support, in a myriad of ways, new Canadians in the throes of adjusting to a new culture and language."

The final one I will read, because it expresses the opinion of a number of people. . . .

"I now truly believe that all politicians are the same" -- so this is reflected to all of us. "During the last election I was told: 'No cuts to health care or education.' Well, my wife has lost her job in health care and my children are facing cuts to the public education system. All this while I watch my contributions through income and property taxes ever increasing. Where is my money going?" -- in large capitals.

"Mr. Clark, I no longer trust you with my money and I will certainly never trust Mr. Campbell. I am now faced with finding a credible party. Please do not go through with proposed school board budget cuts."

Hon. P. Ramsey: Let me say a couple of things. I surely recognize, as I've said, that in asking school districts to carry through on the efficiencies that we identified through the public education restructuring consultation. . . . It has been difficult for some school boards to grapple with. . . . Vancouver has struggled. I must confess that at times I've been a little bit concerned that a reduction in funding from the province of about 0.6 percent -- about $1.8 million -- has been portrayed by the school board as a $16.1 million cut. Surely the school board needs to live within its financial means, and it has made a number of decisions to do that.

I would only say that we are not walking away from our responsibility for education. I invite the member to review our really rather extensive discussion of global school budgets, and I don't intend to repeat a lot of it. I would merely say that in spite of some of the difficulties, we have been able to provide school districts in this province with the highest per-student funding of any province in Canada. I think that is a reflection of our commitment to place education at the top of the priority list, not at the bottom. We have not asked school districts to do the drastic cuts in programs or services that other provinces have done, and we have very clearly maintained our funding for those who need school the most.

I would only reference the over $70 million that we're going to be spending on ESL programs this year. The Vancouver school district got an increase again for ESL; its total budget for ESL is $26.77 million. Similarly, in special education the Vancouver budget is $33.9 million, and I'm not even talking about the many programs that are targeted at inner city needs in Vancouver. We debated this at some length yesterday, I believe, and I added it up. It's well over $70 million -- close to 20 percent of the district's budget targeted at those in most need.

In conclusion, I recognize that these are not easy budgets. I would be pleased to have ministry staff respond to the letters that the member wishes me to.

J. Weisbeck: I have another concern about a capital project, and that's George Elliot Secondary School. As you know, 

[ Page 6177 ]

there was quite a bit of uncertainty in that community. Last year they got to the point where they had moved all their books out of their library and made allowances for moving, and to have their funding removed. . . . I understand that this year they've done the same thing. So could you please give me the current status of that project?

Hon. P. Ramsey: George Elliot has been approved, and the school district has been authorized to tender the project in the amount of $13.9 million.

J. Weisbeck: Can you give me some sort of an idea of when they plan to turn some sod there and of completion dates?

Hon. P. Ramsey: They have authorization to tender now; if they do it very quickly, I would assume within four to eight weeks.

R. Masi: I would pose this question to the minister. It may have already been asked and covered by the member for Delta South, but I'd like a report on any capital projects that are planned for the Delta school district.

Hon. P. Ramsey: In Delta there is one project that's been approved for some planning moneys this year, and that's the Annieville Elementary School. Currently the school board and the ministry are having some rather intense discussions about whether it proceeds as a replacement or whether we do a renovation-addition. So that sort of work is ongoing. We do have planning money for this year, and then construction would be considered in 1998 or beyond.

R. Masi: Could I ask the minister about the situation with North Delta Senior Secondary School and whether it's a renovation project or a replacement project -- or whether that's come forward yet?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I actually met with the Delta school board -- I think you were present, hon. member -- to discuss this and any other issues. I assume you want to make sure that Hansard records what we discussed in the. . . . Was it the Hemlock Room?

R. Masi: Small chairs.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Low chairs.

At that time, I think and my staff I were fairly forthright with the Delta school board in saying that as a replacement project North Delta was very low priority for the ministry and that they should work with our staff on renovations or needed minor capital renovations to the project at this point. I had to tell them very candidly that in that area -- and in the lower mainland generally -- if I had a choice between replacing a facility that still had some useful life in it or building a new facility where I had too many students parked in portables and waiting to get into a school, I'd have to opt for the new schools.

R. Masi: That leads nicely into my next question. I've always had a question about whether to build a new building or to renovate, and I wonder if. . . . In the past I've seen two examples of renovations where possibly one was acceptable and one wasn't. Are there guidelines or policies, or is this sort of a one-off thing -- you examine the school and that's it? It's just a general question on policy and procedure.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The work of the ministry actually starts with doing a sort of audit and assessment of the shape of an older building that might be a candidate for replacement. That gives us a general sense of where it ranks in the many aging schools in the province and its need for some serious work. After that, the ministry staff engage with the school district in a rather extended process, talking about what the scope and shape of a replacement might be, as opposed to renovations and upgrades of an existing facility, and they try to reach some sort of conclusion about that. So every year, then, the challenge that the ministry has, as they present me with options for capital planning, is a really long list of replacement projects that should proceed at some time and an equally long list of additional space needs. They do their best to put the two together in a way that makes rational sense.

[7:00]

R. Masi: This is just a general question; it's not specific to any district. But in terms of conversions of junior secondaries -- and there seems to be a lot of that happening in the province, either moving them as elementary schools or middle schools or dropping the senior secondary labels -- it all seems to have a bearing on capital cost. That's why I'm bringing it up here. I just wonder: is this a ministry policy to gradually eliminate the concept of junior secondary schools?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The ministry advises me that on a policy level, we're absolutely neutral on the question of whether we do junior secondary, senior secondary or go to elementary, middle, secondary. Those are local decisions, and they take them.

On the facilities side, when they are asked to look at renovating schools or changing them in some way, they work with the district to do a cost analysis of what's being proposed to see what the bottom-line figure is on capital expenditures from a reconfiguration. Obviously we're going to want to improve the facilities if it makes sense in terms of the economies of capital construction.

A. Sanders: The A team is back.

Just a couple more schools to talk about. Everybody wants their school talked about, and that's what they have asked me to do.

I want to discuss a school that is not in my riding. It's one where there's been a very diligent young man looking after it in terms of the interests -- a fellow by the name of Ed Mehrer, who is a columnist for the Prince George. . .Kamloops paper.

Interjection.

A. Sanders: Well, you know, everything north of Hope is the same to me. Isn't that what they say about bureaucrats? I do know the difference between Kamloops and Prince George. I'm thinking of the similar issues that they have.

[ Page 6178 ]

I've looked at a number of these school boards quite carefully, and I think Kamloops is a very good school board. They seem to really have their house in order on a lot of issues and have some creative ways of doing business, as well.

Specifically, one of the questions I'm asked in a lot of places around the province, which I want the ministry staff to look at, is the frequency or the number of times that we announce projects before we actually do anything. Lloyd George Elementary is one of those places that has been announced three separate times. I started to get phone calls about Lloyd George, which is a renovation of an elementary school costing $2.9 million for reconstruction of the 81-year-old school. After it was announced twice and nothing happened, people started to get up in arms. There have been a number of other schools in this same boat, where they were announced and then a year later they're announced and then perhaps -- as in some of the Surrey schools -- announced a third time. Is there a rationale or a reason for announcing schools two, three or more times without doing anything?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Lloyd George was announced, obviously, and then the project was frozen as part of the capital review. The unfreezing of that project and the time line for getting through value analysis and project approval and tender and construction were well known to the school board at the time it was announced.

A. Sanders: I think that basically what I want to get down to here is the general principle, as opposed to the specifics of one school or another. The ministry has a tendency to announce things for many schools, because good-news announcements in education go a long way. I think that in the end, they actually do harm the credibility of the ministry, because people expect something to happen and then nothing does.

Specifically with the Lloyd George circumstance, in May '95 a tender for the reconstruction was planned, and then it was left off the government's list. Then it was supposed to be. . . . In June '96 the provincial government put the freeze in place, again denying that it would be built. Then it was thawed, and we were told that it would be quickly promised for February '97. Nothing happened, and five months after that announcement, district officials had yet to receive any money. The funding was expected, but five months later it had still not occurred, with the ministry saying that the value analysis was the reason for the delay. Then finally this young man, Mr. Mehrer, contacted the MLA for the area. Two days later, on July 13, the MLA wrote in the paper that she didn't know why it wasn't being tendered. Finally, the money came through after the MLA complained to the ministry, and renovations were announced on July 16.

I'm just wondering, hon. Chair, if there isn't a better way to do this so that we don't get circumstances like this. This is not an unusual circumstance. It's only the paradigm for what happens in many districts. Is there not a better way for us to do this procedure?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I can't really control what's written in the public press of Kamloops. I do know what was clearly conveyed to the school board and to the press in Kamloops by myself, I think back in March or April. What I said very clearly at the time was that it would take a while -- a month or two -- to do value analysis after this project came out of the freeze. After that, it would take some time to get specific project approval and all the necessary bylaw stuff in place, and I fully anticipated that this project would be ready for tender in July of this year and that construction would begin by September. I said that very clearly in the press in Kamloops; I said it to the school board. And we're on track. The project has been approved in the amount of $3 million, and tender is going ahead. If there are people who wish to ignore a clear time line which has been outlined by the ministry and which is clearly understood by the school board, that is something that they can do. I'm not sure it serves much purpose, but I understand that some people would wish to do that.

A. Sanders: Obviously these must be isolated examples, but we have another one here in the Comox Valley Echo. Two months after announcing in the newspaper -- not personally -- funding for two new schools and renovations for two others in the district, the school board had not received any written announcements from the ministry delineating how these projects would be undertaken.

First of all, is this accurate information in the paper?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I said at the time we announced our construction plans back in April that we anticipated that 37 schools would be going to construction sometime during this fiscal year. I think we're still on track to make that happen. I reported to many members of the critic's caucus today about when I expect specific projects in their ridings to complete the planning phase and go on to tendering and construction. The reality is that there's no magic wand that I or any minister can wave after an announcement to make sure that the dirt starts getting moved the next day, and I think the member knows that.

The school district in Comox is well apprised of the status of every project in there. There are two projects that are currently undergoing value analysis to make sure that the taxpayers are getting full value for the dollars that we're spending. Those are Highland secondary and the new Huband Road elementary. We expect that work to be completed within the next month or two, at which point we'll move to project approval and then to tendering. It is a long process. We're spending significant chunks of tax dollars. It's important that we get all the elements in place and do it right.

The other major projects in that district are Lake Trail junior secondary and the North East Comox middle school. They are now the subject of some really intense discussions between the school district and the ministry as to whether they wish to build that configuration or to build two middle schools and what impact that decision will have on the fifth project in that district, which is the new North Comox Elementary. So planning for all three of those is now the subject of some intense discussions between the school district and the ministry.

But I must say that the school district is fully aware of this. They are kept in the loop. There is no attempt to say to the district: "Well, we approve this, and we'll get back to you in some never-to-be-remembered time about where we go next." For all the projects we announced this year for planning or construction, the ministry is actively engaged with the school districts in doing the work that needs to get done as we complete planning or move to construction of these projects.

A. Sanders: Then there is some problem in communication, and that large number of people who solely do communication in the Premier's Office should get busy on this area of consternation.

In that same article in the Comox Valley Echo of May 9, 1997, Trustee Vanbarneveld said that he felt betrayed and 

[ Page 6179 ]

asked: "How do you plan in this vacuum? It's bizarre." Following May 9, the board wrote a letter to the ministry for answers, asking why they were receiving information from the newspaper and not personally about releases of funding from the freeze for new schools in their area.

To try and do some verification of whether there is any truth to these matters, I phoned ten different school districts that had projects released, and all of them had read in the paper about the release of funds, except for Terry Fox. They had not been contacted by the ministry. Their first understanding that they were receiving projects of any kind was received from the media, not from the ministry or the minister's office. So I think that this problem is a little bit more significant than we're talking about. In fact, the phone calls I made were approximately a week after the first release of funding projects, so I don't think this is an isolated issue. I think it is something that exists. I think it's unsatisfactory. There should be some mechanism in place for us as legislators to provide school boards with the information about funding decisions in their districts at least at the same time as the media receives it, if not before.

[7:15]

A. Sanders: There are two really important issues I've saved for tonight for no particular reason other than that they are of such extreme importance that I wanted to do them together. One is the effects of budget cuts on school districts in terms of staffing, and the second is provincial bargaining. I think the latter, provincial bargaining, is in fact one of the most important issues that this minister will have to deal with in his tenure. The result of dealing with it or not dealing with it constitutes the second issue -- that is, the budget cuts to school districts in terms of staffing. I think what I'll do is start with the provincial bargaining, because it will lead naturally into the second.

If we look at the provincial bargaining circumstance, the teachers were in favour of local, not provincial, bargaining. And when I say the teachers, I mean their bargaining body, the B.C. Teachers Federation. This was presented in a brief to the Korbin commission in 1992. Teachers were in favour of retaining district-by-district bargaining and rejected two-tier and/or provincial bargaining. In doing so, there were a number of comments made that delineated why they felt the way they did: "Centralization is often seen as having negative consequences for the bargaining and representation process. These consequences include a reduction in the local flexibility and autonomy of both management and workers and a restriction on the scope of worker participation."

A second comment was made: "Intraorganizational conflict is another probable result, making negotiations a more lengthy and more costly process."

The individual who actually authored these comments is Robert Davies, a UBC commerce and business administration expert. I believe he was part of the Korbin commission.

So what we had in 1992 was a report -- which I'm sure the minister has read, and his staff most definitely have -- that suggested that as far as the BCTF were concerned, district-by-district bargaining was considered important. Further, with respect to provincial bargaining, the BCTF submitted the following:

"'. . .provincial bargaining' as such is effectively an impossibility, unless what is suggested at the same time is a wholesale transformation of our school system into a centrally administered unitary system. . . . We suspect that proponents of 'provincial bargaining' have not even begun to think about the task of reflecting -- or eradicating -- in a single 'master contract' the thousands of conditions and practices, rights and expectations found in the different existing board-teacher agreements around the province. Nor have they established any rational policy basis for attempting to do so."

Hon. P. Ramsey: No.

A. Sanders: Does the minister feel that there is any wilfulness or any concern about the possibility that collective bargaining as we would like to see it, or as it is being set about in B.C., will not come to fruition, because it has been imposed?

Hon. P. Ramsey: There's a rational policy base for provincial bargaining -- that's consistency, and it's a pressing need. That's why the decision was made. It was made a number of years ago. I think the member knows that at one time we had local bargaining in the health sector, as well. We've had provincial bargaining for many rounds now for hospital employees and HSA members and others.

A. Sanders: Does the minister share my concerns that the status of the present negotiations, or lack of negotiations, between BCPSEA and the BCTF is an important issue for his ministry?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Of course, it's an important issue for my ministry, although I think the member knows that the operations of BCPSEA and other employers' associations under PSEC -- the Public Sector Employers Council -- rests with the Minister of Finance.

The Chair: Just before recognizing the member, the Chair needs to caution members that we're dealing with the Ministry of Education, Skills and Training estimates, and the minister has already made that point. In addition to that, I think we are wanting to come around to '97-98 estimates. We seem to be dealing with several years ago in much of this subject. I would caution members on that.

A. Sanders: Thank you, hon. Chair, for your instruction. I will have to sort out exactly what that means, and I'll have to have the minister help me do that.

The reason I'm focusing on the Korbin commission -- albeit a '92 report, in the same way that the OCG report is a '95 report -- is that it is only being dealt with now in '97-98. We are in a situation where we have a collective bargaining circumstance in British Columbia that is at somewhat of an impasse because of the lack of a collective agreement beyond the end of 1998. This is something that will have to be very much negotiated and time will have to be spent on it by this minister, by his staff, and in cooperation with BCPSEA and the BCTF. Therefore I am very unsure of why, despite the fact that 

[ Page 6180 ]

from an evolutionary point of view the Korbin commission was the start of this change, this is not a current issue. I would ask the minister to explain that to me.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I will leave the Chair to interpret his own remarks. Let me only say this: the people that the member talks about who are involved with BCPSEA and involved with PSEC in negotiation, report to the Minister of Finance. That is a point that needs to be made. Collective bargaining on these provincial associations falls within his responsibility, and he and his staff take the lead in doing that.

We do have, obviously, some interest in it. Indeed, a member of my ministry staff sits on the board of BCPSEA. So we are concerned about this issue. I'm not going to pretend I think that everything has gone swimmingly in the first round of provincial bargaining, but at the end of the day we did reach a transitional collective agreement. I make an assumption, and perhaps the member may criticize me for making an optimistic assumption. Nevertheless, I do believe that both parties will bargain in good faith. The quicker they get down to business, the more comfort I will have that we will have a successful round of collective bargaining this time.

A. Sanders: The minister has suggested not questioning the ruling of the Chair. But the ruling of the Chair was made because the minister passed a note to the Chair, which told the Chair what he wanted the Chair to say. So there is some connection in my thinking process as to why this was important here. What I'd like to know, because this definitely needs to be clarified for me, is: are BCPSEA issues not questions that are relevant to the Minister of Education?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Of course they are. BCPSEA, the bargaining agent, sits on the Public Sector Employers Council; its representatives sit on that council with myself as minister. I've already said that senior members of my staff sit on the board of BCPSEA. Mandates come from PSEC and from the employers' association; they bring that to the table.

We have set up processes in place here that first attempted to deal with all the difficulties around class size. I think everybody recognizes that this is one of the very key issues in the coming round of negotiations. I think the member knows there has been a review of these issues, and those results are available to both BCPSEA and the BCTF. Currently they're in a situation where Mr. Don Munroe is involved in bringing the parties together as a facilitator to assist with the parties grappling with these issues.

I watch these negotiations with intense interest, and I don't mean to imply that somehow this is of no interest to me or my ministry. It's of very great interest. However, in the bargaining process here we act, in some ways, to try to provide accurate information, as the employers and employees carry out their negotiations.

A. Sanders: Does this mean, then, that questions about class size and the importance of those issues within the '97-98 budget are questions that should be directed to this minister?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I would be pleased to take technical questions, but this ministry does not set negotiating positions. That's done by BCPSEA.

A. Sanders: I think I have a clearer picture now of what the minister has said. The importance to me, hon. Chair, of this particular issue -- and again, I have only marginal interest in the actual negotiating process. . . . I am very, very interested in the class size problem -- or dilemma or whatever you want to call it. To me, if the ministry is not integrally involved in this situation along with the Ministry of Finance, then you have a huge problem. To me, you could probably either construct or destruct the entire ministry based on this one issue and the outcome of anything that has to do with the bargaining process over this issue. So it would certainly be absolutely important to me that the Minister of Education has a very big say on, and very significant conduits into, all of the information that surrounds the BCPSEA-BCTF negotiations, regardless of whether they are occurring within a different ministry.

I started with the Korbin commission not to confuse people but perhaps to provide, for those who have less interest in this area, how we got to where we got in 1997-98 -- that it was based on the results of the Korbin commission -- and how that led to the formation of the Public Sector Employers Act and mechanisms for looking at provincial bargaining.

[7:30]

The issue of most importance, of course, is class size. Basically what we need to look at is the important aspect of collective bargaining in respect to the issue of class size. If we look at British Columbia right now, the B.C. population under 25 will grow in the next 25 years. That is very different from many other provinces, as we have already discussed. The population in British Columbia is estimated to rise from about two million to 5.8 million by the year 2021. There will be a constant demand for schools in the next 25 years in this province, and again, demographically speaking, this is quite different from other Canadian provinces. We will find that in B.C. there will be many schools opening, while in other provinces there will be the potential for many schools to be closing.

What long-term plan does the minister have in place to cope with the issue of population growth and the need for schools?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Obviously there are many plans that the ministry has in place that look beyond the current fiscal year. The member asked specifically about capital, if I read her question accurately.

[ Page 6181 ]

The ministry works on a sort of five-year rolling plan, so the attempt is to look at five years and ascertain need in the various regions of the province, and then do that every year. So you're always attempting to look five years out in the future and identify needs for the minister and for other ministers in government.

A. Sanders: This capital freeze was an interesting exercise in that it brought very much to the surface what I think is a potential burgeoning issue for British Columbia. We need to cope with increasing the number of schools, and we need to cope with the dollars that will be necessary for capital construction. There is always the concern that we will be behind, and that has been outlined very clearly today by members from the Richmond and Surrey districts, where fast growth is very much the process.

In the Ministry of Education, do we use the services of demographers in order to help with five-year plans?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We use B.C. Stats, but we also do our own enrolment projections. So we employ our own staff to do that work.

I'd just comment that I think the member and I have been talking about a common problem, or a common perception of the problem, around capital. I referred to it in dealing with a couple of the high-growth districts, particularly Surrey and Richmond, where I recounted the record of the past five years, where we've actually been able to build more spaces than the actual school-age population of the district. However, we had such a backlog that we're still playing catch-up, and that projected enrolment growth meant that we were going to be doing that for some time.

That's one of the things that was reconfirmed, as the member says, by the freeze and the capital review. That is why it is so important that we deal with issues like extended days, like efficiencies, like more efficient site acquisition -- and beyond that, as we look at how in other areas of the province we take advantage of technological advances to substitute for learning space, which might be on the Net rather than in a classroom, and look at the opportunities there. There's a wide range of initiatives that we can use to deal with these pressures.

It will also mean. . . . And this is the more difficult part for us as elected officials in the province. It will also mean, because we have this growing population. . . . And it's not just a five-year plan; we can look well out into the next century with demographic projections -- though, as the member knows, the projected lines tend to get a fair bit of variance out there after a few years. But as we look out that far and try to deal with the rising population, our challenge as elected members is to be very realistic when we talk to the public about the ongoing necessity for investments in schools and universities and colleges and hospitals, and the borrowing and debt that that means.

We must do it within the means of taxpayers, obviously, but we must also recognize we're working within an environment in this province where, unlike other provinces, the necessity to build additional schools and provide additional space will be an ongoing one. So we need to make some fundamental changes to do the way we're doing business; the status quo won't cut it. That's one thing the capital review showed us. We need to adapt, because the future is too important; we simply can't continue on. We need a clear, consistent approach across the province. We're trying to do all those things.

A. Sanders: One of the things that I have seen very clearly from most of the school boards that I have spent time with is that very, very few of them are thinking beyond this year. They are thinking about whether or not they will get the money that they had been promised before the freeze in 1996, in order to build the school today that they needed 18 months ago. They are not thinking about what they're going to be doing in five years. They had very horrified looks on their faces when I would ask them who on the board actually made those kinds of plans -- there was no one. They basically felt that they were working more on a basis of putting out fires than of making long-term projections.

The minister has mentioned a very important concept. In the Vancouver Sun, David Baxter, who is a B.C. futurist, basically said that the future public debate would be between aging baby-boomers requiring more health care, and students and their parents who want to have money for school and education. Then, of course, there will be both those of us who are the aging baby-boomers requiring health care who also have the children in school at the same time. Basically, 1996 was the year that the boomers turned 50, and Baxter goes to great length to explain in a very careful and thoughtful way how, in fact, if we thought we had a crunch for funding for schools from a capital point of view now, you haven't seen anything yet, because we're going to have very significantly more, especially in B.C.

One of the things that the minister has quoted and that I think needs to be looked at in terms of the demographic approach to education is that B.C.'s credit rating downgrade was an indication that it's no longer acceptable for government to carry large debts to finance capital projects. We all see the world very differently. From where I sit, the logic is actually the opposite. If we manage our finances well and have fiscal responsibility, we do in fact protect health care and education, as opposed to the other way around. I just wanted the minister to have the opportunity to add his comments to the record with respect to this issue.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Just for the information of the member, the forum on extended days that the ministry hosted had as one of its keynote speakers Mr. Baxter.

A. Sanders: The one I wasn't invited to.

Hon. P. Ramsey: No, the other one. The one on extended days; I think neither of us got there. We were working extended days here; we didn't get to go to extended days there. Mr. Baxter did one of the keynote speeches at it. I must say that the deputy reported to me that the reaction of many trustees bears out your observation. We do have a problem of having our nose pressed against the wall and being unable to focus out there and look at what our education system is going to require in five and ten and 20 years.

So we do need that longer-term vision. I think people like Mr. Baxter are good for letting us give our head a shake and get some of the cobwebs loose and figure out what we're actually going to be dealing with. I also find it fascinating to talk to those who think that those of us who are spending our time in this chamber debating about physical space and teacher components of education may be missing the boat on how education is delivered in the not-too-distant future.

We are at the very beginning of the implementation of technology that could radically change the way information is provided. It could radically change teachers' access to curriculum resources. It could radically change the way students interact with one another -- not just in their school, but across the province and across the world -- and have that built in as 

[ Page 6182 ]

part of the curriculum. It could radically change the way we look at schooling in terms of a school year -- a calendar year.

[7:45]

Earlier in these estimates, I shared my impressions of just one of these small products that is now available -- and it's just sort of a harbinger of things to come -- which is an Internet program put on by those who are talking about the Canadian Everest expedition. I don't know if the member is aware of it. I'd be glad to give her the web address. She might be interested in looking it up and poking around for a while.

What it provided the teachers who signed on for this was access to how such an expedition is planned; the physiological challenges facing climbers; all the difficulties of transportation, language and on and on -- of dealing with a strange country in a strange place; the challenges of climbing; how it was actually done; and then tracking the actual progress of the expedition, including real-time data from base camp, where they could talk to climbers who were actually involved in the assault.

The reviews of this from teachers and students on the impact of this on their class was remarkable. I mean, you weren't reading about, you know: "Edmund Hillary did this first, we've had so many since then, this is where Everest is, and we want you to memorize the height in metres." All of a sudden we had fifth-grade students trying to figure out what they'd pack in so many pounds of gear and then comparing it with what the climbers actually took to see where they might fall short -- a very intense and real experience. The teachers reported that it just blew their classrooms wide open. Students were physically present there, but they were linked with classrooms across the country.

So we're spending 30 hours or more here, and our focus is largely on physical space and traditional methods of instruction with traditional materials. I hope that those who read these transcripts in five years will at least see that we in this chamber have some glimmerings of the way that education is apt to change. I think the member does. I've seen it in her comments and her probing about the concerns of this minister and this ministry, as we attempt to look out ahead there as well at the challenges that face us in providing high-quality education to the children of our province.

A. Sanders: I appreciate the interesting comments from the minister, and he is absolutely right. I also do see, however, the interesting circumstance that while we are looking at how we are trying to fit into an agrarian model, if we do go back as far as Plato, we're going to find in his comments on mass education some of the same things that. . . . If we look at Plato or Rousseau or what's-his-name -- Horace Mann -- and people arguing about class size. . . . These individuals far beyond and far before us were having the same arguments about class size and about whether we should be all taught in one big room or whether we should have individual tutorial instruction, regardless of the fact that so much has changed. So I think pedagogical situations are probably always going to be focused one way or the other, depending on which way the pendulum swings.

What I was trying to look at was the demographic shifts that we're experiencing. We are in fact looking at an education model that is causing change so quickly that we are holding onto some old concepts without embracing some new ones, and we are not encouraging either at the ministry level or at the school board level a lot of thinking towards the future, because people don't have the time and the ability to count on resources more than six months down the road. Therefore they cling to what they know how to do -- that is, to plan the way they've always planned. I think we're going to get into trouble with it. There are going to be some hard growing lessons that will be learned, and I think they're going to be within the time of this minister's tenure.

Getting back to a little less philosophical debate, I want to focus now on looking at the issue of class size, because we're talking about whether we're having traditional classrooms or whether we're going to have different kinds of classrooms or whether we'll need classrooms at the same time as we're asking where the classrooms are, because they aren't being built. Class size, to me, is the most important roadblock to the Minister of Education making any real financial decisions with regard to resource allocation within his ministry today as we speak. I think it's the issue that guts progress in provincial bargaining. I think it's a wedge issue for school boards becoming more responsible and making more realistic financial choices. I think it's an issue that inhibits teachers from having anything better in place than a transitional collective agreement.

If this minister did nothing in the next four years other than in his tenure as Minister of Education solve the issues that relate to class size, he would have done more for kids, parents, teachers and boards than any other minister in that job description before or after. It's not without enthusiasm that I urge this minister to make a real difference and have the creativity and resolve that would be necessary to facilitate some kind of bargaining and really good across-the-board talk about the issue of class size.

The NDP government brought about amalgamation and collective bargaining to school districts. In 1996 the Premier stunted what could have been further contractual evolution between teachers and boards by imposing the transitional collective agreement. Cynics claim that it was to create peace and abort a teachers' strike during a period of an election in 1996. With the retrospectoscope in place, history provides that that perhaps was in fact the motivation behind what was to become a reality.

Three and a half years later, we have two bargaining groups without substantive progress in negotiations. These two groups have 125 issues to negotiate. Ten had been agreed upon by BCPSEA and the BCTF at the time of the transitional agreement; one year later there is no change. It's not an optimistic scenario when we consider that this agreement will run out in June 1998, around the time that we are going to be bringing in a budget followed by estimates which we are doing now.

With this lightning speed, it's patently obvious that ministerial intervention -- directives, incentives -- is imperative in terms of this minister and this ministry providing leadership in whatever way they can to really facilitate having some 

[ Page 6183 ]

forward motion on this particular problem. We must not find ourselves one year from now where we were even three or four years beforehand, and I think the minister can do a lot to influence those negotiations with respect to looking at what's best for kids.

We need to have both parties, with the help of the minister, being very cognizant that the present pace is not good enough and that we need stability in the education system and that we need it now. Without resolution of the contract and the issues that account for 90 to 95 percent of the $5.8 billion this ministry has in its budget, there is no part of the system we discuss now that is secure or even particularly important until this is dealt with. My question to the minister is: in his control over the negotiations between BCPSEA and the BCTF and with the slow speed that they are moving, what could the minister do to facilitate something more expeditious?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I think I'll start at the philosophical and work down to the specific. One thing that needs to get done is to make sure that both teachers and trustees and others in the system are thinking beyond the wall that they see in front of their faces and that they are looking five and ten years down the road about how it might evolve and how current discussions around configuration of work within a collective agreement might impact that. They should also look at some of the opportunities, the technology and other ways of delivering education you could have, to break some of this impasse.

It's not easy, though, but that's one thing. For example, I hope that one of the outcomes of the extended-days forum we've put on is that both sides, teachers and trustees, have a better understanding of what the possibilities are, so that we don't have positions at the table that are simply positional bargaining around an issue, but there's some understanding of what the real range of ways of dealing with a situation is. So that's one piece of work I intend to keep on doing.

I must say, I'm a little concerned here. There was a transitional collective agreement reached last year. The member refers to this as an agreement that the Premier imposed -- which is interesting, because I don't think he had a vote at either ratification table. The member seems to imply that it's a wrong thing for the Premier's Office to try to accelerate resolution of this agreement, and yet she is concerned that this intervention aborted some evolving relationship between the parties.

Part of my background is as a collective bargainer. I've done collective agreements from both sides of the table. Ultimately, issues get resolved after a certain level of understanding and real belief that the parties at the table are telling you their best perceptions of what their ranges are and where the deals are. It does take some time. That's one of the reasons why we did this class size review at the bargaining table to at least make sure that we had a common understanding of what the problems were. How did the teachers perceive the issues? How did the trustees perceive the issues? What are the actual data? The ministry, of course, is very useful in providing actual data and saying, "This is what we know about class sizes, configuration of classes and staffing of classes around the province," for both sides to look at. So that's a useful role the ministry and minister will continue to play.

Those are some of the ways that we can surely try to advance it. I've met with both sides to this -- BCPSEA, BCSTA, the BCTF -- and expressed my concern, as I said earlier, that both sides take this seriously, that there is a need for development of an ongoing relationship. And I have some confidence that this relationship is evolving. In my first time in this portfolio I would have described my meeting with employer and employee as almost two solitudes. They didn't seem to be talking about the same issues in some cases. Now, I think, that has changed. I think both sides have an understanding, at least, of the challenges that collective agreement provisions pose for the other side at the table. And that's good news, because that is the basis on which profitable negotiations can proceed and, in my experience at least, the basis on which agreements are ultimately signed.

A. Sanders: I took some time to look into how many times this group met -- feeling a certain urgency that we had a year left, and they had had three years where nothing really had. . . . Of the 125 issues, only ten had been settled. My findings were that they had met four days between March and May of '97 -- they did not meet between January and March -- and that the group was not going to be negotiating, because they were on summer holiday for July and August. I just wanted the minister's comments on that.

[8:00]

A. Sanders: Here's a group of people dealing with 90 percent -- or even up to 95 percent -- of our $5.8 billion ministry, and they've met four days in '97 and won't meet until September 1997 because it's the summer holiday. There are many of us who would dearly love to have a summer holiday. What's good for the goose. . .is how the expression goes. Does the minister feel that these groups should be left to their own accord, or should there be an expeditious schedule for. . . ? Should they be given a push? I guess that's the right question.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'll resist the temptation to compare our life with that of teacher bargainers. I'll only say this: there are times when I fondly remember summer vacations, too.

Let me just say this: we have not only two parties at the table, BCTF and BCPSEA. We have one of the most respected labour facilitators and neutrals in the province involved, Mr. Don Munroe, who I think both parties, and surely I, have a lot of respect for, in his ability to prepare parties for bargaining and then facilitate some of the work around the table. Mr. Munroe is seized of this process and is advising both groups on how to get ready for the hardheaded work that will need to be done in the fall. I'm not prepared at this time to commit to any intervention in the bargaining that goes on. Nor is it clear to me that direct intervention by a minister necessarily assists parties. Mr. Munroe and the staff of BCPSEA and PSEC do stay in touch on how negotiations are going. The Minister of Finance and the collective bargaining committee of cabinet receive reports on how things are progressing or not progressing; and if there is a need for further impetus for the parties, we'll consider that at the time -- but not at this time.

A. Sanders: Do boards pay from their budgets for BCPSEA?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We dealt with this early in estimates. They pay half the cost of BCPSEA, $1.5 million, and the ministry pays $1.5 million.

[ Page 6184 ]

A. Sanders: Just to clarify that, is there an additional cost that comes from BCTF, or is that the government cost that was stated?

Hon. P. Ramsey: BCTF contributes nothing to BCPSEA.

A. Sanders: So the two bargaining groups are the BCPSEA and the BCTF. But BCTF pays nothing?

Hon. P. Ramsey: They pay their side.

A. Sanders: Oh, they pay their side. Okay, thank you.

Just for clarification, because I'm not sure, did the minister give the composition of the BCPSEA board?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The BCPSEA board is composed of seven school trustees from around the province, two officials of the Ministry of Education and two officials from the Ministry of Finance, from PSEC.

A. Sanders: Would the minister provide for this member the names of those individuals?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We don't have them with us tonight. I'll be glad to provide them; it's public knowledge.

A. Sanders: By June 1998, there are three important issues that must be solved, and I'd like to look at these just briefly on an individual basis because they do have significant merit. The first is class-size language, the second is teacher evaluation, and the third is posting and filling.

Class-size language. Basically, what we're looking at here is restructuring class-size language so that it doesn't. . . . The restructuring of class-size language has been said to me by some trustees to be a concern because it might gut their other areas of education services, and as a result the district would squeeze funding to other areas to meet collective agreement requirements.

An example that was given would be the contract signed between the now Minister for Children and Families and the Surrey teachers. Basically, my understanding there is that if the contract language available to the teachers in Vernon was applied to Surrey, there would be -- with the same contract and no other change -- savings incurred of about $8 million. How is the restructuring of class-size language not going to squeeze funding from other areas of education services to meet the needs of collective agreements?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I think the member well knows that the two parties to the negotiations -- both the BCPSEA and the school trustees that they represent, as well as government and the BCTF -- have strong views on contract language. They'll be bringing those to the table. I'm not going to presume to understand at this point the intricacies of what they table or where resolutions might be reached.

A. Sanders: I find interesting the large differentiation in contracts in different areas in terms of class-size language. It was with great interest that I had the central Okanagan contract applied to Surrey and the significant difference in terms of savings -- or money available to education -- that could be incurred by just a difference in class size. I see this as a very, very serious problem, and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how this is solved -- and solved in a very, very student-proactive way.

The second issue that is very important and must be solved by June '98 is teacher evaluation. Could the minister explain, for the benefit of the House, the problems inherent in this issue?

Hon. P. Ramsey: You know, I'd be interested in hearing what the member thinks are the inherent difficulties in this issue.

A. Sanders: I'm sorry. I wasn't listening; I was daydreaming or something.

Hon. P. Ramsey: There are a variety of collective agreements that obviously have provisions in them for teacher evaluation and supervision. There are some provisions of the School Act that apply, as well. I'm not quite sure what the member is referring to. What one side in these negotiations sees as a difficulty, the other side may see as an advantage, and vice versa.

A. Sanders: So my understanding of the answer -- and I was not trying to be rhetorical; I truly didn't understand -- is that different districts evaluate teachers differently, and because of the differentiation in the evaluative process, there's trouble getting together on this particular issue on how it should be done.

With respect to that particular issue, one of the comments that was made to me by a school trustee was that -- and again not to be rhetorical but to truly wish someone to explain this to me. . . . I was told that the issue of teacher evaluation with respect to the transitional collective agreement is. . ."kneecap the School Act." That was the way it was described to me. I think that has a Mafia-type connotation in terms of the metaphor.

Could the minister explain to me what that means?

[8:15]

Obviously a collective agreement does not have the ability to supersede legislation, so we are puzzled at what your informant meant by that comment.

R. Masi: I am not the informant.

I'd like to first of all refer to the School Act. Now, I haven't massaged this act for about five or six years, so I'm a little out of date, I admit. Is there still a requirement in the act for a report on a teacher due in a specific period of time?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We believe so -- though the person who has that expertise has temporarily left us.

R. Masi: Assuming a positive answer, that there is a time frame in which every teacher must be reported upon, there are districts that have entered into -- again, I'm a little rusty on this. . . . But I believe it is teaching and learning condition agreements that in fact will not permit reports to be written except in cases of negative reports. That's one example that is, I'd say, a major inconsistency. I wonder if we could have a comment on that.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The School Act requires that school districts meet the provisions of the Teaching Profession Act. The Teaching Profession Act requires that each district have in 

[ Page 6185 ]

place a mechanism for evaluating teachers. Each school district then bargains the way that it's actually done with their teachers, and they are enshrined in the 75 collective agreements that cover public school teachers in British Columbia.

R. Masi: Well, that's our answer, then. It's not in fact required every three years or in any specific time. I assume that the hon. critic is making a case for consistency. Consequently, with 75 different agreements, we have inconsistency of evaluations.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I would only say that here, as in the class-size issue the critic has been discussing, the need for consistency is clearly one of the things that is driving the necessity for provincial bargaining -- and a provincial agreement.

A. Sanders: So we're all learning something here. Here's another area that really means these people need to get busy and do their bargaining. This is holding up quite a significant aspect of the School Act, in that teacher evaluation is necessary for all of our teachers. I'm also told that harassment charges are clouding this issue. I wonder whether the minister has had that brought to his attention.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes, I and the ministry have heard concerns about this, though we haven't. . . . If I remember, one extreme formulation of the problem that I've heard was that evaluation of teachers could be construed as harassment. I'm unaware of any circumstance where that has actually been borne out. Similarly, I've surely heard that teachers at times feel that they are working in an atmosphere where they are harassed by students or by others in the school.

Finally, I think the member is well aware of some of the concerns that I've had about how we work to ensure that all our students are learning and studying in an atmosphere that's free from harassment. I've heard and seen incidents of that within our schools, which are very inappropriate, of course. Our schools are surely not sanctuaries set aside from those problems.

A. Sanders: Does the minister support the need for teacher evaluation?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes.

A. Sanders: The third area that's very important within this agreement is that of posting and filling. Specifically what that is, in my understanding of watching it work. . . . Multiple teachers can often go through a single classroom. I'm interested in the minister's thoughts on the issue of multiple teachers going through a classroom in terms of the education of students. I'm thinking primarily about elementary students.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Again, these provisions differ greatly from district to district, which is why I think the member is right that both sides will be bringing their views to the table. I hope that we have optimum provisions in place at the end of the bargaining process. Obviously the less disruption the better. How you achieve that is something that is going to be on the table.

A. Sanders: I think this is an important. . . . I don't think that any one of these is more important than another. All three of these issues are obviously very, very condensed issues. They're very, very potent issues.

Especially at the elementary classroom level, I think there's quite a bit of work to show that continuity and personal relationships are prime factors for learning, in primary grades especially. Whether or not three or four grade 1 teachers going through a single grade 1 classroom is an effective learning template is something that is of significant concern to me. This is one of the issues that most definitely is on the table for discussion, and I would very much like to know that the minister would exert any influence he had to make sure that these issues are dealt with from a learning template, not from a working template. I think that this is very important in terms of those kids who are in elementary grades, especially primary grades.

When we're looking at the collective agreement. . . . We've looked at the three issues, but the literature on class size has been further reviewed, and I was able to read a review done by two researchers at the University of Victoria. They had done a 1,200-paper study, which they published, looking at literature over the past two decades on class size.

The interesting things that they found were some of the following. "The outcomes of the research were conflicting, inconclusive and disappointingly meagre. In terms of students, the effects of class size on student achievement became smaller as grade level increased." In other words, for kids in kindergarten and grades 1, 2, and 3, class size was an important issue. For kids in grades 9 to 12, it was not important at all. Even then, only 50 percent of the kids in the K-to-12 studies showed any significant change in terms of class size. "At-risk students: we do not know if simply reducing class size will solve achievement problems, so there's very, very inconclusive evidence here."

In terms of teachers, there appeared to be an article of faith among teachers that reducing the size of the class had a benefit. Certainly, having been in that circumstance, manageable class sizes represent an important psychological factor for teachers. Using the Maslach burn out inventory, there did seem to be an increase in burn-out for teachers with increasing class size.

In terms of instruction, however, the quality of instruction was a far more important variable than class size when we were looking at student achievement. A number of the studies that they cited. . . . In 1990, "Children will be better served if the quality of instruction is viewed as more important than the number of children instructed." In 1992, "The key to raising standards lies more in classroom management than in seeking to reduce class size." In the summary of their findings, they basically said that certainly class size should be within reasonable ranges in which the most effective teaching and learning conditions can occur.

Hon. Chair, we find this government and this minister in a very significant conundrum, because we have a number of very, very important issues to look at. We have research down-playing class size as an issue in children's learning, and this has been substantiated provincially but also globally, in a number of recent articles in the Economist and other such magazines. We have district contracts with teachers that view class size as a pivotal point of all learning, with the paradigm that small classes are better. We have an almost $4 billion ministry that we are discussing the estimates for, where up to 95 percent can go into salaries. Therefore the corollary is that 95 percent of that is not budgeted in a stable way, because the issue of class size has not been resolved over the past three and a half years by the negotiations between BCPSEA and BCTF.

[8:30]

[ Page 6186 ]

We also have teachers living with ongoing uncertainty concerning layoffs or decreased job expectations in districts where some of them have taught for four and five years. I've seen that among my own friends and colleagues in the Vernon area, where people were being laid off, despite the fact they'd been at a school for four years, because of changes in the amount of money the districts were given this time.

We also have taxpayers trying to ascertain when any of those making decisions are talking about learning conditions for their kids and when we're talking about working conditions for ourselves, as adults.

I think this whole conundrum has left quite an unsatisfactory scenario for this minister and his tenure. What I would urge this minister to do is to really make policy that will remove British Columbians from the catch-22, where they see conditions they're not satisfied with and yet see the groups that control the very largest part of our funding not meeting to negotiate, perhaps, quickly enough. We have school boards wondering how they can look into the future. If we don't resolve the class-size issue, we're not in a circumstance where we can really make many decisions five or ten years down the road in terms of looking at how we're going to spend these billions of dollars.

I guess my soapbox here is primarily to really put a very, very important focus on this particular issue for the minister and to urge him that I see this as something that I will be measuring how the ministry does. It will be the yardstick or the benchmark, based on how much of a leadership role the ministry takes in this issue, as to whether or not we can count on looking at how we educate our kids and where we allocate those dollars in the next five years.

This is not in any way, shape or form to surmise that I know where those dollars should be allocated. To me the greatest part of education is teaching, and there the dollars should go. But I think that this stability that we've talked about in many different ways is the very important issue that is missing in this mix.

I would just ask the minister for three answers; number one is a general response to what I've said; number two would be any solutions that he sees that come to the immediate surface of his cerebral cortex; and number three is whether there is an action plan of any kind that this information brings forward to him.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'll just say a couple of things in response. I thank the member for her analysis of some of the challenges that we face as collective bargaining progresses.

Let me just say this. I think that the issues that the member has flagged are indeed some of the principal ones that do need to get resolved in this round of bargaining. I will certainly be conveying the view that these are issues that simply need to get dealt with to anybody who's at the table.

I also think that the member has raised some interesting issues around class size. Her experience is probably like mine. I've taught classes of anywhere from, I suppose, a dozen to 50. I surely found that the sort of education I was able to provide in a classroom setting differed in a class of 50 from what it did in a class of 12, and the sort of learning environment I was able to establish differed. Did every class need to be 12? No. Should every class be 50? No.

I think the important thing here is to make sure that we have the true flexibility -- not just flexibility in terms of collective agreement provisions, but true flexibility to tailor what happens in a classroom so that kids can learn. That's truly the bottom line here. There are all sorts of factors that go into that, some of which we've discussed in the last 30 hours of debate on these estimates.

I've said very clearly that right now we have negotiations going on between parties. The ministry is involved as a provider of information and, in BCPSEA, as members of the board. I also serve as a member of the board of PSEC, to which BCPSEA reports, to make sure that these issues are being dealt with. We receive regular reports on what's happening at various sets of negotiations.

We do have a period for the summer. We may be concerned that bargainers aren't working as long hours as we are, but they will be back at it in the fall. We'll be monitoring very closely what's going on. Now Mr. Munroe is meeting with the parties separately, and he'll be bringing them together for substantive work when he feels that that work will be profitable.

I think we're sort of at the end of this segment of estimates. Hon. Chair, I would suggest -- this is the prerogative of a Minister of Education -- a ten-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 8:37 p.m. to 8:49 p.m.

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

A. Sanders: The member for North Vancouver-Seymour will be talking on Bill 43, so he's not here at this point. I'm just going to move on to some short topics that I'd like some minor clarification on.

The first one is stock plans for schools. I canvassed this issue last year, and what I want to know is with respect to one of the schools that I saw in the paper a number of times this year, the Strawberry Vale school. I really don't want to go into the Strawberry Vale school again. The minister and I are both very well aware of this particular school and the litany of letters written to the editor on school design, a waste of money, and so on and so forth. But I think that, again, this shows that the public expects us as government to have some kind of definitive plan for designing and spending on school construction that is within some kind of framework, which allows us not to differentiate in economic terms from one school to the next or from one district to the next.

I think parents sometimes have a difficult time having their kids go to schools that are nicer than their own family homes. That's difficult for many of us. I think, just for the minister to comment, for the record. . . . What has the ministry done to encourage the use of stock plans to standardize school design?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Well, if ever there was a reason for more exacting standards, it is Strawberry Vale. When I first saw the picture of it, I couldn't quite believe I was looking at a school. It does represent, I think, one extreme that we definitely need to move away from.

Look, I said it repeatedly in estimates, and I'll say it again very quickly for the record. We have reduced the unit cost of 

[ Page 6187 ]

each square metre in schools by 15 percent. We've reduced the amount of space in schools by 10 percent. Those are some of the measures that will keep us away from repeats of Strawberry Vale. Incidently, though, those reductions in space and costs made the ministry's stock plans obsolete, because they were actually based on higher unit costs and more space. We're significantly below the sort of stock plan costs with the efficiencies that we're asking school districts to attain. We were faced with: do we do another ministry stock plan? The answer was no. We're encouraging school districts to use a newly developed school plan as sort of a district-based stock plan.

You heard in estimate debates this afternoon and this evening that in Surrey, for instance, we're looking at three different elementary schools using the same plan. In Qualicum, there are two using the same plan; on the Sunshine Coast we have two other schools built using the same plan. The member, I think, acknowledges some diversity around the province, but is asking: what can we do within a district to make sure that we're using it well?

Actually, the design for the Qualicum school district, which is for an elementary school with the capacity of 300 to 400, is going to be available as a Vancouver Island-lower mainland stock plan, applicable to those school districts because they share a common climate. So we don't have a sort of one-size-fits-all stock plan. It was made obsolete by the reduced costs. We are encouraging, with a lot of cooperation from districts, the use of common plans where it works.

A. Sanders: One question I would probably want the answer to with respect to that, because it feeds back into the extended-day cost-saving measure, and it is important. . . . When we're look at one of the problems I see with the extended day, which I've been trying to wrestle with in terms of how it will actually function, to have an extended day you have to have additional space in schools to accommodate those who are waiting for two or three hours between their classes.

If we are utilizing our space in the school so well that all the classrooms are full, yet we have taken away all of the additional space -- ancillary space -- in schools that young people would use to gather, hang out or do whatever they would do in the two or three hours between classes, in some cases, then we could have a problem in the catchment districts where those schools are built, in that those children will not be in the school, because there's no place for them to go. Therefore they're in the houses of the families living around the school who are at work. Or they're at the 7-Eleven, the poolhall or maybe, on a positive note, the rec centre. But there may be other places they are that aren't in the mandate of the school or its rules and responsibilities.

With the downsizing of stock plans, which could have been used perhaps more realistically for schools that would be on an extended day and require additional space, what kind of thinking process has gone on at the ministry to really look at those two different and diametric issues?

Hon. P. Ramsey: This is indeed one of the issues that we're working on. It was an issue much discussed at the extended-day forum. We are looking at adjusting the plans for secondary schools to make sure that they will accommodate space for students who are not actually in class, to deal with precisely the issue that the member raises. There may be some circumstances where a school is sited, say, next to a rec centre, where there's some combined use of facilities that might alleviate that. But it is a serious issue. It's one that's being addressed in the plans being worked on for secondary schools that are going to be on extended days.

I just want to clarify one point that the member made. There are no stock plans for secondary schools. We're working on those for the elementary level. As our estimates debate touched on, in Surrey we occasionally find a chance where we can use one plan for two secondary schools, but that's not common.

A. Sanders: The other important issue that I want to touch on tonight is, having gone from what I saw as the meltdown issues in the Ministry of Education, that of the class size, teacher evaluation and posting that needs to be discussed by June 1998, in order for us to have an agreement within our districts and have some stabilization of how much money we have to spend on everything else. . . .

[9:00]

In an attempt to quantify that into some kind of structure that I could get my head around, we did a survey about a month and a half ago, looking at the school districts and how many staff would be relieved of their responsibilities -- laid off, fired, whatever -- based on the school year starting in September. From looking at those districts, the total number was 929.587 FTEs. This number, which I'm happy to share with the minister, is not something that is there in terms of September, as far as I know, because I know things will change. But it's the best that I could do with the timing and information that were available.

An example would be in district 22, that of Okanagan-Vernon. Five FTE certified education assistants will be laid off, and five FTE non-classroom teachers will be laid off. Two FTE administrators will be laid off, and two FTE custodians would be laid off. So when the kids go back in September, the best snapshot I could derive was that there would be, in my district, nine individuals less in the school district providing some kind of service, either administrators, teachers, teacher aides or custodians.

What I'd like to know from the minister is: are the numbers that the ministry has come up with -- because I'm sure they've done this independently of me and much more efficiently -- approximately even in the same ballpark?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm not sure they are, because obviously with the expenditure of $34 million and the necessity to hire teachers for additional students in additional classrooms, some of the layoffs that the member references will be more than made up for with additions to staff in other areas.

What I will share with you is what the ministry believes, from current information from districts -- obviously there's time, a chance if that changes between now and September -- of net changes for the province in various areas of employment. The expectation they have is that we'll see 252 FTEs 

[ Page 6188 ]

more in teaching staff in September than we now have and than we had last year; 43 FTEs less in administrative officers, principals and vice-principals; 17 FTEs more in excluded staff; and 253 FTEs less in the CUPE support staff area. That's the net impact that school districts are reporting on their decisions around 1997-98 budgets.

A. Sanders: For my benefit, could we go through the specific numbers the minister has given? I can't remember them exactly, but I believe there were 200-odd teachers that will be additional for the September school year. Could the minister explain where those have come from? Are they people who were laid off and will be rehired, so it's the same people? Or are they 200 brand-new people who will be employed in the schools that will be opening in September who were previously not there?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm not sure I can give the member any sort of an across-the-province view of where the additional people are going to be hired from. What we are saying very clearly is that if you took all people categorized as teaching staff -- and that includes teacher-librarians and others that have been impacted by district decisions, as well as direct classroom teachers -- and if you took a snapshot for the fall of 1996 of what school districts are projecting they will have on staff in September '97, based on what they submitted, there will be 252 more FTE positions in teaching staff in the schools. The reality is that there will actually be an increase above that of teachers who are directly employed in classrooms. There will be a reduction, though, in people who are classified as teaching staff who work in non-classroom areas. I think you've probably got the same letters I have around teacher-librarians and counsellors and some other reductions that school districts have made. But as far as who these people are, in some cases you are right: it will be rehires of people who have been given layoff notices.

The member spoke about posting and filling provisions. In some cases, this results in some quite strange procedures, because the collective agreement says that this is how it should be done. I'll give you one example I was very concerned about until I looked into it. That was in the Prince Rupert school district, where I think something like 60 teachers had been given layoff notices. My reaction was: "Sixty teachers! It's a small district. What's going on here?" I discovered that you actually had a school board decision to downsize some staff in a couple of small schools. Those teachers had bumping rights -- posting and filling again. There was actually going to be a reduction of ten teaching positions in the district, but in order to get down the list to the person with the seniority to bump others, they had to issue 60 layoff notices. Given normal attrition and retirement, I suspect that any teacher who was teaching in Prince Rupert district last year will have a place to teach this year.

That's not uncommon. When we see in the paper 60 layoff notices being given, figuring out what that actually means in terms of staffing may be something quite different. Again, back to the main point here, the ministry, based on the budgets that were received, estimates that in September '97 there will be 252 more positions for full-time teachers in the province than there were in September of '96.

A. Sanders: I'm wondering if the minister and I are comparing different numbers here. I'm talking about the teachers who were present in June of '97 in the school districts and who will be teaching, hopefully, or doing whatever they were doing in the school district in September of '97. The minister is talking about September '96 to September '97, and they're actually two different figures. I'm just wondering whether there is any credibility in comparing those two different figures.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Staff advises that there's very little difference between total teaching staff in the fall, September '96, and the following spring, June '97.

A. Sanders: My understanding is that the minister said there was 200-and-something CUPE staff who would be laid off in that total number. Is that correct?

Hon. P. Ramsey: That is correct: 250. We expect that if we compared the figures again for September '96 or June '97 with September '97, we would find that staffing. . . . If you add it all up across all school districts, there would be 253 fewer full-time CUPE or support staff positions.

A. Sanders: My assumption, I guess, would be that teachers' aides are CUPE staff. Okay.

The problem here that's worth noting is that an FTE does not reflect the actual number of people that will be affected. And that can work in a positive way, with the example of the 60 layoff notices and ten people actually losing work at the end of it. But it could also work negatively, I would think, drawing from that same logic, where if 194 teachers' aides were being laid off, that might actually represent two or three hundred people who received layoff notices in order to get to that 194 distillation down at the end of the road.

I'd be very interested in having the ministry's figures to look at, primarily because I do not want to be left with any misconception. My figures are different, and, of course, I did not have access to -- or did not even look at -- new schools that were coming in. But I had 359 FTE positions lost in teaching, 194 in teachers' aides, 260 in administrative staff and 114 in custodial staff, with all districts canvassed except for two. So I would be interested in knowing whether the minister will share his figures with me so that any discrepancies in my understanding can be cleared up now.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Well, we don't have the information with us tonight in the detail that you're talking about. I'll be sure to provide you with a further briefing from staff after estimates, if you want to actually figure out how we got to the figures that I'm presenting to you tonight. But I mean, just intuitively, the budget increase for the K-to-12 system is $34 million. There is going to be $34 million more spent in the system next year than last.

We have 10,700 more students which we expect to enroll in our schools in the fall of '97 than we had in the fall of '96. Teacher collective agreements mandate a certain class size. There's some capacity in the system to absorb 10,700, but not a whole lot, particularly in the high-growth districts. So there will clearly be a significant number of hires to provide classroom services for 10,700 more students in our classrooms.

The figures that I've read to you reflect, in many ways, school districts following through on some of the broad directions that we discussed with them as budgets were being prepared -- and that the funding letter that I sent to districts, which you've quoted from, reflects. And that is my insistence: that they look first at making reductions as far away from the classroom as possible. I think the figures that I've read to you reflect the school districts' agreement and follow-through on that broad initiative.

[ Page 6189 ]

A. Sanders: Just to bring into the mix all of the information, I think it's important to recognize that although $34 million was additionally put into the budget, $27 million was taken out with the other hand. So we're in a situation where. . . . The minister shakes his head, and I would appreciate him explaining why that is not the case.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The budget is up $34 million this year over last. What we've discussed very clearly is that we are going to fund every additional FTE -- 10,700 -- at the same level as we were funding FTEs in the past. The actual requirement for total funding would be $61 million. Okay? We've provided $34 million, and we've said to school districts that the other $27 is going to come not from the classroom end of things but from the service and admin stuff that surrounds classrooms. That was their part of the challenge to meet the increased enrolment across the province. By and large, school districts seem to have accepted the challenge and made appropriate reductions.

[9:15]

A. Sanders: You know, it's always difficult to look at the numerical side of things and the realistic side of things. What I hear the minister saying -- and I'll just clarify it so that I understand -- is that based on the way things were done last year, the school districts would have got $61 million. But they're not getting it; they're getting $34 million, and they have to somehow come up with $27 million to fill in that difference. Although both situations are true and realistic, I think the interpretation of that is: still doing the same this year with less than you had last year. It's like getting your paycheque, and you think you're going to get 61 bucks and you only get 34, and you've already budgeted for having 61 with whatever your daily or yearly or monthly expenses are.

So I think that basically we are looking at a situation where we can call it whatever we like. Be it efficiencies or cuts, there are any different numbers of semantics. But basically, the school boards are going to be having less money at their door in this budget year than they did last year, because they have to find those efficiencies, and they have to be creative to do that. I'll let the minister respond, because I think that's only fair.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The budgets that school districts receive will be $34 million greater than they had last year. There's more money in the system for the sixth year in a row. The member's description of where the reduction in per-student funding occurred. . . . We've discussed it repeatedly here. I think there's a good understanding on both sides of the House.

It's clear that this budget required school districts to change the way they were doing business in some minor ways -- 0.77 of 1 percent worth of minor ways. And I would ask the member if, in her personal finances, a 0.77 of 1 percent reduction would be seen as a crisis in her ability to go on and make necessary purchases and expenditures. Admittedly, it requires some change. But on the macro level, this is a small change in the funding for school districts of our province. We remain, as I've said, at the top of the ladder in funding per student for school districts in this province compared to any other province in the country.

This did require the districts to look at reductions in some areas. They had 18 months' notice that this was going to occur, from the time amalgamation was announced in the spring of '96 to the start of the fall term in 1997. So I think that's just, in brief, an attempt to wrap up some of the points that have been made several times during these estimates.

A. Sanders: In many ways this discussion reminds me of the blind man and the elephant. Wherever you are that you're describing the elephant, it's a long snake-like structure, or it's a hard, round thing with toenails, or it's a little tiny thing with a tassel on the end. I hear what the minister is saying, but at the same time, if you were looking at a 0.78 percent change and you had very little disposable income on which to make that, it might be a very significant change.

When we have school districts doing everything that they do, other than hire their staff, with sometimes only 5 percent of the total amount that's given to them, many of them do feel that we're expecting them to do a lot with considerably less. We also went over -- and I've risen to the minister's bait, I guess -- all of the other changes that have occurred that add onto that 0.78 percent. I won't belabour those now, for they are there for everyone to read in Hansard. There are other things, such as inflation, other agreements, etc., that do add into that total mix, that do change the mix from just a pure 0.78 percent change in the overall budget.

I'd like in the remaining time to take up some short issues that need to be canvassed, but I don't have a lot of questions on them. One is home schooling. I find that more and more parents in the area where I live seem to be home-schooling their children. I get a lot of inquiries about it at the constituency office. When I looked into the actual home-schooling circumstance, it did appear that enrolment had increased. The figure was 3 percent over the period from '91 to '93. I could not find any figures for home schooling in the '96-97 year and certainly none for the '97-98 year. I was hoping the minister could provide me with some information on how many children are being home-schooled in, I would imagine, the '96-97 year.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'll read you the last. . . . I don't have '97-98 figures. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens in the fall.

There are actually two columns I'd like to read you. One is for independent schools that are receiving some support from the public school system, and then independent or home schoolers that are receiving support from the independent school system. They reflect two different realities.

I don't know how far back we want. Let's do the last four years. In '93-94, public school system, 782; 1994-95, 705; 1995-96, 726; 1996-97, 672. So a decrease over a four-year period of around 100 spaces. Wow, actually the peak of the last decade was reached back in '90-91, when we had 958 home school students receiving support from the public school system.

The situation is quite different for the home schoolers that are receiving support from the independent school system. There, the highest number was last year -- 4,253, up from 

[ Page 6190 ]

4,079 in '95-96; 3,686 in '94-95; 3,471 in '93-94; and back in '90-91, it was only 1,500. So indeed, there's quite a significant increase in home schoolers attached to the independent school system.

A. Sanders: What would the minister feel was the significance of the numbers increasing yearly in the independent faction?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I think what I would say just in general terms is that many of the decisions that lead people to choose independent schooling for their children also lead them to do home schooling.

A. Sanders: Does the ministry have a breakdown of whether there is a religious-based component behind the home schooling initiative?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We don't have figures here that provide that sort of breakdown. I would say that the great majority of home schoolers are, of course, elementary school children. If they followed the same distribution within the independent schools -- the breakdown of the various categories in the independent schools that we discussed earlier -- one would expect that well over 50 percent would be affiliated with or receiving support from a religious-based school.

A. Sanders: The next issue I would like to canvass is what are called "parents as partners." Parent advisory councils, or PACs, contribute immensely to the health and well-being of our public schools. Especially in the time of cash-strapped governments in the nineties, fundraising efforts from PACs alone have provided money for everything from computers to playground equipment. Often we find field trips -- and even supplies, when budgets are inadequate and result in shortages -- being topped up by the capital raised by the parent advisory councils.

In 1995 a survey of 200 PAC groups revealed that they had fundraised up to $2 million. I found it absolutely astounding that these groups were able to commit that much to the school system. Considering that there are over 1,500 PAC councils in B.C., the impact of the groups collectively and the potential support is virtually unlimited.

In 1989 the Ministry of Education officially recognized the contribution of PAC councils by including them in the School Act. For the first time, legislation defined the role of a parent advisory council and with it, the rights of parents to advise and make recommendations regarding their children's education. The act also provided limited funding through district budgets and access for a provincial network. PAC groups provide financial assistance and thousands of volunteer hours, not to mention an enormous philosophical contribution to British Columbia's public schools.

In the last number of years, this has been one of the things I have been most interested in as an observer, in that I certainly can remember when parents literally dropped their child off at the door of the school and then ran like crazy. Now you can't keep them out of the school. I think there's really quite a significant difference, and I think that comes with good things and with bad things. Anyone who spends enough time around our schools will know both sides of that equation.

Are there districts without PACs?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We're unaware of any school district that wouldn't have at least one school in it with a PAC.

A. Sanders: As with all things, I think there are some areas that don't have very verbose, vital parent advisory groups, and there will be other areas that have quite significant impacts from their PAC -- impact-PAC.

One of the things that I was very interested in seeing was the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils resolutions passed at the annual general meeting. They had a number of resolutions that they did pass. These have met with very little press, and I was unaware of them until I sent for them. Could the minister give me some idea as to how important they are to the minister and through what mechanisms he registers feedback on the BCCPAC resolutions?

[9:30]

A. Sanders: I think what I was looking for from the minister was something a little bit broader in scope. Specifically, my registry of a mosquito compared to a ten-ton truck running over me is a little different. Do these resolutions hold any importance to the ministry, or are they just recorded and registered? What kind of impact, through the School Act, do these resolutions have on conduct, on many things at the level of the ministry?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm trying to give a fuller answer.

Look, I consider the work of PACs to be very important. You're looking at a former chair of a PAC. I served as a chair of a PAC in my children's elementary school for a couple of years, in 1982 and '83, and we raised money to buy the first Apple computer that the school had ever seen in those years. So some things never change.

PACs and the work that they do are recognized, not only at a school level, but the ministry takes them very seriously. Senior staff participate in their events and are in attendance at their functions, including the AGMs. Representatives of the provincial association sit on the provincial education committee with other education partners -- trustees, teachers and secretary-treasurers as well.

Representatives of PACs are intimately involved in the committee work that the ministry strikes. They sit on the committee that's looking at what accountability measures we should have for special education, and how we do the work around administrative caps. They participated in the extended-days forum. The list goes on. I have a hard time thinking of a committee that we've struck -- that sort of cross system -- where we don't include parent representatives. They were senior players at the roles and responsibilities forum.

We take the group seriously. We seek to involve the voices of parents in the policy work that the ministry does. They have had full access to the minister and to my office.

A. Sanders: I think what I was trying to get across was not necessarily that I was dismissing the role that PACs play, nor was I dismissing the amount of interest that the minister takes in PACs. I did notice, from the AGM resolutions, that a number of the resolutions were very definitely going in the opposite direction from where the ministry was going. Not only that, they were very, very direct in terms of what the AGM had felt were important issues. When I read that, what goes along that line is that the Ministry of Education dropped grade 11 and grade 12 CAPP, fine arts and applied skills as 

[ Page 6191 ]

graduation requirements. This is something I've had a lot of mail on, and I know the minister has. It is something about which the previous minister said: "Absolutely no way are we going to get rid of CAPP, and absolutely it does have to be a graduation requirement."

In general, if you look at the educative groups and at the BCTF and their representation, the principals, vice-principals, the ministry and all of these different groups, on some large, broad-based issues you may have quite similar thought patterns, whereas in this particular group of people, there is the potential for very significantly different thought patterns. I see that as good. I see that as how you derive some kind of evolutionary move forward on issues, by having the diversity.

At the same time, when we have a group of BCCPAC saying that they want the ministry to prevent any development of a curriculum for teaching about homosexuality in the B.C. school system, these are quite different from what is happening here in Victoria and are certainly quite different from what is happening among the teachers in British Columbia.

I was trying to bring into account the weight. . . . If we were going to weight all of the participants, and their value differential was weighted as to how much influence they had on decisions, where does this group sit? Their recommendations to the minister are, of all the groups, really the most different from what I have heard from the other groups that would be represented and would make representations to the minister on some of these very issues.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The challenge here is to get things right. Obviously I listen to what this group is saying, and obviously the weight I give their recommendations will vary, depending on the issue. Let me give you an example. The member quotes the recommendation on CAPP, career and personal planning. This had been subject to two reviews, one conducted by a committee which included representatives of PAC, included teachers, included administrators and included the ministry.

PAC reps on that committee agreed with others that the program should continue as a requirement. More importantly, we struck a committee of students themselves to examine the CAPP curriculum and to hear what they had to say. Their recommendation -- which was a surprise, because I sort of expected that they would agree with the resolution you just read -- was strongly: "Don't throw this away. Keep it; strengthen it. We need more of this."

So at the end of the day -- and I have all sorts of correspondence on the program -- I said: "Right, I'm going to go with the students on this one. They say it's having an impact on how they view the world and on the education that they're receiving and how it relates to that world. I'm with them. Let's do it." I must say that I was a little puzzled to see that resolution coming out, because the views of the PAC representatives on the committee we struck, from the same organization, were 180 degrees different.

On the issue around homophobia, I really had hoped we wouldn't get into this one. When I talked to the representatives of BCCPAC after their convention about this resolution, I expressed my disappointment and told them that I thought their organization had been badly abused by people with an axe to grind who had misrepresented what the ministry was doing, what the current curriculum was and had used that group for political purposes. I must say that there was some agreement from the executive of that organization that that indeed is what had happened. That's a shame. This is a good organization that has a chance to develop -- it's still relatively young -- into a very effective voice for parents on education issues. Regrettably, I don't think this resolution helped that.

A. Sanders: The minister gets the point I'm coming to, and that is that sometimes things are not as they seem. There are very excellent reasons for us to look at the parent advisory committees and to recognize that in the future they will be looking for expansion of their privileges in terms of what they do. I have talked to many who already have said: "When we are raising this much money in our schools, we would certainly like to have more say on exactly how it is allocated." I understand that, having been in that circumstance and having done that kind of work. There is also, once you work that hard, the need for the philosophical direction-finding that comes with the responsibility. You want to have the results, as well.

I wondered how the ministry was looking at the evolution of the PAC group to best serve students in the future and to make it a strong and viable group, while also making sure that no agendas become the main focus of the PAC group so that the PAC group becomes something that it was never intended to be.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Much of that responsibility rests with the PACs themselves and with their provincial organization. We provided some money to assist them in developing some core services. Clearly they need to look for some other sources of support, too. It can't simply come from the ministry.

We seek to make sure that the messages we're sending to them are ones that say we value their voice. As PACs at a school level recognize that there is an opportunity to have a provincial voice heard here, the movement will indeed strengthen. Yet there may be a lot of parents and a lot of PACs that simply say: "Our issue is with our own school and doing all we can to promote the highest possible education for our children." That, too, is their decision.

How they evolve is. . . . We might wish to push it in a certain way, but ultimately the major initiatives are going to have to come from the PACs themselves.

A. Sanders: I do see this as an interesting issue and that time will tell in terms of the development of PACs. I really do look forward to seeing it expanded into a very strong and directive force. These are the children of the parents who have got involved within the school system.

I am just going to finish with one question on curriculum, on the IRPs. The home economics teachers in my district had wanted me to bring forward a concern that they have. I quote a letter from Patty O'Hearn, who is a home economics teacher at Charles Bloom Secondary School and the president, I believe, of the home economics teachers group in the Vernon area. She also, incidentally, was in my grade 8 home room when I was teaching.

[9:45]

[ Page 6192 ]

"We have not been happy with the new proposals, although we're not sure what, if anything, you can do. We want to bring it to your attention as the Education critic. The ministry has yet to officially supply us or anyone in the province with a copy of the IRP for home ec, although we finally got hold of one in 1997. According to our time line, all responses to the document must be made by February. This is not realistic as a time line, since the rest of the home economics teachers in the province have yet to see the document and have no idea how drastic the proposed changes are.

"Thank you in advance for looking at this document, and we look forward to you looking into the matter.

"Signed,
Patty O'Hearn"

What is the process when teachers who are actually teaching subjects look at their resource packages and feel that they do not reflect what should be taught in their classroom? How does that evolve so that this classroom teacher, who has taught the subject for a number of years and who has written this letter, can feel that there is somewhere for them to go?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The development of IRPs involves teachers deeply. Many of the people who have been seconded to work on them come from the field.

What you can reassure your correspondents on is that these packages for home ec -- I think you said grades 11 and 12 -- are still under development. We don't expect to have them complete. The time line for the scheduled development of the IRPs for grades 11 and 12 doesn't have them scheduled for completion until the 1999-2000 school year, so there's lots of opportunity for your correspondents and others to make sure that the overview committee that's looking at development of the IRP hears the views from the field.

I've had many letters on the same subject from home ec teachers. I think that's really the only group I've had, which leads me to believe that there's been some misunderstanding about what's going on with that specific IRP and its development. There are a variety of IRPs under development, and I haven't heard similar concerns from others. Others know very well that this is a process where we distribute information, get responses, refine it and try again. We make sure we're getting curricula that reflect what can and should be done in classrooms.

A. Sanders: Noting the hour, I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 9:49 p.m.

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