2000 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 36th Parliament
HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

[ Page 14547 ]

The House met at 10:07 a.m.

Prayers.

Orders of the Day

Budget Debate
(continued)

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up a little bit where I left off yesterday, as I started my response to the NDP's ninth deficit budget in a row, by commenting on some of the areas where we see difficulties in this budget, and there are many. It's a little difficult, though, to comment in detail about some of the government's plans for health care and education spending and for new money to a variety of sectors, when one doesn't know exactly where that money is going to go.

Year after year, the government has come into the House and told us about the hundreds of millions of dollars of new money that they're putting into health care, into education or into other social services. Only recently did the government start to admit -- I believe the new Premier disclosed it on "Voice of the Province" -- that in fact one of the huge cost drivers the government faces is the collective agreements and the accords that they've signed over the last number of years -- dating back to the first one in 1995, I think.

[1010]

I want to talk a little bit about health care. It's an interesting way that the government has accounted for it in this year's budget. We all know -- I think it was two years ago -- that the federal government announced new money for health care. They announced that they were going to start putting money back into health care after years of taking it out. They announced a chunk of money that would go to each province, and each province could determine how they wanted to draw that money down over the following three years. Some provinces took it early; some provinces spread it out. Some provinces have yet to draw it down. But in British Columbia, it's interesting. The government talks in its budget about new spending for health care -- new spending this year over last year, new spending over what they spent last year. This year the government says it's going to draw down $454 million of the money that was set aside by the federal government and given to the provincial government for health care. That's $120 million that's left over from last year and $334 million for this year -- $454 million.

But if you look at the budget documents and the budget reports, you'll find that the revised forecast for health care spending last year was $8.1608 billion. The revised forecast is the best estimate of what we actually spent on health care in the last fiscal year, which ends in a few days. It's the best estimate we have of what the government spent on health care in the last fiscal year. This year the government is forecasting an estimate for spending in health care of $8.5025 billion, which leaves a difference of $341.7 million.

In fact, what the government is forecasting to spend, over and above what they actually spent last year, is about $342 million. But they're drawing down $454 million of the federal money for health care. That leaves us with a hole of -- what does that work out to? -- about $112.3 million. So the government is taking $454 million from the federal government to spend on health care, but they're only allocating $341.7 million of it to health care.

So one has to ask where the rest of the money is going. Is it being used for something else? Is it being used for some other expenditures? Is it being used to fund the ferry system? I mean, what is the government planning on using that money for? I'll be interested to hear what the minister's explanation is for that spending, because I think that what we end up with is a little bit of jiggery-pokery there as to where the money is going. I'd be anxious to hear what the Minister of Finance has to say about his plans for health care spending in the coming year.

Hon. Speaker, I think it's important also, when we finally hear from a member on the government side. How much of the money that's going into health care is actually going to reach patients? How much of it is actually going to have an impact on patient care in British Columbia? Is it going to have an impact on the wait-lists? Is it going to have an impact on cardiac care? Is it going to have an impact on rural health care and the crisis that's been there in rural health care?

If you take the Premier at his word, a huge amount of that is going to be for increased cost of staffing or paying for the people that are actually providing the health care itself -- no new people but just increased costs, inefficiencies in the collective agreement, etc. So it will be very interesting to hear how much of that money is actually ever going to see a patient, how much of it is actually going to be in health, in a hospital room -- how much of it is actually going to result in better care for the people of British Columbia.

[1015]

[ Page 14548 ]

I remember the former Minister of Finance, the member for Vancouver-Hastings, who is now the Deputy Premier, saying a little over a year ago that. . . . It was her frustration with wait-lists. She said: "Year after year, the government puts hundreds of millions of dollars of new money into health care, and it never seems to go anywhere." The reason for that is because it never gets to the patients. It gets absorbed in the demands of the contract negotiations that the government has entered into over the last number of years and the accords that they've signed. That's a huge amount of money that's gone into that pay packet; it's a huge driver of the cost of health care.

There are people in British Columbia who rely on the health care sector, who haven't seen any of it. One group in particular, who are on level 2 disability, who have a variety of problems, a variety of challenges that they face every year, day in and day out -- whose medical costs rise, whose accommodation costs have been going up, whose costs of food have gone up. . . . Their whole cost of living has risen dramatically over the last number of years. They haven't had a raise in six years. It's been six years since they've had any boost to their benefits at all.

So one has to question where the government's priorities have been. Have they been with patients? Or have they been in delivering their political IOUs to the people who support them over the years? It's pretty clear where that is.

You can see it with the CUPE strike that's on right now, where the government. . . . In the House yesterday it was amazing to hear the government talk about the employer and the employee and not mention for a second the students that are caught in the middle or the parents of those students who are trying to find some place for those kids to go today, yesterday and in the foreseeable future. So we know where the government's priorities are; they show up year after year.

One of the other areas that the government has been trumpeting in this budget is its tax cuts. It's a little hard to take when you hear the NDP government talk about tax cuts, because they are so minuscule that you need the Hubble telescope to find them. They are so tiny in proportion to what the government has been doing over the last number of years that it's virtually impossible to find them.

The government has allocated $50 million this year for personal income tax cuts for British Columbians. Now, that sounds like a lot of money, and it is a lot of money. But when you compare it to the brand-new revenue the government is projecting for next year -- the windfall revenue that they're anticipating over and above what they had last year -- it pales in comparison. The government is forecasting $1.1 billion in new revenues this next fiscal year. If the government didn't cut anything, if it didn't cut one penny out of any program -- in fact, if it added maybe half a billion dollars to program spending -- they'd still have $600 million to play with for a tax cut. And what did they choose to do? They chose $50 million. They had $1,100 million, and they spent $50 million of it on a personal income tax cut for people.

You know, when you were a kid. . . . I grew up in a large family, and you'd open a box of Smarties, and you'd sort of go: one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me. We can all remember doing that.

Interjection.

G. Farrell-Collins: Well, yeah, I probably didn't take enough; I'm a little thin.

If you were to take this $1.1 billion that the government had and open it up like a box of Smarties, it would be 96 for the government and four for a tax cut. That gives you the proportion of what the government's priorities are. They spend money as fast as it comes through the door.

[1020]

Next year the government is planning on adding $70 million to the income tax cut -- again, a drop in the bucket. We don't know what the revenues will be for that fiscal year yet. We don't know for sure -- we'll see when the time comes -- but I bet that if you put it in comparison with the new revenues on top of the new revenues from this year, it'll be even fewer Smarties for income tax cuts and more for government spending.

British Columbians wouldn't mind the government spending if they thought they were getting value for the money that they were spending, but they don't. We know that virtually all the new money for health care and education has gone into the pay packages. We know that. That's come forward. We've been saying it for a long time, and now the government is finally starting to admit it, although they haven't come forward with the actual figures. People wouldn't mind the government spending their tax dollars if they felt they were getting value for their money.

As I said yesterday, the biggest and best example of how the government chooses to spend money has been the fast ferry project. That was a choice this government made. At any step through the process of the fast ferry program, if the members opposite had listened to the member for Richmond Centre, who's been the Ferries critic for a number of years, or if they'd even listened to the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast when he was on this side of the House. . . . He changed his tune when he crossed to that side of the House, but if they'd listened to him when he was on this side of the House, they would have been able to stop that. Instead of a $463 million waste, they would have been able to tailor it. Perhaps they could have improved the ships. Perhaps they

[ Page 14549 ]

Those are the kinds of choices this government has made over the last number of years, and British Columbians -- you have to understand -- are very upset when they see a budget that's going to increase the deficit by well over another billion dollars. The deficit for this year will be well over a billion dollars.

Total debt is going to go up by almost $3 billion this year -- $3 billion in new debt this year. People ask themselves: "Are they spending the money wisely?" If the past is any indication, clearly they haven't been spending that money wisely, and it's unlikely that they will in the future.

There are a few other little tax cuts in the budget. I know the government is trying to take credit for the money that the federal government has cut taxes by -- a reasonable tax cut from Ottawa, anyway. I wouldn't say it was significant, but it was the first of what we hope are many. The government seems to roll that over, and they trumpet it out there for the public that they're actually going to save British Columbians half a billion dollars in income tax over the next number of years.

I just don't think people buy that. They know that a big chunk of that came from the federal government. In fact, when the federal government announced its personal income tax cuts, the Minister of Finance announced: "Well, that may not all flow through to British Columbians." He may have to absorb some of that. It wasn't until there was outrage in the streets, essentially -- overnight negative response to that -- that the minister backed off and said: "Okay, okay, I won't take your tax cut. I'll let you have your federal tax cut, and I'll have to redistribute some of the other ones to see what we can do."

That just shows you the attitude of the government towards tax cuts. They don't believe in tax cuts. They don't believe that that's going to help the economy. They say it periodically in their budget documents, but then you'll find another page where they tend to contradict that. They don't fundamentally believe that British Columbians as citizens can spend their money more wisely than the government can. I bet that if you polled every member on the other side of the House, they would stand up and tell you that they think government can spend the money far more efficiently than taxpayers can. They prefer to make the choices for individuals and spend their money, rather than let the individuals make their own choices.

If you look at the income tax cuts that the government has put forward and some of the other tax cuts that they've put in place, it's simply not enough. It's simply not enough to do anything to stimulate the economy and get us turned around.

[1025]

I can honestly say that in all the time I've been watching that sector and in the time I've been meeting with people, never once has anybody said: "Hey, the best thing we could do for the high-tech sector in British Columbia is have the government form a commission, put money into that government commission and go out and market the high-tech sector." I can tell you that what every one of them has told me is that they have a hard time, first of all, keeping their highly skilled workers in British Columbia. And worse than that, they have an incredibly -- almost impossibly -- difficult time attracting highly skilled, highly paid people to British Columbia.

Many of the small high-tech companies reach a certain size in B.C. and. . . . We have a great incubator going here. Our universities are spinning off all sorts of new technology, all sorts of new opportunities for people. These small companies get to a certain size where they start to require somebody who's got a high-tech background and can manage a company, particularly people as CEOs, financial people or leadership people in that company. They go out and can't find them here, because there's not enough of them. They go across North America. They go around the world to try and attract people, and everybody says: "Gee, I'd love to live in Vancouver. I'd love to live in British Columbia. The lifestyle's great. It's a wonderful province -- huge opportunity." Then you show them what you're going to pay them. Then they sort of do the calculation of what the taxes are going to be, and they say: "I don't think so. I think I'll stay where I am. Why don't you move the company to where I live?"

In fact, that's what's happening. B.C.'s high-tech companies reach a certain size, and they have to leave the province if they're going to expand. They've gone down to the Seattle area. They've gone down to Portland, Beaverton. They've gone down to the Silicon Valley. They've gone to Idaho. They've gone to Alberta. They've certainly gone to Ottawa -- the Ottawa Valley. I mean, it's not just a U.S.-Canada thing; it's right across North America. Every single high-tech person I talk to tells me that that's a problem. And these are people who work long hours. They work very hard, they're very bright, and they've spent years in school. They've been working very hard for years, if not decades, to build the talent that they have. They're the drivers of our new economy. They're the people that are going to diversify British Columbia so that the next time we get a downturn in the forest sector or the resource sector, we've got something to fall back on.

All you have to do is look at what happened in Washington State and Oregon over the last number of years, while British Columbia experienced an economic downturn. B.C.'s revenues dropped; people were unemployed. We had a huge negative impact in our rural economies, from which we're barely starting to recover. The government likes to blame Asia and likes to blame the resource prices around the world. But what they didn't notice is that Washington State trades with Asia about as much as we do; so does Oregon. Those states border on the Pacific as well. They trade with Asia; they export wood fibre; they export pulp.

But they diversified their economy over the last number of years. The diversification that's taken place in Oregon over

[ Page 14550 ]

B.C. needs to do the same. If we're going to be ready to play a role in the gain that's happening around the world and the modernization of the economy -- this next industrial revolution, if that's what we want to call it, or an information revolution. . . . Who knows where it's going to end up five or even ten years from now? But if we want to be part of that, we have to make sure we attract those people to British Columbia and we keep them here.

I can honestly say that there is nothing in the government's personal income tax cut that's going to do anything to fix that. And I know the NDP thinks that if anybody's earning over $50,000 or $60,000, they're rich. Well, there are lots of people in the high-tech sector. . . . I don't think there are many jobs in the high-tech sector that start below $60,000 a year. Most of those people are able to earn significantly above that. If they find that there's no tax relief in British Columbia whatsoever and if those surtaxes are still getting piled on them, they're not going to choose to live in British Columbia. They're going to choose somewhere else, and they're going to take their companies with them.

[1030]

Interjection.

G. Farrell-Collins: It is great. And it's doing well, but I can tell you that it's not doing nearly as well as it is in every other jurisdiction in North America -- not even close. Go to Washington State and find out what's happening there. Go to Oregon and find out what's happening there. Go to the Ottawa Valley and find out what's happening there. We're not in the race. We're moving forward, but we're not nearly up with the pack. We've got all this opportunity -- these great people in British Columbia -- that we're not taking advantage of, and there's nothing in this budget that's going to do much to change that.

So you have to ask yourself, hon. Speaker: the tax cut portion that's in this budget -- is it tokenism? Is it symbolism, as the Premier said? Or is it meaningful tax change that's going to try and bring British Columbia's economy into this next decade and make sure that we're competitive? It certainly doesn't appear to me that there's anything in there that's going to do anything to kick-start this economy.

In fact, I think there's a significant amount of information in the budget that's going to do just the opposite. Right across this country -- and I highlighted it yesterday in my speech -- regardless of political stripe, whether they're a Liberal government in Atlantic Canada, whether they're the NDP in Saskatchewan or whether they're the Tories in Alberta, it doesn't matter. Virtually every other province in this country -- I think Ontario is due to balance its budget this year -- has balanced its budget, some of them up to seven and eight times.

The NDP in Saskatchewan were elected two days after the government of British Columbia under Mike Harcourt was elected in 1992. They've tabled six balanced budgets. British Columbia has tabled nine deficit budgets. We've more than doubled our debt; Saskatchewan has been paying off its debt. Saskatchewan is now in a position that the interest costs on its debt are going down. Every year they pay money on their debt, and every year they get a benefit from that. That's less money they have to pay in interest to the people who they're borrowing money from.

Over the same time period in British Columbia, our debt service costs have doubled. We now pay over $2.6 billion a year in interest alone. There are only two ministries bigger than the ministry of debt service costs: the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health. Every other ministry in government spends less per year than the amount British Columbia pays on interest on our debt, and that interest cost has doubled. We're at record-low interest rates; we have been for awhile.

The government had been rolling over its debt at fairly low interest rates. That's not going to last. All you have to do is listen to the musings of Alan Greenspan, and you know that interest rates are on their way up. Unfortunately, it's right when I'm renewing my mortgage, as it always happens. But they're going up. As I've been doing the calculations on what that's going to cost me, I've been thinking about what it's going to cost the province. My mortgage isn't $37 billion -- gladly. Some days it feels like it's close, but it's not.

As interest rates start to increase, that debt service cost is going to grow and grow and grow. I can foresee a day, with this government, where debt service costs will become the second-largest ministry in government. If this government gets another five years and continues on the fiscal plan it's got right now, we'll have another $8 billion of debt before they ever balance the budget -- according to their plan. That's not to say we'll actually ever get there, but according to their plan we'll have an additional $8 billion in debt. If interest rates go up two or three points over that period of time, we're going to be paying $4 billion to $4.5 billion in debt-servicing costs. That's the kind of thing that rolls over, over time. I can foresee a day, if we stick with an NDP government, where we'll be spending more paying interest on our debt than we spend educating the children in this province.

It didn't have to be that way. If we'd done half of what the NDP have done in Saskatchewan -- half -- we'd be way better off. British Columbia has way more opportunities and has way more resources and has way more people, with far more diverse talents, than Saskatchewan has. I grew up in Saskatchewan, and it's a wonderful province. But it fights day in and day out to pay its bills. It struggles year after year to keep its head above water. It has grain, a bit of oil and a bit of lumber, and that's about it. It doesn't have the diverseness that British Columbia's economy has. They have huge challenges, and yet those people -- from the same political party in Saskatchewan -- have managed to get their house in order. They've managed to pay down their debt, and every year they have more and more money that's available for health care, for education or for tax cuts, because they're not paying as much interest as they paid before.

[1035]

[ Page 14551 ]

It's not that you have to be some right-wing, extreme, fundamental, ideological, tax-cutting, spending-cutting government in order to get your house in order. You don't have to be like that. I know that the NDP on that side think that anybody who wants any tax cuts, who thinks we should get our spending under control, is somehow Mike Harris wearing a B.C. pin. That's not the case. There are huge opportunities for savings in this province.

We had increased revenue last year of over $1 billion that the government wasn't expecting -- a billion dollars more than forecast -- or a 5 percent increase in the government's pay package, if you want to put it that way. They got a 5 percent raise just out of the blue. What did they do? They spent it. They spent it all; they spent more than all.

What it requires is a little bit of discipline. They could have come much closer to balancing the budget last year just by not spending all the money -- not by making a huge amount of cuts, but just by not spending all the new money. There are huge opportunities here for the government to make progress on its deficit and start paying down its debt. But they've missed every single opportunity that's come along.

And it's difficult; I know it's difficult. Don't think that the people in New Brunswick didn't find it difficult to balance their budget and start to pay down their debt. It wasn't easy, but they did it. Don't think that the people in Alberta and Ontario didn't pay a price, because they did. It was difficult, but they did it. Don't think the people in Saskatchewan didn't find it difficult to get their fiscal house in order. But they did, and they're starting to see the benefits of it. They're seeing greater economic activity. Economic activity -- private sector investment -- from 1992 to 1999 in Saskatchewan was nine times what it was in B.C. It grew at a rate nine times faster than it did in B.C. That's astounding.

Mr. Speaker, if only this government would be disciplined, if only this government would get its house in order, if only they'd have the determination to try and deal with that problem, British Columbia could be doing so much better.

If you look at the government's five-year fiscal framework, which they put out last year in place of the five previous debt management plans with various names that they had before that, and you look at it this year, it makes for very interesting reading. The debt management plan -- now they call it the five-year fiscal framework -- is the government's plan to balance the budget over time, to progressively lower the deficit to the point where they can balance it, to stop accumulating debt and to balance the budget and start paying down the debt.

It makes for interesting reading. If you look at the government's budget documents, they have these two little graphs, and they're quite interesting. One is the revenue graph, which of course goes up. The other is the spending graph, which of course sort of tapers off somewhere in the future. It doesn't taper off right now; it tapers off somewhere in the future. The two more or less meet in this sort of grey area towards the end. It's an interesting diagram, because it relies upon, I think, 3.9 percent average growth in revenues over that time period and only 2.2 percent increase in spending over that time period.

Interjection.

G. Farrell-Collins: It says 2.2 percent, actually. The Finance minister can have a look -- 2.2 percent. I heard him; he says: "That's what we had in the last four years." But if he looks carefully at the document that shows 2.2 percent growth, he'll see that it is actually from the consolidated revenue fund, not the summary statements. It doesn't include all the debt or all the capital costs. Capital costs this year are growing at 15.1 percent, year over year. That's not 2.2 percent growth; that's 15.1 percent growth.

The minister himself admits -- or at least his bureaucrats admit in the budget reports -- that it's going to be very difficult to keep government spending to a 2.2 percent growth rate -- very difficult. They talk about the challenges that they face. They talk about the 2.2 percent growth rate and how difficult it's going to be for government to keep to that figure.

It lists a bunch of different challenges that the government faces. I'm trying to find it, but if I can't, I think I can recite anyway. They talk about growth in spending costs. They talk about growth in wages, and that's the biggest one -- cost drivers, hard-wired wage cost increases that have been agreed to over the last number of years by this government quietly and under the table, when they told us that they were keeping it to zero-zero-and-2. That's the number one item that they show as a cost driver.

[1040]

Hon. Speaker, the minister himself admits, and the budget documents make it clear -- in fact they make it quite clear -- that keeping to 2.2 percent growth in spending is going to be very difficult for this government, very difficult indeed. The minister says 2.2 percent is what they've done over the last number of years.

But he doesn't factor in the costs of new capital. Now this five-year fiscal framework doesn't just include the consolidated revenue fund; it's now the summary statement. So you have to include all of those costs; you have to include it all in there. I think the minister is going to find it very difficult, when he starts crunching the numbers over this coming year, to be really sure that he's going to be able to keep within that 2.2 percent growth.

Interjection.

G. Farrell-Collins: It would be easier to call an election, as the member said.

Mr. Speaker, no matter how you look at this budget, one has to be disappointed in it. I think the feedback that the minister has received from the public over the last day -- certainly the comments in the media -- is pretty indicative of disappointment. The government had an opportunity to get its deficit under control, to start to lower that, to reduce taxes. They chose to just open the floodgates again -- over a billion dollars in new spending, significant increases in the budget.

The problem is that government doesn't really have a choice. They've made decisions in the past that are now driving the costs of health care, education and other social programs. And they're stuck with it, because they won't, for a second, deal with that problem.

I don't know if they thought they'd be out of government by now and this would be some other government that was

[ Page 14552 ]

I think that over the last number of years, what we've seen from this government is a legacy of debt, a legacy of runaway deficits and a legacy of just sheer incompetence in the decisions that they've made and the way that they've managed the economy. They've never hit a target -- not one target over nine years. I would be surprised if they hit any target over the next year. Heaven help us, hon. Speaker, if there were another five years.

Interjection.

G. Farrell-Collins: I hear the interim Minister of Finance -- he was there briefly -- saying: "We're under this year." The fact of the matter is: your revenues were up, and you spent almost all of it. If that's how we're going to hit the target -- you know, if the target just keeps moving up and down -- no one can put any stock in any of the projections that the government's made throughout any part of the budget.

Every time revenues go up, the government spends them. The government didn't spend at half the rate of the revenue increase this year. That's what it requires to stick to the five-year fiscal plan. If revenues go up by 4 percent, spending can only go up by 2.2 percent. Last year revenues went up, and spending went up almost the total amount. In fact, they did go up the total amount. There's no discipline there; there's no discipline whatsoever. It doesn't matter how wonderfully revenue streams grow. They'll never balance the budget, because they're going to spend it. They did that in '92; they did it in '93; they did it in '94; they did it in '95. Every year that the revenues have gone up, the government's spending has just gone up to meet it.

[1045]

We won't have a high-tech sector, five or ten years down the road, that compares to anywhere else in North America if we keep our tax rates as high as they are. That's a fact. I don't care how good this commission is that they're proposing. You can go out and market all you want, but if what you're selling isn't what the people want, they're not going to buy.

That's the problem this government has every time it goes to Asia. They brought in the corporate capital tax in 1992. That is anathema to Asian investors. You might get away with it in central Canada, where investment primarily comes from Europe and the United States. They're used to capital taxes; it's something they're familiar with. But if you bring in a capital tax on the west coast of British Columbia, the impact on our investment climate is shocking.

Every year the government tries to go to Asia and tell them that B.C.'s open for business. Every year that they go there and say that, the first question they get asked is: "What about the corporate capital tax?" It doesn't matter how much money you spend going to Asia. It doesn't matter how many ministers you send. It doesn't matter which ministers you send. If the message is the same, if the product is the same, they're not going to buy. Until you deal with those problems in a structural way, until you deal with the taxation problem in a structural way, British Columbia will continue to miss out on the opportunities of the future. This province has huge potential.

The most depressing thing in the budget this year is something I came across. . . . Somebody pointed it out to me. I want to spend a little time reading it into the record and then comment on it. I think it's probably the most depressing thing I've ever read in a B.C. budget document, despite the deficits and despite the debt. I'd ask the minister. . . . I see he's reading along with me. Grab your hymnbook -- page 136 of the budget reports: "Implications of Fiscal Capacity Disparities." Now, if anybody's listening, just bear with me. I didn't write this; it's governmentese. So it's a little complicated and it's a little confusing, and have to read through it a couple of times. It's very bureaucratic. I just want to read you from it. It's fairly long, but I want to read it, because I want to comment on it.

"Concerns about fiscal disparities are most prominently expressed in relation to Canada's least well-off provinces. Sometimes the concerns are voiced in the broad context of national equity; at other times there is a narrower focus, such as reducing the potential for fiscally-induced migration -- migration by individuals between provinces in search of better public services and/or lower taxes."

I want to go on a little bit:

"A focus on the national setting for addressing fiscal disparities is important, but it can obscure appreciation of the regional setting -- a setting which has been growing in relative importance with changing trade patterns and a more regional focus for competitiveness."

The next paragraph goes on to say:

"In this context, the large gap in fiscal capacity between British Columbia and Alberta, its closest neighbouring province, is of particular interest. Among provinces, Alberta is the strongest beneficiary of the provinces' constitutional right to the revenues from non-renewable natural resources."

[ Page 14553 ]

"While British Columbia may have an above-standard fiscal capacity on a national basis, this is of limited benefit in a regional setting with an increasing imperative to address tax competitiveness. From a western Canada perspective, British Columbia is little better able to provide 'reasonably comparable public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation' " -- they're quoting from the federal equalization program -- ". . .than those provinces receiving equalization."

[1050]

Well, hon. Speaker, they should go back over the last decade and look at what's happened to Alberta's revenues from oil and gas. Some years they're up and some years they crash, and the Alberta government plans around that. British Columbia has natural resource revenues, also, from forestry, from pulp, from. . . .

Interjections.

G. Farrell-Collins: Well, we used to have revenues from mining. I think I've hit a sore point. We used to have revenues from mining, but we don't have them anymore. So here it is. We're getting down on our knees and saying: "Woe is us. Poor British Columbia. We can't compete. All those people in Alberta -- they have all the gas and the oil, and they get all the money. Poor little British Columbia."

Well, if you look at what British Columbia historically has received from natural resource revenues, it's been huge. We've received money from the forest sector; revenues from mining, which used to be the second-largest industry in this province; and revenues from oil and gas in the northeast sector, which continue to grow quite dramatically and in fact are responsible for a good portion of the new revenues this year. But the government complains about how bad that is. I didn't hear them complaining in 1994-95, when forest revenues were through the roof and Alberta was hurting as a result of depressed oil prices. So it's a little much.

I know that one of the people that the member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast admires immensely is Frank McKenna. And I think Frank McKenna summed it up the best when he was the first Premier in Canada to grapple. . . .

Interjections.

G. Farrell-Collins: I'm sorry. Did I get the riding wrong? The member for Powell River-Sunshine Coast? I apologize if I got the riding wrong.

One of the first things that Frank McKenna did in New Brunswick. . . . He was the first Premier in this country to say: "We're going to balance our budget; we're going to get this province moving. We're going to be a have province in Canada. We're going to compete. We're going to balance our budget, and we're going to move this province forward." He did that some 11 or 12 years ago. The first thing he did was go to the people of his province and say -- and I know the member has heard him say this: "You know, you don't travel very far when you're on your knees." You've got to get up, get in the game, carry your own weight and be part of the game. And that's what British Columbia has to do. If, instead, we're heading off on all sorts of excuses and whining about why British Columbia can't compete and how there are just so many natural advantages in Alberta that B.C. doesn't have, then we've given up. If the government's given up, then do what governments do when they give up -- drop the writ, call an election, come over to this side of the House for awhile and give us a chance.

Mr. Speaker, I never thought I'd see the day when a government of British Columbia was whining about how hard off British Columbia is, whining about how few natural advantages we have, whining about how the deck is stacked against us, complaining about how hard done by we are. This province has resources that are second to none in North America -- second to none. We have natural resources in the forest sector; we have natural resources in the mining sector and the oil and gas sector. But we have resources well above and beyond that in the people of this province. The talent that we have in this province, the people that we're putting out of our universities, the people who are working in other jobs across this province. . . . We have talent beyond belief. We have opportunity beyond belief.

We border on the Pacific. We have huge opportunities in Asia. We're a half-hour flight from Seattle and the high-tech sector there. We're an hour-and-a-half flight from San Francisco and the San Fernando Valley and the high-tech sector in Silicon Valley outside of San Francisco. We have huge opportunities. We're not a five-hour flight and three times zones away, as they are in Ottawa. Why can't British Columbia be the place in Canada where the high-tech sector is leading edge, cutting edge, beating every other province in this country and virtually every other jurisdiction in North America? We have huge potential with our people here, if we could just keep them here.

[1055]

G. Farrell-Collins: The hon. member says that we are keeping them here. Well, then he hasn't been talking to the high-tech sector, because they're losing people and they're losing companies. We've got to keep them here; we've got to bring them here. We've got to go out into Seattle, out into Washington State and Oregon and back to Ottawa, and bring our people home, bring their companies home and prepare British Columbia for the next decade, not the last decade.

I await the one-pager from the Premier that's going to tell us how much money this government has hard-wired into the agreements over the next few years and how much health care money that has been going into health care over the last few years has been going to places other than patient care. I await that. I want to see that, because I think it's going to be interesting.

When the ministers opposite, whoever they are, tell us, "Gee, we didn't know it was that much, and it was really the former Premier who did it all and signed these deals," people aren't going to believe them. What we've done over the last number of years with those agreements is hard-wire into those systems costs that we're never going to get out. It means that we're going to continue to be one of the highest-cost areas

[ Page 14554 ]

When this government finally has the guts to call an election, when they finally go to the polls, they'd better be clear with people about that sort of thing. They'd better be clear about the decisions they've made and the costs that they've driven and the waste that they've incurred over the last number of years.

I hear that the Premier was asked yesterday whether this is a budget he'd take to the electorate, and he said no. Well, Mr. Speaker, every budget that a government brings forward is one they should take to the electorate. Every budget is something they should be proud of. They should be able to stand up -- if it's a bad-news budget or a good-news budget -- and explain to the people of this province why the budget is the way it is. If the Premier has his Finance minister introduce a budget in the afternoon, and within two hours he's standing up and saying, "No, I wouldn't take this budget to the public," then maybe they should go back into the cabinet room, go back to Treasury Board, and start over and come up with something that they actually can take to the people of this province, whether it's today or six months from now or a year from now.

Every time a government introduces a budget, it should be able to justify the costs. It should be able to justify its revenue measures to the people who are paying for it. This is the party that said they were going to be as honest and hard-working as the people who were paying for it. Well, if after nine years they're afraid to take their budget to the electorate, then what does that say about their party? What does it say about their government? What does it say about the vision they have for this province and they've had for this province for the last nine years? It says they're not up to snuff. They're not up to the measure, and after nine years they don't have a clue what they're doing, where they're going or how they're going to get there.

If this government wants to have the trust of the people, as the Minister of Finance said yesterday in his lockup. . . . If their problem is that they've broken trust with the people of this province and they have to get it back, tabling a budget that they're afraid to take to the public isn't a good start. I think this budget has holes in it that you can drive a truck through. You could sail three fast ferries through the holes in this budget. This is the wrong budget for British Columbia at the wrong time, and the figures are all wrong.

This government needs to send a message right across this country, right across this province and right around the world to our investors that B.C. is open again -- that the province understands what it has done wrong in the past, that the government understands the things that it has done wrong, that it has its fiscal house in order and that it's going to eventually eliminate its deficit and start to pay down its debt, because we're the only jurisdiction in North America that hasn't got that yet. Capital isn't coming here. Private sector investment is not happening. Long-term job creation is not going to happen. Long-term economic prosperity is not going to occur in British Columbia. The future will happen elsewhere; it won't happen here.

[1100]

I think this budget has failed the people of British Columbia like the eight that preceded it. I don't see any direction in this budget that shows they're going to turn this province around. I challenge the minister to go back to the drawing board, start over and come up with a budget that he's proud to take to the people of this province, instead of one that he's ashamed of.

B. Penner: The NDP's budget that we heard about yesterday takes B.C.'s debt to record levels while providing no major incentives for businesses to create jobs in B.C. In my view, the NDP's latest budget -- their ninth consecutive deficit budget -- could well be entitled "Debt, the Silent Killer of Government Services and Opportunity."

As we've already heard, B.C.'s total debt will reach a record $36.5 billion as a result of Budget 2000. This is despite more than $1.1 billion in anticipated extra revenues to the province this coming year, because the government is spending the money faster than it's coming in. This fact alone puts a lie to the NDP's claim that their latest budget signals a change in direction by this new government. There is nothing new about more deficits, more debt and higher interest charges from an NDP budget. This kind of reckless, consequences-be-damned budget and profligacy is all the more puzzling when you step back and look at this matter from an everyday perspective.

When you or I borrow money, we know that we have to pay the bank more than just the original amount. We have to pay interest. The same rule applies to governments. The more debt governments have, the more interest they have to pay. The more interest governments pay, the less money they have to spend on priority areas like health care, education and transportation. That's why it makes good sense for governments to reduce debt, thereby freeing up funds that would otherwise be spent on interest charges. If you're like me, you don't like paying the banks any more than you have to. That's why I try to make an extra payment every year on the principal component of my mortgage, so that less of my monthly payments goes to paying interest.

The B.C. government has not learned this very simple lesson, but Alberta has. Back in 1994, B.C.'s total provincial debt was $25.9 billion and Alberta's was $22.7 billion -- not a great difference. Back then, the Alberta government decided that it was time to balance their budget and stop going deeper

[ Page 14555 ]

[T. Stevenson in the chair.]

What does this mean to the average person? In Alberta the government now spends $750 million less on interest payments every year than they used to, due to lower debt levels. This allows them to cut taxes, increase spending on both health care and education by 17 percent in just two years, and offer the lowest unemployment rate in Canada. Unfortunately for B.C., our higher debt means that we are spending $2.8 billion every year just on interest. That's more than the combined budgets for Aboriginal Affairs; Women's Equality; Labour; Environment and Parks; Agriculture and Fisheries; Attorney General; Energy and Mines; Forests; Small Business, Tourism and Culture; and Transportation. This is a government that likes to pretend that they care about the environment, women's issues and aboriginals, yet every year they spend more on interest than they do on those ministries.

[1105]

Over 618 B.C. companies have headed for Alberta since 1992 -- 131 of those making the move in 1999 alone. Within B.C., there were 4,765 fewer business incorporations last year than in 1994. According to Statistics Canada, B.C. has ranked last among all Canadian provinces in attracting private sector investment since 1992. We saw an 11 percent increase, compared to a 41.6 percent increase for Prince Edward Island; 52.2 percent for Quebec -- and that's despite the intervening sovereignty referendum they had; 83.7 percent for Newfoundland; 89.6 percent for Saskatchewan; 107.5 percent for Alberta; and 118 percent for New Brunswick. What was B.C.'s increase? Eleven percent.

Just as it takes a while for new investment to work its way through the regulatory approval process and result in new plants, equipment and jobs, it could take years before a shortage of new investment shows up in the form of fewer jobs and lower incomes. But eventually it does happen. The results in B.C. demonstrate this, with the devastating impact that the NDP's investment-chilling and job-killing policies have had on our citizens. The chickens have come home to roost. Our province has had the poorest record by far of private sector job growth in the country since 1996 -- again, according to Statistics Canada. Partly as a result, British Columbians' average take-home pay after taxes has decreased by more than 10 percent -- or $1,800 -- since 1992. We used to have higher incomes than the Canadian average, but under the NDP our average disposable income is almost $1,000 less than the rest of Canada.

This government says that it can't afford real tax cuts, because our deficit is too high. Well, who raised those taxes in B.C.? And who has avoided dealing with the deficit in our province? The NDP dramatically increased taxes in the early 1990s but, despite huge increases in government revenue, still managed to spend more than they ever brought in.

I remember former NDP Premier Mike Harcourt promising voters back in 1991: "If we don't have the money, we won't spend it. You can take that to the bank." Well, he and his NDP colleagues sure did spend it and kept coming up with excuses about why the budget couldn't be balanced this year or next year or the year after that.

Not that the NDP didn't pay lip service to the importance of making ends meet. Another former NDP Premier, the one who resigned in August last year, once said that balancing the budget was the easiest thing he could imagine doing. Later he even went so far as to say that his government had actually balanced the budget. Of course this wasn't true, and the matter is now the subject of a court case presently scheduled for trial on April 10 in Vancouver. If a B.C. Supreme Court judge agrees with David Stockell -- a determined individual who abhors government waste and thinks elected representatives should be held accountable for their actions -- and if the judge finds that the government committed electoral fraud in 1996 by misleading voters about the province's finances, three NDP MLAs will be looking for work sooner than the rest of their colleagues. But I digress.

In 1992, when the member for Vancouver-Kingsway was Minister of Finance, he told this chamber that the NDP was "committed to sound and prudent management of the province's finances. . . . Prudent fiscal management means getting British Columbia's budget deficit under control." The NDP's budget deficit that year was $1.79 billion. By 1994 the government's throne speech was promising a balanced budget by 1996. The NDP claimed to have learned to do more with less. But the provincial debt continued to climb. By 1995 former MLA Elizabeth Cull was the NDP's Finance minister. In her budget address that year, she stated: "First, we must eliminate the deficit and begin to pay down the debt created by previous deficits. A situation in which a government continues to spend more than it brings in is both unacceptable and unsuitable." I agree, yet that is exactly what the NDP proceeded to do, adding another $9 billion in debt since that time.

[1110]

The following year, after incurring half a billion dollars in additional debt, the member for Saanich South had this to say about the importance of balancing the budget:

[ Page 14556 ]

". . .this government remains committed to the goals of eliminating the deficit and reducing taxpayer-supported debt as a percentage of the provincial economy. . . . What makes balancing the budget and controlling the province's debt important is that these goals provide the fiscal foundation for building a strong economy from which all of our citizens can benefit. With sound fiscal management" -- the minister went on to claim -- "we can be sure that valuable taxpayers' dollars are not targeted toward paying interest on the debt but are paying for schools, for hospitals and for the infrastructure necessary to encourage investment, jobs and economic growth."

I would be remiss to overlook the comments of the NDP's latest leader, the member for Vancouver-Kensington, on the importance of balancing the budget. Way back, on March 24, 1994, before he was even Attorney General, he said: "Perhaps for the first time in many years, we are conscious of the fact that debt has to be repaid, and a beginning has been made now." That was in 1994. Since his so-called beginning, B.C.'s debt has increased by $11 billion. Some beginning.

More recently, on November 7, 1999, when he announced his candidacy to become the NDP's third leader since the 1996 election, the member for Vancouver-Kensington said: "We must balance the budget, and we must keep it balanced." Well, I've got news for him and his NDP colleagues. It's never been balanced by the NDP.

Since his comment last fall, British Columbians have been forced to pay an additional $1 billion in interest on our debt. That's just since November 7, 1999. One has to wonder: did the various NDP Finance ministers and Premiers actually believe what they were saying about the importance of balancing the budget? Or were they just saying whatever it took to get elected?

I think it's possible that some NDP MLAs actually do recognize that paying ever-increasing amounts of interest on the debt takes away from the government's ability to look after the elderly, the young and the most vulnerable members of our society. But they just can't bring themselves to do anything about it. It reminds me of an addict who acknowledges that his habit is deadly but can't prevent himself from getting another fix. The NDP is hooked on spending money it doesn't have, hoping to appease special interests who threaten to make life miserable for them if they don't get what they want. Of course, no matter how much money they receive, it's never enough, and more is always demanded.

As the downward spiral deeper into debt continues, so too does the spiral of increasing interest costs. Those interest costs have to be paid before any money can go to classrooms, hospitals, roads, parks and the protection of children. The NDP's addiction to borrowed money is sucking the lifeblood out of our economy and our social programs. Debt truly is the silent killer of government services and opportunity in B.C., because we hear the government using that as an excuse for why they can't offer meaningful tax relief to British Columbians.

[1115]

Here's another comment:

"B.C.'s chartered accountants complained that B.C.'s business and personal taxes remain higher than those in Alberta, and growing debt will make it even more difficult to catch up. 'B.C.'s economy is being left behind by Alberta and Ontario, and the budget failed to adequately address this problem,' said Richard Rees, CEO of the Chartered Accountants of British Columbia. 'The budget took baby steps, where other provinces are taking giant leaps.'

"Rees noted that Alberta residents, under that province's new tax system starting in 2001, will not pay tax on their first $11,620 of income, where B.C.'s exemption kicks in only at $8,000. As well, where Albertans will pay a flat tax of 11 percent, British Columbia's top tax bracket is almost double, at 19.7 percent."

Far too often I'm coming across people whose kids are leaving B.C. after receiving their taxpayer-subsidized education. We are subsidizing the export of the raw material necessary for the information age. Our young people -- our best and brightest prospects for the future -- are voting with their feet by exiting the province. That's disgraceful. The official opposition wants no part of that, and we are doing everything we can to bring some common sense to this government. But they're not listening. Unfortunately, it appears that nothing but a cold shower of an election will bring reality to bear for the people in the NDP government. The next election can't come soon enough for British Columbia's young people. I believe that they should be able to stay in British Columbia to pursue their futures. They shouldn't be forced to leave their home and their families in order to secure a bright and positive future.

The Vancouver Sun weighs in this morning with an editorial entitled "NDP Still Can't Live Within B.C.'s Means." They note that: "Of the Health ministry's budget increase of $549 million, $183 million is for enriched wages and benefits. By comparison, just $42 million of the increased spending will go toward additional beds and home care."

They later say: "A government that had not mismanaged its own affairs so badly could have done much more to reduce taxes, entice investors and stimulate economic activity. But the NDP has always liked to spend, regardless of the consequences." In conclusion they state: "If the government understood the concept of affordability, then change might come. But spending only what it can afford remains a foreign concept to the NDP."

The budget presented yesterday, Budget 2000, contains the second-biggest debt increase in one year in B.C.'s history. The deficit for programs plus the increase in project spending will, after some accounting adjustments, deliver a $3 billion increase in taxpayer-supported debt by the end of the budget year. This is the second-largest increase in provincial history. The previous record was also set by this government -- no surprise -- right after they formed government in 1991.

"Assuming the New Democrats were to remain in office," according to Vaughn Palmer of the Vancouver Sun

[ Page 14557 ]

That is the promise that the NDP holds out for British Columbians: more debt, more interest charges. That means less money available for tax cuts and important services that we all have come to rely on. That's not good enough.

[1120]

That's really what the truth or transparency act that they tabled yesterday is all about. It's an admission that, frankly, might be of interest to the judge who is sitting in on the David Stockell case on April 10, because to me it appears to be an admission -- against interest -- that their past conduct was less than truthful. Of course, that's what that entire court case is about -- whether or not this government misled voters in order to get elected and not just gave a false promise about balancing the budget but actually doctored the financial statements for the previous year.

Keep in mind that in the spring of 1996, when we went to the polls, the NDP didn't just produce a budget for '96-97. They also tabled financial documents stating the results for the '95-96 fiscal year. They tabled financial documents for 11 full months. Those documents were inaccurate; more than that, they were misleading. The judge will have to decide whether that deception was deliberate. If the judge does so find, the case law now appears that it will be the case that three NDP MLAs, as I stated previously, will be out shopping their résumés around in very short order. So we'll stay back.

Interjection.

B. Penner: A member opposite is suggesting that it's just politics. But I don't think British Columbians accept lying as a part of politics anymore; I think we need to rise above that and present the truth.

The government has made a partial step forward with its transparency act, acknowledging the sins of their past. But we'll have to see whether that's enough to satisfy a Supreme Court judge as to whether or not the government should be forgiven for misleading British Columbians back in 1996.

People can be forgiven for almost being in a state of disbelief that this government could more than double B.C.'s total debt in just nine years, when before that it took over 100 years for British Columbia to incur an equal amount of debt. It took since Confederation -- 1871, when B.C. joined Canada -- for B.C. to accumulate a total debt of $17 billion. It took the NDP just nine years to more than double that.

People say: "How can they do that? How can you find ways to blow $17 billion in such a short period of time?" Ultimately, I think, it comes down to mismanagement. It comes down to a lack of willpower. It comes down to a failure to believe that it actually is important to apply prudent management principles to government operations.

I think the best example of that -- a lasting legacy to NDP waste and mismanagement -- is the fast ferry financial fiasco, also known as the ferry follies. A couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity -- or some would say the lack of opportunity -- to ride on the fast ferry from Nanaimo over to West Vancouver. I was saddened. Yes, I've seen all the TV reports and read the articles in the newspapers, but I had really hoped that this ferry would be able to accommodate more people than it can. It's unbelievable when you drive onto the ferry and realize how few vehicles it actually holds. The government tells the public that they can actually accommodate almost 250 cars and 1,000 people.

I had a chance to speak with the captain of that ferry, and he told me that that's not true. He told me that their own internal policy restricts the number of passengers to about 770. Why's that? Because they found that passengers, due to the design of the ship, get a little bit fractious with each other. The layout is such that it fosters hostility. Why? It's because there isn't enough room. People feel like their space is being invaded, that their personal privacy is somehow challenged. Not surprisingly, after an hour and a half of an unpleasant crossing -- as is often the case, given the weather conditions -- people get a little upset with the person sitting right next to them, who they don't know. If you've been on the ferry, you know what I mean. You don't have a lot of space between you and the next person.

To make matters worse, of course, the seating is uncomfortable. There's virtually very little to do on the ferry. There's not as much space in the bookstore, for example, to go and browse as there is in the traditional ferries. All in all, it's just a dismal failure of taxpayers' money.

[1125]

Again, let's put this in context. Let's put this into the terms of everyday life that face British Columbians in the province. We've all heard the news that thousands of people are waiting for important surgery, cancer treatment -- medical attention. I had a gentleman come into my office a couple of weeks ago. He's been waiting for treatment for his cancer since November. He has colon cancer, and he cannot get surgery. I received a call back this morning indicating that he may now be getting surgery -- after my inquiries -- in May. But all of this time he's been living with the realization that the cancer is spreading, and he's been told that it's an aggressive tumour. Do you think he can get medical treatment in British Columbia? He's got to wait until May, and the cancer is growing. But this government, the NDP, thinks it's more important to spend $465 million on a fast ferry that doesn't work. What does that say about this government's priorities?

It's not like it was an accident; it's not like it was not foreseeable. This thing was a disaster in slow motion. We all saw it coming. It was like the sinking of the Titanic. It was painful to watch. But the government refused to listen to experts, refused to listen to the opposition as we tried to point out that this error could be avoided. They put up the blinders, plugged their ears and kept spending taxpayers' money. Now

[ Page 14558 ]

Even worse, construction started without any comprehensive business plan and before engineering drawings were complete. Contracts were open-ended and allowed costs to soar by hundreds of millions of dollars. My colleague the member for Richmond Centre pointed out repeatedly that a financial disaster was taking place. We asked the government to reconsider this maritime disaster. The evidence was overwhelming: the ships didn't suit our needs, and they certainly didn't fit our budget. But the government wouldn't listen, and look what happened. B.C. Ferries has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy. Its debt jumped from $14 million -- $14 million, not billion -- when the NDP took office in 1991 to $1.165 billion by early this year -- a staggering 8,221 percent increase in nine years. B.C. Ferries' net loss was $114 million in 1999, compared to a $59 million loss the previous year. To make matters worse, the auditor general predicts that operating costs for the fast ferries will be 27 percent higher than for conventional ferries, adding to the sea of red ink already sinking our ferry system.

Our grandchildren will pay for this fiasco for years to come. They deserve to know how this happened. There's a way for us to get to the bottom of this story, and that's through the Public Accounts Committee of the Legislature. All members of that committee, opposition and government members, had agreed last year to a list of witnesses that would be allowed to come before the committee and provide evidence -- testify, answer challenging questions, find out how this happened. But back in January, NDP MLAs voted to shut down the committee when the answers started getting too close to home. The truth hurt. Even though they earlier agreed to talk to senior managers, engineers and planners, the NDP slammed the door shut on the public's right to know.

At the time the current Attorney General, the person who was seeking the NDP leadership, said it was wrong to do that and stated that taxpayers had a right to know what happened. But now that he is Premier, he won't allow questions to be raised. He claims it would cost too much money for MLAs to just walk down the hall, sit in a meeting room and ask government officials, who are already on salary, to answer some questions. That's an absolute ruse. It's not true. MLAs are already getting their salary. The taxpayers are already paying for the senior bureaucrats. The least they could do is tell British Columbians how this project got so far off track.

[1130]

This current budget that we're debating only increases the problem. Again, as I say, the government is relying on another fix of more debt to mask its problems. But we all know that what happens with an addict is that you need to go back for ever-increasing amounts of your fix. Ultimately, the person's health is destroyed. That's what's happened to British Columbia. Therefore I cannot and will not support this budget.

Hon. J. Smallwood: I've spent a fair amount of time here in the House this morning listening to the opposition presentation on the budget. As I listen to them, it really strikes me that there truly are differences in the values that the government brings to its decision-making and the values that the opposition brings. I think those differences can best be summed up by a couple of comments that were made by previous speakers. It's reflected in how the opposition values the role of government in society as well as how the opposition values the people that work for government.

There's been a great deal made of the questions around remuneration for those people that work for government and provide services. There's been a great deal made of the priorities that government has made in trying to balance the need to continue to invest in this province, to support the people who rely on government services, and the government's commitment to flow through the tax cuts that were made by the federal government.

I'd like to talk about a couple of those aspects. First and foremost, we've heard this morning that government should not have spent the money that it received in increased revenue, and there's been a difference. . . . The speaker articulated a view that this government feels that it can make decisions better than taxpayers can. The opposition would have provided that money in tax relief to taxpayers.

What that says, more than anything, is that that party is a party of privilege, in and of itself, and that it represents privilege in this province. Most citizens in this province understand that the services provided by government are services that are valued in communities. They build the support that families need to be able to compete in a modern economy. Those services are education and health care. They are the great equalizers. If you are not from a privileged background, you depend on those services. If you are from a privileged background, you believe that you can buy those services in the open market and get the reward that your privileged position affords you.

If we look at the history of the support that this government has afforded not only government services generally but health and education specifically -- when the federal government abandoned its commitment and its investment in those services -- I think you can well understand why we have taken over the position of being the education province in Canada, where more people are enrolled in continuing education than we've ever seen before.

[1135]

When the opposition says that it would not spend on those programs but instead would cut taxes -- cut the

[ Page 14559 ]

I also want to talk more specifically about some of those expenditures in those areas. Not only have we continued to invest in education through the reduction of class sizes. . . . Now, some may say that we should not have done that this time, that we should have maintained the status quo or indeed allowed the class sizes to increase, because the deficit or tax cuts were more important. This is what I'm hearing from the Liberals.

But we are talking about our future. We're talking about young people and their opportunities to learn, to be equipped and to stand as equals -- children of working families, children of single-parent families and often children who, unless government stood side by side with them and improved their opportunities for education, could never hope to be able to stand as equals as they enter the workforce as adults.

The investment in the health care system through investment in increased opportunities for people to get training as nurses -- increased number of nurses to support the health care system. . . . But let's also talk about the increases in this budget for the contracts that have been negotiated over the last short while.

As the Minister of Women's Equality, it's fascinating to me that we have come so far and are still in a situation of having to name the work that women do and having to argue that the work that women do not only needs to be valued and recognized but also should be compensated fairly.

[1140]

In this province, women earn 73 cents on the dollar. When the NDP was first elected in 1991, when I had the privilege of being the Minister of Social Services for this province, there were women issuing income assistance cheques -- single parents who had two or three children -- who were actual clients of their own ministry. They were issuing welfare cheques to people across the counter and having their own wages topped up by the ministry that they worked for, because that's how low the wages were. Our government embraced a principle of recognizing the work that women do, of providing a low-wage redress and pay equity as part of the negotiated settlements. I'm proud to say that those women are no longer clients of the very ministry they work for. Their work is recognized. They are able to support themselves and their children, and that is something that we should be proud of. I am proud of that.

Hon. Speaker, we've heard an awful lot about these settlements, and I want to speak more of the work that those people do -- predominantly women and predominantly in the community service sector. We have just seen an example of an agreement that targeted the work that women do in the community service sector -- many of them in group homes and many of them dealing with the most vulnerable in our society. Let me talk a little bit not only about the work they do but about why the government strategy to recognize that work and to pay appropriately is not only the right thing to do for those women who do the work but the right thing to do for taxpayers. And it's the right thing to do for the people they serve and take care of.

We've heard an awful lot from the other side about the dollars that have been invested in the people who provide that service. They on the opposite side have said that none of this investment does anything to improve patient care. Well, shame on the opposition. Shame on them for not understanding and celebrating that work. Shame on them for criticizing without the knowledge base. Shame on them for playing politics with something that is so important.

While we're talking about the people that work in the community service sector, let me talk about one very small part. In this province we saw a significant deinstitutionalization of people with severe mental handicaps, started by a previous government before the NDP was elected in 1991. People were moved from institutions that they had lived in for the majority of their lives -- 30 and 40 years and some longer. They're now living in group homes and in communities, and they have, over the last number of years -- the last decade -- been part of a community and contributing to the community and expanding themselves and being themselves more than they could have ever hoped to be, living in an institution. Again, the people that worked in those group homes often came in at entry-level wages. Even though many of them had certificates from community colleges, had gone on to additional education after high school, they would come in at entry level. And to provide stability and quality of care, government would invest in opportunities for continued education and support -- to provide that quality of service for the people that they cared for.

[1145]

Again, because of that strategy and a commitment that our government has brought to acknowledging and paying proper wages for the work that those people do, we have

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This budget continues to recognize the importance not only of government services and of investing and providing stability but of looking for innovative solutions as well. It's that balance that this budget provides in recognizing the need for support for families in their everyday lives and in providing an innovative solution to day care -- a program that women in British Columbia and across Canada have been calling on governments to do for a decade. It's about time. And this opposition says that is a false investment. I think the people of this province understand that this government's got its priorities right -- that investing and providing for the kind of support. . .recognizing in particular that women's lives are made up of caring for their children, often caring for an elderly parent and working, as well as their commitment to their community. . . . That is a formidable task, and without the government's recognition that the women of this province deserve a government that is on their side, I truly do despair.

So I would encourage the opposition to move beyond the politics of the game, recognize that taxpayers rely on governments to support a quality of life that they deserve and that they pay for, and that they celebrate the work that women do -- in particular the work provided by public services that taxpayers pay for.

There is a great deal in this budget that truly makes a difference in ordinary citizens' lives in British Columbia. We have not abandoned the important priorities of health care and education, even at a time when the federal government has walked away -- only 15 cents on the dollar for our cherished health care system as Canadians. I would have hoped that the opposition would have made more comment about the federal government's abandonment instead of calling for this province and this government to walk away from those valued services.

Noting the time, I move adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. D. Lovick: I move adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:50 a.m.

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