[ Page 10471 ]

The House met at 2:08 p.m.

Prayers.

Oral Questions

CONSTITUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF NISGA'A TREATY AGREEMENT

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Speaker, first of all, the hon. member well knows that the Attorney General doesn't usually release opinions. Firstly, it's important to recognize that this opinion has been released. This opinion, in the preamble, indicates that this advice was given sometime earlier. That advice is now written up, and it has been released. The Attorney General will not release any other opinions. The Attorney General is in the process of obtaining opinions from outside counsel. If and when we order them and receive them, those would be released.

The Speaker: First supplementary, the Leader of the Official Opposition.

G. Campbell: The Attorney General is, I'm sure he's aware, responsible for ensuring that the government is fully and properly advised of all legal issues and potential legal ramifications relating to treaties. Frankly, I'm not at all confident that he has fulfilled that obligation, based on the doubt that surrounds this particular issue. Will the Attorney General now undertake to release all legal opinions submitted to the government, including all legal advice related to those opinions, pertaining to the effect of the Nisga'a treaty on our constitution?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: I will stand corrected with respect to my memory; I don't recall seeing any other opinions. However, even if there are other opinions, the Attorney General decides whether or not they are to be released. This opinion was released; it is from the most senior constitutional expert in the ministry. The ministry is seeking other opinions, if at all possible, from outside. If and when they are requested and received, they will be released. I make that commitment now.

G. Campbell: I think the critical thing to the people of British Columbia is for them to see all opinions with regard to this. There is no question that this is going to have a major impact on British Columbia and the people that live here, and they deserve to see them.

The Attorney General, I'm sure, is aware that a number of Canada's foremost constitutional experts have a view that the Nisga'a treaty does indirectly amend the constitution through the back door, under section 35. That position has been publicly supported by such constitutional experts as Dr. Peter Hogg, Dr. Ted McWhinney and Mel Smith, who has been this province's. . . .

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, members.

G. Campbell: Mel Smith. . . .

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. . . .

G. Campbell: Hon. Speaker, for the information of the members opposite, Mel Smith was the province's chief constitutional adviser for 20 years. How can the Attorney General. . .

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members, come to order, please, so the question can be heard.

G. Campbell: . . .be so sure that he is right, when all those experts are evidently wrong?

[2:15]

With respect to the issue of whether or not this is a constitutional amendment, nowhere does the constitution of this country contemplate seven provinces and 50 percent of the population agreeing on rights of the first nations. Quite to the contrary, the existing rights and rights that may be defined, refined and acquired pursuant to negotiations are contemplated in the constitution. The makers of the constitution are very clear about the need for seven provinces and 50 percent of the population, at least, for the amending formula. Nowhere does it mention, in the writings of legal scholars or within the constitution itself, that those rights that are contemplated by the constitution in sections 25, 35 and 52, I believe. . . . Nowhere does it say that they are to be amended according to a formula. If they are not, they certainly are not constitutional amendments.

G. Campbell: I am sure the Attorney General is aware that there are at least conflicting legal opinions as to whether or not this treaty effectively amends the Canadian constitution. I see the Attorney General nodding his assent. Will the Attorney General at least commit -- given that that does take place, given that there is an existing debate taking place in the community -- to referring this matter. . . ?

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, hon. members, so the question can be heard by the minister to whom it is directed.

G. Campbell: Given that there are conflicting legal opinions with regard to this very important matter, will the

[ Page 10472 ]

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Let me clarify the issues. Firstly, I don't believe the real issue is whether or not this is a constitutional amendment, from the point of view of the hon. member who just asked the question. The hon. member is quoted as saying, back in 1996, that referendums would not be appropriate for the Nisga'a issue at all. The hon. member for Matsqui just said in July this year -- July 8, if I remember correctly -- that a referendum for Nisga'a may not be appropriate. The issue behind this whole constitutional debate that the hon. members are engaging in is whether or not we ought to have a referendum. If that is the issue, then the hon. members should say so.

Let's not talk about constitutional amendments, because this in no way amends the constitution of the country. The province itself, the federal government and the Nisga'a -- in a tripartite agreement -- cannot ever, ever amend the constitution of the country. There is a formula in place for amending the constitution of the country.

In addition to that, it's important for us to recognize that the federal government's position, based on the legal advice that they may have received, is completely in agreement with the position of the province, of the Nisga'a and of many legal scholars across this province and across this country. This might come to light, because as they hear this debate -- which really has no basis in fact -- they might want to pronounce upon it by themselves. It is obviously a very important question for this country: whether or not we play partisan politics with the interests of those who have been oppressed for decades. For the first time in the history of this province, we now want to redress those wrongs, and we're talking about passing referendums on the rights of minorities that have had no rights whatsoever.

G. Campbell: I'm surprised that the Attorney General doesn't know that the rights of minorities are protected in Canada under our constitution, and that is not affected by the Nisga'a agreement.

Secondly, let me simply point out that for more than two years we have called for a referendum with regard to the principles of any aboriginal treaties. It was only two weeks ago that the Premier announced that the Nisga'a treaty would in fact be the template for all future aboriginal treaties in the province of British Columbia.

With respect to the Attorney General, it seems to me that the Attorney General is willing to take a very significant risk with regard to this issue. If the Nisga'a treaty is passed, only to have the court find at some later date that the Constitutional Amendment Act does indeed apply, the results will be devastating to everyone concerned, including the Nisga'a.

In the last few months, this government's legal advice on at least four separate occasions has been proven wrong by the courts. Wouldn't it be better to erase all doubt, to know the constitutional impact that the Nisga'a template will have in advance of debating this treaty in this chamber?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes, I as the Attorney General have responsibility for deciding and offering my opinions on issues such as whether or not there ought to be a reference to the courts. If and when there is need, I would certainly advise the government appropriately on that issue. That's who I advise: the government.

However, it is important for us as political leaders -- as leaders with some moral authority in this country, in this province -- to make sure that we don't allow the courts to make decisions that are important for all of us, and that first and foremost we have a debate and dialogue amongst ourselves. At the end of the day, if the decisions that we make amongst ourselves aren't appropriate and somebody sees fit to go to the courts, obviously the courts are free to rule upon those issues.

My first reference would be to have a thorough debate in British Columbia on this issue, so that people are fully informed and are able to have an informed discussion. Obviously the federal government is free to take a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada. If there is to be a reference, it has to be the decision of the federal government to take it to the Supreme Court of Canada directly. The province alone cannot take that reference directly to the Supreme Court of Canada.

G. Campbell: Section 35 of the constitution was intended to recognize and protect existing aboriginal rights and treaty rights. It was certainly never intended to allow for the creation of a third order of government that includes constitutional paramountcy over some areas of jurisdiction that are otherwise exclusively held by the federal and provincial governments. Can the Attorney General tell us if he has any legal opinions as to whether or not the Nisga'a government will constitute a third order of government in the sense contemplated in the Charlottetown accord? And will he release those opinions?

Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Speaker, there has been debate in British Columbia for some time, and there are arguments on either side of that question -- whether or not this is a third order of government or a fourth order of government. There is a municipal government in place -- a third order of government.

I think it's important for us to recognize that the Attorney General, at any given time, isn't aware of all or many of the legal opinions that might exist. I'm not aware of any specific opinions at this time. My memory doesn't serve me appropriately. If there are, I'd certainly look at them. At the end of the day, it's the Attorney General's responsibility to determine whether or not we are to release all of those opinions. It is important, however, that this debate take place in the public domain -- that we are advised and informed by scholars of renown from all parts of the country and all parts of British Columbia and that people in British Columbia are able to make up their minds as to which way they think this matter should go. However, the Attorney General does not usually release all and any opinions. This was done very quickly so that everyone realized that this was the Ministry of Attorney General's particular view. It was an opinion that had been provided and then actually codified in writing recently.

G. Campbell: The government has effectively said that the Nisga'a government won't be a third order of government. The Nisga'a have a very different opinion, however. To quote from one of their web sites: "It must be recognized that self-government is a third order of government, having independent authority over a range of jurisdictions." Given the doubt that exists surrounding that constitutional question and the difference of opinion between this government and the Nisga'a, wouldn't it be prudent to refer the matter to the courts in advance of passing the Nisga'a treaty, to ensure that all parties at least have a clear understanding of what it is we are establishing?

[ Page 10473 ]

Tabling Documents

Hon. D. Lovick: On behalf of the Minister of Advanced Education, Training and Technology and on my own behalf, it is my pleasure to submit to you the first report of the Industry Training and Apprenticeship Commission entitled, "Report on Operations, Financial Statements and Report of the Auditor General," for the period November 28, 1997, to March 31, 1998, as required by section 9 of the Industry Training and Apprenticeship Act.

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND
MINISTRY RESPONSIBLE FOR SENIORS
(continued)

[2:30]

What I hope to be able to accomplish in this very brief time that I have to canvass this issue is to get some sense of where the ministry feels it's at in this transition from a health care system that is largely focused on acute-care needs to one that is moving toward more services being offered in the community. I don't think I am misstating the ministry's intent. Certainly there has been a great deal of movement in this province, and also in other provinces in recent years, toward trying to put more and more health services in the community -- to have more and more services looked after by home care workers, community health nurses, therapists in the home and so on.

What I would like to try to do is to get some sense of evaluation of this program. One of the things that is mentioned, I think, in the Maclean's report. . . . It talks a lot about the state of affairs related to this issue. It sort of suggests that in the last few years, we went through periods of time in health care where a number of acute-care beds were closed. The theory behind this is that functions previously looked after in those acute-care facilities were now going to be looked after in the community. However, what has kind of lagged are the systems to evaluate in fact how well we're doing and how much this is costing. For the minister's benefit, that is really where I am trying to go with this.

The first thing I would like to ask the minister is really a fairly simple question. This would relate to the line-by-line breakdown of the ministry' budget. Where in this budget will we find evidence that money is in fact moving from acute-care to community care?

Hon. P. Priddy: My staff is just looking for a particular piece of information, but I'd like to start, if the member will allow me, with a couple of comments on this. I think the point that the member raised is important; it's also a very challenging one. When you say to folks, "What's your key health care concern?" people say acute-care beds and emergency wait times. In some ways it's really hard to make that shift. I mean, you and I can make the shift, but it's hard to make a societal shift towards looking at what's happening in the community. In my experience with the health authorities so far, at least with the ones I've worked with, they're working really hard to be able to enhance community services -- to enhance continuing care, home support and so on. I don't want to look at this as two separate pieces. This is supposed to be a seamless health care system, and in many ways these things are interdependent on each other. There are people in acute-care beds who don't need to be there and don't want to be there, but they don't have a more appropriate place to be, which is the community support part. If we are really talking about being patient-centred, then we are talking about where the patient would want to be and where the patient is best-off to get the kind of care they need.

The first piece I would talk about is the fact that we are, as the member knows, doing a very comprehensive and significant continuing-care review, which will be reporting out to me in November. They're looking at where the gaps are, where it is working, and if it is working, why it is working. They're looking at all of the issues -- not just long term care facilities but home support and other supports for seniors in the community.

In terms of this year, where you might actually find at least some of the information. . . . I can't actually tell you in the line-by-line part, but I can tell you where it's reflected. Long term care facilities throughout the province will receive care-level adjustments to reflect acuity changes -- changes in the health challenges of people that support is being provided for. All the negotiated wage increases will be funded. Anyway, those are some of the ways that you would find additional money in the continuing-care system.

K. Whittred: I'm pleased that the minister agrees with me that this question is a challenge. I know it's a challenge, because I have read quite widely in this area. I guess my point is that at some point within the system we have to come to some level of understanding about how we're going to ask ourselves how we are doing. We have been in this transition now -- and I'm not being critical of the transition, necessarily; I'm just making a statement -- for a number of years. Closer to Home was introduced, I believe, in '91 or '92, so we are now several years into this switching of services.

There certainly is conventional wisdom in the community. People who go in for surgery know that they don't

[ Page 10474 ]

What we don't know and what I can't find in the budget -- and this is my question -- is: where can this ministry show me that as we are cutting back. . . ? If we cutting back on acute-care services, where are we showing that that saving -- if there is some saving -- is going into the community? Alternatively, where can we see that there is in fact more money being put into the various community programs?

Hon. P. Priddy: The understanding I have from staff is that. . . . I'm not sure we can view this in the light of a cutback in acute-care services, but what health authorities and hospitals are doing in acute care is taking 5 percent of their administrative budget and putting that into community services. I can't point this out in the line-by-line, but I'm happy to give you a copy of this, member. For adult day services, which is all part of that continuum of support for seniors in the community, in the last year and a half or two there's been a $1.5 million increase for those kinds of services. We're just checking for the home support ones, because I know that there has been an increase, and I'd like to be able to tell you what it is. As it relates to home support and money paid out by the Ministry of Health for home support services. . . . This is -- as I know the member knows, because she has spoken to it very well on a number of occasions -- the kind of support that is able to keep seniors in their home for a longer period of time, as they would wish to be. Over the last three to four years there has been a $67.5 million increase for home support.

K. Whittred: This wasn't quite the direction I intended to go right at this moment, but perhaps seeing as the minister is going there, I can follow. The minister mentioned the increase in home support. I wonder if you could tell me the increase -- how do I want to phrase this? -- in home care hours, which would be an indication of the number of patients who are being serviced. The second bit of information I would like is the number of patients, because that would give an indication of the acuity of illness.

Hon. P. Priddy: That I am able to do for you. In home support services over the last two years, it has gone from 7.2 million hours of service, if you will, to 7.7 million hours of service. The average number of hours of service per client over the last two years has gone from 16 to just over 19 hours of care per month. That's just for home support services, in the way that you and I would understand them. There are other statistics I could offer, should the member wish it at some stage, for home care nursing, community physiotherapy, etc.

K. Whittred: No, I don't want to get into a discussion today about a whole bunch of isolated statistics. I find that those are not very useful. What I would like, though, is. . . . We now know the increase in the number of home care hours. I would like to know, relatively speaking, how many patients are being served. Does that represent the same number of patients, an increased number of patients or fewer patients?

[2:45]

K. Whittred: I would like to follow that particular concept a little bit. I knew the answer to that; in fact, it was the same thing last year. There are more home support hours but fewer clients, which of course means that there is a higher acuity. What I find in the field is that the people who work in home support tell me over and over and over again that they are dealing with sicker and sicker clients.

I guess what I would like to know from the ministry is: where are the others going? I'm going to take an imaginary number. If there used to be 100 clients who were receiving home support, we now know that we have more hours, but we only have, say, 90 clients -- for the purposes of illustration. What has happened to the other ten?

Hon. P. Priddy: A couple of things are happening. There may be some seniors who were, for instance, receiving a visit once a week -- someone to do vacuuming for them, if you will. I know that many home support agencies that are making choices about their dollars are looking at the acuity of patients. It may be that people who received housekeeping services only are receiving, perhaps, less of that, or they may be receiving it in another kind of way. I think that's as a result of the choices that home support agencies are making, in terms of the best use of their dollars. I think we see a drop in clients, in part for that reason. Some are receiving some support in day programs. They don't have the same need for a home support worker, if they have access to a day program. There are new day programs opening around the province this year again. Those are a couple of reasons why we might see the drop.

K. Whittred: While we're on the subject of home care, I would like to pursue, for a moment, the ministry's philosophy or participation in the plans or the suggestions of the federal government for a national home care program. I am wondering what the minister's feelings about this are. What role has British Columbia played, if any? Where can the minister see this going?

Hon. P. Priddy: I have read in the paper of the federal government's thoughts, at least, about a national home care or home support program. They have not said anything to the provinces that I'm aware of. This is at least a proposed strategy by the federal government. If I were asked about B.C.'s position on this, I think what I would say is that if the federal government were to return the $375 million that they've cut in health transfer payments, we could probably use it, as could every other province, in a way that most affects the people in our province. It is somewhat unusual for the federal government to step in and start funding an individual health program when the delivery of programs is, quite rightly, historically in the purview of the provincial government. While I always welcome federal funding and would actually be pleased to have it back, it's very hard for me to envision how

[ Page 10475 ]

K. Whittred: Not, of course, being in the position of the minister. . . . I have had personal experience just recently with a family member from another province being ill in this province. It occurred to me at the time how absolutely nonsensical it was, in that of the services here, the only services that could be accessed were hospital services. It seems to me that it would make sense to have at least a reciprocal agreement with other provinces on some of the services that we call continuing care. All of those, of course, fall outside the purview of the Canada Health Act, and therefore there are no agreements between provinces. Particularly in this day and age, when we talk about Closer to Home, families don't always live close to their loved ones. I guess I'm asking the minister to comment on that particular idea.

Hon. P. Priddy: The member, of course, is correct that there is no interprovincial agreement around anything that is outside of acute care, medicare, medical, Canada Health Act. . . . I'm always prepared to pursue any kind of arrangements with people. I'm not sure how the federal government would do it. But as the member may know, I have a personal interest in home support, because I taught that program at Douglas College for many years to home support workers. I have asked for that to be placed on the agenda of the federal minister's conference, which is in about six weeks now, I guess.

The challenge here, and I base this partly on the discussions I've heard from other provincial ministers around home care and partly on my experience around trying to get something like this to happen with child care federally, is that because the programs vary so much in terms of how people deliver them and the level of service they have. . . . As I say, I've put it on the agenda and am still prepared to pursue it, but I think that you would have difficulty getting all provinces interested in it, because the system is so disparate across the country. But I have asked to have it on the agenda, and we will be discussing it.

K. Whittred: Just an idea: it occurs to me that sometimes it's perhaps not a bad idea to start small. Perhaps simply an agreement with a neighbouring province, where probably the majority of situations are apt to come from, would be one way to start, rather than trying to get the whole piece of the puzzle and the entire country involved. That's just simply one idea.

I'd like to move on for a moment and speak about the community care licensing report that you alluded to earlier. This grew out of a couple of things, I guess, certainly not the least of which was the in-depth reporting in the articles featured in the Vancouver Sun last fall -- in September, I believe. I have the report here. I don't want to go through it line by line, but I thought we might zero in on a few things. I wonder if the minister could comment on some of these recommendations. First of all, the shift from child and adult licensing to residential and non-residential -- can the minister explain exactly how that will affect the licensing?

Hon. P. Priddy: I will say just before I begin this that these are recommendations we are still looking at. There are clearly a number that we'll be going ahead with and some that have problems. I think the rationale behind this -- not illogically -- is that if you divide between a residential and a day program, if you will, as opposed to between adult and children. . . . I think most of us would agree that if you are in one place for 24 hours and you're already vulnerable -- which is what you're likely to be, or you wouldn't be in one of those facilities -- then your risk in a residential environment is greater, simply because you're in. . . . I'm not suggesting that it's anything about the facilities, but if you're a vulnerable person in one place with the same group of people for 24 hours, that's quite a different situation than being in a day program for six hours a day. So we can look at it that way. When you divide it by adults and children, then you aren't able to take into account in the same way the difference between the risk in a 24-hour program and the risk in a five-hour program.

K. Whittred: One of the things that I have a bit of apprehensiveness about in terms of the licensing of all community care facilities is that it covers such a broad spectrum of facilities. It covers everything from residential homes for seniors -- residences, care centres -- to what are normally called group homes or, in fact, care centres for children. I wonder if the licensing would be more appropriate if this was broken down into smaller segments. I wonder what the minister's opinion of that would be.

Hon. P. Priddy: Let me clarify: broken down into smaller pieces that are more programmatically gathered or collated or whatever, or broken down and shared amongst ministries? Both those things have been suggested.

K. Whittred: I was thinking of breaking it down in terms of use. It seems to me that it's difficult to come up with appropriate licensing standards for a seniors facility and a children's care centre. They are two entirely different things. I'm curious as to why this has to include all those kinds of care centres in one licensing package.

[3:00]

Primarily, what the Community Care Facilities Licensing Act has tried to focus on is their basic mandate, which has always been around health and safety. While I'm happy to look at smaller pieces -- and actually, I'll ask people to do that -- when you talk about health and safety issues, there may be some variances between one residential facility and another. But there is far more commonality than difference, if your focus -- which is what the Community Care Facilities Licensing Act is for -- is health and safety.

I think I'm going to regret saying this. . . . Does that always bother people when I say that?

Interjection.

Hon. P. Priddy: No? Oh, good. The other side of that question, then -- and it is a question I've asked every ministry I've been in, not only this one -- is: how do you ensure that there is responsibility for the programmatic safety? What is it that people are doing with people? It's not: "Are the fire exits

[ Page 10476 ]

K. Whittred: Another of the recommendations, I guess, that more specifically applies simply to the seniors facility is perhaps what I was getting at in my last question: the creation of a single licensing category for multilevel facilities, to allow for aging in place. I wonder about these. Because these are still under review, I'm simply asking the minister to comment on some of these major recommendations.

Hon. P. Priddy: I think the member is quite correct. I think one of the inhibitions in this now is that the current licensing act doesn't allow us to support what I hope we all believe, and that is for people to age in place if that's what they choose to do. I mean, this is always about a person's choice. But it doesn't allow the same flexibility for aging in place around levels of acuity and so on. So it is one of the recommendations on the act, and it's one we look on favourably.

K. Whittred: I still have a little bit of trouble understanding. . . . How does this differ from the licensing of some other kind of community care facility? I don't quite see that.

Hon. P. Priddy: The difference currently -- and if I'm not helpful, then please come back; I know you will, because good teachers do that -- is that multilevel-care facilities are currently licensed under the Hospital Act, because they have a range of people with different acuity in their facilities. That is what makes the licensing different. It's because they're licensed under the Hospital Act differently than all those other facilities that would fall under the category of community care licensing. What the report recommends is that it be done away with and that multilevel-care facilities come out from under the Hospital Act and be licensed in the same kinds of ways as other facilities are, which allows more flexibility. We support that.

K. Whittred: Now I'm getting even a little more confused. I think we're going in the opposite direction to where I thought we were going. So multilevel facilities were previously with, and at this time are still with, the Hospital Act. What about extended-care facilities, which are also multilevel? What will their licensing authority be?

Hon. P. Priddy: Extended-care facilities, which you refer to, are also under the Hospital Act. The report is actually silent on those. At this stage, I don't think there's been a recommendation to move them out from under the Hospital Act. The reason it makes sense for multilevel-care facilities is because there is such a huge range of people and sometimes ages, as much as I don't like that, and care needs in a multilevel-care facility -- which we should be moving to, by the way; I mean, there's no question that we should have them. Whereas in extended-care facilities the range of acuity isn't the same. While the report stayed silent on it, if there are no changes, it would stay under the Hospital Act.

K. Whittred: I hear what the minister is saying, and I understand, I think. However, that is not really what I hear in the community. It's my understanding that the philosophy of this ministry is that all facilities are to be multilevel. This is the direction that the ministry is moving in. So that makes a discussion eventually, at some point down the road, about extended care somewhat redundant. There is only going to be one facility, so every facility is going to have a range.

The second thing that I hear in the community is that while theoretically these facilities do have a range in the real world, most of them are dealing with patients of greater and greater acuity. In other words, the individuals are sicker and sicker. So I guess the point I'm really getting at here is: are these facilities more hospital than they are residential? What is the definition we're putting on them? I think that particular point has a great deal to do with how we license them and what lens we are seeing them through. Perhaps the minister could just comment on that.

Hon. P. Priddy: I appreciate the member's comments about what she's hearing in her community. It is true that there is a very direct move towards. . . . When doing any construction or replacement -- renovation -- it is to multilevel. So if people are hearing that, they're hearing it absolutely correctly. What we've never had before is an ability for people to age in place. Whether it's more like a hospital or not, I'm not sure. The member may have had more experience than me, but I've been in a number of multilevel-care facilities. What I see is not so much people that are necessarily more acute, although I see some of that, but people who are frailer. We're just all living longer. So what I see are people who are frailer but not necessarily more acute from a health perspective or from an illness perspective -- people who are frailer as they age.

It is correct: we are moving to multilevel. We're not building new extended-care facilities, although I don't want that to panic anyone, because some people use those phrases interchangeably -- extended-care facilities as you and I know them. But I don't necessarily think that multilevel-care facilities are like a hospital, so I wouldn't see a reason to change that designation. I would see a reason to keep them in the community and move them out of the Hospital Act, so they can maintain that flexibility.

K. Whittred: Thank you, through the Chair, to the minister for her remarks on that.

The last thing I'll ask about on this licensing report -- because it is at this point just a report, and perhaps next year will be the time to really get in and see how much of this has been implemented -- is the creation of a community care licensing board. I wonder if the minister could enlighten me a little bit about exactly who is going to be licensed. What kinds of agencies or services in the community would fall within this jurisdiction, which perhaps presently do not?

Hon. P. Priddy: There are some discussions going on currently with the community about this particular recommendation; it wasn't a particularly unanimous one. One of the things that I'm trying to do is have the community inform me better about what their views are on this before. . . . We've actually decided on no action whatsoever on this one; we've taken no position on it. Because, as I say, there is some difference of opinion about this in the community, we've gone back out to gain some of that perspective.

K. Whittred: I would like to pursue a little bit more about the numbers. I observed, I think, in last year's estimates -- and I will not go through that exercise in numbers again. . . . But what we're finding happening in a number of areas is that

[ Page 10477 ]

[3:15]

K. Whittred: Following up on that question, one of the directions I followed in last year's estimates was to try to get a sense of where the ministry was going. I would like to ask the minister where the ministry would like to be, say, in two or three or four years with this type of care. Is the ministry planning on having more long term care beds? Is the ministry planning on more home care? Is it to be a combination of the two, and how are we going to get there?

Hon. P. Priddy: I think that depends on a couple of factors. One of them is that a large part of this will be determined by the continuing-care review that is going on, looking at all of those pieces: home support, home care, multilevel-care beds, extended care, all of the things that support primarily seniors or elders in their communities. In some part, if you were to ask me where I'd like to be in three or four years' time, I would tell you that part of that is dependent upon that, certainly from the ministry's planning perspective.

If you ask me where I'd like to be, as the minister, in four or five years' time, I think I would tell you a couple of things. One of them is that I want to ensure that. . .if we need more beds, then we need more beds -- and I don't doubt for a minute that we do; and, when we're doing renovations and conversions, we're converting into multilevel-care beds, so that while the numbers haven't grown substantially, the flexibility of the beds available has -- every time there's a renovation, it's renovated as multilevel.

Second, I would like to be able to find some way to -- to shift the priorities of the public is a bit grandiose. . . . I would like to be able to have people understand that what we do in the community for seniors or for people with multiple health needs does truly impact the acute-care system. I mean, if you go out and do a focus group -- certainly in my health community and perhaps in yours as well, hon. member -- people will say: "If you could find some more money from somewhere, put it into hospital beds; put it into here." I don't know if everybody yet understands that if we don't put in the money and find the resources to refocus on community care, not only will we be having seniors living in environments, or in ways, or in beds that are not the best for them, but secondly, we will be affecting the acute-care system. Those people will be living in acute-care beds, and there are lots of those around the province currently.

First, I'd like to see the shift, if you will, in the community around thinking about what it means to have good, quality supports in the community for people. Second, I would like to see additional bed resources and day-program resources, because for many people, a day program means they probably can keep staying in their homes. They may not be able to do it 24 hours a day, but if there's a day program to go to and there are generally two meals a day, then people are going to be able to stay longer in their homes. I want to see more of those kinds of supports so that seniors get to stay in their community.

If seniors don't get to stay in their homes -- and I'm not telling you anything that you don't know; I'm just needing to say it, hon. member -- and in their communities, my kids and my grandchildren miss out on things, because a lot of people here don't have grandparents around. We're all from somewhere else. Well, not all of us, but lots of us are from somewhere else. If the only seniors they ever see are in an extended-care facility, they never get to learn the strength and wisdom of and hear the stories from seniors.

For me, if you ask, in four or five years I want to see a more enhanced community-based system, looking at hospice, at adult day programs and at home sharing, which has worked for lots of seniors for a period of time -- being able to say what best meets the care needs of this individual. It would be a much broader range than: "There are 30 extended-care beds, or you're at home and somebody comes once a week; those are your choices." I guess that's part of where I would want to be in that period of time.

K. Whittred: I'm just trying to think of where to go next here. The minister alluded to things like adult day care. I wonder if I could ask the minister: what has been the increase in adult day programs in the past year?

Hon. P. Priddy: I cannot tell you, actually, how many day programs there are in the province. I mean, I could tell you that; I can find it for you. But the number of client-days of service has gone up 6,000 to 7,000 in the last year. The number of agencies actually operating day programs has gone from 89 to 91 -- not a big increase. In three and a half years it went from 81 to 91. The annual expenditure is up $1 million. But if you wanted a list of day care programs in the province, we could get you that; I don't have it with me.

K. Whittred: I would like to return just for a moment to some issues surrounding the closing of the old personal care homes. That is an issue that has come across my desk. I would like to ask the minister: does the minister know the number of beds that have been lost due to the closing of these homes, which are no longer. . . ? I realize why they're being closed: they're no longer adequate under the multilevel guidelines. The second part of that is: are these beds in fact being replaced?

Hon. P. Priddy: The personal care homes, which, as the member knows, we haven't used at all for the last couple of years, have indeed closed. A number of those people -- those elders -- have gone into multilevel-care facilities. Some of those folks -- I'm not sure about the number, and I'm not trying to suggest it's a great number -- are actually at home with home support, because they really just need the support around them to keep the daily living things going. So some of those people are at home, but many of them went into multilevel-care facilities.

K. Whittred: We previously discussed today the increasing acuity of residents in care homes. Again, something has been brought to my attention by a number of people. Actually, I think this was more related to extended-care homes. Families that feel that their family members are not being adequately

[ Page 10478 ]

As a result, they are in fact hiring private home care to go in and look after their family members in the extended-care facility. I have discovered that this is. . . . While I wouldn't call it endemic throughout the system, it is becoming fairly common. Again, I feel that most people expect, when you're in one of our facilities -- whether it's a multilevel or an extended-care facility -- that you wouldn't have to further go out and hire your own private home support worker to come into the facility to give a service such as bathing. Meals was another one that I had heard about. I wonder if the minister can comment.

Hon. P. Priddy: I think there are two factors to this. One of them is yes, there are people who hire staff to go in. My information from folks is that sometimes someone who doesn't live in the community -- who may live however far away, not even in the same city. . . . Someone who can't get in to see their family member on a regular basis may want them to have a bit of additional support or some extra things. Staff, while providing good-quality health care, may not be able to do all of the extra things that you and I might like done for an elder that we love. Yes, there is some of that going on. I certainly wouldn't. . . . There's been a little bit of an increase, although not a significant one, and it certainly isn't a common activity.

I'm sure there are other ones, as well, but the stories I've heard about this have more to do with wanting to provide some of those extra things that you might want your mom, your dad, your grandmother or your grandfather to have in a facility where you're not paying additional dollars yourself. It isn't about quality health care, but it may be about additional attention, an additional outing or things like that.

[3:30]

Another thing I want to bring up in this area is the issue of resident councils. This is something that I have been approached about by a variety of people. I'm told -- and I must confess, I do not have a wide knowledge of this myself -- that some facilities have resident councils, and some do not. I'm sorry. I'm using the wrong expression; it's family councils. Does the ministry have any idea how many extended-care and multilevel facilities do have family councils? If so, what is their mandate?

Hon. P. Priddy: We don't have a list, but a best estimate by staff is probably about two-thirds, and the rest are working on it. Of course, as well as the family councils, we want to ensure that there are resident councils. In many facilities, particularly multilevel-care facilities, residents are more than able to make their wishes known.

I wonder if I might go back for a moment to an earlier comment that the member made. If the member is hearing from people who say that if they're not there, their family member will not have a chance to eat, I would be really grateful to know which facilities those are -- if the member is comfortable doing this and it's not breaking a confidence. I don't have to know a name. That concerns me, and I would want to ensure that we take action on that.

I now ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Hon. P. Priddy: In the gallery today is Larry Odegard. Larry is the president of the Health Association of British Columbia, which means that he is working with all of the health care authorities throughout the province -- community health councils and regional health boards -- in a variety of ways around education and is assisting those boards in coming together in the fine way they have. I'd like the House to make him welcome.

K. Whittred: I said at the beginning of my remarks that this year I intend to be very brief and that my main goal is to try to get a little bit of an idea of how the government is doing in terms of the old way of doing things and moving toward more community care. I also wanted to comment that last year in estimates I was very critical of the ministry for not having a plan, as I saw it. This year there has at least been some movement toward this, with the community care plan and looking into community care. I don't know whether last year's estimates had anything to do with that or not, but one would like to think that maybe they did.

I would like to ask the minister if she could simply comment at this time on the questions that are being asked about the continuing care system and what we could hopefully look for next year.

Hon. P. Priddy: I have no doubt whatsoever that the hon. member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale, in estimates, had an effect on the plan. With such articulate MLAs, the opposition raises very good points.

I can give you a little bit of a sense, if you'd like, of some of the areas -- if I'm interpreting your questions correctly -- that people will be looking at. They're obviously looking at all the components of the system of continuing care: home support, residential facilities, community home care nursing, rehab programs, assessment treatment programs, group homes, adult day care, meal programs, family care homes, etc. It is the whole spectrum of services, and that's just to give an overview.

The questions they'll be asking in general are to ensure that we have a comprehensive overview of how that can be a seamless system for people. In my experience -- certainly in my own family experience, as well as working with home support workers -- it's often really hard if you don't have a system that is all attached together. Somebody is in an adult day program, and suddenly they need Meals on Wheels. It's a whole shift. You have to find another agency and talk to them, and then if you need some more home support, then you've got to go somewhere else. To look at how we make sure that moves smoothly once you're into the system so you don't have to keep going back in and out for every service that you need, what we'll be doing is assessing the strengths and the weaknesses and any other sort of ramifications, if you will, of

[ Page 10479 ]

One of the questions that the review will be asking is: what does it look like at other places, and where are the places that seem to be really successful at this? What are they doing that we might be able to do to do our job better? The member was getting at this a while ago, and I certainly didn't give her a vision, but I do have some thoughts about where I'd like to see this go. I actually have a vision -- some people call it a vision; I happen to call it the dream -- so when somebody says: "Other than all those problems you've got out there, what do you want it to look like? What's the dream, and what are the pieces you have to put together for that. . . ?" While doing all of that and identifying the necessary actions including looking at the pieces, certainly people will be looking at costing. What works for different types of patients, and what's most cost-effective? I think there are ways that we can be more cost-effective and probably better meet the needs of lots of people. I would suggest that someone being in a acute-care bed in a hospital simply because they don't have a place to be in the community is neither cost-efficient nor good for the patient. So those are some of the sort of larger questions that people will be asking in the review.

K. Whittred: I don't intend to spend a lot of time on this -- other than to give the minister an opportunity to tell us what her vision is for the future -- because it's very difficult to evaluate something that hasn't taken place yet. I'm very pleased about it.

One question I would like to ask. . . . I'm a little bit disappointed that the terms of reference for this particular review are for the entire continuing-care system. Well, I guess disappointed isn't quite the right word; I'm a little bit concerned about focus. The clients of the continuing-care system are primarily seniors, elders. I'm well aware that there are young people, but in terms of numbers, there are relatively few. I think that I personally would be a little bit happier if the terms of reference for this had more focus on the elder population, because I'm not sure that their needs and the needs of the young people who access the system are necessarily the same. I hope that when this is completed -- I think it's next October that it reports -- we won't be disappointed and find that the terms of reference are too broad to accomplish what it should accomplish.

Now, I want to move on and look at seniors issues in the more general context. I wonder if this would be a good time for some of my colleagues who have questions about long-term care to take a turn, and then I'll return to the seniors.

R. Thorpe: In dealing with long-term care and facilities, I am a little bit confused with respect to the conflicting reports we've had about the availability of and the increase in facilities. We've had newspaper reports that the health region has increased the number of long-term beds by 60. I wonder if the minister could confirm or deny that.

Hon. P. Priddy: We are aware of some of the push that you're feeling. I'm assuming you're talking about your region around long-term care. I believe that the people in the region who are working on this were told that after the budget review had taken place, we would be able to talk more with you again.

R. Thorpe: I have a letter, dated July 10, to one of my constituents from the Ministry of Health and Ministry Responsible for Seniors. It's signed by the regional director for the Fraser Valley, Thompson, Okanagan and Kootenays. "The ministry has recently approved funding for 60 new long term care beds in the Okanagan-Similkameen health region, which includes Penticton." Has that announcement been made, or has that announcement not been made?

Hon. P. Priddy: No, that announcement has not been made.

R. Thorpe: Perhaps the minister would want. . . . This is the letter dated July 10, 1998, and I believe this must be the ministry reference number up here in the corner: 1 201724. This is a serious issue in our region and in our community, as I've talked about at length last week, with respect to the disproportionate number of seniors, on provincial averages. Why, then, would ministry officials be writing to constituents and telling them it has taken place?

Hon. P. Priddy: Perhaps it was a staff person who has been particularly moved by the arguments made by the member and was casting forward into the future a bit to give hope and encouragement to the people that are writing. But there has been no official announcement made.

[3:45]

Hon. P. Priddy: In two ways: one in a longer-term way, which is the continuing-care review that's currently going on, and I think we actually canvassed that earlier in estimates; and secondly, by working not only with the local health authority but with our own regional staff, to be able to look at how acute the current situation is in the South Okanagan and to be able to take any actions that are possible within the fiscal framework to address it.

R. Thorpe: So is there an aggressive plan being pursued at this point in time to deal with this issue in the South Okanagan? Or is the minister saying that the province has fiscal constraints and that's why we're not doing a plan?

Hon. P. Priddy: I'm actually saying both. Yes, there is what I think is a pretty clear and aggressive sort of initiative underway to address the issues in the South Okanagan. And are there always fiscal constraints? Of course there are.

R. Thorpe: When will the plan be completed that addresses this significant shortfall in the South Okanagan?

Hon. P. Priddy: I think the member and the people who live in the South Okanagan will hear part of that quite soon, and they may not hear part of it until the end of the continuing-care review. But they will hear part of it quite early.

R. Thorpe: I suppose what people are going to hear shortly is what's already been announced in this July 10 letter. And what we're going to continue to do is take photo ops and do press releases to tell people that things are better, when in fact people know they're not better. I wish this government would stop playing with people's lives through photo ops and announcements, and deal with the issues. In fact, just for the record, let me read from the July 1998 board meeting of the

[ Page 10480 ]

In closing, I would just like the minister to comment. What are we doing to seriously address this issue, knowing that the costs are racking up over here on the acute side, while we are apparently doing very little or nothing on this side? Then we have people suffering in long-term and acute care, waiting lists growing, and people can't get into long-term care. How are we going to break this roadblock in the South Okanagan?

Hon. P. Priddy: With the greatest respect to the member, I don't think anybody is looking to do photo opportunities. I would suggest that the information that was given to the South Okanagan and the information that was given to the health staff is that a determination would be made about the beds that are referred to in that letter after the budgets have been reviewed. So, in fact, in our office, there has been no determination made about that. As I said, we were very clear with both our staff and people in the South Okanagan that that's when the final determination would be made. I don't think this is actually about some decision and it's out the door and we're waiting for some kind of photo opportunity later on. We've certainly heard about the needs and heard clearly, and we will make this decision. But the final decision will be made after the budget review.

In regards to the South Okanagan in general, I think that we've canvassed this before as well, hon. Chair. We are working with people in that region; we are identifying what the needs are; we are identifying what the fiscal resources might be to meet those needs; we are working with the health authorities and our staff there in order to be able to do that. There are other areas in the province that have, if not the same, then similar needs, perhaps, around additional extended-care beds. So I don't know that there's a plan for only the South Okanagan; there's other areas that are feeling this kind of push as well. But part of that plan will be revealed shortly, and part of it will take longer.

R. Thorpe: I would hope that the South Okanagan is only a part of the overall plan. Therefore I would ask the minister: would it be possible after estimates to get a copy of that plan?

Hon. P. Priddy: It would not be possible after estimates, because, as I've said, the final determinations about those will be made after the budgets are reviewed, which isn't the same as the end of estimates. But yes, that information can be made available to you as soon as it's finished.

I. Chong: As a member who represents a constituency that has a significant number of seniors, and as one of the capital region MLAs. . . . We have a huge demand for long term care facilities. I recognize that the 1994 regional long term care facility plan at that time recommended a five-year plan for 726 new beds. As I stated earlier, with the demand for long term care facilities, that assessment in 1994 has changed in the last few years. In January 1996, as I understand it, there were 683 people in the community waiting for facility placement. Nine or ten months later, in October 1996, the number of people waiting in the community had increased to 976. Those are the latest statistics I have. I don't know what the numbers have grown to by 1997 and 1998. I imagine they've gone up substantially. The concern that I have for the capital region, as the member for Okanagan-Penticton has for his area, is that we don't seem to have a handle on how to deal with the increasing demand for long term care facilities. If we haven't identified the problem, then we cannot identify the budget resources that are going to be necessary.

My question to the minister is: can she advise us where we are in this region in terms of the number of people in the community waiting for facility placement? What short-term solutions versus long-term solutions are being looked at -- the short term being in the next two years the versus the long term being in the next five years? Perhaps a facility is being looked at to be renovated -- or a new facility being built. Can the minister advise what is happening in the capital region now?

Hon. P. Priddy: The member is asking about the next two years. For one thing, once the continuing-care review is finished and reported to me, which I think will be in late November, we will have a much better provincial sense of how we can approach this differently. I want to stop for a minute and say that while a significant amount of this is about how there aren't enough beds -- I understand that -- part of the continuing-care review will also talk about. . . . Some people, with a different kind of support, might not be on that list. There are other kinds of support, if we could get those in place, that would enable people to stay in their own homes. Or they might delay choosing another kind of living option for two or three years. That's why the continuing-care review is so important. It's not only to go and look at beds -- it will do those kinds of things as well -- but it's also to look to see if beds are the only solution. And I don't think they are.

Secondly, in the capital region area we are currently having discussions about a couple of significant initiatives that will, I think, have some impact in the short term.

Thirdly, it's always a real challenge for health authorities, because they and we are trying to get Royal Jubilee done and the Vancouver cancer clinic done. When you look at capital resources available in the region, it's often where you do it and which you do first if you can't do them all. But I think there are a couple of significant initiatives underway, which will make quite a difference.

I. Chong: I appreciate the minister trying to provide an answer when I know it's a difficult one to provide. Nonetheless, it's not an issue that has evolved over just the last few years. I believe that the capital regional district health committee -- the capital regional health district at the time, before it was amalgamated -- had identified a number of problems and had been trying to deal with this. When the capital health region was formed, this information was passed on, but in the interim, with all the changes in administration, etc., I feel that perhaps there hasn't been enough focus placed on this. Particularly here in the Victoria area, every day there is an increasing demand. The report that was issued in November of 1996 through CRD health was called "Long-Term Care Facility Plan, 1997 to 2001" -- a four-year plan, I guess.

Can the minister advise me whether that plan is to be used in the review or whether that particular plan is no longer valid. If in fact it is going to be used, where are we with some of those recommendations in that plan? Can the minister at least give me some update about whether the work that was done in this plan is still vital and significant in the review that's going to be taking place?

Hon. P. Priddy: Yes, we will be using that. It's a piece of a much larger piece, but some of that information and data have

[ Page 10481 ]

I. Chong: In the 1996 plan there was a schedule of 13 projects that were to be dealt with. Does the minister have a list of those 13 projects? Have any of those been deleted, amended or otherwise altered? I believe that those projects were estimated to cost approximately $82 million -- roughly $16.4 million per year. They would add a significant number of beds. At this point, I'm not clear on whether those 13 projects are to be proceeded with or if they're also being held up, pending the results of this review.

[4:00]

I. Chong: I will hang in for that extra month or two, because I very much would like to get an update on where those lists are. With that, perhaps the minister will also be able to provide an idea as to whether any funds have been committed in terms of a planning stage. All too often, whether it's in hospitals or in schools, we find that funds are sometimes committed towards planning. That's a good thing. The difficulty, though, is that once the planning funds are committed, there appears to be a huge time delay before a project is undertaken. Obviously, as an MLA I get questioned: "Well, if the funds were committed to planning, you would think that thereafter the project would ensue." That's doesn't always happen. If funds have been committed to a planning stage, even a year or two ago, it would be helpful to know, to at least have an idea, where we are with those -- particularly with the capital region area that I represent.

Hon. P. Priddy: I don't have it with me, but I'd be happy to do that. As a Surrey school trustee, we've always made that argument -- not always successfully, by the way, member -- that projects should come in envelopes. You get planning this year, and you get construction the next, and so on. You're right -- it doesn't always work like that, and it's most frequently for fiscal reasons, although sometimes it's for local reasons. But I'll certainly let you know what stage yours are at.

K. Whittred: The issue that was raised by my colleague from Okanagan-Penticton is one that I did not raise this year. I might just point out to the minister that the problem of long term care waiting lists exists; it has not gone away. The waiting list for long-term care continues to be about 18 months, I believe. In many regions of the province -- in fact, in most regions -- the problem continues of acute-care beds being used by long term care patients. In the interests of brevity, I did not address this issue -- and also because there is some attempt to address the issue in the report. All I would add at this time, hon. Chair, is that while I am pleased that the ministry has named a commission to look into these issues, I hope that we see action on this very quickly.

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

I would now like to move on and look at just a few things that basically arise out of the office of seniors per se as opposed to continuing care. Perhaps as a word of introduction, I could point out that for two years in a row I have been prepared to respond to a ministerial statement ushering in Seniors Week. I see that we have the former Health minister in the House as well as the current one, and on neither occasion has there been a ministerial statement about Seniors Week. We have had ministerial statements about marmots, and we've had ministerial statements about highland dress, but never about seniors. I just want to point that out and hope that this is not reflective of the status that is given to seniors by the ministry. I cannot help but note that every other delegated week is always ushered in by some statement or another.

Something that I would like to pursue for a few moments is the whole area of caregivers and caregiver respite. Nothing ever changes in this very much; I think the problem continues. The first question I would like to address is: within the ministry, is any attention being given to. . . ? Or are any programs being pursued that will take into account the financial position of caregivers? I'm thinking particularly of women, for example, who may take a leave of absence from their job to look after an ailing parent or relative. They may fall behind in their pension, and therefore they will suffer the long-term consequences for that particular task of caregiving. Over and over, it is brought to my attention that while people very much support the whole concept of Closer to Home and so on, it does have some very serious financial repercussions on other family members. I am well aware that this is a multifaceted kind of question, as most questions in this area are. Perhaps the minister could respond.

Hon. P. Priddy: Thank you, hon. Chair, and welcome.

To the member, around the earlier comment you made about the ministerial statement: point taken. Next year you will hear an eloquent one. If we can have marmots, we can have elders, I would hope.

Interjection.

Hon. P. Priddy: Or elder marmots; I don't know which.

Around caregiver support, I know that's an interest the member has. Is there a new initiative underway? No, although there is a report, "For I and Mine," which is under review and which we may take some. . . . I think there will be some lessons for us from that. But if you're asking if there are new financial initiatives, the answer is no, although, as I'm sure the member knows, we do provide home support workers to provide respite hours for caregivers of seniors. We also provide residential beds for care providers who need to be away for a few days and need to have some support for the person in their family.

K. Whittred: Yes, I'm aware that there are respite hours. I was more curious to know whether or not, through the. . . . I know there's an interministry committee, and I know that it even meets from time to time. I don't know whether it ever actually puts forth proposals, or what not. I'm thinking more in terms of initiatives that may originate from your office or from the office for seniors to the Ministry of Finance, for example, that would put into place some initiatives that may allow for caregivers who are in a position of, say, losing pension benefits, some sort of program to continue with them. There are a whole variety of things that might be done. I'm looking for any kind of channel or mechanism within the government where these issues may be pursued.

Hon. P. Priddy: I'm not aware at this time of any of those initiatives going from our office to the interministry committee

[ Page 10482 ]

K. Whittred: The minister is quite right. It would be similar to the kinds of things that have been introduced, for example, for women who take time out of the workforce to have children. The mechanisms are there for them to continue with their pension without penalty. However, those mechanisms do not exist for a woman -- who, by the way, would probably be much older -- who is taking time off to caregive an aging family member and can therefore suffer some very significant losses. That may be something that the office for seniors or the minister might want to take into consideration.

I wonder if I could inquire about the particular status of adult guardianship legislation. I get many calls about this, and I would like to know exactly where it's at.

Hon. P. Priddy: I don't know if the member canvassed adult guardianship with the Attorney General, but adult guardianship legislation is under the Attorney General ministry.

K. Whittred: Well, yes, I know it's under the Attorney General's ministry. I do believe, though, that the office for seniors has published some information on it. Again, I sort of get back to the point that came up last year: the whole office for seniors is a multidisciplinary office. I believe that we might expect a response from the ministry, certainly at least on a surface level, to a simple question such as: what is the status of it? All I want to know is: is it in effect or not?

Hon. P. Priddy: I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to dodge the question; I'm just always careful with other people's legislation. I think most people who know me know that I was involved with this before government, so I am actually very supportive of the adult guardianship legislation. My understanding of the current status -- again, the legislation belongs to the Attorney General -- is that the legislation has not yet been proclaimed and therefore is not in force, although many people are signing representational agreements anyway.

K. Whittred: That is my understanding as well, and that is part of the reason that I was asking this, in that I do get quite a few calls about it. I am curious. If this legislation has not been proclaimed. . . . There are organizations out there that are holding seminars on how to use it. They are in fact faxing around copies of representational agreements. I have had calls from lawyers who don't know exactly what to do with it. I am wondering what this minister, who is responsible for seniors, does about people who are using this agreement when it in fact is not law.

[4:15]

K. Whittred: I will now move on to something near and dear to my heart, which is seniors housing. Last year when I approached this, I was told that housing also does not fall under this ministry. Later I was also told by the Housing minister that seniors housing didn't fall under his ministry. Of course, I wondered where it did fall. I'm going to ask the questions again anyway, even though I may in fact be told the same thing. The reason I think this is the appropriate place to be asking questions is that the kind of seniors housing we're talking about goes a little bit beyond regular housing into, a tiny bit, the element of protection, or what we call assisted living. I wonder if the minister can tell me if there has been any action on this front in the past year.

Hon. P. Priddy: I won't tell you it's under the Minister of Housing. How's that? I did with the Attorney General because other people's legislation makes me a touch cautious. But there are lots of examples where it is an interministerial responsibility. I don't think any of us should say, "Excuse me; it's my colleague's down the road," except when you have something that you think you shouldn't be tripping down, as in legislation.

Actually, there is a planning committee currently underway with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, looking at supportive housing for seniors. We have, I think, talked to almost every municipality around the province. I mean, this has got lots of partners in it: the office for seniors, the Ministries of Housing and Municipal Affairs and individual municipalities, which are often the determiners of how we organize housing in individual communities. We've done the literature review and the planning with people, and so on. It's not quite ready yet, but we think that that particular report. . . . As a matter of fact, I shared this with my provincial and federal colleagues the last time we got together. There's actually a lot of interest in this across the country. I think everybody would recognize what we have done around supportive housing for seniors. There are several seniors' co-op residences in my constituency, but in a more comprehensive way we haven't done the kind of work that's necessary to look at supportive housing for seniors.

So there is a planning process underway -- consultation with all the municipalities, working with Municipal Affairs, working with Housing. As soon as that planning is finished, we'll be able to have the strategies that help us say to a municipality: "If you do this, then we can draw health care from here." Even in supportive housing, there may be some health needs for people. We'll be able to say to the Minister of Housing: "Well, if you've got some actual extra dollars for supportive housing, we can use those over here." It will help us develop those strategies. I appreciate the member's comments. There is planning underway.

K. Whittred: I wonder if the minister could tell me what the difference is between supportive housing and residential care.

Hon. P. Priddy: As I get older, I can't remember quite as long a list, so I will refer to my friend and partner and staff person here on the left if I run short on my list.

[ Page 10483 ]

K. Whittred: The minister spoke of a housing strategy. I wonder if the minister could tell me: when is this strategy to be announced, and what could we expect as the follow-up to that strategy?

Hon. P. Priddy: I'll just go back for a moment, member, if you don't mind, to add one point on my list that I didn't remember. If you look at a supported-housing model, some people would refer to that -- and I think quite fairly -- as almost a consumer protection model. I mean, people have a place to be, and it's safe and so on, but there are other kinds of support there for them. In a residential or extended-care facility, it's very much a care model -- a health care or care kind of model -- whereas this is much more independent and much more about some consumer protection.

To move on to your comment about when you can expect to see a strategy, we should have the results by fall. It would be in time to be in cooperation with the results of the continuing-care strategy, because I don't think we'd want to have this continuing-care strategy, as wonderful or whatever as it might be, and then another strategy out there. Not having these two linked together makes no sense whatsoever. So it's timed to be in sync with the community care review. Then we would work with both Municipal Affairs and Housing to present a strategy resulting from that.

Some of that may take some resources, but some of it may not. I think it's much more about a strategy that particularly talks with municipalities about how they can do that in a way that fits in their community and doesn't go against any of the housing principles that many communities hold. So it may require some resources, but I think it's just going to require pulling people together and saying: "Yeah, we can do the work, but we'll have to do it together." On the details of the strategy, I'd obviously have to report to you after those reports are in. But I would expect to see a strategy within a couple of months after that.

K. Whittred: With that, hon. Chair, I am going to conclude my remarks. I said initially that I was going to be brief. I haven't really gotten into half the things that I have available to me.

I would like to conclude with just a couple of observations. One is that I am very pleased that this year, in this general area of continuing care and seniors, we do have the government committed to a review of continuing care and a supported-housing strategy. Last year in estimates, neither of those things was in place. This year, of course, it's a little awkward to try to question those two things, because we don't know what the outcome will be. I look forward to next year, when we can really determine what the government has in mind. So with those remarks, I will conclude and turn it over to my colleague.

L. Stephens: I'm happy to participate in the Ministry of Health estimates. I'm going to be talking about women's issues. During the Women's Equality estimates debates, there were a number of areas that overlapped. Women's Equality is responsible for a broad-ranging area of women's health, but the Ministry of Health actually delivers a lot of the programs. Some of those programs are what I want to talk about today.

The provincial health officer's annual report of 1995 did a separate section on women's health, and he identified a number of areas that he felt needed to be addressed to support women-centred health care. I know the minister has within her ministry a women's health bureau and also the Minister's Advisory Council on Women's Health. Perhaps I'll start by asking her whether or not there have been some decisions taken around the report from the provincial health officer.

Perhaps just to refresh the minister's memory, it talked about the overall health status, living and working conditions of women, violence, substance abuse, mental health, reproductive health and chronic disease. I know there are a number of issues and ongoing strategies, particularly around the new health care, which we'll talk about a little later a bit more fully, and also the provincial HIV/AIDS program, which we'll talk about later on as well. For now, I'd like the minister to comment on this particular report -- how significant it has been for her ministry and what she sees happening as a result of this report.

Hon. P. Priddy: I don't have the report with me. You're going to canvass some of the specific issues around mental health and so on. As a result of that. . . . I don't think this is the easiest thing in the world to achieve, but I do know that we have moved a long way in terms of health care. If you don't mind if I describe that as regular health care. . . . The regular health care for the literate, English-speaking person who goes to hospital, be they female or male, tends to have some equity, some equality, to it. The areas that we're trying to move in are more challenging, because we have to work with each and every region to do it.

We did a workshop with the Health Association of British Columbia, regional health authorities and the women's advisory council to the ministry, because we wanted health authorities to have a sense of how women look at health care. It's not a better way; it's not a worse way. It's just a different way, sometimes, than our male counterparts. We did quite a good workshop with all the health authority representatives on what the issues are that women see differently in the health care system, how we can make this more women-focused and what the particular services are. There are some that are of particular concern to women.

[4:30]

When you're really frightened. . . . I know the member knows this, because she has talked about it as well. It's hard enough when English is your first language to make sure that all those things you're worried about -- the signs and symptoms that people are feeling -- get reported out accurately to a health care professional. It's triply hard if you can't do that in

[ Page 10484 ]

The other piece is around aboriginal women. I guess you could say this around aboriginal health in general. Some health authorities have a really good understanding of what aboriginal health care might mean, different than what it means to others. In systems that are quite matriarchal, it is women who have the responsibility and are often the healers in those communities. It is important for health authorities to understand it from a woman healer's perspective as well as from the perspective of a woman who is part of a family collective. We have actually written to the health authorities of B.C. and are working with aboriginal groups to be able to make sure that there's a women's perspective there as well.

There are parts of the mental health plan that are going on as well, but I understand that you'll canvass that separately. Well, I'll sit down and let you ask your next question.

L. Stephens: There are some very important and serious issues around accessing health care and health services information by people who do not have English as a first language. I know that some of the communities are trying very hard to address that particular issue, but it's getting to the groups of people who need that kind of service that is the critical factor. I wonder if the minister could talk a little bit about what her ministry is doing in that regard -- whether she is using informational brochures and education packages along those lines -- and perhaps what communities or parts of the province she's particularly targeting with those messages.

Hon. P. Priddy: There are actually some fine initiatives going on. You know, as soon as those words are out of your mouth, you always acknowledge: "And we can do better." But there are, I think, some good initiatives going on.

Let me start close to home for you and me and then move out a bit from that, if I might. Certainly for the South Asian community, particularly for Punjabi- and Hindi-speaking people, we do our health brochures in a variety of languages. Those aren't the only two. We have done some columns in the South Asian papers -- I don't think we've done one yet in the Chinese papers -- around health care issues that are of particular concern and maybe even of additional concern in the South Asian community. Let me use two as examples.

One is the issue of screening mammography. We know that a very low percentage of South Asian women have screening mammographies done. Now, the upside to that for older women is that they also have a much lower incidence of breast cancer than we do. On the other hand, by the time there are second-generation South Asian women, they won't, because we know that a lot of this is around diet and environment. So as we see second-generation women, they really need to be getting in for mammographies, because their incidence will increase. There are screening mammography clinics that are done with Punjabi- and Hindi-speaking staff people, so people will feel more comfortable being able to go to those clinics.

Diabetes is another concern in the South Asian population. By the way -- you know this, member, but for the benefit of the House -- that's people who are not only Punjabi- or Hindi-speaking, but also Urdu-speaking, people from Fiji. . . . It's a very wide group of people; it's not the more traditional groups that others might think of. But diabetes is quite an issue, and we're now running diabetic clinics -- certainly one in Surrey -- for the South Asian population, with people who speak those languages.

We also funded -- actually some time ago, but some of these pieces are part of it -- a project with the B.C. Cancer Agency around breast screening and breast cancer, which specifically targeted immigrant women -- obviously not just South Asians but immigrant women.

If you look at South Asians, then you're targeting parts of the province. I guess you could target everywhere, and that's not always possible in every language, but we're targeting areas like Prince George, Kamloops, Merritt -- areas where we know there are large South Asian populations.

We've just made arrangements to have health columns in the Chinese papers. We'll probably do that on at least a monthly basis. We'll try in the beginning to select issues that have perhaps particular relevance to the Chinese community and then move on to broader-based ones. Those two papers are in Chinese, and therefore it's not like circulating that in English, because it happens to go to that community.

We've done some TV programs. I've done radio programs with the Chinese radio station, and we've done programs with the major South Asian television station, talking about health care issues, as well, in both the Chinese and the South Asian communities.

One of the things I think we have to do. . . . I don't know if we're doing it quite as well, but we may be and I simply don't know, because it's not quite as close to me personally. We know that there are a growing number of people from Central America. So we need to be able to find ways to reach into that community in terms of using a language that is easier for people to use in the beginning, to be able to read the information and know where to go. I think the hospitals in particular -- I know that when I go to Vancouver and into a hospital. . . . I'm so used to going into Surrey and seeing the instructions in English and in Punjabi. You go into a hospital in Vancouver, and you see instructions in English and in Chinese. So I think that individual hospitals are also trying to pick up some of that kind of responsibility.

Just two more pieces. One is that we tried very hard to make sure that this information goes not only to women but also to men in those communities. I'm going to try to be careful here. Often -- not always, but sometimes -- women are dependent on their partner, their spouse, for assistance to get to lots of kinds of services. Therefore it's important that the spouse also knows how important it is that that health care be available for his wife or for his children. Those are a few of the things; I can add more, if you want to hear more.

L. Stephens: There is one area, and that's the emergency rooms of the acute-care hospitals. I suspect that that would be a difficulty if someone whose first language is not English came in with an emergency and was brought in on their own. Would there be an ability for the staff to access an interpreter of some kind? I know that is in fact the case in the court system. I wonder if the larger centres in the province, particularly, have that capability.

Hon. P. Priddy: I would not suggest that it's as consistent as it is in the court system. You always need to give honest answers. But certainly in most major hospitals, there are either staff or interpreters on call who speak that language. But as soon as those words leave my mouth, I'm sure you can go find several stories where that hasn't been the case. We are trying to have a way for that to be more consistent.

[ Page 10485 ]

So yes, most major hospitals have someone. It's probably harder in the middle of the night than it is during the day, but mostly they can manage that. I've heard some stories about where it hasn't been available, as well, so it's not a perfect system yet.

L. Stephens: The issue of elder abuse is one that seems to be growing. I know that hospitals and different sections of the Health ministry are concerned about this. Certainly in the continuing-care and extended-care sectors, this is an issue that comes up from time to time and is, again, part of the news. Certainly in my community we have such an instance being attended to at Jackman Manor.

On the issue of senior women generally, women who are not in hospitals or in continuing-care homes -- women who are isolated, living either in their own homes or in family members' homes, where it's much more difficult to access services and is sometimes under very difficult circumstances for them -- may be dependent, for various reasons, on the people they're living with. It becomes a bit of a detective game, I guess, to determine whether there are people who do need to have some kinds of support and services. It makes it doubly difficult if they are people who do not understand the language well or do not understand what their rights are.

I know there are some different non-profit societies that are working very hard to try to address this issue. I just wonder if the minister has anything within the Health ministry that deals with this particular health service, trying to bring that information to seniors -- particularly seniors who do not have English as a first language -- and secondly, if it is a focus of her ministry or whether it's something that goes along with the access-to-health and health services information packages she provides.

Hon. P. Priddy: There are some initiatives. I don't consider it actually. . . . Now, the member would know that I spent three and a half years at Women's Equality, so I'm not going to consider that it's wrapped up in some other package. I would be unable to bring myself to do that. There are some initiatives. Again, this is one of the issues that I think the member for North Vancouver-Lonsdale raised earlier -- about partnerships within government.

If you look at some of the work that is going on in our ministry, we are doing what's called connecting training for health care providers about the issues of senior abuse. It's hard to talk about elder abuse without. . . . We have the office for seniors, so I'll probably drift a little bit into other people's portfolios, if you'll just forgive me for that, hon. member. That's training for health care providers around recognizing and being astute on the issues of elder abuse. We think that should be really easy, but it's not.

[4:45]

We also work with the office of the public trustee, which is funding community response networks that are working with the non-profit or volunteer community in terms of being able to actually respond to seniors or elders. I must be in my story-telling mood. The first time I ever went to Portland, on the transit system they describe that it's so much for children, so much for teenagers and so much for adults, and then they say it's so much for honoured elders. I just thought it was such a nice way to talk about the seniors in their community.

The community response networks, which the public trustee actually has provided the funding for but which we're working with, are developing response networks in the community that will respond for seniors. We provide support to the British Columbia Coalition to Eliminate Abuse of Seniors. Those are dollars that are available for that organization to work within communities. You know, I think there are some things that work provincially, some things that work on the ground in the community and maybe some things that work together. So I'd like to think we have some role in this. But particularly in smaller communities, the people who live there often know who may be at risk or a particular place where someone may be at risk, and maybe they are better able to do that work on the ground if we can provide some funding for them.

The information guide, which is extremely well received. . . . We have a seniors' information guide that I just think is excellent, but it's only published in English. We are just now going into translation of that document into at least Chinese and Punjabi, and we'll see what we need to do beyond that. Those are some of the initiatives that we're taking around elder abuse, so I don't consider it to move off somewhere else. . . .

The other thing is that the ministry's advisory committee around women's health has also. . . . I guess I'll say this in two parts. They are obviously there to use the lens of women's health, but they've also taken a look at elders. They've been doing some costing from a health care perspective around the issue of abuse of women. Some of that had already been done, so I told them not to spend too long studying it; I'd rather get on with doing the work. But within that, they are also looking at that for elders.

L. Stephens: I want to talk a little bit about prescription-drug abuse, which I know the minister is aware of. There used to be quite a concern around this. I think the level of awareness has increased dramatically. I don't want to give the ministry a commercial here, but I know the ministry and Women's Equality made a video that talks about the pill epidemic -- it was on national television -- and about this very issue. Virtually everyone in the health care field knows about prescription drugs and what they can do. I recall talking to a number of paramedics who told me that their primary

[ Page 10486 ]

Hon. P. Priddy: There are several initiatives that are either ours or done in combination with other organizations. For instance, one of the drugs that we know is prescribed a lot -- who am I, a non-medical person, to say overprescribed? -- for elders is diazepam: Valium and its cousins, if you will. There is a program of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, where they monitor particular groups of drugs or a particular drug, and this is one that they have been paying special attention to. They monitor all prescribing habits of physicians around this, and when they see prescriptions being filled or when they see what seems to be an overly large number of prescriptions being written, then they will -- and have, by the way -- take action with a particular physician who is overprescribing. That would affect almost anybody, but you and I know that it would mostly affect women. I'm not sure it's always elder women, but certainly elder women and men both have issues about overprescription of diazepam. So that's one thing that we're doing.

Secondly, one of the things that has sometimes happened is that people become dependent on prescription drugs because they -- I think the phrase is -- multi-doc. That means they go from physician to physician to physician. If the last physician doesn't know that you had this, then you can get. . . . The member knows what I'm talking about. Because of our PharmaNet system, we are starting to see some differences as a result. When someone comes in with a prescription. . . . Generally, if we are talking about abuse -- advertent or inadvertent -- of prescription drugs, we're talking about sleeping pills and mood-altering drugs, we're not talking about an antibiotic. As you link into the PharmaNet system, it doesn't matter which doctor you went to last or in which part of the province; it flags that you have had three prescriptions of this from somewhere else. That's another way of trying to monitor the overprescription or overuse, advertent or inadvertent, of those medications. The thing, though, that we can do. . . . I guess this isn't so much about overprescription, but the thing I think we can do better at is how seniors -- be they women or men, but at some stage there are more women than men, depending on how far down the life cycle we look at -- actually use the drug itself. As someone who is not yet an elder -- although 55 next year, but that doesn't quite qualify. . . .

Interjection.

Hon. P. Priddy: Same age as you, hon. Chair -- he just had his birthday.

I know that when I was doing my cancer treatment -- I'm a nurse, and I can read a prescription bottle reasonably well -- by the time I had eight or ten different prescriptions, all with different times to take them with food, without food or whatever, I was confused. So one of the issues that we can help with for seniors and for people who don't have English as a first language is the actual administration of them. A lot of the things that a paramedic will see when they come is somebody who has simply taken their medication incorrectly. They've taken too many, they've taken it at the wrong hour, it's the wrong drug interaction or it's something that was in the closet and they took it but they're not supposed to be taking it anymore. So part of that is some of the work that we haven't yet done and need to, which is actually understanding how to use the medication.

The other piece that I'd mention -- and I actually haven't checked with the staff person to my left here, but I will -- is that by giving people a trial prescription when they're first prescribed something, it's a way to monitor that somebody hasn't suddenly got six months' worth of diazepam. Off they go with it, and the addiction can happen within that period of time. People should get a trial prescription to see if the medication actually does what people want it to do.

My last comment is that I don't know if we are able to be clear enough -- sorry, the verb escapes me at the moment -- with seniors about the critical side effects of the interaction between alcohol and drugs. Maybe some people don't think this would be a big issue for elders, so we don't have to talk about it as much. But we do know that alcohol addiction among seniors is actually quite high; so when you add that to a drug interaction, you do have to call a paramedic.

Somebody said we might have one more thing here; just let me check before I sit down. Oh, of course -- I forgot the White Rock seniors project. You may know that one. Actually, this has been going on for awhile. It was new to me when I came to the ministry. I wasn't aware of it at all. The White Rock seniors project, which is an excellence in health community pilot project, is the means by which as many recommendations as possible from the Pharmacare Review Panel's report and the seniors medication strategy are implemented in a selected community with a large population of seniors. I think it's been going on since July 1995, and it's intended to be an education program staffed by volunteer seniors and designed to increase the medication knowledge of the elderly, with an intervention program staffed by a full-time pharmacist and a part-time nurse targeting seniors at high risk for medication-related programs. It's been incredibly successful.

L. Stephens: I want to leave seniors for the moment, because those two issues were at the top of the list for me in dealing with the problems that many of our seniors face. I want to talk a little bit more about sleeping pills and tranquillizers and about women generally -- the fact that many of them become addicted to these medications over the years. Perhaps there are not as many as there used to be. These particular medications used to be prescribed fairly liberally. However, the knowledge of the damage and the long-term damage to health that they can do, I think, has really helped to sensitize people to the long-term effects of these medications. Has the minister any knowledge of how prevalent this still is -- whether or not there are still some serious issues around addiction to sleeping pills and tranquillizers and whether or not there is a process underway to sort of rein that in, other than what the minister has talked about around Pharmacare and PharmaNet? When she's talking about that, I have another question for her: what part of the ministry is responsible for monitoring the kinds of medications that are being prescribed, and who does it go to? For instance, if whoever this is in the ministry is monitoring to see that in fact this particular individual has six months, eight months or a year. . . . What happens then? Just because they know. . . . What's the next step; what happens after that? Perhaps the minister could talk about what happens after the identification is made.

[5:00]

[ Page 10487 ]

Hon. P. Priddy: The primary responsibility. . . . The ministry doesn't monitor what prescriptions everybody has. That is the purpose of the PharmaNet computer system that is set up. The monitoring happens by pharmacists, who tap into that. There are some issues around confidentiality of information for individual patients as well. But when the pharmacist you present your prescription to taps into PharmaNet, they have a sense of what is happening and would have a responsibility, if they think there is an issue, to report it to their own organization. Again, the College of Physicians and Surgeons monitors, particularly, the prescribing of benzodiazepines, sleeping pills and sedative medications, as well, and is responsible for disciplining, and it does discipline physicians based on that. It's done in partnership with the ministry but not in the ministry. I expect that we will be doing a pilot project, starting in a particular community, around the use of both hypnotic and sedative drugs.

L. Stephens: I have a number of issues I want to talk about: aboriginal women's health and a few other things. With all due respect to the minister, I'd like to move through them quickly. I know there are an awful lot of issues in health that still need to be discussed, so if we can do that, then we'll move this along. I'm sure the minister would be thankful for that as well.

In the aboriginal women's health area. . . . This is a section of the ministry's responsibilities, and there are some huge issues around aboriginal women's health, as I know the minister knows, particularly in the urban centres of the province. I guess that first of all I'm going to ask the minister if she can answer this question: what changes will there be, if any, in the provincial Ministry of Health's delivering of aboriginal health care programs to the Nisga'a, for instance, with the new agreement that's in place? That's one we have in place, so I'll ask her to just comment on that. She can't comment on the other agreements that are to come forward, but I'd ask her to comment on whether or not there will be substantive changes to the delivery of health care by the province in regards to the Nisga'a agreement.

Hon. P. Priddy: In regards to the member's question around the Nisga'a, we've had an agreement for a very long time with the Nisga'a. They've controlled their own health care services through what is virtually a community health council, and that's what they'll continue to do.

L. Stephens: The aboriginal women in British Columbia here -- and we'll talk about those in the urban centres, particularly in the downtown east side. . . . Drug and alcohol abuse has the most impact. My understanding is that alcohol abuse is common in 93 percent of aboriginal communities, and drug abuse is common in 81 percent. I know the minister understands that this is a very difficult issue for the aboriginal communities themselves. I'd ask the minister, then: what kinds of programs does her ministry deliver to aboriginal communities around the province, and through what mechanisms?

Hon. P. Priddy: We work, in a large part, through the six aboriginal health councils throughout the province. Aside from the Nisga'a one, which we've talked about and, which is guiding its own health care services, we provide funding through the six aboriginal health councils. Those aboriginal health councils work within their geographic constituency, if you will, to identify the priorities for health care.

Maybe I can just give the member a couple of examples of this that may go into some things that she wanted to ask later. There is an HIV/AIDS reduction awareness. . . . Some of these dollars would go to men as well, but a significant amount goes to women. Earlier you mentioned HIV/AIDS. The project is actually called Healing Our Spirit; it's the B.C. First Nations AIDS Society. They've been funded to half a million dollars to do awareness and education programs. We've done sexual abuse intervention counselling through the aboriginal health division. We've done health education and hospital liaison, which is the first nations women's group in Prince Rupert -- a dynamite group of women. They've been funded to provide two of the main kinds of service for primarily women in that area around accessing hospital and health services by being a bridge or liaison -- or however you want to describe that -- between the patient and the band service. Often it includes providing translation services, as well, because many people use their own aboriginal language. Native community health services, as well -- the Central Interior Native Health Society. . . . We provide funding for administrative, clerical and health care staff, which includes a nurse and a doctor. That work is ongoing, as well, around trying to make a difference in health status, certainly with aboriginal women.

I'm just trying to think if there was an additional one here. No, there's not an additional initiative.

L. Stephens: The Stopping the Violence Against Women program -- I understand there is a memorandum of understanding between Women's Equality and the Ministry of Health to deliver those programs around aboriginal family violence services. It says: "The agreement will address the parameters for allocation of funds, requirements of monitoring and reporting on the status of the programs and procedures for cost recovery." Could the minister tell me the amount of money the ministry spends on aboriginal family violence services?

Hon. P. Priddy: The amount of money that is, if you will, journal-vouchered from the Ministry of Women's Equality to the Ministry of Health is $2 million.

L. Stephens: Is that $2 million spent in the aboriginal family violence service? If so, could the minister talk about where that money is allocated? Is it allocated to the six aboriginal health councils, or is it allocated to non-profit societies to deliver those programs?

Hon. P. Priddy: It's allocated to the six aboriginal health councils, which in turn allocate it to non-profit societies.

L. Stephens: Could the minister talk about how the monitoring and reporting works? What kind of processes are in place for the ministry to in fact know what the money is being spent on?

Hon. P. Priddy: They are monitored by the aboriginal health councils. We have taken some additional steps this year around how that reporting and accountability is done. I actually want to see outcomes for the dollars -- not just, "Did you spend it?" and "Who did you spend it on?" So we've added an additional clause to their contracts that says they must report out on the actual outcomes for people of how the dollars are spent.

L. Stephens: Perhaps the minister could elaborate a little on what that kind of reporting structure would look like. Would there be an audit, for instance? Would the ministry be

[ Page 10488 ]

Hon. P. Priddy: The first thing is that they are certainly audited. While that's an important thing to do, audits don't always tell you much about program outcomes. But certainly they are audited. There are periodic visits by our staff to those programs to ensure that the money is indeed being used for the target group for whom it is intended. We will be providing guidelines for the health councils on how to actually describe outcomes. It's fairly new to government -- it probably shouldn't be -- to actually expect people to be able to document outcomes, like: has it made a difference for people? I would actually be expecting to see outcomes that look like this: as a result of action A, this family was able to stay together -- or sometimes not; or as a result of this, this woman was able to return to the workforce. I want to see the actual difference it has made in people's lives.

L. Stephens: Do these health councils also deliver the aboriginal drug and alcohol abuse programs in the province?

Hon. P. Priddy: The aboriginal health councils deliver some alcohol and drug programs, but there are a number that are either the responsibility of this ministry or the responsibility of Children and Families. They do do some, but not the whole complement.

L. Stephens: Could the minister outline what programs the aboriginal health councils are responsible for and what programs the Minister of Health is responsible for?

[5:15]

The programs that are funded through the ministry -- and again, it's not clear-cut. . . . For instance, we fund the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre, and they, within the plan of their work, will deliver some of the alcohol and drug programs that they see are needed in their community.

I hope there is not an overlap between the programs, but there may be some similarity.

L. Stephens: Time after time after time we hear about the lack of treatment beds and detox facilities for everyone, actually, who has this particular problem. The aboriginal population is affected more than the other populations at large. I would like the minister to talk about what kind of plans her ministry has for new detox beds and for new drug and alcohol treatment centre beds. I know that as far as the women are concerned, there are the two: there is Peggy's Place, and there also is Atira House in Surrey. These are the only two facilities for women to receive any kind of drug and alcohol counselling, with the exception of the women's centre for excellence.

The number of beds is very, very low for the population of the province. It seems to me that we need to do. . . . When we talk about prevention and intervention, that's the place to do it. I know that this minister and the ministry itself -- and the government, frankly, in different ministries -- talk about early intervention and prevention programs, saying that that's the way we need to address these issues. I completely agree. But it's got to happen. The resources have got to be put into the kinds of facilities that will allow for those intervention programs to be successful. There has been study after study, which I know the minister is aware of, that talks about the need for these kinds of beds.

I would like the minister to talk a little bit about her plans this year to increase those treatment beds for drug and alcohol abuse, and for detox beds -- whatever part of her ministry is appropriate. I know that Children and Families has a role in this as well, and they have to come to grips with the kinds of facilities and resources they need to put forward. But I'd like to know what this minister's ministry is doing to address these two issues for this year.

Hon. P. Priddy: We are doing a number of prevention and early intervention programs. But when the member asks what we're doing about detox beds or treatment centre beds, we don't have that responsibility or that budget. It is totally within the purview of the Ministry for Children and Families. I'm not trying to duck the issue; we don't have the responsibility for treatment beds or detox beds. But I am aware of some plans underway in Children and Families to address some of these issues.

L. Stephens: So the minister is telling me that Children and Families has the responsibility for adult drug and alcohol abuse programs, as well as for youth and children.

Interjection.

L. Stephens: Thank you.

One more question. The saline-breast-implant issue has come forward. We've had the silicone-breast-implant problem, and now we have the saline implants. Could the minister comment? Is she monitoring this situation? Is she prepared to address this issue in any way?

Hon. P. Priddy: It's quite frightening that we did silicone breast implants and saw the lawsuits involved, and the pain and suffering of women, and are now going through the same thing again with saline implants. We have not got a particular initiative in the ministry to monitor it, but we have indeed stayed in contact with the medical community. The B.C. Cancer Agency will sometimes see women if the implant was done as a result of surgery they've had because they've had a cancer diagnosis. Certainly the College of Physicians of B.C. are in contact with primarily the surgeons, who. . . . I won't say they have a responsibility; that's not what I mean. They are the people who have contact with those women. But we don't have a particular initiative within the Ministry of Health around the saline implants.

S. Hawkins: I just want to go back to the regional budgets for a minute, because many of the regions are now reporting in and submitting their budgets. I understand that many of them are finding themselves in deficit situations. The minister said before that the health regions' budgets aren't finalized, that the minister is going to be reviewing them and approving the budgets. I have published reports from ministry communications, telling the public that balanced budgets are the only budgets that the ministry will accept from the regions. So if the regions are forwarding budgets that are $1.8

[ Page 10489 ]

Hon. P. Priddy: I believe we have canvassed this before in estimates on a couple of occasions with several different members. We have always asked, probably for the last 15 years, for hospitals or facilities to submit balanced budgets, so there's nothing very new at all about this. What we have asked people to do is submit a balanced budget and indicate, in order to get to that balanced budget, what kind of actions they would take. That's the kind of information that informs our final decisions about where boards might need additional assistance.

S. Hawkins: Well, again some very unhelpful answers. And yes, we've canvassed, but we never get an answer that's suitable. We have said to the minister that hospitals have said that they're going to have to cut beds and that regional authorities have said they're going to have to cut patient services. I'm wondering which services the ministry feels are acceptable services to cut. I can tell you that patients in the areas don't think it's acceptable to cut. And yes, we have seen authorities or hospital boards having to submit balanced budgets, but every year what we've seen with those balanced budgets is cuts in services and cuts in hospital beds. Frankly, I don't think the ministry has been honest enough to admit that in the past. In fact, with the last minister, when we did mention last year that. . . . In fact, I'll use my own hospital. Kelowna General Hospital had 18 beds closed last year. She said those were normal summer closures, and they weren't. In fact, those beds never opened.

Again, it's very frustrating. And isn't it convenient that we're almost at the end of estimates and you don't have the budgets for the regional health authorities finalized, so we can't scrutinize them here? So we will be watching what happens very carefully. Last year we didn't get that information, because it was the first year, and they said it was in transition. This year we don't get the information, because the minister sits there and says: "It's the first year that the regional health authorities are doing it." So we don't get the information. Frankly, I think it's appalling. We don't get any information from this ministry, because, as I've said repeatedly, this ministry hasn't filed an annual report for the last three years. It's very frustrating to get answers from a minister and a ministry that are responsible for one-third of provincial spending, that should be accountable to the public and to patients for that kind of spending. It's very frustrating to sit here and get glossed-over answers.

I'm going to turn the floor over to my colleague from Shuswap for some questions as well.

G. Abbott: I have a few questions with respect to the recent agreement between the HEU facilities sector and HEABC. I just want to get a recap of some of the main features of the agreement and of what the cost of those changes in the agreement will be. Can the minister confirm, first of all on the money side of things, that it is a three-year deal of zero-zero-and-2, as has been discussed in the media, and that there is provision for 1 percent per year for pay equity? Is that correct?

Hon. P. Priddy: That's correct.

G. Abbott: Could the minister advise what the cost will be in year three when the 2 percent increase comes into effect? What will the overall cost be in terms of that agreement?

Hon. P. Priddy: No, I don't have that information with me. I'll get it if the member would like it.

G. Abbott: The 1 percent per year for pay equity is in all three years of the agreement. Could the minister advise, first of all, what the cost of that 1 percent per year is?

[5:30]

G. Abbott: Just to make sure I've got it right, the estimated cost that has been arrived at for the facilities sector agreement is $13 million in the current year, $26 million next year and $62.5 million in the third year of the collective agreement. That $62.5 million is not a cumulative figure. Is that correct? Thank you.

The Chair: Through the Chair, please, members.

G. Abbott: Could the minister advise what the specific purpose of the 1 percent pay equity provision is? The reason I'm asking this is that the provision for 1 percent pay equity appears in every agreement that has been reached between the HEU and HEABC since 1991, and I'm wondering why it is a persistent and ongoing factor in those agreements. Is the 1 percent to address -- obviously -- specific inequities, or has it come to represent something else in the contract provisions?

Hon. P. Priddy: I wasn't sure if it was '91 or '92. That's all I was checking on.

No, it doesn't represent anything else; it continues to represent pay equity. For the most part, although there are exceptions to it, that is addressed towards women in low-paying positions.

G. Abbott: To follow up, then, if the issue is women in the lower-paying positions, are we addressing it over time through the 1 percent provision? Or are there factors at work which continually put the goalposts a little further out of reach? In short, is the 1 percent provision something we will see in perpetuity in contracts of this sort? Or are we seeing the goalposts coming into sight, so that we presumably achieve equity through some contract period in the foreseeable future?

Hon. P. Priddy: I expect it will be there for some time to come, but I also expect an end to be in sight. If we use the direct government employees' pay equity as an example, I think there's a small amount in this year's contract, and that's the end of it. That began, certainly, before our administration. It began in the eighties under the previous administration, but this is, I think, the last year for it. Yes, I would expect to see an end.

[ Page 10490 ]

The agreement also provides for significant improvements from the employee perspective in the LTD package and in health and dental benefits and in a number of lesser benefits, as well, as I read it here. Do the costs which the minister outlined take into account all of those benefits, or are those in addition to the figures which the minister provided to me?

Interjection.

Hon. P. Priddy: Sorry, we were having a brief discussion. The staff person who is most familiar with this agreement is not here. My staff think the figure I gave you is inclusive of benefits, but I'm not certain of that. I'd want to check with the deputy, who should be back very soon, and we'll clarify that for you.

G. Abbott: Could the minister outline which tables remain to be resolved? I know they're not in the facilities sector but in the community sector. What tables remain to be resolved at this point in discussions?

Hon. P. Priddy: There are tables yet to be resolved. One is the nurses' table; one is the paramedical professionals table; the community table, to which the member has already referred; and a fairly small table, the provincial association of residents and interns.

G. Abbott: The additional costs that the minister has noted, which arise from the facilities sector agreement. . . . When we have that in combination, presumably, with the remaining tables at some point, there is obviously a substantial new cost. How does the ministry set about distributing those costs? Who pays for the new agreement? Do the regions get additional allocation to deal with that? How does the ministry deal with that additional cost burden?

Hon. P. Priddy: Knowing, of course, that negotiations aren't completed yet, what has happened historically is that there have been additional dollars to the Ministry of Health to cover those wage costs for health authorities or for whoever.

S. Hawkins: I want to ask the minister a few questions about mental health for the next 20 minutes or so, and we'll probably continue that tomorrow. Earlier this year the ministry announced a seven-year mental health plan. I know I'm being repetitive by saying that the ministry has said that it would spend $10 million of that this year. We're into the second quarter of spending. I wonder if the minister can outline for us, then, the implementation framework for the $10 million that's going to be spent on mental health across the province this year.

Hon. P. Priddy: There will be $10 million spent on the framework.

S. Hawkins: Well, that's the kind of helpful answers we've been getting all along, I guess. Where will that $10 million be spent, how will it be spent and on what kinds of programs? A $10 million chunk doesn't just. . . . Is the minister planning to spend that money this year? This is the second quarter of the budget year. We've heard promises from this minister and from this government before -- well, over the last few years -- on reducing wait-lists. Frankly, we haven't seen a reduction in wait-lists. In fact, we've seen wait-lists being blown out of proportion, and we're seeing the longest wait-lists in the history of this province. So if the minister can be just a little more specific about where that $10 million is going to be spent on mental health. . . . It's not just this member standing on this side that's interested; it's all those patients out in the community and people with mental disabilities that are asking.

Hon. P. Priddy: I can give you the categories that we will be spending the $10 million on. We're working with the health authorities around specific initiatives in their own areas. As those arrangements are made and as we receive Treasury Board approval, we will be talking about those in more detail. But the $10 million will be spent on. . . .

Interjection.

Hon. P. Priddy: Well, if the member is going to shake her head that she doesn't believe me, there's no point in giving the answer, hon. Chair.

S. Hawkins: Well, hon. Chair, I can't believe that this government announces a seven-year plan and says that $10 million of that $125 million will be spent this year. We are now into the second quarter of the budget year, and this minister still can't tell us where that money's going to be spent and how it's going to be spent. They're still waiting to hear from regional authorities. I'm getting frustrated, because everything we ask about, they're still waiting to hear on from regional authorities. Well, why are you making announcements like $125 million seven-year plans and saying you're going to spend $10 million of it this year, when you don't know where you're going to spend it? Why wouldn't you plan for it first? Why wouldn't the government do that? Why wouldn't they have a plan in place and know exactly where they are going to spend $10 million? How do we know that it's $10 million we need this year?

The government's got all these initiatives in place. They've got legislation on the order paper, and that's going to require a lot of resources. We're hearing from groups around the province that are concerned about the kind of resources that the implementation of that legislation is going to take. This minister is telling us that we've got this huge chunk of $10 million, and when we ask her where it's going to be spent, she tells us it is going to be spent this year. She says she's waiting to hear from regional authorities on how they want to spend it.

Well, I can tell you how they want to spend it. I've got a article here from Terrace, and basically they have beds they want to fund at Mills Memorial. They say the provincial government plan to put more psychiatric care beds in Terrace is welcome, but it should be planned properly. I mean, why make those kinds of promises on a $125 million seven-year plans if there's no plan?

An Hon. Member: So you can make an announcement.

S. Hawkins: I mean, it's something we've seen over and over from this government, hon. Chair: announcements. They're great at making announcements about plans -- wonderful. Gosh, I've got all the announcements on the psych centre in Kamloops. I've got four; count them up. And we still don't have that facility. We know we were downsizing Riverview over the last few years, and the government kept promising that there were going to be additional beds put in the regions. We still haven't seen them. But, boy, have we ever got

[ Page 10491 ]

Now we ask this minister, because they say that's where they're going to be spending the money -- second quarter of this year, you know. . . . We are asking where this money's going to be spent. The minister can't tell us. She says it's going to be spent, but she can't tell us where, because they. . . .

Why haven't we heard, then, hon. minister? Why haven't we heard yet from the health authorities? Why is it taking so long, when we're in the second quarter of the budget year? Those resources are desperately needed out in the community. This minister knows that, and a lot of the members opposite know that. As well, members on my side know that, because we get the letters, the phone calls, the complaints, the tears, the desperate pleas for help. So why do we not know yet -- it's the end of July -- where that money's going to be spent? Why don't we know that?

[5:45]

S. Hawkins: Well, I think the minister is being irresponsible if she's saying that this isn't the place to announce where that money will be spent. This is where we debate the budget estimates for this next year. That $10 million is in these budget estimates; that's where it is. Whether you and this government are going to spend it on housing or emergency beds or whatever, this is the place. I would put to the minister: this is the place. This minister and this ministry are accountable to this House for spending, because this House represents the people around the province; that is who the minister is responsible to. We expect those kinds of answers in these estimates. Frankly, we haven't gotten a lot of answers in these estimates.

Again, I have to question the planning that's done in the Ministry of Health. I'm very afraid of the kind of planning that's taking place, because I think there's a considerable lack of planning. Certainly, you know, the report is old; it's a '93-94 report that was done by the auditor general, the value-for-money audit that he did. . .

Interjection.

S. Hawkins: . . .on mental health. You know, I can tell the member for Skeena, if he's read that report, that the auditor general had some very significant concerns about spending in mental health. Frankly, I think it's appalling that we're not getting the kinds of answers we need to find out where those resources are specifically being spent.

Another month or two, and it'll be half of the budget year done. We've still got psych patients and facilities and hospitals and emergencies that are crying out for those funds. I think it's appalling that this minister can't tell us where that's going to be spent. I want to ask the minister if she can confirm if any of that money has been spent yet. Has any of the $10 million been spent to date?

Hon. P. Priddy: No, none of the money has been spent to date. Secondly, when the auditor general did his report, he was concerned that there was not an ability to trace outcomes for people with mental health needs. That was probably fair enough, because a lot of the money that was put out went to redress outstanding issues. These are dollars that are very much targeted to a niche group of people -- those people with severe and persistent mental illnesses. I have already said that the $10 million is going for supported housing, psychiatry sessions, subsidized work spaces, general rehab spaces, assertive case management and family respite days. If the member wants to know how much of that goes to every region or whatever, then I can provide it for her.

S. Hawkins: I'd like to point out exactly what the auditor general said. Yes, he was very interested and concerned about outcomes. But he also made a comment in his executive summary, saying that information has not been provided to the Legislative Assembly: "Members of the Legislative Assembly [have not] received information about the transfer of patients and funding from Riverview Hospital to the community." Those are the kinds of things that we are concerned about in this House -- when the ministry and the minister are accountable to this House for the spending they do, and we don't get that information.

Frankly, again, I'm very, very concerned. The minister is saying that none of that $10 million has been allotted so far to mental health programs. Next year the minister can be certain that we'll be coming back and asking about how every cent of that $10 million was allocated. Yes, when and if the ministry gets around to allocating the money, this member would like an accounting of how the $10 million is going to be spread around to the different authorities and which groups are going to get the funding.

I now want to ask about the mental health advocate. The minister also promised the appointment of a mental health advocate, and we want to know if the job has been filled, because we haven't heard. What exactly will be the role of the mental health advocate, and how much will that office require?

Hon. P. Priddy: The position of a mental health advocate has been advertised; people have been interviewed. The position has been offered, and we're simply waiting for formal approval to be able to announce that. Yes, the job has been offered.

In terms of the role that the mental health advocate will play, they'll play several different roles. They'll play a role as a system advocate. In part, that's what we need an advocate for in government: to look at whether the system is responding to people's needs, to see if the system is rolling out the mental health plan in the way that the plan was intended, to see if the resources are going to the places where we intended them to go. But the mental health advocate will also hear from families and individual consumers in the communities.

S. Hawkins: Can the minister tell us what amount is in this year's budget to provide for that office? Can she break that down for us?

[ Page 10492 ]

S. Hawkins: Can the minister tell us if that $100,000 is salary or if that $100,000 includes office space and all the backup required. Does it include an assistant? Can she be more specific?

Hon. P. Priddy: It reflects salary, benefits and operating for the remainder of the year.

S. Hawkins: When the minister says the remainder of the year, does that mean that next year the mental health advocate will be getting more than $100,000?

Hon. P. Priddy: Yes, it does mean that the office of the mental health advocate will probably receive more money than that next year. What we're doing is looking at ways in which we can efficiently use the operating dollars -- co-locating with other people in the Ministry of Health and looking for ways we can do that as inexpensively as possible.

S. Hawkins: We know that housing is a huge problem for the mentally ill, and we know that good housing is very difficult to find. We know that many of the advocates -- and certainly the minister is aware of Roderick Louis -- have said that for people with mental illness, safe and supported housing can make the difference between living a healthy existence and getting into a cycle of sickness. The minister announced on May 5 that there were going to be 200 more supported independent-living units. I wonder if she can tell us where those 200 units are.

Hon. P. Priddy: I have asked staff to provide the list. I'm sorry; we don't have the spreadsheet here, but the 200 that are referred to are all outside the lower mainland. We will get you that information as a list of where they are, and we can probably provide that to you by tomorrow morning.

In terms of the housing continuum for people with mental illness, people are correct when they say that safe and supported housing is probably one of the most important things we can do in helping people remain supported and healthy in their communities.

We have a partnership with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Ministry of Housing, which was recently ratified. This will accommodate up to an additional 1,000 persons with mental illness in existing social housing units managed by non-profit societies, housing co-ops and public housing agencies throughout the province over the next six years. We'll make sure the spreadsheet of where the 200 are gets to the member in the morning.

One additional point. Funding in the amount of $1.6 million was provided to the Vancouver-Richmond regional health authority just recently for the development of an additional 200 supported-housing units through refurbishing existing stock. So they are moving ahead on that as well.

Seeing the time, hon. Chair, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.

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

Hon. P. Priddy: Noting the time, hon. Speaker, I move that the House stand recessed until 6:35 p.m. and thereafter sit until adjournment.

Motion approved.

The House recessed from 6 p.m. to 6:36 p.m.

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

Hon. P. Ramsey: I call second reading of Bill 39.

PUBLIC EDUCATION COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT ACT
(second reading continued)

J. Weisbeck: When debate was adjourned last Thursday night, I was referring to the concerns of a number of individuals. I had quoted from a newsletter from BCPSEA, which expressed their concerns about the process of this act and the future of school boards. I also referred to the chairperson for school district 23, who had a number of concerns as well, particularly about the agreement-in-committee and the impacts on the students and their families. As well, the superintendent of school district 23 has some similar concerns about this contract. He was, first of all, concerned about the staffing issue.

In the case of school district 23, special education instructors will have to be hired, but he commented that these instructors are very, very difficult to find and that their contracts are actually very expensive. The timing of this contract is crucial, too, considering that they're on vacation in the summertime and that trying to draw people to British Columbia has obviously always been difficult. We know that in the high-tech industry. . . . When I was speaking to someone in one of the industries in the high-tech sector, the comment was that one of their biggest problems in drawing people to British Columbia is the high cost of housing. I'm certain that this will have an impact, as well, on hiring some of these individuals and trying to draw them to this province.

We're also concerned about the lack of lead time for the school districts to hire these people. The minister has promised more teachers and smaller classes. Having visited a number of schools in my riding, seeing students hanging from the rafters and the proliferation of portables, my immediate reaction when I saw this bill was: where are all these extra students going to be placed? The minister might be relying on the fact that the increasing trend is people moving out of British Columbia and that we're going to have fewer students to deal with in the fall, but I think we all know that that's not going to happen. We know there's going to be increased demand, particularly in the legislation of smaller class size in kindergarten-to-grade-3 offered by this contract.

We also know that new construction will not fulfil those needs, so it's obvious that somewhere along the way, more portables are going to have to be placed after the shuffle when students are moved from school to school. Currently in British Columbia there are 3,091 portables. From the year 1991-92 to the present, there has been an increase of 1,435 portables in this province. It has exactly doubled in the time that this government has been elected. They've obviously left a legacy of portables, and I don't see that changing very much in the near future. In school district 23 there were 168 portables built between 1966 and 1995.

[ Page 10493 ]

What I'm concerned about is whether the quality of education is being affected by portables -- both the ability of a teacher to teach and the ability of a student to learn. Certainly we know that portables have some difficulty from a management point of view. We know that maintenance of portables is 10 to 12 percent higher than for normal classrooms. We know they're difficult to keep clean because of their distance from the main buildings and the difficulty of getting equipment out to them. Certainly there's an increase in the number of break-ins in portables, and obviously that has an impact on insurance and deductibles.

A thing that I noted particularly in one of my schools is that they were losing some playground space. In fact, Rutland Secondary was losing two tennis courts because of the space required for portables. We all know that there seems to be a concern out there that there is an impact with portables. I know that the member opposite, the member for Malahat-Juan de Fuca, commented in Hansard: "We've heard many members over the years talk about the problems associated with our students getting an education in portables. It's not conducive to a good, healthy education."

Are the teachers able to teach in portables, or do the portables have a negative effect? There was a study done last year by Charlie Naylor of the BCTF research department. The study was actually done on teacher safety and portable classrooms, but from teacher safety came, obviously, a number of other interesting results. When you think about teacher safety, you think about their concern about their own safety; their preoccupation with that safety is obviously distracting them from their jobs. This particular study involved seven school districts that were selected from areas with a high number of portables. It was a fairly good sample: 401 returns in this survey.

There were a number of issues, as I mentioned, that came out of this. I won't quote some of them, but I was interested in a few of them. It showed that 53 percent of the respondents had been teaching in portable classrooms for more than three years. At that time, we thought that portable classrooms were maybe a temporary issue; but, certainly under this government, they have become a very permanent fixture. Some of the concerns were about access; it was difficult to get to them. One basically talked about the poor ventilation and poor air quality. I have a concern about that too. They talked about how difficult it is to get TVs and videos to some of these portables. We talk about the provincial learning net and how that's going to be a very important part of our education. I am concerned about the difficulty of getting that line into those portables. One of the biggest concerns is about air quality. They found that 60 percent of people who taught in portables found that the air quality was much poorer. They were asked, "Is your ability to teach effectively in portables a factor?" and 42 percent said yes. Actually, they found that their teaching ability was lessened by having to teach in portables.

As I said, throughout this study they obviously had a number of concerns about their safety. It obviously does have an effect on their ability to teach. One of the recommendations out of the response was to move teachers from the portables and back into the schools. Certainly we know that the environment of portables is a concern. In my riding it's probably not that large a concern as in some -- maybe in some of the portables in the lower mainland, where they've had a fungus problem. Certainly in some of the interior and northern ridings, the cold winters will have an effect.

In conclusion, I support this amendment. There are two issues on which I will accept this amendment and thereby reject this bill. The first issue is the hijacked process, basically, which is really becoming a trademark of this government. The second is that this is a bad bill, because it splits up families in this province and because of the effect that the continuous reorganization will have on students. It is a bad bill because of the busing of students and the emotional impact on children who are forced to move out of their neighbourhoods due to rigid class size. British Columbia needs this amendment, and I am happy to support it.

[6:45]

The first thing I want to comment on is the Ministry of Education's annual report that was tabled just last week. It's interesting -- when you cruise through this document, which doesn't have a lot in it, quite frankly. . . . I was desperately looking for any comment about accountability in this document. Other than the message from the ministers, there is not one word about accountability in this entire document.

Then I went on, looking for any reference to school boards. I looked, in particular, under the chapter headed "Satisfaction." No surprise -- there is no comment from school boards under "Satisfaction." Then I looked for PACs, parent advisory councils. There's no comment whatsoever about parent advisory councils -- none. Then I desperately searched for any comment about governance, and the same thing: nothing there. So that's it for the annual report.

I have another document in my hand. This is also from the ministry -- in fact, it's from the minister -- dated June 25, 1998: "Minister Introduces Legislation to Save Education Agreement." Of course, this is Bill 39 that we are now debating -- in particular, the amendment by our colleague from Okanagan-Vernon dealing with the obvious fact that this agreement is not properly funded. We'll probably all see the disastrous effects of that by October 1, if not earlier.

When the minister tabled this bill for first reading -- this was June 25, and we didn't get around to second reading until July 21 -- he said that he wanted the legislation "to proceed quickly through the House so school districts can hire the new teachers and be prepared for the smaller K-to-3 classes. . . ." I'm wondering -- maybe this would be a question for committee stage -- what happened to this quick progress through the House. It was four weeks after the bill was tabled and first reading that we actually got around to what we are now dealing with, second reading debate on the bill. I think it's obvious that this government has no commitment to the agreement-in-committee or to Bill 39 or to any of the puffery that surrounds it all. There is no commitment there. Again, I'm fearful that as early as September 8, the first day back to school, and certainly in October, we are going to see the disastrous fallout from this bill. So there we are; we already see that there's no commitment from the government in its

[ Page 10494 ]

The government recommended ratification of this agreement, of course. I have the agreement-in-committee here: ". . .Government will recommend ratification of this agreement-in-committee. . . " to BCPSEA, as we call it -- the British Columbia Public School Employers Association. Well, as we know, 87 percent said: "Thanks, but no thanks." It reminds me of the Charlottetown accord, when we had a lot of people wandering around the country with Yes buttons on their chests and wherever else. The good people of Canada saw through that ruse and rejected Charlottetown. The good trustees of this province -- 87 percent -- saw through this document and said: "Thanks, but no thanks." Even though the government was desperate for a yes, we know that the duly elected local trustees, which this government has turned its back on, overwhelmingly said no. That, of course, is what we on this side of the House are saying as well: a well-documented no to this agreement.

Let's carry on with some examination of the background that led up to Bill 39, the bill that we will perhaps be voting on some time tonight or tomorrow or next month or whenever. I have a report -- the monthly newsletter from Teachers for Excellence in Education for May 1998. I know the members opposite won't care to hear about anything from the Teachers for Excellence, but it's. . . . I'm not going to get into the content, but the heading of this particular monthly report is interesting: "Controlling the Debate on Public Education." Well, I would suggest that that title fits the scenario that this government is attempting to do by pushing this bill, and therefore the agreement-in-committee, through the House and attempting to force-feed it to the trustees, the students and, of course, the parents, the taxpayers and the teachers. Everyone will be force-fed this document. This government wants to control the debate on public education.

We've seen what they've done with the collective bargaining process. That's their form of control. They're in love with collective bargaining when it suits their purpose and their friends in the union hiring halls. They abandon that entire process when it doesn't suit their agenda. It's quite clear that the agreement-in-committee, when it came on rough times. . . . When BCPSEA was not given adequate funding -- which the government, surprisingly enough, itself found -- they naturally had to say: "We're not getting anywhere with this collective bargaining process." So the government snuck into the back room through the back doors and produced this backward deal.

Hon. Speaker, the ministry has been bombarding us with propaganda, particularly if you happen to have children in the public system. I do have children in the public system, so I am the recipient of Better Learning. There's a secondary school edition -- summer 1998, it says; it came out before the summer started -- and an elementary school edition. The document really contains very little. I may comment in a moment -- in fact, I probably will -- on some of what's in it, but let's examine some of the fallout from this document. Now, this document allegedly went with every public school student to every public school home. I'm not so sure that that's the case, but that's the calculation.

Columnist, Les Leyne, in the Times Colonist picked up on something that some students in 100 Mile House produced because they got this document. Before they bothered to take it home to their parents, they thought: "Let's do a little exercise on what this cost our parents, the taxpayers of 100 Mile House and, of course, the rest of the province." Keep in mind that this document, which the students apparently discovered cost 25 cents an issue. . . . I presume that information came from the ministry. They calculated there were 616,000 public school students. They got out the calculator, and being good mathematicians from 100 Mile House. . . . It was $154,000 in public money -- in their parents' money -- to take this home and tell the parents how wonderful the system is, how wonderful the agreement-in-committee is and now, of course, how wonderful Bill 39 is, and to be sure to get their parents to vote yes in support of the agreement.

Well, thank God for students like those from 100 Mile House, because they've seen through this. These are the future taxpayers. They've calculated not only the $154,000 in taxpayers' money that this cost but now, as well, they're projecting. . . . It does say in these documents that there will be further editions or sequels. Then they say, "Well, it probably costs 46 cents a copy for thicker editions," and they estimate that the exact number of B.C. students will be 615,980. That produces the figure $283,350. So the price tag is growing as we speak. These are all from good students, as I say, from 100 Mile House. They've actually written a letter to the Minister of Education; I know he has it on his desk for answering. All the kids' names are at the bottom of that letter. So -- well done, 100 Mile House.

As well, there's a bit of fallout from Nelson. When the trustees of the Kootenay Lake school district, met and looked at these two documents, they said: "They're a waste of money." I entirely agree with them.

Before I get into a bit of the content of the documents, there's another one that the ministry has produced. It's a little smaller; it's headed "Education Opening Doors." Then you flip it open, and it's got: "Better learning equals more teachers plus more classrooms equals better learning equals more teachers plus more classrooms. . . " ad nauseam, ad infinitum. I don't know what this cost. I'll send this up to the kids at 100 Mile House; they'll have the answer -- a waste of more money. In the middle of the document -- and this is where I come in directly, as a parent of school-age children -- we are asked: "What do parents think?" Well, I can tell you what this parent thinks. I think the Teachers for Excellence understand, through that headline I cited earlier, the real issues we're debating in this bill and what's happening to public education in this province.

But in more general terms, parents think that the ministry, in conjunction with the BCTF executive, has hijacked public education; that's what parents think. Parents think there is little accountability in the K-to-12 system. Again, I cite the minister's annual report; there is no comment about accountability whatsoever, even in his own documents.

Parents think that they should have more say in the administration and direction of their tax-sponsored schools; that's what parents think. Parents think that if they line up over holiday weekends to demand and seek entry to traditional schools, they should be heeded. We see this time after time at the Easter break. It will probably be happening again in August, leading up to Labour Day, if there are any spots left in these traditional schools. Parents will be camped out overnight and over weekends, sacrificing their time so they can have more say in the process of their children's education in the public system.

Parents think that effective partnerships in public schools will include administration, staff, students, parents and the community -- all of those players -- in the process of public

[ Page 10495 ]

Parents think that choice and versatility should be more than mere words mouthed by the minister and the president of the BCTF. That's all they are; it's just mouthing, just going through the motions. Parents think and know that we can all do better for the public system.

I've made comments in this House previously in this session on the question of site-based management and how I think we can all do a much better job in the way we administer our public schools. I think there should be more initiatives on things, even like year-round schooling. At the moment we have only two elementary schools in this province on year-round schooling: Glendale Elementary in Williams Lake and Kanaka Creek Elementary in Maple Ridge. I would like to see more initiatives of that nature being undertaken.

[7:00]

We see the result. We see the result in a rejected agreement-in-committee -- rejected by 87 percent of the school trustees. And, of course, we see Bill 39, which is their attempt to ram this thing through the House before we adjourn for the summer, if we ever get around to doing that, so that by September 8 they'll have this document in place.

As late as and probably no later than October 1, I predict that we are going to see the real fallout from this agreement, this backroom deal. I don't think even the Minister of Education had much of a hand in this, because we know the influence of the Premier. We certainly know that the teachers of this province had very little hand in this document. They only did as they were told to do, if I may put it that way. Not even 50 percent of them voted in favour, when you factor in the 40,000-plus teachers. Not enough of them voted to actually represent 50 percent of the working teachers of this province. So BCPSEA was excluded from the process. I commented earlier on the lack of collective bargaining. In fact, even the Surrey and Vancouver school boards challenged the agreement at the Labour Relations Board. It's unfortunate that some of these legal challenges didn't go further, but we'll have to see how things play out in the legal context.

Recently in the Victoria News, there was an editorial that read, "Forget the Vancouver Island Marmot," which I thought was a bit cheeky. I don't know why they would suggest that we forget the Vancouver Island marmot. Actually, what they were talking about was: forget elected school boards. They equated those with the potential extinction of the marmot, and that's where we're headed. This government, through Bill 39 and other bills and government policy in public education, is putting the trustee on the same endangered list as the Vancouver Island marmot. Maybe we'll have to get petitions going around the province to save the trustee.

Parents say that if we are to have elected boards -- I go back to what parents are saying across this province -- those boards must have effective local control. The agreement-in-committee gives boards no control whatsoever. Everything is controlled out of the Premier's Office and, maybe indirectly, out of the Minister of Education's office.

Then, of course, we got the sales pitch. I've already talked about some of the sales pitch -- these Better Learning documents that we can now discard. They only cost $154,000, or whatever. And there will be more, I guess, which is unfortunate. Kit Krieger, president of the BCTF, started his travelling road show around the province to sell the agreement-in-committee. He and Novakowski met with all sorts of people. They even met with the Liberal education committee. That's fine; we appreciated their coming. But we knew, quite frankly, having met with them, that there were a lot of unanswered questions out there, and they didn't have the answers. Maybe in committee on this bill the minister will have the answers, but I somehow doubt it.

I must make another comment about Mr. Krieger, hon. Speaker, because sometimes his conduct leaves me a bit baffled. On April 4 of this year, Teachers for Excellence sponsored an education seminar in Vancouver, at Robson Square. My colleague sitting next to me, from Delta North, attended that conference. I know as a fact, because two people who registered for that seminar have told me. . . . The Education minister from Alberta and people from Australia and from Newfoundland and other parts of North America attended. Kit Krieger personally phoned a West Vancouver school trustee and the president of the B.C. Principals and Vice-Principals Association, and he told them: "Don't go to that conference, because it will be looked upon without favour by the BCTF." Well, that is shameful. I'm not suggesting, of course, that the government was a party to that, but the government is in cahoots with Kit Krieger on this deal, and we know how he conducts himself.

I might say, as well, about Mr. Krieger that he comes from West Vancouver and was well respected in the West Vancouver teaching community. In fact, he was the president of the West Vancouver Teachers Association when he was elected to the BCTF presidency. It's funny -- I hear Mr. Krieger talking about flexibility now; it's a nasty word in his lexicon. But interestingly enough, there are only two school districts in British Columbia that don't have fixed class sizes in their contract. Guess what: West Vancouver is one of them. Guess what: Kit Krieger, as the West Vancouver Teachers Association president, never once squawked or raised a concern about flexibility. It worked well, and still does, in West Vancouver. Suddenly he's the head of a 40,000-member union, and things have changed. We see the results; we see this backroom deal cooked up by the BCTF and the Premier.

As well, the minister. . . . Let's drag the minister into this for a moment. He spent $30,000 of our tax money to fly in superintendents from all over this province to sell this deal. My question for the minister is: why didn't he fly in the elected board chairs to sell this deal? Does he have some problem with elected officials? I guess he thought he could

[ Page 10496 ]

Now the government is constantly running ads telling us -- including parents and taxpayers, of course, all of us -- how wonderful the K-to-12 system will be if we pass Bill 39 and approve the agreement-in-committee, and how life will be great after Labour Day. I'm sorry, but I have no confidence that life will be great after Labour Day, and the further we get into this three-year deal, the worse it's going to get.

We know this government's broke -- just look at the disaster in the forest industry -- so how do they think they're going to pay for all this glorious. . . ? Eliminating portables and having librarians in every corner, counsellors in every classroom and teachers in classes of 18 -- how do they think they're going to pay for this?

Then, of course, the propaganda came home through the school kids -- Better Learning and the opening doors and the closing of offices and the backroom this and the shenanigans that. Everything adds up to a pretty sour atmosphere. In a way, it's unfortunate that we're debating this in the dog days of summer. I think it would be more appropriate if all parents and kids were at home in September, listening to this debate, where they could really sink their teeth into it. They're going to see the effect of this after the fact.

There's another thing as well, by the way, that I want to draw the House's attention to. If you look at the back of this Better Learning document, you'll see the three princes on the back. I guess this is by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen; our public school system's been surrendered to Buckingham Palace. Well, they've got more money than these guys have, I can tell you that.

I didn't bring the letter with me, but on June 2 the minister fired off a letter to all the board chairs. It was then, on June 2, that he finally recognized that there were chairs of the boards out there, and he thought it might be nice, sort of after the fact, to let them know that there was a document, that they should be giving it due consideration and that he'd be sending the superintendents back to tell them how wonderful it is. That's the way he has conducted himself.

In my comments earlier about the extinction of the Vancouver Island marmot, I suggested that maybe he could write to the marmots, as well, and let them know that they're about to be extinct. The way this government functions, for anything it touches, if it isn't extinct, it soon will be.

When I was going through all the editorials in the various newspapers -- in the fallout from the agreement-in-committee, when it was rejected by the trustees -- without exception, every editorial that I saw, both in local papers and in the Vancouver dailies, rejected the agreement: the Times Colonist, June 3; Vancouver Sun, June 3 and April 24 -- they saw what was wrong with this deal way back in April; Victoria News, a local newspaper; the Province, June 16. Of course, we know what the boards did with the agreement.

I should get a little closer to home. I've made some comments already about West Vancouver as one of the two school districts that my constituency covers. As well, I want to give the House the West Vancouver school board's reaction to this agreement-in-committee, which of course they rejected, along with 87 percent of their colleagues: "The greatest impacts for our district will be. . . " -- and they list five.

No. 1 is: the need to hire at least three additional teachers this year and provide classroom space. Maybe they're going to be like they are in Surrey; maybe they're all going to pitch their tents in September. I don't think West Vancouver has that in mind.

No. 2 is: the potential of having to move students from their home or catchment school if class size limits are exceeded. Isn't it ironic? I've already told the House about the excellent working relationships in West Vancouver -- where they don't worry about the strict class size and the problem of flexibility, because it isn't a problem in West Van. That's out the door with this agreement. Maybe Mr. Krieger would like to return to his home school district and comment on that.

No. 3 is: the potential of having to reorganize classes during the course of the school year. That's why I've been commenting about October -- because I know. I've seen this in the past -- when days were much better -- when my kids were bounced from a two-three split into a three-four, trying to shuffle the deck as best one can in difficult circumstances. Now school districts don't even have that luxury. They are really going to be locked in, and West Vancouver recognizes that.

No. 4 is: in years two and three of this agreement the district will be running out of classroom space at the elementary level. Portables? Wouldn't it be ironic if the very thing that the minister has announced he's going to get rid of is what we're going to see flourishing because there's nowhere else to go? There's no other space available. You can't build classrooms of a permanent nature fast enough to accommodate this agreement. There is just no way to do it. We're not going to be able to get ourselves to that point.

Finally, No. 5 from West Vancouver -- it's almost like the Letterman Top Ten, but I've only got five. . . . No. 5 is: loss of flexibility in determining the assignments and duties of non-enrolling teachers such as librarians, counsellors and special education staff.

So thank you, West Vancouver, for your input. I had a similar letter from North Vancouver. It doesn't really add any great detail to the concerns of West Van. I'm sure that every member on both sides, government and opposition, will be able to approach their school districts and come up with similar information.

I'm almost out of time, but before I sign off -- and the kids can return to their movies or whatever else they pick up off the satellite. . . . In January 1998 -- and my colleague the critic from Vernon has already made reference to this -- President Clinton, in addressing the American nation, said: ". . .we will actually be able to reduce class size in the first, second and third grades to an average of 18 students a class all across America." This ministry has stolen this from Bill Clinton, number one. Number two, instead of all across America, it will be all across British Columbia -- he hopes.

I suggest to this minister. . . . When I see that Mr. Clinton's talking about an average, I hope that. . . . Maybe in Washington, D.C., things are average, but we are much better and look at things in a different light than average. We cannot get ourselves locked into an idea that this government has stolen from across the border, Karl Struble-style, and simply throw it into the hopper and say that it's bound to work. Well, it won't work. It's not properly funded; it's not properly thought out; it's not properly debated; and there has been no consultation. In the meantime, they've wasted all sorts of time and money. We're now almost to the end of July; I'm almost to the end of my talking time. In four or five weeks from now, the public school doors will reopen, and we're going to have a disaster.

[ Page 10497 ]

[7:15]

I think this bill represents a failure of the current regime of collective bargaining in the public sector in British Columbia. I'm going to suggest that that, in large measure, is not just because of the model -- because I'm not sure that I know enough about the issue to pronounce a definitive judgment on the current model of public sector collective bargaining. But I do have the view that the reason we have this bill before us is because of the government's failure to allow the model to work and that in that respect, my problems with this bill are my problems with the way the government has handled collective bargaining in the public education sector. I think that if you go back over the last five years in the public education sector collective bargaining history, you'll find that things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. Let me try to explain some of what I mean when I say that.

First of all, I acknowledge -- and happily acknowledge -- that collective bargaining in the public sector is always going to be a challenge. Part of the challenge is because, of course, in practical terms, when we are talking about education and we're talking about health care, for example, we are talking about public services which may not be in all respects in a monopoly position but which are, for most of the clients of those services, virtually the only game in town. So if there is a strike in a public school in a community, the parents and the students don't have the choice they often have in the private sector of going down the street to buy another automobile or shop at another clothing store or eat out at another restaurant. If the school is closed, that's it; there's no more education in town. So the relationship between employer and employee in that context is always going to be different, I think, than it would be in the ordinary private sector. Also, there's the issue about who's in charge, who is the employer when we're talking about public sector collective bargaining, and that's going to take me to a particular aspect of the problem that this bill presents.

In the old system of collective bargaining in the public school sector -- which I don't claim to be an expert about, but I think I know just enough to begin to make one point about -- a particular problem had developed. On the one hand, a bargaining agent for teachers -- and I will be talking mostly about teachers -- was the B.C. Teachers Federation, a well-organized, well-motivated, well-funded large union, a union that has quite a lot of power in British Columbia as a voice for teachers in the public education sector. On the other side of the table at the negotiations, until the last few years, you had each of the school boards in British Columbia -- 75, I think. Now, oftentimes what that meant was that you had on the one side of the table a very powerful union that represented all of the teachers in the province, and you had on the other side of the table a school board that might be from a fairly small -- small in terms of population, small in terms of wealth -- school district. And all too often, at least if anecdotal labour history is to be believed, the BCTF had the upper hand in bargaining. And sometimes when the BCTF came up against a school board that was prepared to say no, and perhaps they had the resources to do that, then you'd have a standoff or a stalemate, and from time to time the government would step in and legislate an answer to the problem. In fact, that happened in 1993. There was a bill passed in 1993 called the Educational Programs Continuation Act. It's chapter 5 of the statutes of British Columbia of 1993.

A big part of this bill essentially imposes labour peace or resolution of the labour problem on the school district in Vancouver. But I want to make one point about the way in which that bill worked. That bill spoke about the continuation of teaching services on former terms and conditions, pending the resolution of the dispute that existed between the parties. It chose, as the mechanism for resolving that dispute, the appointment of an arbitrator. What happens when you use that model is that the arbitrator hears submissions from both sides, gives both sides the opportunity to present evidence and make submissions, and then he or she essentially renews, revises, rewrites and then imposes a collective agreement. In that model it's a neutral third-party arbitrator who has the power to resolve the dispute between the parties. It's not the government; it's not the minister; it's not an agent of the government or the minister -- it is an arbitrator. I think that under that model there is perhaps some possibility that the resulting agreement will represent a reasonable balance between the competing positions.

In 1993, the same year in which that arrangement was imposed on the teachers in Vancouver, the government also passed a bill called the Public Sector Employers Act. That act created a new model for collective bargaining in the public sector. I won't purport to describe at great length what it does, but for the purposes of the present debate it became the mechanism for the creation of the Public School Employers Association, which is, essentially, the bargaining agent on behalf of the school districts -- or at least that's what it's supposed to be.

I actually went back to Hansard, to the debates around this bill in 1993. The Premier -- that is, the person who is now the Premier -- appears to have been the person responsible for the introduction of the Public Sector Employers Act in 1993. There were a couple of things that he said that I think are interesting. He talks about that bill: "The bill strikes what we believe to be a fair balance between the need for accountability to government and preserving the ability of public agencies to manage themselves and their human resources." What that bill tried to do, according to the Premier, who introduced it in 1993, was ensure that there was some mechanism in place that kept a bit of a lid on public sector wage expectations, but at the same time ensured that the agencies that are responsible for managing the various parts of the public sector still had the ability to do so. In this case that would be school boards.

The Premier also said this: "The legislation establishes a process that builds on the existing collective bargaining process. . . . This government respects the collective bargaining process." So in 1993 the person who is now the Premier stood up and said: "We have a new model for public sector employee-employer collective bargaining, and it's a model which is intended to build on collective bargaining and to express the government's respect for collective bargaining."

That's an interesting concept. I think, actually, that the official opposition generally supported this bill in 1993, presumably because in 1993 the official opposition actually believed the Premier when he stood up and said that his government respected collective bargaining. I'm sure that there may have even been members of the government then who actually respected collective bargaining. The problem is that this bill does not respect collective bargaining. This bill is

[ Page 10498 ]

In 1996 this new model, introduced in 1993 for collective bargaining in the public education sector, failed again, and the government was required to pass legislation, which it did in the spring of 1996, I think. It's called the Education and Health Collective Bargaining Assistance Act. This was an early example of an attempt to use this new model of collective bargaining, which appears not to have succeeded. Again, I want to emphasize the way in which the government essentially legislated so as to prevent an industrial dispute in the public education sector. What they do is talk about the appointment of an industrial inquiry commissioner or a mediator. The commissioner or mediator would be provided by the parties, with recommendations to settle the terms and conditions of the collective agreement. Then those recommendations would be deemed to be the collective agreement between the parties. The recommendations were to include any matters previously agreed to by the parties, and the agreement could be varied, by agreement, between the employer and the trade union.

What I think this 1996 bill did was continue to preserve a form of a process for the resolution of the collective bargaining issues, which allowed both parties some input into it. It was independent from government and in fact allowed both parties, the employer and the trade union, to vary it over time if that was necessary. I suppose you could say that the new model didn't pass its first test in 1996, because the government essentially had to intervene. But the way it intervened was by creating a process that would result in agreement, as opposed to what they're doing here, which is essentially to legislate by imposing an agreement -- not an agreement made as a result of an impartial, independent inquiry or a mediated or arbitrated process, but rather an agreement imposed simply as a result of the will of government, which I think is. . . . I want to be fair about this, but that looks to me like a much more serious intrusion into this theoretical area of free collective bargaining, which the NDP are so quick to stand up and defend when it suits their political interests and so quick to slap in the face when it doesn't.

[7:30]

What I want to say, as a result of looking at what happened in 1993 and in 1996, and at what is now happening in 1998, is that I think the government's approach to the resolution of the problems that are presented by collective bargaining agreements in the public education sector is getting worse rather than better in terms of its respect for the idea of collective bargaining, in terms of its respect for the idea of school board autonomy, and in terms of all of the things the government was trying to fix in 1993, when it created this new model. What we have is a kind of slide that's going downhill, and that is really unfortunate in terms of what it means for the schoolchildren of British Columbia and for the parents, but also in terms of what it means for the future, if there is one, of collective bargaining in the public education sector in the province.

One of the other things that was said in the debate and that is recorded in Hansard concerning the bill in 1993 is of interest in light of the process which has led to the statute. My colleague the member for Richmond Centre asked the person who is now the Premier a question during committee stage debate. He put this proposition; he said: "The concept that is really embedded in this purposes section is that the government, as the main body that holds the purse, wants to be at the table and have some involvement during negotiations." That was the point that my colleague had seen in the 1993 act. He wanted the Premier to respond to that: what is the role of government going to be in collective bargaining in the public education sector? Is it the government, because the government is the main body that holds the purse, who is going to be at the table and have some involvement during negotiations?

Well, here's what the Premier said: ". . .we're not intending to be at the bargaining table in all these different sectors -- not at all; far from it. We're not trying to usurp the role of the employer. . . . We're not going to be at the table with public sector unions, interfering -- to use a stronger word -- with the bargaining process." Well, that's exactly what has happened here. In fact, government has interfered directly with the bargaining process. Once again, I suppose my fundamental problem here is that I smell the stench of hypocrisy all over this bill. It's a government that says that it's committed to collective bargaining, that makes speeches about that commitment in the context of defending Bill 26, and that introduces and defends a bill here, Bill 39, which I think is a direct attack on collective bargaining -- for better or for worse. It's just nice to catch the government at their real agenda, which is politics, not principle.

You know, even if all they were doing was imposing an agreement and then leaving the parties to their problems after that, I suppose there is a possibility that I might be prepared to look with some favour on that idea. But that's not enough for this government. This government doesn't just want to impose an agreement and then walk away and leave the parties back with their process. That's not good enough for this government. This government doesn't have any respect at all for local school boards or the ability of local school boards to make workable decisions.

In section 2(3), the government gives itself the power -- it's not just the government; it's the minister. . . . It doesn't just

[ Page 10499 ]

This doesn't simply impose a collective agreement and leave it. It imposes a collective agreement and then says: "We're in charge from here on in." The minister has an enduring, continuing role in ensuring that those nasty people, the school trustees, don't get up to any trouble by actually sitting down and having the effrontery to do a deal with the BCTF on behalf of their own constituents. "Oh, no; we don't want to do that. We want to make sure that government has its happy little hands on this particular process and its outcome for as long as it lasts."

You know, at some point in the next few days we'll get to debate Bill 50. Interestingly enough, Bill 50 will create some changes for public sector bargaining, including public sector bargaining in the education sector. I think the intention of this bill will be that the support staff who work for school boards will be brought back under the umbrella of the Public School Employers Association. No doubt when the members of the government stand up and defend that provision in Bill 50, we'll hear them make nice speeches about collective bargaining and how important it is that the Public Sector Employers Council be put into place where it can represent the interests of the people it has to represent and bargain collectively -- not just with teachers but also with support staff.

The truth of this government's attitude to public sector bargaining and to teachers and to students and to parents is in this bill. I think that proof of that is simply this: this government will do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, however it wants, to achieve its own political purposes. The rest of it can basically all sit and waste away into nothing.

For reasons that I tried to outline here, in addition to all the other reasons that my colleagues have elaborated on, I find myself unable to support this bill.

R. Neufeld: I rise to speak in support of the amendment to Bill 39. The amendment reads:

"That this House decline to give second reading to Bill (No. 39), the Public Education Collective Agreement Act, for the reason that the government has underestimated and inadequately funded the total cost of (a) the agreement-in-committee, (b) the existing collective agreements [and] (c) the capital construction arising from (a) and (b), and, as a result, will undermine British Columbian's confidence in the public school system."

It's absolutely unbelievable that we could sit here and listen, as I did, to hours of debate, hours of heckles in the House from members across the way -- from a previous Labour minister, who now sits on the back bench; from the present Labour minister; from union organizers, very strong ones, heckling individuals on this side of the House when we talked about Bill 26 and saying how they believed it was the workers' right and all of this, and that you have to work people together to get these agreements fleshed out. It's amazing that tonight, just a week or ten days later, we'd be standing in the same room, and it's the opposition that's talking about a fair collective agreement, not the government.

You know, it's quite a turn of events, how they can sit there and actually keep a straight face in this Legislature after watching and hearing what they've talked about in the last while. Now, they legislate something that 87 percent, I believe, of school trustees across the province said no to. But you know best, don't you, folks? It is so typical. From 1991 till now, it has not changed one iota. It's always: "We've had legal advice; trust us. We know better than you; trust us." Well, the people of British Columbia have trusted this government just a few times, and now they don't trust them on anything -- absolutely nothing. How could you blame the people of B.C. for not trusting this government? It's: "If you don't like it, we'll force it on you. We don't really care. We think it's right, and we're just going to force it on you." This government doesn't care about the ramifications of what will happen with this bill.

[7:45]

It's interesting that they do say that this year alone, they will invest an additional $338 million to create new spaces and new schools, school expansions and major renovations; and all of that's fine. But if that's what's required with the growth, shouldn't that normally be what happens? Why do you have to send out something to every school child in the whole province?

But they do go on further to say. . . . This is where they become a bit presumptuous, but that shouldn't surprise anyone in the opposition or anyone in British Columbia. They say: "Over the next five years. . . ." Now, they're two and a half years into a maximum five-year mandate. They've got two and a half years left. But they're telling British Columbians that over the next five years, we will invest a further $370 million to build an additional 1,000 new classrooms for kindergarten-to-grade-3, to help reduce the number of students per class -- or $74 million a year. It's all propaganda aimed at trying to convince parents that this little deal with

[ Page 10500 ]

The financial problems that this agreement puts into place will not really come into place until 1999. I don't know whether these folks will even be here in 1999. Who knows whether they're going to be here in 1999? I can tell you that about 80 percent of the people in British Columbia wish they were gone tomorrow. When they ask me, "When's the next election?" and I give them the day that it could be -- you know, figuring out the five-year term -- everybody goes: "My goodness, do we have to put up with this group of socialists for that long?" How can British Columbia handle this group of financial wizards until that time?

Interjection.

R. Neufeld: Hon. Speaker, here we have the Minister of Labour heckling me, the minister who just recently talked about collective agreements and how fair and how wonderful it was. Yet he's heckling me today. But once-size-fits-all doesn't work. The minister from Prince George should know that, but he's forcing something on the whole province as one-size-fits-all.

Areas such as those I represent have many rural schools that are a long way from any large population centre, whether they're in Toad River, Prespatou, Buick Creek, Halfway or Upper Pine. Some of those are well over 100 miles from any major centre. All of a sudden, when we hit that magic number. . . . You know, there's not another school just down the block, where you can split the kids up. That's what's going to happen under this bill. You end up at the magic number of children in a grade, and all of a sudden -- poof. "I'm sorry, young fellow or young lady, it doesn't matter whether you're from the same family or not; you're going to go down the street six or seven blocks to another school, because we've hit that magic number." It's the same in the rural schools. The only trouble is that the next school is well over 100 miles away. I don't know; I guess we'll just start another class. We'll split them down into smaller classes, and we'll go along that way.

It does not treat school districts equitably. You know, districts that have watched their dollars, that have been very careful about their dollars and that have watched their administration costs will be treated no differently -- absolutely no differently.

Interjection.

R. Neufeld: You're right, hon. member; they will be penalized. And that's not fair, but then, of course, that comes from the folks over there -- the Labour minister who knows better than anyone. My goodness, that is the icon of NDPism over there. I'll tell you, he knows the whole world inside out. Just give him ten minutes, hon. Speaker -- right after I sit down -- and he'll stand up and tell you about it. He'll stand up and tell you about how great a piece of legislation this is. He'll tell you how great this is -- how he as minister knows how to put this legislation in and how it'll work better for everyone. I can hardly wait to hear his words of wisdom, as he stands up and. . . . I'm sure that as soon as I sit down, he will stand up. Or maybe one of these other members from across the way -- that union organizer whose only claim to fame is building a building and it went flat broke within six months. He stood up twice on Bill 26, and, he told us: "You have to be a socialist to understand negotiations and labour. You just don't understand at all." It's going to be interesting. It will be very interesting to listen to this group -- as the member for Richmond-Steveston talked about -- talking to Bill 50 and about what's going to happen with Bill 50. But here they are, telling us today how much they know.

If you go to the newspapers across Canada -- at the same time, we're in this old socialist agenda, this old socialist rut so that, "If you don't like it, we're going to force it on you anyhow," like we have in British Columbia -- you read from maybe some more enlightened places when they talk about education. I'm just going to read into the record a little bit here:

"The education secretary will publish a paper later this year setting out changes to teachers' career structures, including fast-track promotion and a new system of pay incentives designed to encourage good teachers to stay. It's crucial to morale and to their recruitment, but it's central to the standard agenda. Teachers' pay is now based on the length of service. In the past, unions have rejected performance-related pay, claiming it is divisive and inappropriate."

"The paper will also promote direct recruitment from businesses and new classroom assistants to help with basic tasks, so freeing teachers to teach." It's interesting, a new phenomenon. I know it's tough for you folks across the way to understand that.

I know it's really tough for you to understand how maybe we should be changing some of these things, not just coming in as in 1993 and legislating teachers back to work. I remember clearly, in my constituency, that the longest school strike in B.C.'s history was in Fort St. John. Did this government react? Not a bit.

An Hon. Member: Vancouver.

R. Neufeld: Vancouver went on strike. I'll tell you, we were down here on a Sunday debating a bill that talked about arbitration. Arbitration -- did you hear that word? It's not here anymore. All of a sudden we've got another bill. "We didn't like that process. Only when we're talking about Bill 26 or the Labour Code or something to that effect does it work. But all of a sudden, when I'm going to look after my friends on one side, we're just going to lay the bill in front of you. It's going to be laid out, exactly what you're going to do, whether you like it or not -- no more room for negotiation."

The information that I read into the record and that I quoted is from the Observer, July 19, 1998 -- Tony Blair. That's a Labour government, I believe, isn't it? It's a Labour government talking about those kinds of things. And we have people in British Columbia still stuck in the last century, still floating along in a ditch that they shouldn't be in anymore.

I just also want to read briefly into the record a letter that was sent from one of my districts to the minister. I won't read all of it, because parts of it are pretty damning. But I do want to read the last part as my closing remarks. It says:

"Mr. Minister, we assure you of our dedication at all times to the educational well-being of the students in our care and ask that you reinvest your good intentions in a cooperative, fulfilling endeavour that values locally elected school boards and the

[ Page 10501 ]

mandates with which they are entrusted. We look forward to a future for public education that is indeed for the public and of the public, free from party, political and/or union manipulation."

With that, hon. Speaker, I can tell you that I will be voting against Bill 39 and in favour of the amendment.

I. Chong: I rise this evening to enter into debate on the amendment to Bill 39, the Public Education Collective Agreement Act. The amendment was put forth by my colleague the member for Okanagan-Vernon, who is the official opposition critic for Education. I know she has consulted extensively with a number of school boards and trustees throughout the province. Based on those consultations, she was able to conclude that Bill 39 could not and should not be supported, due to the reason indicated in her amendment. For the record, I wish to reiterate that reason. It is: ". . .the government has underestimated and inadequately funded the total cost of (a) the agreement-in-committee, (b) the existing collective agreement, [and] (c) the capital construction arising from (a) and (b), and as a result, will undermine British Columbians' confidence in the public school system."

I believe that the amendment is quite clear. What it is talking about is a government that has once again imposed its top-down, unaccountable and dictatorial will on British Columbians. I know that the government members will want to somehow spin our comments, our debate and our concerns into some form of mistruth, so I want to be very clear -- as I try to be in every debate I enter into. Firstly, I want to state that I do support the public education system and do support smaller class sizes, provided that it is in the best interests of students and that it does not compromise their educational opportunities.

As a product of the public education system, I remember being in class sizes of anywhere between 30 and 35 students. I also recall having to sit in cold portables during the winter months, and that wasn't particularly comfortable. That was a long time ago, and things have changed since then. We now see more involvement of parents and guardians in our education system through their established parent advisory councils. We also now see more interest from locally elected school trustees, more interest from the Principals and Vice-Principals Association and more interest from school administrators, all because of one similar concern that they share. That is the needs of the students.

[8:00]

You have to wonder if grades 4 to 12 have to give up some of their resources to deal with the K-to-3 initiatives. I know the minister is shaking his head; he would like to believe not. I would like to believe not, as well, but there is nothing in this piece of legislation that can give me that comfort. Once again I want to make it very clear. I am not against smaller class sizes, especially not for the K-to-3; however, I am against legislation that will reduce services to students.

I know the government members opposite have received a number of press releases, as we have on this side of the House, and for the record, I want to read a few of those into Hansard. On June 25, 1998, the B.C. School Trustees Association issued a press release, and within it, their president Carole James stated: "Trustees are deeply disappointed with the imposed contract." She goes on to say: "It is school boards that must find the resources, advocate for the funding to implement the agreement and ensure that the voices and concerns of our communities are heard and responded to." Those are wise words, and I applaud the fact that the president of the B.C. School Trustees Association was able to put those in writing to remind all of us that school boards have a role to play when it comes to the public education system. Their role is to deal with the funding shortages that may or may not occur. Some of the school boards have been very innovative, and for that reason they have been able to keep the quality of the education system less impacted than in other areas. But in some areas. . . . In the capital regional area, for example, I know the Sooke school district is having some tremendous difficulties. That is why we have to allow trustees an opportunity to work with this agreement. They're stating that they're not able to do so.

Further on in the press release, the president identifies trustee concerns, and I'm sure the minister has seen these. There are five concerns that have been identified. One is the class size limits, which could force schools to reorganize classes and, as a result, force students to move at any time during the school year. If that were to occur, it would be a very disruptive course of action for families. Another point that was raised is that the children would possibly have to move from their neighbourhoods because of the inflexible class size limits. They are already dealing with the fact that the class size limits are creating two identifiable problems. They've also stated that the contract causes classes to be disrupted and prevents students from being sure that they will have the same teacher all year.

When we talk about providing services to students, we want the least amount of disruption in their classrooms, and we want the opportunity for teachers to have some flexibility. It would be a very sad situation if a class size grew to the extent where one or two students had to be removed and to get another teacher and make new friends in another classroom. In the K-to-3 classes. . . . Those are our youngest students, the youngest and brightest minds, the ones that are most impressionable. It's very important that they develop a sense of independence and a bit of social acceptability within those classrooms which they are first enrolled in. To move them during the school year would not accomplish that.

Another point that the B.C. School Trustees Association raises is that the funding to hire librarians and counsellors is only available to districts that don't meet the specified ratios. They recognize that there is funding to hire librarians and counsellors; however, some districts won't be afforded that opportunity, because of specified ratios.

One of the final points they raise is that the contract is poorly written and will likely lead to numerous and expensive arbitrations. If we find that taxpayers' dollars, education dollars, are having to be spent on expensive arbitrations, as opposed to funding for student services, we are not being accountable to the taxpayers and the students of this province.

[ Page 10502 ]

Hon. Speaker, we also see a press release from the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils. I think that is one of the most important press releases we should heed, because it deals with parents -- the parents whose children will be attending and relying on a public school system. If they are concerned that "strict adherence to contractual class-size figures may be detrimental to the needs of students," then we should be paying attention to that.

Again, those are not my words. Those are the comments and concerns expressed by three independent organizations that felt the need to issue a press release to have this attention be brought forward to the Minister of Education and to members on this side of this House, in an effort to try to have their points and their voices heard.

The B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils issued a second press release. Their first one, I believe, was on May 15 and the second one was on June 18, so they took a reasonable amount of time to look at this particular agreement. What they're saying is that if we accept this legislation, we are going to create more problems in the public education system. It may not appear immediately, but it will eventually work its way through the system, and we will have to deal with it.

I heard the minister when he gave his opening remarks and made comments throughout the past month about this particular agreement. I heard his comments about the fact that, you know, busing is a fact of life and that it will continue to occur. But again, it's not the members on this side of the House that are raising those concerns and intending to have them introduced in a fearmongering way. We have seen parents write in -- parents who have written to their local papers, expressing the fact that they feel that their families will be torn apart by this new deal.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

On July 5, 1998, a Ms. Barbra Skates from Revelstoke wrote in. I'm sure the minister has seen that letter, and I think I heard our opposition critic read parts of that letter, so I won't read that into the record again. But suffice to say that Ms. Skates was concerned that her family of three children would be torn apart by this new deal, having to deal with going to different schools and having the older siblings not being able to be there in support of the younger siblings. We also see a letter from a Rowena Sartor from Burnaby. Again, she wrote in about the same issue. She, being a single parent, makes it even more crucial that we look at Bill 39 and make sure it does provide best for the needs of the students.

I also want to state that I do support the need to reduce the number of portables around this province. As I said, I had to sit, unfortunately, in a number of those portables when I was younger. However, we are in a day and age that we should be looking at changing that. For this government to finally accept and recognize that, they should be applauded. However, it's difficult to offer that commendation to the government, when since 1991 they have in fact increased the number of portables in this province. Now they're trying to reduce it, as if they are doing something magnanimous. I don't think the parents are being fooled by that. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors, much like that of our so-called balanced budget. I think people are finally able to see through some of this.

I think a number of my colleagues have already mentioned, or those who will speak after me will continue to mention, the necessity for us to maintain the autonomy of local school boards. Our locally elected school boards provide a service to our public education system. Our locally elected school boards have been entrusted with making decisions that best serve our students. They should very much have been a part of this agreement, and even if they weren't 100 percent a part of it, then they should at least have been able to feel comforted by some of the language -- that they could support it.

When you find that 87 percent of school trustees do not support this, that must tell you that there is something wrong. If we had 87 percent of municipal councillors disagreeing on a particular issue, I am sure that the Minister of Municipal Affairs -- maybe not the current one, but the former one I know -- would have listened. I would hope that this Minister of Education will pay heed to the fact that 87 percent of school trustees oppose this agreement.

The minister stated that there had to be government intervention. I'm afraid I just cannot buy that argument. If government comes along at every opportunity and imposes and intervenes, then it is saying that government can do whatever it wants. I've said time and time again that that's what the Minister of Forests said in the past -- that government can do whatever it wants. Because I don't accept that statement, I can't accept the argument that the Minister of Education provided.

I know that there are many others who wish to speak on this issue, and I think some very valid points have been made by my colleagues, particularly the Education critic, the member for Okanagan-Vernon. I think she offered a good amendment. Her amendment, as I stated earlier, defines the fact that this, in addition to the problems created in the education system now, has to do with a very fundamental problem of financial and fiscal responsibility to our taxpayers and to our students.

I would just like to conclude with stating that I visited with a class about a month ago, when they came to the Legislature for a visit. One of the students -- she was in grade 5. . . . I asked her what she thought of her class. She said to me: "Why is it that we can't have enough paper for our schools?" A fundamental thing such as school supplies is somehow not being funded. Those are the issues we should be addressing -- services to students -- not an agreement that 87 percent of school trustees cannot support.

I will be supporting the amendment, and I will be opposing Bill 39. With that, hon. Speaker, I conclude my remarks and take my seat.

[8:15]

[ Page 10503 ]

All of these major involvements are put into a bill which is simply one page listing the agreements but not the contents of the agreements. It has been very difficult to discover what the contents of those agreements are and what the implications are for education across our province. One thing that seems to be very clear, though, is that the kind of resources that are needed to put these agreements in place simply will not be available. The confusion that's going to grow even more in our schools, as it has grown in the last number of years, will continue.

One illustration, for instance, that has caused a great deal of confusion and that is still causing confusion in our province is the implication for class size in kindergarten and in grades 1 and 2. There are new, rigid, smaller class sizes being imposed until September 30. For many people the assumption still is -- and I've discussed it with others, because of the inability of Minister of Education to educate them otherwise -- that this rigidity will continue throughout the whole year. Yet the minister says that that's not true. I read the agreement, and I know that on September 30 -- and that's why I'm trying to get the message out on behalf of the minister, if you like, but more for the people of the community. . . .

On Sunday evening I talked to a person who had worked on the agreement, who said that the interpretation we got from the minister is in itself not true. As I understand it, at the end of September, the class size agreements that previously existed will then kick into place. Some schools will have more flexibility, and others will not have flexibility because their previous agreement did not allow it. He hasn't clarified the issue; he's just confused it even more for people.

I'm interested in a copy of a letter that was sent to the Minister for Children and Families. It has a direct bearing on this. I'd like to just read the first sentence, which has to do with all-day kindergarten programs: "We are requesting that the Minister of Education and the Minister for Children and Families include poverty-socioeconomic status as a criterion for accessing all-day kindergarten programs" -- because all-day kindergarten programs at the present time are only available to certain groups of students who have specific needs. That's fine as far as it goes, but there are a great many students in our province who, because of their socioeconomic and experiential backgrounds, are also in need of that education. I would convey that request to the minister, in case he didn't get a copy of the letter, so that that might be taken seriously in his renovation of the programs.

Coming back to the agreements before us, there is a great deal of emphasis on the fact of the zero-zero-and-2 pay increase -- no pay increase for teachers over the first and second years of the contract and 2 percent in the third year. But very little has been said about the improvements in teachers' benefits and about the early retirement package, which is also another so-called improvement. We need to be clear that other advantages have come to the teachers for their own personal benefit, even if it wasn't a "salary" benefit in this current year. That's the kind of cosy arrangement that the BCTF has with this government. They make these private deals on the side by memoranda, by articles signed between them and no one else. That's the concern we have.

We're also concerned that parents have not been supportive of this, at least through the PACs, the parents' committees. They have opposed this because they feel that they have also been left out of the discussion, the decision-making and the planning. They are also aware that the impact will come back upon them, their students and their families.

Then we have the concerns about where these new classrooms which are brought about by this new plan are going to be made available. For instance, just in Vancouver South, 70 new classrooms will be needed in schools that are already full and bulging. Where are we going to find those, unless we bring in more portables? We were told by the minister that instead of bringing more portables in, we would be moving in the other direction -- replacing portables. That's the kind of mathematics. . . . For them, you add 70, and that's a decrease in portables.

One of the items that I've also heard talked about continuously within the community is that this is going to bring forth a whole slew of grievance procedures as it gets worked out. The cost of grievance procedures is horrendous. That is money going out of school budgets that should be going to teachers and student activities. As the hon. member for Oak Bay-Gordon Head just mentioned, right across our school system there is a lack of basic school supplies like paper and teaching materials. Part of the reason is that because of the mitigation that's going on between school boards and teachers, because of the regulations and activities of this government, they're getting beyond the bounds acceptable to us in our community. Not only are they unacceptable in their costs, but they're unacceptable in the harm that they cause in the attitude and atmosphere of our school buildings around the province.

Others have gone over these particular issues of concern in great detail. We would like to work with the government to have an education system that improves day by day, but in order to do that, you have to have a process that will work, a process that can be understood by everyone who is involved in it, and a process in which all the parties can negotiate fairly and honestly with each other. This is not the process we have. Therefore I support the amendment and, unfortunately, will have to vote against the bill.

L. Reid: I too rise to speak to the amendment declining to give support to second reading of Bill 39, "for the reason that the government has underestimated and inadequately funded the total cost of (a) the agreement-in-committee, (b) the existing collective agreements [and] (c) the capital construction arising from both (a) and (b) and, as a result, will undermine British Columbians' confidence in the public school system." That amendment was put forward by my hon. colleague from Okanagan-Vernon and speaks to me directly, as an educator. There are tremendous opportunities in this life to offer support. This is one of the opportunities when indeed we must have some intense scrutiny shone on this particular piece of legislation.

This is the same government that will tell you repeatedly that they have in fact supported school boards. If that's the case, why would they intervene -- interfere, frankly -- in the bargaining process? Either they agree and support local accountability and local decision-making, or they don't. I would suggest that they have clearly indicated that they have little confidence, if any, in the school boards of British Colum-

[ Page 10504 ]

I don't know the last time the Premier taught elementary school or secondary school children in the province, but I would think that he has zero firsthand knowledge of that exercise. To sidestep, step around, the individuals who are classroom teachers and were negotiating on behalf of classroom teachers in the province is foolish; it's foolhardy. It does not make good sense that he himself would step into a process where he knows very little about the true needs and ramifications of the decisions he has taken.

I fundamentally believe in school boards. I think they are the natural avenue for parents to put forward their views. To take local control from school boards and centralize it here in Victoria is not a decision of this government that I am particularly comfortable with. I don't believe that makes good sense. This should be about local decision-making. Indeed, hypocrisy is evident in this chamber: we have the Minister for Children and Families, who talks about regionalized delivery systems; we have the Minister of Health, who talks about regionalized health care; then we have a Premier who talks about centralized educational decision-making. Somewhere the rubber hits the road with that lack of logic. Hopefully, they will confront each other and come to grips with the fact that they have been hypocritical in the extreme on these questions.

I believe in individuals who are locally elected and locally accountable. I know that there is no accountability on behalf of this Premier when it comes to my riding of Richmond East, when it comes to the Richmond school district. He's not locally accountable in my riding; neither is the Minister of Education. They have usurped the responsibility that previously fell squarely upon school boards and have basically stepped around that responsibility. I don't believe that is in the best interests of children in our public school system.

Again, if the move is afoot on behalf of this minister to eliminate school boards, I trust that he will get to his feet and indicate whether or not that decision has been taken at the cabinet table. Frankly, I am fearful that that decision has been taken, and it will do nothing to further the needs of local schools, local communities and children in our system.

Individuals who are now responsible for implementing the program have that decision taken from them and placed in the hands of the province. I believe that the budget process and the delivery mechanism, those two mechanisms, are inextricably linked. It makes sense to me that the people who understand the cost of delivering the program are indeed the ones who negotiate the budget. Again, that decision has been taken from them. So I believe that this Premier has meddled, and I believe the fallout will be twofold.

[8:30]

The majority of those 1,200 new teachers coming into the system will find themselves teaching in portables. Problematic? It's not particularly decent to the individuals coming into the system and is not an appropriate way to keep a promise. I can see now that he's ranking the promises. Portable reduction has fallen off the table and is going to be taken over by his new collective agreement.

The people who best represent teachers and students and parents are school board members and the local bargaining teams that went forward and took that information to the provincial team. For sidestepping the provincial team, no rationale has been given other than that the Premier didn't like how the negotiation was proceeding. When the Premier chooses to legislate rather than negotiate, it's amazing how quickly a labour government can step outside its own belief system and suggest that the ends do justify the means or the means do justify the ends. I don't accept that notion in any way, shape or form.

Certainly when we talk about the domino effect in the classroom, the domino effect in education. . . . The Premier is also the Minister Responsible for Youth. He talks about public safety. He is now going to be moving students across districts in the province. Many, many elementary- and primary-age children -- seven-, eight- and nine-year olds -- will be finding themselves going to school miles from where they live. Again, somehow the Premier's promise of safety as a priority for young people in this province has fallen off the table, and another promise has taken its place.

We'll see an increased number of portables, when we heard that reductions were promised. We heard the Premier say many times that he was only interested in increased safety for young people. Again, neither appears to be true, hon. Speaker. Certainly I speak as a teacher when I talk about these ratios that are somehow being purported to be in the best needs of students. Phenomenal!

A resource room teacher, one teacher to 342 students; teacher librarians, one librarian to 702 students; counsellors, one to 693; learning assistance, one to 504. . . . There isn't anybody on the front bench this evening who has worked with primary-aged children in a classroom. I can tell you that if your responsibility is one to 702 students, I would invite any of the members opposite to get to their feet and tell me, indeed, how they would apportion their time -- their 20, 25 hours a week -- to 702 students. This is not a win. This is not even adequate, in terms of individuals who have never truly tried to partition their time in a classroom. Again, a learning assistance teacher, to be engaged in a meaningful interaction with a child, is going to spend at least 20 or 30 minutes with a child on a daily basis. We have one learning assistance teacher to 504 students. Tell me again how that's in their best interests.

I don't think that the Premier is being particularly honest when he continues to sell this agreement as being in the best interests of the school system, because it's not in the best interests of students. That is, indeed, alarming to me. Coun-

[ Page 10505 ]

Enormous rhetoric emanates from the government benches, hon. Speaker, but practicality is sincerely lacking. These are very difficult situations to come to grips with, and not very much has transpired that will indeed be helpful to young people in our school system. I say that as a teacher.

This government -- particularly this minister -- always took great delight in telling us how funding for education has only increased under their administration. That's absolutely untrue. A B.C. Teachers Federation document of April 1997 -- a brief to the government of British Columbia. . . . Their graph is abundantly clear: "Real provincial funding per student has declined." Is this an increase in funding, or is it a replacement of the dollars that were previously taken from education? I will commit to the record that it is only replacement dollars; it's not new funding. Provincial funding per student, the seven-year change: down by $427, or 7 percent, per student. The source is the "Budget Instruction Manual, 1997-98 Preliminary Budget, 'History of Provincial Funding Per Pupil.' " This is a current document. It was prepared for this budget year, which we have just begun.

Again, many, many people know that the minister was not direct and, frankly, not honest when he got to his feet all those times in this chamber and indicated that they have indeed increased funding for education in this province. The partner to this agreement, the B.C. Teachers Federation, knows for a fact that that's not true, and they have sent this out to every possible source in the province. They know that the funding has gone down by $427 over the term of office of this government, that it has only been a reduction.

Do I accept the notion of this minister and this Premier when they talk about new dollars for education? Absolutely not. This is an attempt to replace the funding. It is not an attempt to do new things for the education system -- absolutely not. The promises they have made, frankly, fall far short of practical realities. They certainly don't mesh with previous promises; one pretty much cancels out the other. The portable reduction strategy, the portable transfer strategy: all through this material, one promise pretty much cancels out the next. Is that something that we should be selling to British Columbians, to parents or to students in the school system? No. It's patently false. There's absolutely no way in the world that you would see me getting to my feet to attempt to sell a document that is riddled with such illogic and, frankly, such controversy.

I'm not supporting Bill 39. I am supporting the amendment, and I look forward to further speakers on this question.

J. Wilson: I would like to speak on the amendment to the Public Education Collective Agreement Act, which would decline second reading of that bill.

Last spring we were handed a budget, and in that budget the government said: "We're going to put money into education." Almost everyone in the province assumed that this money would go into the budget, so that school boards could have a little more funding to make up for some of the cuts they've had continuously for seven years. Ever since this government took over, they've cut each year. They've cut education -- cut, cut, cut. Finally we thought we had some good news, but we should have realized that there was something else behind all this.

At that point the government didn't have the guts to come out and say: "Look, this is what we're going to do with this extra money. We're going to put it into a collective agreement deal." No, they didn't do that; they waited. I guess they were trying to avoid some heat. It's kind of strange. It seems like every time they move, they're in hot water. It becomes a way of life for them. We have a lot of problems in the school districts in this province, especially in the interior. School boards have to deal with problems that don't exist in the lower mainland or on southern Vancouver Island.

We live in an area that is spread out. Our schools are few and far between in many areas in the riding, and busing becomes a really important issue there. The cost of busing is way greater than it is in areas like the Fraser Valley or Vancouver; it's practically nonexistent in Vancouver. In some of the more urban ridings, busing is not a huge expense. But when you get into the interior and the north, it becomes a really critical budget item. Each year that grows; it gets to be more and more expensive. One of the reasons that this expense keeps growing is that many of the buses have to travel five days a week on our secondary roads, which shouldn't be called roads. They're demolition courses for vehicles; that's what they are. That drives up the cost of maintenance on the school buses and the cost to the taxpayer in the end.

Maintenance. When you drive around school districts in the interior and look at the schools, you'll see that, without any question, they are not being maintained well enough to even keep the building from deteriorating. They need paint, and they need any number of items put in there to bring that maintenance up to a level that will keep that building safe and sound. When you have a problem in maintenance, it used to be that you could send someone out to fix it. If it was a leaky faucet or a door that wasn't working right, you'd phone the school board, who'd phone up the maintenance building and say: "You can go out to that school. It'll take you half a day. It's a 100-mile drive, but they've got a leaky tap, or the door needs to be rehung." So someone would get in the vehicle, and they'd go out there. With the rules and regulations that we've been subjected to, without any common sense being attached, it now seems like we have two people getting in the van and driving a hundred miles, and they hang a squeaky door and drive back to town. It's just a matter of one person not being able to go and do a job because it's not safe if he's out there by himself. I don't know what the problem is, but it just doesn't happen. It's double the cost for maintenance right there. It's all of these things.

We look at portables. Portables might work fine in a climate like we have here, where Victoria is or on the South Island or in Vancouver, but when it's 40 or 50 or 60 below, portables are not a pleasant place to be. They're terrible. You don't take your coats off. You don't take your mittens off. Did you ever try doing your work with mittens on, trying to write that way? It's not conducive to a good education. It's tough. That's another one of the reasons that portables are just. . . . And they've been growing. They're like mushrooms. There's a little bit out there, a little of spore, and they pop up everywhere. It's just disgusting when these kids go and sit in these portables. I would like to see the Minister of Education go to Mackenzie when it's 40 below and sit in that portable for one day. It would be a good education, to put it mildly.

The cost of this bill has never been assessed. It's going to be especially hard on large school districts that cover a 100-

[ Page 10506 ]

The school boards in this province are elected bodies. They were elected to take care of the management of the money that is put up for education by the government. They know what we need in this province. They are in the area; they are hands-on; they see it every day. They know what is best for that district, and they are the ones that are in a position to spend the money more wisely than anyone else. What this bill will do is take away the right from the school boards and give to the minister and his workers in Victoria -- a one-size-fits-all right across the province. This is what you're going to do: "We'll get the cookie-cutter out, and this is what you're going to get." There's no consideration for the best management of those dollars.

I couldn't help thinking: now that we've got rid of the school boards -- they're redundant; we don't need them -- we can appoint people to run our school districts. They know better. They know how to spend our money. It just occurred to me -- considering the fact that we've seen Bill 50 and have had a look at that can of worms, the next move that this government may make is to say: "Look, we'll just get rid of the fact that we need to legislate things. We'll appoint a bunch of our friends to do the legislation. We'll let the MLAs become redundant, because all they do is represent the people and their districts and the taxpayers and how they spend the money. So why do we need them? Better yet, maybe we'll get rid of this building, and we'll let this little dictatorship continue for a few more years." It's sickening.

You know, hon. Speaker, maybe they're not so stupid. Maybe they do know what they're doing. If you chase enough working families out of this province, you won't have a problem meeting your target, because you won't have any kids to go to school. Then they can get rid of a few portables like they promised, because there won't be any children left to fill them up. They'll be right on target in two or three years. Maybe that's their plan; I don't know. The way it's going, the way the scenario is shaping up, it could very well happen.

When I think about what's happening with this education system, I often wonder whether the Minister of Education has anything to say with regard to what goes on in that ministry or whether he's just a figurehead. One of the things that is really going to hurt when this bill goes through is when we've got little children standing on the side of the road, children from kindergarten to grade three, and it's 30 degrees below, and there's a north wind blowing. . . . I can't help but think: does this minister only go to his riding in fair weather? Has he forgotten that we have severe cold weather in the winter in the north of this province? That could be.

But then another question comes to mind. If that's not the case, if he's never around when he should be there to realize what's happening and what this has the potential of creating, then I have to ask myself: what's he got against these children? What's he got against these families? Why isn't he standing up for them? For those reasons, I have to vote against this bill and support the amendment to stop second reading.

B. Penner: I rise in support of the amendment put forward by my colleague the member for Okanagan-Vernon. Clearly, the proposed agreement stinks. This isn't just me saying this, but 87 percent of the elected school boards across our province have said that this agreement stinks.

Why do we go to the bother of electing local school boards if they're not supposed to have any say in what happens at our schools? What more fundamental issues do school boards have to deal with than the provision of educational services? That is what this agreement is about; it's supposed to regulate the provision of those services to our students through an agreement with the teachers in our communities. If the local school boards aren't going to be allowed to manage, then why do we go through the exercise of electing them? I think we're doing everyone a disservice.

It's shocking that it would be the NDP government that would see fit to interfere in free collective bargaining. I think back a few years ago to when they were in opposition and how they used to rail about a different government and its attempts to get involved in collective bargaining. In my view, this is a far more blatant interference in the democratic process of free collective bargaining than anything any other government has been involved in in this province for decades.

I want to restrict my comments principally to concerns affecting the Chilliwack school district. The Chilliwack school board was among those in the province that voted overwhelmingly to reject the backroom deal struck between staff working for the Premier and the head of the B.C. Teachers Federation. In essence, I think I can summarize the concerns of the Chilliwack school board as follows: "Rigid primary class-size language means funds can't be used for support programs, resources or support staff. It could mean more portables and more busing to schools outside of neighbourhood school areas." That's a statement from the Chilliwack school board.

I remember, just a few months ago, this Premier and this Minister of Education proudly proclaiming that they were going to reduce the number of portables used by students in British Columbia. This agreement that the government is attempting to impose and ram down the throats of elected school boards will have the opposite effect. They're setting themselves up to break their own promise, yet again. On the one hand, the Premier says that he's going to reduce portables; on the other hand, he's forcing an agreement, against the will of elected school boards, that will increase the need for portables due to overly restrictive class-size language in the collective agreement.

Another concern expressed by the Chilliwack school board is as follows:

"Past protection of non-enrolling staff positions, such as counsellors, teacher librarians and ESL teachers, means no funding this year to support the current level of service or to replace other services previously cut to keep these positions. Chilliwack will be punished for having done a good job of managing its resources in previous years. Further, new costs will be incurred for operating expenses, contract improvements for teachers on call and inevitable grievances over contract language."

"The agreement is not a good one for children in that it does not address the initial concerns raised by the B.C. Public School Employers Association, the board's representative. Specifically, the inflexibility of targeted funds, eroding the district's programs to meet student needs, contract language on posting and filling of job vacancies and language on teacher accountability. All of those things are weakened by this agreement.

"While the Chilliwack school board shares the concern regarding inflexibility of targeted funds, of particular concern

[ Page 10507 ]

are provisions that relate to primary class size limiting flexibility in providing services to children, non-enrolling staff ratios -- penalizing the Chilliwack school district and providing inequitable funding to districts throughout the province -- additional operating expenses for which funding is not allocated, new costs associated with teachers on call and lack of clarity in the language of the agreement that will create arbitration costs."

It's interesting that there is no additional funding provided for the increased arbitration that will inevitably result as a result of this new agreement. I'm told that a more specific concern of the Chilliwack school board relates to teachers on call. In my day in school -- which wasn't all that long ago -- we called these people "substitute teachers." According to this agreement, the cost associated with teachers on call, or substitute teachers, would have to be absorbed within the current school district budget. In Chilliwack, this amounts to an annual cost increase of approximately $125,000. I suggest that is taking $125,000 away from delivering important services to our students. That's another reason why this agreement-in-committee has to be stopped.

I could go on at some length talking about other cost impacts of this backroom deal cooked up between the Premier and the BCTF, such as teacher-on-call costs. As I've just described, increased costs for holidays and benefits have to come from existing funds. I have to stress that the language of the agreement is unclear, again likely leading to more arbitrations in the future. For all of these reasons, but primarily because of the way this agreement affects our children, this bill has to be stopped. It has to be stopped in its tracks; it has to be stopped right now.

For members opposite to say that it's okay for government to interfere in the free collective bargaining process now means that they're going to have a heck of a hard time complaining later, when some other government comes along, as it inevitably will, in the decades to follow and gets involved in union-management negotiations. You can just hear the NDP members crying out and complaining: "Oh, that's not fair. You're getting in the way of management and labour. Let them sort it out themselves. We believe in that as a fundamental tenet of democracy." You know why that sounds so familiar, hon. Speaker? It's because we've heard it before. The NDP themselves used to sing that song in the last few decades, anytime a government interfered. Here they are themselves, giving it legislated authority, legislated preference -- fundamentally altering the relationship between management and organized labour. This is the thin edge of the wedge. Actually, the wedge isn't that thin in this case; this is a pretty significant wedge that the government is driving between management and organized labour.

I've talked to the school board officials. In fact, I talked just this afternoon to a trustee in Chilliwack. He told me that his preference would be for the government to allow them to negotiate an agreement. Leave the same amount of money on the table, that the government says they're committed to providing under this agreement, and let the local school boards figure out how best to manage those resources, they can provide the best possible service to students.

Come September, there are going to be some pretty angry parents in the province of British Columbia, when they realize that their sons and daughters are being bused right past existing schools in their neighbourhood because of an arbitrary class size of 21 students. If a twenty-second student shows up for that class, even if the teacher agrees, that student isn't allowed to sit in that classroom. They're going to have to go somewhere else, and that means either more portables or more buses. That means students going outside of their neighbourhoods, away from their friends and perhaps away from their brothers and sisters, because of the restrictive language of this backroom deal cooked up between the Premier and the BCTF.

[9:00]

In summary, before I turn the floor over to someone else to speak on this amendment, I'd like to reiterate that come September, parents around the province are going to look to see who voted in favour of this bill and who voted to try and stop it. When parents in my community ask me whether I supported this agreement, I'm going to tell them no, because I plan to vote in favour of this amendment.

S. Hawkins: I ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

S. Hawkins: In the gallery we notice a very well known advocate for mentally ill persons, Mr. Roderick Louis, who joins us today. He has a great amount of personal experience with the B.C. mental health system. I mentioned him this afternoon in the Health estimates, but I certainly didn't expect to see him tonight. I would ask the House to please make him welcome.

R. Thorpe: It's a pleasure to rise tonight in this House and speak on behalf of my constituents, the voters of Okanagan-Penticton. If I could, I'd like to just flip back to July 21, 1993. It was the Public Sector Employers Act: "The legislation establishes a process that builds on the existing collective bargaining process. . . . This government respects the collective bargaining process." Hon. Speaker, who do you think made that statement? Yes, the Premier of this province made that statement on July 21, 1993. His government has total disrespect and disregard for that free collective bargaining process that so many people in British Columbia care for.

It's a pleasure for me to speak in favour of the amendment put forward by my very good colleague from

[ Page 10508 ]

That very government over there says that they are the defenders of working people and of the right to free collective bargaining. Yet this bill is taking that process away and making a sham of their very words. They've hijacked the process once again, because the Premier did not like they way things were going, and he had to look after some of his closest advisers.

Trustees, who are duly elected within their communities to work with and for the children of our communities, have had that democratic right stolen from them by this government, which says that they stand for free collective bargaining. Nothing could be further from the truth. On June 18 my school district, school district 67, issued a release. They said very proudly that they were proud to vote against the actions of this government, as did 87 percent of the school boards and trustees in the province -- an overwhelming no to the socialist NDP, who are hijacking democratic rights of people. They went on to say this: the trustees in school district 67, like so many trustees throughout British Columbia, are there because they believe in our students. They said that this provincial agreement, as negotiated, is a bad deal for students of the province and for students of school district 67.

Their analysis of this agreement clearly shows that the negative consequences far outreach any benefits to the local school districts and the students. They went on to say that this agreement allocates funding unfairly and inequitably, and fails to address key issues identified by the school boards across the province -- school trustees, who have the responsibility to look after the students within their area and who have shown, year in and year out, that they are much better equipped to deal with local situations than this socialist horde over there that believes one-size-fits-all works in all parts of British Columbia.

This bill that this government wants and this contract that they want to stuff down everybody's throats do not provide for teacher evaluations. Qualifications versus seniority is the basis for teachers' hiring. Flexible class sizes are gone. Language that will enable more students to attend neighbourhood schools. . . . More handcuffs are put around trustees. The board of the Okanagan-Skaha school district has demonstrated fiscal responsibility, has reduced its administration, kept funding support for school and classroom levels, and maintained teaching staff even in non-enrolling areas. This agreement does not provide for school districts that have diligently discharged their responsibility. In fact, this agreement brought forward by the Premier's Office penalizes people who have done their job, looked after their communities and looked after their students. That is fundamentally wrong.

All the time, this Premier and this Minister of Education say: "Trust us." The people of British Columbia are saying: "No, we don't trust you anymore. We haven't trusted you for the last couple of years." They remember Bingogate and Hydrogate and the charities; they remember that this government was charged under the Criminal Code of Canada -- and we'll deal with that bill a little later. This is a government that said that they had two balanced budgets; then, shortly after the election, the truth came out. More deficits, seven deficits in a row, and they say: "Trust us." British Columbians say: "No, we don't trust you."

The government also said: "We're going to reduce portables in B.C." What's happened, hon. Speaker? You know what's happened; I know what's happened; British Columbians know what's happened. We've increased 100 percent. All the time, they're sending out propaganda saying less and less. It's just simply not the truth. This is also a government that said: "We're going to reduce waiting lists." I talked about that yesterday. They're growing every day, as my colleague from Shuswap knows very well.

If this government has learned one thing in the last seven years, it is simply that they do not have the trust of British Columbians. And this act, to take away the democratic rights of elected school trustees, is fundamentally wrong. The Premier should be ashamed of himself for pushing this through.

The bottom line is that students are not the priority. The elected school boards have been thrown into the ditch. The NDP have abandoned the free collective bargaining process in British Columbia. On July 26, 1993. . . . I'm not even going to let you guess who said this, because I'm going to tell you before I quote it. Yes, you're right: the Premier. "We're not intending to be at the bargaining table in all these different sectors -- not at all, far from it. We're not trying to usurp the role of the employer." Well, that's exactly what the socialists have done. They've taken it away. We know the Minister of Education didn't do that. He answered the phone; he was told what to do.

Who said this on July 26? "We're not going to be at the table with public sector unions, interfering -- to use a stronger word -- with the bargaining process." Well, the facts just say that, once again, this Premier cannot keep his word to British Columbians -- he just simply cannot do it. The record speaks for itself.

What particularly concerns. . . . I have the pleasure of serving two school districts: school district 67 and school district 23. School district 23 is very concerned about the increased rigid formulas for the delivery of education service to students, the loss of flexibility for new students arriving after September 30 and new teacher on-call rates. Those are just a few of their major concerns, and they voted unanimously to reject this government and these actions. School district 67, which has worked very diligently at running a very fiscally responsible school district, while maintaining librarians and special education teachers. . . . They're going to be penalized by this because they've done a good job.

The Minister of Education says he's committed to funding the project. Well, based on previous commitments of funding by the minister, I and I'm sure the board of trustees, are very concerned about the ability to maintain the current levels of service. But time will tell; the facts will come out. I'm on the side of the trustees versus this government, because their record speaks for itself.

Trustees across this province voted 87 percent to reject this contract, which has been imposed by the Premier's Office through the Minister of Education. This contract is flawed. It's not equitable, nor is it in the best interests of the students. Let us all remember that we are here for the students, because they are our future.

Therefore I will continue, even after this vote takes place, to stand on the side of right versus wrong, to stand on the side of the democratic process, to stand against interference, to

[ Page 10509 ]

[9:15]

"That this House decline to give second reading to Bill (No. 39), intituled Public Education Collective Agreement Act, for the reason that the government has underestimated and underfunded the total cost of: (a) the agreement in committee; (b) the existing collective agreements; and (c) the capital construction arising from the first two. As a result, this will undermine British Columbians' confidence in the public school system."

The agreement-in-committee, the subject of this bill, is an agreement between the provincial government and the B.C. Teachers Federation. This agreement is controversial because the government moved to displace the B.C. Public Schools Employers Association as a party to the negotiations. The minister uses the transparent and likely calculated excuse that the provincial government was asked by the trustees to get involved. I want to register my opposition to Bill 39 and support this amendment for a number of reasons, including the following.

First, the actions by the government to sideline BCPSEA represent a serious intervention into the free collective bargaining process. Any other government would have been loudly criticized by the NDP for such undermining of free collective bargaining. However, with this government, legislated union agreements are becoming the rule rather than the exception.

Second, the government has cut school boards right out of the bargaining process. These actions call into question the government's respect and support for the critical role of locally elected school boards.

Third, the government did not act in good faith in its relationship with BCPSEA. Only after the government took charge of the negotiations did they, through some miracle, came up with another $150 million for education in this deal. This additional funding was not originally available to BCPSEA, thus limiting its options for negotiating an agreement with the teachers' union.

Fourth, for a second consecutive contract negotiation, the government has failed to address the variety of outstanding contract issues that result from all the different individual teachers' contracts that existed prior to April '96. There were 105 contentious items on the table, which are now rolled over for another three years. This is a government that talks tough when it is railing against Ottawa or Washington. However, true courage is demonstrated by a government which addresses difficult issues within its own control in a straightforward manner. Like so many times before and on so many different issues, this government took the line of least political resistance and avoided dealing directly with the 105 outstanding contract issues -- lots of talk, but no courage and no leadership.

Fifth, this bill, and specifically the agreement-in-committee -- the substance of this debate -- are bad for the future of education in this province. There has been a long list of concerns expressed by school boards, parents and administrators who are expected to implement this agreement.

Given the above points, the questions that arise are: is the agreement fully funded by the government over the next three years, or will school boards have to rob Peter to pay Paul in order to implement this agreement? School boards say they are being hung out to dry on the funding issue. The NDP has forced this unworkable deal on school districts without any commitment for funding it beyond the first year. As a result, school districts will have to cut staff in other areas, such as janitors and playground supervisors, to make ends meet.

Secondly, how will the government fund the increased capital cost of the classrooms required by the implementation of this bill? The government claimed, and the Premier promised last spring, that they will reduce the number of portables by half within five years. This is after the NDP increased the number of portables from 1,656 in 1991 to 3,091 today -- more promises by the Premier that he cannot and will not keep. These are all promises for more classrooms made with more borrowed money that the Premier does not have. It is not a coincidence that the full impact of this agreement will set in towards the end of the three-year agreement, conveniently putting the most negative results of this bill beyond the time of the next election.

Some of the impacts of the Premier's agreement-in-committee on the children in the B.C. school system are as follows: more busing of primary school-age children and, on average, greater distances from home; continuing classroom reorganization; an increased number of split classes; and primary children in the same family being less likely to attend the same school. Parents are fearful of being faced with increased travel and separation of their children into different schools.

In my school district -- school district 34, Abbotsford -- parents, teachers and trustees are concerned about the growing number of portables. We have just finished opening two new public schools, but these schools have been in the pipeline for four years. However, the number of portables will now begin to grow even more rapidly, because there is not much in the way of new schools in progress, and Abbotsford is a high-population-growth district.

I want to go on record and register a concern on behalf of the parents, students, school trustees and teachers that the government will not be fully funding all of these costs of this contract which has been foisted on our school board. There will be significant cost increases in our school district, which are estimated as follows: $3.8 million over three years is the estimated cost of hiring additional teachers. The direct cost of class size reduction will be about $2.4 million over three years, and it will involve hiring another 26 teachers. A 2 percent salary increase will add $310,000, and the cost of 26 additional classrooms will be about another $1.2 million. The total figure comes to about $8 million over three years. The people in my school district and our school trustees are looking for a commitment from the minister that these additional costs will be fully funded by the provincial government, which unilaterally signed this deal.

The school trustees and BCPSEA have expressed great concern not only about the process but about the result. Those are my two closing points. The trustees were sidelined in the process, and when they considered the deal on its merits, they argued that it was a bad agreement. In the final analysis, 87 percent of school trustees whose job it was to negotiate this agreement voted against it. On that basis, I support this amendment and will vote against Bill 39.

[ Page 10510 ]

I think this is a piece of legislation that. . . . Those in the NDP caucus should really look in the mirror and question why they are here, why they first ran for elected office, and what the values and principles were that they stood for when they first sought public office. This is a bill that speaks to the heart of what collective bargaining is all about. If you go back through the last seven years since the NDP were first elected, and you start looking at the speeches that were given by members throughout those seven years about the importance of collective bargaining. . . . They should go back and read those speeches themselves, and they should question Bill 39 and what it is that happened in the last seven years that made them turn 180 degrees on the very principles that they stood for when they first got elected to this chamber.

The British Columbia Public School Employers Association put out a newsletter very recently. This is their newsletter dated July 1998, and it talks specifically about Bill 39.

I think that for the benefit of those who may be watching this on television this Monday evening at 9:30. . . . They may not know a lot about Bill 39. What Bill 39 is doing is imposing a collective agreement between an employer group and an employee group. The employee group is the B.C. Teachers Federation, which has a bargaining committee that was in the process of negotiating a new collective agreement on behalf of members. The employer group is the British Columbia Public School Employers Association, which is made up of all the trustees, the school boards from all around British Columbia.

What happened earlier this year -- in early June, when this bill was announced; actually, it goes back to April, when the agreement was first cut -- was that the provincial government stepped into the middle of that negotiating process and said, basically, that we were no longer going to allow free collective bargaining in this province; we were no longer going to allow this employer group made up of B.C. public school employers, the school trustees, to negotiate a reasonable collective agreement that they could afford to pay for -- those are the key words. They weren't going to allow the bargaining committee of the BCTF to negotiate a collective agreement that could best represent teachers in this province.

Instead, we wound up with the Premier intervening. The Premier of this province intervened and basically said to the school trustees across this province: "What you have done in terms of collective bargaining doesn't count anymore. I'm stepping in, because I'm the king of this province." That was his attitude -- that he was king, and he could do whatever he wanted. It didn't matter what those negotiating the collective agreement believed in; he was going to step in and do what he thought was best. Rather than allowing the bargaining committee for the teachers in this province to do their job, he went to the executive of the BCTF, and they cut a backroom deal. What they did, if I can use some words from the school employers' association, is bring in an agreement that imposed a collective agreement, regardless of that free collective bargaining process.

Let me just quote from this newsletter. It says: "Although school trustees were frustrated with the flawed process that led to the [agreement-in-committee]" -- this is the secret agreement -- "they carefully considered the agreement on its merits." You know what, hon. Speaker? Even though they felt there was an obligation to stand up for students in this province, to stand up for school kids in all school districts, they recommended rejection of this agreement. The school boards across this province rejected that agreement to the tune of 87.6 percent of the total school board votes. The reason they did that was because they do not have the financial resources with which to meet the obligations that are being imposed on them by this government.

It is so typical of this government, so typical of this Premier, to walk in and impose a collective agreement and say: "Well, this is fine. Let me just get together with the president of the BCTF. We're going to sit down behind closed doors, and we're going to cut the deal." This is the Premier who's a former labour negotiator. He knows how to cut a deal. And you know what? It doesn't have anything to do with the ability to pay. It doesn't have anything to do with the ability of the taxpayers in this province -- who are paying school taxes, who are paying provincial taxes -- to pay for this collective agreement. In all of the negotiating experience that this Premier has had in this province, he has never had to worry about whether or not the employer could pay. He just had to worry about cutting a deal that would make sure that his union executive cronies would be happy with the deal that got cut -- and that's exactly what happened. But what this Premier forgot in the middle of that process was that he has a responsibility to the taxpayers of this province to make sure that the taxpayers can afford to pay for the agreement that he is signing behind closed doors. That did not happen.

[9:30]

I want to go back to the history of collective bargaining as seen by New Democratic MLAs in this chamber. I want to go back to their very first throne speech, on March 17, 1992. This is in their throne speech. This is a new government coming in; they've been in opposition before. They came in with a great philosophy, great principles. They were going to stand up for all the rights of free collective bargaining in British Columbia. Right in the throne speech, their very first throne speech, is: "We will restore the right of free collective bargaining in the public sector. . . ." You know what? That's gone.

Here's a speech from the current Minister of Highways, the member for Yale-Lillooet, on March 18, 1992, probably in speaking to that throne speech. He said: "The people of Logan Lake" -- that's a community in his constituency -- "want fairer labour laws which will allow the process of free collective bargaining to proceed without government intervention." Where's the member for Yale-Lillooet today? Is he going to stand up and vote against this legislation? He should, because this is what he stood for in 1992. Let him stand up today for the principles that he believed in in 1992.

Let's talk about the Premier of the day, Mike Harcourt -- who is actually a constituent of mine in Vancouver-Quilchena. He said, on March 20, 1992: "We have restored free collective bargaining. . . ." They were so proud of this in 1992. Here we

[ Page 10511 ]

Let's talk about the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin, when he said on March 23, 1992: ". . .government is committed to making sure that free collective bargaining in this province flourishes. . .the position of this government is, and will continue to be, that we will support the free collective bargaining system." Hon. Speaker, Bill 39 is exactly 180 degrees diametrically opposed to that principle and to those philosophies. Where does he stand today? Why doesn't he stand up in this chamber and say he's going to vote against Bill 39 because he still believes in those principles?

Let's look at the Minister of Education of the day, Anita Hagen, on April 9, 1992: "In respect to teachers' salaries, one of the strongest recommendations that was made by the Sullivan royal commission was that the provincial government shouldn't interfere with the outcomes of bargaining; that it should be free collective bargaining."

[E. Walsh in the chair.]

So many of the members in those days talked about the importance of the Sullivan commission. Do you know what they have done today? They have totally forsaken it, turned their backs on it. She goes on to say: "Collective bargaining is not something that this government enters into in any direct way; it is between the school districts and their employee groups." I see the member for Burnaby-Willingdon. She was a member of this chamber at that time. Where have the principles gone? Why have they turned their backs on the basic principles of free collective bargaining? Why is it no longer important? Well, it is important. I think they should go back and revisit some of those things.

The Premier -- he wasn't the Premier then -- on June 11, 1992. . . . When they were talking about the Compensation Fairness Repeal Act, the member who is now the Premier stood up to introduce this bill for first reading. It was the repeal of the Compensation Fairness Act. This is a quote from our current Premier, what he said in 1992: "It is our view that agreements reached between the parties should be respected. Any outside influence by legislation such as this act is an unnecessary intrusion into the free collective bargaining system." That was only six years ago. What has changed in six years? I think their values have changed, their principles have changed, their morals have changed, their ethics have changed: they have gone out the window. They're no longer there, because they no longer believe in these things. Now they're prepared to bring in legislation that goes in exactly the opposite direction.

In closing second reading debate on that bill on June 15, the now Premier said: "In repealing this legislation, we're not suggesting that there will be no control of wage increases in the public sector, because obviously one is not going to sign collective agreements that one can't afford." Now, isn't that an interesting concept? Maybe it's historical -- 1992 -- but here we are, six years later, and we have this Premier bringing in legislation that's going to do exactly that: legislation that is part of a collective agreement that the taxpayers, as represented by the school trustees in this province, have said we cannot afford.

The member for North Coast, who is now the Minister Responsible for Northern Development, on May 30, 1993. . . . This was actually an interesting piece of legislation; it was called the Educational Programs Continuation Act. That minister, at the time. . . . This is a quote from his mouth on that date: ". . .free collective bargaining remains the best possible system. The check on free collective bargaining, when it fails and a question of the public interest arises, is the obligation on us as legislators to come back to forums like this and take action. . . ."

Hon. D. Miller: Well, there you go.

C. Hansen: The minister is sitting there, and he says: "There you go." Hon. Speaker, do you know what? They did not give collective bargaining a chance to succeed. They stepped in at the early stages of the collective bargaining process and, as it says it here: ". . .collective bargaining, when it fails and a question of the public interest arises. . . ." This government did not give collective bargaining a chance to succeed.

If I can just skip through some of these. . . . I've got a ton of them, and I know it takes up a lot of time. This is a quote from the same minister, when he was speaking to Bill 52, in the third session of that parliament: "Teachers and trustees want to maintain the right of free collective bargaining. . . ."

Hon. D. Miller: It was a great speech.

C. Hansen: The minister says it was a great speech. I must confess that I didn't read the whole speech; I read this particular section -- and it was not taken out of context, I assure him. What is clear is that at that time the members on the government side believed in free collective bargaining and now they don't. Now they have completely turned their backs on it.

I wanted to save one from the current Minister of Education. This is from April 17, 1997. He said: "We will continue to work with parties involved in collective bargaining, to assist them in reaching free collective agreements. I continue to believe that that is the best way of resolving bargaining in public schools in British Columbia." That was just a little over a year ago, and how much has changed in a year. Here we have the Minister of Education saying one year that he believes in free collective bargaining, and the very next year the Minister of Education says: "We're going in the opposite direction. It doesn't matter; I don't believe in it anymore."

He talks about continuing to work with the parties. Let's look at Bill 39. Who are the parties to Bill 39? Bill 39 identifies the parties to this agreement as being the B.C. Teachers Federation and the employers' association. The employers' association represents the school trustees. Bill 39, which is before us today. . . . Section 2 -- and it's such a blatant sentence that I think every government member should look in the mirror and say: "Can I vote for this?" -- says: "Effective July 1, 1998, the agreement-in-committee" -- read "secret deal behind closed doors in the Premier's office" -- "is deemed to constitute a collective agreement between the parties." Now, isn't that a nice way to approach collective agreement? You have government coming in with legislation and saying: "Do you know what collective bargaining is about in British Columbia today? It's about deeming there to be an agreement between the parties, when one of the parties has voted -- to the tune of 87.6 percent -- that they reject that agreement." I hope that members of this House will join me in voting against this agreement and that they will vote in favour of the amendment from my colleague from Okanagan-Vernon.

T. Nebbeling: I too would like to speak in favour of the amendment presented by the member for Okanagan-Vernon.

[ Page 10512 ]

I've heard the member for Okanagan-Vernon speak very eloquently as to why this bill has so many dangerous traps that we have to avoid in order not to undermine education and, in a sense, community stability. If this bill goes ahead, we're going to see many people, in the smaller communities in particular, being affected, in the sense that students, kids, will no longer be able to go to the schools nearest them. They will have to find alternative ways of getting to a school outside the traditional area, and this will have a price for the family is a given. Today many parents feel the need to drive their kids to school. They feel it is important either for the child's comfort or for safety reasons. Parents do have a number of reasons why they feel comfortable taking kids to school and picking them up again. This bill will force many parents to go well beyond what is traditionally the area where they would expect to take their children.

This is all done because of the bill's commitment to the principle of smaller class sizes. I don't think there's anybody who is opposed to smaller class sizes. If indeed the benefits are such as have been described by some of the members on this side, then I would support smaller class sizes. But if the government is not at the same time willing to take the consequences that smaller class sizes will bring -- including the need for more classrooms, and more portables when classrooms cannot be added and when the funding for this component of schools is not available, basically refusing to let students attend a particular school. . . . The money that is allocated to this bill will not suffice to provide every school district with enough funds to comply with the mandatory requirement of 21 students per class, and hence the very strong opposition of the school trustees throughout British Columbia -- 87 percent. They know as trustees that they cannot comply with this requirement; it is not a matter of not wanting to.

This very undermining approach to something I don't understand is supposed to be a plus or benefit for students. It is what I think was not really well thought through by the minister at the time he announced it. When the minister announced the collective agreement -- and I don't want to go into how this collective agreement got put together, because my colleagues have all done that already. . . . I think that when this collective agreement was put together and accepted, nobody in his right mind could have thought that with the kind of money that was allocated to this program, they could fulfil the full requirements that will be imposed throughout the school districts.

[9:45]

I've been trying to see this kind of requirement in my riding. Squamish may still have the opportunity where kids going to school in Brackendale will finish up in Highlands, crossing Highway 99. It will take busing. But if you go to a community like Pemberton, what are they supposed to do? Pemberton has got one school -- inadequate. It's got about 12 portables already. Class sizes are considerably higher than 21. When the Pemberton Secondary School has to comply with this new collective agreement, either the minister is going to make a major financial infusion into that school to accommodate the needs -- or what else? Are we going to have these kids bused out to Whistler where we have a similar problem? Somewhere along the line, school trustees are going to get stuck and will not be able to comply, because of the class size requirement and the lack of funding for what is now mandated in this collective agreement.

So for that reason and the many other reasons that my colleagues have spoken on, I think it makes more sense to indeed take this bill back and see what we can do with true negotiations with the school trustees in British Columbia.

I'd like to spend a little bit of time on the school trustees, because we keep talking about the impact on the students. While they are foremost in our minds, I would like to spend a little bit of time thinking about the action that this government has taken in presenting this bill, mandating on school trustees a collective agreement that they know cannot work. They have said so through rejecting this collective agreement by 87 percent. What does this do to a school trustee? We all know school trustees; we all work together with school trustees. We also know that school trustees are, in principle, people who are not paid. . .for doing a lot of work with one thought in mind: that is to serve the student population in the community which they represent. I know that especially in the rural ridings, school trustees often have to travel long distances to get to meetings. They have to make decisions that are far-reaching, and they do all this without ever complaining. They don't demand pay like councils do; they just do it because they know their contribution is indeed valuable to the students of their community. This is how many of these school trustees give something back to the community.

I cannot comprehend the sense of -- what would I say? -- distrust for this government now, after they as government, together with the B.C. Teachers Federation. . . . Having created this behind-the-door document, the government is trying to ramrod it through.

These people must feel totally worthless as trustees. They must feel that all they thought they represented in their communities, all they committed to in the developing of students, all their ideas, their thoughts, their energy are all for nothing. This collective agreement and the way it has been put together clearly says: "You trustees throughout British Columbia do not have the ability to come up with something that we think is good for British Columbia students." That's what we're doing with this collective agreement. It must be the worst. . . .

These people are not getting paid. They're volunteers. Some of these volunteers have been school trustees for ten, 15 and 20 years. They have committed most of their spare time to standing up and working for their students in their communities. These are the people who, through this collective agreement, are getting the message from this government that says: "Sorry. What you're doing is wrong; it doesn't work. Thank you very much. Continue if you choose to do so, but when it comes to making decisions, the Premier and the president of the BCTF will put the agreement together that you as trustees then have to work with." In spite of the messages from the trustees that they cannot work with these conditions, that the funding is not there for these conditions, that they have no way out, that they have no options to somehow comply with. . . . They're in the situation where they cannot tell a child to go to another school, because there is no other school.

[ Page 10513 ]

I cannot support this bill. I will continue to speak against it. For that reason, I strongly support the amendment of the member for Okanagan-Vernon.

L. Stephens: It's a pleasure for me to rise this evening and speak to the amendment to Bill 39. Many members on this side of the House have spoken about a number of issues that we're very concerned about in this bill. Certainly the one about the trustees having their responsibilities usurped by this government and by this Premier again shows that you can't believe or trust anything that this government does.

When the Minister of Education introduced Bill 39, he said he did so because the stability in the education system was the most important issue. He also said that he feared a teachers' strike or board lockouts in the fall. He also said that the two parties -- the BCTF and the employers' association -- had longstanding disagreements and could not reach a better agreement for kids and that government had to step in and protect education. But this government is up to its old tricks again.

Just like with Bill 26, the Labour Code, where they rewarded their friends and insiders in the building trades, Bill 39 rewards their friends in the BCTF. Government is not protecting education, and there has been example after example. . . . We all know, in this House -- certainly members on this side of the House know -- that since 1991 the cuts to education have totalled $400 per student. When the minister talks about protecting education and when members opposite stand up and say they're protecting education, parents know that is not true, students know that is not true, trustees know that is not true, and teachers know that is not true. The announcement that the minister made a short time ago about the $105 million has simply restored some of the chronic underfunding to public education that has happened over the last seven years of this government. Everyone knows that 90 to 95 percent of school district budgets are spent on salaries and benefits, so the remaining 5 or 10 percent goes into the classroom. That's only 5 or 10 percent that goes into the classroom, and the Education budget in this province is now around $4 billion a year. So when the province says that it spends more per student for its education system than any other province in the country does, the fact is that that does not mean that the money is going into the classroom, and it doesn't mean that we get a more effective or efficient education system. I don't believe that we'll see the money that this government said it's going to spend, and I don't think that we're going to see the money spent on the teachers and the support staff.

Even if it did happen, even if the government did spend some of this money, it would simply be replacing the funding and the staff that have been cut over the last seven years of this government's administration. That's all they would be doing: simply replacing a number of these individuals -- support staff, librarians, ESL teachers, special needs teachers -- in the classrooms. Every single member in this House knows that that is true. Every single one of us has school districts in our ridings, and every single member of this House has been lobbied over the last seven years to provide the kind of education funding that is needed in the classrooms of this province. This government continues to say, year after year, that it is protecting public education -- and it is not true. The people of the province know this. They know they can't believe anything that this government says, and this is just another example.

They say they believe in free collective bargaining. But what they say and what they do are two different things. This agreement is another example of that. Everywhere we look, everything this government touches, certainly in this last year, has pointed to the fact that what they say is not what they do.

Here's another political payoff to one of their friends and insiders -- and this is the BCTF, the unions. This government undermined the employers' association, they completely subverted the principles of free collective bargaining, and they went into the back room with their friends and cut a sweetheart deal -- the Premier's deal. This is the Premier's agreement. He was the one who wanted this to go forward. It's another sweetheart deal with another union.

But how could the teachers' union support this? How could a union support subverting free collective bargaining? How is that possible? Well, perhaps this was a good deal for the teachers, for the BCTF. What is it going to give them? It's going to give them a lot more teachers in the system, and it's certainly going to give them the ability to maintain the status quo, to maintain the kind of education system that we have today, in which many reports and many studies have said we need to have some drastic changes.

The long-term effect of this agreement is very bad for the children. I think that most of the school boards can probably manage for the first year, although I understand there's about half a dozen that are on the verge of bankruptcy. But I know that in two to three years, not one school board in this province can manage this deal -- not one. We need an agreement that's in the best interest of the students over the long term, and this deal is definitely not it.

Even the teachers' negotiating team rejected this agreement. The teacher's negotiating team rejected this agreement. The trustees rejected this agreement. But the government went behind closed doors and said: "We know what's best. We know what you need. We are the ones who have the power, and we are the ones who are going to do whatever we want to do to get whatever deal we need for our friends in the B.C. Teachers Federation."

The government have failed our public education system; they have failed our children. The government did not allow this process to work. Many members on this side of the House have talked about this. . . . I don't know what it is. Members on that side, government members, talk about how sacrosanct the free collective bargaining process is, and then they turn around and do something like this. It's very difficult to understand.

If you support free collective bargaining, you support free collective bargaining, and that did not happen in this instance. I'd be very interested to hear any government member get up and defend their position on this particular agreement. The question is: why? Why, if the minister was afraid of a strike or a lockout. . . ? That's what he said. Maybe it was because of the bargaining position of the employers council. Maybe that's what he was afraid of.

The bargaining council was at this negotiation for quite some time, and this is their position, their bargaining-for-better-education position. They talk about public education as the only sector where the union controls the level of business through their workload language in the collective agreement. An inordinate amount of education dollars are diverted away from direct classroom services because of restrictive contract language. Restrictive contract language does not allow school boards to allocate available resources in the most efficient manner, and school boards have been forced to strip the rest

[ Page 10514 ]

[10:00]

The second one was improving job-posting and -filling procedures. This is the bumping provision in the collective agreement that allows teachers to displace other teachers, based on seniority. What happens is that there is a steady parade through a classroom where teachers are away for one reason or another.

The third was improving the system of evaluating teachers. I would presume that this particular point would have been quite contentious. There are many very, very fine teachers in our education system in British Columbia, and many of them are frustrated when they see that some others perhaps need to have some skills upgrading, as everyone does -- as every line of endeavour does today, with the kinds of changes in the workplace. . . . It doesn't matter what kind of workplace you're in, it needs to have constant skills upgrading and constant evaluations of work performance. That happens in all sectors, in all workplaces. Why can't that happen in our public schools?

The fourth was the extended-day efficiency scheduling. This was another area that the bargaining unit wanted to see addressed. They say: "Clearly we cannot continue with the status quo, because the status quo is not working." But this government's backroom deal is the status quo, and protecting the stranglehold of the BCTF on the public education system in British Columbia will be the result of this particular agreement.

My school board in Langley voted against it, as did most of the school boards in the province. Mine voted against it for basically the same reasons that the rest of the school boards did -- because they knew that rejecting the contract was the only opportunity they had to show the government that this agreement was not going to be in the best interests of kids in public education. What they said was that it makes the system more inflexible and less able to manage small variations in class size.

In my district, Langley, we have a number of initiatives that have been longstanding. I think that the Langley district is a very progressive school district in this province. I would even go so far as to say that we've been doing a lot of innovations in our district for the last 20 years, which others could probably emulate or have a look at. The ability to have cross-boundary transfers. . . . Our district is very accommodating when it comes to allowing parents and students to access schools where the programs offered are those that the kids are looking for. We're able to specialize in some ways in our schools. We have a technology program at H.D. Stafford; a fabulous award-winning media communications program at Blacklock; another award-winning community school -- national award-winning -- in Aldergrove; the baccalaureate program at Mountain; and fine arts programs -- another national award-winning school -- at Fort Langley. I believe we've done some very fine things for public education over the years in my district.

When you get individuals that have been involved in public education for as long as those in my community and other communities around the province have been, who are committed to the alternative and progressive programming that we have in my community, I have to listen to what they're saying. I listen to these parents, I listen to these teachers, and I listen to these trustees. They say to me that the flexibility the district needs to deliver the variety of programs that have been developed in Langley will be eroded, as will the district's ability to deliver other services.

There are so many things wrong with this particular agreement -- not just the way it was done, but the impact it will have on our classrooms. There's no certainty of funding beyond the proposed three-year agreement as well. The language of the proposed agreement-in-committee is not clear, and collective bargaining is the only way to ensure that the vital interests of students, parents and teachers are met.

The parents, teachers and students in my district have nothing good to say about this agreement at all, and I believe it will further undermine the relationship between public education and the province. It will certainly cause chaos in our schools in September, when parents who believe that their neighbourhood school is where their children belong find that they're going to be busing them out of their neighbourhoods, perhaps to other districts. Who knows? We don't know that, but we do know that this agreement has the ability to bring those kinds of uncertainties to our school district in September.

What this agreement has not done is eliminate the 105 contentious items on the bargaining table in transition from local to provincial bargaining. No employer needs were addressed, but all of the teachers' needs were addressed. This agreement does not provide resolution to those four paramount issues under negotiation in the transitional collective agreement. Those were the posting and filling, the flexibility in class size, the teacher evaluation and the extended-day efficiency scheduling.

What this agreement will do is contribute to the disintegration of the role of school boards as bargaining agents on behalf of local communities -- a waste of resources in the creation of the British Columbia Public School Employers Association as the employer bargaining unit over the past five years. The rigid guarantee for initiatives and funding will result in huge deficits and costs to the school boards. Cuts will occur to CUPE and administration as a result of BCTF guarantees. My school trustees and the parents believe in the neighbourhood school. My school voted against this agreement because they believe, as I do, that it is not in the best interests of parents, school boards or public education.

Money for the agreement has not been put into education coffers by the Premier, the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Education. The agreement will cost considerably more than the minister has funded and will lead to other cuts in services to children. The school boards will not be able to fund the agreement and will be unable to maintain the safety, health and education standards that parents expect in our public schools. Increased funding to education is not directed at all parts of the school system. And because there is no flexibility in the agreement, health and safety hazards will result.

[ Page 10515 ]

B. McKinnon: I'm pleased to rise in support of the amendment moved by my colleague from Okanagan-Vernon. Bill 39, put forward by this NDP government, will have a dramatic impact on public education throughout this province. It is another poison bill put forward by the NDP that will do untold harm. The amendment put forward to decline second reading is the only possible solution that this disgraceful bill is worthy of. The B.C. Liberal opposition predicts that there will be a significant impact felt by parents beginning in October of 1998 and also in October of 1999. This is an extremely bad bill for our children and for the school districts in this province.

I think it's fair to say that this is another one of the Premier's agreements being pushed onto the public with his usual arrogant, big-bully manner and I-know-best attitude. We have a Premier who is only concerned with where he sits in the polls, not with the education of our children of this province. The Premier hijacked the process, decided to take negotiations away from the school boards and put himself in charge. The Premier's track record does not speak well for the Premier. So how can anyone believe that this bill will be good for this province? His track record shows us that this bill is going to be one more disaster for the people of British Columbia. I call it despicable. They know that parents won't realize it until all is said and done; parents won't realize what has happened until they start to register their kids at school.

Here we have one piece of paper before us that is going to have an enormous impact on our children. You would think that the members opposite who have families, especially young families, would be appalled at what their party is doing to education.

We live in a province where one-size-fits-all will not work. If we travelled around this province and visited every school district, as I'm sure the Minister of Education has at one time or another, we would find a province that is very diverse, with different needs in many areas. As elected members of this Legislature, we all know that each one of our constituencies has different goals and objectives. We all know that a one-size-fits-all solution will not work in a province as diverse as British Columbia.

This bill will have a dramatic impact on public education in our province. This socialistic government is doing untold damage to our children's education, and that's why I support this amendment to not give second reading to Bill 39. What works for Vancouver may not work for the north; what works for the north may not work for Surrey, where our growth is ignored by this government. What this bill does, hon. Speaker, is take a portion of our education system and require every school district, regardless of their local direction, to provide education in the same way.

That's why the people of this province elected school boards. Our school trustees are elected locally by the people of their communities to make decisions that are best suited for their own districts. Trustees know their districts and know that circumstances vary between districts. Trustees themselves can arrive at the best solutions for their community. It is their role, not that of the Premier of this province, to negotiate with teachers. The Premier should be paying attention to his own job and leave the school trustees to theirs. If he paid attention to what is happening in this province, maybe it wouldn't be in the crisis that it is today. The elected trustees are held accountable to the people who elect them, just as these Members of the Legislative Assembly are.

[10:15]

This deal imposes a rigid class-size structure on all schools. This will force children to be bused out of their neighbourhood schools if there's no room at the school nearest to them. Families will be split, and the school could be many kilometres from their homes.

This is an unworkable deal, forced on school districts without any commitment for funding beyond the first year. School districts will have to find areas to make cuts when there is nothing left in the cookie jar. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where these cuts will be made. If school districts can't let teachers go to save money, they're going to look into other areas. Those areas will more than likely be janitors, playground supervisors and possibly transportation staff. Overcrowded classrooms are unacceptable. But local school boards must have the flexibility to adjust classroom size, maximize classroom dollars and preserve classroom services. If school boards don't have the flexibility to do what they were elected to do by the people of this province, it is our most vulnerable who will suffer: our children.

In the city of Surrey, the existing contract between the district and the Surrey Teachers Association is 20 students per kindergarten class. The existing space standard in the facilities branch of the Ministry of Education is 25. The district is being penalized in its ability to accommodate all kindergarten classes in existing, renovated and new facilities. The proposed changes to the space standard would mean that Surrey would need at least 20 additional classrooms, based on the September 30, 1997, enrolment. When we look at the existing contract for Surrey's primary grades 1 to 3, we have 25 students per class. For several years, that total was 28. The proposed changes would mean that Surrey will need an additional 50 classrooms for grades 1 to 3, based on September 30 enrolment. The additional classrooms needed in Surrey work out to be approximately 70 classrooms, based on the 1997 enrolment. This space is the equivalent of five average-sized elementary schools.

This settlement introduces a new provision that provides for the number of non-enrolling teachers to be based on stipulated student-teacher ratios. Surrey usually has more costly provisions than those of other school districts. This new settlement will require the district to follow Surrey's contract provision, but it also requires the district to make all reasonable efforts to comply with the 1997-98 ratios for the next three

[ Page 10516 ]

I'll give you an example of the effect the extra teachers in this settlement is having on other districts. Surrey school district's funding for extra teachers is 11.81 FTEs, compared to Vancouver at 63.684 FTEs and Richmond at 57.826 FTEs. If you take the size of Surrey and compare it to Vancouver or Richmond, the treatment that is given to Surrey by this government becomes even more unfair. Some districts get preferential funding, while others do not. Surrey clearly doesn't get fair treatment when it comes to funding for our students when you look at the growth we have.

This government has negotiated and legitimized lower class sizes. There is now a good argument that the ministry should change the class sizes used for capital programs to reflect collective agreement numbers. This could be very important to Surrey. For example, if the existing class size of 25 for kindergarten were changed to the newly negotiated 20, we can calculate that Surrey would be entitled to 25 additional classrooms, and that is just for kindergarten.

Other districts will receive new and additional funds to meet the newly negotiated standards without compromising other parts of their district budget. The unfairness, in my view, is that Surrey had to achieve these same or better standards by cutting elsewhere in their budget. There will be unfair funding of school districts and unfair treatment of students on a district-to-district basis. One broken promise after another broken promise is all that comes from this government.

This government has failed the people of this province, and it continues to fail the people every time they put out a press release. The Premier makes a big announcement that the government is going to reduce the number of portables in the province. Out go the press releases, the spin: "Look what we are doing for education in this province." Yes, look at the way the NDP are removing portables from schools. In Surrey we need 30 more portables ready for the students by September, 1998. That, in my books, is adding, not subtracting.

Hon. Speaker, this government is drowning politically, and they're trying to take our children, our most vulnerable resource, with them. This is a shameful bill and a shameful government, which has lost all sense of direction and is so out of touch with the real world.

K. Krueger: I rise to speak in support of the amendment moved by my colleague from Okanagan-Vernon and thereby, obviously, to speak against Bill 39, the Public Education Collective Agreement Act. There are many reasons for this. The principal one is because I believe in public education and am very concerned about the safety and well-being of children in British Columbia. I believe in free collective bargaining, and I believe in the provincial government fulfilling its responsibility to children in B.C.

The B.C. Liberals are convinced that education is the highest priority of the provincial government and ought to be its first consideration in funding allocations. We've been appalled to see the decline in funding for children and their education in this province. We don't believe in compromising children's safety and obliging them to bus across town to attend schools farther away from their communities than they would otherwise attend. We don't believe in the splitting of families and the creation of latchkey-kid situations where in some cases, children will come home from several different schools. If they're fortunate, they'll have one parent who can go around and pick them up with a vehicle, but they won't be able to attend at all of their schools.

This government must be receiving letters, as we are -- beseeching letters from parents -- saying that this is not going to be a workable situation for them. This might be termed the mandatory busing bill, because it's going to create havoc in families and in school districts throughout this province.

We don't believe in dirty schools, and yet school districts will not have the money to pay CUPE employees to do their jobs in maintaining the cleanliness of schools and even maintaining the integrity of the buildings themselves. It's been shameful to hear of the problem with rats in schools in the lower mainland, in some cases overrunning school buildings that haven't been properly maintained. The school boards already don't have sufficient funds, and now that this collective agreement imposed by the Premier is going to allocate funding in such stringent and inflexible ways, school districts are going to be in even more of a bind in that regard.

We don't believe in the forced misuse of resources in school districts: principals having to go out and shovel snow off sidewalks and teachers having to spend their time doing things that CUPE employees used to do because the CUPE employees aren't there anymore. It's amazing -- the more this Premier interferes in processes in this province, the more he creates the very problems that he purports to be trying to solve.

We don't believe that it's right to cause the layoff of young teachers throughout British Columbia and the deferral of retirement by teachers who were ready and, in many cases, had already given notice that they intended to leave the education workforce and make room for young and upcoming teachers, who are paid far lower salaries at the outset than those teachers at retirement age. We don't believe in robbing administration of the flexibility that they ought to have in doing their job: administering the schools. We don't believe in the destabilization of education, which the Premier's agreement with the BCTF has brought about. We don't believe in the hijacking of collective bargaining that has happened or the emasculation of school boards and their negotiating representatives, the B.C. School Trustees Association. We don't believe in the creation of a grievance goldmine, as has happened, with the Premier intervening in the way that he did. We don't believe in forcing schools to organize around a collective agreement, rather than organizing around the educational needs of children. What a backwards process this Premier has set up for us once again.

We don't believe that it's appropriate for a government to negotiate an agreement behind the backs of the legitimate negotiators for the management side and then refuse to fund it. And most of all, we don't believe that government MLAs ought to sit idly by and then vote like trained seals once again for an agreement negotiated by a dictatorial Premier who presumes to just take charge, who manages in the classic seagull style of management: fly in from nowhere, spray his whitewash all over the place, do a lot of squawking, try to take credit, have a photo op and fly out, leaving everyone else to deal with the consequences once again. We can't understand why the government MLAs put up with that or how they will ever justify to their constituents their negligence, their failure to stand on their own two feet and oppose this Premier. How will they ever face their constituents after a disgraceful performance such as the one we've seen in this Legislature this session?

Here we are, once again, in the middle of the night with the government MLAs just sitting there ignoring us, talking to

[ Page 10517 ]

For this government caucus to back the Premier when, really, the only proponents of it were a 40 percent vote of the BCTF. . . . Many of those teachers were voting not because they thought it was a good deal but because they didn't want to have to go on strike. They didn't want to be manoeuvred into a situation where services were withdrawn altogether. Who has eliminated the designation of education as an essential service in British Columbia? This selfsame government -- putting the children of British Columbia into this box. It's another of those giveaways to a big union organization like the health labour relations accord, like the Highway Constructors Ltd. agreement for the Island Highway, like the so-called jobs and timber accord, like giving silviculture work to the IWA.

Time after time after time we see this Premier making bad deals, representing British Columbians, to benefit that small, ever-shrinking group of people that he thinks of as his buddies, his friends and insiders. Once again we see the Premier squandering resources. He's squandering the resource of the school trustees of British Columbia, those people who give heart and soul to represent their constituents, who are duly elected and empowered by communities to negotiate on their behalf and who appointed a negotiating team that was then completely undermined -- had the rug completely pulled out from under them -- by this Premier. It is another case of mismanagement.

By removing the flexibility of administration from school districts right on down through principals and vice-principals, the Premier has brought on predictable consequences yet again. For every action there is, indeed, an equal and opposite reaction. When all the resources are devoted to satisfying the terms of a collective agreement such as this that benefits only one group involved, other groups will suffer. It will be the grades-4-to-12 students; it will be the CUPE employees and their jobs; it will be administrators, families, parents and, above all, the children themselves. That is wrong.

[10:30]

What kind of input have they had? This is what the B.C. School Trustees Association said: "Challenges will be faced by the boards, including class-size limits that may force schools to reorganize classes and, as a result, force students to move at any time during the school year." I challenge those government MLAs to think about what they're going to say when those parents call them and say: "This is outrageous: My children are being forced to move in the middle of the school year because of the stupid agreement that was hammered out between Kit Krieger and the boy Premier." The trustees go on to say:

"Children will possibly have to move from their neighbourhoods because of the inflexible class size limits. The contract causes classes to be disrupted and prevents students from being sure they will have the same teacher all year. Funding to hire librarians and counsellors may only be available to districts that don't meet the specified ratios. School districts that have managed to preserve these positions during previous budget cuts will not receive funding to restore the services they cut in order to maintain these positions."

What do the B.C. principals and vice-principals say to their association? They decry the emphasis on seniority once again. That came up during the Bill 26 debate. It comes up a lot in regard to labour management relations with this Premier and this government. "The emphasis on seniority in the staffing process has made it increasingly difficult," they say, "to develop a team of teachers best qualified and suited to meet the needs of students in individual schools." They go on to say that they support parent concerns about the disruption of classes throughout the year to meet the dictates of a collective agreement. They say: "A centrally-imposed agreement limits flexibility to meet local needs." The limiting of flexibility is a very destructive force in administering any kind of a system. It should only be done with great care and for good reason. This is another of Premier Clark's top-down, one-size-fits-all, inflexible arrangements.

What did the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils have to say? They say:

". . .this contract is specifically tied to hiring teachers rather than allowing local school boards, in consultation with parents and other partner groups, to determine how these funds can most efficiently and effectively be deployed within their jurisdictions to meet the needs of primary students." They are concerned that "strict adherence to contractual class-size figures may be detrimental to the needs of students. Some may not be able to attend their local schools; others may suffer from having to be reassigned to different classes and/or different teachers throughout a single school year as enrolment grows or declines."

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

They point out that restrictive contract language limits delivery of alternate educational models such as the semester

[ Page 10518 ]

The parent advisory councils published their support for the school trustees of British Columbia, emphasizing that in voting against this collective agreement, the trustees had voted for fewer children forced from neighbourhood schools, fewer classroom disruptions during the school year and more local flexibility in the deployment of funds to meet the needs of students. The parent advisory councils go on to say that through their resolutions, the trustee members stated they want school libraries to remain open, they want assistance for students who are coping with learning disabilities or special needs, and they want support for troubled children and teens. Don't the government members want these also?

The parent advisory councils go on to say that the rigid formulae in this agreement do not recognize the unique needs of students in each district. Trustees must be able to respond to students' greatest needs by allocating funding accordingly. They talk about grave concerns with the inflexible class-size language necessitating the busing of young students -- probably the youngest students and families -- out of their immediate communities, resulting in continuous classroom reorganization.

They say that the agreement does not address the issue of evaluating the quality of instruction. It strikes me that once again we have a practices code imposed by the Premier of British Columbia. We've had the Forest Practices Code, last week we were working on the homebuilders' practices code, and now we have the education practices code. After it causes further collapse within our educational system, I suppose we'll have "Education Renewal B.C.," a Crown corporation. Time after time we see this Premier repeating his same old failed approaches.

Here's a teacher who writes. He says that four teachers in his school are going to be eliminated because of this collective agreement, and retiring teachers have withdrawn their notice of retirement because it is those teachers' belief, as he says, that they should hang on for another year for a $20,000 bonus next year. He says that this agreement has guaranteed the layoff of young, enthusiastic teachers in his school.

Here's a parent who has written:

"I have three kids -- ages 13, ten and five -- in three different schools next year because I live in a small community where our children don't come in those nice little bunches of 20 kindergarten kids. I've already been denied bus service to my home for next year, and now I have been told that I have to send my daughter to a school about one hour away from my house so she can go to kindergarten. . . ."

". . .I have been told that I have to send my daughter to a school one hour away from my house so she can go to kindergarten, when there's a perfectly good school 20 minutes away where her brother will be going. Whatever happened to brothers and sisters going through school together?"

An Hon. Member: Shame! This minister is responsible.

K. Krueger: My colleague is right: this Minister of Education is responsible for that, for not standing up to the Premier and saying: "Let me do my job, Mr. Premier. Let the school trustees of British Columbia do their jobs." If we accept that they ought to be empowered by the public to do a job, as they have been, then we ought to let them do it. If there's money that can be put on the negotiating table, why not give it to the negotiators? Why keep it in the Premier's hip pocket and then trot it out when he thinks it's time for another photo opportunity because so many of his other initiatives have failed?

In summary, it's no surprise that I oppose this legislation. I support the amendment by my colleague from Okanagan-Vernon to decline to give it second reading. The B.C. Liberals oppose Bill 39, and the reason we oppose it is because we care about kids and we believe in public education. We stand against this family-busting, taxpayer-abusing, roughshod-riding, phony, dictatorial, rubber-stamp, fascist government.

R. Coleman: Hon. Speaker, I'm pleased to enter into the debate this evening on the amendment to the bill. In my district this year, there are four children with autism who are going to be entering kindergarten. Those four children are going to enter kindergarten, and they will not have the benefit of a full-time aide. When I spoke to my school district about this, I was told that it's simply because the money isn't there, not necessarily that they wouldn't provide the service. We know that with early intervention and treatment, the government can save over $2 million in direct costs over the life of an autistic child. We know this, yet what we've done here is taken an education agreement and forgotten about the individual human issues that affect people, their families and their children. We can make light of it, and we can catcall across this House about it. But the fact of the matter is that there are children in this society who, as a result of this agreement, are not going to get the education that they deserve.

What this deal does is show absolute, flagrant hypocrisy. Can you imagine a government that is based on the principles of labour, entering into a negotiation and then breaking it down while it was still in negotiation and throwing money on the table not to the parties but in a backdoor agreement in order to cut a deal on a piece of labour negotiation? If that was done in any other sector, the catcalls and cries from the other side of this House -- that it was absolutely unacceptable for anybody to go in the back door and make a deal without the two parties being at the table -- would be unbelievable. It would be absolutely unacceptable, because that's the principle that they built their party on. They built their party on proper collective bargaining -- not on having a minister come in at the nineteenth hour, throw another $150 million on the table for one party and exclude the other party from the negotiations. What would have happened if that money was on the table on day one? Would the parties have been able to come to an agreement? I think they deserved the opportunity to find out, and they weren't given that by this government.

The money for this agreement has to be put into this agreement because this government has done a number of things since it came into power seven years ago. In the last seven years they've cut education funding. School boards across the province have been forced to make painful budget cuts. A study done by the British Columbia Teachers Federation -- the people you cut the deal with -- shows that per-pupil operating funds have declined by almost $400 from 1990-91 through to 1997-98. The report shows a 7 percent decline in education funding. The B.C. Teachers Federation -- the same people you cut the deal with, who you threw the money on the table with in the back rooms -- also said that if

[ Page 10519 ]

You're playing catch-up. You're playing catch-up to a joke, and the joke is your commitment to education from 1991 to 1998. It was a joke, and that's the reason that you're in the position you're in today.

The NDP reduced overall per-pupil funding in the amount of $43 in the 1997-98 school year alone. You sit there and try and tell the people of this province, whose kids can't get special-needs training in their school, that you put the money into the system. Well, you didn't put the money into the system, so quit giving them this load of garbage. Tell them the truth: that you, as a government, have abdicated your responsibility to education, and as a result of that, you had to go into a back room and mess up everybody's lives.

Now a single parent in my community will have to do the same thing as the member for Kamloops-North Thompson was talking about a few minutes ago. They'll have to drive three children -- in kindergarten, grade 2 and grade 4 -- to three different schools in the community next year because of this particular piece of legislation. You can't tell me that's good for our children. You can't tell me that's a bill that we should stand and support in this House. There's absolutely no way that I could support it.

We're going to have school grounds no longer being supervised. What's that going to lead to? That's going to lead to violence in the school yards. Supervision is important in today's society with the difficulties that we have in our school system, and we have to be very concerned about that. Schools won't get the upkeep that they would normally get, because the money has to go into meeting the rigidity of this particular agreement. That means that daytime custodial staff are no longer going to be there to clean the washrooms, unplug the toilets, remove the litter and clean up after accidents.

[10:45]

Get off the fraud. Get off the big fat mess that you've given us and put the system back on its feet, where it belongs, with all the parties at the table -- all the parties, just like you would have from the basic tenets of your own political party and of labour negotiation, which you all support and that you spent time debating on Bill 26 just a couple of weeks ago. Stand up for what you believe in. Stand up for open bargaining; stand up for the agreement. Stand up for it, because that's what you tell everybody you believe in. Why don't you prove it, once and for all, and defeat this legislation?

G. Wilson: It's a pleasure to finally get into this debate, albeit at 10:45, and to speak about this piece of legislation. What is interesting about this legislation, apart from the fact that we are debating it close to the midnight hour, is that it is a reflection of a departure -- I think we could accurately say a complete departure -- from what most members opposite would have expected of their government in terms of their commitment to collective bargaining.

In my comments tonight, I want to address this issue in three primary areas. One, I want to talk a little bit about the process from my perspective in this chamber and also the process from my perspective as somebody who has been somewhat actively involved in my past life in public sector education and in collective bargaining as a chief negotiator -- as someone who's been actively involved on that side of the gate. The second is that I want to talk a little bit about what this means in terms of the legislation itself, in terms of the elected school boards. What does this do to all the people out there who went with good faith to the polls and put their little Xs next to their preferred candidates who were running for school boards? What does this legislation say to those people who believed that the people they were electing to local school boards would actually have a voice in how education was going to be delivered? Lastly, I want to talk about what this means in terms of the educational fallout. What does this mean, actually, to the children? That, really, is the bottom line of where we're going to go.

Let me start off by saying this. When I had an opportunity to speak to this and then in preparing for this debate, I prepared this huge, long file. I went through all kinds of materials. I went through Hansard Blues and pulled out all kinds of information. It was my thinking originally that when I got on my feet, I was going to, with as much control as possible, beat this government about the ears on this legislation and get passionate about what I believed was an absolutely flagrant violation of one of the most fundamental principles involved in labour negotiations, and that is an adherence to free collective bargaining.

So I went out there, and I wanted to challenge this government to stand up for and defend what they have done with respect to public sector bargaining and negotiations in the province of British Columbia. I talked to many of these members individually, and individually they're uncomfortable. That may state volumes about why they're not up here going on the record and defending what this government is doing tonight. Why are they not out here? Because they are cowards -- absolute cowards! That's why they're not up here; that's why they're not defending it. They know that the rank-and-file union members who are affected by this legislation. . . . They know there's a big-time sellout of free collective bargaining.

Where is the member for Victoria-Hillside, with his union credentials? Is he standing up and saying: "You know what? A legislated collective agreement by a government is a good thing. And when the next government comes in and sits down with the employer and excludes the employee, we're going to stand up and say, 'Right on; that's what we want, let's have the employer and the government sit down, cut a deal in the back room, negotiate it between two parties only, and then enforce it by legislation' "? Where is he? Bring in Victoria-Hillside to defend that. Where is the member? He's not here; he won't stand up; he won't defend this deal.

Where's the member for Kootenay, with her long credentials in labour relations? She's a strong union member. Where's the member for Kootenay saying, on her feet: "I think this is great legislation. This is what we want in free collective bargaining in British Columbia: to have the government sit down with the executive" -- not even the negotiating team -- "of one side, cut a deal, and then go and say, 'That's it guys, and if you don't like it, too bad, because we're going to legislate it' "? Where is the member?

You know, the only member. . . . The member for Esquimalt-Metchosin got on his feet to talk about class size. Is

[ Page 10520 ]

The only other group that I've got about as much anger at tonight is the public sector union bosses. I wrote a letter to every single union head -- every one in the public sector. I said: "Before I get on my feet in debate, I want you to send me a letter defending what this government has done, stating your position and telling me you think this is good public policy." Not one had the guts to send me back a letter. Why? Because this government has gone down the tube of public sector erosion in the collective bargaining process. They got all of the members together who are in their little group, the elites in the union, and said to the union elites: "Stick with us, guys, because we're your friends. Stick with us, guys, because we'll give you something that's going to be worthwhile."

You know what, hon. Speaker? When I spoke to them privately, those public sector union bosses, not one of them thought this was good legislation. They're all uncomfortable with it, every single last one of them. So I said: "Well, why will you accept it? Why will you not come up and stand up with me and say: 'This is unprincipled; this is wrong; this is the beginning of the end of free collective bargaining for public sector workers"'? They said: "Because it works to the advantage of our members in this instance." What kind of principle is that? How can we ever take those people seriously when they decide to go out on the streets with a picket, saying that their rights for free collective bargaining are being eroded? They have lost it, hon. Speaker; they have had it. Never again will they stand up with any dignity and say: "We are protecting the rights of workers in this province."

I see the Minister of Transportation and Highways waving his hands and saying: "Ah, forget it." You know what, hon. Speaker? That's why these people on the opposite side of this bench aren't going to be returned to government: because they know contempt like no other government knows contempt.

What about the public sector workers? This is a government that says it's just great to take judges' salaries at $118,000 and jack them up to $145,000. But this government says to the women -- and they're predominantly women -- who are involved in home care: "I'm sorry, there is no money in the pot for you." This government said to the teachers, who haven't taken a wage increase in almost seven years: "Sorry, guys, no wage increase. But you know what? We're going to cough up a deal here that's going to bring in a lot of non-enrolling teachers, because we think that's in the best interests of the teachers." I went to the teachers in my riding. I met with all of them, and there isn't one who thinks that's a good idea, because they are struggling and need resources in the classroom right now to help them. This government hasn't delivered on that promise at all.

I want to know where these members are. In doing that, let's just take a look at a few more who have these credentials. In fact, why not have the hon. Minister of Finance -- she has long credentials in labour negotiations, albeit not public sector but certainly private sector -- to get on her feet and say: "I think that government intervention in free collective bargaining is a good thing. We want to do that. We want to legislate collective agreements, and we want to legislate those collective agreements so that if the Labour Relations Board says something in it is wrong, the minister can override the Labour Relations Board. That's great legislation, hon. Speaker"? She won't get to her feet. Not one of them has got the guts to stand up and defend this bill.

And when the minister gets up, he's going to say: "This is good for public education, because we are promising $150 million in new classrooms for teachers. We are going to bring in an end to portables, and we are going to reduce class sizes. We are going to do all of those sorts of things." Do you know what? We've heard that over and over and over, and it hasn't happened. It won't happen, because on the capital expenditure side, this minister knows as well as any other member in this Legislative Assembly that he cannot bind future Treasury Boards to capital funding expenditures. He can't do it, and he knows he can't do it. So this is just nonsense -- absolute nonsense.

Do you know what is interesting? It's that the members opposite find this very amusing. Do you know why they find it amusing? Because they are in a majority government, and that means that they can do just about anything they want.

Well, the rank and file in the public sector might be very interested to know that not one of their union bosses -- not one -- was prepared to stand up and challenge this government. That is absolutely disgraceful, because if anybody believes in free collective bargaining in this province. . . . The people who have to fight for it and guard it are people in the public sector. They're the most vulnerable: the rank-and-file workers, the workers who will take no wage increase, the workers whose rights in the workplace are slowly being eroded, the workers who this government pretends to support. Not one of them will get up and defend it, because they are just too cowardly to do so. They know in their hearts that there is no defence for what this government is doing in this legislation -- no defence at all. And it reminds me, hon. Speaker, of this same government -- remember? -- who legislated teachers back to work, who brought in back-to-work legislation. This is the pro-labour government. . . .

[11:00]

G. Wilson: He asks when. The last time the teachers were on strike in Vancouver, we had a special session -- on a Saturday, if I'm not mistaken -- when we all had to come in here and vote to legislate the teachers back to work. Check the Hansard record, member; it's all there. This NDP government legislated. . . . Sure, you had a different Premier; maybe that's the reason you booted him out. Well, you're doing worse than that tonight. And if we want honesty in position, from my perspective we've got the NDP delivering on a Liberal promise, in a sense, because at least those members had the integrity in the last election to say that education should be an essential service -- something I don't particularly agree with. This government campaigned on completely the opposite point and has now introduced it legislatively. That's what this is now. This is now government as an essential service; this is now an erosion of the public sector.

[ Page 10521 ]

Hon. Speaker, the next time there is a collective bargaining process in British Columbia and the employer comes to a non-labour-friendly government and cuts a deal in the back room and legislates it, I don't want to hear a word from any one of these members; I don't want to hear a word from the public sector union bosses out there; I don't want to hear a word from anybody who wasn't prepared to stand up and fight this legislation today.

An Hon. Member: Same principle.

G. Wilson: The principle is entrenched today. It was brought in by this government, and this government will wear it. I hope that every rank-and-file union member out there knows it, because they've just been sold down the river.

Now, hon. Speaker, you might ask: "Well, why would the unions be so ready to take dirt from this government?" It's because they're treated like dirt by this government. You know what's incredible? At a public commentary the other day, the Premier of this province said: "Well, yeah, that just shows that we don't show favouritism. So we'll treat the unions like dirt if we have to." He didn't use those words, but that's effectively what it meant. We're prepared to treat them like dirt. So what the union bosses are saying is: "Yeah, we don't mind taking dirt from this government, because they're our friends. But boy, if we take dirt from somebody who is not our friend, we're going to get really upset."

The bottom line is that the union, the rank-and-file members, the people who are out there, the teachers, the people who expect to see something come down the tube that is going to be worthwhile and help them -- they're sold out.

Let's talk a little bit about the school trustees. This government forgets one thing: those school trustees were elected to office by the people of the province of British Columbia. By legislating this agreement down the throats of the school trustees, this government is legislating down the throats of every single individual who went out to the polls to elect their representative. This is the government that promised we were going to have elected hospital boards. It didn't happen; they're all appointed boards. This is the government that talks about the fundamental rights of democracy and of the people in a democracy having the right to vote and to choose. What a joke! They haven't delivered on any of that.

When the elected members of each area, through the trustees, had their bargaining unit bog down because this government refused to give them a mandate that they could settle on, what did the government do? Did the government come in and say: "Okay, we'll bring in mediation"? That was an option, but no. Did it say: "We'll appoint an industrial inquiry commissioner"? That was an option -- no. Did it turn around and say: "Well, what we'll do is bring in binding arbitration"? That was an option. The answer is no. When the trustees came and said, "Listen, we're having trouble steering this bus to someplace where we can get it to an agreement," they didn't expect it to be hijacked and taken somewhere else. They wanted some help, and they didn't get it. Instead what they got was an agreement signed between the executive of the BCTF and the government of the province of British Columbia, with a great deal of assistance through the Premier's Office. It's absolutely unconscionable. The contempt this government has shown to those people who elected school boards is absolutely unbelievable.

I don't know how any one of these members. . . . How is it possible that the member for Yale-Lillooet can go back to Yale-Lillooet and go up to his trustee and say: "You know, you're doing a really good job. I'm behind you 100 percent. I want to make sure that you can have this thing work, because. . . . When you had an opportunity to cast your ballot on this, and you voted against it, I said, 'Ha, you don't know what you're talking about. My government knows better. We're going to legislate this thing straight down the tube' "? How about the member for Prince George-Mount Robson? You've got the Prince George-Mount Robson school board. Are you going to go there and say: "Well, you know, I know you're elected, and I know you thought this was in the best interest. . . ."? What about that, hon. Speaker? Where did that member go? How are they going to be able to stand up and look their school trustees in the eye? They won't be able to.

How are they going to be able to look their electorate in the eye, when they have just said to the electorate: "We are contemptuous of the fact that you have elected these members. We will give them no credibility; we'll give them no power, no authority. We are going to dictatorially put this in place, and that's the way it's going to be"? It's absolutely unbelievable. These are duly elected members.

I don't know what happened to the trustees after this deal came down. I would have expected that we would have heard more from the trustees than we have. Perhaps they're trying to gather momentum or find out how they're going to go on. Maybe they're regrouping, or whatever they're doing. We've got to hear from those trustees, because it cannot be done by members of this Legislative Assembly, standing up at 11 o'clock at night on a bill that this government is going to ram through, come hell or high water. We have to hear from these members, and these members have to go back to the people of British Columbia and tell those people who elected them that this government is actually absolutely contemptuous of the electoral process, contemptuous of the fact that these people are constituents of the trustees and of these members and in fact that they're contemptuous of the fact that they have a right to cast a vote and have an opinion and have that opinion prevail at the community level. That's what the government is saying in this bill: "We are contemptuous of the people of British Columbia having a right, at the community level, to decide what is in the best interests of their children in the education system." That's what every one of them is saying.

How about if we had the member for Surrey-Whalley get up, or maybe the member for New Westminster? He's always keen to get up and debate in principle. Get up! Defend this bill. Is there any one of them that has the guts to stand up and defend this legislation? Not one of them. We're going to hear some kind of milquetoast response from the Minister of Education about how wonderful this is going to be for education. That's it. Not one of them has got the guts to do it. That is just shameful.

In my last few minutes, let me talk a little bit about the education system and what it's going to mean to the kids. I don't know how many people out there who are listening to me or who may read my comments in Hansard understand exactly what transpired. In this deal there's a grid. The grid is essentially established on teacher-librarian staffing ratios,

[ Page 10522 ]

What was the response when I put the question to the minister on how this was going work? "Well, it's going to be negotiated." If there's no agreement on it, how are they going to be able to deal with it? They're going to deal with this through labour grievances. How are those labour grievances going to be funded? They're going to be funded out of $150 million worth of revenue that's going into the school boards, because that's the only place the school boards are going to have to fund it. These grievances -- and there will be many, because this is just full of errors. . . .

Interjection.

G. Wilson: Oh, the minister is saying: "Stop making up problems." Will the minister table for the school districts in British Columbia how much they spent on legal bills in legal labour grievances in the last year alone? Just table the information, because nobody else can get that information. That information isn't available. I'll tell you that it's in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

Interjection.

G. Wilson: Yes, it is. The minister is saying that it is. So I'm not making up problems here. I'm simply saying that this is going to exacerbate those problems. That is going to make this problem worse.

We've heard from a number of the members of the Liberal Party who have already talked about the impact of class size on busing. I'm not going to repeat information that's out there, because many of them have put it out very eloquently and very clearly. I agree with their position. I think we will find that there are many, many young people who are going to be forced into the situation of having to be bused.

What this minister seems to have forgotten in all of this deal. . . . He's assuming that this agreement is something that is going to be available in those school districts where we see enrolments rising. Has the minister given any consideration at all to how this is going to impact those communities where enrolment is declining? Has the minister even figured out how those declining enrolments are going to impact class size, when in fact the declining enrolment is in rural areas where people are moving into the urban areas, and the rural areas will be able to very quickly accommodate class size but the urban areas will not? Does the minister have any clue about how that might work?

He hasn't. What's interesting is that when you read the text of the agreement, the solution there is to average. You're going to find out, in the averaging and combining of classes, that not only are you not going to meet the minimum class size but also that those numbers are in fact going to be higher. They may even be 26 or 27 per class. So where's the pedagogical benefit in that? It isn't there. We know it isn't there; the government knows it isn't there.

The government knows this is all rhetoric. The government knows that the Premier went to the B.C. Teachers Federation convention and made a big promise to have a reduction in class size, to put education out as the number one goal of this government -- this government that hasn't yet met one of its primary economic objectives. In doing this, in order to reach this, they have sacrificed the principles of free collective bargaining. Their negotiating team itself -- for the BCTF -- did not accept this deal. It's absolutely mind-boggling, what has happened here. From this government -- a government that I believed. . . . You know, you can hedge your bets and hedge your principles in a whole host of areas, but surely to goodness you're not going to hedge your principles on something as fundamental as this labour government's supposed commitment to free collective agreement.

I remember this Education minister, who was then representing a college, sitting there in labour school, and I remember when he was out there in his union hat and fighting a restraint program -- a different government, a different regime. I remember arm-to-arm, shoulder-to-shoulder: "Solidarity forever. . . ." You know the song, hon. Speaker? Maybe we should all sing it: "Solidarity Forever." You remember that, and how we were all going to stand together and fight this oppressive government? We had thousands of people on the streets there, because we had a government that brought in a restraint program. That restraint program was so offensive that the public sector workers were all out there -- not the private sector, no, no, no. Just before the private sector had to actually do something, guess what: there was a deal cut in Kelowna. Well, too bad, because the public sector workers were all out. They had themselves right on the line. They'd paid their dues; they were all out there. They didn't get the support from the private sector workers. Why? Well, because that was taking it a little too far.

So Solidarity collapsed in a heap, and this minister now sits as Minister of Education and puts the final coup de grâce on the carving up of free collective bargaining for public sector workers, by bringing in the first-ever, I believe, legislated collective agreement in public sector history. It's the first ever. What a great first for this minister! What a great first for this minister, to bring in the first-ever government-legislated collective agreement, where he has not even had the ability to pull two sides together and have those two sides ratify an agreement in the traditional sense.

What another great first for this minister -- to give to the government the power, under the minister, to override the Labour Relations Board. That's terrific. I wonder if the member for Saanich South, who's the Minister of Advanced Education. . . . Do you think it's good legislation, member, to have the minister of the Crown be able to get up there and override the Labour Relations Board? Is that good legislation? He's hiding. I saw him slide down his chair.

Hon. Speaker, there's got to be shame on the faces of every one of those members, because not one of them will get up and defend this deal, except for the trite commentary we're going to get from the minister in his closing speech -- "It's good for education; $150 million" -- and the regurgitation. . . . Not one of them will get up and defend legislating a collective agreement and killing public sector workers. . . .

[ Page 10523 ]

G. Wilson: Maybe the member for Yale-Lillooet, who speaks well from his seat when he's sitting down, will get up and speak to it. They know that this is disgraceful legislation that should not be given second reading. We should vote against this bill, support this amendment and put this thing to bed once and for all.

[11:15]

[The Speaker in the chair.]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS -- 29
Sanders	C. Clark	Campbell
Farrell-Collins	de Jong	Plant
Abbott	Reid	Neufeld
Chong	Whittred	Jarvis
Anderson	Penner	G. Wilson
Weisbeck	Nebbeling	Hogg
Hawkins	Coleman	Stephens
Hansen	Thorpe	van Dongen
Dalton	Masi	Krueger
McKinnon		J. Wilson

 

NAYS -- 34
Evans	Zirnhelt	McGregor
Hammell	Boone	Streifel
Lali	Orcherton	Stevenson
Calendino	Goodacre	Walsh
Randall	Robertson	Cashore
Conroy	Petter	Miller
G. Clark	Dosanjh	MacPhail
Lovick	Ramsey	Farnworth
Waddell	Hartley	Sihota
Smallwood	Sawicki	Bowbrick
Kasper	Doyle	Giesbrecht
	Janssen

On the main motion.

The Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, I recognize the Minister of Education to close debate.

Hon. P. Ramsey: It's a real pleasure to stand here and close debate on Bill 39. It has been an interesting evening, listening to some of the concerns. . .

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, members.

Hon. P. Ramsey: . . .expressed by members opposite. Let me just say right up front that, you know, we have two main sorts of concerns. The first is no surprise: concerns about the process which led us to this debate. I want to be very candid with the members that I've heard those concerns; I've heard them from some of the trustees who they are representing. As I said when I introduced this bill in the House, I wish that this round of bargaining had ended differently -- very much.

When bargaining with teachers and trustees began nearly a year ago, I think everybody hoped that they would end with smiles and handshakes and with the first negotiated provincial agreement. . .

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, members.

Hon. P. Ramsey: . . .that received that sort of unanimity when it was concluded. Regrettably, that did not occur. Frankly, what I hear from the members opposite is a real desire to somehow rewrite the history of that bargaining, to somehow believe that it was being productive; that even after something like 70 meetings between the trustees and the BCTF, progress was being made; that even after the trustees said to government, "Look, we need your assistance to try to get there," somehow the two parties could have gotten together on their own. Hon. Speaker, that was clearly not happening. Government did step in, and we now have an agreement which is good for kids and which received overwhelming support from teachers in our province.

Let me say that the one thing I found a little disturbing here and that I'm sure some of my colleagues did as well was to hear this Liberal opposition, which from the start has opposed any sort of collective bargaining for school boards, stand up and somehow transform themselves overnight into the defenders of all that is pure and true in collective bargaining in British Columbia. After the performance in this House this session, that is untenable and unbelievable.

The parties to this agreement were not close. They were not reading out of the same book, let alone off of the same page. They were miles apart.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Members. . . .

Hon. P. Ramsey: What we have is an agreement that will let us move forward to make sure that we have stability in our school system this fall. Yes, there are problems with implementing this agreement. Yes, we will need more classrooms. We will need 1,000 more classrooms over the next five years to accommodate smaller classes in kindergarten-to-grade-3. That's on top of the portable reduction that we are committed to. Yes, we have to hire teachers, and yes, we have to make sure that this is implemented smoothly, but these are problems that any school trustees in provinces across this country would be pleased to have.

They are having some problems in implementing $150 million of additional funds and in hiring 1,200 more teachers for our kids, on top of having the highest per-student funding in Canada. They have to hire 1,200 teachers, not lay them off. They have to build 1,000 classrooms, not close them. They have to invest $150 million, not cut $500 million, as they're doing in Ontario. We're going to work with teachers and with trustees to make sure that this agreement benefits our students this fall in classrooms in British Columbia.

Hon. Speaker, I move second reading.

[ Page 10524 ]

YEAS -- 34
Evans	Zirnhelt	McGregor
Hammell	Boone	Streifel
Lali	Orcherton	Stevenson
Calendino	Goodacre	Walsh
Randall	Robertson	Cashore
Conroy	Petter	Miller
G. Clark	Dosanjh	MacPhail
Lovick	Ramsey	Farnworth
Waddell	Hartley	Sihota
Smallwood	Sawicki	Bowbrick
Kasper	Doyle	Giesbrecht
	Janssen

 

NAYS -- 29
Sanders	C. Clark	Campbell
Farrell-Collins	de Jong	Plant
Abbott	Reid	Neufeld
Chong	Whittred	Jarvis
Anderson	Penner	G. Wilson
Weisbeck	Nebbeling	Hogg
Hawkins	Coleman	Stephens
Hansen	Thorpe	van Dongen
Dalton	Masi	Krueger
McKinnon		J. Wilson

Bill 39, Public Education Collective Agreement Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

[11:30]

EDUCATION STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 1998
(second reading)

The Speaker: Minister, I wonder if I might interrupt you for just a moment. Take your seat while members who have some business elsewhere proceed to do that quietly.

Hon. P. Ramsey: The amendments do several things. They clarify which students are entitled to provincial funding. The amendments also set out that the minister may provide different levels of funding for different categories of students. This is the current practice. The amendments specify which categories of students are only funded through special grants. Currently provincial resource programs and distance education schools are funded through special grants, and students funded through those grants are not included in the calculation of block funding to districts.

The amendments also establish in legislation that adult high school graduation programs are free of charge to all students, including those over the age of 19. Approximately 54,000 students are now taking adult basic education courses -- 33,000 in school district programs and 21,000 in college programs -- of which 12,000 pay tuition. ABE is offered by 18 colleges and institutes in over 100 locations, as well as by the Open Learning Agency. Students will now be able to choose between college and school district programming, based on individual need and course offerings rather than cost. We are levelling the playing field between school district and college adult basic education. Courses in either system will lead to a common adult credential. This is unique in Canada. B.C. is the very first to coordinate the public school and college courses.

The amendments to the School Act also set an upper limit to the number of funded adult spaces in the K-to-12 system and apply conditions on that funding. This amendment is a key part of our government's efforts to harmonize the college ABE system, which has such provisions, with the K-to-12 adult education system. Enrolment has been capped at college levels and will be in public schools. As a result of uncapped growth, enrolment has grown by 10 percent a year for the past seven years. Regrettably, completion rates have not risen as well. Currently the School Act links funding of adults directly to enrolment rather than to completion. The amendments will permit the ministry to withhold up to 10 percent of the adult funding allocation to school districts, depending on completion rates. The amendments also provide the ability to deem certain categories of students resident for the purposes of education funding. This amendment will assist those students who might otherwise not meet school board residency requirements such as exchange students or dependants of foreign diplomats, for whom it is ministry policy to provide funding.

The second thing that this bill changes is the current section 942 of the Municipal Act. It repeals that section. This section was enacted as Bill 43 in 1995 to allow school boards and local governments to enter into voluntary agreements requiring developers to provide up to 5 percent of the development land for new school sites and replaces that with a mandatory school acquisition site charge or fee on new residential development.

The purposes of the original legislation were to ensure that school districts had the ability to meet the demand for new schools created by new residential developments and to provide needed savings to the taxpayers of the province in acquiring school sites. However, that approach did not work. School boards and local governments have had difficulty negotiating agreements under the 1995 legislation and were faced with expensive land purchases to build schools in residential areas. New residential development not only creates demand for new school sites but also drives up real estate values in the local market. For years, throughout British Columbia, developers have built new housing units without thinking about whether the new construction would bring in more children, thereby increasing the need for new schools. Municipal governments are not responsible for the planning of schools, and unless they took this into consideration before approving the subdivision, then land concerns for future schools were overlooked entirely.

This amendment responds directly to concerns raised by the UBCM, by school districts and by developers alike. Several school districts in Victoria, Coquitlam and other municipalities have been asking for mandatory site acquisition legislation for years. The amendment merely takes an existing, voluntary process of involving developers in the cost of new school sites and levels the playing field among all municipalities. The B.C. School Trustees Association and the individual districts have applauded the amendment.

[ Page 10525 ]

In some communities, the amendment will actually result in lower costs for developers than they're paying now. For example, in Richmond, they had estimated a per-unit fee for next year of roughly $6,000. When this amendment is applied in Richmond, the per-unit fee will drop to around $1,000. Calculation of the charge is based on projections from local governments and school boards of future residential development and its impact on student enrolment. The charge is directly linked to new development, school population growth and school site costs. It also includes an inexpensive and efficient process for addressing disputes by the appointment of facilitator to help resolve them.

Municipalities and other interested parties will have access to each school district's audited financial statements showing the use of all funds collected, and an amendment to the School Act limits the use of those funds to the purchase of eligible school sites only. The legislation also provides for a land-in-lieu option if the school board, local government and the developer can reach an agreement on the matter.

We know that we face challenges in our education system, and to meet those challenges, we have committed to ensure that every student gets a strong start and the skills to succeed. In our rapidly growing communities, this means making sure that school boards have the land necessary for building new schools. That's what the legislative amendment is all about.

This act makes some important amendments that will assist school boards in the province to provide the best possible education services and facilities to our residents. We made it clear that improving education by increasing access is one of our top priorities, and this legislation is a reflection of that commitment.

I move second reading.

A. Sanders: As the minister pointed out, there are two areas to Bill 35, and they are quite divergent in terms of what they cover. The first area, section 937.2 to section 937.91, deals with school site acquisition. The second area that is being amended is section 75 of the School Act. This gives the minister the legal mandate for how students are funded within the education framework.

I'd like to look at those two sections separately because of the complete difference in the nature of the two sections. The first section, on school site acquisition, is a remake of Bill 43, whereby school site acquisition within areas was considered voluntary, and this will now in fact make it mandatory.

The Speaker: Member, I wonder if you might pause for a moment. I'd like to call everyone to order. Conversations should be out in the corridor, please. It makes it very hard to hear.

A. Sanders: Under Bill 35, what we are going to have instead of the voluntary cooperation of areas in school site acquisition is a mandatory function. There are some reasons to be fundamentally opposed to this.

When we look at sections 937.2 through to 937.91, we're finding an abrogation of responsibility of government for the funding of education, from providing the capital necessary for land all the way through to the development of school sites.

What we've had in one short week are three things of critical importance. I think the actual clustering of those three things is even more important than any one of them on their own. We've had the passage of Bill 26, the labour bill; we've had the Homeowner Protection Act and the financial implications there; and now we have school site acquisition mandatory charges under Bill 35. Basically, what we have can be summed up, for those who are buying a new home, as an unprecedented attack on new-home buyers. There's no question that those three things together cannot be viewed one without the other. First we have a problem with whether people are actually going to have a job in this province and now with whether they can own a home. The two things together, for anyone who has been following this Legislature this summer and considering buying a home, must be horrible things for them to recognize in terms of their own future ability to have a home.

What Bill 35 has inadvertently or advertently done is to increase the price of a new home by around $1,000. What we have in Bill 35 is in fact a formula to derive how much the capital expenditure is, how much money must be paid for forced school-site acquisition. That formula under section 937.5 is composed of four variables. When you use those four variables to calculate the cost, Bill 35 could in fact increase the cost of a new home to a new-home buyer by $3,000.

There is an arbitrary cap that is set on the amount. Although that formula can generate numbers as high as $3,000, because of the so-called cap. . . . From the press releases I've been seeing or the interviews that have been done with the minister, he has either arbitrarily, or maybe with agreement from somebody, set the cap at $1,000. Now, all it takes under Bill 35 -- because it will be in the legislation -- is for an order-in-council to be done to remove or change the cap. We could have, from this particular legislation, up to $3,000 in additional cost for school site acquisition. This will be added to anything above four single-dwelling units. So although it is $1,000 now -- and maybe that's not a lot of money to some people; it's certainly a tremendous amount of money to anyone in the area of Okanagan-Vernon -- very quickly, as of September or October, it could be up to $3,000.

Here we have a construction industry where B.C. has the lowest per-capita housing starts since 1951, the lowest number of housing starts in the country, and the introduction of Bill 26, with the implications of job losses that have been predicted by people in the area of finance and investment. We have a mandatory homeowner warranty which has taken the cost of a new home up by around $3,000 to $4,000. Now, on top of that, we have a school site acquisition charge of $1,000, because there's a cap. But that cap could be removed now that we've got the formula in legislation, and we could see as much as $3,000 on there. So what we're finding is that not only are we a province that has few jobs for our young people but we're now almost saying to them: "If you want to have a new home, you'd better forget it in this province." I find that unconscionable.

[ Page 10526 ]

[11:45]

If what we have here isn't an attack on new homeowners, I don't know what it is.

Interjection.

A. Sanders: Another attack, says my colleague from Okanagan-Penticton.

The other things that Bill 35 will affect, which we'll have to discuss in committee, are the costs of housing for other groups. We're at a time when we're talking about increased co-op and low-priced housing for the mentally ill, through the mental health plan. There are, of course, the co-op housing groups. When I phoned several of them today, they weren't even aware of Bill 35. What kind of circumstances are we in when non-profit housing and co-op housing do not have an opinion for me on this circumstance, because they were so busy trying to figure out what the implications of the costs of the homeowner warranty program are going to mean to them? They haven't even got around to Bill 35, and I was telling them we were reading it tonight, and that it will be done and gone and away you go. Try to pick up the pieces and go from there, when it's all said and done and the dust settles in Victoria.

We have all these other kinds of non-profit housing. How will they be affected by this bill? Is the minister going to create regulations that exempt 8,000 different groups of non-profits, co-ops and housing for the mentally ill? What kind of acrimony is that going to create between those who do market housing and those who provide housing in other areas? They will get into the definitions of what seniors housing is, for example. Many people without children are choosing to live in seniors housing, and they're certainly not seniors. Why should they be exempt from the charges incurred in Bill 35, and yet those who build a free-standing home or condominium in a subdivision-type area will incur these costs?

I see this bill not only creating huge, almost impossible costs for many people living in my area, an area where welfare is the biggest employer, but also creating housing increases for those people who really have no money at all and are looking for housing for groups who will never be able to afford their own homes. That is absolutely unconscionable to me.

One thing that I would suggest there, as well, before I move on, is that there were alternatives to Bill 35, including public-private partnerships, smarter building designs, better local planning and alternative financing. Any of these could have been explored. They were brought forward to government, and government has chosen not to look at those. So I think that too is very, very concerning.

The second area of Bill 35 is the amendments to section 75 of the School Act. These go through -- section 82 and so on and so forth. This section gives a legal basis for the minister to ensure how students are funded. There is a legal basis behind the differential funding or the different kinds of funding that used to occur. The minister mentioned these in terms of special education, the provincial resource programs, etc.

There are some things in there that we'll have to go through, as well, in that there are some areas in adult basic education that I am very concerned about. Specifically, under this bill it allows the minister, by legislation, to hold back 10 percent of the money going to school boards until completion rates are available for those who attend adult basic education. The minister has talked about adult basic education being free to all, but under this bill, there will be a cap. This cap is on everything in B.C. these days, it seems. There will be a cap on enrolment, and once that enrolment is incurred, 10 percent will be held back.

My concerns with that area are that the school districts can't really do much about individuals coming into adult basic education who find that they cannot finish the program because they have acquired a job, have an ill family, are needed at home or whatever reason it is. That 10 percent that is held back because they have not finished the program will in fact have to be siphoned out of the programs that we have for the K-to-12 system. That's at a time when we can ill afford having money taken out of the K-to-12 system, a time when that system is going to need every dollar it's ever going to find, because of Bill 39, which this government insists on passing despite the fact it has been well-proven that it will create havoc within public education. Bill 35 is going to add to that problem.

Those are the two things that this bill does. I am not in support of this bill. I have very significant concerns about it. When the minister has staff to instruct him on his bill so they can answer my questions, we'll get into those questions specifically, but I think that Bill 35 is the sleeper of the summer. It's something that people are not aware of. I think it has a significant impact on those who will be buying new homes in British Columbia, and I have serious concerns about it.

R. Coleman: I'm pleased to enter the debate on Bill 35. I was reading a report earlier today with regard to a study that was done on the removal of the property transfer tax from house purchases in British Columbia -- about the 6,000 people it would have allowed to enter the housing market just by removing that one tax, and the increase in taxes received by government through new construction that it would have created. The reason I mention that is that if you start to do the calculations of what this government has done to housing in the last 30 days, we've taken 12,000 people out of the market. So 12,000 young families will not be able to afford a house in British Columbia because of what this government is doing to housing.

[ Page 10527 ]

I remember one time when I was dealing with an old guy that used to do construction. I always used to say: "How much is it going to cost?" He'd say: "How long is a piece of string?" Well, when it comes to this calculation, how long is a piece of string, and how long is it going to stay at $1,000? How long before it goes up in price, and how long before it goes right to the bottom line of the price of a house in this province? Let's say it stays at $1,000 or goes to $2,000. Let's play with $2,000, because I don't think this government will ever stay at $1,000 for very long on anything. In the past few weeks, we've added another $3,000 to the cost of housing through another act we're dealing with in this Legislature. Now we're up to $5,000 on the price of a house. Do you know what that does? That takes 10,000 people out of the market. If only 6,000 of those units had been new units, it loses 12,000 more jobs in the construction sector in British Columbia over the next 12 months.

We've gone from 44,000 housing starts in 1993 to 22,000 housing starts today. Now we're looking at going in and bringing in a new cost on housing to take the very people that we want to get into affordable housing out of the marketplace. We're raising the price out of their reach again, and they won't be able to buy a home. That's our children; that's our grandchildren; that's our families. We have no right to take away the ability for somebody to have reasonable, affordable, quality accommodation in this province at any time.

In addition to that, what we've done in reverse is that we've brought in the insidious Bill 19, which contained a clause of undue hardship in the residential tenancy component of the province. I have been tracking, and I know of, just under 100 units of rental housing that have been removed from the market as a result of Bill 19. I told the Attorney General at the time that bill came to this Legislature that that was going to be the result of that legislation: people were going to get out of that marketplace. And they are getting out of that marketplace.

Now we've affected the rental marketplace -- the affordability factor, because we're going to have less rental housing -- and we've made it so expensive to buy a house that we're taking out of the market 10,000 people that may want to buy a house in their lifetime. What kind of insidious approach to housing could this be? Only somebody that only had contempt for the taxpayers of this province and for the children and the families that we want to be able to have affordable housing in the future in this province. . . . That's insidious, it's wrong, and we shouldn't be doing it to the housing sector of this province.

[12:00]

But you know, the other thing is that on top of the fact that we're losing the opportunity for our families to own a home, 10,000 homes is $1.5 billion in tax revenue to government at all levels; 20,000 is obviously $3 billion. We've lost 20,000; now we're adding another 6,000. So we're going to pop another billion dollars in taxes out of the marketplace because we don't have the foresight to realize that when we cause a reaction like this in the marketplace, we actually kill the opportunity for revenue. We actually lose both ways because we do something like this.

Imagine doing something that costs you money and loses money at the same time. That's what this government is doing with this type of legislation on housing. It just doesn't make sense, because it's insidious and it's wrong. You should not bring in legislation like this. You should get your act together and handle it. The housing in this province should be done in a proper, correct and professional manner.

G. Wilson: In rising to speak to Bill 35, I should inform the Speaker that I am my caucus's designated speaker on this bill.

Interjections.

G. Wilson: Or perhaps not, as I look at the Government House Leader. Hon. Speaker, it is one way to make sure that some people are paying attention, however.

I'm not going to speak long on Bill 35. I've been on record many times as saying that I don't think that the way for us to raise capital for the construction of schools is through additional taxes on property. That's effectively what we're doing here. I think we need to remove education as an isolated tax on property and move toward a more comprehensive system of revenue collection for education. I think that the comments that were raised by the member for Fort Langley-Aldergrove speak well to some of the concerns that anybody interested in land development or property development would have as a result of this bill.

I should point out that I have not always necessarily held the opinion that some level of surcharge should not be

[ Page 10528 ]

What I think would be better would be to provide them with that choice. The choice would not be by introducing a new tax, a surtax, which would simply be passed on to new-home buyers and which would push up the cost of housing in the manner that has just been so clearly expressed by the member for Fort Langley-Aldergrove.

In closing my comments on the reasons why I will not support this bill, I think that if we are to be sensible about putting in place long-range financial planning, if we are to be sensible in terms of putting in place long-range capital development for schools, we have to recognize that we can't do that off the backs of new development. There are many communities where school construction will be required and where you will not see that level of development occur. Therefore the surcharge -- or surtax, which this is -- cannot be fairly and evenly applied in community to community around the province.

For all of those reasons, I don't think that this is a sensible way to proceed. I think this is going to be a serious negative with respect to further property development. I think there is a better way to go: four-year-based financing, and by removing education as an isolated tax on property and building in a more comprehensive system of tax collection for capital construction of schools.

It's unfortunate that the government that promised no new taxes has indeed introduced a new tax. This is yet another new tax. It is more unfortunate that the burden of this new tax is not only going to be passed on to homebuyers but, because of the property values going up, an excess is now also going to have to be paid in their property taxation in future years.

I think this is the wrong way to go. It's unfortunate that the government has chosen to do it. It's perhaps the most expeditious -- it's the easiest and the fastest -- way for government to grab capital. Having promised all these new portables. . . . Excuse me -- it wasn't new portables; it was getting rid of portables. In net effect, we're going to get more portables, but the promise was to get rid of the portables. I got that confused. Having decided that there's going to be all this new capital construction to get rid of the portables, clearly the government is now looking for a fast tax grab in order to be able to afford it. This is the way they've attempted to do it. I think it's a regrettable piece of legislation.

M. Sihota: Hon. Speaker, I want to comment on this bill. You know, we're all elected to come here, and I guess that in many ways politics is all about values and about who it is that you represent. I note with more than just passing interest that the bulk of the comments made by members of the opposition really relate to the impact that this legislation will have on the land development industry. That, to my mind, is a fair point for debate -- obviously one which in this chamber we should engage in. Quite frankly, I certainly have no difficulty with that debate.

I also want to say that I note with some regret that there has been very little mention in this chamber of the other attribute of this bill, and I want to speak to that. This bill makes adult basic education for individuals, as defined in the legislation, free. In this day and age we often don't make room for progressive social policy. I know that that provision in this legislation will change the lives of many of my constituents. In the time that I have worked in this Legislature, the work that I do in my constituency office and with the people who I talk to. . . . Of the people who rely on me to speak for them in this chamber, many of them have been frustrated by their inability to achieve their potential as human beings, because they have not had the opportunity to secure the kind of qualifications that they need to be able to secure the employment that they desire.

Government's decision in this legislation. . . .

Interjection.

M. Sihota: Hon. member, let me finish. I'll give you some advice in a minute.

The government's decision in this bill to now provide a remedy, assistance and a helping hand to those people is long-overdue public policy. I know that there are some members of the House who may want to vote against the land development provisions, and they're entitled to do that in committee. I suspect that some of them -- such as the member from the PDA -- will support this provision later on. But I want my constituents to know that this is the result of a lifetime of work for many members of this caucus who feel very passionately about this provision. I think that if it were a little bit earlier in the day, if more people were in the House, they would speak to this element of the legislation. In many ways, it embodies what it is that all of us in this House stand for and what we would make the first call of our debate on this bill, as opposed the issues that the members opposite raised.

Hon. P. Ramsey: I thank all members for their comments on the bill. I particularly want to second the comments of the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin. Through the work of this ministry and the Ministry of Advanced Education, Training and Technology, we have moved into the forefront of the provinces in providing adult basic education. I think this is one of the hallmarks of the act that should be noted, so I appreciate the member doing that.

As for the amendments to the Municipal Act, I think we have two issues here. One is a matter of principle, and I have no problem engaging in the debate about whether a developer of land should be responsible for paying a portion of school site acquisition. That's what this act provides -- a portion, 35 percent, of the cost of acquiring the site, not of the cost of building the schools.

Frankly, we have developers who see nothing wrong -- and I don't either -- in asking developers to pay the cost of sewer, the cost of water, the cost of other municipal services, and the cost, in some cases, of parks and other charges. Given that one of the most valuable services that we provide to residents of a subdivision is access to schools, it strikes me as entirely consistent to ask developers to bear a portion of the cost of developing the schools through a school site acquisition fee.

That's the principle part of this debate. I think we've had that tonight, and we've heard various views on it. When we get to committee stage, we'll also have a chance to explore some of the technical aspects of how that will be imple-

[ Page 10529 ]

With that, I move second reading of Bill 35.

Second reading of Bill 35 approved on the following division:

YEAS -- 34
Evans	Zirnhelt	McGregor
Hammell	Boone	Streifel
Lali	Orcherton	Stevenson
Calendino	Goodacre	Walsh
Randall	Robertson	Cashore
Conroy	Petter	Miller
G. Clark	Dosanjh	MacPhail
Lovick	Ramsey	Farnworth
Waddell	Hartley	Sihota
Smallwood	Sawicki	Bowbrick
Kasper	Doyle	Giesbrecht
	Janssen

 

NAYS -- 26
Sanders	Farrell-Collins	de Jong
Abbott	Reid	Neufeld
Chong	Whittred	Jarvis
Anderson	Penner	G. Wilson
Weisbeck	Nebbeling	Hogg
Hawkins	Coleman	Stephens
Hansen	Thorpe	van Dongen
Dalton	Masi	Krueger
McKinnon		J. Wilson

Bill 35, Education Statutes Amendment Act, 1998, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. J. MacPhail moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 12:18 a.m.

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