2000 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 36th Parliament
HANSARD
The following electronic version is for informational purposes
only.
The printed version remains the official version.
(Hansard)
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2000
Morning Sitting
Volume 20, Number 19
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The House met at 10:05 a.m.
Prayers.
Hon. S. Hammell: Hon. Speaker, in compliance with the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act, it's my pleasure today to table the Pacific National Exhibition strategic plan for the year 2000-01.
Hon. G. Bowbrick: In Committee A, I call Committee of Supply. For the information of the House, we'll be debating the estimates of the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Immigration. In Committee B, I call Committee of Supply, and we'll be debating the estimates of the Premier's Office.
The House in Committee of Supply B; T. Stevenson in the chair.
The committee met at 10:08 a.m.
ESTIMATES: OFFICE OF THE PREMIER
AND EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OPERATIONS
On vote 9: office of the Premier, $2,713,000.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Chair, I'm pleased to speak about both the office of the Premier and its work, as well as the budget of the office of the Premier. This would give us a chance to review the progress that we've made over the last four months and outline some plans for the future.
It has been exciting and challenging work since I took over in February. We have been attempting to chart a new direction under my new government, and we will obviously have a chance to discuss some of those issues as we go into the estimates.
I wanted to make sure, when I took over as Premier, that we begin to have a new approach in managing the public's business. There are several markers, several indicators, of that approach. The main reason we need to change that approach is that we need to once again reconnect with the hopes, needs and values of British Columbians, who feel alienated not just from the government, if I might say, but from the political system in general. I think it's important for both the opposition and the government side to take note of that.
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It was with that in mind that I attempted, both during the leadership campaign and ever since I've become the Premier, to move away from conflict and confrontation and to have a spirit of civility both in the Legislature here and in the work that we do outside, so that once again people in British Columbia see that politicians, regardless of their differences of opinion, conduct themselves appropriately and are working for the greater good despite political differences, which are natural and ought to remain. Obviously that's part of the ongoing contest in front of British Columbians vis-à-vis values and approaches that might be different on either side of the House.
As part of that new approach, I said during the leadership campaign and after that I wanted to put our fiscal house in order. We've begun to do that early on, dealing with the megaprojects such as fast ferries in the way that the restructuring went on, in the way that we attempted to deal with it, so that all of the facts -- facts, nothing but the facts -- go out in the public and the public has some sense of restoration of trust and credibility in the processes we use to manage projects.
One of the issues in that regard, obviously, was fast ferries itself, but it is our general approach to how we deal with megaprojects in British Columbia. That's why the Minister of Finance has indicated to all Crown corporations and all ministries that any megaprojects, before they proceed in British Columbia, must have business plans attached to them, must have proper analysis done, a business case available for the project. Then those projects ought to be constantly monitored in an appropriate way with checks and balances.
It was in that context that he ordered the review of the SkyTrain project, which I was told came back and said that the SkyTrain project was on budget and on time. The review was helpful in determining that.
Part of that approach -- the rationale for part of that approach -- is to restore trust, as I said, as well as accountability so that we set clear and achievable objectives not just in projects but in government generally, throughout government, and then we set out to achieve them and indicate how we are going to achieve them. Obviously that would be part of the process of restoring credibility and trust in mechanisms of government.
One of the four priorities during my leadership campaign, which I carried, of course, into the Premier's Office, was to make sure, as I said, to be non-confrontational, chart a new era of politics in British Columbia, put our fiscal house in order. As part of getting that financial house in order, we have made progress in all of these areas over the last four months, as I indicated earlier with respect to megaprojects. We continue to do that. Let me just go over just go over two or three of the initiatives that we have done which have been very, very important and central to that new approach.
We started with the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act. You have in that legislation the most open and transparent budget-making law in Canada. I believe there isn't any parallel in Canada with respect to that particular approach, and I think that that's obviously the work of the Enns panel and other work that has gone on in British Columbia. We took all of that into account and legislated almost all of the recommendations of the Enns panel.
It was important that we did that because people need to know that their business is conducted in a way that's transparent and open, that they get the bottom lines in budgeting -- facts, nothing but the facts all of the time. You now have a legislative requirement, or set of requirements, to ensure that that happens. It was no coincidence that that was one of our first actions after I became the Premier, because I wanted to make sure that we began the process of restoring that trust and that credibility with respect to budgeting in the public domain.
That legislation was introduced with the budget in March. Of course, that process, under the law, opens itself to
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more public input at various stages. It improves issues around planning the budgets, and at the end of the day, it also strengthens accountability of the budget-makers to the public, including the Legislature.
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In that regard, as I said earlier, that particular piece of legislation makes British Columbia a leader in transparent and open financial reporting, ensuring that the public at the end of the day has the utmost trust, and that they can rely on figures. One could quibble about the priorities that one places in the budgets -- how we make the budgets. But one could not quibble with the figures, because it's important for people to know what is the real bottom line in budgeting. On priorities we can differ. On the opposition side and on the government side, obviously priorities are different, and we're always proud to argue about those priorities.
Transparency law, which I just referred to, was the first plank in the budget reform package that has been before the House, and it's going to be. A second plank of that process was a made-in-B.C. income tax system, which the federal government obviously allowed with the changes. Some other provinces have followed that approach. We decided that we were going to follow that approach. We will now have a made-in-British Columbia personal income tax system, which we introduced in May. That allows the provinces to set their own personal income tax brackets, rates and non-refundable credits, instead of always having to be boxed in by Ottawa's lead or follow Ottawa's lead.
That really means that in British Columbia we can begin to structure our own tax system to better reflect the needs, the values and the priorities of British Columbians. It also means that we can target tax cuts -- as we have done -- to those that are most in need, people earning, I believe, $40,000 or $45,000, or individual families earning $80,000. The vast majority of the people in British Columbia today pay the second-lowest income taxes in Canada, and the situation will continue to improve. By the end of next year, I understand, the new system will save British Columbians nearly $750 million in personal income taxes relative to 1995 figures.
As well, as part of what we've done in budgeting, we have made sure that 100,000 low-income British Columbians will no longer pay any British Columbia income taxes at all. I think that's important, because it is the low-income British Columbians, once they get the tax breaks, who immediately plough back all of that money into the economy, and that becomes a driver for the economy. That's very, very important, because that's the section of society that needs those tax breaks the most.
So both of these budget reform measures are very, very significant improvements. We're now ready to move forward with the third plank in the reform package; that's the balanced budget legislation. We will, of course, talk about that once it's formally introduced this afternoon. But that delivers on my commitment to provide the level of fiscal management British Columbians both demand and deserve. I think it's important that we balance our budgets. You will see the plan, hon. Chair, as it will be unveiled today at 2 p.m. I believe that it would be one additional way of ensuring that governments begin to live within their means in British Columbia, but it will do so in a way that does not jeopardize some of the social values that British Columbians cherish and uphold to the utmost.
We will talk more, of course, about that legislation, but for now I want to mention one further initiative that was introduced in the past four months; that's the issue around the legislative reform. It was heartening to find cooperation on the opposition side, and I want to say that we found consensus on many issues. There was substantial consensus. But we were unable to reach final agreement with the members opposite, and that remains a disappointment for me. I want to make sure that we continue the process, because if we had completed it and if we had complete consensus amongst both government benches and the opposition benches, we would have been able to proceed, so that life in the Legislature would become a little more bearable and the work of the Legislature would proceed in an orderly fashion, in a fashion that would serve the needs of British Columbians better.
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Unfortunately, that didn't happen, but I will continue to urge the leader of the opposition and the opposition benches to work with us, so that we can try and make sure that legislative reforms that are the order of the day, that already exist in other legislatures and are long overdue in British Columbia, aren't prevented from happening in British Columbia by partisan posturing. I commit the government to ensure that we continue to work with the opposition so that we can modernize the rules of this chamber to make it work better. I am determined, in this area and many other areas, to take a new and different approach. I am proud of what we've accomplished in the last four months, and we will continue to do more in the months to come.
In the year ahead we will build on some of these accomplishments and achievements in place. We will bring forward policies to continue moving forward on the eight key priorities that I've outlined to the public. Those eight key priorities are as follows. I will just mention them very briefly: securing and renewing medicare in British Columbia, making B.C. a leader in education
Let me say a couple of words on all of them. Securing and renewing medicare in British Columbia. We have had discussions with the federal government, as we have had discussions with other Premiers in other governments across the country. Money alone will not be enough to renew and strengthen medicare; money is required. Actually, we have consistently increased funding for medicare in British Columbia since 1991. The only province to provide nine straight increases to medicare is British Columbia. I know a few heads are shaking on the opposite side, but they should nod, because that is the truth.
But money alone would not be enough. We need to renew medicare; we need to strengthen it. That's why we held an innovation forum in British Columbia with the help of the experts -- the practitioners, health care workers, nurses, doctors and consumers -- to come out with some recommendations. I anxiously await the recommendations of that forum, so that we can begin to renew medicare in creative ways so that it is there for generations to come.
The second priority was making B.C. a leader in education. We took the second-worst record in the post-secondary education and made it the second-best record in post-secondary education in nine years. We've added over 20,000 new post-secondary spaces in British Columbia. I have pledged publicly that we want to make British Columbia the education province in Canada. We want to make it the best in Canada, the leader in education in Canada. We will continue to do that, as we have over the last nine years.
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There are other priorities, such as accelerating innovation in our economy, giving communities real power, so that we look at possibly, in terms of communities, some resource revenue devolving to the communities, such as what happened in the Columbia Basin Trust -- maybe not on that scale, because we may not have the resources, but maybe on a smaller scale -- see what we can do to give communities the fiscal and the financial power and the control, so that they can begin to utilize the dollars on the ground as they see fit to grow perhaps a new economy, high-tech sector or add value to the existing resource economy. Those are important initiatives that we will look at in the coming months.
Making our society greener. British Columbia is the envy of the world in terms of the environment it has. British Columbia also has the toughest environmental regulations. I'd really like to know, on all of these issues, where the opposition stands. But those are issues for another day. We will obviously do that on the hustings. If the opposition wants to do it here, I'd be happy to do it here. I think that we have a different approach. We want to see British Columbia a greener and cleaner British Columbia. I don't know what the opposition's approach is. They keep talking about cutting regulations. Is that the environmental regulations we're talking about? I'd like to know that. It would be very important for us to have a serious debate on those kinds of issues.
We also want to make sure that everyone in British Columbia is moving forward, and that means no one is left behind. That includes the first nations in British Columbia. We commit ourselves to continuing treaty negotiations to ensure that we get some deals, unlike the opposition who want to subject everything to a referendum on those kinds of important issues.
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I also want to make sure that we continue to advance women's equality -- we do that by several initiatives that we are currently considering -- and make sure that women have absolute equality in British Columbia in our day and in our time.
As demonstrated in some of the tangible ways, the final priority is getting our financial house in order. I've talked about that already, and I would obviously be looking forward to a rational debate on all of these issues. That's our plan for the future, and we will, any day, love to put our plan against the opposition's plan once they have it, because I haven't seen one. I haven't seen one. I'd be happy to debate it today, tomorrow, the day after -- whenever the opposition wants it. I'm looking forward to that.
G. Campbell: The Premier and the leader of this government has covered a broad range of issues today in his opening remarks. I want to focus in on his last remark for a second. The Premier says he wants to hear what our plan is. All he has to do is read about it. He can go out and talk to people all over the province and find out about it. I know, actually, that the Premier's been paying attention to it, because he's trying to grab some of it. But the fact of the matter is that the Premier can hear all of our plans, as will all of the people in British Columbia, by simply calling an election today.
Now, I have a sense, hon. Chair, that the Premier probably won't be calling an election today, because all of the things that the Premier talked about today, which we have to restore, are values and issues that have been damaged and destroyed by his government -- by the NDP government -- over the last nine years. And unfortunately, over the last few months the Premier seems to think that, on the one hand, he can be part of that government, but he's not really part of the government. So why doesn't everyone just trust that he's someone new? The fact is that if you want to restore trust, you have to act in a trustworthy manner.
For example, when the Premier says that he wants to restore trust, it seems to me that the people of British Columbia would expect that the Premier would know what was going on in his government, would expect that the Premier was showing up for meetings when they actually had important and serious issues to deal with, and would expect that he was carrying out that mandate that people give him, the trust that his constituents gave him -- the trust, even, that his party gave him.
When his party elected him as a vice-president and put him on the board of directors, this Premier assumed a trust. He assumed the trust that he would represent the values of his party. And the values of his party, I would suggest, were not that they would have a fundraising arm that would go out and take money from charities. The values of his party were not that they would try to cover up that misdemeanour, that incredible act of negligence. The values of his party were that he would be there and that he would hold their values high.
Instead, what did this Premier do? This Premier decided to miss the meeting, and he missed the meeting deliberately. He said that he missed the meeting deliberately because he believed there were some problems that were there. So what does that mean? What does that mean to the public, not to the opposition? Forget the opposition. What does the public feel? Well, here was one public comment on it: "Sounds like he had suspicions that something was not quite right. If so, closing his eyes was the height of irresponsibility." That's the Vancouver Province.
One of the problems that we have in this Premier talking to us about trust is that he consistently closes his eyes when he has responsibility. On a half billion dollar expenditure, he closed his eyes -- didn't have a business plan, didn't seem to care what was going on. In fact, he didn't even remember attending the meetings.
Trust is carrying out your responsibilities in a way that you say you will carry them out, and this Premier failed in that regard. Trust is giving to the people of British Columbia the things that you undertake to do. This is a Premier who went and led the so-called recall and initiative committee to go out to try and find out how we could compose recall and initiative legislation. He deliberately wrote a bill that in fact will never work. I contend that the government knew that from the day they started out that process. It was a sham. It was designed to not allow the public to hold politicians to account. That's what recall is about. It's about holding politicians to account for the things that they say they'll do. This Premier decided to hide behind the words; the substance of the bill meant the public would never be able to hold politicians to account.
What kind of trust did that instil? Well, here's a comment from someone in the public: "After a lengthy stall, the Recall and Initiative Act presented last week imposes conditions which are technically possible but in practicality virtually impossible to meet." That's the Times Colonist in Victoria.
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Trust. How do we establish trust? We follow through on the things we say we're going to do. The Premier is now telling us, in the last year of this government's mandate, that suddenly he's discovered the importance of financial responsibility, after standing up for nine years and voting for deficit after deficit and after sitting on Treasury Board during the fixed budgets debates -- the fudge-it budget proposals before 1995 and 1996. After doing all those things, he says: "Oh, now I've discovered financial accountability. Now I care about it. Now I understand the debt is eating away at the heart of our essential services like health care and education. Now I understand that investors won't come to British Columbia. Oh, I get it. When the taxpayers' paycheques keep shrinking and shrinking, their quality of life somehow or other starts to erode." Well, I'm glad the Premier is at least saying the words now, but we've heard these words before -- before an election.
I remember when the Premier said before an election that there would be no expansion to gambling in British Columbia. I remember when this Premier said before an election that there will be no slot machines in B.C. casinos. I'm sure the Premier remembers saying that, standing up to the people of British Columbia and saying in his voice: "This is what a B.C. casino is. There are no slot machines. There are no VLTs. That's what I mean when I tell you about a B.C. casino. I wouldn't ever do anything that I didn't tell you."
And then after an election we have a massive expansion in gambling. This is what the Premier said, hon. Chair: "Let me give you some characteristics of a B.C.-style casino: no slot machines, no VLTs, no alcohol, a moderate number of tables and lower betting limits." Well, he did the exact opposite of that. So if there is a challenge with restoring trust in elected officials in public life, I think it starts with the Premier. It starts with the person who has misled the public so consistently with regard to the public policy initiatives that he believes in.
Now, I understand that the Premier may have different public policy beliefs than I do. I think that's healthy; I think that's good. I would certainly like it, though, if he'd tell us what his real public policy beliefs were, so that the public could make a decision on where we're going to go as a province.
After saying that there would be no slot machines in British Columbia, it was this Premier who did everything he could to impose slot machines on communities. It was this Premier who used the power of the government, the resources of the taxpayer and the law to try and impose slot machines on communities in the lower mainland whether they wanted them or not -- spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to impose something that this Premier said he would not do.
Trust. How do you restore trust when we have a Premier who you can't trust, because the Premier doesn't seem to understand the importance of the role that he plays? This is a Premier who as Attorney General had a responsibility, a clear responsibility, to protect the courts and the legal system in British Columbia. I think the record of this Premier with regard to court actions is abominable. It's a record of going after citizens; it's a record of using the power of the government to break contracts. In fact, the Supreme Court of British Columbia said that this government went to the very core of our legal system. They decided that somehow or other they could pass laws, they could break contracts, they could manipulate, they could deceive, and they didn't have to disclose. They went after a private sector agreement contract, so that the government said: "You're just not going to do that. You're going to have to pay punitive damages on it." This Premier was the Attorney General when that took
Individual after individual in this province has been attacked by this government. They've been attacked by this government while this Premier was Attorney General: Frank Dixon, John Sheehan, Bob Ward -- individuals who had to use their resources to try and maintain their rights as citizens. This government's record and this Premier's record in terms of that have been abysmal.
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So we want to restore trust? Yes, we want to restore trust. But the first part of restoring trust is standing up, saying what you honestly believe in and acting on it. This government over the last nine years
So my first question to the Premier today is: as we look at the future of the province of British Columbia, would the Premier agree that it's time for us to move beyond the letter necessary to the law? Part of trust is for people to have the spirit of the law in place. I want to start with something that is very critical to all of us. It's important -- and I think it's important for the Premier to understand -- that this is totally non-partisan. Openness in government is a critical part of restoring trust between the public and elected officials. Could I ask the Premier: does the Premier agree that openness and straightforwardness in government are a critical cornerstone to restoring trust in our public institutions in British Columbia?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.
G. Campbell: Would the Premier agree that the Freedom of Information Act is an important tool in terms of making sure that we do have openness of government reflected in the actions of the government?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.
G. Campbell: Would the Premier agree that it would violate the spirit if not the letter of the Freedom of Information Act if any ministers or senior staff were to use aliases in correspondence and e-mails that would effectively circumvent the disclosure provisions of the act?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I'd like the hon. opposition leader to give me the particulars. I'd be happy to respond.
G. Campbell: This is a general policy question for the Premier. I don't have a particular here. I'd just like to ask the Premier: would the Premier agree that it would violate the spirit of the act if any senior officials, any cabinet ministers, any political appointees were using aliases in e-mails and faxes to try and avoid disclosure under the act?
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Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Chair, I would like the hon. opposition leader to actually give me the facts. He's big on facts. Let's have the facts. I'll be happy to answer the question.
There is a common-law principle, and that common-law
G. Campbell: If I could ask the Premier: would the Premier agree that any minister or senior staff who was using a code name in e-mails or correspondence to refer to himself or to other members of the government or senior staff would obviously be trying to do that to hide and get behind the Freedom of Information Act -- to avoid the Freedom of Information Act?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I don't know the circumstances of a particular case. If the hon. member has the information, I'd be happy to take it and look at it and give him the answer -- an informed answer, not a political-posturing answer that he is seeking right now.
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G. Campbell: Let me ask the Premier this: is the Premier aware of anyone in his cabinet or on his senior staff or the senior staff of government who is using aliases in their correspondence or their e-mails?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: No, I'm not.
G. Campbell: Will the Premier undertake to review this matter specifically with his cabinet and his senior officials to ensure that no one is using aliases in e-mails or correspondence?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Chair, I'd be happy to speak to my cabinet colleagues and find that out. I'd like to know what particular senior officials the hon. member is talking about. There are many of them. But I'd be happy to speak to the limited number that the hon. member wants me to speak to.
G. Campbell: What I would like the Premier to do is commit to review this in detail with his cabinet, his deputy ministers and his senior political appointees to ensure that they are not using aliases in either e-mails or correspondence and to report back to this House with regard to that. Will the Premier undertake to do that?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It's appropriate and the right thing to do for me to speak to my cabinet colleagues. They are ministers, and I have the right to speak to them. In terms of public officials, I have no intention of going on a witch hunt. If the hon. opposition member has some information, I'll be happy to receive it and deal with it.
G. Campbell: I don't think it's a witch hunt simply to ask public officials if they are doing it and to direct those public officials, if they are doing it, that it's wrong. I would suggest to the Premier that if he finds that public officials have admitted to doing it, that is an offence in terms of the public, in terms of creating trust with the public.
I want the Premier to know that there are many things that people are concerned about. One of them is the way that this government has used its e-mail, its correspondence and its power. This is simply a question of policy. Will the Premier go to the public service, as well as his cabinet, and say: "This is not going to happen. If it does happen, if I find that you've been doing it, as far as I'm concerned, you're going to be held accountable for that. That is a firing offence"?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I would be very happy to look into the matter. But I'm still waiting for the information. If the hon. opposition member has information, based on which he's asking obviously very important questions
So I would be happy to receive the information from the opposition leader. If the hon. opposition member doesn't want to give it to me, I'd be happy to have the deputy minister receive it, with respect to the public service, so that he can deal with it appropriately, because it is his obligation to deal with it.
G. Campbell: The issue at hand is one of establishing trust and being sure that the government is open and straightforward and aboveboard. I'm asking the Premier to do that, because I think it's important for us to get that. The reason it's important is that if this House is recalling last year's Premier's estimates, there was quite a bit of fiddling around going on with regard to e-mails and other things under the last Premier's office.
We don't want that happening in this government. The Premier is claiming that it's just some new standards. We'd like to see those standards in place; we'd like to hear them. What I've just heard the Premier say is that as far as he's concerned, if that is happening, it would be an illegal act. I assume that if it's an illegal act, the Premier would believe that was a firing offence.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I really don't want to get into a legal debate. I didn't think my comments amounted to exactly what the hon. opposition leader said. My comments simply indicate my knowledge of the common-law principle, which is that if you use
That's a very well established common-law principle. I don't know all of the laws in the world. I'd be happy to have the information from the opposition leader and look into this. I am absolutely onboard in terms of his position that if any member of the civil service or a member of cabinet is using aliases to hide something from a legitimate law and circumvent that piece of legislation, then that's wrong.
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G. Campbell: I'd like to move to the issue of accountability. The Premier has talked about it. I know I've talked about it; many people have talked about it. It's an area where there's been a certain amount of problem with the government, and I'm assuming that the Premier, as the leader of the government, has set some new accountability standards. In the past there has been no accountability with this government -- no ministerial accountability, no cabinet accountability -- and there has been a significant problem with that.
So my question to the Premier is this: what is the Premier's definition of accountability in the political sphere? In the government, how are people going to be held to account?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: That's a question through which you can drive a truck, actually. So I'd like to ask him to ask me a specific question; I'd be happy to answer it.
G. Campbell: When the Premier talks about accountability, what does he mean?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: We all know what accountability means. You are held to account for what you say you will do, and you will do it. But I would appreciate the hon. opposition leader asking me a specific question, and I'd be happy to answer that.
If we're going to get into a dictionary definition of accountability, I really am not interested in that. I want to know what the hon. member wants to know; I'd be happy to tell him.
G. Campbell: Well, the Premier can rest assured that I'm not getting into a dictionary definition of accountability. If I wanted that, I'd go to the dictionary. What I'm finding interesting, though, is that the Premier says accountability, and I say accountability, and there are two different meanings. What I want to know is: what does the Premier mean by accountability?
What I mean by accountability is this; just let me give you some ideas. If someone says that they're going to do something, they do it. If someone sits on Treasury Board, they have responsibilities; they will be held accountable for those responsibilities. If a minister sits and is responsible for B.C. Ferries, he has responsibility to make sure that there is a business plan. He has a responsibility to make sure that he's following through with regard to his responsibilities to the taxpayers to manage their dollars correctly. Accountability would mean that if someone who was involved in that failed miserably in their duties, they would be removed from those duties; that establishes accountability. If someone says, on the one hand, "There will be no slot machines in the province of British Columbia," and the other hand comes in and gives them, that is not, for me
So would the Premier please explain what his side of the House means by accountability, because no one in the public or on this side of the House understands what the Premier means when he says those words.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: That, to me, is a sort of firing squad definition of accountability. I believe that each one of us makes those judgments as we review the work of our colleagues in cabinet. If -- God forbid! -- the opposition leader becomes the Premier, he'll have to make judgments on his colleagues. I would be happy to make those judgments when and if I'm confronted with those judgments.
Each one of us undertakes certain obligations, and we live up to those obligations unless there is a legitimate reason that our desire to live up to those obligations has been frustrated by circumstances that are above and beyond our individual control.
G. Campbell: I think we're going to go back to the word "trust" here. This is why, in fact, people have trouble trusting the government, because I don't understand what the Premier just said there. It's a simple question, Mr. Premier.
When you say, for example, during your leadership
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During your leadership, I would assume that you would have liked to see how a lot of these decisions were ever made. Who actually has ever been held to account, hon. Chair? I'd like to know who has been held to account by the Premier, by his government or by anyone for the fast ferry fiasco. The public would like to know that.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I think that we all have very recent memory of recent events around the fast ferries, and I don't think I need to remind the opposition leader of the kinds of changes that have taken place around that particular issue.
But I think he may be alluding to the issue of the contract that has been let out with respect to the sale of the fast ferries. If he is, I'd be happy to talk specifically about that, if I have any knowledge. For the fast ferries, there's a corporation that deals with those issues. They make decisions in the normal course, and one has to judge them by the normal commercial standards. I'd be happy to talk about that, if that's what the hon. member is alluding to.
G. Campbell: I'm not alluding to that. What I'm alluding to is what the Premier means by accountability. The Premier has appointed a cabinet. I assume that when he appoints a cabinet, he sets out some tasks for them. I assume that he will watch his cabinet and see whether they're performing or not. I assume there are some goals he has set for them that he expects them to perform towards, and the public assumes that. In parliamentary democracy, I can tell you that half the cabinet wouldn't be able to sit in the cabinet, because they would have had to resign by now because of the traditions. This government has changed the traditions of parliamentary democracy.
My question to the Premier again
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goes into Public Accounts Committee and decides to close it down and close off the fast ferry inquiry. The Premier says during his leadership, which he brought up during his estimates, and I didn't know we were going to get a chance to talk about that, but I certainly will now that he's raised it: "It's wrong. We shouldn't have shut it down. Everyone has the right to know." The Premier is made Premier and says: "Well, forget that. We're not opening it up. There will be no inquiry. The Public Accounts Committee won't be able to continue." He stonewalls. He closed it down.
Can the Premier explain how the public would see any accountability from the Premier for his first comments and his second comments? What did he learn?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I think I answered that question several times before; I'd be happy to answer it once again in the House. I took a very good and thorough look at the auditor general's report.
An Hon. Member: Before or after?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: During the course of that issue, as it was developing.
I decided that the opposition obviously doesn't have faith in the auditor general's report; I do. The auditor general's report was comprehensive, and it was thorough. There have been other investigations. It was absolutely independent. It provided us all the information that could have been made available to anyone. In fact, beyond that, he was able to speak to anyone that he chose to speak to in arriving at the conclusions that he arrived at.
We've all been enlightened as a result of that; we've all taken action as a result of that. I believe that the opposition at that point was simply politicizing the issue more than it ought to have been. It had been dealt with by the auditor general, and that was the end of the matter for me.
G. Campbell: Thank you for the answer. Let me just follow this through for the Premier. The Premier is saying that the auditor general, whose report came out well before his commitment that it was wrong to close down the Public Accounts Committee
And the Premier wants me to believe today that he didn't read the report when it was first out. The report was there, and we were dealing with it. It was clear that there was a Public Accounts Committee going on. He didn't read the report. He's a member of the cabinet. He's one of the people who are on Treasury Board who approved it. He didn't read the report. He comes along, and he's decided to seek the leadership of the province. This is a major problem we're facing. He hasn't read the report and doesn't know what's going on. We get to the leadership, he says: "Oh, it's wrong to shut down Public Accounts. The public has a right to know."
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And then, after he's elected leader, he finally decided to read the report. Did the Premier not think that a half-billion-dollar waste of money for taxpayers was important enough to read a relatively short report prior to seeking the leadership of his party, prior to being elected the leader of his party and becoming Premier? Had he not paid attention to it beforehand? Is that the kind of accountability the Premier believes in?
The public says we've got a cabinet here that is supposed to manage our dollars. We've got people who are on Treasury Board who are supposed to manage our dollars. They go out and they say
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I suggest to the hon. Leader of the Opposition that sober second thought is always very refreshing. He should in fact pay some heed to that, because I believe that the opposition -- and they did this in this House, in this very House, if I remember correctly -- raised the same question, and my answer was the same. They don't have faith in the report, a very comprehensive, thorough, independent, transparent and open report of the auditor general of the province; I do. I looked at it once again, and I decided there was no need to spend any further public money in addition to what had already been wasted.
G. Campbell: It's exactly that kind of answer that leads people to wonder what the Premier actually believes. So let me ask the Premier this question: will he have sober second thought after an election, should his government happen to be re-elected, with regard to the balanced-budget bill? Will that create sober second thought? Will he throw that out? After the election, will he throw out the Transparency Act that he's heralded today, due to sober second thought?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It is that sober second thought that's bringing in that legislation.
G. Campbell: I'm sorry that the Premier was not sober for nine years prior to his
Interjections.
G. Campbell: I want to come back and ask the Premier again if he can define for us what he has set as goals for his ministers of the cabinet and what he looks at as ministerial accountability. What responsibilities has the Premier set in terms of personal acts for his ministers? What performance does he expect from them?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Cabinet decisions are made in confidentiality; they are made public when it's decided that those decisions ought to be made public. And I judge based on those decisions that are made in cabinet -- whether they are public or not public -- whether or not a particular minister is doing his or her job.
But the most important part of the job of all of the politicians on my side of the House -- I don't know whether that's true on the opposition side -- is to ensure that we reconnect with the hopes, values, dreams and aspirations of
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British Columbians. And we're going to do that in the next few months and actually shock the opposition by winning the election.
G. Campbell: You know, I actually wish the Premier well in his efforts to reconnect with British Columbians. This government has gone out for the last nine years, telling us every other year that they're going to reconnect with British Columbians and their values and their hopes, and every time they've failed. So I hope that this government will go out and listen to British Columbians.
I hope they'll listen to people in the resource communities who've been devastated by this government's policies. I hope they'll listen to people in the business community, who have said consistently to this government that their economic policies make no sense and drive people out of work. I hope they'll listen to the nurses and the doctors and the teachers and the physiotherapists and the patients across this province who've said that health care has deteriorated across this province because of this government's inaction, because of this government's reprehensible behaviour in the last decade in the province of British Columbia.
[1100]
I've got to tell you, hon. Chair, that the Premier's answer with regard to ministerial accountability is exactly why people are so concerned with this government; there is none. The Premier clearly does not have any standards for ministerial accountability. He does not expect performance. He does not expect a quality of behaviour and activity out of his ministers, and I think that's a shame. With regard to the public, it's no question that they demand that. They demand, when their minister is given responsibility for a project or for an undertaking, that they carry it out in a way that does reflect the values and the interests of the people of British Columbia, and that has consistently failed.
So let me ask the Premier with regard to how the government works. I'd like the Premier just to give us a brief outline of what the role is that the Premier's Office plays and what role that office plays in terms of coordinating activities. The Premier has said quite clearly, earlier on, that this was not going to be a government that's run out of the Premier's Office. We've seen lots of confusion as a result of that, where one announcement is made, then another announcement is made, and they're in conflict. I'd like to know how the Premier's Office is actually working, what he intends the Premier's Office to do and what the Premier himself would hold himself to account for.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Obviously the coordination happens in my office through cabinet. Cabinet is the body that is supposed to coordinate the work of government. Ministers go into their ministries and follow the decisions made by cabinet and bring back the results of the implementation of those. Obviously the coordination governmentwide is done through cabinet. I would ask the hon. opposition leader to be a little more specific.
Let me go back to something the hon. member said. The hon. member is talking about the nurses and the patients and the doctors and the health of British Columbians. The hon. opposition leader was there. He was the Leader of the Opposition when the federal government cut transfers to British Columbia and every other province, when they began the process of making those cuts. It was he that said those cuts were not deep enough.
I would like the hon. opposition leader to remember that in 1996 he said $6 billion is enough. We now have $8.7 billion in health care. I would be happy to debate these issues either here or on the hustings in British Columbia; I'd be happy. I say to the opposition: they will have their day, and they will lose.
G. Campbell: Well, the interesting thing is that the Premier says he's going to come in, and we're going to initiate a new era. Then he goes back to the same mistruths of the old era. I think the fact of the matter
I'll tell you where I was. I was in the north in rural communities when hospitals were shut down, and your Minister of Health couldn't even bother to go and talk to those patients. I was in the north talking to people in Prince George about what dollars are needed to focus on health care, when you weren't even aware of where Prince George was. The fact of the matter is that people in this province have watched as their health care system has deteriorated dramatically. It has deteriorated dramatically because this government has not focused its health resources on patients.
Two, three, four years ago we could have brought together all the members of this Legislature. I do not buy into this Premier's attempt to try and suggest that his side of the House cares about patients and health care and our side doesn't. We all care about health care.
It's time for this Premier, if he wants a new direction, to mobilize the Health Committee of this Legislature, send them around this province, hear from patients, hear from doctors, hear from nurses, hear from caregivers in every part of this province, so we can start having a strategy and a health plan that will work, as opposed to responding to crisis after crisis which this government has created and failed at.
My question to the Premier is this. He undertook, prior to his accession as leader, that the Health Committee
[1105]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: We have no time to waste. We have to get to work. We've had a health innovation forum in British Columbia, in Richmond, with practitioners, with doctors, with nurses, with health care workers. I await anxiously the recommendations from that health forum. We need to proceed.
We are having discussions with the BCMA. We're having discussions with nurses. We've started new 400 spaces for training nurses in British Columbia. There's a national shortage of nurses in Canada; I've spoken to the Prime Minister about that. I've had discussions with the Prime Minister on different issues. We're hoping we'll get some money from the federal government.
We are ready to do the work. We're doing that work. We don't need another committee actually hindering the work in this matter.
G. Campbell: Just so I can be clear with the Premier, the Premier believes that a legislative committee going to commu-
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nities across this province, listening to patients, hearing from doctors, nurses and community leaders would be a waste of time and a waste of money. Is that correct?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The Minister of Health stood here day after day answering questions. That was the time to make any bright suggestions, if the opposition had any. I haven't heard any.
G. Campbell: I'll make sure the Premier starts to get our releases, because clearly he's not doing very much reading, just as he didn't with the other portfolios he's held.
Again, my question to the Premier is
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Committees have done good work in the past. Committees aren't always a bad thing to have. The question is the time frame. The minister has just indicated to me that during his estimates he said he'll take a look at the committee, if a committee would be useful at this stage. We need to get to work.
G. Campbell: That highlights exactly the issue I'm trying to get from the Premier in terms of what the Premier's Office does. I want to know what the Premier believes. Does the Premier believe that a legislative committee on health travelling around the province, hearing from patients, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and community leaders, actually going and listening to their solutions to their problems, as well as their problems
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I said committees are sometimes very useful. But, you know, the problem with health care in British Columbia and across the country
G. Campbell: You know, hon. Chair, that's exactly the problem. The Premier talks like a horoscope sometimes. The reason that you have the legislative committee go out around the province is because it does bring all politicians together. This is a non-partisan issue.
This is an opportunity to go out and listen to the people in Rossland and Trail, to listen to the people in Dawson Creek, Fort St. John and Terrace, to listen to the people in Prince George, Vanderhoof, Clinton, Kamloops and Merritt, to listen to them in Port McNeill and Port Hardy, to ask those people: "What are you dealing with?" I can tell you that there are people who are hungry to come and speak to a legislative committee about the problems they face in health care; doctors are, nurses are -- individuals, not necessarily just institutions. Let them come. Open the debate up.
Get the committee out around the province. I'm a little shocked that the Premier seems to think that that's a waste of time. Why is it a waste of time for all of us together as a Legislature to go and try and deal with this problem in a constructive way, working with people across the province? Why does the Premier believe that that's a waste of time?
[1110]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I think the hon. Leader of the Opposition has selective hearing. I did say that the minister concerned has indicated that he'll take a look at the committee. He will obviously bring a recommendation to cabinet. If he can provide me with a rationale better than the hon. opposition leader has provided me with, we will have a committee.
G. Campbell: I want to go back and try again to get from the Premier
One of the challenges that we've had with the government is that it's very difficult to tell where decisions are being made and how they're being made. For example, with regard to the Island Highway on the North Island, the Minister Transportation and Highways says that there will be no island, and the Premier decides that there's going to be a $3.5 million expenditure to provide that island. Can the Premier tell us how that decision was made?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: When that was the subject of public discussion, the minister came to me and raised the issue with me after having said what he had said, and I heard concerns from the local community. I heard concerns from the local MLAs. I also heard -- not directly -- that the police in the area were also concerned. They wanted that done, and that decision was made based on a commitment that the community felt had been made earlier.
G. Campbell: I just want to be clear with the Premier. I don't want to be unfair here. The Minister of Transportation and Highways said that it wouldn't go ahead. The community came back and said: "We think it should go ahead." And the Premier decided, through the Premier's Office, that it would go ahead. Is that correct?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I think I said this earlier, but when the issue arose, I was advised of the issue. I was also advised that the community was concerned that contrary to what the minister may have said at that time, earlier in the matter the minister had made a commitment. That's what the community told me: the minister had made a commitment that there would be a divider available. I also heard concerns, through the local MLAs, that the police were concerned about safety.
I looked at that, consulted with the minister and consulted with the MLAs, and it was felt unanimously that it was the appropriate thing to do, for many reasons. One, the community felt they had been promised a divider; two, the police felt that it would add to safety. Those were important considerations. It wasn't driven out of the Premier's Office. It was based on discussions held with the MLAs and the Minister of Transportation, taking into account the concerns of the com-
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munity -- exactly what I always said: this government will work based on consultation, not run out of the Premier's Office.
G. Campbell: The basis of this is to try to find out how the government works, because it's not clear how it works.
Interjection.
G. Campbell: No, I want to get this clear. The issue is raised; it comes to the Premier's Office, as I understand it, and the Premier then deals with it. Is that correct? The Premier's Office deals with it. You may deal with it in terms of dealing with the Minister of Highways and the MLAs and the public and all the rest of it, but the Premier's Office actually dealt with it. Is that correct?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I have answered the question. If the hon. member can lend a little more specificity to the question, I'd be happy to answer that specific question.
G. Campbell: Let me ask this in a different way. Mr. Redlin, of the B.C. Transportation Financing Authority, said: "It was never a decision of government to have concrete median barriers there. It's never been part of the approved scope of the project. There is not now, and there is not going to be, enough traffic to warrant the $3.5 million investment." That's what the staff recommendation to the government was, as I understand it. It was never part of the project.
[1115]
What I'm trying to understand is how a decision is made in this particular government to invest an additional $3.5 million. I've heard from the Premier today with regard to the additional information that was gathered; I'm assuming that was gathered by the Premier or the Premier's Office. How in fact was that decision to spend that $3.5 million made? I understand that the Premier consulted with the minister, consulted with the MLAs, etc. But how was the decision made? What time in the Premier's Office was taken in doing it? How was the direction forthcoming?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I would be happy to answer those question about the technical plans of the Ministry of Transportation if I had somebody here. Those questions belonged in the Ministry of Transportation's estimates, but I'll be happy to tell the hon. member what the process was. I understand that in terms of the technical report, a divider was not a part of the highway. I've just been told. But those are issues that the hon. member should have elicited from the Minister of Transportation and Highways.
I'm happy to tell the hon. member and the Legislature that when the matter came to my attention, I spoke to the MLAs concerned. I spoke to the minister concerned. I was told the police were of the view that it would be better to have that divider, for reasons of public safety. And ultimately, that was the decisive factor in my mind, as a former Attorney General. That's what I have been told: that the police in the area said that it would be an appropriate thing to do.
G. Campbell: Am I to take it, then, that this was all informal chats? The approval of the $3.5 million -- the direction to approve it was basically an informal chat that was taking place. The reason I'm asking is straightforward. We asked for information on this through freedom of information. We were told the Premier's Office had no information whatsoever with regard to this. So I'm interested, again, in how this government works, what's taking place. How is it that citizens or members of the opposition can get information on how that flows? When the Premier's Office says there's no information on this and it's a $3.5 million expenditure, I think it's reasonable to ask how those expenditures are made and are committed in view of this government's and this Premier's record.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I'm told that the opposition leader made a FOI request of the Premier's Office, and there were no records. That speaks for itself. Everything isn't housed in the Premier's Office. The Premier's Office doesn't control these things. I also know, I might add, that the Minister of Finance was also consulted before making that decision.
G. Campbell: Again, what I'm trying to discover from this Premier is actually how the government works and what it's doing. It seems to me that when the Premier makes a decision that they're going to invest an additional $3.5 million, there should be some record of it. So this government doesn't have a record; that's fine. I just wanted to know exactly what was taking place with regard to that.
I want to go back for a second to the whole issue of how the government is put together under this Premier and what he's done in his office and with his cabinet and with his Treasury Board, etc. Could the Premier just outline for us the new structure that he has in his office and the purpose behind it?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The hon. Leader of the Opposition, if I understand his question correctly, is asking for the structure of the committees and the like, rather than the hierarchical chart within the Premier's Office, which I understand he has. If you want to go through that, I'd be happy to do that.
In terms of the committees, you have the two major committees of cabinet. There's the Treasury Board, and you have the planning board that deals with ongoing priorities of government.
You then have the cabinet caucus committees on legislation and regulations and orders-in-council, which meet weekly, as does cabinet. Sorry, let me
Then you have the Environment and Land Use Committee that determines issues around those areas and brings recommendations to cabinet, and that's a cabinet caucus committee.
You have the forestry working group, which has some MLAs and some cabinet ministers on it, and you have the green economy working group, which also has some cabinet colleagues and MLAs on it. The First Nations Issues working group, as well, has cabinet colleagues and MLA colleagues on it. Then there is a working group that's a federal-provincial issues working group that I've put together to bring some order to how we conduct our business with the federal government. Those are the committees and working groups that we currently have.
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[1120]
G. Campbell: If I can just start with the organization chart of the Premier's Office, for a second. I'm just interested in what the roles are of the deputy chief of staff, internal, and the deputy chief of staff, external. What is the difference? Why is there a need for those two deputies?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The deputy chief of staff, internal, deals with my caucus colleagues and cabinet colleagues, because I as the Premier don't always have time to meet with everyone. They keep in touch with all of my colleagues, and when and if I have to meet, I do meet. But there's constant communication that continues. With respect to the external deputy chief of staff, that's for the outside world. People from different sectors of society who want to have issues to raise with the Premier have input and have a contact that is readily available if the Premier is not available.
G. Campbell: I recognize the importance of making sure that you coordinate with your existing ministers and the senior staff. How does the Premier distinguish the differing tasks between the Deputy Minister to the Premier and his chief of staff?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The Deputy Minister is a career civil servant, and the chief of staff is a political appointment. They have separate work, separate domains.
G. Campbell: I'm sure they have separate domains. But can you outline for me what the Deputy Minister to the Premier's responsibilities are and what your chief of staff's responsibilities are?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The Deputy Minister deals with the bureaucracy, the civil service side of the content, the management side of the issues. The chief of staff deals with the politics of the issues. Obviously, they have to have a close working relationship, but their domains are absolutely different.
G. Campbell: So the chief of staff basically covers the political side, and the Deputy Minister covers the public service side.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Yes.
G. Campbell: I'm just going to try now to understand some of the standards that are set through the Premier's Office that are reflected in the things they do.
We all recall that earlier this year, Stuart Backerman, who had worked on one of his leadership rivals' campaigns, was told it was not going to be appropriate for him to be hired under contract. I was wondering why the Premier felt it was appropriate to hire people into his office who worked on his leadership campaign, but it wasn't appropriate for a minister to hire someone for their ministerial responsibilities who actually had experience in the ministry before.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Let me just say first that I don't believe there is any bar to political individuals working, either on contract or otherwise, either in the Premier's Office or elsewhere. I think that that's understood. If you start creating that kind of prohibition, you may in fact disqualify many good people from working for government who otherwise have the skills and the talents that are appropriate.
[1125]
All the political individuals who have been hired in the Premier's Office have gone through cabinet orders-in-council. There's a process in place. That process is obviously followed, and it's for everyone to see. I understood that the chief of staff had some concerns about that particular contract, and he dealt with those issues as he saw fit.
G. Campbell: Could the Premier enlighten us as to what those concerns were?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I'd be happy to advise the opposition leader. I don't have all the information. I don't concern myself with respect to personnel issues to the extent that the hon. opposition leader might expect me to. My job is a political job -- to manage a government generally but not specific contracts or specific individuals.
G. Campbell: I actually don't expect the Premier to know all the personnel issues, but this was one where clearly the Premier's Office had interfered. A decision had been made, and the Premier's Office decided that it wasn't an appropriate decision. I think it's important to understand why. We know that within the Premier's Office a number of people that worked on the Premier's leadership campaign are now in the Premier's Office getting handsome salaries. We'll get to that in a minute. My question is: what's the difference?
I know Mr. Backerman from a long time ago. He's been active in a number of areas of concern. I'm just interested in what the Premier's or the Premier's chief of staff's rationale was. What distinguishes that decision from the Premier's decision?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I would be happy to answer that question if I had the information. I said I would get the information for the hon. leader and provide that information. We have the Premier of the province in estimates, and we have the Leader of the Opposition, and we're talking about the reasons a particular individual was prohibited by the chief of staff from carrying on with contract work. I thought we were going to talk about weightier issues in British Columbia. I'll be happy to provide that information to the hon. leader once I have it.
G. Campbell: I think what the Premier doesn't understand is that this is about leading by example. The example the Premier sets to his cabinet colleagues is that it's all right for him to appoint his leadership supporters to $100,000-a-year jobs or $90,000-a-year jobs. That's fine for the Premier to do, but somehow or other it's not fine for his cabinet colleagues to do. It is important to lead by example. I'm sure the -- well, I'm not sure, actually
What are the standards that are set? Is there one standard for the Premier's Office and another standard for his minis-
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terial offices and another standard for MLAs? That's the question that is at the core of this. I would ask the Premier: would he be willing to bring in Mr. Chilton, his chief of staff, today, this afternoon as we carry on our estimates, so that we can have the answers to these questions?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Chair, I already said I'll be happy to get the answer for him. Whether or not Mr. Chilton is here, the answer is what he requires.
G. Campbell: Can I get the answer today, then?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: We'll make our best efforts to do that.
G. Campbell: Could I have the Premier outline for me the political duties that he has suggested to Mr. Chilton that Mr. Chilton take on?
[1130]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I understand that the hon. opposition leader has been given a description of these duties on Monday. I will just read from those so that we are one with respect to the information here.
Firstly, it's ensuring timely and full consideration of major new initiatives under the Premier's eight-point plan, by both the cabinet and the government caucus; consultation and communication on major public issues with key B.C. business and labour and community leaders; and support for the Premier's new initiatives with Ottawa, neighbouring provinces and with the American states.
I can tell the hon. member that when I flew to the Western Premiers' Conference, the chief of staff was with me. When I flew to see Gov. Gary Locke of Washington State, with whom I had a very good meeting and made some progress, he was there with me. He is the political adviser that deals with those kinds of major issues.
G. Campbell: We know that Mr. Chilton has had experience in the Premier's Office before. In fact, he was removed because of the reports with regard to him and the Now Communications contract. Can the Premier inform us as to whether or not Mr. Chilton has any contacts or any connections with Now Communications in his current role?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: None that I know. But I do know that he knows many people in British Columbia, including people in Now Communications, as do I.
G. Campbell: I'm not asking if he knows them. Obviously he knows them; they've been active members of the NDP and supported the NDP for some time, as I'm sure Mr. Chilton has. The question is: is he doing anything, with government, with Now Communications? Does he have any responsibilities to communicate with them? Is he in any way involved in any contract negotiations with them? Is he in any way involved with any contract approvals for ministries with Now Communications? Has he severed his professional, his public, relationship with Now Communications? And is that the situation today?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I find the question rather puzzling. I don't believe that Mr. Chilton had any kind of a direct business relationship with Now Communications, before or now. Whether or not he talks to them on issues, I at this time don't know. I'd be happy to provide that answer. I don't believe that he negotiates any issues on behalf of government with Now Communications. But I'll be happy to provide that information.
G. Campbell: Can the Premier explain to us what the role of Hans Brown is? He is evidently connected somehow with the public service, or works with the public service. Could the Premier explain how that is carried out?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The senior adviser to the Premier, Mr. Brown, advises me on major government changes and new initiatives in support of the eight-point plan that I outlined very briefly here, and I've talked about that across British Columbia wherever I've been. He has been, obviously, advising me with respect to the budget, with respect to the legislative agenda, with respect to any public policy programs. I consider him to be a key adviser to the Premier; I talk to him almost on a regular basis, at least once a week if I can. That's the work he does.
G. Campbell: Mr. Brown is paid, I believe, something in the order of $100,000 a year. Could the Premier tell us what Mr. Brown's salary is?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I'm advised that he gets level 12 pay grade. We'll give you the amount shortly, if we can find it.
G. Campbell: So am I correct that Mr. Brown's responsibility is to keep the Premier informed with regard to the budget and what's taking place with regard to the budget? Is that the preparation of the budget, or the ongoing management of the budget?
[1135]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: It's the preparation of the budget, preparation of the legislative agenda and other policies and programs that he and I might feel appropriate that he and I talk about.
G. Campbell: I want to go back to this issue of accountability that we talked about earlier. Is Mr. Brown the person who's responsible for briefing the Premier on the budget, so the Premier knows what is in the budget and understands what's in the budget and understands the public policy implications of the budget?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: The Minister of Finance actually does all of what the hon. opposition leader just alluded to. But in addition to that, I believe that I do need additional advice. We all have different perspectives, and I have continuously sought the advice and assistance of Mr. Brown in that regard as well.
G. Campbell: What I'm trying to understand, again, is that I understand that the Premier can't do everything all at once on his own; he's only got 24 hours in a day, just like everybody else does. What I'm interested in is the evident confusion that took place with regard to the budget, with regard to whether it was independent school funding,
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whether it was the $10 optometrist fee; there was a great deal of confusion with regard to that. My question is: who is keeping the Premier informed with regard to that so that he's not consistently coming back and saying: "Gee, I didn't know that. I have to find out"?
I assume from Mr. Brown's title here and the salary he's being paid that it's his job to keep him informed about what's taking place in the budget. If it's the Minister of Finance, that raises a whole other series of issues with regard to accountability. So is it Mr. Brown or is it the Minister of Finance who is responsible for making sure the Premier understands what the budget says?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: In terms of what the budget actually says, that's the obligation of the Minister of Finance, since those issues are decided by the Premier and the Minister of Finance alone.
I am interested in answering the question with respect to the independent schools. If the hon. member has the question, I'd be happy to answer that. I don't recall who advised me -- it may have been the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Education -- with respect to the independent schools issue before the budget was introduced. It could have been either of those two. I don't recall which one it was.
I have publicly stated the information that I had received. It may have been from someone else in addition to those two individuals, and it may have been miscommunication. But I believed at the end of the information I received, regardless of the source, that there was no change to the regulations dealing with independent school funding and that this reduction reflected a better enforcement of existing regulations.
Based on that understanding
G. Campbell: I'm not questioning the decision of the government to restore the funding for independent schools. I think that was the right decision. I think it was the wrong decision to actually take away the funding from independent schools. I think that's clear.
What I'm trying to get back to here, though, is that we constantly hear: "It might be someone. It could be someone else. I really didn't know. I can't figure it out. Now I know, and I've changed my mind." The problem for everyone, I think, is that that creates a whole bunch of uncertainty with regard to the province of British Columbia. We saw a number of things within the budget that evidently there wasn't information on that the Premier had.
Again, all I'm trying to understand here is, if Mr. Brown is supposed to be providing the Premier with advice on what's taking place in the budget, and the Premier still doesn't understand it, who's accountable for that? If the Minister of Finance is supposed to be keeping the Premier abreast of what's taking place in the budget and the Premier doesn't understand it, who's accountable for that? If it's just someone else out there in the ether, where is the accountability?
[1140]
Hon. U. Dosanjh: If what the hon. member means by accountability is that somebody should be fired for making an error like the one that was made, I absolutely disagree with the hon. member in that particular instance. I don't recall who gave me the information. If I did
But I was given that information, and I believed it to be true. I'm not out to do a witch-hunt with respect to my colleagues. They are doing their best to meet the needs and demands and hopes and values of British Columbians. We are going to continue to try and reconnect with the people of British Columbia. But if the hon. member has any substantive questions, I'll be happy to answer them.
G. Campbell: I think, again, that what the Premier has told us earlier today is that financial responsibility is one of his priorities. This is not like a casual conversation you had at McDonald's or you went down the street and talked to someone at the hotel about. This is about the province's budget. Would the Premier agree that the person that is ultimately accountable for the budget of the province is the Premier of the province of British Columbia?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I do believe that every cent of taxpayers' money is very, very important. But given the scale of the budget -- it's a $22 billion budget with hundreds of changes every year -- it's only fair to assume that one may not remember who advised you at any given time of any particular change. If the hon. member believes that he has a computer in his head, obviously I am in a different world.
G. Campbell: I'm just trying to get, again
The challenge that we face on this side of the House is that as soon as the Premier made the decision to do the right thing, which was restore the funding to independent schools, we heard from members of the BCTF that the Premier had actually undertaken to cut the funding to independent schools. So you know, there's a problem with regard to credibility with regard to that. I'll get you the clips.
The fact of the matter is that people need to know who is responsible for the budget. So moving away from that topic, perhaps the Premier can answer this simple question: does the Premier feel that he is ultimately responsible to the taxpayers of British Columbia for the budget?
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Hon. U. Dosanjh: Absolutely. That's exactly what I've been trying to tell the opposition leader for some minutes here.
G. Campbell: If the Premier is ultimately responsible for the budget, then one of the issues that I have is: why isn't the Premier aware of what's taking place in the budget? If you're responsible for it, you should know what's happening in it.
Let's deal with parks. The Premier said that he felt that parks had been underfunded in the budget. Can the Premier say why he decided he'd underfund parks in the budget? Or did he not know they were underfunded prior to the budget and just discovered it after the budget was presented?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I may have said that parks have been underfunded. I still believe that parks are underfunded. But we have to live within the means that we have, and in the context of those priorities, sometimes some priorities go underfunded. I wish we had the resources. We would provide more money for health care and more for education -- unlike the opposition leader, who said that federal cuts were not deep enough. It's a matter of priorities. If the hon. member has a question to ask, I'll be happy to answer.
G. Campbell: The question I have for the Premier is: why does he discover things after the budget that he should have known before the budget? He actually said to people that he felt parks had been underfunded. He said that he supported increased resources for parks during his leadership, and he said, after the budget had been launched, that gee, there's not enough here for parks. I mean, if he's responsible for the budget, he's responsible for the allocation of resources. If he feels there should be more allocation of resources to parks, that's where they should go.
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Hon. U. Dosanjh: That's exactly what I'm talking about -- that the allocation is a difficult issue. We've made some difficult decisions, and if parks remain underfunded, I regret that. That's a fact. But the opposition leader has a member in his caucus who wants to mine the parks. Where do they stand on this issue?
G. Campbell: This is a quote from the Premier, hon. Chair, and this is why, again, the Premier often doesn't like being reminded of what he said. He said: "I discovered" -- discovered is the past tense -- "once the budget was made public that the parks area is underfunded." That's what the Premier said. He's got an office staff; he's got someone on his staff who's supposed to inform him about the budget. I've heard the NDP say that they're concerned about parks. I heard the Premier say that one of his priorities was the greening of British Columbia. I heard the Premier say he was concerned about finances. But he's not concerned enough to find out what's happening in the budget, he's not concerned about finding out whether or not parks are properly funded, and he evidently doesn't have staff that will tell him when these changes take place.
The Premier said that he discovered, after the budget, that parks were underfunded. What was it that the Premier discovered after the budget? Was it the budget number? Was it that the Parks ministry said they needed more money? What was it that he discovered after the budget that he should not have known prior to the budget?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I just said that when you're dealing with a $22 billion budget, I wouldn't expect anyone to remember all of the issues, no matter how long a briefing one got. The fact is that parks are underfunded.
This is the same opposition leader who ran in the 1996 campaign and forgot about advanced education. They said it was a mistake that they were going to cut 14 percent out of advanced education. Anyone can make a mistake, hon. member.
G. Campbell: The problem that the Premier has is that this is a pattern with the Premier. He makes a decision. There is a public outcry, and the Premier says: "I didn't know about it." He sits on Treasury Board. He makes a decision that they're going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars without so much as a business plan. He says: "Gee, I can't really remember that. I don't even remember if I was on the committee then." He makes a decision with regard to gaming and says: "Gee, I don't remember that."
The issue is purely this: there's a number of issues that this Premier says he didn't remember. The $10 optometrists' fee: that was evidently a mistake, and no one understood it. It was absolutely fundamental what was taking place, but the Premier didn't know it.
You have a senior adviser who's suppose to be advising you with regard to the budget. Why is it that the person who is advising you with regard to the budget doesn't take the exceptions out of the budget? What you normally do is you say: "These are the things that have changed. Excuse me, Mr. Premier, I've chatted with the Minister of Finance, and what we're doing is that we're changing the funding to independent schools. That's what's happening here." Or you say: "You know, Mr. Premier, you said that you've got a lot of concerns about parks and the environment. You really care about that a lot, but by the way, it's underfunded." Now the Premier says he discovered after the budget that it was underfunded. Could the Premier tell us what he found out after the budget that allowed him to discover it was underfunded?
Interjection.
G. Campbell: There was no discovery after the budget, in other words. The Premier just decided that he'd use that as a line and hope he'd get away with it. Can the Premier tell us exactly when he became aware that deputy ministers
Interjection.
The Chair: Point of order, Premier.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Hon. Chair, I know that the opposition plays fast and loose with truth all of the time. They slander members of government day in and day out in question period.
Interjection.
The Chair: Member, listen.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I would ask the hon. member to withdraw what he just said.
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G. Farrell-Collins: Then I would demand that the Premier withdraw what he just said, because the only one who slandered anybody in this province is the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, and he's paying his legal bills.
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The Chair: If the Leader of the Official Opposition feels he's impugned the Premier in any way, would he withdraw the remarks. Also the Premier, if
Hon. U. Dosanjh: Well, Chair, I do withdraw the remarks, if the hon. member finds them offensive at all, and if they are offensive in fact. But I would urge us to move on to have a real debate, rather than dealing with the untruths and allegations that are absolutely unfounded. I know that prefatory remarks in question period are a go. But let's become a little more civilized.
The Chair: Thank you, Premier.
Leader of the Official Opposition.
G. Campbell: If the Premier was offended by anything I've said, I'm glad to withdraw the comment. But all I'm asking for is answers, hon. Chair.
The Premier has said that he didn't discover anything after the budget with regard to the parks. All I've asked is: what did the Premier discover with regard to the parks budget, after the parks budget was released, that he didn't know beforehand, and who told him? That's a simple question. If you want to be civil and you want to be straightforward, answer the simple questions.
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I have already indicated that when you're dealing with a $22 billion budget, you may have been advised and informed about issues, but you can't remember all of those issues. I may have used incorrect language. Obviously I learned after the budget became public. Maybe I learned again, but I definitely learned, and it registered that parks were underfunded. That's what I meant.
G. Campbell: The challenge we face and I think the frustration I feel, and I'm sure it's reflected in the frustration the Premier feels, is that this is a pattern. We have seen this pattern before. We saw it with regard to the fast ferries, where the Premier discovered they were actually spending hundreds of millions of dollars without a business plan. It was wrong. We saw it with regard to school funding, where the Premier discovered that there was going to be a cutback in funding to independent schools, and then he decided he'd better change his mind. We've seen it now with the parks, where the Premier discovered after the budget that parks were underfunded, and he's now changed his mind.
Can the Premier tell us how it was that we came to the decision with regard to the $10 optometrist fee? That's a situation where once again we have a commitment from the government, from the Minister of Finance, saying that there will be a $10 fee, that they will be charged as planned. There was a cabinet meeting where the fee was discussed on April 5, 2000. Can the Premier tell us again: how does this budget system work? And when there are changes and fundamental changes like this, why is it that the Premier's not included or informed either by the Minister of Finance or by his so-called budget adviser?
Hon. U. Dosanjh: I knew there was a $10 charge that was going to be imposed as of April 1. As it became public, there were some concerns expressed by the practitioners that they had not been consulted. I ordered the cabinet to defer that matter, and it has been deferred. It's going to be reconsidered.
G. Campbell: I would like to request that the Premier bring forward this afternoon the information he undertook to try and get today.
In view of the hour, I would move that we rise, report progress and ask permission to sit again.
Motion approved.
The committee rose at 11:53 p.m.
The House resumed; the Speaker in the chair.
Committee of Supply B, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.
Committee of Supply A, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.
Hon. D. Lovick moved adjournment of the House.
The House adjourned at 11:55 a.m.
PROCEEDINGS IN THE DOUGLAS FIR ROOM
The House in Committee of Supply A; D. Streifel in the chair.
The committee met at 10:13 a.m.
ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
MULTICULTURALISM AND IMMIGRATION
AND MINISTRY RESPONSIBLE
FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE
On vote 39: ministry operations, $12,225,000.
The Chair: Good morning, and I apologize for the delay.
I recognize the Minister of
Hon. S. Hammell: Hon. Chair, I'm very pleased to present the 2001 budget estimates for the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Immigration, as well as the estimates for the Public Service Employee Relations Commission.
I'd like to introduce the ministry staff members who are here today to help us respond to questions. Our Deputy Minister and commissioner of the Public Service Employee Relations Commission, Val Mitchell. I also have with me Cathy Stigant, who is the executive director of immigration and management services. Behind me is Dianne Grant, the director of management services; Inder Mehat, who is the
[ Page 16960 ]
director of multiculturalism; and Tom Jensen, director of immigration policy.
I'd like to start with a few remarks that will help to frame some of the issues for the ensuing discussion. On February 29 of this year, the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Immigration was reorganized as a freestanding ministry. Previously, Multiculturalism and Immigration existed within the Ministry of Attorney General. B.C. is the only province in Canada that has a ministry solely dedicated to multiculturalism and immigration issues, and I am very proud of that. It reflects who we are and the kind of society we want to be.
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The Ministry of Multiculturalism and Immigration has also been given the responsibility for the equal opportunity secretariat. The secretariat advocates for employment equity in the public sector and monitors its progress, including the public service, Crown corporations and provincially funded agencies such as schools and hospitals.
We are dedicated to creating a public sector workforce that reflects our communities and responds to the growing needs of British Columbia's diverse population. The Public Service Employee Relations Commission, PSERC, is also part of these estimates, and I'm also the Minister Responsible for the Public Service.
Earlier this year, I was very pleased when the Premier asked me to take on the dual responsibilities for Multiculturalism and Immigration and the Public Service. I have a keen interest in multiculturalism, and I strongly support a professional and representative public service. I believe that having these two portfolios under one person will give an impetus to our efforts to create a more diverse public service. I would like to start by addressing my responsibilities as Minister Responsible for the Public Service.
PSERC is the government's human resource agency for the public service, which in turn is a portion of the public sector. The commission represents the government as employer in collective bargaining. It also provides leadership and direction in human resource management planning.
Our human resources are one of our most important assets, and I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the good work that is being done by public service employees each and every day. It is very important work. A strong and efficient public service is the foundation upon which the government carries out its priorities and its objectives. My vision is for a professional public service that is dedicated and respected, representing the diversity of the province, and is a preferred employer that attracts and retains people with talent and commitment.
Many challenges face us in achieving that vision. Let me give you a sense of some of those challenges. I foresee changing expectation for the role of government -- I think it has changed, and I expect it to continue to change -- and continued resource pressures.
Fiscal pressures will continue to drive changes in the mix of public services delivered and the method of delivery. The nature of work and working relationships is constantly changing. There is an increased emphasis on flexibility, mobility and a personally satisfying balance of work and other activities. We need to be current if we are to be an employer of choice. The changing nature of work and the increased use of technology drive the need for training and development. The public service must be representative of the population it serves, yet hiring and retention statistics indicate that this will require focus, commitment and attention.
As we were even commenting yesterday, many long-term public service employees will be retiring in the next few years. It's actually quite remarkable how many of the management will be retiring in the next few years. They will take away with them accumulated years of knowledge and experience. On the other hand, this demographic change offers a unique opportunity to refresh and invigorate the public service through the recruitment of younger employees and employees more representative of B.C.'s population. These challenges have informed our priorities over the past years and our performance plan for the coming years.
I would now like to highlight some of the events of the past year concerning the commission. In August 1999 the auditor general released an audit on training and development in the public service. He said that the human capital of the B.C. public service is at risk. I share his concern, and we are implementing his recommendations. PSERC, working with the auditor general's staff during the two-year audit process, in fact accomplished many of the recommendations that were put forward even before the report was published.
[1020]
One of the most successful measures was the introduction of the executive development program to prepare people for senior management positions. Our next focus will be on management development and supervisory training.
One initiative that I'm particularly pleased about is the employee recognition program. In 1999-2000 the commission launched two initiatives to increase employee recognition for excellent performance: a staff appreciation awards policy and a public service awards program. These initiatives supplemented the current program. Since its inception in 1995, the employee recognition program has increased annual savings to the government from $3 million to over $14 million.
One of my priorities last year was to focus on equity and diversity in the public service, and I will continue to do this. The public service has significantly increased the number of women in management positions over the past few years. I want to continue to build on that success and also to ensure and extend it to the visible minority community, people with disabilities and aboriginal people.
We've had considerable activity in the equity and diversity area over the past year. We opened a recruitment access office in Prince George. Most ministries gave priority to equity groups in auxiliary hires, and the equal opportunity secretariat was formed.
Over the next year, the commission will continue to work with ministries to find ways to increase the representation of equity groups in the public service. There will also be a focus on collective bargaining, as many of the collective agreements expire March 31, 2001.
That is an overview of just some of my priorities as Minister Responsible for the Public Service. The commission does a great deal more, and further information is in the commission's performance plan. I would be pleased to discuss any of that information with you.
I would now like to move into the area around multiculturalism and immigration. Much of the work in this area is derived from the Multiculturalism Act, which was approved
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by the Legislature in 1993. We are responsible for promoting and implementing the act throughout the province. The act recognizes the multicultural heritage and diversity in our society. It promotes cross-cultural understanding and the elimination of racism, a society where individuals treat one another with respect and dignity.
It encourages a society that allows for the full and free participation of all British Columbians in the economic, social, cultural and political life of the province. Crucial to this is the need to provide effective immigrant settlement programs and other strategies to facilitate the integration of immigrants into B.C. society. Responsibility for immigration is shared between the federal and provincial governments. Citizenship and Immigration Canada maintains overall authority for the selection and admission of immigrants to the country. It is this ministry's job to develop, coordinate and promote B.C. policies and programs across government to maximize the social and economic benefits of immigration.
An important tool that is used to achieve this is the agreement for Canada-B.C. cooperation on immigration. Signed over two years ago, it gave the province the responsibility for designing and delivering the vast majority of settlement services. This part of the agreement came fully into effect on April 1, 1999. My ministry assumed authority for administering services such as English language training for adults and other community programs connecting new immigrants to services and people in their new home.
[1025]
This has led to the development over the past year of the B.C. settlement and integration program. It combines the federally funded immigrant settlement services with our previously funded provincial services, resulting in the elimination of overlap and duplication for service providers. This has also allowed us to make great progress on improvements to tendering and contracting, becoming more accountable and transparent for the spending of taxpayers' dollars. This has laid the groundwork for continuous service agreements with our service providers, and this will provide stability and lead to improved services, giving organizations the ability to engage in long-term planning.
The immigration agreement also gives the province an increased ability to develop a made-in-B.C. approach to immigration. These include a business immigration pilot project, a provincial nominee program, mechanisms to seek recoveries from those who default on their sponsorship obligations and the cost of services provided to refugee claimants.
In addition to implementing the immigration agreement, we have also been very active on other issues. We coordinated interministry policy-level responses to issues arising from the unexpected immigration last year of refugees from Kosovo and the Chinese migrants from Fujian. We also represented the province in federal-provincial consultations on a new funding model for settlement services. This resulted in an increase of $1.2 million to B.C.
We have also successfully initiated a pilot project on the information system to collect data on clients of settlement services and the activity of the service providers. This supports our research, contract management and accountability reporting. I am very proud to say that this pilot has generated a great deal of interest and may eventually serve as a model across the country. It is another example of the leading-edge immigration-related work that we are engaged in.
It has also been a productive year for our Multiculturalism B.C. division and the equal opportunity secretariat. We have taken a leadership role to promote the need for all ministries and Crowns to become more responsive to the growing cultural diversity of our province. We have developed a draft manual, benchmarks and indicators of what a culturally responsive ministry or Crown should look like. Multiculturalism B.C. has also been active in helping to support multiculturalism and anti-racism initiatives throughout the province.
For example, we assisted the Central Okanagan school district to establish a racism-free school district and also helped Langara College deliver a diversity seminar for community organizations and media training on multiculturalism. Our "Responding to Racism" resource guides for B.C.'s education system have also proven to be extremely useful and popular. More than 5,000 of these guides were distributed throughout the province, and we will be updating and printing more copies this year, due to the continuing demand.
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These are examples of the types of strategies that the ministry has developed to focus on non-confrontational, positive ways to address racism and arrive at better understandings of other cultures. We are determined to meet the complex needs of the increasing diversity of B.C.'s growing population. Our commitment to promote cross-cultural understanding and work towards eliminating racism is stronger than ever.
While cultural diversity enriches our magnificent province, there are many remaining structural and attitudinal barriers that impede the full integration of everyone into our society, and there is need to manage and reduce those tensions. Our partnerships with post-secondary institutions, school districts, municipal governments, public institutions and health boards to develop and implement multiculturalism and anti-racism policies, programs and services will produce results that will contribute to making our province the best place to live in Canada, if not the world.
Hon. Chair, it is an ambitious agenda, but one that we are committed to implement. The performance plan for 2000-01 outlines in detail what this ministry and PSERC intend to accomplish over the coming year. I look forward to our debate and the debate of our estimates and to providing any information you might seek.
C. Clark: I agree with the minister that British Columbia is indeed enriched by the fact that we live in such a diverse society -- a place where hopefully people from any culture in the world can come and feel at home. My dad's family came here in the 1800s, over a century ago, from Scotland. They were immigrants, like so many immigrants that flood into this province every single day, and they fought and they scrabbled, and they worked their tails off to try and make themselves a success. They came from a place where they had something, and they left everything there to come here, to create something in British Columbia, because they believed that this place would be better than the place that they left. And their story, from a century ago, isn't any different from the stories of thousands of immigrants who come to British Columbia every year.
Everyone who comes here wants to make something of themselves. Everybody who comes here is prepared to make huge sacrifices in order to join us in this beautiful place. And
[ Page 16962 ]
when they do that, they contribute so much to British Columbia, they contribute so much to the lives of those of us who already live here. And it's not just being able to go out and get any kind of food that you want in Vancouver, which is something I certainly appreciate.
But more than that, the fact that we can see so many different faces and hear so many different languages reminds us that the world is so much bigger than the place that we might have been raised to know. It reminds us, too, that the differences that exist in our world make us stronger. The fact that there are so many different people from so many different cultures able to live in British Columbia in peace and in harmony is something that every Canadian, every British Columbian, must be enormously proud of.
And government plays a role in that; there is no question about that. I think government has played a positive role overall in encouraging a harmonious relationship between people of different cultures in British Columbia.
But the real heroes in the piece are the citizens of British Columbia, because I really believe that almost everyone in British Columbia shares this view that one of the things that makes us great is our feeling of not just tolerance for each other, but acceptance and welcoming others who have some differences into this place. We are determined to build on the knowledge and the different experiences that people bring from all over the world and use that to create a far greater whole in British Columbia. The real heroes in British Columbia are our citizens, who've created this mosaic that has made British Columbia such a desirable place to come and live for so many people the world over.
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The immigration numbers that we see from overseas, in particular to British Columbia, confirm that. People still want to come here -- the migrants from China that the minister referred to in her opening comments. The sacrifices that they made to try and come here cannot be overstated. Perhaps they weren't aware of the magnitude of the sacrifices that they would have to make in order to come here, but nonetheless, they came, not knowing what would greet them at the other end of their voyage, not knowing what would happen to them on their voyage, on the way here. To imagine that someone in this day and age, in this world of interconnectedness, would leave their family and their home and their language and everything they know in order to come to British Columbia under those kinds of circumstances
That tells us two things. First, it tells us that we live in the greatest province in the greatest country in the world. But it also reminds us that we have a humanitarian duty to people all over this globe to try and open our arms and welcome them in to be a part of the greatness that's British Columbia, and to allow them to participate in the wealth that generations of immigrants and first nations people have built in British Columbia.
So I'll join the minister in congratulating the citizens of British Columbia on what they've achieved in creating such a marvellous, such a tolerant, such an accepting society that we live in today. And the minister is right; there's lots more work to be done. We aren't there yet, and I assume we will never be there, and the work will never stop. But nonetheless, we should take pride in what we've achieved, because it really is a great deal.
One of the things, though, that we do need to do -- that has been left undone -- is create a public service that is reflective of the society that we've achieved in British Columbia. I think the minister would agree that we haven't made nearly the progress that we'd hoped the government would have made. The public service in British Columbia is largely unreflective of the public that it serves. The number of visible minorities, for example, who graduate from university is, I think, 23 percent. The number of visible minorities working in the government is under 5 percent, I believe. Oh, I'm wrong on that; but I'm close -- 5 percent give or take a few percent. Nonetheless, that's a very, very big gap.
I assume, for example, that the ministry would expect most people who would come to work for the civil service to have a degree, and we could look to university graduates as a good group to measure ourselves against. With 23 percent of graduates at university being from visible minorities, our numbers are very, very poor in comparison. I think the government has a lot to answer for on that front. This government has been in power for almost a decade and has failed to make any significant gains on that front -- even as our population has expanded dramatically, even as our economy has shrunk.
As the number of jobs in the private sector has shrunk, presumably the jobs in the public sector would be more and more attractive to people who might not otherwise have applied for them. As the total number of jobs out there shrinks in comparison to the population, presumably the jobs that are left available will be much more in demand. And you'd assume that part of that would mean that people who are from visible minorities would be applying in greater numbers to the civil service.
That's another barrier, I think, that exists out there that the government hasn't really addressed. We do need to make the public service in general more attractive as a place to work for citizens of British Columbia. We also have to make it more attractive to people who are from visible minorities, first nations and the disabled community. The government -- and not just this government, but previous governments -- has done a good job in including women, in particular, in government. But we haven't had nearly the same kind of success when it comes to visible minorities, disabled people and first nations. That's something that desperately, desperately needs to be addressed in more than just press releases. It needs to be addressed in a way that we can measure the outcome and say: "Okay, after ten years of government, we've issued all the press releases in the world, we've made all the announcements in the world, and look, it actually resulted in some real concrete gains."
When people from the visible minority community come to me and say they're disappointed with the government on this front, I have to say that I agree with them. The government hasn't met its commitments, and it certainly hasn't lived up to the expectations that it created in those communities that it would do something to address the problem.
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There is also an issue, though, of the attractiveness of the public service in general to the public. It's my view -- and I think this is pretty broadly shared -- that the public service isn't the kind of attractive career for people coming out of university, for example, that it once was. When my grandfather, who was a career civil servant, finished his career, boy, you know, he retired with a great deal of respect. He spent his entire career moving up the ladder in the federal government. It was a career that was a very, very well-respected career; it
[ Page 16963 ]
was held in high esteem. It was held in the kind of esteem that people who are in the medical profession might be held in and lawyers might be held in.
But for some reason, when you say the words "civil servant" or you say the word "bureaucrat," people don't have the same kind of respect that they once did. We need to restore that in the civil service in British Columbia. That is going to be a critical part of renewing the civil service and making sure that we replace all those dedicated civil servants, those career civil servants, who are going to be leaving us over the next five to ten years. We can't just replace them; we have to replace them with people who are of the same kind of quality. In order to do that, we have to make the civil service an attractive place for people to work.
The minister won't be surprised to hear that one of my strongly held opinions about the public service is that one of the reasons it is not held in the same kind of esteem that it once was, particularly in British Columbia, is because it is no longer the kind of professional, non-partisan civil service that it once was. There are a lot of professional, non-partisan civil servants who are still working in the government. But so many of them share a desk or sit in a desk beside someone that they know didn't get their job with the kind of qualifications that they should have, people that they suspect only got their jobs because they're connected to people at the political level. And no civil service can function that way. A civil service can only function if it maintains the balance of professionalism against the political level.
There is a role for politics in government. I will be the first to admit that; I revel in that. We certainly have to have an active political level in government, and ministers of government need a competent, strong, vocal political staff -- no question about that. But equally, that has to be balanced off by a professional, non-partisan civil service that gets its jobs based on merit and merit alone, not based on who they're connected to or who they know or what they believe, because when you're processing a land tenure title, it doesn't matter what you believe, and it doesn't matter what party you belong to. All that matters is that you're committed to serving the public.
I believe that is why most people who apply to the civil service or who go through university and dream of a career in the civil service decide to go into it -- because they want to serve the public. Goodness knows, it's not for the money, in most cases. People do it because they want to serve the public. They want a long-term, stable career where they can do something good for their fellow citizens and play a role in making British Columbia a better place.
A lot has been said about my party's position on the civil service. I want to make this very, very clear: I believe that the only way government can achieve a big agenda is if the civil service helps them along. What we in the opposition are proposing is a bold agenda for government. We will not be able to achieve that -- no government will be able to achieve dramatic change -- without a good, competent, hard-working civil service. Civil servants are our partners in trying to achieve change for British Columbia, in trying to make British Columbia a better place. Move us back to the front of the pack in Canada instead of being at the back. Make us competitive again. Create again a province where you know that if your kids graduate from university, they can get a job here; they won't have to go to Alberta or Ontario or Saskatchewan. Let's make British Columbia number one again. We can do it, but we can only do it with the help of government civil servants.
I would call on all civil servants in this province to look forward to the next ten years with the hope, with the understanding, that we intend to create not just a civil service that is partners with us but a civil service that is allowed to think creatively, come up with ideas, think outside the box, push the agenda, do something that hasn't been thought of before, come up with new and innovative ways to really reinvent government, because that's the only way that we will move ahead of that competition and close that ever-widening gap between us and the other provinces and jurisdictions in North America.
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That's the only way we'll do it. And I believe that civil servants in British Columbia are hungering for that -- an opportunity to work in a place where, if they come up with a great idea, they'll be allowed to implement it. People will be encouraged to push the edges of the envelope every day, and if they stick their neck out, they won't get it shot off; they'll be encouraged. If their idea isn't one that the political level agrees with, fine; go and come up with another. But we'll encourage the civil service to do what it does best, and that's to recreate government, because as we move ahead in the next ten years, government is going to need to be recreated. If we're going to catch up, real hard thinking has to be done about how we're going to reinvent this big enterprise called government.
With that call to civil servants and the citizens of British Columbia, I'll close my opening statements, and I will ask a very broad question about the budget. Then we'll move into our questions about multiculturalism and immigration, where I will be very ably assisted by my colleague from Vancouver-Langara, who knows more about multiculturalism and immigration, or who has forgotten more about it than I will probably ever learn.
But first, my very broad question. I know that the minister is interested in balancing the provincial budget. My question is: what is this ministry planning to do over the next year to contribute to ensuring that the government is able to balance its budget?
Hon. S. Hammell: What I'd like to do is just respond to a couple of the opening remarks before we get into the details of your very broad question. It is very comforting to know that there are people in the opposition who do understand the need, the extreme need, for us to act decisively and effectively around encouraging people from a wide variety of backgrounds to take the civil service as a place where they might find a career.
I assume that with those comments, there is some thought that you might actually put some action behind those concerns, as the government has done, because we acknowledge
I do hear you acknowledge that we've done reasonably well around women in management, actually women throughout the civil service. Women are a majority of the players within the civil service. But as sort of normal, if you look outside into the real world, women have largely played supportive roles. Over the last ten years we have made a significant difference in that management area, but there is still room for improvement. When we launched our man-
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agement executive program yesterday, there were significant numbers of women who were being encouraged to pick up the leadership torch and to develop their skills in that area.
But you know, it amazes me, because you get comments from the opposition like from your colleague from North Thompson. He thinks that it's a real negative when government tries to develop affirmative action programs or reverse discrimination programs. He says: "I can't help it if I'm a white male." These kinds of programs are reverse discrimination to him, where we are focused on trying to move those numbers and trying to encourage the people from other communities to get involved.
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I mean, the comments on it being negative to have some kind of action and go out and affirm and convince people who are not just from one particular group to come in and move into the civil service
I agree with you. I believe we have to be forceful. We have to go out and sell the civil service as a place that is an exciting place to be, a place where you can develop a career. I don't think there's any business in this world that would be as exciting as being a participant in the business of government. You do not have a single focus. You have variety of places that you could go and interests that you could follow. There are never-ending places for you to explore your skills and explore your interests. You could spend time one year as management in forestry; another year you could be working with children and families. So the breadth of experience that you could have within the civil service is quite remarkable.
I agree entirely with the critic opposite that we have to make this an exciting place for people to see. I don't agree with her that people don't think it already is. We had a career fair in Public Service Week. We had over 1,000 people come to check out the possibility of jobs in the civil service, from one small ad in the Times Colonist. There's incredible interest in the civil service, which should give us all comfort as we move into a new period where we will be changing many of the faces within the civil service. That gives me great comfort. It is a good place to be and one that I think people are encouraged, do see as a place
I do want to comment on the second point that the member opposite made. I actually was hoping that we would have a more civil discussion around some of these issues this time round as perhaps another time, and that we would leave behind all this kind of partisan notion that the civil service is infected with people who don't deserve to be there. I think that is actually quite insulting to the people who are working. It also shows an actual lack of understanding of how the civil service works, how it functions, how people come into the civil service and how they are allowed to stay.
You have a closed system. You either come in as an auxiliary, and then you're panelled to get a job, or you come in directly for a temporary position, and then you're panelled to take on a full-time position. The notion that the civil service is infected and sort of riddled with partisans and that people look around and think, That person got ahead of me because they are from a political party, is actually quite erroneous and insulting to the people that work hard in the civil service. I had actually hoped that we wouldn't immediately get into that kind of low-level attacking of people who are actually doing a good job, and that you had actually taken a look and understood how the civil service works and how it is based on a merit system.
The merit system is embraced in law, and there is a process that is extremely difficult to move through because it is rigorous and very thorough in terms of its examination of its candidates. The people who are in the civil service -- the ones that I have worked with -- I have found extremely capable and very meritorious in terms of their ability to do their job and their dedication.
[1055]
Your colleague from Kamloops-North Thompson was also at one of the events where we celebrated the accomplishments of many of the civil servants. It was a remarkable event. It was one that was quite moving because of some of the challenges that the people in the civil service throughout this province had made.
So I'm sure that we all have our places, and we all want to make our statements and make our name in terms of discussions around people and where you think they came from. But I think you in fact do a very deep disservice to a lot of people and the system that has served this government and previous governments and the people in the system who have served governments well.
But I do want to, again, agree with the member opposite that as we move
Again, it brings back to me -- and I've only been in this portfolio a very short time -- some of the really exciting stuff that is going on within our government or with our government members.
We were over at Vital Statistics, where they have created a system that is being bought throughout the States to be replicated. And it's these people who actually created it. They were able to think out of the box. They were able to figure out how to make a cumbersome system better, how to ensure that information that people were trying to acquire, which was often dealt with manually, could be got on line on the Internet. Now people are accessing and doing a lot of research through Vital Statistics. They were completely unable to a number of years ago.
So you're correct. We have to have people who are creative, who are energetic, who have permission to think out of the box, to take on challenges, to think of new ideas and to bring them back and discuss them. And we share all these notions with you.
I actually believe in the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Immigration and for the Public Service. I'm actually blessed with many of these people whose job it is to work with the multicultural community or the civil service -- the community of our civil servants -- to make our life easier.
The Chair: Before I recognize the hon. member for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain, the Chair is going to try an intervention early in this debate, and I hope the committee accepts it in the spirit in which it's delivered.
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Parliamentary practice, and really the history around the examination of estimates, is that it's one of the realms where the members get to be political and partisan in their debate. That's as it should be, I believe -- or the parliamentary practice believes. But in order to facilitate that partisanship in debate, it would be helpful if the debate was carried on through the Chair to, so to speak, remove the personality from the debate.
The Chair has a very thick skin and is not offended. And I think the members should, under parliamentary practice, fly at it in a partisan way. But if that flying-at, so to speak, were carried out through the Chair, I think the personality in the debate would be removed, and we can have a good, raucous debate in here this morning. So if the committee accepts that advice from the Chair, the Chair will be extremely happy and comfortable.
C. Clark: Well, I would suggest to you, hon. Chair, that the disservice that has been done to the civil service is not by the opposition suggesting that there's a problem. It's by the problem itself. In my view, the government has done the disservice to the civil service by failing to respect the principles of merit in its hiring policies. That is the disservice that's been done to the civil service.
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My pointing out that there's a problem with that is only in an effort to correct it. The government's answer consistently every time, when any member points this out, when any member of the public points this out, is that somehow we're attempting to say that every single member of the civil service isn't doing their job, which is absolute hogwash. No one in the opposition is suggesting that. No one in the opposition is suggesting that everyone who works for government is somehow contaminated with partisanship.
All we are suggesting is that the government has departed enough from the principle of merit in enough of its hiring that it is making it impossible for many non-partisan, professional civil servants to continue to do their jobs in the way that they expected to when they first applied for them. That's the only thing we're suggesting. When you contaminate an office of the civil service with partisans, what you do is change the balance of power of that office. You make it very difficult for the people who were hired without connections to continue to function in the same way that they did before. My only aim is to point out to the government that there is a problem, so that they can go some measure to try to correct that.
The minister well knows that there are a lot of ways that people are brought into the civil service where they don't go through hiring boards. I don't misunderstand the process. There are a lot of people who get hired into government through orders-in-council. There are lot of people who get hired into government under exceptions in the Public Service Act. There are a lot of people who get hired as auxiliaries. There are a lot of different entry ways into the public service.
My suggestion -- and this is a suggestion that is forwarded to me on almost a daily basis by civil servants themselves -- is that those principles of merit are being violated regularly in government's hiring of civil servants. That's all I'm suggesting, not that every civil servant is bad -- absolutely not.
I think there are a lot of really terrific civil servants -- some top-rated national talent that we're privileged to have working for us. But we will not get the best out of them if we create a highly politicized, partisan environment for them to work in. If we're going to sell the civil service to people, we have to have something to sell. We have to be able to convince people that it is going to provide them with a stable, non-partisan, professional environment that they can be proud to work in. That's what I would like to see created. All I'm suggesting -- and this is what I suggested last year to the minister -- is that it's time to recognize that there is a problem. If the government continues to be in denial about the fact that there's even a problem, I don't see how the government can move in any way to fix it.
I suggested that we should have a merit commissioner created as a non-partisan, independent officer of the Legislature to whom members of the civil service can go to confidentially voice any complaint they have about the violation of the merit principle in hiring. If a future government violates those kinds of principles, there has to be someone that civil servants can go to other than their political bosses. If they're going to accuse their political bosses of doing something, surely they don't want to make the complaint to the political boss. That's why I'd be interested, later on in the debate, to talk about a merit commissioner.
I do, though, want to move on to the Multiculturalism estimates, because my colleague from Vancouver-Langara is here, and I don't want to waste his time. I do want to use his expertise as much as we can in questioning the minister in that area. I'm still hoping for a general answer to that question about the budget, and I'll restate it. I know the minister supports moving to a balanced budget in the next little while. I'm wondering: in general, what are this ministry's plans to help the government move toward a balanced budget in British Columbia?
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Hon. S. Hammell: I recognize that this is a broad question, so I'll try to come back at it from as broad a base as is intended. Part of our work is to attract people who come to the province and to move them into the workforce quickly and effectively. That is our whole settlement program.
[D. Zirnhelt in the chair.]
Part of our work in terms of the broad base of balancing a budget is that we work to ensure that immigrants move into contributing economically to the bottom line of the province as quickly and efficiently as we can and that they are then participating in the economic growth of the province. We also work with communities to create the kind of harmony that allows for improved productivity and work to dispel tensions. From a kind of broad base, we're there working to help people move into economic performance quicker.
On the Immigration side, we also work to recover IA from estranged claimants. We work with the social assistance section of government, where we work with people so that maintenance or sponsorship programs are honoured and promoted.
We also increased the settlement funds this year from Citizenship and Immigration by $1.2 million. I think that was indicated in my opening remarks. We have been working with
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bargaining with the federal government to increase the money that we receive from them in support of the immigrants who have landed on our shores. We are also working on a provincial nominee program, which will eventually -- when it gets up and running -- target particular skills, again to enhance the economic viability of our province.
So there are quite a number of things, from a general to a very specific, that we keep our eye on ensuring that in the end people who are at work and who have moved quickly into the economic fabric of a community become productive citizens. They feel better, the economy is good about it, and they are then contributing. Our performance plan sets out our work for the year, and we have all the regular systems and accountabilities set up in the ministry to ensure that our budget is on track.
V. Anderson: I appreciate the discussion that's been going on, and I appreciate the dedication that the minister has for the area in which she's minister -- Multiculturalism. That certainly comes across in the community meetings as well as here. So I appreciate that very much.
I'd like to ask just a technical question to begin with and then go from there. I always have to turn to the little blue book and start there. In the Multicultural and Immigration section there are recoveries of
Hon. S. Hammell: That recovery is from Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It's a transfer as a consequence of the agreement that was signed. Its job is to provide the money for us to take over the settlement programs. The money is then broken down between the salaries of the people who are doing the flow-through and the monitoring, the work around the settlement area and the actual grants that are given to different groups.
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V. Anderson: Could you break down how much is salaries and how much is grants, and also break down where the major area of the grants are? What are the major programs for which the grants are allocated?
Hon. S. Hammell: The amount is for language programs, which is where the bulk of the money is. It's about $20 million. There are 26 FTEs, which is $1.6 million in terms of salaries. The rest goes to settlement grants.
V. Anderson: If we look at those programs, the language programs are roughly $20 million. And the settlement grants would be roughly $3 million, then, for settlement, if I understand rightly, just by doing quick arithmetic. What is the comparable input from the provincial government to those same kinds of programs? How much does the provincial government put into language, for instance? How much does the provincial government put into settlement programs?
Hon. S. Hammell: You're correct with your numbers. The settlement money is actually $5.8 million, which means we had, prior to the federal agreement, $2.5 million in settlement. It's still there, because that's how the numbers flow. We put in $19.643 million, which is almost $20 million, in terms of language development. That money is matched through Advanced Education in terms of English as a second language.
V. Anderson: With regard to the language, is that managed through Advanced Education, or is it managed through this ministry itself? Where are the programs for language training undertaken, and who's responsible for the management and operation of those programs?
Hon. S. Hammell: So we'll be clear, we're talking about two different pots of money. I know very clearly where my pot of money goes, and I will give you a more general discussion on the other.
We split our $20 million pretty much between three areas: the NGOs, like our multiculturalism groups; our colleges; and private companies that provide the service. So it's about a third, a third, a third. Advanced Ed does profiling. They do adult basic ed, and they do English as a second language. They do theirs largely through the colleges.
V. Anderson: I know there's been some concern in contracting discussions between the multicultural organizations and the community organizations who have been doing education and service training, developmental training and those kinds of things. A concern was that under new contracting, many of those were being threatened and being transferred over to the colleges. Could the minister comment if there has been a solution to that problem and to that concern?
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Hon. S. Hammell: We have signalled that they should not be concerned, and there has been no difference made to date. But I do want to just add a little bit to the English language piece. Going back to the broad concept of the fact that part of our responsibility is to ensure the smooth transition of immigrants into the economic fabric as well as the social aspect of our community, it's becoming more and more clear that in some cases we may have to refine the English language programs that we present. We may have to move some where you're trying to focus more on the technical aspects of a certain area of work so that you get your basic. Then you get it more refined so that you can slip more easily into work. Some of that work is going on to look at those possibilities and what kind of refinement is needed for the English language programs. Some of that is coming out of the NGOs, such as SUCCESS, which is very clear about and very focused on those sort of subtleties.
V. Anderson: At last somebody is listening. If you go back over the last nine years, every year in Multiculturalism I have suggested that we needed business English, that we needed the language of the community where people were going to work, whereas the educational conversational English didn't get there. I wouldn't say that's a subtlety; I would encourage you to do it. You can learn everyday conversational English also through business English, but you can't learn business English through conversational English. It's a reverse.
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That was one of the questions I was going to ask you, so you jumped the gun on me there. I think there needs to be a far greater awareness. Even before I was elected, I was at the opening of the Taiwanese cultural centre back in '91, before the election. Their concern then was that not only were they not having business English but that they weren't getting an understanding of how to do business within the country, which required a connection between the two.
I would stress that there needs to be a real stress there. On the other side of that ledger is a greater stress on informal opportunities for persons within the community, particularly many of the women of the community who aren't able to get into the formal English courses but would be able to participate in community English programs, where they socialize and meet with other people and learn English in the process.
As an example, I will use the program that's been operating in the church where I was, Marpole United Church, for probably 15 years now, every Friday afternoon. Persons from the community come in from all language backgrounds for conversational English, to read the newspaper. The kids bring their homework, and people bring their citizenship application forms to be worked out -- to do just everyday conversation. Generally the men who have been involved in the business or work world are getting English at their workplace. But the women who are staying home are not getting English in the same opportunities.
I would like to see us stress not only business English and working English on the one hand but the English of the community for those people who are outside of that on the other hand. That would also go very much for the senior citizens who come into the country and don't have the opportunity either at work or at home to learn that language. This has an indirect result for our children. In one of the schools in my community, probably 50 percent of the children who come into the school with English as a second language were born and brought up in Canada. What they are doing is living at home either with their mother, who is using the native language, or with the grandparents, who are caring for them on behalf of the parents and are not having the opportunity.
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If we have $20 million, which is a lot of money, it seems to me that there are some areas that I hear everyday in the community are being overlooked. I know some of these programs will be through other ministries, but as I understand the multicultural role and the settlement role of this ministry, it is to push the other ministries in this direction. I wonder if the minister would like to respond.
Hon. S. Hammell: First, it's good to know that we are focused and looking down the same sort of path -- that we've got to move things in a certain way.
One of the beauties of having taken these programs into our own hands is that we can tailor and then start to respond and develop a made-in-B.C. approach. As I've been out in the community around the multicultural world, the work pattern is actually quite interesting. Often it's the women who find the work and the men are at home, just because of the nature of some of the challenges. Women maybe find more entry-level jobs quicker, so we need to take a look at the men who are at home as well as the women. The notion of working at a community level and doing what you've just described is very appealing, and we will take a look at that.
I do want to comment on the whole business of English as a second language and the fact that our second generation is actually not ink-fluent, because they're housed in a first generation home. It has been very interesting especially for me from Surrey, because it seemed to me that Vancouver
One of things that we are doing by having a second generation fluent in a second language, sometimes a third language, is that we create an economic advantage in the long run for us here, because in a global market when you have a community that can speak a variety of languages, clearly you set yourself in some kind of advantage down the road. But the trick is then to ensure that the children, before they get into the school system, have some ability to run into and begin to learn the language of the community that they live in.
Now we do a number of things for women and, I assume, gentlemen who want to take English language courses. We do provide transportation and child support to get that homebody out and into a language environment, learning the language, and meanwhile the child is also in an environment that encourages a second language. I actually think this is a supporting argument for the child care that we have to provide in some ways -- that child care experience where we get those young kids speaking not only their home language, which I think they should do and be encouraged, but also mastering and accomplishing the language of their community.
V. Anderson: Following up on that same theme, if you like, but branching out a little bit, it seems to me that the place in which the children are leaders in multiculturalism is that the children in our schools are living in a multicultural framework, which is perfectly natural and open to them, and that if we have a strong multicultural program, it's in our schools, not in our communities.
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I would ask the minister what are we doing to work through the schools for multiculturalism. I'm thinking not just of the programs but more of the organization. Community schools, for instance, to me are the place where communities come and meet. There's no other place that families meet as much as in a community school. And I don't know whether the minister, from the multicultural point of view, can raise with the Education people about the supporting of community schools, because I think that's a fundamental way to go.
Part of that also is that we had at one time, before cutbacks came in, many more multicultural workers or home-and-school, parent-school workers -- they had different names but the same function -- who worked between the school and the parents, so that we weren't in a sense dividing the family by teaching young people new ideas, but the parents were out of touch. And therefore we created tensions within families rather than helping. To me, that's a fundamental place where these things could be done, because that's where people are. Particularly immigrant parents are very appreciative and in contact and have a great deal of respect for what goes on in the school.
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So I'm asking what conversation has gone on with the education programming from the multicultural point of view of enabling children and parents to be together but also to share the contributions that the parents have with us in the educational system.
Hon. S. Hammell: I'm going to come at this from a couple of different angles. First off, I have always supported community schools. Personally, I believe that the school is sort of the heartbeat of a community and a neighbourhood; it is the place where people come and meet, and meet through their children. I don't think there is any other place where we can say that same thing happens. A school that has reached out to its community and gotten the community involved is truly exceptional and is a community school in its finest sense.
But I do want to come back to your point, because it is very, very real, and again, it goes back to our whole broader effort around ensuring that the public sector is more reflective of the community that it serves. We cannot have schools that do not reflect the population that they serve because of exactly the problem that you identify. There is nothing worse, I think, for a parent -- or for the child, as a matter of fact -- than to be blocked by or to have a barrier of language. The parents, of course, as do all of us who have been parents and are parents, want the best for their child; they want to be there to support their child. And to be unable to be told how to do that or how to provide parent-like support is extremely difficult. It's not only difficult on the parent. As a teacher, I know how difficult it is from the other perspective, where you send something home and you're having difficulty communicating. So the part of the piece that suffers is, of course, the child and that sort of natural communication between parent and teacher.
Again, I think part of that will be addressed when our schools reflect more accurately the population around them. Coming from Surrey, I'm starting to see that a lot more. But certainly it's not without problems, especially when you have people in the home that do not speak the language; then you've got to take those extra steps.
[1130]
Our multicultural advisory committee -- I don't know whether you saw the report; if you haven't it, I will make sure you get it -- made a number of very specific recommendations to the Education minister around multiculturalism. The deputy minister met with them and agreed to work with them on the recommendations, and that is in progress. I can read them for you, if you want, or I can ensure you get them so that you can at least see the direction we're going in.
V. Anderson: I appreciate that. I'd be happy to receive them.
At the same time, I would ask two questions related to that. The Multicultural Advisory Council -- is this the one you're referring to? So it's still operating. Could you tell me about the nature of its operations at the moment? And the other one: is there some discussion through Multiculturalism on the multicultural competence and understanding in the curriculum of those who are training to be teachers in the universities of British Columbia?
Hon. S. Hammell: We are working with UBC and have developed a pilot around anti-racism work that is being taught to the teachers at UBC. The curriculum has been developed and is in the implementation stage. In fact, Australia and Denmark are looking at the curriculum to see if it's applicable to them. So yes, we're in that area.
Yours was broader, in the sense that you said multiculturalism, and our first step is to deal with anti-racism. I mean, I understand that the broader notion of multiculturalism takes a bit of a wider sweep than just antiracism. Around the multicultural advisory committee, 28 people have now been appointed. Letters have just gone out. I have been phoning people and congratulating them, and we hope to have our first meeting sometime around the end of July.
V. Anderson: The minister seems to anticipate some of my questions. It has to deal with anti-racism and multiculturalism. They're both important. But to do anti-racism first without multiculturalism is, to me, the wrong way around, and it can't be accomplished. Anti-racism, as significant as it is, is an anti program. It impinges a negativity. I've been in a variety of things where this happened.
Let me use an illustration, which is an old one, of a Lutheran minister in the southern States who was working in what was called a very conservative congregation. They were having problems with members of the black community; at least, the church was having problems with a member of the black community. He was angry at the church. He developed a program which eventually meant that he was forced out of the church, which was taken up as a good symbol. The Harvard business administration picked that program up, and they examined it and said that he had become to his church members what the church members had become to the black. So he had repeated the negative in the other direction, and he had planned, unconsciously, for his church to force him out from an administrative point of view.
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So you can't have a meaningful anti-racist program, unless you have an appreciation of your cultures, of your own culture and your background and the similarities and the differences between them and also unless you have an understanding that people think differently, depending on the cultures from which they come. That philosophical background is extremely important in multiculturalism, because to put it just glibly for the moment, we of the Western world think right/wrong and black/white, whereas the Eastern world thinks with the confusion of things that are complements to each other rather than contrasts.
A Voice: Harmony.
V. Anderson: Harmony and the complement -- two sides of a coin complement each other. To us, two sides of a coin are in contrast. So there's a different way of thinking. You can't do effective anti-racist programs that don't have a backlash danger unless you have a multiculturalism understanding. So it seemed to me that my question was not about anti-racist programs but competency cultural training programs, according to the competency that the Children and Families ministry prepared a few years ago within the education training of teachers and within the school system.
Hon. S. Hammell: First, we'll wax philosophical for Val. I mean, it's interesting -- right? -- whether anti-racism is a small component of a larger piece. I actually think it is. But anti-racism, once you move to discrimination, is really about
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hate. It's about dealing with the human emotion of hating something for some reason. It's a bit of a harder nose to deal with -- right? And to suggest that we can eliminate hate is a challenge -- right?
We recognize
I can respond in two ways to you. I cannot respond to you and give you any good news around teacher education, but I can say that in the Crowns and in the ministries we're focused in that area. The Royal Roads management program deals with those competencies. And we have developed a tool that people in the ministries and the Crowns and in fact the larger public service sector can use to develop and work on those competencies.
V. Anderson: The last report on multiculturalism we have is '98-99. I was trying yesterday to see if there was a new one. I understand there may be a draft someplace, but it's not out yet. Can the minister share with us
These reports have been coming out for four or five years now, I think. In the initial reports, when you read the report of one ministry or one Crown and read the other reports, they all said the same thing. There really wasn't any distinction. They all said: "We're doing a good job, and we've got more programs underway, and we're doing this."
But I know that about the third year there was beginning to be an attempt to evaluate what was being said in these reports to see if anything significant was really happening or whether we were just putting forth programs which weren't causing any change. Is the minister able to point out any areas in which there has been any significant measurable change or indication of direction within the ministries or the Crowns, because they have been having the consciousness that they had to do these reports each year?
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Hon. S. Hammell: Largely as a result, I guess, of what you have seen in terms of the reports, last year we hired Roop Seebaran, who did an assessment and a study through the reports. Through that we developed a self-assessment tool that ministries could then take back to their own ministry. Once that had been developed, we called a forum of the senior civil servants last September to train them and to make sure that they understood the use of the tool and how to use the assessment in self-assessment of their ministry. We have changed from a one-year reporting system to a three-year reporting system so that the use of the tool can be worked on, to develop some competencies around using it.
V. Anderson: Following that up, have there been any significant changes? Will the report look any different than what it has been, because of this review and re-evaluation?
Hon. S. Hammell: I'm just going to correct something I said. It's not a three-year reporting period. They develop a three-year plan and then report out each year. It's a resource manual that they receive in terms of self-assessment.
I'm just going to give you three brief examples of a number of changes that have taken place. For example, in the Assessment Authority, translations are now available for your tax notices. That's kind of a unique concept. ICBC has hired a multicultural marketing staff person. The Ministry of Forests has opened up their contracting to include a multicultural lens.
V. Anderson: I want to move on to the immigration settlement part of it for a moment.
But I just have to do my annual kind of thing and ask you if you are using the multifaith calendar and whether you are making that available to the community at large -- awareness of it. It's the only resource that I know that highlights the special days that all the community has. It's interesting that in a time when we're trying to say that no one should force their religion on anyone else, we can move in the direction of knowing that everybody has a faith. Or we can move in the direction of celebrating the faiths that everybody has and recognizing those special days. For us in the Canadian scene, many of our special days are "secular," but for many other people of the world that we cherish, their faith's days are out of their faith. They're not secular; they're faith days. So I'm hoping that we can still maintain this recognition among
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I'd like to move over for a brief comment on the business immigration. You mentioned the nominees in the business and family class. Could you comment on what changes have taken place in those areas -- in business immigration and family-class immigration -- and what place the nominees have and what place B.C. has in helping to plan and give it direction? In the past it was that we took what we were given and had no comment. My understanding is that we're much more involved in commenting on the kind of immigration that may end up in B.C. and planning for it.
Hon. S. Hammell: The way it has occurred in the past is that the federal government has tabled their plan and then we have commented on it. With the new act, what they are doing is moving to a multi-year planning process that we will be included in, in terms of creating the plan. So you're correct. We are much more involved in the process and are now actually consulted as to the mix of people that we see as being appropriate for B.C.
V. Anderson: Could you comment on what the position is and the effect of the ability of B.C. to make nominees, as I understand it?
Hon. S. Hammell: The provincial nominee program is to have the tool at your hands so that you can then strategically decide what type of immigrant you need to address your economic strategy or your economic plans. You may have a sector that is moving, and it may dry up in terms of our ability to provide the skilled workers. So that company could find someone from overseas. And there's a relationship -- right? -- between the company and the person who has the skills. They are brought over, and through this program we can get them working in British Columbia a lot quicker.
The Chair: Noting the time, member.
V. Anderson: Thank you. Just to clarify, is it the company that makes the nomination? Or does the company make the
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nomination to the British Columbia government, and the B.C. government okays and recommends the nominee?
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The Chair: Minister, noting the time.
Hon. S. Hammell: First off, I should note that this program is not in place yet. I just want to make that absolutely clear right at the beginning. But it is conceptualized. We believe we know how it will work when we get it going. The company identifies the skill shortage that they have. They find someone overseas. They then come to us and apply for one of our positions under the provincial nominee program.
V. Anderson: One final question: is there a quota under the nominee program? Is there a certain number that we're allowed?
Hon. S. Hammell: At this point in time we have a cap of a thousand over a three-year period. But I don't think that that cap is actually rigid. If something was working well, there would probably be some flexibility in it, but at this point in time there's a cap.
Should we adjourn? I move we rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.
Motion approved.
The committee rose at 11:51 a.m.
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