[ Page 7467 ]

The House met at 10:06 a.m.

Prayers.

Tabling Documents

Point of Privilege

It should be noted, firstly, that the member for Matsqui did not accuse the minister of "deliberately misleading the House" but rather chose to use the charge of "misleading the House." Joseph Maingot, QC, in Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition, at page 241, discussed the making of allegations that a member had misled or deliberately misled the House as follows:

"To allege that a member has misled the House is a matter of order rather than privilege and is not unparliamentary, whether or not it is qualified by the adjective 'unintentionally' or 'inadvertently.' To allege that a member has deliberately misled the House is also a matter of order and is indeed unparliamentary. However, deliberately misleading statements may be treated as a contempt. In the Canadian House of Commons, members attempt to get such matters before the House on a 'question of privilege' when there is merely an allegation of contempt rather than an admitted matter and the problem arises because the use of unparliamentary language is not permitted in the House and therefore questions of privilege and motions in support must be purged of such language.

"If the conduct of a member is to be formally discussed or debated in the House of Commons, such as a charge of. . .deliberately misleading the House, it cannot be done on a 'question of privilege,' because until admitted or so found by the House, as the case may be, such allegations are unparliamentary and cannot be uttered, and the fact that the accused member denies it is irrelevant."

It appears to me that there may have been a misapprehension as to the application of the question. Through the series of questions and answers, the minister made a clear distinction between her activities as an MLA prior to entering cabinet and her activities as a cabinet minister. Indeed, the memo cited by the member clearly related to a time prior to the minister being appointed to cabinet. Under the circumstances and upon reading the whole transcript, rather than selected passages, it is the opinion of the Chair that there is no prima facie case of breach of privilege nor contempt made out.

It is further my view that this matter clearly belongs in the category alluded to in various Speakers' decisions -- a dispute between members as to facts. I would refer hon. members to the Journals of this House, April 6 and June 8, 1982, at pages 32, 34 and 132.

For the foregoing reasons, I cannot find that a prima facie case of breach of privilege has been made.

Orders of the Day

S. Orcherton: I just noticed an old friend in the gallery, and I ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

S. Orcherton: Up in the gallery today is a person who has worked a long, long time in terms of representing the interests of working people in British Columbia. Jim Humphreys is with us today. He is a past business manager of the Machinists Union, Local 3, has negotiated many collective agreements for workers in the shipyards in Victoria and has taken a whole lot of different initiatives around trying to make the workplace a safer place for people. It's somewhat coincidental that he's here today but certainly timely, as we're going into debate on Bill 14. I'd ask the House to make him welcome.

WORKERS COMPENSATION
(OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY)
AMENDMENT ACT, 1998
(second reading)

I want to start, if I might, by deviating from my formal text and sharing with members my horoscope for this morning. It seems to me somehow appropriate. My horoscope, according to the Globe and Mail, reads as follows: "Be completely open about what you think and feel today, even if you know that what you say is unlikely to be met with universal approval." That strikes me as somehow an appropriate way to set the tone for this debate. It's Pisces, if anybody is interested.

What we're doing today, it seems to me, is very important, and indeed I am pleased to be presenting this bill. The legislation we're looking at flows directly from the recommendations of the first report of the Royal Commission on Workers Compensation in British Columbia. The royal commission, as most members will know, was established in response to concerns from injured workers, from employers, from labour and from others about the effectiveness of the workers compensation system in British Columbia. The royal commission was accordingly given a wide-ranging mandate to review and to make recommendations for improving the system, including occupational health and safety.

[ Page 7468 ]

What the legislation does is establish the fundamental statutory framework necessary to promote and to protect the health and safety of British Columbia workers. It's worth noting that we have seen a 25 percent decrease in injury rates in the past decade. Nobody, I am sure, however, would say for a moment that those rates are not unacceptably high; they are unacceptably high.

[10:15]

That high rate of injuries and accidents, of course, imposes a heavy financial cost on workers, on their families, on employers and on our health care system. We simply cannot allow this to continue. That's only speaking of the financial burden. The human cost is of course equally high and equally outrageous.

The legislation that we're presenting builds on the strengths of the existing prevention system administered by the Workers Compensation Board and is further informed by the advice and the input from employers and from labour. The legislation creates a new component, or a part, of the existing Workers Compensation Act, and it -- that is, the part -- will be administered by the Workers Compensation Board.

The purpose of this legislation, as I have suggested, is to promote and to protect the health and safety of workers. It is also to promote cooperative approaches to health and safety in the workplace, including educating employers, workers and others; and to prevent accidents, injuries and illnesses.

Everyone obviously shares in the responsibility for creating a healthy and safe workplace. I think that, by working together, we can indeed minimize the social and economic costs of accidents, illnesses and injuries. We can also enhance the quality of life for British Columbians and thereby the competitiveness of British Columbia businesses. The Workers Compensation Board, we should not forget, has a very broad mandate for occupational health and safety, including -- and this is made very clear in this legislation -- establishing and maintaining standards and requirements for the protection of workers.

The board's role is therefore one of both educator and enforcer. For the purposes of administering this legislation, the board may do a number of things. It may carry out inspections. It may assist joint health and safety committees. It may provide information, advice and education on occupational health and safety matters. It may promote public awareness, and it may undertake research, maintain statistics, and offer grants and awards.

The board, of course, must carry out its mandate in a fiscally responsible manner, and it will be required to report out annually both on its performance and on the state of occupational health and safety in British Columbia.

While employers have the primary responsibility for ensuring the health and safety of workers at the workplace, it is clear, as I suggested earlier, that all parties have a role to play in this regard. Employers must ensure compliance with the legislation and must remedy any unsafe or hazardous conditions. Employers must also ensure that workers are aware of their rights and duties under the legislation and must provide the necessary information, training, instruction and supervision.

Workers must take reasonable care to protect their own health and safety and that of others at the workplace who are affected by their actions. Workers must abide by established, safe work practices and must not act in a manner that threatens their safety or that of others. Supervisors, suppliers, owners and directors and officers of corporations also have responsibilities for ensuring health and safety.

The legislation requires the establishment of joint health and safety committees in all workplaces where there are 20 or more workers regularly employed, and it requires the appointment of worker health and safety representatives in workplaces with ten to 19 workers. Some will argue -- indeed, have argued -- that this will impose an unnecessary burden on the marketplace, on business. Research that has been undertaken in Canada, the United States and in Europe, however, acknowledges the benefits which accrue from the establishment and maintenance of proactive, cooperative employer-worker health and safety committees.

The duties and the functions and the functions of the joint health and safety committees include a number of things: (1) identifying situations which may be unhealthy or unsafe and looking at ways to respond to those; (2) dealing with occupational health and safety complaints; (3) consulting with both employers and workers; (4) advising the employer on health and safety programs and policies and on educational programs; and (5) participating in inspections and investigation.

The legislation sets out the employer's obligations to support these committees, including providing for eight hours of paid educational leave yearly for each committee member. That is, I suspect, a feature of the legislation that may be somewhat controversial or, at least, open to question -- quite legitimately open to question.

Another feature that is also going to be controversial, I think, is the establishment by this legislation of a worker's right to refuse unsafe work. The legislation sets out a process for dealing with such complaints. The worker is also protected from discriminatory action for exercising his or her right or for acting in compliance with the legislation. While these rights and protections are built into this legislation, a worker must not take advantage of this right, and an employer is not precluded from taking appropriate disciplinary action in these circumstances. The privacy of individuals and the confidentiality of business information are respected in this legislation.

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

The legislation also sets out various miscellaneous Workers Compensation Board authorities with respect to the use, handling and storage of hazardous substances, first-aid training and certification, medical monitoring and certification programs, and certification of blasters.

The board also has the authority to grant variances from provisions of the regulations. It is crucial to establish, though, that the variance that might be granted must afford equal or greater protection for workers. A lesser standard will not be acceptable. A variance is a way to make the legislation work better for all parties; it is not a means to diminish or reduce the standards.

[ Page 7469 ]

The legislation establishes strong enforcement measures to protect worker health and safety. The board has the authority to make orders to ensure compliance with the legislation and regulations, including orders to stop work if there is an immediate danger to workers. The board also has the authority to impose an administrative penalty of up to $500,000 on an employer who has failed to take sufficient precautions to prevent injuries or who has not complied, or where working conditions are demonstrably unsafe.

Formalized review and appeal mechanisms, including what is reviewable and appealable -- who may request a review or an appeal -- and review and appeal processes are also set out in the legislation. Until such time, though, as the royal commission submits its final report, which will include recommendations on appeal structures, the appeal division of the Workers Compensation Board has been designated as the appeal tribunal for purposes of this legislation.

A person who contravenes the legislation, the regulations or an order made under the legislation or regulations commits an offence and is subject to prosecution. The penalties on conviction are a fine of up to $500,000 or six months' imprisonment or both if it is a first offence and a fine of up to $1 million, 12 months' imprisonment or both if it is a subsequent conviction.

These penalty levels are significant and purposeful. Obviously they send a very clear message, a clear signal of how important this government views occupational health and safety. My hope is that never would those kinds of fines have to be invoked. Rather, people would recognize that safety is indeed everybody's responsibility, and we all must do whatever we can to ensure that a safe workplace obtains.

Regulation-making authority is split between the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council and the Workers Compensation Board. This responds to the royal commission's concern that there be governmental accountability for health and safety matters. Regulations of the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council will be broader and more criteria-setting in nature, while board regulations will be more operational and technical in nature.

Indeed, as I said in first reading, one of the reasons for the legislation -- the stand-alone part in the Workers Compensation Act of an occupational health and safety provision -- is that the Workers Compensation Board reported that they perceived they were being cast in the role of having to make public policy decisions, a role which more properly belongs to elected governments and cabinet, through the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council -- thus this division of labour, if you will, between those two functions.

The legislation requires the board to undertake ongoing review of its regulations and to ensure that consultation, including public hearings, occurs before regulations are made. This will ensure that both employers and labour, as well as other stakeholders, have an opportunity to provide input into the regulatory process.

This legislation will create a new part, part 3, of the Workers Compensation Act. Several existing provisions contained in the Workers Compensation Act will be repealed or amended, and the Workplace Act, that old statute, will be repealed in its entirety.

In closing, I would like to express my personal, wholehearted support for this legislation. I want to express my appreciation to the royal commission for their thoughtful recommendations on occupational health and safety. I also want to thank the reference group of employers and labour, which provided us with the valuable input and advice that animate this legislation. I have seen the benefits of a proactive health and safety program in a workplace, despite the fact that I am not one, like some of my colleagues, who has spent a long time in a workplace as we normally understand that. But I did spend a little time in logging shows, and I did spend a little time in the bush, and I did spend a little time working in mills. I saw just enough to make me believe that what we're doing is (a) necessary and (b) absolutely appropriate. I have seen the tragic results of an ineffective or nonexistent health and safety program.

[10:30]

Mr. Speaker, I am looking forward to comments from the opposition on this legislation. I am looking forward to a detailed and thorough debate during committee stage of this legislation. I want to thank all members for their attention. I move second reading.

C. Hansen: Hon. Speaker, the minister started his remarks with his horoscope of the day. It wasn't something that I was planning to comment on, but my colleague from Okanagan-Penticton ducked out of the chamber to find my horoscope for today. Again, I wasn't planning to comment on that until I read it, and I thought: what the heck, I will. My horoscope today says: "No one is going to let you down; no one is going to leave you holding the baby, so don't waste time on suspicious thoughts." I realized that if I abided by that, I was going to have to throw out half my speech today. One of the things that I'm concerned about with this piece of legislation is: who's really behind some of the drafting of it? It says: "Act as if you cannot lose; act as if you cannot be defeated. You were born with an amazing degree of self-confidence; make use of it." Once I read that, I decided I was going to stick with my original speech plan.

The official opposition is obviously very concerned about worker safety -- all of us in this chamber are. All of us in society are. Certainly every worker in this province is concerned about worker safety, and every employer in this province is concerned about worker safety. I think that we have to find ways that worker safety is going to be enhanced. The minister mentioned some of the statistics in terms of workplace injuries, and I think it's fair to say that even one injury in the workplace is too many; even one fatality in the workplace is too many. We constantly have to find ways to ensure that our workplaces are made safer, to ensure that injury levels are decreasing -- which they are, but we have to make sure that they decrease even farther. We have to make sure that fatalities are avoided and that everything possible is done to prevent that from happening.

[ Page 7470 ]

When the budget was introduced earlier this year, the Minister of Finance put out a press release that talked about a new approach this government was going to take in terms of regulation. I'll just quote from her press release of March 30. It says: "We want to make it easier to do business, so that business can create jobs. . . . We know that red tape and overregulation have increased business costs and made B.C. less competitive. We are determined to improve the way we work with business."

When I first saw Bill 14, the Workers Compensation (Occupational Health and Safety) Amendment Act, I expected to find a lot of measures that would be aimed at results and at creating safer workplaces. But what I found in the bill was basically an increased amount of red tape. What we have is a process that has largely ignored business input in terms of developing workplace safety. What we see is an increasing amount of bureaucratization of a process, rather than something that's going to lead to fewer workplace injuries.

We wind up with this particular piece of legislation coming in, in the context of a government move to cut regulation and red tape and to move towards more results-based. . . . If I can quote just for a minute from the budget speech that the Minister of Finance gave, she said: "We know that the number of regulations and how they are administered adds to costs and delays. We recognize that the relationship between individual businesses and government agencies has become complex and often inefficient. We are determined to work with business to fix that." Then she goes on to say: "What it does mean is focusing less on process and more on results." As I read through Bill 14, what I see is a lot more process, a significant increase in the amount of process that the workplace is being subjected to. And I don't see anything that is focused on the results side of it.

As I mentioned before, we are obviously interested in enhancing workplace safety, but regulations and legislation do not make a safer workplace. I have often felt that the NDP approach to workplace safety is to measure that in terms of how many pages of legislation or how many volumes of regulations there are. That clearly is not a measure of workplace safety. That's a measure of red tape; that's a measure of bureaucracy.

Last week there was an official from the minister's office who was talking about the new health and safety regs that came in on April 15. He talked about them in terms of how many inches of regulation there were. When I was giving my remarks in regard to the throne speech, I brought in the new regulations on occupational health and safety that came into effect on April 15. You're talking about 600 pages of regulations, and if you want to measure it in inches, it's about two inches -- a pile. If you print if off the Internet, that's what you get.

So here we wind up with, first of all, a government that says it's out to cut red tape and to make results-oriented initiatives. Within days of that budget speech, we have the introduction of new health and safety regulations on April 15 -- literally hundreds and hundreds of pages. Now we have a piece of legislation that's come in which is going to add even more paperwork and more cost to small businesses around British Columbia.

If we look at our neighbouring province of Alberta -- which I know this government hates to do -- they have 25 inspectors in the workers compensation administration in Alberta who inspect worksites. I understand that they do approximately 1,200 workplace inspections per year. By contrast, in British Columbia we have 190 inspectors doing approximately 46,000 workplace inspections a year.

But what's key is that Alberta has about 60 percent of the injury rate of British Columbia. I understand that there are differences in terms of the kinds of industries in the two provinces and those factors. But I think the statistics are quite shocking, because adding more employees to the Workers Compensation Board and adding more inspectors and regulations is clearly not resulting in fewer injuries. What we've seen in our neighbouring province is an area where they put far more responsibility on the individual employers. It is results-based. As a result, they have a significantly lower injury rate in that province.

If you look at some of the other costs that have been happening in the Workers Compensation Board over recent years, the WCB health care costs, for example. . . . This is a report that was actually commissioned by the panel of administrators of the Workers Compensation Board. It was done by the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. The then chair of the panel of administrators, Lee Doney, presented this on March 21, 1996. This is a direct quote: "WCB health care costs in British Columbia have exploded in recent years. On an incurred basis, aggregate health care costs have increased by 90 percent from 1991 to 1994 or 24 percent per annum."

You know, hon. Speaker, 1991 is the year that this government came into power, and in the three years following, those health care costs were increasing by 24 percent per year. Over the same time, we incurred health care costs on newly registered claims. They rose by 95 percent, because there was actually a reduction in the number of claims coming forward; but the costs per claim were increasing very significantly.

If you look at the administration costs of WCB over recent years -- in fact, if you go back to 1988, which I know was before the NDP came into power -- essentially, those costs have doubled in the period of time from 1988 to 1995. While claims have increased by less than 1 percent during this period, the staff at the WCB have increased by 58 percent. The employers' bill -- the premiums that have been charged to employers in this province -- increased during that period from $442 million to just under $1 billion, and as we know, it's even progressed since those stats came out.

Again, just to compare some of the costs to Alberta, the 1997 WCB rate in Alberta is $3.33 per $100, while the WCB rate in B.C. is $5.05. If you take the mining industry as an example, the annual WCB payment per mineworker has risen from $1,430 in 1988 to $3,334 in 1997.

You know, what we've seen over these years is a growth in the regulations of the WCB. We've seen a growth in the staff at the WCB offices and in the number of inspections that are going on. We are seeing a decline in the number of injuries in the workplace. But certainly that is not. . . . If you compare that to other provinces and other jurisdictions, the same decrease in workplace injuries is taking place. Yet they're not seeing the growth in costs and they're not seeing the growth in administration.

I want to talk for a minute about safety committees, which the minister mentioned in his opening comments. I want to refer back to the words of the royal commission itself. The minister has said that this new legislation has come out of

[ Page 7471 ]

Let's look at the current system. Under WCB classifications, we have A-, B- and C-class workplaces in terms of hazards. We have the highest-rated-hazard worksites, A and B, now subject to establishing safety committees in those worksites if they have more than 20 employees. In class C, which are the lowest-risk workplaces, the least hazardous worksites, there is a requirement that they have safety committees if they have more than 50 employees. What the royal commission is saying is that it is worth looking at whether it should be extended. But they feel that even after the research they have done, there is a necessity for further investigation. Instead, what this government has chosen to do. . . . And I guess, coming back to, "Should I be suspicious today?" I'd like to know why this government has chosen to ignore the recommendations of the royal commission. Instead, they have gone forward in this legislation to impose the establishment of those committees on every workplace in British Columbia, regardless of how hazardous that workplace is, and to impose the committees on every workplace that has 20 or more employees.

[10:45]

If you look at that at face value and you think of the idea of a safety committee in the worksite, that sounds like something that should be all well and good. Safety representatives. . . . You know, it's got all the trappings of something that is in the interests of worker safety. But if you start looking at the way these are being set up, the reporting requirements that are being made, it's clearly just another layer of bureaucracy that's being added onto the worksite that will likely make no meaningful contribution to workplace safety. The minister, in his opening remarks, made the comment that research acknowledges the benefits of such committees, and he comments on studies that have been done throughout Canada and North America. Since Bill 14 was introduced, I have talked to some of British Columbia's best experts on occupational health and safety. I have talked to individuals who know this legislation inside and out, who know the regulations, who have studied thoroughly what is done in other jurisdictions, and not one of them is aware of any research that has been done that shows that worker safety committees enhance the safety of the workplace.

If this were something where there was evidence that establishing safety committees in every single worksite in British Columbia was somehow going to reduce injury rates and reduce fatalities on the worksite, that's something I could endorse wholeheartedly, because that is our interest. Our interest is the results. Our interest is fewer injuries, fewer fatalities in the workplace. But my understanding is that there is no such research to back up that claim.

I can see the minister busily taking notes, which I appreciate. Quite frankly, hon. Speaker, I would welcome any details of that research from the minister before we get into committee stage on this legislation. I know it's research that some of the leading experts in British Columbia are not aware of. I question whether that research shows that these committees will have that type of result.

We also have to look at how these committees are set up. When we get into committee stage, this is something that I will pursue in detail. What I think this legislation fails to recognize is what the culture is in most workplaces in British Columbia. Most workplaces in British Columbia are not based on a factory model. You know, most workplaces in British Columbia are not based on a model that has management and workers as two entities, as two solitudes within the workplace. I know that everything we see coming out of this government in terms of regulations, in terms of speeches, in terms of new legislation that's coming down, tends to look at the factory model, where you have the bosses and you have the poor, downtrodden workers.

Well, the majority of workplaces aren't like that. I've set up my own small business in this province. I know a lot of small businesses, and I have worked with a lot of small businesses in this province. The majority of workplaces in British Columbia are small businesses, and many of them are in that category -- between ten and 20 employees or between ten and 50 employees. What this legislation asks for is to set up a process of establishing a committee that says that management should pick two reps on this committee and that the workers who are not management should get together and, by secret ballot, vote for their reps on the committee.

Most workplaces in British Columbia are not set up in terms of the management and the workers. I know I can speak from my own experience as a former owner of a small business -- that worksite didn't have a hierarchy. There was nobody on that worksite who was more important than anybody else. There was mutual respect among all of those workers, and as far as I was concerned, the shipper was more important than management because he was the person who was dealing on a regular basis with the clients. The receptionists were more important than management because they were the ones who were dealing on the front lines of that company.

So for this government to come in and say, "We want to set up a we-and-they kind of scenario. . . ." You know, they talk about these work safety committees as being something that will enhance the cooperation of workers and management, working together to make the workplace a safer place.

[ Page 7472 ]

I want to get to the issue of who is writing public policy in British Columbia when it comes to labour legislation. We know that we have a government in power today where very few have had the experience of actually creating a job. Very few, if any, have. . . . I think there may be one or two who have actually had the experience of running a small business.

I think, when we start looking at some of this legislation and the direction that things are going in, we start to realize who's really in charge of labour policy in British Columbia. I went into the ministry web site to look at some of the background contained in that. In there was a message from the current minister. There are some fine words in here. If they were only backed up with action, I could support these things.

The minister says it's clear that solutions must involve employers, workers and government. On the next page, it says: "Only the cooperation of employers, unions and individual workers can end the tragedy and create safer workplaces." But as I will get into in a moment, what we see is that this legislation has not come forward as a result of a cooperative effort but rather as a we-versus-they effort where they decided in the end not to come down on the side of employers.

To carry on with some of the minister's fine words in his message on the web site: ". . .efforts to improve workplace safety. . .we can produce legislation which is second to none" in North America. I think this legislation is second to none in North America -- second to none when it comes to creating regulation, second to none when it comes to adding costs and more burden onto small businesses in British Columbia. It says: "We can also create a legal framework that encourages cooperation, such as the existing requirement for joint labour-management safety committees." As I mentioned earlier, I don't feel that the workers' safety committee has achieved that objective, although those are fine words.

I want to turn to another page on the web site. These are letters that went out on December 22, talking about the royal commission, and they were signed by this minister's predecessor. The letter that went out to the business community in British Columbia -- to employers -- is addressed: "Dear Stakeholder." Now, there's a nice, personable way to start out a letter to the business community, to those who are creating jobs in British Columbia -- the small businesses: "Dear Stakeholder."

It says: "I would like to elaborate further on that commitment to ensure you are clear on what our intentions are." It goes on to say: "Our goal is to bring in framework legislation which will consolidate existing laws and regulations into a new health and safety statute. . . ." I think that line is quite important, because in many regards, this is a consolidation of existing regulations. This is a case of taking existing regulations and putting them into statute.

Those sections of the act do not do anything today to enhance worker safety, because that worker safety is there already, based in the regulations. What we're talking about is basically a question as to whether it's entrenched in regulations or entrenched in legislation. I understand that that was the mandate given by this government to the royal commission, and I want to come back to that mandate later on, in terms of why that mandate was worded the way it was.

This is the nice, friendly letter to the business community: "Dear Stakeholder." Now, let's turn to the letter that went out to the trade union movement. No, it's not dated December; this is dated January 19.

Interjection.

C. Hansen: No, it actually starts out: "Dear Friends." There is probably nothing that summarizes better this government's approach to labour legislation. Labour legislation is being driven by their friends, and we know that. It goes on to say here, and this is in the letter to the dear friends, to the trade union movement, saying that the legislation will be based on the recommendations put forward by the royal commission. But as we know quite clearly, there are many areas in this legislation -- some of which I've already covered -- which are clearly in addition to the recommendations that were put forward by the royal commission.

But this sentence goes on to say: ". . .based on the recommendations put forward by the royal commission and my own discussions with workers, unions, employers and people working in the occupational health and safety. . . ." We now know the result of those discussions. We now know that the discussions that were had with people working in occupational health and safety and the discussions with the employers in British Columbia were ignored. Instead, what happened was that the royal commission recommendations are not just what's reflected in here. In fact, the recommendations that were put forward by the unions were added, and the concerns that the unions had about the royal commission recommendations were deleted before this legislation was developed.

This letter to the unions goes on to say: "During this coming year, I am making workplace safety my number one priority as Minister of Labour." But as we know, he's no longer the Minister of Labour. We also know that this piece of legislation is not the top priority of this minister, and it's not the top priority of this government when it comes to labour legislation. What we have yet to come are changes to the Labour Code, which is obviously a much higher priority in terms of giving consideration to those in the trade union movement who are their friends and supporters.

When the minister introduced Bill 14 in the Legislature last Wednesday, I found it very interesting that the copy that was circulated to the press gallery was in fact 50-some blank pages of legislation. I appreciate the fact that this was an accident, an error, but nevertheless I thought it was somewhat symbolic of what this legislation is all about. What we know is that this particular printing of the bill was in fact supposed to go to the B.C. Federation of Labour. It was full of blank pages, and they were going to send it to the Federation of Labour with: "Here, just fill in the blanks, and we'll introduce it in the House."

We know that this bill was sent out to a review panel. Coming back to the web site, in a letter to the stakeholders the minister talks about the committee -- the reference panel, I think it was called -- that was asked to look at the legislation when it was still in draft form. This panel is made up of three employer reps and three labour reps. There are reps from the Council of Construction Associations and from the Health Employers Association of B.C. and a rep who is a lawyer from Russell and DuMoulin in Vancouver. Then there are three labour reps: the B.C. Federation of Labour, the Health Sciences Association and another Vancouver lawyer who I gather acts on behalf of the trade union movement.

[ Page 7473 ]

[11:00]

Interjection.

C. Hansen: Hon. Speaker, I am the designated speaker.

Interjection.

C. Hansen: Hon. Speaker, the minister just made a comment that he was going to move that. That would be interesting -- if we put those administrative penalties back into this legislation through an amendment process. That would certainly be a way of improving it.

In this reference group. . . .

Deputy Speaker: The minister on a point of order.

Hon. D. Lovick: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry -- believe me, I don't normally in harmless banter ever raise a point of order. But just to clarify, please don't suggest for a moment that I was responding to the member's statement about changing the legislation because of that utterance. That is not on. The reference was only to the fact that I was so enjoying the member's speech, I was going to move that he should be the designated speaker, if he were not so defiant.

Interjections.

C. Hansen: Certainly I think it's very dangerous for a minister to be yelling heckles across the floor. It's clearly an example of where he could get himself in a lot of difficulty -- by a heckle that we hear in a context which he hadn't intended. It's unfortunate that this minister will not seriously consider that kind of amendment, but we'll talk to that subject when we get into committee stage on this bill.

This reference group, where you've got the trade union movement objecting to those sections in it. . . . As I understand it, he had officials -- public servants in the Ministry of Labour -- who were charged with putting this legislation together who made the statement that their instructions were to draft legislation that reflected the royal commission report; therefore it would not be appropriate for them to consider withdrawing. They were not prepared to consider the input from the labour members of this reference panel to withdraw those provisions in terms of administrative penalties for workers who blatantly violate safety in the workplace.

What we then know is that there was a second meeting of this reference group that came together. At the start of the meeting, draft No. 2 was handed out to the six of them so they could read it. They couldn't photocopy it; they couldn't take it home. They had to turn it back in at the end of the day.

An Hon. Member: Numbered copies.

C. Hansen: Numbered copies. Lo and behold, draft No. 2 arrives, and this entire section has disappeared. One whole section of the royal commission's recommendation that they spent ten pages on, that they did a lot of research on as a measure that was necessary to enhance workplace safety, has disappeared. I started out this presentation by talking about my horoscope, which said that I shouldn't be suspicious today. But that's pretty blatant. Hon. Speaker, you wind up with the labour reps on a reference group like that. . . . They can't get their way when they're talking to the dedicated public servants in the ministry. So what do they do? They go out, and they go behind of the back of the public service. They go directly to the minister's office.

Interjection.

C. Hansen: Sure, phone him up. I'm sure they get their calls returned pretty fast. They phone up the Premier; I'm sure they get their calls returned pretty fast by him too. Lo and behold, an entire section of the legislation disappears into thin air. And here the minister is claiming that we have legislation that's based on the recommendations of the royal commission report. Clearly that is not the case.

What is clearly wrong with this legislation is that those who drafted it have never had the experience of running a business. Those who drafted it are not in touch with the culture of most businesses in British Columbia. Those who drafted it are not in touch with the interest and efforts that every business has in British Columbia to make sure that their workplace is safe.

Safety in the workplace and the advocacy of that is not exclusively the purview of the trade union movement. It's not just government that's interested in that; it's not just those of us who are politicians that are interested in workplace safety. I have found in my experience that the people who are probably the most interested in workplace safety are employers. They want to protect and care for their workers. They want to make sure that their worksites are safe. If there had been real input from the small business community in terms of drafting this legislation, in terms of taking the recommendations of the royal commission and putting them into words, into draft legislation. . . . If the small business community had been involved in that process, you would see regulations and recommendations. You would see legislation that would be far more sensitive to results, rather than the prescriptive process that we have in this legislation -- which the Minister of Finance said in her budget speech was to be the new way of doing government regulations in British Columbia. It was to be based on results, rather than a prescriptive approach.

You know, in addition to the worker administrative penalties which have been yanked, the trade union movement also asked that the Workers Compensation Act be retained, rather than having a new occupational health and safety act. The commission recommended that there be a new occupational health and safety act, separate from the WCB act. The trade union bosses didn't like that. Lo and behold, it's been changed.

The royal commission recommended that the power to make regulations be given to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-

[ Page 7474 ]

Hon. Speaker, I have been asked if I would relinquish the floor temporarily, as a member would like to make an introduction. Then I'll resume my comments, if that's appropriate.

V. Anderson: I ask for leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

V. Anderson: We have students today from advanced classes in Churchill Secondary School in the Vancouver-Langara riding, with their teachers Mrs. Barthel and Ms. Kirmis. I wonder if the House would make these students from Churchill School very welcome.

C. Hansen: One of the other problems that I have with this whole process is that we are putting the cart before the horse, not once but twice. We have a royal commission that is looking at a broad range of aspects of the work of the Workers Compensation Board. Those recommendations will lead to legislation, and in turn, that legislation will lead to regulations that are necessary to give interpretation to the legislation that this chamber passes. But what we have is that whole process reversed. On April 15 we had that whole new thick binder of regulations come into effect. I know that that's the result of a six-year process in which there was extensive consultation, etc., but a matter of days later, this minister introduces this bill which is going to directly impact those regulations that just came into effect. There are examples of wording in this legislation that is similar to but slightly different from the wording that exists in the regulations, yet they address the same subject area. What will take precedence? We have this legislation that will come in. Once it's passed, there's going to be a need to go back and change and review all of the regulations that just came into effect. To bring in the regs and then bring in the legislation is clearly backwards.

Let's also look at the report, the recommendations, of the royal commission. Here we have a government that has set up a broad range of terms of reference for the royal commission, but they ask that some very narrow, limited areas be examined. As the government insisted. . . . It wasn't at the discretion of the royal commission that they come out with this interim report; this was mandated in the original terms of reference. There are areas in this legislation that prejudge the results of that final report of that royal commission. Clearly, the way that this process should have gone was: allow the royal commission to complete its final report, look at the governing structures, look at the way they're being administered, come back with recommendations for legislation, and then come back with the comprehensive regulations that are necessary.

This is a very complex piece of legislation. I think the minister will agree to that. We have 50-some-odd pages; we have 200-some-odd sections in this legislation. I have a very specific request to make of the minister. He must allow adequate time for this legislation to be thoroughly reviewed before this legislation is called for committee stage in this chamber. Hon. Speaker, it is essential that we allow time for this review to take place.

Let me come back to the terms of reference of the royal commission. One of the things we know is that the royal commission will be. . . .

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Order. Through the Chair, please, members.

C. Hansen: One of the references in the mandate that was given to the royal commission is in section 1: ". . .to examine the statutory framework, mandate, structure, organization, governance and administration of the British Columbia workers compensation system, including accident prevention." That's in section 1; that's not part of their interim report they were asked to deliver. That's part of the second report, the final report, which is due on September 30 of this year.

Also, if you look at section 3(a), where they have been asked to look specifically at the appeals process. . . . Again, we've got aspects of this bill -- Bill 14 -- that deal with the appeal process. In theory, this whole bill is about accident prevention, and yet we have a royal commission that as part of its mandate is still examining those areas. So clearly we should not be proceeding with this legislation until such time as the final report of the royal commission is in.

We have three very dedicated commissioners who are part of that royal commission, and they, I believe, have taken their terms of reference very seriously. The terms of reference which asked them to report on these very narrow aspects were not of their choosing. It was dictated by this government, and yet there is no rationale for that.

[11:15]

I would ask the minister what impact this legislation is going to have on workplaces in remote sites in British Columbia. We already know that industrial camps are largely exempted from this, but what about a lodge? What about a fishing lodge up in the Chilcotin, which is far removed from any training facility in British Columbia? We have lots of questions to ask of lots of industries in British Columbia in terms of how this legislation is going to impact on them.

I'd like to remind the minister of a piece of legislation that came through last year called the Builders Lien Act. The

[ Page 7475 ]

We have a wealth of expertise on this side of the House. We have individuals who have run medical offices as medical doctors; we have a dentist; we have principals of schools who have been responsible for the worksite of many teachers; and many employers. Hon. Speaker, several of us on this side of the House have built and run our own small businesses. We have people on this side of the House who have run trucking companies. But as much as we have a tremendous wealth of experience in the official opposition caucus, I would say that we haven't got every expertise that's needed to anticipate the ramifications of this piece of legislation on every industry in British Columbia.

Since this bill was introduced last Wednesday, we have gone out to consult with industry groups. They too admit that as much as they represent an industry group, they can't speak for how all these sections are going to impact on the workplace. I would say that there are many small businesses in British Columbia that, when they start realizing the increased bureaucracy and the increased costs that are going to be loaded on them by this legislation, will be extremely upset. I have no doubt that the small business community around B.C. will have some very positive recommendations to make to this minister in terms of how this legislation can be worded in a way that truly does produce the results that are desired.

Through that broader consultation, we can get input from every worksite as to how we can minimize the cost, minimize the red tape and still enhance worker safety, so that we can continue to drive down injury rates in B.C. I believe that that kind of consultation is absolutely essential. For that reason, I would like to move an amendment to the motion that is before us. The motion reads: "That the motion for second reading of Bill (No. 14), Workers Compensation (Occupational Health and Safety) Amendment Act, 1998, be amended by deleting the word 'now' and substituting therefor the words 'six months hence.' "

On the amendment.

K. Krueger: Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the amendment. This is a friendly amendment. It's friendly to the stated intent of this government; it's friendly to workers in British Columbia. It's friendly to employers in British Columbia, particularly to small and medium-sized businesses -- that category of employer which is known to have generated by far the majority of new jobs in the economy in the past decades.

It's a friendly amendment, and we hope the government will accept it as such. We want to work with the government side on this issue, clearly. Everyone cares about worker safety; nobody in this chamber wants to see workers exposed to hazardous conditions, hazardous materials or unsafe workplaces. None of us wants that. Surely no one in this chamber would ever suggest that about any Member of the Legislative Assembly. Certainly everyone on the benches on this side of the House cares, and we know that everyone on the benches on the other side cares as well. We'd prefer to stay away from any silly partisan talk about anyone not supporting workers or worker safety. Clearly we're all in favour of that.

It can be done while building the economy of British Columbia. Workers can be protected while we encourage business to invest and create jobs in B.C. It's not necessary to stifle or discourage business as we go about the high responsibility of protecting workers and ensuring their safety. What's important, we believe, is that we target the right targets here. It's not every business that has problems with identifying hazardous conditions in its workplace. Apparently, by the statistics that the minister himself quoted, there has been significant progress made in recent years in this area. So why not target those particular businesses or, if we have to, particular industries where workers continue to be hurt because of unsafe work practices, perhaps unsafe worksites, unsafe equipment -- those that have had bad results? Let's not take this scattergun approach to all businesses in British Columbia as determined by the number of employees they have, which this legislation sets out to do. That's a destructive approach, and it's not going to accomplish what the government says it wants to accomplish.

My colleague has suggested in his amendment that we take the time that's necessary to engage in a real consultation with employers and employees throughout British Columbia, and it's a good idea. What could it possibly hurt? Particularly in light of the fact that the royal commission is ongoing and that many of its recommendations have yet to be seen, have yet to be written, there is no rush to introduce these measures. Indeed, the government just finished introducing a huge amount of new regulation in this area only two weeks ago. How does it make any sense to do this? It's almost as if the government is competing with the anticipated results of the royal commission, and the WCB is competing with both. It's not an acceptable situation at all, in that it adds further red tape and costs to small business in British Columbia at the very time when we've all been speaking about the need to enter into a new economy and a new understanding of how to create jobs in British Columbia and about how to make our economy come alive again.

We can do that by empowering employers, empowering small business, empowering employees. My colleague from Vancouver-Quilchena spoke of the nineties ways of managing businesses, where employers have their sleeves rolled up and are working alongside employees, often recognizing, as a day-to-day approach, that employees know more about certain aspects of the business than the owner or the manager does. The employee is the expert, and her or his input is essential to the manager conducting the business of that enterprise in the way that is most productive for the enterprise. So why not take the time to consult those employees and see what they think about this legislation, see what amendments they think would be in order? The government need not consider it a matter of losing face; it's a matter of listening to the people who will implement these plans. If they are good plans, they will stand, and if they need some amendment, that doesn't mean there was poor intent when they were introduced. It just means that they weren't practical for the workplace of British Columbia in 1998. So why not do that? Let's accept the new realities of management at the end of the twentieth century and going into the next millenium -- that it really is necessary to consult and to listen when we consult, and not to simply impose encyclopedic regulation on businesses in the hope that certain goals will be accomplished, particularly when those goals are demonstrably already being accomplished by many of those same businesses.

I believe in loss prevention initiatives, and I think most people in this House do. I think that's why the graduated driver's licensing program in British Columbia, for example,

[ Page 7476 ]

I spent 18 years handling insurance claims and then three years with the same employer handling loss prevention initiatives, and felt that I'd missed the boat for the first 18 years -- that the time is much better spent on prevention than on the consequences. You're not going to have any argument from this side of the House on the need to ensure that there are safe workplaces throughout British Columbia and that those employers who perhaps don't have a good track record or are demonstrating carelessness or a lack of ability to deliver a safe workplace. . . . Those employers need to be assisted and dealt with. That doesn't mean that we impose new regulation on all employers.

We have to have focus in order to have an economy that works. The minister spoke of his desire to improve the ability of British Columbia's businesses to be competitive in 1998. We don't do that by adding new and unnecessary regulation to them. We do that by working with them and addressing the concerns we have with the employers, the businesses, that are creating those problems, not by attacking all business, all job creators, all investors in British Columbia -- as Bill 14 does, despite its good intent. It doesn't make sense to put a smothering blanket across all business and investment in British Columbia, particularly at a time when business in B.C. is hurting.

My colleague from Vancouver-Quilchena quoted the Finance minister, who appears to have recognized -- as evidenced by her remarks in introducing the budget -- that there is a need for a new economy in British Columbia, a new way of doing things. The Premier appears to have recognized that in the prebudget consultations he did with business as well as with organized labour and even with spiritual leaders throughout the province, recognizing that our results in British Columbia are dismal. There has been something wrong with our approach when we're moving backwards, when we're sliding from first to worst in terms of economic performance. Something is clearly wrong, and the Premier was out to identify that.

Indeed, there were good indications in his words, prior to us being called into session, that he did recognize that this government has inadvertently built a war machine, and it stands on the three pillars of overregulation, overtaxation and interference in labour-management relations. That war machine trained its guns on the economy. Surely that's a perverse result, Mr. Speaker. Nobody on the other side of the House meant for that to happen, but that is what happened. Those guns have been firing for seven years. We understand the government's wish to silence the firing and to stop the destruction that has been raining down on the economy of British Columbia.

This bill, as it's written, is not the way to do it. We feel certain of that, even from the brief time that we've had to analyze it and from the material that is pouring into us over the faxes and telephones from concerned businesses and business organizations throughout British Columbia. That is another cannon from that war machine that has been destroying the economy of British Columbia, and we must not allow it to happen. We don't need to. We can shut it down for the time being. We can listen to those people and come back with constructive amendments from them, to make this a productive piece of legislation in its amended form. Why not put a temporary halt to this particular bill, in recognition that it may not have the desired effect? Surely those people who are concerned about unsafe workplaces in British Columbia don't wish to shut down a lot of safe workplaces, and that's what will happen here.

[11:30]

The member for Comox Valley is ridiculing me for saying that, and that's just out of line. We're speaking here with good intent. We think the government's making a mistake, a serious mistake, and the member for Comox Valley -- where small businesses will also have great difficulty with this legislation -- shouldn't ridicule a member for raising these cautions. Indeed, I caution every member on the government benches that they're going to be held accountable by small businesses in their constituencies.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Every small business there will be affected by this act. It will add tremendous expense to the operation of those businesses. There will be constituents in their areas who will bring in business cards like this, or other messages, and say to them: "Why have you done this? This was the last nail in the coffin of my business. This is what is going to put us under, because we can't afford it. We can't afford layer upon layer of regulation." Besides that, they'll say to their MLAs from the government side: "We have a safe business. We never injured a worker. We never failed to listen when our workers came forward with concerns. In fact, our workers are our best asset, the aspect of our business that's the most important to us." What every good small businessman will say is: "The people, the staff who work for us. . . . We would never willingly do something that would endanger them or fail to take care of something that does endanger them."

I thank the member for Comox Valley that she's no longer heckling me, because this is an important issue. I don't think that people should be ridiculed for speaking to it, and I don't think her constituents would believe that either. Now, Madam Speaker, the Minister of Labour is adding to the ridicule. I submit to the Minister of Labour that he has never made anything work in his life.

The Speaker: Hon. member, I'm sure you're not trying to impugn any motives of members.

Take your seat. Thank you.

[ Page 7477 ]

K. Krueger: I think that it behooves MLAs to be humble and to not presume to speak about issues they know nothing about or to fail to listen when members who are knowledgable in a certain area speak to their proposals. We have a Minister of Labour who was, of course, the Speaker not long ago and who began to write cheques as if there were five more employees on his team than there actually were. This has been a matter of some concern throughout British Columbia -- that the Speaker's budget was exceeded so substantially. I'm making the point that people who've never operated a business shouldn't presume to impose new regulation on businesses without at least listening, when it's proposed, to those businesses telling them what the consequences of their legislation are going to be.

This government continually speaks about consultation, about listening, about the new economy, about wanting to do things right, about being willing to have a second look at what it's been doing for the past seven years, given the results that it's looking at. So let's have some walking of the walk, rather than just talking of the talk. I know that the government side is hearing from small business and from business associations as well. Let's have a government that has the humility to say: "Okay, if we're all hearing that there are serious concerns about this legislation, let's stop and listen to them -- not for a matter of a couple of days, but for six months, as the member for Vancouver-Quilchena suggested." That's sufficient time for people to analyze this legislation, consider the effects it will have on their businesses, document those effects and make presentations to MLAs on both sides of this House, so that we can have amendments that make the legislation work in the way that the government says it's intended to work, rather than destroying the economy further than it's already been destroyed.

This bill is dangerous to the economy. It will kill jobs. My constituent who brought in the business card is right: government regulation has killed her business. Overtaxation, overregulation and interference in labour-management relations is a story repeated throughout British Columbia. We believed that this government was beginning to understand that, to get that message. So, frankly, we're surprised at this voluminous legislation and that this would be dropped on the employers of British Columbia at a time when they're already reeling.

We all heard from the forest industry for years that they were being killed by that same formula: overregulation, overtaxation, interference in labour-management relations. We heard that for years. We heard them saying: "We're only making a profit now -- despite the highest prices in our history for the longest time we've ever seen -- because of those very high prices. It won't be sustained, because we're barely making any money." Sure enough, as soon as the price dropped because the market changed, forest industry businesses began laying off people. That's what we're hearing now from business throughout British Columbia. It's the same formula; it just hasn't happened quite as quickly, because they weren't targeted as directly as the forest industry was targeted by this government.

This document is the Forest Practices Code, if you will, of occupational health and safety. Once again, the government, rather than laying out results and looking to business to deliver on those results -- and clearly the desired results are safe workplaces for employees throughout British Columbia. . . . Instead of focusing on results, once again the government has made the mistake of focusing on process. Old habits die hard; we all know that. We're dealing with people across the way who are used to negotiating collective agreements and -- sometimes with great pain and over long periods of time -- building a very complete document that outlines all essential aspects of how labour and management are going to get along.

People on the government side believe in that approach to doing things. But when you replicate that approach in legislation, when the unions presume to become the government, essentially, and impose their notions of what works best on employers throughout British Columbia, the results flow that we've already seen. The economy goes into a tailspin. We move from number one in Canada to number ten in Canada. Businesses shut down. People say: "I can't afford to have employees any longer." A woman in my constituency said: "My husband and I have seven logging trucks on the road, and because of the regulations of this government we've reduced it to one. We just have the one that we run ourselves, because we really don't want to have employees with this government."

I know the government isn't happy with that. The government is hearing those same messages. But it needs to humble itself and accept that it's got to stop doing things this way. It's got to stop laying new blankets of regulations across entire industries and, in this case, across the entire economy of British Columbia if it wants to turn the corner and start to rebuild the economy. This bill actually adds to all three of the pillars of that war machine I spoke of earlier. Certainly it's huge overregulation; certainly it's further dramatic intervention in labour-management relations in the workplaces of small businesses at least but also of businesses throughout British Columbia. With its increased penalties and its massive charges to employers who are found to have transgressed, it's another huge increase in taxation, if you will, in fees and in assessments.

It's onerous, it's weighty, it's cumbersome, it's destructive to the economy, and it should not be allowed to go forward in its current form. We in opposition, frankly, don't want to go into weeks and weeks of battling with the government over this. We'd much rather that we all take a 1998 approach to this legislation, hoist it for the time being, and let people tell us what they think of it and explain to the government why they don't think it's a good idea, if they don't -- and plainly a lot of them don't.

I'm sure the government received the press release from the Employers Forum to the WCB in British Columbia. The people who put this document out are not dummies. They are people who are fully aware of what they're talking about, of the issues. They employ millions of British Columbians. We're talking about the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, the B.C. Construction Association, the B.C. Road Builders and Heavy Construction Association, the B.C. Shake and Shingle Association, B.C. Sugar, the B.C. Trucking Association, the Boilermaker Contractors Association, the Business Council of B.C., the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Central Interior Logging Association, the city of Vancouver, the Coalition of B.C. Businesses, the Council of Construction Associations, the Council of Forest Industries of B.C., the federally regulated employers in transportation and communication, the Fisheries Council of

[ Page 7478 ]

Interjection.

K. Krueger: A member across the way is calling out: "Did we hear from any labour associations?" Well, certainly. We listened to the labour associations as well. It's pretty clear who authored much of the legislation at hand. I think they have been listened to very closely. Once again, we have a bill that is clearly biased in one direction. The pendulum in this province has swung so far to one side of the labour-management spectrum that it has become a very unhealthy situation. I think that's obvious even to the government side of this House.

What has driven this bill? What indeed is the unseemly haste in tabling this particular piece of legislation? I think a lot of people in British Columbia have been waiting very patiently for the results of the royal commission into the Workers Compensation Board. There's only one other area, actually, where we hear more complaints from constituents in Kamloops and up the North Thompson Valley than we do with regard to the Workers Compensation Board. The other area is the Ministry of Human Resources.

We receive heartbreaking, overwhelming stories from families of claimants, and from claimants themselves, involved with the Workers Compensation Board, particularly workers who are not completely disabled. They're partially disabled in a very long-term way. They seem to fall through the cracks, and they get some very rough treatment. I have a file where a man was quite young when he was hurt on the job and had a back injury. He went into a terrible time with the Workers Compensation Board -- two decades of fighting with the WCB -- and he died of a heart attack, brought on, his family believes, by the stress of all that.

That sort of behaviour by the Workers Compensation Board is what people around British Columbia are hoping is being addressed by the royal commission. The minister is nodding his head, and I think that he believes that too. We all certainly hope that that's right and that there will be an outcome that's favourable to those disabled workers and their families. Certainly the aspect of safe workplaces, to ensure that we do all we can on the prevention side, is important, but surely that is what this commission was struck for in the first place.

That's the area that we really think the government should be focusing on: dealing with those workers and their concerns. And it's not that a few people in Workers Compensation management haven't tried. Indeed, we began to get this onslaught of concerned claimants very shortly after I was elected, and the Workers Compensation Board sent a manager around who told me that it was going to be his specific job to liaise with me and make sure we got our answers on these cases. It wasn't very long before he quit answering my phone calls. He let the messages pile up, and now we have to write letters urging him to do his job. Frankly, I don't think he can do anything about it. I think the Workers Compensation Board is a colossus that's out of control; it's a law unto itself. Whether or not the people in the organization care about workers, they are unable to deliver for workers. That's a totally unacceptable situation.

As I read through this act, Madam Speaker, I notice once again that the Workers Compensation Board is given almost emperor-like powers, where courts can't review what they decide, and really no one can challenge them. They get to do their own appeal procedures. Our experience is that they back themselves up, and that it is a pretty tight little unit over there, a kind of closed shop. The Workers Compensation Board thinks it's just fine to appoint a retired doctor who moved to British Columbia from somewhere else, who might have only been a general practitioner, and to act on his advice -- rather than on the advice of specialists who are treating our constituents -- and overrule all the medical experts that have dealt with that claimant in the years since his injury and treat them like their advice is nothing. The Workers Compensation Board will hang its hat on the ill-advised advice of some doctor they fetched from elsewhere to back them up.

[11:45]

If you were an employer considering coming to British Columbia with your money to set up shop and have employees, wouldn't you be frightened of this notion that all of these powers are going to be given to your employees to say: "Well, I don't really think that looks like a safe situation, so I'm not going to work there"? Whether the worker's intent seems genuine or not, you've got to pay everybody to sit around while the matter is investigated. The whole pendulum is on that worker's side of the issue; he 's not going to face any penalties, but the employer faces penalties from the moment he raises his concern.

The employer knows that if he hires employees who turn out to have a bad attitude. . . . For example, a cat operator who won't wear his seatbelt is an example that we hear a lot about. Some of these guys just won't wear seatbelts, and I ran into that in my past career. There were drivers who were just determined that they wanted to be thrown out of a vehicle if they had an accident, because they thought they'd be better off, which of course they wouldn't. But we have cat operators who won't wear a seatbelt -- and what happens? The employer gets fined $14,000 when WCB catches the fellow operating without a seatbelt, and then if the employer can't make him wear it from then on and the WCB catches him again, they double his fine. Think of the things that could happen if a cat got away because the worker was thrown off. It isn't just a threat to himself; it's a threat to everyone around him. Surely those are the sorts of problems that we ought to be dealing with in legislation dealing with occupational health and safety.

We know, of course, that that was part of the recommendations that came forward. As my colleague from Vancouver-Quilchena has pointed out, it was mysteriously deleted -- well, not all that mysteriously; curiously deleted. Why? Because there's a bias, we think, in the way this legislation has been drafted. It's a bias against employers. The message to

[ Page 7479 ]

I thank you for indicating that the green light is on, Madam Speaker. I'm the opposition's designated speaker on the amendment.

This is the way this legislation is going to be understood outside British Columbia. It's another message to investors that nothing has changed, that the climate in British Columbia is still hostile to investment, that the government, while it's talking about changing its course, actually hasn't done it. In a way, that's not a surprise to anyone. It doesn't necessarily mean that the government doesn't intend what it's been saying: that it's going to change its course. It's very difficult for an oil tanker to turn around. The captain may want it to, and he may decide to turn it, but it takes him a long time to do it. This government has been cruising at full speed for seven years in a particular direction and has now recognized that it has to get off that course, because it's been clipping icebergs. It hasn't sunk yet, but it's starting to spill its load and lose its power. The ship is in trouble, and the government has said so.

The point we're making today -- and with this amendment -- is that if the captain is serious about turning this oil tanker around, then he should listen to the crew that he's got on board with him. He should listen to everybody who has input, and there are many people. . . . Everybody in British Columbia will be affected by this legislation in a negative way, because it will further dry up investment in British Columbia. It's too onerous on people that the government doesn't need to target. It's onerous on everyone.

I can see by the look on the minister's face that he's perplexed as to why I would say that. But the fact is that when we impose regulation on employers, it takes away from their ability to make their business successful. It takes away their time; it takes away their employees' time. It also sets them up in a situation where they're even more vulnerable to labour disruptions than they are right now. Conceivably, employees who acquire positions under this legislation could walk around with clipboards, could waste their time, could throw up frivolous scenarios to employers that shut them down, and could be paid throughout all of that and definitely won't face penalties for doing that, while the employer has a penalty from the moment that that action is taken.

Interjection.

K. Krueger: The minister asks me now -- and I suppose it's a valid question from his point of view -- whether I'm talking about the same happy workplace where there's no need for intervention. Indeed, workplaces sometimes become unhappy because of labour-management situations. That's the case; we all see that happen. There are legitimate mechanisms in place for employers and employees to deal with that. One of the points I'm attempting to make is that this exacerbates what's already seen by investors, looking at British Columbia, as a problem with a province which is so biased toward big labour -- union bosses, organized labour -- that it's totally unfriendly to investors and is an unfriendly climate for them. This will make it worse.

The minister quoted some stats. In the most respectful way, I put it to him that we would like to actually see his research -- perhaps he could table that and provide it to us -- that suggests that this legislation is necessary. Certainly we have workers being injured on the job. Is that across the board, we wonder -- and we don't believe it is, because we have statistics of our own -- or is it confined mainly to certain high-risk industries? How much of it has to do with the operation of motor vehicles on highways on behalf of employers? Certainly a lot of it does; I've seen many of those cases. How much of it really has to do with the small business people throughout British Columbia that will be affected by this legislation and the kinds of workplaces that they have and the kinds of work that they do? How much does it have to do with a family-operated convenience store, for example, a grocery store, a realtor's office, a lawyer's office and an accountant's office? Under this legislation you are subject to this regardless. There's going to be a huge expense to a lot of businesses that really don't need these types of restraints laid upon them.

Madam Speaker, I'm hearing the heckling from the back benches on the other side. Clearly these people haven't read the legislation. I'm going to propose that we adjourn for the lunch break. I will continue my remarks when the House reconvenes after question period. In the meantime, if some of those good members, those hon. members who will have to defend this legislation to their constituents when they go back home, would like to read the legislation, perhaps we could have some informed debate from that side of the House when I finish my remarks in the afternoon.

The Speaker: Hon. members, we need a proper motion to close debate. So I encourage someone to move a proper motion to close the debate on second reading.

K. Krueger: I move that we adjourn debate on second reading of Bill 14 until after the lunch break.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. D. Lovick moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:55 a.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

The House in Committee of Supply A; E. Walsh in the chair.

The committee met at 10:18 a.m.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

Hon. P. Ramsey: Hon. Chair, I'm going to make a few introductory comments as we begin the debate on the estimates of the Ministry of Education for 1998-99. These estimates reflect this government's commitment to putting the education of our children at the top of the priority list of things that we should be addressing in the provincial sector.

I must say this is one initiative that I've been told about by parents. As many people know, I toured the province last

[ Page 7480 ]

Among those are concerns that there be enough teachers to actually do the work that needs to get done; that we look at class size to make sure that every child is getting the individual attention that he or she needs, particularly in the early years where getting a good start is so important; a concern about facilities, particularly in areas of high growth in the province, where too many children have spent too much of their educational career in portable, temporary facilities; and concern about making sure that all parts of the education system are focusing on the needs of the child, so they can learn and prosper both individually and as part of a community, in a school environment that's free from violence and focused on education.

I think the budget that we are going to be debating over the next several hours reflects government's attention to those concerns and government initiatives in those areas. I want to spend some time talking about the initiatives contained in this budget and how they reflect our government's commitment to protecting our public education system and improving what happens in classrooms around the province, where over 600,000 of our children receive their primary and secondary education.

I want to begin with the operating funds that were announced last month. Premier Clark and I announced a $105 million increase to the operating funds available to school districts for the 1998-99 school year. That increase is reflected in the budget documents that are before us for this committee to debate. I must say that given the current environment, with a rate of inflation around 1 percent, maybe less, and given very tight government finances, many of my colleagues are going to be standing in this place debating budget estimates that show a decline in funding, year over year. That has not taken place in Education.

This is a very significant and substantial funding increase for school districts and for children across the province. The goal here was to make sure that we were covering inflationary and cost pressures identified for us by boards, whether they be the cost of the teachers' salary lift of 1 percent on April 1, 1998, whether it be the cost of increased EI premiums, or whether it be the inflationary pressures on books and materials. We sought to make sure that those factors were incorporated into the funding lift for school districts in this operating budget. That's what the trustees asked us to do.

A second thing the trustees asked us to do was make sure that we're funding enrolment growth fully. This $105 million increase does that as well, as nearly 8,000 -- or maybe a little more -- students come into our school system in September of 1998. That's 8,000 more than this year. They will find in place some 400 new teachers to do the work of educating them and, in addition, 300 out-of-class education professionals, be they aides, ESL, whatever. That's incorporated in this funding increase.

Over all, another way of looking at the increase -- of course, our favourite way of looking at it; at least in this chamber it seems to have been the focus of much debate last year -- is the operating funding provided per pupil. This is a lift of $93 per pupil, on average, across the province, which brings the per-pupil finding in the K-to-12 system to $5,849 per student. That keeps B.C. in a leadership position in the country in funding our public education system. It will make it possible for school districts to meet those enrolment pressures. It funds increases in special education students; it funds increases in English as a second language; it funds increases in aboriginal education. Total operating funds for education from kindergarten-to-grade-12, as the budget documents reflect, have reached $3.58 billion per year. It's a huge commitment and, I think, a very justified commitment

Despite some of the pressures that have been particularly facing government and that have led other provinces to make different decisions, in British Columbia we have done what's necessary to protect the core of the system and provide increased resources to deal with the increased number of students that are going to be enrolled in our K-to-12 system.

One of the other major initiatives we announced was funding for an aggressive construction program to build new schools, new classrooms, and to renovate older facilities and cut in half, over the next five years, the number of portables that our students are attending school in. When I toured schools last fall, the attitude towards portable facilities differed, in some cases, from district to district. It was clear that in districts that had a small number of portables, this was not a major issue. Frankly, neither parents nor teachers found a lot of difficulty in saying that a child might spend a year or two in a portable facility, provided it was well maintained and of decent quality. But there was a great concern -- particularly in high-growth areas, where in some cases you might have more portables than school -- that students were spending too much of their educational lives in temporary and portable facilities.

As I think the estimates in this chamber last year reflected, we know that over the past several years -- the last three or four years -- the number of portables in the province has remained fairly constant. This construction plan is an aggressive initiative to start bringing down the number of portables. We intend to spend $338 million during 1998-99. That expenditure will create 17,200 spaces for students. Since I just told you about the lift in enrolment of around 8,000, you can see that we are going to be able to cut into the number of students who are attending schools in portables and move them towards permanent classrooms. As the projects that we've started this year and the ones that were announced last year are completed, 1,048 portables will be eliminated. The goal here is to eliminate over 1,500 portables over the next five years.

I don't want to leave the impression that all the portable-reduction strategy is tied to large increases in the capital budget. Around $31 million in the capital budget is targeted this year specifically at that initiative, on top of a base of $307 million for capital expansion. That's the total budget there. The other reason why we're going to be able to start reducing the number of portables is that the rate of increase of the school-age population is slowing. We're surely not facing the situation of some provinces that have a declining school-age population, but at least the rate of increase is slowing. By not curtailing capital spending -- in fact, we're increasing it from $300 million last year to $338 million this year -- we are going to be able to make a significant difference in facilities and a significant impact in reducing the number of portables around the province. We can't build every school we'd like to. We're surely not going to eliminate every portable. But we can and will make a major investment in the future of our kids through this construction plan.

[J. Smallwood in the chair.]

A third major initiative is, of course, to bring the teachers and trustees of the province together with us in a really

[ Page 7481 ]

[10:30]

As I said in my opening remarks, this agreement will also result in provincial standards for lower kindergarten-to-grade-3 class size. I submit that that will make a noticeable difference to our schools and to the educational experience for our children. All the available resources of this $150 million will go to providing more counsellors, more librarians, more special education learning assistants and ESL teachers for our schools. It's a major step forward. It's part of our goal of reducing the average class size in kindergarten to grade 3 from its current level -- around 22 -- to around 18 over the next five years. This agreement is a major step forward. The partnership that will result when it's ratified will benefit every child in our school system, and I think it will serve as a model for others.

Those are three large elements of the budget for the education system that we'll be debating over the next while here: a major increase in operating funding, a very aggressive construction program and an innovative agreement with teachers. These are key elements in the commitment to education, but they're not the only things that we're working on. I want to mention about three of them, because they haven't received a lot of the public attention that those three have, and I think they're perhaps equally important. One of those, which I think our debates around estimates last year reflected, was the ongoing work between the Ministry of Education and school trustees around delivering services efficiently -- finding savings of non-direct delivery where we can save some money without impacting the quality of education.

Back in January, I had the pleasure of joining with the president of the B.C. School Trustees Association for the release of a survey that was conducted on ways that different districts had found to be more efficient in the delivery of public education. It was a very encouraging report, because it identified a huge range of initiatives that school districts had undertaken, everything from how they shared services around professional development to ways they'd found of getting software more cheaply to how they'd found ways of spending fewer dollars for transportation for children. It was a huge list. Frankly, I don't think any district has implemented every item on that list. After I received the report, I asked school districts to review it carefully and look at additional ways -- either in their own district or in cooperation with neighbouring districts or by provincial initiative -- of saving some bucks outside of direct classroom delivery to take some of the pressure off in classrooms. It also included eight specific recommendations that the ministry is reviewing on areas from joint bus purchasing to software licensing to acquisition and technology -- a really broad range of initiatives that the ministry could be able to lead on in saving some dollars.

Just last week one piece of work was completed that received some press. The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Advanced Education struck a pricing arrangement with the four software providers -- Microsoft, Apple, Corel and Lotus -- that provide the bulk of utility software for schools, colleges and universities and are now able to offer that software to schools, colleges and universities at a price that is significantly below any price that's been available to them before, and do so across the province. So it doesn't matter what district you're from, it doesn't matter whether you're ordering one copy or 1,500 -- the price is the same, and there are some very low prices.

One example. Apple took the step of offering its software at 50 percent off its educational discount price. The educational discount price, as I think many of the members here know, is already significantly below what is available at retail. This agreement with Apple will enable school districts to purchase their software significantly below that again. The same is true for all four of those companies. It's an initiative that should save school districts around $3.7 million over the next two years, and that's if they just purchase the amount of software that it looks like they did in the past year. That's an example of the sort of efficiencies that I wanted to report to the committee on. I think there's always more work to be done there, and the school districts and the ministry are committed to continuing that work.

A second initiative was the announcement on implementation of the provincial learning network, PLNet, which within two years will link all 1,700 public schools, all 112 campuses of our colleges and universities and all 20 community skill centres across the province. It will provide, through that network, access to educational resources that are going to particularly benefit small and remote campuses or schools. The important thing, particularly for those who are from smaller communities with smaller schools who don't have a variety of Internet providers competing for their business, is that it provides that access at the same price across the province -- levels that playing field.

One of the great concerns, as we looked at the information age and access to the Net and the information that it has on it, is the danger of creating almost technological ghettos. Because there are a multiplicity of providers competing for business in urban centres, school districts were able to drive prices down and get a relatively good price. In smaller communities, it was not the case. As a result, in some cases you had variations of factors of ten between the cost of the same service -- say, in Revelstoke and Burnaby -- and that's not acceptable. So this PLNet will level the playing field and make sure that all British Columbia students have access to the latest on-line education information, no matter where they're living.

Finally, I want to mention an announcement made last week by the Attorney General and myself to invest $1 million

[ Page 7482 ]

I would say that when I toured the province last fall, I was actually surprised by the amount of attention that this issue had from students, teachers and parents. Their concern wasn't the way the media commonly portray it -- as concerns about a violent incident. Obviously any parent is concerned when they read a horrific story such as the Reena Virk situation here in Victoria. But that wasn't what was on parents' minds; their concern was their children getting harassed or getting discriminated against or getting bullied at or on the way to school. It was more the climate in which education could occur, rather than the criminal behaviour, which a very, very small element of British Columbia school children are either engaged in or are the victims of.

That's what we're trying to focus on, then: how do we get in place some of the resources on anti-bullying programs that are already there at many schools and in many school districts? How do we make sure that we have provincewide bullying prevention programs that are creating the sort of atmosphere in our schools where you have that sense of community that's owned by the children themselves, and that makes this sort of behaviour something that we can prevent and something which doesn't occur? We're going to try to begin early, at a young age, before bullying and other violent behaviour begins. We want to get every British Columbia school involved in the safe schools programs and give teachers and community leaders and students the skills they need to deal with confrontation in positive and non-violent ways and to create the sort of learning atmosphere that children should be learning in.

In conclusion, we have a variety of initiatives in the Ministry of Education that are reflected in this budget. They are a dramatic step forward for education. Just to sum up: 2,500 new teachers in our system in the next three years to take care of the agreement on lower class size and non-enrolling teachers and to take care of increased enrolment. Smaller class sizes! For the first time, those of us who sit in this chamber will be able to say that your child in kindergarten-to-grade-3, whether you're taking it in Burnaby or Burns Lake or Nakusp or Pouce Coupe, will have the same ratio in class and the same access to out-of-class resources. There are 75 major capital construction projects, new spaces for 17,000 students in the coming year, replacement of 1,500 portables over the next five years, a three-year agreement with teachers that provides no salary increase but major investments in our classrooms and other significant advances.

Hon. Chair, I'm sure that we'll have much debate on these issues, but this is a very bold response to the challenges that our schools are facing. It indicates the importance that this government is placing on education and our determination to put it at the top of government action and priority. Have we solved all the problems? Of course not. There's still plenty to be done, but the commitment is clear and it's strong. It's something that we need to keep pushing on in the long term.

With that, hon. Chair, I'll take my seat. I'm sure we'll have a fascinating and informative debate on the estimates of the Ministry of Education.

A. Sanders: The one thing that I am really, really grateful for in this province and in this country is that we have a democracy and can come into a chamber like this and talk about the same topic with a completely different viewpoint. It's the blind man and the elephant kind of story. That is the wonderful aspect of democracy. What I'd like to do is to take some time to look at the overview that the minister has kindly provided for us, and perhaps look at it from a different point of view.

Over the last number of weeks, this government has announced four initiatives. The minister has outlined those for us today. These collectively mark one of the most significant uses of education as a political tool that I have seen in the past 20 years. Last month the Premier and the minister announced a $105 million lift in education funding, with a lot of bragging and a lot of backslapping. How soon the Premier and this minister forget that it was the NDP who cut the funding to education by $400 per student from 1991 to 1998. How do you take the credit for something you took away? How do you spin that education would be better off, when school trustees, administrators and teachers, who know the school districts, tell me that these school districts will have deficits, cuts or at best maintain the status quo with a $105 million lift? The cash injection, to the people in the know, was a facelift designed to make the school system, now one year older, look one year younger. It did not address the seven years of furrows and lines that chronic underfunding has created.

[10:45]

Then there were the 400 new classroom teachers and 300 new teaching aides hired with that $105 million. I spent a lot of time going around to school districts, to secretary-treasurers, to trustees, and I could not find a single individual in a single school district who works with finances, and who could vouch for those figures in terms of the numbers. So why were these promises made? For political gain, is my most likely rationale.

This government has made some promises, some very large promises -- false fodder for a re-election hopper. I expect more promises in education in the next few weeks and next few months. I do not expect even a fraction of them to be kept. We have found and we have learned in the past that it is useless to hold the Premier to anything he says when he's running for office, and therefore I expect an election in the wings. I do expect another election is imminent, and it must be soon, or education would never have gotten so lucky.

But the $105 million announcement was not enough. Last week the Premier and this minister made some more announcements to express their so-called education commitment. If these announcements weren't for political purposes, then why does the Premier not let the minister make his own announcements? The announcements were political; they were photo opportunities for the Premier's favourite part of the job, with lots of fanfare to fix a problem that the NDP created in the first place. There's lots of hunger for recognition in the area of education by the Premier.

Let's look at the announcements and decide whether they are true commitments or just smoke and mirrors. First the Premier announced fewer portables. I consider this nonsense, nonsense about reducing the number of portables by 50 per-

[ Page 7483 ]

New schools, school expansion, major renovations were all announced. They won't touch the chronic underfunding of school capital construction, nor will they budge the rising population tide nor stem the classroom needs of rigid class language that this minister is pushing. There will not be fewer portables in five years; there will be more. Vancouver alone will need 70 new classrooms just to deal with the demands of the rigid class language. There will be portables sprouting like mushrooms on the lawns of Vancouver and lower mainland schools, and the minister knows it. There will be at least 30 percent more portables in schoolyards in the next five years. I'm even going to give you a number, hon. Chair: 4,018 portables minimum is my projection in five years, and hopefully, I will be around to wreak that profit of correctness. This minister knows that political motivation has led to this announcement. It's been 100 percent politically motivated and zero percent anything else.

Even this announcement wasn't enough; there had to be more. First, there was the $105 million political, emperor's-new-clothes photo opportunity, followed by the portable extravaganza, followed by the knockout punch: the BCTF agreement -- the scud missile to the school boards. Two Fridays ago the Premier and the minister joined with the BCTF to announce an unprecedented three-year agreement. Unprecedented is right, because the employers -- the school boards, the elected boards who represent communities, the elected people who represent parents and kids -- hadn't the foggiest and weren't privy to any agreement. It's unprecedented, most definitely, but not one that I would brag about.

One half of that bargaining team -- a whole organization, half of a marriage -- would be informed by the media that they had reached a bargain -- reached a bargain they never made. Congratulations. It's unprecedented -- another NDP first. This minister and this Premier, the pushers of the agreement in the media and in the House, before it was discussed or ratified by teachers or trustees. . . . A marriage pushed by the Premier's Office before anyone has had an opportunity to even vote on whether they are willing to enter into that marriage. . . . What's good for kids and teachers and parents and trustees is what's good for the Premier's Office. That is the message that British Columbians have gotten from the recent layer upon layer of education announcements. And you don't get much more political than that.

Some will say that it's okay to force-feed an agreement, that it's okay to be a control freak. But what is the cost? The cost is eight million in wasted dollars that went to settling 105 items on a bargaining table, four years of bargaining, four years wasted in the lives of people seconded from our school districts into a central area to do the bargaining. And that's only from the employers' side; that's not what's wasted in terms of the teachers' part. No wonder the BCSTA had to save $4 million in efficiencies and effectiveness. It's a good thing that they were able to do that, because then they won't be so much in the hole from all the bargaining they've done and that money has been lost on.

Basically we've got a very large concern. We've got the concern, among the school boards that I've discussed, of an NDP-induced euthanasia of school boards as a credible partner in governing and running schools. This is a very, very serious circumstance for those people who spend a great deal of time working on behalf of their school boards and their communities, and I think it's unconscionable. The cost is no resolution -- shelving, deep-sixing and ignoring the serious issues that were on that bargaining table. Issues of class size, not just for K-to-3 but for all classes. Issues of posting and filling. How many teachers is it okay to have in a grade 1 classroom before the year is out? Teacher evaluation. How do we evaluate our teachers and do it so that the teachers feel that they've been fairly treated and employers feel that they have fairly represented the community? And there's many more; those are only three.

The cost of the implementation of the rigid initiatives and the ephemeral funding that will result from the acceptance of the recent agreement-in-committee has the potential to create huge deficits in school districts -- and inevitably, if not deficits, huge cuts. These are people who have to balance their budget, by law. We haven't talked at all -- or the minister hasn't mentioned at any time -- about the cost of laid-off CUPE staff, support staff in the schools, that would follow this marriage. If you can't cut teachers, you've got to cut somewhere in order to balance your budget.

The cost is the disappointment of a promise made without the promise to deliver anything more than the promise itself. The agreement's virtue will be the minister's greatest invention. It's made on the anniversary. . . . All of us remember that one year ago this was Bre-X week. Sometimes I think that there's irony in how these things occur.

That's what we didn't get in the agreement. Let's look at what we did get -- let's take it to the other side of the fence. What we did get is the part where I don't really have a buried mistrust; I must say that it's right on the surface. We get $150 million promised -- not guaranteed beyond one year -- in a memorandum of understanding, to replace the $200 million that the NDP has removed from education since they've been in power and had funding stayed at the same level. We get 1,200 teachers to replace the 1,470 teachers not hired had we been at the same hiring levels prior to NDP. We get smaller classes in K-to-3, though there isn't a single classroom for them to go to -- smaller classes fixed but the funding flexible, not guaranteed. We get a three-year agreement with teachers -- with a salary increase in the second year, actually, not in the third year, as the minister has said. This Premier told this House that this was a historic agreement, a highlight of the Premier's career.

We know that the Premier likes to make historic agreements, and we acknowledge that these are highlights in his career. He likes to point those out; he's used that phraseology five different times since I've been here. The first time was the historic Bonneville bill, where $250 million of taxpayers' money was lost in May 1995. Then there was the FRBC, a historic agency as the Premier said, that government raids -- or tried to raid -- for general revenue. There was Alcan, another landmark agreement. There was the jobs and timber accord, the biggest announcement I have ever been involved with -- "an ambitious job creation," said the Premier. And now what I call the education accord. This is some track record and some history. This Premier makes lots of promises, and like the promises before, the education accord will be no different.

Let's look at some of the track records within those accords. The jobs and timber accord: 40,000 jobs promised, 7,000 jobs lost -- that would be an F on my report card in the

[ Page 7484 ]

But there's more: 500 new classrooms if the B.C. teachers sign the Premier's accord -- none if they don't. Is this bargaining interference? Strong-arm tactics? My way or the highway? More of the same, hon. Chair. This Premier has made four announcements that together I term the education accord. I expect that this accord will go the way of all the other accords. This one, unfortunately -- as with the other accords -- he will legislate if he doesn't get his way. That is my expectation for this summer. There is a pattern. It's a pattern of megalomania, and time will prove me close to the mark.

Nothing short of the truth is the truth. If I were a betting person, I'd say that the odds are against the Premier to deliver, just as they have always been and just as they always will be.

Hon. P. Ramsey: First I want to thank the member opposite for her comments, though I must say that I expected a touch better.

I did want to introduce my staff that are with me today. On my left is my deputy Don Avison. On my right is Paul Pallan, assistant deputy minister for the education services division. Behind me is Rick Connolly, director of the school finance and capital planning branch.

I want to respond to a couple of factual statements and then to the member's overall assertion. In 1991-92 the budget that this chamber debated for the Ministry of Education for grants to school districts was $2.87 billion. The budget we're debating today is $3.56 billion. Declines? I think not -- seven years of increases year after year after year. This government has shown its commitment to education like none other in this country, seven years in a row.

The other thing that the member raises is per-student funding -- block funding per student. Just so we have it on the record. . . . This is what the data part of the Ministry of Education provides to anybody who's interested in it, including members of the opposition, who could get it very easily. In 1991-92, block funding per pupil was $5,439. Block funding per pupil this year is $5,849, an increase of $410 per student.

[11:00]

The other thing I simply have to say is that I heard a lot of rhetoric here about. . . . I think it's really a bit of dyspepsia on the part of the Liberal opposition. Frankly, they're finding this good news about education hard to swallow. What can I say about that? If you don't want a $105 million increase to education funding, stand up and say so. Stand up and say that you don't want inflation funded. Stand up and say that you don't want enrolment growth funded. That might be a little bit consistent with the position that has been taken by this Liberal opposition on the budget, where they wish to see cuts. They say. . . . As recently as their last convention they renewed their 1996 election pledge to cut 15 percent of taxes and then cut $3 billion out of services for ordinary British Columbians. Let's stand up and say what that amount would be per student under a Liberal administration.

The other thing that I have to. . . . Let's deal with the capital part of this, just briefly. I would be delighted to see the reality of portable reduction in the next couple of years, and the member opposite who says that there will be 4,000 portables on school grounds will, I think, be proven immensely wrong.

The other thing that the member does accurately point out, which I didn't actually mention in my introductory remarks, is that far from being willing to abandon the idea of reducing portables in the face of an agreement with the BCTF that will require more classrooms, this government has committed additional resources to build the 1,000 classrooms that will be needed by the teachers of those smaller classes for kindergarten-to-grade-3. Our estimate is that over the next five years, we will require around 1,000 more classrooms to take into account that reduced class size.

And yes, the Premier and I announced very publicly that that was part of what government needed to do to make this agreement work, and we are committed to doing it. The cost was $370 million over the next five years. And yes, we very publicly said that the targets are to get 500 of them done in the next two budget cycles. Those are the goals, and that's the way we can do both the portable reduction and get those numbers down, get the class size down and get every student in kindergarten-to-grade-3 a similar-size ratio and the attention that they deserve in a decent facility. So that is the reality of the capital budget.

On the agreement with the BCTF -- and I want to close here -- the member opposite has made a lot of allegations about this agreement. But one thing I haven't heard, and I'm going to want to hear that before these estimates are out. I want to understand clearly what the Liberal position is on this deal.

Do they support the idea of lower class sizes for kindergarten-to-grade-3? Do they support the hiring of 1,200 more teachers over the next three years to make sure the kids get the support they deserve both in class and out of class? Do they support an agreement where you have teachers saying at the table: "This is more important to us than the big wage increase, and we'll forgo wage increases for two years?" Do they support that concept, or do they want to see what, frankly, parents and teachers and others have been telling me needs to be improved -- high class sizes and a lack of out-of-class support?

[ Page 7485 ]

A. Sanders: I've been here long enough that there's been a number of things that the minister has said in these estimates, and time has proven that they have been unable to carry them out. I don't see that this will be any different. I appreciate the minister's comments that he is willing and able to prove every statement that he has made so far, and I'm looking forward to that. I want him to know that there will be lots of opportunity for him to answer all those questions.

I think what we should do, rather than hanging around, is to get right down to the point. What I'd like to do is start by looking at the $105 million announcement of funding to education. This has been very much reported in the media -- by the minister -- to be a funding increase. Let's look at that amount exactly. For the record, the minister has put in the difference in pupil funding between 1997-98 and 1998-99 at around $93.

One would assume, if one is a parent, that that means their child is going to get $93 more for something in education. Maybe it's more books; maybe it's more equipment in the gym; maybe it's more art supplies; maybe it's something more. That is definitely the perception the minister has left with the average person who looks at that announcement, and for good reason. It sounds as if the government has done something positive for education.

Let's look at that first announcement and see what it breaks down to actually mean. Does it mean that a child will have $93 more with which to be better educated, or does it in fact mean the status quo? I think there is pretty good evidence and proof to show that the status quo is as good as it gets, or a small increase of 1 percent or so. There are 28 districts with negative changes -- negative percent, in fact. There are 12 districts with less than 1 percent, and 13 districts with between 1 percent and 2 percent. In terms of this $105 million, let's look at what it actually means and whether it's such a great big deal, or whether it follows, to a large extent, enrolment increases and other factors.

How many districts do the minister's records show as actually getting more than the amount they got in 1998? How many districts have increased amounts in 1998-99 from the year before?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Of the 60 districts, if we take the Francophone Education Authority as the sixtieth district, 48 have increased funding for 1998-99, and 12 have lower funding for 1998-99. The most common cause of lower funding, of course, is declining enrolment. In some cases, we had enrolment declines of as much as 5 percent or 5.5 percent, so even a significant increase in per-student funding couldn't overcome the effects of that. So 48 went up, and 12 had decreases in operation grants.

A. Sanders: Of the 48 that went up, how many of those did not have increased enrolment?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Actually, I remember trying to count them at one time. Staff will work on the exact figure. I think it was also around a dozen. So of the number that had small enrolment decreases of one-third or one-half -- in some cases maybe of a percent and a bit -- the amount actually went down by a little bit. But it was offset by the per-student lift, and they ended up with more at the end of the day.

A. Sanders: That means that of the 60 districts, 48 had an increase. And of those that had neutral enrolment, in fact only 12 got more money from the $105 million lift. Is that correct?

Hon. P. Ramsey: No. And that wasn't the question you asked. You asked how many that had a decline in enrolment still got an increase in budget. The answer was, again, around ten to a dozen. Staff will get me the exact number. You might have had, in some cases, a decline in enrolment of as much as 1 percent and still have an increase in budget.

A. Sanders: I apologize to the minister if there is some confusion. I'm looking for the number that had neutral enrolment -- no increase or decrease per se -- but also had an increase in their budget. What was the number of districts that had that figure?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm looking through this long list, trying to find some that are "neutral." I'll give you some: Sooke had a decline of 7.7 FTEs. That's about as neutral as you're going to get, I guess. They had a funding increase of $905,000. Central Coast had an increase of 8.5 FTE students, and the budget went up $151,000. It's a pretty small district. This was neutral. It's hard to find neutrals, because there are swings of a few hundred students district to district. Kootenay-Columbia had an increase of 3.7 percent in students, and its funding went up $564,000. I'll see if I can find one that goes down slightly. Fort Nelson had a projected decrease of two students, and it had an increase of $118,500.

So the average per student lift is $93 per student. Do that across the piece. Obviously you can have declines in enrolment and still have a lift in budget, once it works its way through the system.

[11:15]

Hon. P. Ramsey: I've no problem with that at all.

A. Sanders: I'm looking at a document, "A Comparison of Funded FTE Enrolments, 97-98 and 98-99," following the $105 million lift. I assume this is the document the minister is quoting from. On looking at that document, there are 28 districts that have a negative percentile change in this current year of funding. There are 12 districts that have less than 1 percent change and 13 districts that have between 1 and 2 percent change. That's a pretty large extent of all of the districts and really shows a pretty neutral amount of money going into the individual school districts from 60. . .if we're looking at the $105 million as the supposed lift in that area.

Hon. Chair, I'd like to ask the minister the following questions. The ministry has said that there are 8,000 new kids this year. The base funding alone for these kids is approximately $50 million for '98-99. Using the money that comes from the student funding as new money is misleading, I consider. It follows the children; it's part of their base budget, so to speak. The other $55 million -- the remainder of the $105 million -- is swallowed in wage increases from former con-

[ Page 7486 ]

Hon. P. Ramsey: I'm pleased to answer the question, but I must say that I find it a bit surprising. Last year the member opposite castigated this government for not recognizing the cost of salary increases and inflation and EI and whatever. Now we're being castigated for providing the money that reflects those.

Hon. Chair, the member is quite clear, and I hope she may be quoting from the news release we did when we announced the $105 million. We provided to media the breakout of how much was there to cover increased enrolment and the cost pressures in the existing system. We did that; we did it explicitly; we did it forthrightly. We told the teachers, the parents, the public and the press exactly what the $105 million was for. The increase in per-pupil funding -- $93 per pupil on a base of 306,000 students -- amounts to $56 million. The increase in enrolment, based on 8,200 new students, is around $48 million. That's exactly how it breaks down.

A. Sanders: The minister will agree, I'm sure, that that is misleading to a person reading the paper who sees: "The government's strategy was launched two weeks ago with a $105 million lift in education funding. This increase brings the per-pupil funding to $5,849, an increase of $93 per pupil." Then it goes on to say how this money is going to increase the well-being of all the school districts. It does not say anything whatsoever about this money basically being for the status quo to keep school districts from having to make further cuts in their budget this year with respect to inflation, CPP and so on and so forth. It is misleading to present it that way.

Yes, I did ask the minister last year why these other costs were not covered by the ministry and were borne by school boards, and he has not answered the question I asked him. The question was: "Why don't you just tell people that way, and then let it be and not try and gain credit for something that you haven't done, other than keep the status quo?"

I'm interested to know how the ministry gathers figures for the 8,000 new children who have been anticipated. From the districts, my understanding was that there was a countable 4,200-some children, so I wonder about the discrepancy between the school boards' anticipated increase in enrolment and the government's figure of 8,000. How can that be accounted for?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I thank the member for her question. I learn something new every day in this business.

Staff inform me that school districts have for many years estimated enrolment growth on the low side. They do that for the excellent reason that they'd prefer not to have to lay off teachers in the fall who they have already committed to hiring. Then every year, in the fall, they do a recalculation of the actual number of students, and the ministry provides the funding based on the number of students that are actually there.

So, yes, the districts clearly have estimated -- I don't know if the figure is 4,200; that seems low to me -- a lower number than this ministry has estimated and that this budget reflects. We want to make sure that we have the money for the number of students we anticipate. Obviously this is a moving target, and we will not know for sure how much funding will go out to school districts until we do that recalculation based on actual enrolments in the fall.

A. Sanders: Let's explore that for a minute. If the ministry estimates that the growth in enrolment is 8,000, and the enrolment is, let's say, for the sake of argument, 5,000, there are 3,000 children at $5,849 that don't exist per se. Where does that funding go when those children don't materialize?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Generally the ministry has been quite accurate in its projections of where enrolment growth has been. It is always a challenge to do that projection. Not only are you trying to project the number of students that are going to show up at your schoolroom door, you're also trying to project the number of ESL students, because there's top-up funding for ESL students, for aboriginal students, for special education students. In particular when you get high-need special education, the amount granted per district can vary greatly. The budget figures that are announced and tabled and that we're debating are based on those estimates.

The member is quite right. What is not subject to that sort of variation is the number of dollars per student -- the $93 per-student lift. That new figure is then reflected in the gross budget for the number of students in the province. This is nothing particularly new. The ministry has, for many years, gone through this process of estimating the number of students, announcing the funding envelope based on that projection and on the per-student figure, then adjusting the grants per district based on the actual enrolment that shows up.

A. Sanders: Let's just explore this. We'll take a sort of hypothetical circumstance. Let's say that I wanted to expand my figure for the amount of money I was putting into education -- that it was politically expedient for me to do that. Instead of saying 5,000, I would say 8,000 and therefore be able to claim that I was putting more money into the lift than actually did exist. Let's pretend that's not the situation, that the government would never do something like that, and let's look at it as a true mistake -- a person calculating this got the figures incorrect and put the wrong figure down, and we have 5,000 kids coming into B.C. instead of 8,000. What would happen when the discrepancy is that large between the figures for new enrolment that the government has used and the figures that have actually been projected? Where would that money go? I guess my question to the minister is: will he commit today to leaving that money in education and not clawing it back into other budgets?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We've announced the per-student funding for schools. We will fund the schools based on the number of students that show up. If we have 10,000 or 12,000 new students, they'll receive funding based on that higher number. I know the member wants to make something out of this. The reality is that this is the way the ministry has worked for many years with school boards for estimating enrolment and then funding enrolment. There's no surprise here.

A. Sanders: That points to a very important problem we have here, and that's how we estimate pupil enrolment as of the beginning of the school year. Is there no other more reliable way? Between two estimates of 4,200 and 8,000. . . . That's a 100 percent difference with respect to the figures. Is there nothing else that the ministry can use in this day and age that would give us a more reliable head count?

[ Page 7487 ]

A. Sanders: As a point of information for those who are interested in listening to these estimates, you can't lay off someone in September. So the argument that you could lay them off in September, and therefore underestimate, doesn't particularly make sense to me.

Does the ministry have figures for enrolment in January as a halfway point?

Hon. P. Ramsey: I hope I didn't misspeak myself. It was precisely because you can't lay off a bunch of teachers in September that boards underestimate the number of students they may have -- so that they may be faced with a situation in August or September of hiring a few more rather than be faced with employing staff for whom there are no students. That's precisely why school boards have traditionally underestimated their enrolment.

I would also point out to the member that this year we are actually projecting a decrease in the rate of enrolment growth in the public school system. Last year we had around 11,000 or 12,000 more kids in the system; this year we're projecting that will fall slightly to around 8,000. That provides us, frankly, with some abilities -- particularly on the capital side -- to keep investing and to get rid of portables, because we have a declining rate of increase in enrolment. That provides us with an opportunity that we intend to seize.

The member also asked whether we had January figures from school districts. The recalculation is done based on September 30 reporting from school districts, and we do not seek a further enrolment number during the year.

[E. Walsh in the chair.]

A. Sanders: Can the minister provide me with the enrolment estimate for this year -- the breakdown in terms of students per district?

[11:30]

A. Sanders: No, it's not. If the minister could provide that for me, I'd be appreciative.

The first concern is that if we overestimate the enrolment, then the money going into education will certainly not follow. And if we overestimate by very large numbers, then the money doesn't exist in the first place. I will look forward to looking at that enrolment figure and finding that this year, as in years past, the ministry's estimates are in fact the accurate ones and reflect the true enrolment of new kids that we are teaching in British Columbia.

Now that we've looked at the enrolment figure we're using -- 8,000 kids -- and the certain amount of trepidation I had about that particular figure, let's look at the $93 incremental lift itself. I watched a number of the news releases, and many times the releases and the impressions of the reporters who reported those were that there was new money being injected directly into the classroom to raise the funding beyond status quo. I took it upon myself to ask a number of parents what their impression of the message was. In fact, their impression of the message was that their child would somehow be receiving something additional in the classroom, and it would be to the tune of $93 each.

This is in fact very misleading, because when we break down the $93, the money is pretty well all spoken for in enrolment and in a number of other areas. Let's look at a prototype district and look at the $93 and what it breaks down to be. Of the $93, there are a number of factors: composition adjustment, $14; provincial learning network, $17; teachers' salary increase at March '98, $33; change in expertise and qualification of teachers -- teachers aging in the workforce and having more qualifications -- $8; CPI and inflation, $11; employee benefits, $16; support staff increase, $10; amalgamation savings -- there haven't been any savings from amalgamation, but the school districts are asked to make minus $9 in savings; and savings initiatives -- I believe that comes from the efficiency and effectiveness -- $7 clawed back from that, even though. . . . Well, who knows why?

What that shows me is that of the $93 injected into the classroom. . . . That money is spoken for. It is spoken for in the previous salary agreements that we had. It is spoken for in the inflationary and CPI benefits that are necessary. It's spoken for in the provincial learning network, which was a technology that we promised our kids. It is misleading to say that that $93 is going to initiatives that were started out this year -- never before brought into the classroom, hot off the press and not already spoken for. To me, this is why this agreement has already taken that $93 and put schools not in a worse position but in a very comparable position to where they were last year. That is a very different message than that kids are getting $93 more, right in their classrooms, hot off the press, for that teacher or those administrators or those support workers to use on supplies, equipment -- all sorts of things that we might use for educational experience within our classrooms.

I'm just wondering if the minister could explain to me why the ministry did not choose to give the message in a light that would explain that we were funding the system at the status quo, because in fact that's what we're doing. Most of the money has already been accounted for. In fact, the $93 is $93 based on the $43 that was taken out last year. I think it's quite misleading, and I'd appreciate the minister's comments there.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Well, at least we've got the opposition moving from this budget as a significant slash of public education to comparable funding. I hope, as estimates go on, that we'll be able to move the opposition to recognizing the increase in investment that this budget represents. It's $105 million, the largest increase in per-student funding in the last seven budget cycles. This Liberal opposition now seems to be saying that it's not enough. After two months of relentlessly saying we should have even less government spending, and coming out of a convention where they once again committed

[ Page 7488 ]

Well, I don't know what else we can say. Far from misleading, in all my comments to the press on it, I've clearly identified the amount of money that goes into dealing with cost pressures faced by districts and. . . .

A. Sanders: Point of order. I do not believe, if we look at the transcript, that I said it wasn't enough. I believe I said it was misleading.

The Chair: That's not a point of order.

Hon. P. Ramsey: Well, hon. Chair, I hope that at the end of the day, the Liberal opposition will support this Education budget and say that we've done a fine job here of protecting the core of education and making sure that all of the pressures of salary and inflation, as well as exciting new initiatives like the provincial learning network, are recognized by this budget. The trustees of the province, in their discussions with the ministry and with me -- and, I believe, in their discussions with the official opposition -- presented a very clear proposal to us for funding next year. They said to identify and fund major sources of cost pressure -- the member has quoted some of them: support staff, employee benefits, CPI -- and to identify and take account of clear initiatives that are being implemented across the system, such as the provincial learning network. The boards said to the ministry and to me: "Please don't ask us to do something so that we're required to take money from someplace else to do it." We put money very explicitly into the provincial learning network across the piece -- $123 million over the next six years -- to link up all 1,700 public schools. The board said to the ministry: "Recognize all of the increased students that we're going to have to deal with and their needs, whether they're special education or ESL or aboriginal." We did that too.

All those factors go into the $105 million that we are debating in this chamber. Frankly, we now have per-pupil funding that's $410 above what it was back in 1991-92. We have a budget for public education which is hundreds of millions of dollars higher than in 1991-92. We have a per-pupil budget that's the highest in this country. That is a record of commitment to children that I think this chamber and all parties should applaud.

A. Sanders: I just want to quote for the hon. minister the comment from the president of the B.C. School Trustees Association on Robin Adair's show after the $105 million announcement. On that show, Robin Adair had asked her if this was a significant increase to the funding of education. Her comment was: "Fortunate districts will be status quo. Others will be cut. No one will be putting back services." That is a very different message than the message of $105 million to boost education funding; it is funding to the status quo -- from the president of the B.C. School Trustees Association, who answered that question for the benefit of the reporter who was interviewing her. So to say that this is a boost to education and not the result of increased numbers of kids and previous education initiatives that we had already agreed to, such as contracts, etc., is misleading. I maintain that this is in fact the case and will stand by that, hon. Chair.

One of the items in the press releases on this $105 million increase was that 400 additional teachers and 300 additional learning assistants are to be hired. I've done as much research as possible, not having the actual documents from the ministry, and I have not been able to find anyone who can show me how we can hire 400 additional teachers and 300 additional learning assistants. I would ask the minister, if he had a spreadsheet, to in fact show me that, so I could go over that personally.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The figures of 400 teachers and 300 out-of-class professionals -- oh, those are in-class, too -- be they aides, counsellors, librarians, whatever, are based on the current staffing models around the province. It would be what additional staff will be required to take care of the 8,100 or 8,200 more students that we expect in the fall of 1998.

Staff advise me that they calmly just sort of take it, divide it by 20 and say that's how many classes 8,000 kids breaks down to -- around 400. You're going to need teachers for them. You're going to have small classes of three or four in some remote place, and you're going to sometimes have a class of 25 or 28 in a big city. But you're going to have a whole bunch more classes, and you're going to need a whole bunch more teachers -- 400 of them -- to instruct them. The 300 figure just simply says, based on current staffing models, this is what we have out there as far as non-teaching personnel who work with those kids.

A. Sanders: Again, this is very misleading to the people who crunch the numbers in school districts. My question to them was: "Here's what the minister has given you. I want you to come up with 400 additional teachers and 300 additional learning assistants." This does not say that these are the teachers that were already necessary and would have been hired and in the system anyway to keep the status quo -- that had to be hired for the 8,000 kids. Then, of course, if we go back to the original problem that we don't have 8,000 kids, there, already, is a decrease of quite a significant number in teachers and additional learning assistants that would be hired.

Again to the minister: are these additional teachers, or are these just the teachers that would have been hired to service those 8,000 children in the first place to maintain the status quo?

Hon. P. Ramsey: We have, as I already said, around $56 million. That's $93 per pupil -- and the member has broken it down -- that goes into increased funding per pupil. We also have $48 million that's targeted to take care of additional students in our schools -- around 8,100 or 8,200 new students. We're going to need a whole bunch more teachers, 400 or so, to take care of them. There will probably be adjustments in staff to take care of existing pupils as well.

Frankly, I find it a bit puzzling. We've been here now for. . . . This is the second year we've been debating the estimates of the Ministry of Education. Last year there was an increase of $34 million. At a time when the provinces that this Liberal opposition models itself on were cutting education funding, we had a $34 million increase. The member said, rightly, that it didn't take care of inflation and population growth. I acknowledge that and said that I asked school districts to get some efficiencies. This year we're saying: "Hold on now; let's make sure we're funding every kid; let's make sure we're looking at funding every pressure; let's make sure that when we have a new initiative that is provincewide, like the provincial learning network, we're putting the money into

[ Page 7489 ]

[11:45]

What I'm looking at here is what the cost is. Let's do it this way for the minister. I do not see, in the prototype district. . . . What is the total cost for the 400 additional teachers, and what is the cost for the 300 additional learning assistants that have been budgeted out of that $50 million sum?

Hon. P. Ramsey: The cost of providing those resources per student would be $5,849.

A. Sanders: I was looking for the total cost, not the mathematics.

Hon. P. Ramsey: It's $48,500,000.

A. Sanders: Are these full-time-equivalent teachers, and are they full-time-equivalent learning assistants?

Hon. P. Ramsey: Yes.

A. Sanders: Does the minister have a breakdown for the 60 districts, including the francophone authority, of the new teachers and new teaching assistants that would be hired in each district with the $105 million?

Hon. P. Ramsey: No, we don't, on that sort of broken-down scale. As I explained to the member earlier, staff have done a macro computation based on ratios on a provincewide basis. Individual districts are doing their budgeting and will be hiring new teachers and new staff as they work through their budgets this spring.

A. Sanders: The school districts are certainly in the budgetary phase as we speak. Will the minister be getting a list from the school districts of their breakdown of the 400 teachers and 300 additional learning assistants to be hired, so that we can then do a computation to come up to the 300 and 400 numbers?

Hon. P. Ramsey: When school districts submit their budgets, they indicate the amount to be spent, and they do indicate their FTEs in various categories, including teaching and non-teaching. They finalize those in September, when they know actual enrolment and the actual number of teachers that are going to be required.

A. Sanders: Does that mean that the minister now has a list from September with those numbers and will be getting another one next September?

Hon. P. Ramsey: If I heard the question right, it was: "Does the ministry have, district by district, a list of the number of excluded personnel, teachers, support staff, as of September 30, 1997, and will we get another such list in September 1998?" The answer is yes.

A. Sanders: And not one in between?

The Chair: Minister -- and, knowing the hour. . . .

Hon. P. Ramsey: Thank you, hon. Chair, for your wise advice.

We will be getting their preliminary figures when they do their '98-99 budget, which they will be submitting in mid-May. But, like the estimate of the number of children, that is a preliminary estimate, and school boards will lowball those figures because they are trying not to staff up and have surplus staff in the fall that they would be paying but wouldn't have kids for them to actually work with.

With that, and noting the hour, I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 11:50 a.m.

[ Return to: Legislative Assembly Home Page ]

Copyright © 1998: Queen's Printer, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada