Hansard -- Volume 2, Number 29 -- Saturday, January 26, 2002

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY



CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page

Tabling Documents		871

Introductions by Members		871
	J. MacPhail

Education Services Collective Agreement Act, Bill 27 (second reading)		871
	Hon. G. Collins Hon. G. Bruce J. Kwan J. MacPhail Hon. C. Clark

Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act, Bill 28 (second reading)		885
	Hon. G. Bruce J. Kwan J. MacPhail Hon. C. Clark Hon. S. Bond B. Lekstrom J. Bray

Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act, Bill 29 (second reading)		909
	Hon. G. Bruce J. MacPhail J. Kwan Hon. C. Hansen Hon. G. Hogg B. Lekstrom J. Bray

Mr. Speaker: Hon. members, I have the honour to present the following documents for tabling: Elections B.C., 2000 annual report; conflict-of-interest commissioner annual report, 2000; office of the ombudsman: An Investigation of Forest Renewal BC: The Forest Worker Transition Program Tax Information Dispute — public report No. 41; auditor general annual reports, 1999-2000, 2000-01; Annual Report, 2000 — office of the ombudsman; Building Better Reports: Public Performance Reporting Practices in British Columbia — office of the auditor general, report No. 3, 2001-02; The 2001-2005 B.C. Ombudsman Strategic Plan — special report No. 22; office of the ombudsman: Developing an Internal Complaint Mechanism — public report No. 40.

J. MacPhail: Mr. Speaker, I thank very much my colleague sitting next to me for informing the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and me about the serious illness facing one of our member's sons. We would just like to add our hope and our prayers as well, and if we could, even during the course of this weekend, be kept informed of his, hopefully, well-being, we would appreciate that.

Hon. G. Bruce: Mr. Speaker, I move that the Education Services Collective Agreement Act be read a second time.

This bill settles the teachers dispute and provides a collective agreement between the parties. It also provides for the appointment of a commission to review the structures, practices and procedures for collective bargaining in the education sector. We are taking this action because this government puts students first, along with the teachers of this province. Because this dispute has dragged on too long and has shown far too little potential for a settlement, we've had to act.

I want to begin my comments by acknowledging the tremendous contribution that's made by teachers throughout this province every day. You know, just think back; it wasn't all that many years ago that we, too, were in school. Some of us were a little bit longer getting through, and some of us have been out a little bit longer than others, but there were good days, I think, that you'll recollect, and you'll remember specific and certain teachers. I bet you that if I went through this room today, I could ask of you, "Who was your grade 1 teacher?" and almost to a person, you'd remember who your grade 1 teacher was.

Teachers make a strong commitment, have a huge dedication and contribute substantially to the well-being and development of the young people ? our students ? and most importantly, as we put it, our children in our province. They show this in the classroom in the extra time that they put in to help students excel at their academics, to coach sports and to enrich their students through field trips, music and drama. Those good memories that you had, I had as well — the experiences through my school years with the teachers that I knew and many know very fondly.

I've had four children that have all gone through the school system, have built tremendous relationships and value the extra effort that many teachers put into helping my children get through school — and the extracurricular, be it on the basketball court or band or drama and still the inquiry and interest about where my children are, where they've been and what they're doing. It's a lifelong, lasting relationship that's built between many teachers and our children.

I want to be clear: I value teachers. Everybody in this House values teachers, and this government as a political entity values teachers.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. May I have the members' attention and those in the gallery? I wish to bring it to the attention of everyone in the public gallery that you are in no way to impede or interrupt the proceedings in this chamber. Thank you.

Hon. G. Bruce: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is precisely because of the important, essential role of teachers that today we must act and not allow the damaging job action to continue. It's in the students' interest to end this dispute. It's in the parents' interest to end the dispute. It's in the teachers' interest to end this dispute.

This bill brings a difficult process between teachers and the employers to a conclusion. After ten months of hard work and 45 issues on the table — only three that were able to successfully reach a conclusion, and really minor ones compared to what was before them — this legislation sets out the terms of a new collective agreement.

The collective agreement itself runs from July 1, 2001, when the previous agreement expired, and it'll run until June 30, 2004. The terms will remain in effect until a new collective agreement is reached following its expiry.

It has two parts: provincial issues and local issues. It continues the existing collective agreement, with the following exceptions: we are making provisions that every teacher in British Columbia will receive, over the course of three years, a 7½ percent salary increase.

The collective agreement includes the three items of the 45 that were on the table that were agreed to by the parties during the bargaining. They include the review of any legislative changes that affect the agreement by a committee, the formation of a committee to deal with issues relating to housing of teachers by those districts — 17 in number — that provide housing for teachers, and the extension of provincial policy on harassment and sexual harassment to the Queen Charlotte District Teachers Association, the one school board that was initially not covered by this policy.

The bill also provides that if there is a disagreement between the parties over what was agreed upon on those three issues, then either party may refer it to an arbitrator appointed by myself as Minister of Labour. The decision of such an arbitrator will be final.

The collective agreement also consolidates the multiple certifications into a single certification in each of the province's 60 school districts. What this means is that there were nine districts that had several agreements because of the amalgamation that took place years earlier, and we're now bringing them all into one. So there are 60 school districts, and there will be 60 agreements. To give you an example, in my area there's the Lake Cowichan agreement, and there's a Cowichan agreement, and that will be rolled into the Cowichan agreement.

To be sure and to be correct, no teacher will receive anything less than what they're getting today, and all teachers will receive the 7½ percent increase over three years. This corrects a problem that has been in place for more than six years, when school boards were amalgamated and some of the collective agreements were not.

This bill cleans that up, applying that agreement in each district that currently applies to the largest number of teachers, to all teachers in the district. In my instance, the Cowichan district agreement is the larger, so that is the agreement that will be taken. By doing this, the bill simplifies administration in the affected districts and gets all teachers in each district under the same collective agreement.

Mr. Speaker, this bill also provides me, through this ministry, with the authority to appoint a commission to review the collective bargaining structure. As we're aware, we have not had a negotiated settlement since prior to 1994. The structure in place is not working. It's incumbent upon us as government to take action to review the process as it's currently constituted and see if there's not a way that we can develop a new process that will better allow for negotiated settlement, so that in years ahead we're not back here having to do this same sort of thing. Given the difficult history that we've seen, there certainly seems to be good reason to consider undertaking such a review. This bill makes that possible.

By providing a collective agreement, this bill effectively ends the dispute, as the Labour Relations Code prohibits any party from striking or lockout when there's a collective agreement in place. It will help our province's schools to return to 100 percent of their attention to the business of educating our young people.

Everybody would have preferred it if this legislation had not been necessary. It's always preferable when the parties reach a negotiated settlement, but in this situation, after ten months, with the disruption that was occurring within the educational system and the commitment by this government to put students first, this government has had to act. Students must come first.

I know — and I hope the vast majority of teachers believe this — that the teachers, like this government, put students first. That is what this bill is all about. I look forward, with the passage and enactment of this bill, to moving ahead to fulfil the commitment to our young people. Teachers, parents, school trustees, administrators and this government can go back to working together in the interests of students.

J. Kwan: I'd like to begin my debate today with a quote that at least one of you in the Legislature, I would imagine, and perhaps more will remember. The quote is as follows: "You compete by recognizing that teachers should be valued members of our community, and they're going to have to be paid." I wonder if any member in this House recalls this statement — particularly the Premier. It was actually a statement made by the Premier on The Bill Good Show on Monday, December 18, 2000 — before the election — when he said he valued the teachers and their contributions, and he recognized the importance of that value and recognized that they need to be paid in respect.

What have we got today? The Minister of Labour says this legislation is about education. It's about students. If it is actually about education and students, I wonder why the Minister of Education wouldn't actually introduce the bill instead of the Minister of Labour.

I know this government looks to Ontario and to Alberta as its big brothers, as the experienced approach to dealing with members of the public and dealing with teachers. You know, perhaps this government will also learn from the experiences of Ontario in terms of what happened in Ontario and the purpose of their own bill in Ontario — Bill 160. Bill 160 was introduced. People there recognized it for what it was. It was reported in their own paper there, the Toronto Star. This is how they summarized that bill: "Taking control away from teachers is the essence of the government's new education bill. In this sense, Bill 160 is not about educating children. It is about power in the workplace: who has it? Who uses it?"

I think this is what this bill from this government is about. It's not about looking for ways of how we can ensure that the education system is better and that the students' opportunities to learn are maximized but rather for this government to gain control. That's what this bill, I think, is about.

I've heard a lot, I guess, about some people discussing what their thoughts are about teachers. Some of it I've heard even from members of this House. As much as people sometimes say they value teachers, I also hear some very degrading comments about the contributions, the commitment, the dedication of teachers.

It was interesting, because I don't normally listen too often to this show, but every now and again I do. I relapse into just catching it to see what members of the public might be saying through this radio station. It's actually on The Bill Good Show. Bill Good actually read into the microphone an e-mail he had received from a student. The subject was Teacher Survivor.

I'd like to read this e-mail into the record, just so that from a student's perspective, we have a different understanding perhaps of what teachers do in our school system — not from my perspective but from a student's perspective. The e-mail reads as follows:

I thought this e-mail, which came from a student, perhaps gives us a different insight of what a teacher does and of the value of a teacher. All too often I hear people, quite frankly, degrading the value, the commitment and the dedication of teachers. When you ask the students' points of view, at least this one student had a different point of view. Perhaps that will help us think about the classroom situation and the environment in which teachers now work.

This debate started out with issues around wages for teachers. Again, I know we like to compare ourselves with other provinces, but I'll just put some facts on the table. Contrary to what you might have heard on the news, B.C. teachers are actually not the highest-paid in Canada. Teachers in Ontario, in Alberta, in Yukon, in the Northwest Territories, even in Nunavut, all make more than their colleagues in British Columbia.

Experienced teachers in York — that's Ontario — earn approximately $11,000 more than their Vancouver counterparts, while experienced teachers in Edmonton and Calgary make about $2,000 more.

In fact, I know of a teacher who has the same level of experience and the same level of education in his career as a teacher, and he also has a family member who works in Ontario with the same level of university and the same years of experience in the classroom. His relative in Ontario makes $8,000 more than he does here in Vancouver.

On the issue around wages, comparison with other provinces, I think, is one measure to determine where we are at, because there is an issue around retention, and there is an issue around attraction. I'll go more into that in a little while.

It's true that under the former NDP government, on average in the last ten years the teachers' salary increase was less than 1 percent. That's a fact. It's true that they didn't get the big wage increases, because teachers agreed they would sacrifice wage increases to ensure that class sizes are smaller for the students in British Columbia. That is a fact, hon. Speaker.

Not only that, I've been put on the Education Committee, and one of the privileges is that I get to listen to citizens across British Columbia. British Columbians have come forward and spoken to the Education Committee. I've learned through this Education Committee that teachers in British Columbia put a lot of their own time, commitment, dedication and heart into the job, but more than that, even with a lower salary than their counterparts in other provinces, they put their own financial resources into the school system to supplement the public system in education.

On average, a teacher puts about $1,100 a year of their own money into buying resources for the classroom and into buying anything that would enhance the classroom's educational experience — not for themselves, necessarily, although I know they enjoy teaching the students and the excitement of seeing students learn. I know they enjoy that, and that is their reward, if you will. They do that because of the students. They

put in their own money to buy learning resources for the classrooms to benefit the students.

You know, that amount of about $1,100 a year amounts to about $45 million of their aftertax dollars to purchase learning resources for the students in British Columbia. I don't know how many people know that. They don't have to do that, you see. Teachers have chosen to do that because they want to enhance the learning experience of their students. That's why they do that. Overall some 95 percent of Canadian teachers contribute their own money for books, supplies, food, beverages, transportation, computers, software, etc. B.C. teachers were found to be the most generous on this count.

One could ask: well, if the financial rewards are so low, why would you go into the profession of teaching? Through the Education Committee I know that other members in the House — the member for Delta North and the member for Burnaby North — will have remembered some of the testimonies that came forward. The teachers said it was because they loved their jobs. They love it because they have an opportunity to teach. They have an opportunity to see the next generation flourish. They have an opportunity to give something of themselves back into the classroom, back into the communities, back into our society. They do it because they're passionate about it; they're committed to it, and they're dedicated to the students in the classroom. That's why they do it.

Teachers' beginning salaries. Are they competitive, as the Premier has said, and to create a competitive environment you have to pay them? Well, let's compare that with some other occupations in terms of what their starting salaries might be: a dental hygienist, a therapist's starting salary — $49,800; a newspaper reporter — $41,700; a systems analyst — $40,800; a probation officer — even though, I guess, some of them are going to be losing their jobs — $39,000; public school teachers in British Columbia — $37,700.

J. Kwan: My colleague from Vancouver-Hastings asks: "What about a beginner MLA?" Close to $80,000.

If you look at the teachers' starting salary, not just relative to other provinces with the same years of experience and education, we actually rank lower than Alberta, lower than Ontario — the two provinces that I know the Premier and this Liberal government aspire to be. But relative to many other professions that have either the same or even lower requirements in terms of education, their starting salary is higher than a teacher's.

I wanted to put this on the record, because I think it is important to set the record straight in terms of what the salary, the wage, question is and what the facts are surrounding it.

I'm not a teacher, but I do recall that when I was in school, some teachers made a difference in my life, particularly in my earlier years, because I came to this country as a student who didn't speak any English. I didn't understand a word of what was going on around me when I first arrived here. You know what? It was the teachers — the ESL teacher — and the assistance they provided to me that helped me advance in my own classroom.

In my senior years, when I entered into secondary school, I went through a lot of different changes as a new immigrant in British Columbia. I recall very well one teacher that impacted my life — and some would argue, perhaps, for better or for worse — and made me the person I am, in some ways. I was enjoying my math classes, actually. I really did enjoy my calculus classes. Every time there was a problem that was presented to me, I would work through it, and sometimes I would even challenge the teacher on his solution. I remember saying to him: "I'm sorry, but that is wrong. Your answer is wrong." He would ask me: "Why do you say that?" I would go through the procedures of how I arrived at my solution. I remember my teacher scratching his head, and he went: "Oh, gee, I think you are right."

You know, at the end of my high school years, I asked this particular teacher to sign my annual, the book that documents all the activities throughout the school year. He wrote in it: "Jenny, your persistence will get you somewhere someday." You know what? That advice, I have to tell you, was inspirational to me. I think that persistence is helping me and my colleague today. Look at where we are now. What he really said to me, though, helped me challenge the status quo. Even when sometimes people say these are the answers, they may not necessarily be the answers. You need to look and find the facts and work through the problem and find the answers for yourself. That's what he actually taught me. That's what he challenged me to do in the calculus classes that I took with him.

I know the value of teachers, because in some ways I know they have shaped me in terms of who I am as a person. I know the value of teachers, the special assistants, the librarians, the ESL teachers and how much they contribute to each and every student in the classroom — not just those who need extra help but also the broader classroom students who are just average. I think that at some point I did achieve the average level, if you will, within the classroom. Once I learned my English I wasn't any longer the ESL student who didn't know a word of English and who needed that extra help. I just became a regular student like everybody else. I know that teachers make a difference in our classrooms.

Salary proposals. What do they mean? Will the salary proposal that has been tabled today attract teachers to the province in a time when we know there is going to be a looming shortage of educators in British Columbia? I learned through the Education Committee that there is going to be a shortage of some 13,000 educators in the province in the next ten years. Will the package, the legislation and the approach this government has taken attract teachers to British Columbia? Will they help retain existing teachers in British Columbia? Will people feel they're not really being valued and appreciated by government and recognized

for the hard work — even though they say they do? I also learned in school that actions speak louder than words. You can speak and fill the room with empty words, but then you match that up with actions. Do the actions of today, the legislation that's been tabled by the minister, actually match what he says — that he values teachers?

I am particularly worried for some districts that are already experiencing difficulty in attracting and retaining teachers. There are some 39 school districts that report they have shortages in key areas and that they anticipate further difficulties in attracting and retaining teachers. Both the employer and the union — because it's not just the union that says this — were cognizant of these issues during the bargaining process. They were exploring ways of addressing the difficulties through isolation incentives, higher starting salaries and the like to attract and retain teachers.

You have to ask the question: will the legislation that's been tabled today help these 39 districts attract and retain teachers in their communities? Certainly these increases pale in comparison to the 18 percent to 32 percent increases received by deputy ministers once the Liberal government took office. They say they needed to increase deputy ministers' salaries by 18 percent to 32 percent because they needed to attract and retain skilled people for the government. I have to ask the question: why wouldn't the government use their own logic to give deputy ministers 18 percent to 32 percent for the teachers? Why wouldn't they do that?

At the Labour minister's press conference of January 25 it was vowed that no teacher would lose salary as a result of the imposition of this bill. How can that be rationalized with the fact that in the amalgamation scheme posed later in section 4 — on which I'll engage in more discussion and questions in committee stage — the elimination of nine existing contracts will see many teachers lose salary as their collective agreement gets torn up unilaterally by this government? That's a fact.

When that happens, what will happen to these districts? The MLAs who are from the northern part of British Columbia are awfully silent about this issue. I wonder if they're going to speak up for their constituents, the students and parents in their own communities, to ensure that there are qualified, committed, dedicated teachers in their own communities. I wonder if they'll speak up in this House and rise up and say that we need to make sure there are approaches to retain teachers and attract teachers to our own communities.

The Premier has said this is going to be a free vote — a free vote. I wonder if any MLA from the government side will rise up and vote freely on this question.

Yesterday we had our first reading vote on this issue. All of the members just got up like trained seals and voted with the government. I wonder, on second reading and third reading, whether or not the MLAs will get up and actually reflect the concerns that I know have been expressed to their constituents, because their constituents have cc'd — copied — letters to both myself and to my colleague, the MLA for Vancouver-Hastings. I wonder if they'll get up and represent their constituents.

The 39 districts that are faced now with difficulty in retention and attraction…. There are a number of them. I won't go through the list now. I will save that for committee stage later on. I have to say that for the amalgamated communities, the salary proposal will further exacerbate the differential between salaries paid to teachers in Ontario and our own teachers in British Columbia. Already Ontario is $11,000 ahead of British Columbia in salary paid to their teachers, so I think there are going to be impacts on these communities.

The minister has assured us that there would not be any wage loss for the amalgamated teachers, but I know information to the contrary. As an example, Burns Lake teachers will actually suffer a salary loss of some $5,000 in the second year of the collective agreement. Now, I won't go into the details of the bill at this point, but I just want to highlight these as some examples. I will go into details on these issues with the minister in committee stage.

Another issue I'm going to raise in more detail in committee stage is the issue around the commission. If the government truly intended a meaningful examination of the bargaining procedures and structures, then they would have appointed an independent commissioner with equal representation from the involved parties. It would have allowed the terms and conditions of employment to shed some light in this bill and to continue to go through the terms for the next agreement. This would have allowed the various parties to examine the issues in a calm state that I think would pay dividends to the educational system for the future for British Columbia. The government, of course, has refused to do that, poisoning even further, I think, the environment for the future for students in the classrooms. That is a shame.

Some people may think these arguments and views that I've presented perhaps only represent one segment of the community — namely, the B.C. Teachers Federation — but you know, I know that those views are not just shared by the BCTF. I know the BCTF has been very vocal, because they're spokespersons for their teachers. I know that other people share these views as well. I'd just like to reference a letter to the editor that was printed on January 20 in the Times Colonist. It was written by a grade 9 student at Dunsmuir Middle School. The title reads: "Teachers want what's best for students."

It's signed by the grade 9 student. You know, in all of this dispute, even the students have spoken up — not just by way of e-mails to talk-show hosts, to editorials. They've actually taken action to make sure their voice is heard. On January 23 they planned, as you know, a political action on this issue, and it was widely covered. I cite from the Vancouver Sun comments from the students:

Another student, Ben Lightburn, a 16-year-old grade 11 Kitsilano student, feels teachers have no other choice, because the government removed their right to strike. This removal has caused an ineffectual form of job action that affects principally the students who participate in extracurricular activities. In short, the students are enjoying only a very limited education. Many now have no reason to come to school. We would rather that the students were able to fully strike, as this would force the government to produce faster results.

Another student from Kitsilano grade 11, Trevor Smith, transferred to the public school system from a private school: "I am involved in drama, and we can't put on our festival, played in February. These extracurricular activities are what makes the school. That's why I transferred from a private school to Kitsilano. At private school there are very few extracurricular activities."

Who provides for the extracurricular activities in a public school system? The teachers. They provide for these activities not because they are paid to do that, but because they want to volunteer their time to work with students, to enhance their other skills, to create opportunities for them to socialize, to engage with other students, to compete in a healthy environment and, perhaps, even to keep some of the kids off the streets, so they have an activity to go to after school that is productive for the students and for our broader community as a whole.

Teachers don't have to do that. They're not paid to do that. Teachers volunteer their time for extracurricular activities because they are committed to their students and to our community. That's why they do it. The students have recognized that fact. Why can't the government?

Some of the teachers have expressed their views on the amount of time they have put into extracurricular activities, and they question whether or not they would be able to sustain that. I have received a letter from a teacher in North Van. I wonder if the member for North Van will rise up in this chamber and speak up for his constituents. Maybe the member hasn't read these letters; I don't know. Maybe they will just disregard them. I'm going to read parts of it into the record. It's just from a teacher's point of view.

This teacher has taught in North Van since the early 1980s. The teacher remembered the notion of flexibility the then government wanted to introduce to our education system, and he remembered what such flexibility meant. He fears for the education system and how that notion of flexibility could be abused in the future. The teacher recognizes now that there is the introduction of a differentiated learning that obligates teachers to follow individualized educational plans for large numbers of students. These require the students to be treated differently in terms of how they are taught and evaluated, and of course, the teacher recognizes that this is time-consuming and a difficult task. Even in a class of 30, it is a difficult task for them to have individualized plans for every single student.

The teacher says: "I don't mind the hard work. I'm committed. I'm a committed teacher and a hard-working teacher. I chose this profession because I love to teach." The teacher then goes on to say: "I spend many volunteer hours developing curricular resources and sponsoring student activities."

The teacher worries that as his workload increases due to the changes relating to class size issues and extra, non-enrolling supports that are being introduced in the next bill, his workload is going to increase significantly. Not only is that bad for the students but, moreover, he worries that he will have to give up his extracurricular activity involvement for fear that he'd be stretched too thin to fulfil his legal responsibility and mandate in the classroom. This is a teacher from North Van — not a young teacher but an experienced teacher who has been in the system, who has experienced several different administrations, if you will, and understands the impacts of that.

There is another set of facts I mentioned earlier in terms of the issue around retention in the 39 districts. I wonder what the MLA for Bulkley Valley–Stikine thinks about these facts as they impact the region.

With the legislation that's being imposed by the government, you have to ask what the impacts will be for Stikine. Will they have a better opportunity to attract more teachers and to retain the teachers in the district so that students can benefit from their expertise, dedication and commitment? I hope so, but I fear very much that what the government's done today is not going to help the Stikine region and the students there in the attraction and retention of teachers and educators.

Impacting that even more, of course, is the education budget freeze that has been announced by this government. This is from an individual from Terrace, and I wonder what the MLA from Terrace has to say about these plans. This person says: "Protecting education funding equals budget freeze." This means as costs go up, which they do, services will have to be cut to maintain the funding level. Good education requires adequate funding for the resources and services to students. Good education requires professionals who are treated and thought of with respect. Good education needs the goodwill of the government and the society.

I wonder if the people in Terrace find that the legislation being imposed by this government is demonstrating respect to the teachers and demonstrating the goodwill of the government towards our education system. I wonder how the government, the Minister of Education, can show that protecting education funding would mean a budget freeze, which effectively means about an 8 percent reduction in the education budget when you account for things like inflation, etc. I wonder how the minister will add up those numbers to show British Columbians that she has met her commitment during the election on the education budget freeze.

Mr. Speaker, I know that one MLA has actually responded to some of the constituents. This is the MLA for Bulkley Valley–Stikine. I'm going to read into the record three paragraphs of what he said in response to people who wrote to him and expressed their concern. Actually, let me first read the letter he responded to — parts of it, anyway — from his constituent. The constituent says:

In his response to the letter from his constituent, the MLA for Bulkley Valley–Stikine says: "Government does not negotiate with teachers. The BCPSEA does, on behalf of school districts. Government funds education. As negotiations are underway, the collective bargaining process appears to be working. I do not feel it is proper for me as an elected official to interfere with that process, and I look forward to a successful resolution."

I wonder if the member for Bulkley Valley–Stikine will rise up and vote against this bill. He said in his letter to his constituent that he believes the government's job is to fund education. He believes the bargaining process is working, and he doesn't want to interfere. It would not be proper for him as an elected official to interfere with that process. Well, I ask that MLA — the member for Bulkley Valley–Stikine — if he thinks imposing the legislation the Minister of Labour brought in yesterday interferes with the bargaining process. I'd like him to get up and respond to his constituent.

From other people in the community in terms of what their thoughts are, these are letters to the editor from different regions, different communities. Here's another one from a student:

This is a student from Nanaimo. I wonder if the backbench MLA from Nanaimo will get up and respond to his constituent's letter to the editor.

This is from a drama teacher in Nanaimo who's had 30 years of experience teaching in his community.

You know, Mr. Speaker, it really saddens me when I see these letters to the editor. I've received letters sent to me from various constituents throughout British Columbia expressing their viewpoints and their concerns. You know what? The theme of all of these letters speaks to the concern of teachers for their students, students who appreciate and value their teachers and who support the teachers on their call for change — positive change — in the educational system, change that recognizes the importance of education by calling on the government to fund it appropriately and not to come in with an education budget spending freeze over the next three years.

The minister herself had campaigned that she would protect education. The first thing she does is introduce a funding freeze, even now, in a system where teachers are saying they're paying some $1,100 a year out of their own pockets to support the public education system by purchasing materials for the classroom.

How will the budget freeze help the students in the classrooms? How will it provide more resources in the classrooms? I come from an inner-city school. I have visited many of my schools. I've talked to my PACs and my students. You know what? They scramble around just to get paper so they can copy materials for their students. The teachers themselves buy the paper; they run off to Staples to buy a stack of paper so they can do their job. They fear like there is no tomorrow, and I share their fear and their concern for the students in my area and all across British Columbia.

How will the spending freeze on education for three years assist the students in ensuring that they maximize their potential? I know some answers that some people may well come up with, and they say: "Well, let's not pay the teachers the salary and value them for their work, because if we do that, then there will be more money for the students." But one only has to look to see the values of the teachers and their contributions in the classroom and what that means for the students in the long run.

I'm interested in what the member for Kamloops thinks. Here's a constituent who's written to their daily newspaper:

The teachers are expressing their heartfelt views, pleading with the government to please see them for who they are, their investments from their hearts and their souls — longtime, experienced teachers who have dedicated their lifetime to the students in their communities and young teachers who've just entered the system who have a dream.

In fact, I just met with a would-be teacher in my constituency office recently. She expressed the excitement she felt when she found her calling — her calling being to be a teacher in a classroom — and how excited she felt because she was going through her student teacher period right now and how exciting it was for her. She expressed to me how concerned she was with all of the dispute that's going on right now — the approach the government has taken and the attitude the government has taken towards teachers. She wondered whether or not, after all of this, the school environment will be the same for her to teach in. Will the colleagues she was going to be working with still be there? Will they have left the system? They worry very much about the outcomes for the students and the impact of

The teachers and the students have expressed many, many different views. I worry about the shortages — not just from the perspective of districts, particularly those in the northern districts, in the remote areas — in terms of attraction and retention. We know there is a difficulty now in terms of trying to attract more teachers in the areas of math and science. We know there is a looming shortage that's going to be coming to our province with a potential of some 13,000 shortages in the school system for educators for British Columbia. If the government continues on the path that I think sends the signal to teachers that they're not being valued, that sends a confrontational approach to teachers, to students and to parents, then what will happen tomorrow?

We know that in Ontario the approach that's been taken has hurt the education system. There's no doubt about that. We know that the Ontario government has taken an approach that tries to seize power instead of focusing on the question around students and the needs of students in the classroom and that they have created instability in the educational system in Ontario. They've created a hostile environment for the students and the teachers in Ontario. Is this what we want to duplicate in British Columbia?

We know that in Alberta there is a looming strike for teachers coming in February. The Alberta government took the same confrontational approach in the educational system. Ontario has done the same, and now I fear that British Columbia is following in exactly those footsteps. We have learned nothing from Ontario or Alberta in terms of what that confrontation means and the aftermath of that.

The Ontario government is now talking about legislating extracurricular activities — the volunteer time that teachers put in. We are in a new era, I know, with the new Liberal government. Does the new era include legislating people's volunteer time? Is the direction that Ontario has taken where we're heading with the introduction of this bill, which I think sets the path for the future in a very negative way?

What I fear more than anything else, after these bills are passed with all the trained seals in this House on the government side, is the aftermath of the impact in the classrooms for the students — the students who said: "That teacher provided the extra time in uncountable hours in helping me in my school work and in helping me participate in after-school activities, whether they be sports, drama, music — whatever the case may be." Will they be able to count on the teachers to be there to volunteer their time, when the government has expressly indicated to them through their actions that they don't value the teachers and their contributions, commitments and dedication to the students? That's what I worry about: the aftermath, what will happen, the poisonous environment this government is igniting in British Columbia, the poisonous environment that we now know exists in Ontario and Alberta, where they have taken a confrontational approach to our educators.

I would urge the members of this House, especially the backbench MLAs — who I hope will take some time and go through some of the letters they have received from their constituents, whether they be from a student, a parent or a teacher — to stand up and speak on behalf of their constituents. In particular, I'd be very interested in hearing from the member for Bulkley Valley–Stikine, who says he believes the bargaining process is working and that it is not his place to interfere with the bargaining process. Yet his own government is interfering in the most extreme way, right now, in the Legislature. Will he get up and speak against it? Will he vote against it? He has a free vote.

The Premier has said it is a free vote. Exercise that free vote. Break away from being a trained seal in this Legislature, for once. Early on in your career, establish your independence to this government, and say no to this legislation. Say yes to education, to students. Say yes to the dedication and commitment that teachers bring to the classrooms and outside of the classrooms through their volunteer time. Say yes to the teachers, who not only put their hearts and souls into their careers but also put their own money, of their own volition, into supplementing the educational system. Recognize them for the work they do.

Tell your government that what is needed now, more than ever, is not confrontation but a measured approach, a balanced approach, an approach that will say not just to British Columbians but across the borders to the younger generation who might be looking at being educators as their careers that the government does have the good will to create an environment that is positive and not poisonous and negative. Create an environment where there can be dialogue from both sides. Create an environment where negotiation can take place on both sides, where there is give and take on both sides, an environment where the government does not just simply threaten because they know they have the power and control to bring down the big hammer on people. Foster an environment that is positive for the future generations of students in British Columbia.

J. MacPhail: I was moved by the comments of my colleague from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. It was an unbelievably thoughtful articulation of what exactly is happening in British Columbia today in our education system. I sat next to my colleague nodding only because she was touching on exactly what is really happening in our education system, both the wonderfully positive aspects and the looming threat that our education system is facing now. Her discourse was thoughtful — nothing but thoughtful.

I am perhaps going to take a tiny bit of a different approach, because, of course, this bill is really the only one of three that was properly introduced by the Minister of Labour. It's a sham and a cover-up that the Minister of Labour is introducing the other two, but this one is the sole property of the Minister of Labour. There's no question about that, because it is a bill that

directly impacts our free collective bargaining system, and it's a bill that directly and solely impacts bargaining for a group of tens of thousands of dedicated professionals in this province.

I want to take the opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to review what the Minister of Labour promised us as British Columbians when he took on this issue five months ago. In what is a very busy time, I thought it would be important that we look back historically to make sure that we don't repeat the errors of history. When one doesn't understand history, or doesn't examine or learn from history, one is destined to repeat the errors of history. So says someone far more articulate and dead than I am but, nevertheless, incredibly important.

The legislation introduced on August 15, 2001, nearly five months ago, by the Minister of Labour was the Skills Development and Labour Statutes Amendment Act, Bill 18. It was the piece of legislation that imposed essential services on the bargaining regime of teachers. August 15, 2001, was near the end of the first 90 days of the new era, the glorious, halcyon days of the new era. My gosh, those halcyon days. On August 15, 2001, the Minister of Labour, then and now and forevermore, it would appear, got up and tabled and debated essential services legislation.

I'm going to have to spend a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, so that we can learn from history to review that debate. The Minister of Labour: "The bill delivers on four specific commitments we made to the citizens of British Columbia for labour law reform. All of them are aimed at fostering better working relationships, stimulating investment and job creation and treating all workers fairly." He went on to say: "These are measured and reasonable changes that restore balance and democracy in the workplace and ensure that we are able to provide a strong, reliable education for our children, putting the rights of students first."

Please don't mistake this as debate that occurred yesterday or today. This is the debate that occurred five months ago — the first intervention of this government.

Well, here's the response, so far, of the students to the Minister of Labour's wish to put strong, reliable education and the rights of students first. This was written yesterday. It is, I want to say, adorable, but that would be to undermine these young students, who are clearly learning to write. Their printing is excellent, and they're learning to write.

Here's what they had to say yesterday: "All the people who have signed the following petition are in full support of the teachers' strike and are against the 'Liberls'" — there's room to improve there — "of B.C. to demand larger class sizes, fewer specialist teachers and less support for students with special needs. Remember, we are future voters."

That was yesterday. These students are young enough to be at the stage where they're just learning to print. I wonder what the Minister of Labour feels about his success of prediction five months ago.

To carry on, five months ago, the Minister of Labour: "We're saying that their school year can't be impacted, that the students should be in the classroom, that the learning should continue even in the face of a potential lockout or strike. I think that's fairly clear and fairly strongly stated."

To the Minister of Labour: what's changed? The children are in their classroom. There hasn't been a strike; there hasn't been a lockout.

Again, the Minister of Labour: "By this legislation, what we are doing is letting the Labour Relations Board determine, on a case-by-case basis, what is essential. It's very clear; it's not confusing. That's what we're doing." What's changed? The Labour Relations Board is doing that. They're doing it this weekend in determining what was to be the successful legislation of the Minister of Labour.

I'm carrying on, again from the Minister of Labour. "We're not pinpointing and telling the Labour Relations Board: 'Thou shalt do bing, bing, bing….'" I'm sure the Minister of Labour knew exactly what he was talking about when he said that.

"We're very clear. We're going to allow the Labour Relations Board, through this legislation, to make the determination over time, as they had done in health." What's changed? The Labour Relations Board is doing that.

The Minister of Labour to either my colleague or me: "The hon. member presupposes that we're going to have an escalation of labour unrest in this province. I don't actually believe that's going to be the case. It is not a question of us coming along and taking away their right to strike, putting in binding arbitration." Well, you got that right. "We're saying: 'No. We still believe in a negotiated settlement between the parties.'" That wasn't my colleague from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. That wasn't me saying that; that was the Minister of Labour saying that five months ago.

In the last five months, what have the teachers done? What have the hard-working, dedicated teachers done, that my colleague so ably profiled? They followed the letter of the law. They didn't want the essential services legislation. Teachers predicted it wouldn't work and it would prolong confrontation in this province, but what did they do? They followed the letter of the law — not once, not twice, not three times but four times. Four times they went to the LRB, and they have followed the letter of that law from August 15, 2001, that the Minister of Labour said would bring about a freely negotiated settlement. He predicted it.

Unless the government would like to stand up…. Perhaps the minister has information on where the teachers broke the law. Perhaps he could stand up and say why he was right and the teachers were wrong to abide by the piece of legislation this government brought in.

You know, it's very interesting that there are members of this government — not everybody, by any stretch of the imagination — that want to cast their eyes back and say: "Big, bad bogeyman from the past.

You know what? In this particular situation, it is only the Liberal members who have to look to themselves. This collective agreement expired on June 30, 2001. We were well into the first 90 days of the new era. The collective agreement expired on June 30, 2001, so the past bogeyman is gone. I'm sorry. That dispels; that disappears. The past bogeyman is gone. The Liberals have full responsibility for this situation. We'll deal with the other historical moments, perhaps, later on, but this one is the making of this Liberal government and particularly that Minister of Labour.

The collective agreement expired on June 30, and six weeks later the Minister of Labour stood up and said: "I have a solution, and we campaigned on this solution. The voters gave us an overwhelming mandate to bring in essential services legislation, because we explained to them how it was going to work. I am here, Mr. Speaker" — hallelujah! — "to tell you that I have the solution." So said the Minister of Labour.

Well, here we are, five months later, looking at another failure of the Liberal government in its new era. Let me continue to quote from five months ago. I think I'll quote myself now ? that will be a treat ? because I was the one who engaged in the dialogue with the Minister of Labour, and frankly, it was not a confrontational dialogue. I remember being very concerned at the time — very concerned. It was August 15. The school year had not started. People were still on vacation around the province — parents and kids. Teachers were preparing for the return to school, so I was concerned, but I was determined not to overreact.

I did ask and suggest to the Minister of Labour at the time: "The legal right to strike under essential services provisions was immediately outlawed by this government when it was legally complied with by nurses and health professionals" — because, of course, when the Minister of Labour stood up on August 15 and brought in this piece of legislation, he had already ordered an imposed settlement on nurses and health care professionals. He had already done that, and they had been subject to essential services legislation and were complying with it. It hadn't worked. So said he. He had to bring in the heavy arm of his legislation.

Then I went on to ask the Minister of Labour: "So why should teachers and education support workers believe that they will actually get the right to undertake job action under new essential services legislation, when, in fact, we know that the Liberal government couldn't even live within the law of the land of decade-old legislation that applied to health care workers that had worked effectively?" I carried on, and I asked, "Why doesn't this government just admit its true, extreme agenda, that they're banning the right to strike in the public sector and that they want to end free collective bargaining?"

I went on to predict that this is going to be a huge burden on the Labour Relations Board. Lawyers will benefit. There's no question that lawyers will benefit because there will be lots and lots of time spent at the Labour Relations Board determining essential services. That proved to be true. In fact, they're there. The lawyers are preparing as we speak — lawyers for the teachers, for the government, for school boards, for the Public Sector Employers Council. Lawyers are thriving as a result of this government.

I said that there's no guide to essential services. We don't have any guide on this, because this government, once again, made a promise not based on anything to do with reality but made a promise. What I said was: "They're delivering. They have no idea how it's going to work, but they're delivering."

Yes, it's true. There is a ton of work for lawyers, but do you know what? The Labour Relations Board took the government at its word. The Labour Relations Board, an independent tribunal, took their job seriously — thank God for independent tribunals ? and they've worked their way through this several times. But that wasn't enough for the government to live within its own legislation. No, no. Here we are today. I guess the government's admitting failure, because nothing's changed from the debate we had on August 15. Nothing has changed, except the government admitting its own failure. That's what they're doing.

Again, this is what I said at the time: "The member for Vancouver–Point Grey, the Premier, said that essential services law would 'protect workers' right to strike while ensuring students are safely able to access school and classroom services throughout the collective bargaining process.'" What has changed?

One thing has changed about that, because the teachers have been in the classroom teaching. There have been walkouts by students. You're right. It is the first time in the history, I believe, of this province that 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds have had to march down to the Premier's office and say: "Enough is enough, Mr. Premier. Give our teachers what they are asking." That's true, but it wasn't the teachers telling the children to leave their classrooms. It's true: 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds did march down to the Deputy Premier's office to say: "Enough is enough. Support the teachers." But the teachers were in the classroom teaching.

I said: "Every time this minister has stood in the House and predicted that free collective bargaining would prevail and that a freely negotiated settlement would be reached, given the context of the heavy hand of their laws, he's been wrong." Today he is wrong once again. His law failed. It's what they campaigned on, so say they. It's the only thing they campaigned on, and they failed.

Predictions by the opposition in that period in mid-August, when many of us weren't fully focused on what was going to happen, were predictions that were made in the dead heat of the summer. "Why doesn't the government just admit to its extreme agenda — that they're banning the right to strike in the public sector and that they want an end to free collective bargaining? Why don't they just stand up and admit to that?"

"That is the next shoe to drop — Labour Relations Board user fees — because this government is adding such chaos to the labour relations system that they don't have any money to actually provide the services." Oh, well, that turned out to be true. Yes. Black Thursday announced that the government had put such pressure on the Labour Relations Board, created such chaos there, that they no longer could sustain an independent tribunal and were imposing user fees. Well, that turned out to be true.

Another prediction: "The turmoil that will be created in the education system is coming from this Liberal government, just the same way that the turmoil and chaos in the health care system came from this Liberal government as well." That turned out to be true. I don't think there's a bogeyman that the Minister of Labour, on this legislation, can stand up and find, other than himself and his government.

Another prediction: "I think that now it's probably safe to say that the Liberal government is setting the stage for more confrontation instead of cooperation with teachers. That's the same as it did with nurses and health sciences professionals." I'd say that that was a prediction that has come true. There is more confrontation. Cooperation is at risk. Our kids' education is at risk.

Again, another prediction: "Every time this minister has stood in the House and predicted that free collective bargaining would prevail and that a freely negotiated settlement would be reached, given the context of the heavy hand of their laws, he's been wrong." Remember this: it was August 15.

"While I appreciate that he's predicting once again that everything will go fine, his record of prediction is abysmal. I predict that the minister's record of forecasting that collective bargaining will prevail and that there won't be labour disruption is wrong. He's put everything in place to ensure that his prediction is wrong" — August 15, 2001.

I am sad, I'm distraught, to say that there will be labour disruption. I expect that on Monday there will be labour disruption. It wasn't labour disruption that was a given. It wasn't. Our children will be without their teachers because of the actions of this government over the course of the last 24 hours — no other reason.

That has to be at the feet of this Liberal cabinet. I'm not even going to say it has to be at the feet of the Liberal caucus. I expect that over the course of the last 24 hours, good Liberal MLAs who have talked to their communities understand how upset teachers are, understand how teachers are crying in their classrooms and in their staff rooms and how principals are distraught. While they may have got what they wished for, they, too, had no understanding of the impact it would have in the support, in the staff room and in the classrooms and on their students.

I'm going to make a couple more predictions for the Minister of Labour. It has to do with this commission that the Minister of Labour is setting up. I am predicting another impending failure by the Minister of Labour. Look at the language in this collective agreement. Actually, it is a collective agreement, but theoretically it's a bill we're debating.

If you look at the language under section 5, "Review of collective bargaining structures, practices and procedures," again, it's a poorly written, poorly thought-out sop, hoping that it will cover over, mask what this government's record really is on labour relations and collective bargaining. It sets up a commission to review the bargaining structure. I think it applies just to teachers. Yeah, it's specific to the BCTF. Well, my gosh, I think we've got other people working in the education system, but there we have the government going after putting in place a half-cocked, half-thought-out commission that applies to a small sector of our education system.

I don't see any time frame in this commission for resolution. I don't see any thoughtful, independent approach to the commission. I don't see any avenue for public input. Certainly the stakeholders, those special interest groups that this government so abhors, are well represented. They're all covered, but there's no input for the rest of us who are affected by bargaining in this province.

I think the question I have for the Minister of Labour is: how many times do British Columbians have to be guinea pigs for his failures? How many times do we have to go through being a little experiment for his failures in bringing about labour peace in this province?

I expect there will be huge, continuing anxiety directly as a result of this commission because of the way it's been set up. I expect that teachers, rather than feeling like the matters have been put to rest for at least a few months and maybe a couple of years, will feel nothing but anxiety around this commission — a commission, yes. Absolutely. Have at it. Better you keep trying, with failure after failure. Better you keep trying to get it right, but this isn't getting it right.

I expect there is huge anxiety in the Liberal caucus as well. How can there not be? How can there not be anxiety? How can there not be anxiety in the communities where there will be an imposition of terms but also a whole change in the entire nature of their collective agreement, the amalgamation of collective agreements? How can there not be anxiety there?

Mr. Speaker, this is the time when we get to debate the principles of this legislation, and I would suggest that British Columbians are tired and exhausted. Only eight months into the new era, British Columbians are tired of having to redo Liberal principles of legislation. I hope that there is political will, heartfelt will, community-based will from enough of us who sit in this chamber and that there is enough compassion and understanding for the path we are now being put on that people will rise in this chamber in great enough numbers to say no to this legislation.

Hon. C. Clark: I do just want to speak briefly to this. I don't want to drag out the debate, certainly, because it's important that we end this dispute and get education back to normal as soon as we can for children in British Columbia. This government takes our commitment to students very, very seriously, and we

I don't want to go on too long to drag out the debate, but I do want to respond to a couple of comments that some of the members opposite have made and make a few points about where I as Minister of Education think we should be heading in the system over the next several — many — years.

First, the member opposite has taken us on a bit of a tour of history. I hear her saying she doesn't think we should be legislating workers back to school. As a matter of principle, she doesn't think we should be forcing collective agreements on people who are working in schools. You know what this member did when she said that? You know what she did?

Hon. C. Clark: She did that five times as a member of this House. Five times her government legislated people back to work in schools, and the reason they did that…. I mean, she can have that principle if she likes. Certainly each of us in this House has the right to be able to stand on principle, but it's important that we point out, too, when those principles for certain members have changed.

The second thing I would point out is this: I do hear the other member opposite arguing that she doesn't think a 7½ percent raise is enough. Certainly we are in very, very tight fiscal times. There is no question about that. The decision to give teachers a 7½ percent raise wasn't an easy one to come to. Certainly that's not happening across the public and private sectors in our province today.

Hon. C. Clark: I hear her standing up and saying she thinks teachers should get more money. Again, that can certainly be her position. It can certainly be her right to take that as a matter of principle, and I respect that. However, I do want to point out for the House that those members — in fact, the Leader of the Opposition today — sat on Treasury Board that set the fiscal mandate that we are living within today…

I do want to point out that the members opposite and the Leader of the Opposition, who I believe was on Treasury Board at the time, set the fiscal mandate that this government is living within as we legislate this agreement. The member opposite for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant can certainly argue, if it's her position today, that she thinks 7½ percent isn't enough. Then that could be her position as a matter of principle.

I do think it's important that everyone in the House recognize that's a principle that has changed very recently, because when the members were in government, they set this as the fiscal mandate. We are certainly living within that — something that was set by them when they were on Treasury Board. I just wanted to point that out to the House, so no one here is operating under any misapprehensions about the history of where we've been with collective agreements in B.C.

Another thing I'd like to touch on is this: when I hear the members opposite speak, I hear an implication in their comments that somehow, members of the government — be that me as Minister of Education or the Minister of Labour or other members of this House — don't hold teachers in the same esteem that they do.

You know what? Members on this side of the House know that teachers work hard. You're darn right that teachers work hard. Teachers work hard because they care about the kids in their classrooms. I know that, and every member of this House knows that. Every member of this House who has a child in school knows that. Every member of this House who is maybe married to or related to a teacher and every member of this House, like myself, who was raised by a teacher, knows that teachers work hard and are dedicated to kids. They care about children. That's why people go into the profession. We all understand that in this House.

With this legislation, we've tried to find a balanced approach. We've said, you know, that we are facing a very tough fiscal environment, but we know how hard teachers work. Despite the fiscal challenges we face, we are still going to put a 7½ percent raise for teachers in this collective agreement, and that's saying something. I think about the commitment that every member of this House has to teachers and the belief that each of us holds very dearly: teachers do work hard. There is no question about that.

I truly believe that this is a very balanced piece of legislation. I know that when individual teachers have an opportunity to sit down and look at the impact of the legislation that's coming this weekend — on their classrooms, on their students and on their jobs day to day — they, too, will recognize that this is a balanced approach. We are not legislating here the employer's last offer. This legislation provides for a raise every year for every single teacher in the province. And that's important, because every teacher in this province is important.

It's not, today, what the union was asking for. As I said, it's not what the employer was asking for, but it isn't the role of government to play favourites. It's the role of government to decide on a policy direction, and it's the role of the Ministry of Education to decide what would be good for children in our schools. That's what we've attempted to do today with this legislation.

We are not here to take sides, to be held captive by one interest group or another. If there is an interest group whose interest will drive us, that interest group is children. Children are the people who depend on our education system to work for them every day. There isn't a single child in British Columbia who's going to

get another crack at grade 3 or grade 4 or grade 5, so every single one of those years is important to them.

With this legislation, what we are attempting to do is to end this labour dispute, to say that we want our schools to go back to normal as quickly as they can, because that's important for children. We've tried to take a balanced approach to the legislation so that neither side can say: "We got everything we wanted." We tried to take a balanced approach to the legislation so that on Monday — should this legislation be passed in the House — when all the parties have a chance to look at it, they can look at it and say: "Well, you know what? I didn't get what I wanted, but I still think it's fair." That's the only way we will get things back to normal for children in our schools, and that has to be our focus, as members of this House: what is good for children.

I know teachers care about children. I know the Leader of the Opposition cares about children. I know that every member of this House cares about children. What we are attempting to do today with this legislation is to put children back at the centre of our education agenda, because that is certainly where they belong.

Hon. G. Bruce: I would just like to make a couple of quick points and then conclude the debate on this bill.

I think it's important, when we take into consideration the fact that this House is imposing a settlement, that we understand how people and parties that are in a negotiating process feel about that. This is not something that I cherish, as a Minister of Labour, to undertake. It's been very clear that the parties were bound. There was no way that they were going to be able to find an avenue in which they could reach a negotiated settlement. It's also been very clear…. I think it's instructive to look at history, as the member opposite was doing, to look at how many times there hasn't been a negotiated settlement with these two parties. Look at the last ten years. I know we don't want to go back and hunt out the bogeymen, and I don't want to make this political, as difficult as it is in this chamber not to. But unfortunately, those bogeymen continue to haunt us as a new government, and the damage done over the past ten years is extensive. It won't simply be in a quick little fix of seven months that we'll be able to wipe out that bogeyman, as much as both members across the way would like us to do so.

The fact of the matter is that we had a situation where both parties actually had ten months of negotiation that encompassed two governments, and there was no movement. In fact, a series of negotiations that impacted two governments, ten months and the initial mandate that had been presented by the former NDP government weren't going anywhere, and we had the situation, as we're faced with today, where government had to act. That's what we're doing.

The member opposite mentioned concerns about how much a teacher or teachers would get and mentioned a specific example at Burns Lake. I would hope that she would give me that example prior to us getting into third reading, because I would like to assure all of those teachers throughout the entire province that every teacher — every teacher — will get a raise. Every teacher will receive the 7½ percent over three years. If the member opposite has that information, I'd be pleased to receive that and make sure that I can allay her concerns.

These are difficult times, and the worst thing you can do is to go out and create the uncertainty that the members across here are, in espousing different articles that have no basis in fact. This bill is meant to resolve this issue and to put in place a collective agreement in which the teachers that are being represented here in this bill will receive that 7½ percent increase over three years.

	YEAS — 70
Falcon	Coell	Hogg
L. Reid	Halsey-Brandt	Hawkins
Whittred	Cheema	Hansen
J. Reid	Bruce	Santori
van Dongen	Barisoff	Nettleton
Roddick	Wilson	Masi
Lee	Thorpe	Hagen
Murray	Plant	Campbell
Collins	Clark	Bond
de Jong	Nebbeling	Stephens
Abbott	Neufeld	Coleman
Chong	Penner	Jarvis
Anderson	Orr	Nuraney
Brenzinger	Bell	Long
Mayencourt	Trumper	Johnston
Bennett	R. Stewart	Hayer
Christensen	Krueger	McMahon
Bray	Les	Locke
Nijjar	Bhullar	Wong
Suffredine	MacKay	Cobb
K. Stewart	Visser	Lekstrom
Brice	Sultan	Sahota
Hawes	Kerr	Manhas
	Hunter
	NAYS — 2
MacPhail		Kwan

Hon. G. Collins: Point of order, Mr. Speaker. I believe that you yourself were recorded as voting in….

Hon. G. Bruce: I move the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting after today.

Bill 27, Education Services Collective Agreement Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. G. Bruce: I move that the Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act be read a second time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill helps government restore sound fiscal management by increasing operating flexibility in our K-to-12 — kindergarten-to-grade-12 — and college and institute systems.

This bill is intended to put students first by giving the local school boards and the college boards the flexibility they need to effectively manage British Columbia's K-to-12 education system and our province's public colleges and institutes. It's about getting collective bargaining in education away from setting education policy and back to focusing on wages and benefits. But most of all, this bill is about putting students first and about making the tough changes that need to be made to continue putting students first in the face of a difficult fiscal environment.

This bill, most importantly, enshrines the kindergarten-to-grade-12 class size through legislation in the School Act. We'll be one of the few jurisdictions in Canada that does that.

It's also about giving school boards and college boards more flexibility to manage class sizes and the composition of those classes. It takes the question of how many non-classroom educators — people such as counsellors and librarians — there should be in each school and removes rigid ratios that were imposed by the previous government on school boards. This now allows school boards and individual schools to make their own decisions on how best to meet students' needs. It takes decisions on how the school day and the school year will be structured, removing those from the bargaining table and returning those decisions to local school boards, as well as to college and institute boards so that decisions can be made that are in the best interests of all of our students.

These changes provide local, elected school boards and college boards with the flexibility they need to make better use of the facilities and the human resources to place students' needs ahead of rigid imposed ratios and formulas. The bill puts students first by providing significantly more flexibility to our public education system.

In the area of class size, this bill says that class sizes — and we as a government say this — are too important to students to be left as a bargaining chip between the BCTF and employers. This government supports class size limits in our K-to-12 system, and that's why we're placing these limits in legislation into the School Act.

At the same time, we're increasing the flexibility on how class size limits are implemented so that we can protect students and their families from the ridiculous situations that have been common across our province over the last few Septembers — that adjusting period — when common sense hasn't always applied with respect to the student. I'm talking about situations like the busing of five-year-olds 45 minutes each way in the North Okanagan-Shuswap school district because rigid class size limits left them without a place at their closest school. I'm talking about situations like that faced by a Saanich first nations student, who was in the catchment area of a school that has a first nations program. That particular student was forced to attend a different school — one that did not have a first nations resource program — because of inflexible class limits.

Under this bill, class sizes are off the bargaining table, and they are entrenched in legislation in the School Act. The average class size across the district will be limited to 19 for kindergarten, 21 for grades 1 through 3 and 30 for grades 4 through 12. In addition, and importantly, an absolute upper limit for any individual class size will be established for kindergarten. The kindergarten class size is 22 students, and at grades 1 through 3 it's 24 students. That's the specific class size.

This bill will ensure that our public colleges, university colleges and universities will have the right to determine class sizes — how many students can be enrolled and how many students an instructor may be assigned. By giving these institutions and local, elected school boards more flexibility, we are making clear that contracts are not where these decisions should be made. The well-being of students is far too important to be left as a bargaining chip.

In the area of non-classroom educators, such as our librarians, counsellors and others, special needs assistants and English-as-a-second-language teachers, this bill again says that education decisions should be driven by student needs, parent concerns and local priorities, not by rigid, provincially imposed ratios that have been negotiated and bargained. Nowhere else in Canada are these educators assigned by a rigid, formula-driven process, and there's a reason for that. It prevents local school boards and individual schools from matching teaching resources with student needs. The previous government rammed these formulas into place after the employers themselves voted 86 percent against them.

This bill allows school districts to decide the appropriate number of non-classroom educators in each school, so that if more counsellors and fewer librarians

are needed they can make that change. If it's the opposite, and we need more librarians in that particular area and fewer counsellors, then that can happen — reasonable, rational and putting students first. The needs of students should be the deciding factor.

By restoring management flexibility, we are restoring good sense to the system. We're removing difficult issues that are really more properly public policy issues from the bargaining table. The same is true about the decisions in respect to the school year and the school day. By removing these issues from the collective bargaining process, we are giving school districts, colleges and institutes the ability to make the best possible use of their resources and their institutions, in mind of what's best for students.

Locally elected school boards. Locally elected school boards will now be able to listen to parents, students and educators and then decide for themselves on how to make the best possible use of the facilities and their staff. If it makes sense through discussion that a school should operate on extended hours so that students have more flexibility and expensive facilities are in use for more hours of the day, then school boards will be able to make that change. If a school board decides after consultation with affected parents that facilities should be used more efficiently and effectively by adopting a different school calendar, then they will have the flexibility to do that as well.

The same goes for colleges and institutes, which may see value in offering courses for 12 months of the year and should have the flexibility to do that if it's good for their students. Under this bill they will have the flexibility, and they will also have the flexibility to offer additional courses through distance education if they decide that's the best way to meet the students' needs.

These decisions should be made in the interests of all of our students. That is the test of this bill — the aspect of putting students first. They should be open, they should be up to our post-secondary institutions, and they should not be bargaining chips at the table. This bill achieves those goals.

The bill is called the Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act because that's what it's all about — flexibility and choice for local elected school boards, schools and teachers, colleges and institutes and instructors and, most importantly, students and their parents. School boards and colleges need more flexibility to adjust to changing students' needs over time and varying needs from one district to another, from one school to another. They need more flexibility to make better use of our schools and colleges, those facilities which are expensive, which have the potential to provide increased educational opportunities while reducing the need to build additional facilities.

This bill reverses some of the damage that was done by the previous government, and it allows us to take a big step in fulfilling our new-era commitments to more flexibility and choice in education and, most importantly, putting students first. I am pleased that this bill delivers on our commitment to do just that, in putting students first, and that it provides the increased flexibility and choice as we promised before the election.

These are significant changes, but they are good changes. They will provide colleges and institutes and school boards, individual schools and teachers, and students and their families with a better-managed system. They allow us to return the focus of labour relations in the education sector to where it belongs: on salaries and benefits. They show that this government values the contribution of educators as educators and values their input in developing good public policy decisions — good public policy decisions, Mr. Speaker, that put students first.

J. Kwan: I rise to speak to this bill, as it is critical to the education and future of our students. One of the main issues, of course, that has been discussed broadly in the community amongst teachers, students and parents, is around the issue of class size. I know that throughout the round of bargaining, the B.C. Public School Employers Association has made numerous demands to take education backwards 20 years. They want to remove the limits on class size. They want to eliminate the guarantee of services to students with special needs and end the guarantee of services from specialist teachers such as teacher-librarians, ESL teachers, counsellors and learning assistance teachers.

Let me first address the issue of why class size must be maintained and improved. Studies have repeatedly shown that smaller class size helps the students to learn. It enhances their educational outcome. There's no dispute about that. In fact, I know that the member for Delta was formerly a principal, an educator, before he become involved as a politician. I asked him the question: what is the optimal class size for children to learn? You're an educator; you know the field. He replied: "Fifteen or 16 students." That is the optimal number, from all of the research that he has seen to indicate the best class size for learning outcomes for students. Studies have repeatedly shown that smaller class size results in improved student learning. I don't believe there is dispute about that.

The B.C. public schools currently rank, I think, among the third-best in the world — not the best but the third-best. That is something that I know the educators in our system are very proud of, and parents are very proud of it. I also know that we need to strive towards even better outcomes. I don't think anybody disputes that. I know the teachers don't dispute that, students don't dispute that, and parents don't dispute that. They all want the students, the young people, to have a better future, better opportunities — the opportunity to maximize their potential in whatever field they choose to engage in. How do we enhance that? We all know that education impacts the outcomes for young people. We know that.

Representing Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, I come from where we have the poorest communities in all of Canada. We have a postal code that begins with V6A. I know advertisers don't even bother sending their junk

mail to our community, because there's no sense. For these families, these students, the opportunities for the future are limited in many ways. Many of the students have many challenges in their lives. They experience tremendous, tremendous traumas.

The one place where they go, where they can get some support to help them move forward, is the school system. They go there to get food. Children are hungry, especially those who live in poverty. They're hungry. They go to their school to get food.

Many of them do not enter the school system on the same level playing field as other students and children who are not faced with the socioeconomic difficulties of their families. They don't enter the school on the same level playing field. Some of them enter the schools with many needs, great needs, special needs for special attention, special assistance from the teachers — from the teacher-librarians, from the ESL specialist teachers, from the teacher aides — to help them advance in their little lives so that they, too, have opportunities like those who are not faced with those barriers in life.

You know what? Limiting the class size will not help these students — by lifting the ratio across British Columbia, saying that at least as a minimum you must have some sort of ratio to ensure that these children, too, have an opportunity for their future, to make sure that there is that level of protection, a level of guarantee for those children.

This legislation takes away that guarantee, takes away the commitment that says no matter what your background or barriers are, we as a government will be there for you, in the minimum, as a guarantee that there would be special needs assistance support for your children and that for you, as a student, there would be ESL teachers if English isn't your first language.

I mentioned earlier today that I was an ESL student. I know that members of the House will notice from time to time that I may mispronounce a word or use the wrong grammar. Yes, it's my ESL background. I remember well those early years when we first came, my family and I ? a family of eight, a modest family, really. I come from a traditional family. In Hong Kong my mother took care of six kids. She was essentially a housewife. My father ran a small business. He was a tailor. He's retired now and losing his bus pass. He's a tailor by trade. He ran a small business in Hong Kong, making suits for his customers.

My parents made a decision to immigrate to Canada for no other reason but their children. They left the place they were familiar with and came to a new land. They couldn't speak the language and didn't have a high level of education. My mother has a grade 6 education from China. That's where she was born. My father has a grade 11 education. He was a little bit more educated that my mom — not much more, though.

It was their dream to make sure their children had an opportunity for education, better education than they received from China. For the first time, opportunities were afforded to me, my brothers and my sisters to have post-secondary education in the public system. In Hong Kong, you see, it was a private system — it's true, with no limitations on class size, but very expensive because my parents had to pay for the children to go to private school. I tell you, on the modest income from my dad, only a few of the six children actually had the best education they could afford. The other three were sacrificed.

It was at that point that my parents decided they would move and take the family so that all of their children would have an opportunity for a better future. I was one of the lucky siblings. I was one of the younger ones in my family of six children. My mother proudly watched me graduate from post-secondary education. They saw me struggle through ESL. Then I learned English not only in school but from my neighbours. Actually, three-year-old and four-year-old kids in my neighbourhood taught us how to speak English. We in turn taught them how to speak Chinese ? mostly food words, though. That was the opportunity, you see, with respect to the education system — a public education system that afforded me and my family that opportunity.

I now look to the children today, with the future they face, the environment in their classroom with the lifting of the class size ? the older grades, too, not just K-to-3 — and particularly to children who are faced with barriers. What will happen to them? Even the basic guarantees that were in place, that were negotiated by the various districts on their own, even those basic guarantees for the non-enrolling teachers are now gone.

I don't know. I wonder what my colleagues, the government MLAs, would say to those children and their families who are struggling and who cannot afford to hire a private tutor, a special assistant to ensure that their children, too, have an opportunity for the future to be independent, to be happy and to be contributing in our system, in our society and in our communities. I wonder what you would say to them.

I know that the minister will perhaps say: "Well, we create a flexibility, you see. The district can now just, you know, decide where they would allocate their money, because there's flexibility now. So don't worry." It's okay, the Minister of Education says. "I'll keep an eye on it. They'll report back. Don't worry about that."

Well, I wonder if the minister received a stack of letters. These are only some of them. I didn't bother bringing them all up here, because there are too many. These are some of the letters I have received about the need for special needs assistants in classes, for teacher-librarians, for counsellors, for ESL students to help students in the classroom so that they can have the opportunity to advance. These are letters from teachers to the districts, who plead with their hearts ripped wide open, saying to them that the limitations of the allocations even as they exist now are not enough to help the teachers.

I remember this, and I'm sure that the members for Victoria, for Vancouver and for Delta who were on the Education Committee remember teachers who came up

and said: "I do not know how to choose which student deserves the special needs assistant, given the limited allocation that's given to them now." They do not know how to choose and say to this student: "Yes, you deserve more assistance than that student." That's what they said to us. They said: "Please, do not make us choose, to say which child is more deserving and which one is not."

You know what? This piece of legislation sets that right up because it takes away the basic minimal guarantee of those protections. Districts will have to choose and teachers will have to choose who is deserving and who's less deserving. I dare any member in this House to rise up and say: "You deserve more." I'll bet nobody will rise up to say that. Nobody will have the gumption to say that. Yet this is the piece of legislation that sets that right up. It sets it right up, Mr. Speaker.

I want to take a moment to tell this story. In fact, I'm going to tell this story right from the very words of the parent who came to the Education Committee and spoke, I think, very eloquently to outline his story. I met with him personally in Vancouver and heard what he's faced with on the issue around special needs.

I want to share this with the members of the House. I think if people hear this story, they will get a better understanding of the need to ensure there is support in the area of special needs for the children of British Columbia and to ensure that the minimum protection, the minimum guarantees, are not done away with. I hope that with this letter I can change some MLAs' minds. Maybe they, too, can find a heart and understand the pain that parents go through when they're struggling with this issue.

Then it goes on to talk about how infuriating it is for the parent to experience this. It goes on to say:

Then it goes on to say: "These are difficult times, and I recognize that the government's concern is to reduce the deficit. However, as the parent of a child with special needs, I implore the Ministry of Education to measure the effectiveness of limiting funds against a long-term agenda rather than short-term goals."

He says: "Limiting funds will only limit their potential, resulting in isolation from society, depression and costly dependency." Then: "In conclusion, my witness to you, as the father of a child with specials needs, is that current funding for special education is inadequate, should be increased and dare not be cut. The

Ministry of Education has the opportunity to be visionaries. Take the challenge." This is from Michael Parker.

With most of the letters I've read into the record, I've left some pieces of them out. I read this letter into the record because I predict that with this piece of legislation, by taking away the guarantees of special needs as one area of non-enrolling support specialties for the teachers in the classroom for the students, it would further aggravate the current situation.

Right now in the city of Vancouver, in the Vancouver school board, the trustees already have the authority to decide how to allocate the funding for special needs. As you know — as I hope many of you know — in my own community as an example, we have a very great need for special needs. Taking away the basic minimum, the guarantee for children like Callan, has already happened, has already been reduced in September of this year.

This legislation is not going to help Callan or help Michael Parker to ensure that his daughter reaches her childhood dream: to become a professional in her most admired profession, to become a teacher, to become completely independent. I ask the government members: why would you bring in a piece of legislation that has the potential to pit one community member against another, to say that my needs are more important than your needs, creating losers all the way through the system and division? Worst of all, in my view, is the ripping away of the future opportunity for young students of today.

Class sizes need to be maintained. They need to be improved. As the member for Delta North had advised me, the optimal class size is not 30. It's not 24 but 15 or 16, from his professional opinion in the research he has done. Does this legislation bring us in that direction? No, it does not. It actually regresses us.

It actually can have the potential for some schools to have over 30 students. How does that make sense? How does that make sense when the research has already shown that smaller class size is an important tool to optimize educational outcomes? For a minister who claims that her first mandate is to ensure that students have opportunities, that is the number one priority for this government. Well, don't just talk about that. Show it in action. Demonstrate it.

A funding freeze over three years will not bring more moneys into the district to provide for the programs that are needed now to enhance it. It will only cause the districts to sit down and say: "How are we going to meet these needs? Okay, now that there are no guarantees and ratios that are required for special needs, for teacher-librarians, for counsellors, let's take that money, because we simply don't have enough money, and everything is, indeed, a priority in education. Let's just rob Peter to pay Paul. Too bad for the people who have lost out"— with the exception, Mr. Speaker, that the people who've lost out will be the people that we as a society, on the whole, would actually have to support, perhaps, further down the road.

Isn't it a wiser investment now to put the money up front, when we know that early childhood development…? I know the member for Richmond East will agree with me that early childhood development is paramount. Shouldn't it start in the schools? Shouldn't it begin with class size, when we know that a smaller class size…? It's your very own colleague who says that the optimal class size is 15 or 16 students but not higher. Isn't that the place to start?

Isn't it the place to ensure that ESL students, of which I know there are a lot in Richmond, have full opportunity for developing their skills to learn the language? If you don't have the language, you can't learn anything in the classroom, let me tell you, because you don't understand anything that's going on. You need to have that language. You need to be able to master it so that you can go and do reading and writing, math skills, science, etc. It's a basic minimum. Why would you take away the basic minimum to ensure that those opportunities are there for the students?

We know that when the classroom size limitations are taken away, it is going to be harder for the students. There's no doubt about it. It is going to be harder for the teachers. There's no doubt about that. When you couple that with the loss of the specialists in the classrooms who help the teachers, who help the students, you can just imagine the compounding effect of that for all of the students.

It's not just the special needs student, you see, who needs the teacher's attention on a one-on-one basis, perhaps, for just a few moments in the class or the ESL student who requires that extra attention from the teacher to explain to him or her to get through the lessons; it's the rest of the class as well. The students who don't have special needs also need that attention from the teachers — the special attention to help them, to give them an extra boost. When the special assistant is gone, the teacher can't rely on that support to free her up to do more support for the other students. It impacts every single student in every classroom. It may be true that in some districts the numbers will be lower, but it is also true that in some districts the classroom sizes are going to be higher. The numbers for the specialty teachers are going to be reduced. Those students in those classrooms will lose out.

If the minister — the Minister of Education or the Minister of Labour — can get up and say to me, "I guarantee you that every single student throughout British Columbia in every single classroom, through this legislation, will have access to the need for special needs, for ESL, for counselling, for teacher-librarian support, all of those important components that make the classroom whole and that enhance the students' learning outcome," maybe then I won't have so much trouble with this. You know what? I will challenge the ministers to rise up and give me that guarantee. It's not to me, really. I'm just speaking for my constituents. I'm speaking to the people who have written me letter after letter after letter, petition after petition after petition, which I wonder whether or not any of the government members have actually even taken a look at. It's for them. That's what this is about. That's the work of this Legislature. That's why we are here.

The situation we find ourselves in, I think, is most unfortunate. I find it even more unfortunate because I was looking at a newsletter that was sent to me by the

B.C. Public School Employers Association. I was reading through this document, and one of the items they have put in the document talks about non-enrolling teachers and ESL teachers and the BCTF's demand. It says:

It talks as though those demands are somehow outrageous for an educational system. "How dare the BCTF come to this table and demand that there be more support for our students by way of special needs assistants, by way of psychologists and speech-language pathologists?" Maybe the BCTF shouldn't demand that.

Of course, they are demanding that, and you know what? I thank them for demanding that. I know that in every one of my schools in Vancouver–Mount Pleasant there are not enough supports in the classrooms for the children. My greatest dream is for all of us, no matter who we are, where we come from and what our backgrounds or barriers are, to have equal opportunities and that there is equality and social justice for all. That is my greatest dream, above all else.

I know education can make a difference, because I can tell you that my parents made a sacrifice for me, and I know it made a difference for me. I know that if I wasn't here, if my parents hadn't immigrated here, I would never have had a post-secondary education. I likely wouldn't have had a high school education. I know that. Everybody in our community, in British Columbia, every Canadian, deserves those opportunities. This government promised those opportunities to British Columbians during the election. They need to deliver that promise now, and you know what? This legislation does not deliver that promise.

For the B.C. Public School Employers Association to talk as though somehow demanding that there be speech-language pathologists in the classrooms is a horrible thing…. I know the Education Committee members will remember that there was a very moving witness that came forward and actually showed a tape of children who needed these specialists, the long wait-lists that exist now and the lack of access for some children already, to say and to plead with the Education Committee to carry the message to the Minister of Education that you need to enhance the funding, not limit it, not take away the guarantees that are now in place that are already stretched and insufficient.

We need to enhance that and move up the ladder and not down. That is what people have said. That's what I heard in the Education Committee when we travelled. I don't think anybody came forward and said: "Oh, please destroy our education system. Take the money away. Don't spend any more." Well, actually, no. There was a school trustee who came and said that — the very school trustee that received the letters from parents in my riding, from many schools, from Michael, who said to them: "How come you took away my daughter's support by half?" It was that trustee, Barbara Buchanan, actually, who said: "Oh, don't worry. Now that we've got three-year planning, everything is going to be okay."

Well, I'd like this government to come to my riding and tell it to the parents. When this is all said and done, when the support services are gone, when the children in my community are faced with no support, little support or reduced support, and when the opportunities that they see for their children have just vanished before their very eyes, I'd like the government to come to my riding and say to the parents: "Eh, it's for the deficit. That's why we introduced the three-year funding freeze. It's supposed to help you. The big tax cuts that were given to the wealthiest British Columbians — don't worry about them. It's okay, because that happened and you benefited from it, so don't worry. Everything is going to be okay." I'd like the government members to come to my riding and say that and go to every single school, talk to the parents who are faced with these challenges and tell them that, squarely in the eye. I challenge the MLAs on the government side who are going to vote for this bill to rise up and talk to those parents directly.

A teacher — this, too, I learned from the Education Committee — who faces about 25 students in a class, in a class period of 50 minutes, has approximately two minutes, perhaps three, at best, per pupil on a one-on-one basis for any period in time. If you add another student to the classroom, that one-on-one, that precious two minutes, is diminished. Any addition to the classroom diminishes that opportunity to assist the children in their learning on a one-on-one basis. That is a reality.

This was also conveyed in a letter to the MLA in Nanaimo — I hope he's read it — about the importance of class size and the importance of that one-on-one teaching time: "Taking away the class limits for specialty teachers to be in the classroom that will help the teacher spend a little bit more time with that individual student will impact that one-on-one, will decrease the one-on-one class time for the student, and it will, I believe, impact their learning outcomes."

From the Langley school district for the MLA in Langley…. I hope you're listening. "If the size of classes becomes overwhelming, if support services are removed, if teachers lose their opportunities to give input into instructional and scheduling decisions in the schools, I will opt to volunteer outside the school system instead of attempting to babysit children in crowded classrooms without teacher assistance and with special needs students. Educators, not politicians, are the people who know which educational policies work best. Please allow teachers the opportunity to negotiate contract settlements so that the province of British Columbia will maintain and improve the quality of its education. Then there will not be a teacher shortage. Teachers will want to teach in this province, and students will be happy that they go to the school here." This is from a teacher who's on call in Langley,

I hope the MLAs will take the time to read the stacks of letters and e-mails I have received. I know that many of them have been copied to many of the MLAs on the government side in this House. Maybe they then will realize what this piece of legislation means on the class size question to the special needs teachers and on the importance of those minimal guarantees that are in place.

I know that some MLAs, perhaps even the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Education, too, may get up and say: "Well, but by lifting the guarantees, districts can just sort of, you know, spread their money around and spend it wherever." That's assuming that in all of the categories there's actually money to spare. What about in the situation when there isn't money to spare, when in every single one of those categories the limit is already stretched and wanting? What's your answer to that? What would she say to address that issue? Perhaps she'll just monitor it. Great. But how would that directly impact the outcomes for the students in the classroom now — not tomorrow, not the next day, not five years from now?

We all know those early childhood development years are the most critical. I know that the member for Richmond East knows that too. That's her portfolio, after all. One would assume that she would know the importance of that. I wonder if she'll rise up and speak in support of more early childhood development supports in the classroom system now. While they're still young, when the children are there, the supports could actually make a great deal of difference to enhance those outcomes now — whether it be for graduation rates, less involvement with substance misuse later on in life, less conflict with the law or being at risk in general.

Take the wisdom that researchers have already told us. I've got stacks and stacks of reports in my office that say that early childhood development…. Pay now or pay later. If you pay now, you pay less. Not only do you save money but you also save lives by making a difference. That's a choice that I think we all have, particularly the minister who's responsible for early childhood development. I wonder if she'll rise up and speak in support of more early childhood development supports now in the classrooms.

I have another letter here. Its subject is keeping students first. It's a very eloquent letter that's been written, and I'll read bits of it into the record. It says:

J. Kwan: I understand and appreciate that this government intends to run this province like a business, with lots of stats and balanced bottom lines, and I hear a member for Chilliwack cheering that on. "Run their education like a system. If you can afford it, great. But if you can't, oh, well. Too bad for you. If you have barriers and you need extra assistance, the bottom line is that it's too expensive. We can't afford it." That's what he's cheering on, and he's nodding as I speak. It's absolutely shocking. Well, tell that to a parent who pays their taxes into our system to see equity for all children. Tell that to the UN, actually. In a western society…. My goodness, you'd think that I was in….

J. Kwan: A banana republic, actually. You'd think we were in a different country altogether, where somehow it is okay for that to happen, as the member nods his head.

This is what this piece of legislation threatens. It threatens the very core of what makes us civilized, what makes us a civil society, so that we as Canadians can hold our heads high. I have always prided myself as a Canadian — yes, an immigrant but a Canadian — on knowing that we're caring and compassionate and that we do believe that all people have equal opportunities. I've always prided myself on being Canadian and putting those goals forward as the number one priority.

I hope even the member for Chilliwack would agree that if you invest in education now, the business bottom line will actually pay off for society and for our community in the future. It does make business sense. If you can't see the heart and the soul and the humans behind the education system and just look at it as a number-crunching exercise…. Well, look at the numbers behind the statistics around suicide rates, increased court costs, substance misuse and all of those elements that impact the bottom line.

Hon. Speaker, a constituent from Maple Ridge writes — and I hope the member from Maple Ridge is listening:

This is a science teacher with over 30 years of teaching experience in Maple Ridge.

Taking away the class size, making it more difficult for teachers to operate in an environment where they must come forward with individualized plans, is not going to help the students. Surely the government must see that.

I recall that on the Education Committee, when we travelled and were up north, witnesses came forward and talked about the importance of counsellors and how they make a difference in the schools up there, particularly for aboriginal children. It could help them address the childhood and historical traumas that their families may have experienced and help them stay in the school system longer, becoming less likely to come in conflict with the law and enhancing their opportunities for graduation and learning outcomes. They talked passionately about the need for that. They talked about more resources in these areas, not limited resources and less resources, as the minister's legislation now proposes.

From the community of Nisga'a: "This government wants to remove the ratios that guarantee librarians and counsellors in this district." Those ratios give us one librarian and two part-time counsellors spread over four schools and 502 students. Does this number of librarians and counsellors sound excessive? We're being told yes. This government wants to remove the ratios that guarantee special education and learning assistant teachers. This will have a detrimental effect on our students. They're asking for their MLA to support them to ensure that teachers and students are not put at risk.

You know, I was in Victoria when a group of parents came, and they had a Christmas gift for the Premier. It was a box wrapped in a big red ribbon. It was just before the holidays. They were waiting for the Premier downstairs at the main door. The Premier didn't show up. I went in and spoke with them. They had a gift of letters and petitions calling on the government to enhance support for counsellors. There were students there, too, you see. The students benefited from their counsellors, who kept them in school and helped them graduate. They helped them find and define themselves and the goals that they wanted to achieve, and they graduated.

There were people who spoke about some of the emotions that they felt and the challenges that they had at the time. Some of them were even faced with very troubling emotional thoughts. In some schools in our province, actually, the number of teen suicides has increased. They talked about the importance of counsellors and the importance of the ratio of those counsellors — making sure, at a minimum, that the counsellors were there.

The students who graduated said: "Look at me. I'm an outcome of that." Having had counsellor support, one student said to me: "I'm now an honour roll student, and I'm looking forward to going on to post-secondary education." That's got to be something that will touch the hearts of the government MLAs. It's got to, because it isn't made up. They were here. They were people that I spoke with. They were real; they were live. I touched them; they touched me.

This legislation threatens to take away that minimum guarantee that is so essential for the lives of students, parents and families in British Columbia — in this instance, in the area of counselling.

In the area of Stikine one educator says: "We as educators are also very concerned when they employ a clause for cutbacks in our collective agreement — cutbacks in areas that teachers gave up salary to get." That's right. Teachers gave up their salaries to get smaller class sizes. They did that. They took that on not for themselves, but they gave that to their students.

J. Kwan: A question is being asked by the Minister of Education: "Did they bargain that?" Well, the fact of the matter is that the teachers, through that round of bargaining…. That recommendation was actually brought in by a third party.

This government has refused to even allow those third parties to come to the table. They imposed a piece of legislation before the House without talking to any of the teachers, and they're so proud of it, because they think it's doing the right thing. They're so proud, because it takes the control away from those evil teachers — those evil teachers who want to help the students. Maybe they're so proud because it takes away the ratios that these stacks of letters that I've received from parents who say, "This is so very important to the future of my child…."

But oh, for this government…. "Let's take away those ratios, because that is the right thing to do. That simply is the right thing to do. And on top of that, let's impose a three-year funding freeze on the education budget. Districts: it's up to you now. Make it happen. Address all those issues and all of those needs. We have no more money for you, and don't come and complain to me when you don't have any more money,

because we've now given you the flexibility, you see, and somehow that will resolve all the problems."

Will the minister rise up today and give me a guarantee that every single student in British Columbia will get the support they need from the school system? I challenge her to get up and give that guarantee in this House now. Tell British Columbians that yes, they will ensure that where there is a need for special needs education support, they will be there. Where there's a speech pathologist requirement, they will be there. Where there is an ESL student requirement, they will be there. Where there is a need for a teacher-librarian to teach students how to do research, they will be there. I challenge the minister to get up in this House and give that guarantee to British Columbians, to the students and to the parents.

The government members talk about flexibility and suggest that right now, as it stands in the collective agreement that's in place, flexibility is not there to engage in discussions with the districts around class size if there are one or two adjustments in terms of student bodies for a particular class. The fact of the matter is that that flexibility is there, right now, in the collective agreement. It is written in the collective agreement right now to ensure that there is that level of flexibility.

The flexibility that I think this government is now talking about is simply trying to find ways out of the looming budget stresses and pressures that districts will find themselves in because the Liberal government has frozen the education budget for three years. When the districts are faced with those pressures and they don't have enough financial means to support all the programs that are required in the district, it is so that the government can say: "We didn't make that cut. Not us. The district did. Go and talk to your district."

That's what I think this government is paving the way for — so that they can shirk their responsibility and so that they don't have to be responsible to British Columbians. They went to the election and said that they would protect education. After the fact, after the election ? not long after the election, mind you ? they could just say: "We're announcing a budget freeze, but we won't be making those cuts, because we're now giving flexibility to the districts. Districts, you make those cuts. That wasn't my decision; it was the district's decision." That's what I think this is about.

The parents of children with special needs at Vancouver's Mount Pleasant Elementary School wrote to the minister, and the response that they got back from the ministry already indicates that that is now taking place and that is indeed the government's direction. The letter was written to the Minister of Education and to her cabinet and caucus colleagues regarding district 39 — that's Vancouver — and the minister has not written back but has asked the special programs branch director to write back. Parts of the letter in response are as follows:

Great. So here we have the parents of children with special needs at Mount Pleasant Elementary School writing to the minister. I have received stacks of letters saying that they need more support in the area of special needs. And the letter that they got back, at the request of the Minister of Education, is: "Don't come and talk to me. Go and talk to your district school boards."

Now this gives them even more flexibility to make those decisions on basic minimum requirements. Guarantees to ensure that those supports are there for the students are now gone. What are they going to do when they talk to the minister? Who's going to be monitoring this issue? She's already said now — as she's monitoring and as she cares so very much for the students, or so she says: "Don't come and talk to me. Go and talk to the school board. It's not my decision." Now she's just going to offload even more of her responsibility to guarantee supports for students in British Columbia to somebody else so that she can wipe her hands clean and say: "I didn't make that cut. I fulfilled my promise. I said that I was going to place education as the number one priority, and I did that. The people who didn't deliver it…. That wasn't me. That was the school district."

We need to remember that it is this legislation introduced by the Liberal government that has brought about, I think, the situation that we are now faced with, ensuring that those students and parents and their voices are even more removed from the government and that the responsibility for this Liberal government in the new era is to say: "Yeah, we've made cuts, but that really wasn't us, because we already gave flexibility to the school districts. They're the ones who made the cuts. Go and talk to them."

It wasn't just Mount Pleasant Elementary School — although, certainly, it was the one that brought the needs of our schools to my attention. There were many other schools as well. Florence Nightingale Elementary School talked about a whole variety of things: class size, community after-school programs, multicultural and first nations workers, counsellors. The list goes on. It's not just what Florence Nightingale has said but the greater needs that many, many more schools from virtually every school district have expressed. Some talked about special needs. Others actually talked about gifted children — the need for a greater emphasis on funding for gifted children as well. But that, too, is now gone in terms of a minimal requirement to ensure that there is support there.

The Coquitlam community has also written to the MLAs, and certainly it has written to me. This parent from Coquitlam writes:

This is from a parent from Coquitlam who has written to many MLAs with her concern about the approach that this government has taken.

Not just parents, not just teachers, but students, too, have expressed their views. I have a letter here from a grade 12 student from Ucluelet. I'll read part of it into the record:

A grade 12 student at Ucluelet Secondary wrote this to all the MLAs. I wonder if the MLA representing the area from Ucluelet has read the letter and responded to this student with her concerns.

It isn't just the K-to-12 sector that's impacted, that's raised concern after concern about the impacts of the actions of this government. Even the colleges have concerns. The College-Institute Educators Association sent out a press release yesterday. It was a complete shock and surprise for them that they're involved, listed, legislated by this government on the issue around class size, amongst other things. They expressed their outrage yesterday that the government has torn up significant parts of the collective agreements affecting faculty in B.C.'s colleges, university colleges, institutes and agencies.

Maureen Shaw, the president of the College-Institute Educators Association of B.C., noted that no elected representatives or senior bureaucrats have raised concerns about faculty agreements. "We have been given no explanation as to what happens or what problems this legislation is trying to address. In fact, all evidence from students and employer surveys indicates that students and employers are highly qualified for the skills and abilities of college and institute students."

The bill not only attacks college and institute collective agreements, it also contains substantial provisions that affect working conditions, of course, in the K-to-12 system. The colleges, universities and institutes had no inkling. The government never even bothered to say to them: "We have some concerns. Let's maybe sit together and work it out." They just used the big hammer of a big government to come down and put them into the legislation without them even knowing, without the courtesy of even informing them, without even any steps being taken to engage in discussions with them, perhaps to find ways to address whatever concerns the government might have in this sector. That didn't even happen.

This is from a government that had promised that they would be open, accountable, consultative. I guess that was before this election, because that's what they promised then. Now it's after the election, and it doesn't matter really. They don't have to keep that promise. The new era of accountability, of consultation and openness is no longer really what this Liberal government believes. For the colleges, it's: "We don't need to talk to you." That's the impression the Liberal government is creating, the attitude they have taken. The damage, I believe, will be felt by our communities down the road.

This bill, Bill 28, is described by government as being designed to improve student access. Of course, the faculty members and the unions in the B.C. colleges and institutes have lots of experience with improving student access. They don't need a government to impose, with no consultation or rationale, language that undermines 20 or 30 years of history and experience built up in the collective agreements.

College and institute faculty fought for innovative programs such as the institution-based training support that assists income-assistance recipients to succeed in public colleges. Of course, by the way, this government cut the support for that program on Black Thursday, because they feel that is no longer their mandate. For low-income people who are trying to break out of the poverty cycle, who are trying to attain other educational avenues and to break out of the poverty cycle not just for themselves but for their children, this government cut the support for this program on Black Thursday.

The college and institute faculties bargained and achieved support for the Contract Training and Marketing Society to help make the college and institute system more innovative, more accessible to those in need of training. Well, the government also cut that program, because it is no longer important either.

Bill 28, which has been tabled by the government, supposedly creates flexibility and choice in the system.

I fear that it's actually not going to yield the results that the minister, the Liberal government, purports that it would attain. I fear that the people who are in need in our system, the values of the teachers in the classroom and the assistants who help them enhance the students' learning outcomes will all be in jeopardy. Ultimately, our younger generation's education is in jeopardy.

I will not, of course, support this motion, but before we debate the motion, I actually have an amendment to make. The amendment is as follows:

J. Kwan: Speaking to the amendment, I'm asking this government to stop and take a sober second look. I'm asking this government not to put fuel on the fire or put poison in the water of our education system. I'm asking this government to follow through with their New Era document, which they bantered about throughout the election and after the election — their commitment to accountability, to openness, to consultation and to British Columbians that they will listen.

Bill 28, on the issues of flexibility and choice, included many aspects that community members had no idea this government was going to bring forward. In fact, when the bill was tabled yesterday, it was the first time they were informed of the direction this government was taking.

I mentioned earlier that especially in the college-university sector, they had no idea this government had problems or concerns with the current agreements. This government, that promised it would consult, didn't even bother to go and talk to them and say: "We have some concerns, but whatever they are, let's try and see if we can find a way to work them out." They didn't even bother to do that. They just bring in a piece of legislation and say: "Gee. We're going to change class size, and we're going to do all of these things, and thanks but no thanks for your input."

I remember that last summer the Premier said he was going to count on every single MLA in this House, including those MLAs on the government side, to go out and talk to their constituents and receive input so that their voice could be heard in this Legislature. Well, the amendment gives the government, the Premier, the backbench MLAs and the government caucus the opportunity to go and fulfil that commitment to consultation. They can now take these bills and go out to the community. They can take Bill 28 and go out to the community and talk to their constituents. They can maybe take some time to read the many letters that they have received — some of them that I have received — and maybe reflect on them for a moment. Maybe they can go out to the community with an open mind and invite input and then come back to this House to reflect that point of view.

I would challenge every single MLA in this House to go out there and do that and fulfil the new-era commitment to accountability and ensure that the voices of their constituents are heard and then maybe talk amongst themselves, maybe amongst their own colleagues, about the question around the optimal class size for students. Is it 30? Is it 35? Is it 15, 16? Maybe go and visit some schools and see the teaching environment teachers are faced with and the learning environments the students are faced with.

Some of the correspondence I read talked about crowded classrooms of 30 students. They wonder: if the district numbers don't work out for them on the average in their particular area, where will they put those chairs and tables? One teacher talked about the quizzes and tests that cannot take place in the classrooms because it's too crowded and the desks are too close together. They have to move the class to a cafeteria so that they can spread kids out a little bit more when they take their tests and quizzes. Maybe go visit some of those classrooms and get feedback from the students and the teachers in that environment and those learning environments.

Maybe come to my riding. I offer an invitation to every single member in this House to please come visit my riding. I would be happy to take you through a tour of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. I would be happy to take you to every one of my inner-city schools, with the teachers who wear their hearts and souls on their sleeve every single day for the children in my riding and for the children who are struggling.

God, I remember some of my visits and the ones who were struggling, when I went to see them. The teacher aides and the principals were explaining to me the progress a particular student had made and said to me: "But you know what, Jenny? That student is going to move again. This will be her sixth time this year because of the family situation. But we do the best we can, and we make sure the file follows the student to wherever she ends up going so that there can be optimal opportunities for her."

Talk to the parents and PACs, the parent advisory committees, in my schools who I've spoken with and who have written me heartfelt letters that said that with the loss of the special needs assistants in their school — because the district had decided they couldn't afford it, even when the guarantees are in place…. Say to their children, to themselves as parents, that there's nothing they can do and there's nothing that you as elected officials can do for them.

I invite you to come and talk to these parents. Maybe talk to these parents and listen to their hopes and dreams for their children and for themselves.

Then, if you have the courage, say to them: "That's not my decision. It's the district's decision. We decided to limit education funding for three years — freeze it. If you lose your support, go and talk to your school trustee. If the minimum guarantees that are now gone don't work for you…." Every pocket of those minimum guarantees is extended beyond the envelope which is there for them, so they can't borrow or steal from Peter to pay Paul. Say to them: "I'm sorry, but that is the best education system we can give you."

Come to my riding. I will bring you to meet with these parents, educators, principals and students, and you tell them that. I, for one, will not accept that. I, for one, believe in early childhood development. I, for one, believe in investing in the children of today. I, for one, will support education, not by increasing class sizes and not by taking away the minimum guarantees of specialists and teachers, impacting not just the children who need those services but also the other children. I, for one, do not support that vision of taking away the much-needed supports for our system to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to flourish.

There is an opportunity here for the MLAs. I hope that maybe in this chamber some MLAs will rise up and speak against Bill 28 and say to their government, the Liberal government: "This is not the right approach. We need to go out and talk to people. Let's pause for a moment. Let's get that feedback from the community, especially those that didn't even have the courtesy of the ministers of government informing them of the changes that are coming."

Let's give this government the opportunity to fulfil their new-era commitment of accountability and consultation and openness — not to do all of this stuff in secret and then introduce it with a big hammer and wash their hands and say: "We're no longer responsible. If you can't get your services, go talk to the districts, because we've given them the flexibility. It's not our problem now. Go to somebody else."

This is the opportunity, with this amendment, for the government MLAs to pause, for the member for Vancouver-Burrard to go out there. You have inner-city schools in your district as well, and I've spoken with some of your students and parents. Go out and visit the schools perhaps. Talk to them. Get that input, bring it back and advocate vigorously for those whose voice is often not heard, for those who are faced with multiple barriers in our community and, because of that, whose voices are not heard.

I remember this. It's kind of weird, actually, that I would be saying this. I remember the days when I was on city council. I remember Councillor George Puil. There's one thing that we actually agreed on. Those of you who know where I come from on Vancouver city council…. George and I virtually never agreed on anything. There's one thing that we did agree on, believe it or not. George actually said: "It is not the people who already have a voice that need this council to speak for them. It is not the people who already have the means to access whatever it is that they need…to speak for them. It is actually the people who don't have access or the means to ensure that their voices are heard, that the most vulnerable of our society are protected."

Believe it or not, this was George Puil. Those of you who know George Puil will find this surprising, as I did at the time, let me tell you. I actually agreed with Councillor George Puil on that score. It's not that his actions actually always reflected, I think, the most vulnerable in terms of council decisions, but that's irrelevant. The point is that at least, in the minimum, he recognized the need to ensure that the most vulnerable voices are heard and that they are represented and that government support is provided to them.

That's what education is also about. We all as a community, as a collective, have a responsibility to make sure that every single British Columbian, no matter who you are, where you live, where you come from, has those opportunities and that those guarantees of supports are actually there for you. That's what a civil society does. That's the civil society that I want to live in. That's the community that I know we all want to see. This legislation that the minister has brought before us does not do that. It is not a solution to advance education and to protect education.

With the amendment, it gives us the opportunity now to pause, to stop. Go and talk some more with the public. Talk amongst yourselves, then come back with a more informed debate around these issues and, perhaps, with a new look to the needs of education. I urge the members to support the amendment and to give the future of education an opportunity to steer away from conflict and confrontation, to steer away from everlasting negative impacts that will hurt for many generations to come, which we have already seen happening now in Ontario and Alberta. We have that opportunity. The choice rests with every single one of us, and I hope the government MLAs will take these words to heart. I hope that they will support the amendment.

J. MacPhail: I rise in support of the amendment introduced by the MLA for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. I think this may be the opportunity granted all of us in this chamber to have a sober second look, whether we be government members or opposition members. I think the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant has afforded us an opportunity that can make us all breathe a little easier. I hope that each and every one of us will look at this amendment very seriously. I want to say, "Thank you very much," to the member for the thoughtful introduction of such an amendment.

Things are tense. Things are tense in our communities around the province. They're tense in this community here. In the hallways of our Legislature the mood is one of anxiety and tension. This just may be the way where we can sit back, go home, talk to our constituents and get it right, because it is true…. I know the Minister of Labour will stand up and say: "We received a mandate from the electorate to do change." He will then say that it is because of the wrack and ruin left him that we need to do this change. Whatever. Just go back into your communities and discuss it honestly is what I say. There are unintended consequences to this bill that could make our education system take such a

I also want to say that this bill isn't about education, because the Minister of Advanced Education isn't rising up to introduce and defend this as good education policy. This is once again being introduced by the Minister of Labour. The Minister of Labour? What the heck is that about, other than collective agreement busting? Why not have a real debate about it from an education policy point of view? Why have this debate in the context of members having to stand up and vote on a collective agreement bust? Why is the government forcing its back bench to do that? Why not have a legitimate discussion about education policy? Why not have a legitimate discussion about public policy and class size?

This government rises up and says that there has never been an agreement reached between school trustees and teachers. This bill is dealing with a freely negotiated agreement. Every aspect of this bill is dealing with freely negotiated agreements, whether it be on class size or college instructors. Freely negotiated agreements. When did a freely negotiated agreement actually conclude around class size? Under the regime of this government? Yes.

The memorandum of understanding — which, by the way, was openly debated in this Legislature over the course of many months — expired at the beginning of 2001. The employers and the B.C. Teachers Federation sat down and renegotiated — freely negotiated — an amendment to the collective agreement. Both parties not only freely negotiated but freely ratified the class size agreement, and both agreed to insert it into the collective agreement.

J. MacPhail: Yes, that's exactly what they did. Let's not fall into the trap of another misleading statement by the government opposite that there's never been a freely negotiated agreement between teachers and trustees, because that insults both teachers and trustees. I'm hoping Mr. Comeau, the head of the Schools Trustees Association, will admit to that, because he's a decent guy. I was a little bit taken aback by his enthusiasm for this legislation, because I know him to want to put students first. That's why — it is exhausting debating; you might want to try it — the agreement was signed by trustees in this province.

It wasn't a secret. It was open and honest, and it was ratified because it made good sense for it to be in the collective agreement. Then, when the teachers and the trustees negotiated this and settled upon it and ratified it, it was fully funded by our then government — fully funded. Don't let there be one British Columbian who falls for the misleading statements of this government which say it was anything but that.

I must say that the reason why we need to have this amendment is because not only was this freely negotiated by individual districts that signed on and by the teachers in their local unions, but it provided a great deal of flexibility that is now being stripped away with this legislation.

My gosh, this legislation is as rigid as you could possibly imagine. The reason why the original memorandum of understanding on class size had to be renegotiated was because it wasn't providing for the needs of school districts. The school districts claimed the original memorandum of understanding was too rigid, so the parties sat down in good faith — with excellent cooperation, by the way — and said: "Okay; fair enough." There was give and take, and the new language had a degree of flexibility that has now been ripped asunder from the collective agreement. New, unbelievably rigid language has been put into legislation, never to be changed except at the arbitrary will of this government.

How does that make sense for the well-being of students? Where the heck does the government get off calling this public education flexibility, when indeed they took out a section of a collective agreement that incorporates flexibility and replaced it with rigid numbers?

My gosh, I hope I don't run into a parent of a twenty-third five-year-old who now, because of this legislation, has to be transferred down the road or the highway. The collective agreement language would have allowed some flexibility around that little tyke but not anymore. This legislation makes it as rigid as is possible. I hope I don't run into a parent of a twenty-fifth seven-year-old who gets schlepped now onto a bus and shipped down the highway because of the rigidity of the language in this legislation that overrides a collective agreement that had incredible flexibility negotiated into it.

Yeah, first time around, the parties tried to get it right, and they didn't. They admitted to that. They renegotiated it, and they got it right. You know what? The school trustees, the employers and the teachers were meeting, I think, throughout the summer to have even further agreement around greater flexibility, which was incorporated into the collective agreement. All that's gone now.

I hope it's not the twenty-fifth seven-year-old or the twenty-third five-year-old in my riding who is adversely affected by this legislation, but that's all the more reason why it's time for us to take a pause, as the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant has afforded us the opportunity to do, and to go back into our constituencies and fully understand exactly what this government has done. There should be no shame in that. There should be no shame whatsoever. When it comes to educating our students and having changing conditions in a community, whether it be growing or shrinking, then we need to take a sober second look. This affords us the opportunity to do that.

You know, some might say that once again the title of this bill, the Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act, is just a rhetorical ruse and that, really, there is something else intended here. Once again, we have the opportunity to look behind that. We were told this. All of us as legislators were told this at the Select Standing

Committee on Education. I don't sit on that committee, but I took the opportunity to read the debate, which is afforded us through the recording of Hansard.

This is what one teacher said: "The highway of educational reform is littered with failure." The primary cause of that failure is the belief that educational improvement can be done without the cooperation of teachers. The imposition of a contract, the funding freeze and the creation of yet another bargaining regime ensure that this government will not have the goodwill and cooperation of the teachers of this province as it embarks on its failure-destined project of school improvement.

We have heard from teachers and educators about what they worry is the real intent of this legislation. The government is breaking a contract with parents, students and trustees when they break the contract between teachers and educators and their employers. In stripping class size, class composition and non-enrolling ratios, government has backed out of its part of the deal. That's a warning that in stripping the contract which assures services to classrooms and students, this government is paving the way for massive funding cuts. So this is a cover for the massive funding cuts. That's what this teacher worries about. It's hard to argue against. It's sure hard to argue against.

You know what? I'm actually going to put this on the table, because it's time to just get rid of the rhetoric. We can all come clean. I'm glad that the Minister of Education, responsible for K-to-12, is willing to do that, because I am. I'm glad that she is as well.

This government has argued that in 1998 the government of the day ? my colleague and I were part of that government ? intervened in negotiations on behalf of the teachers, and that therefore allows the Liberal government today, the Campbell government, to just carry on a pattern established by the big, bad bogeyman of the NDP government.

Well, this well-informed teacher says that's not true. In 1998 the government of the day did not strip collective agreements. Yes, the government faced an impasse at the bargaining table. It's true. The employers and the teachers couldn't reach an agreement, but what the government did was provide resources. It said: "Okay, enough. Take this money, teachers and trustees, and provide resources to fund smaller classes in primary grades and provide baseline services for five areas of non-enrolling teachers: librarians, counsellors, ESL teachers, learning assistants and special education resource teachers."

That's what the government ? our government ? did, and in the course of that, teachers gave up nothing. Neither did school boards. School boards gave up nothing. In fact, school boards received funding assurances that they should have had from this government. He's referring to the Liberal government. Instead, what they got was a busted-up collective agreement, a stripping of the collective agreement and a three-year funding freeze. "So don't try to compare this situation to 1998," says that teacher.

That's an honest debate. Did the government of the day have to intervene? Yes. Did the government of the day intervene in a way that supported school trustees and teachers? Yes. Did the government of the day put their money where their mouth was? Yes. Try to match that checklist, I'd ask this government.

That's how this legislation is unprecedented, different from anything else that's ever happened in this province. But what does the rest of the world think about this? Have any government MLAs truly discussed the implications of this legislation with their constituents — not just expounding on hollow rhetoric but the true implications of this legislation? The member that represents the community of Trail: has he talked about this with his constituents? They're already concerned. Even before this legislation was introduced, the people in Trail were terribly worried about what the funding inequities of this government were going to bring about. "The funding inequities are a longstanding problem," the community wrote in a letter, "that will be made worse by changes to the provincial funding formula for school districts being proposed by the Liberal government." The community says: "There will be fewer schools, reduced bus service, fewer course offerings in secondary schools, no new desks, books or educational equipment. All of that results if funding does not rise."

Here's what the MLA representing the community of Trail said: "We're holding the line on education funding." Well, that's an admission. That's the truth. "But having said that, I'm lobbying the minister to ensure that the specific difficulties of rural B.C. districts are recognized, and I am confident that that will happen, come budget time."

There we are. These government MLAs are being forced to pit one community against the other. I don't necessarily hold the member representing Trail guilty of anything other than representing his community. That's exactly what he's supposed to do. But what he's saying is: "Yes, it's true. We've controlled funding. We've frozen funding. So I'm going to make sure I go and get some more for my community — rural B.C." What it means — maybe this is what he hopes — is that it'll come from the member's riding in Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. But it's just as likely to come from the member who represents the West End of Vancouver, or it's just as likely to come from the ever-growing community of Surrey. What this government has done, by the admission of its own MLA, is to pit one community against the other, and that's exactly what this legislation is going to exacerbate.

All I'm saying is: take a pause. Go home to your communities and see whether that's the kind of war we want in British Columbia: rural versus urban. I thought the new era was supposed to promise something different — not that kind of war, pitting one kindergarten kid against another in this province.

Are our 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds and our eight-, nine- and ten-year-olds concerned about this? You bet they are. Vernon. Some of the students in the member from Vernon's community were out during the last

couple of weeks, and here's what grade 11 students had to say — and this was because the teachers stopped volunteering: "Our library time has been taken away from us, and we need that time to learn." "We support the teachers, and we don't want bigger class sizes. But we want both sides to come together." Those were quotes from two separate teenage kids — sorry, young people. That was just in the last couple of weeks, so they're concerned about class size. This legislation will provide them no comfort — no comfort whatsoever.

I'll bet you that the member who represents Vernon has not had a chance to discuss that with his community. Take a pause. Go home and discuss it with these students. That's all we're asking. But what was the real intent? Okay. We can get the real intent of all of this from another member of this Legislature, the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson — ever a colourful chap, no question. Always speaks his mind. Doesn't always toe the party line, as a matter of fact. Others would have a grudging admiration for that. I use it to reveal the truth about what he has said: "MLA Hints at Forced Contract with Teachers." The MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson hinted Monday that the Liberal government may impose a contract and end the ten-week-old labour dispute. Not ten months. He tells the truth: the ten-week-old labour dispute.

What was the date of that? Was it this Monday? What would that have been? This Monday was January 21. Oh no! It was January 7. Oh! "I certainly want it resolved," and I quote the member for Kamloops–North Thompson. "I certainly want it resolved, and I'll be pressing those within government to get this resolved. For me personally, this has all gone on far too long." Then he advocates an imposition of a collective agreement in a ten-week-old dispute. He did that two and a half weeks ago. There's the real intent.

What's the real intent of expanding class size, of putting more kids in a classroom? It's because they bankrupted the capital side of government. They've got no money to build schools. That's what the real issue behind this government is: "School Expansion on Hold."

Or Alberni. The member for Alberni-Qualicum, I'm sure, would want to go home and discuss this to say: "Guess what. Don't worry. We don't need that new school, because we're going to cram more kids into classrooms. Don't worry, my community. We've resolved the need for more schools. Oops! Gone. We don't need to build any more, because we're going to put more and more kids in classes." Oh, that'll make the parents feel good. Maybe the member should go home and at least have an honest discussion about that, because here in her riding, they need an expansion. There are more grade 11 and grade 12 students that need seats in a classroom, and this government has said: "No, we're not going to build that." They've solved the problem as of today. Jam more kids into fewer classes. Anyway, we've been given the opportunity to either say, "No, that's not the real agenda here," or go home and admit that it is the real agenda and get the community to cope.

There are two other areas that just simply need us to take a pause, because never before, anywhere, have they been discussed by this Liberal government. One is the change to the school calendar. If you look at this, I'm sure many parents of more-than-one-kid families are quaking in their boots about it. I personally have to manage only one guy, and that's a handful, but there are lots of parents who have to manage two or three kids — okay, we like to call it "raised" two or three kids — or four kids. Those kids go to different schools. You know what? It doesn't work out in a nice, neat little package so that every single little family has all their kids going to the same school.

Lo and behold, in this bill school boards can alter the school calendar. They can change the weekly hours of that school. That means they could have school go from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. in two shifts — I would assume that's what that means — or they could sit on Saturdays and Sundays, because of course, this government can't build any new schools. It can't build any new schools, so maybe what they're planning on doing is the old shift work in the same buildings.

In fact, I just have an objection. You know, it's very interesting. If you just read the explanatory notes here, you'd think, "Oh my gosh! You know what? The government can't do anything without getting parental approval," because what it says here in the explanatory notes is: "requires the board to obtain parental approval before they adopt the non-standard school calendar." But actually, that's not what the legislation says.

Here's what the legislation says: "A board may not adopt a school calendar under subsection (3) unless, in accordance with the regulations, parents of the students enrolled in the school and representatives of employees of the board assigned to the school have been consulted" — not had their approval sought, just consulted. There's a big difference. I need to get that changed, Mr. Speaker. I'm sure there was no intent to mislead parents in this province. I'd feel badly if parents…. All the more reason, I guess, why we need to go back into our community and say: "Did you know the hours of operation of your school could be changed?"

I know lots of 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds where one sibling goes to one high school and another sibling goes to another high school because, guess what, there's already a lot of choice in the high school system. I don't know whether the minister opposite knows this, but there's already lots of choice in our high schools. So one kid in one family will want to take arts — the special choice in one high school — and the other child will want to take special time in French immersion, for instance. Oh, that's a lot of choice in the system, isn't it? What it means is that given the current state of great choice in the education system already, children of the same family go to different high schools. And you know what? That didn't come about by anything to do with this legislation. It's already there. Now we will have families where maybe one child will be going to school Monday to Thursday from eight to 12, and

another child will be going to school Tuesday to Friday from one to five. I just think parents need to know that that's what this legislation says.

My gosh, I had no idea our college system was in such disarray that a government had to strip the collective agreement of college and institute instructors. I actually don't recall this ever being mentioned before. If some Liberal MLAs could stand up and say to me, "Oh, I'm sorry. You know what, member? I did discuss this with my college in my town, and they said, 'Please strip the collective agreement,'" then maybe we would feel a little bit comforted by that. I doubt that we would be in agreement, but we would feel a little bit comforted that at least you had the intestinal fortitude to raise this issue with your constituents. But if you haven't, then we have been afforded the opportunity to pause and go home and discuss. That's all.

Our college system is one of the best in the country. People visit all the time. Our community college system is one of the best in all of the country. All of a sudden it has become a problem. Is it an education problem, or is it a funding-freeze problem — where you're not going to build any more classrooms, so you've got to jam more people into a classroom to make up for your funding freeze, which is really a cut?

Anyway, just go home and discuss. That's all I ask. Just go home and discuss it with your constituents. Come clean before we impose legislation on our kids and our parents.

I'm really taken aback that the B.C. provincial organization of parent advisory councils thinks that this is good legislation. I honestly am taken aback that they think the rigidity of this legislation, which takes away all of the flexibility, is good. I have a great deal of admiration for those parents who volunteer their time at parent advisory councils, but I didn't hear one of them reveal the real issue for parents in this bill, and that may have been because they didn't know.

Mr. Speaker, let's just pass the amendment, take a pause, go home, discuss, come back and have a real debate on the intent of this bill.

Hon. C. Clark: I would, from the government side of this House, urge members to vote against the amendment that's been presented. You know, this government has made a commitment to school districts that we will deliver their budgets, their grants, to them on time. It will be the first time in a decade that any government in British Columbia has done that. We intend to be able to do that so that they can go and consult with their school communities about how they want to allocate their resources. The times have been all too short for them to be able to do that, because they didn't get their budgets in time and they weren't able to consult with parents and with other members of the school community about how they wanted to allocate their resources in making up their budgets for their schools.

The reason we have this deadline in the statute is because schools and school districts need to be able to speak to parents and their communities about what's important to them. That's why we need to deliver their grants to them on time. That's why we intend to live up to the intent of the statute for the first time in ten years, and that's why I would encourage all members of this House to vote against this amendment.

	YEAS — 2
MacPhail		Kwan
	NAYS — 71
Falcon	Coell	Hogg
L. Reid	Halsey-Brandt	Hawkins
Whittred	Cheema	Hansen
J. Reid	Bruce	Santori
van Dongen	Barisoff	Nettleton
Roddick	Wilson	Masi
Lee	Thorpe	Hagen
Murray	Plant	Campbell
Collins	Clark	Bond
de Jong	Nebbeling	Stephens
Abbott	Neufeld	Coleman
Chong	Penner	Jarvis
Anderson	Orr	Nuraney
Breninger	Belsey	Bell
Long	Mayencourt	Trumper
Johnston	Bennett	R. Stewart
Hayer	Christensen	Krueger
McMahon	Bray	Les
Locke	Nijjar	Bhullar
Wong	Suffredine	MacKay
Cobb	K. Stewart	Visser
Lekstrom	Brice	Sultan
Sahota	Hawes	Kerr
Manhas		Hunter

J. MacPhail: Well, I will continue to have this discussion in a way that I hope will penetrate some minds. Now that we're proceeding holus-bolus down the road to pass this legislation without any thoughtful consideration, let me tell the members sitting in this chamber — and perhaps the public who are watching us, either in person or on television — what this could mean.

You know, the bad, bad old days that the Minister of Labour always wants to talk about meant change in the education system for Victoria. Perhaps the members who represent Victoria constituencies will be interested in this. Yeah, it did bring change. The agreement reached in 1998 around student–non-enrolling teacher ratios meant a huge difference for Victoria. Prior to the agreement on student-teacher ratios for non-enrolling teachers, the district of Victoria didn't have one librarian. Can you imagine? Not one librarian. Isn't that awful — that an agreement between school districts and teachers, fully funded by a government, put librarians in our schools? Oh my God. Isn't that awful?

You got your way. The awful bad old days now mean that there will no longer be any librarians in Victoria. I'm sure that once again the constituents of the member for Victoria–Beacon Hill and Victoria-Hillside will say, "Oh, thank you, MLA. Look what you brought to our community once again. We didn't have any librarians in our school district, and then we did. Thank God you got elected so that now we don't have any librarians again. Thank you for those days coming back." That's what this legislation means.

I find it unbelievable that we're not discussing this, that we're couching this flexibility legislation in some language… that we're getting rid of the bad old days. The bad old days for the students of Victoria are here again. Hallelujah, Liberal government, hallelujah!

Here's what it means for teachers. Let's take everybody at their sincere word. Everybody says that 2½ percent, 2½ percent and 2½ percent is deserved and that given the self-imposed, tough fiscal times we're facing, teachers should be grateful. Even if we take a step back and everybody nods their heads and says, "You could have done worse, teachers…." Even if we all agreed on that, which my colleague and I are not saying, look at the price teachers are having to pay for that raise. Look at the price our students are having to pay for that raise, because this government has frozen education funding.

You know what? The Premier has the gall to say that this is about students. This is about good education. He has the gall to stand up and say that this legislation is about better education for students. Explain to me how giving something to teachers with one hand and then taking away valued resources from them that far exceed the value of the raise makes it better for educators, for our students and for the taxpayers in this province. You tell me how it's good for taxpayers in Victoria to not have one librarian and to return to those bad old days. Let's just see what happens in Victoria now that the class size agreement is gone. Let's see what the non-enrolling teacher agreement means for the students of Victoria now that it's gone. I can hardly wait to hear how that's good news for the taxpayers, for the students or for the teachers.

Let me read into the record some predictions from other teachers. These are such eloquent missives from teachers that it does me proud to read them into the record. They mean that our educators are compassionate, passionate, strong, expert, intelligent and dedicated. This is to the fact-finder, Richard Longpre, and it's entitled Facts From the Far North. It's from the Stikine teachers.

Says this teacher from Stikine: "The government talks about making districts more accountable for the learning of their students. How can districts ensure that learning, and not saving money, continues to be the priority when funding will decrease with the spending freeze?"

Oh, the facts and figures from the far north. At Tahltan School in Telegraph Creek, by the time grade 4 students had completed their five years of K-to-4 this past June, 22 different teachers had been their teacher. "Up to 60 percent of the students in any one school in our district are on individualized education programs." Those are what we now call special needs students. "A recent technology and industrial education continuing teaching position was advertised for the third time, and only one semi-suitable candidate was found."

And this legislation is going to be about recruiting teachers to our province to deal with our children in the far north? I predict not.

What about the budget freeze? Well, we know what the budget freeze is going to do, but let me read to you. Some of you, those of you who are on the Select Standing Committee on Education, have already heard this, but I'm sure many of us — you — have not heard this. This is from Dawson Creek, a community with many pressures, some of them unusual. I know the member who represents Dawson Creek is well able to describe these himself, but the pressures in Dawson Creek are not the same pressures that exist in other rural communities. They're often pressures of burgeoning growth. This is from L. Burkholder:

You know, my colleague from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and I have spent hours discussing these matters today. We've heard from a couple of executive council members on why they're so intransigently proceeding down this path. We could go on and on with information about what this legislation will mean. Let me give you just one other example, and that will be it, Mr. Speaker, because the point has been made. What will happen to our non-enrolling teachers when they're gone?

Let me just give you another example. North Vancouver is writing this. Let me read what this says. This is signed by not one but several parents.

Who would think that North Vancouver was a deprived jurisdiction? Well, it is. There are many aspects of families living in North Vancouver who need as much help as the rest of the province. We can't pit one rural community against an urban community, because the students of North Vancouver need just as much assistance as any other student in the province.

Mr. Speaker, there are dozens and dozens of examples. I know that every single one of the MLAs in this chamber has had direct and frequent communication from their parents, probably from their students and from their teachers about what this legislation will do to our education system. It's new information. It's new information to every MLA. No one had any idea what this legislation was going to do, and no one had any idea this is what the government was going to do — rumour and innuendo, yes, but outright denial by the government that they were going to go down this path.

I hope that by missing one opportunity to take a pause and have consideration of the impacts of this legislation, the government members will now say: "We don't need to take a pause, because we now understand that we can't pass this legislation. It will be too detrimental to our children." Despite what the government would have us believe, it will bring rigidity and lack of choice to our education system, not flexibility and choice. I hope that we can see our way clear, without blame, to vote against this legislation.

Hon. S. Bond: I am pleased today to be able to join the second reading debate on the Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act. Just as in our K-to-12 education sector, this bill is about putting students at our public colleges, university colleges and institutes first.

This bill will play an important part in enabling our province's post-secondary institutions to respond to increasing student need. By increasing their choices and by adding flexibility in the post-secondary sector, institutions will be in a better position to meet the growing and changing student need. The bill will provide colleges and institutions the tools that they need to put students first.

It gives institutions the right to determine class sizes and the number of students, to assign faculty to deliver distance education and to determine their hours and the number and duration of terms. This kind of flexibility is absolutely essential during a period of increasing demand for post-secondary education.

Do you realize that full-time-equivalent enrolment in the college sector has grown by 13 percent over the last five years? That's partly because of our province's growing youth population. In contrast to other jurisdictions in Canada, British Columbia's population of 18- to 24-year-olds is steadily increasing and is expected to grow by 12 percent or ? listen to this ? 48,000 young people over the next decade.

In addition, more mature students are entering or returning to post-secondary programs to improve their employment skills in the changing labour markets. These trends will continue to put pressure on our post-secondary system over the next decade, a period during which there will be limited new resources available to meet student demand.

Already, and it has been clear — I have heard it over and over again from students and institutions in this province — there is unmet demand in our post-secondary system. While universities can respond by adjusting their class sizes, some of our colleges, university colleges and institutes ? and just some of them, because some have the ability to adjust those sizes ? have been held back by collective agreements that contain detailed formula-driven limits on the number of students per class, the number and duration of terms or semesters and the use of instructional support.

The resulting inflexibility has made it impossible for these institutions to respond to changing and growing student needs over recent years, much less future needs. So this bill provides flexibility and increased flexibility to address those challenges within the limits of a very difficult fiscal environment. It gives post-secondary institutions the tools they need to expand capacity where there is demand and where physical space permits. As a result, students will graduate faster and enter the paid labour market sooner.

Students will also have benefits in other ways: improved access and more timely completion. We're looking at increased choice and availability of courses, because as the number of spaces in courses increase, choice and availability will also increase. By giving institutions more flexibility, they will be in a position to increase access and make it easier for students to complete their studies and move into the labour market sooner. Institutions will also have more flexibility as a result of this bill, which should result in additional courses being made available through distance education ? particularly important to those people in the rural parts of British Columbia ? and at different times of the year to meet different needs, which will result in better use of existing facilities and resources.

When students are able to get courses that they need more quickly, they graduate sooner and get into the labour market, and it also reduces their debt load. Institutions will benefit as well. They will be able to increasingly respond more quickly to the demand that students have in this province. The bill will allow institutions to shift existing resources to offer more spaces in courses, more appropriate courses and more courses by distance education.

When institutions have the ability to be responsive, students are better served. By allowing more flexibility on class sizes and by providing the possibility of extended instructional days or more terms or more semesters, pressure for additional capital costs will also be much reduced. That means that the same dollars will be able to meet the needs of more students.

Currently, some institutions have limits in their collective agreements, and some do not. As a result, some have more flexibility than others, and there are also differences in class sizes and instructor workloads. While this bill will allow institutions to make their own decisions in all of these areas, these differences will not be the result of restrictions in collective agreements.

This bill is good news for colleges, university colleges, institutes and, most importantly, for the students of British Columbia. It will result in increased autonomy for institutions. It will make it easier for them to respond to the demands in their communities and to meet local needs.

Institutions will have the flexibility to decide class sizes based not only on their resources and their community, but most importantly, on the needs of students in their communities. Issues that should be decided by post-secondary institutions as matters of good management will once again be within their control. That's good for education. More importantly, it's good for students. I'm happy to speak in support of this bill, which does demonstrate the high priority this government places on education at all levels and which once again puts students first.

Hon. C. Clark: I'm delighted to be able to stand today in this House and speak in favour of the Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act.

This bill, as my colleagues have said, is about putting students first on the agenda. It ensures that decisions about children's education are made based on the needs of those individual children. It provides for decisions that are made based on the child that presents. They'll be able to look at a child and say, "How will this child learn best?" as opposed to the current situation, where we are forced to make decisions about educating our children by mathematical formulas that have been set out in collective agreements at a bargaining table by people we don't even know. How does that serve children's education well? It certainly doesn't.

This bill provides locally elected school boards with the essential tools they need to be able to develop a top-notch education system in their communities, one that reflects the needs of their local communities. It puts class size protection in legislation for the first time in the history of British Columbia, and it gives parents a bigger say in how our schools are run for their children.

I believe that this bill is a very important step towards fulfilling our commitment to British Columbians for more choice and flexibility in our education system. The partners who were here yesterday in the House, the B.C. School Trustees Association, have indicated their support for this bill. These are people who, by the way, are locally elected, who represent their local communities in all their diversity. The B.C. Principals and Vice-Principals Association — dedicated people, almost all of whom have been teachers, all of whom are certainly dedicated to making sure that their schools run well for the needs of the children in them.

The B.C. School Superintendents Association was here in support of the legislation. They also have students' best interests at heart. Most importantly, from my perspective, the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, the organization that represents parents from across the province who've decided to get involved in their schools because they're concerned about their children's education, was here supporting the legislation. They, like us, understand that flexibility and choice are critically important for making sure that our kids get the education that they need. They understand, like we do, that no child is well served in his or her education when decisions are made based on mathematical formulas that have been set up not necessarily to serve the needs of those individual children, but to meet the needs of bargainers at some bargaining table, goodness knows how many years before. People that they don't even know, people that have never met those children, deciding in the absence of any knowledge of those children how they will be treated — that isn't right.

Our system should be based on individuals. It should be based on every single child. We should be able to look at every child and say: "What does this child need?" Then we should build a resource support around that child to make sure that child has the best opportunity he or she can to be able to learn in our schools.

The changes made through this bill are essential if we are going to protect education in these very, very challenging times. The issues that we're dealing with today are critical, and I know emotions are running high. I certainly can see from the members across the way that emotions are running high for everyone who's involved in the education system. We are working to try to resolve the differences in how our system should function. However, for me, and I'm sure for everyone involved in the education system, it is absolutely vital that we focus our attention and our resources on what's important, and that's children. We have to ensure that the system is operating at its best today. We need to ensure that it's operating at its best five, ten, 15 years from now. That means building a sustainable system that makes decisions based on what children need. And after all, I don't think that's too much to ask of politicians.

I sincerely believe that this bill will give everybody involved in our education system a starting point for rebuilding the trust that we need to have to make our schools work and a desire for working together to ensure that all of our students are getting the best education possible. I have said many times, and I've said it today, that I know teachers care about children. I know that's why they choose to do their jobs — because they care about imparting knowledge to children. That's why I, as well as students and their parents, am concerned about the threat of walkouts and continued withdrawal of extracurricular activities.

All of us are anxious for calm to be restored in the system. I know that once all parties have had an opportunity to look at the balanced legislation that we have introduced today, cooler heads will prevail. This is a balanced piece of legislation. It's a piece of legislation that's intended to ensure that children's needs come first on the agenda. Surely that is something that everybody who's involved in the education system has a primary interest in.

Today, when the Minister of Labour introduced the Education Services Collective Agreement Act, he said that he was going to give teachers a fair and reasonable raise over the next three years. Today, when we introduced this act, we talked about putting students at the front of the agenda. Neither of these pieces of legislation are wish lists for either party in this dispute. This legislation today intends instead to look after the interests not of the various parties in that dispute, but of children. I think that once everybody's had an opportunity to sit back and examine the impact that this will have on our schools, the positive impact that this will have for children in British Columbia, again, cooler heads will prevail. I believe that we can get our education system back on a sound footing.

This legislation recognizes that class size limits and protection for special needs children are important, and that the place for these protections is in statute, not in collective agreements so that they are bargaining chips at a bargaining table. These issues are far, far too important for that. They are critical matters of public policy, and that's why this government is intending to put them into the School Act. The bill gives back to local communities the right to make decisions about how to make their schools work best for their children and their local communities. It allows them to unleash the energy, the creativity and the innovation that each one of the partners who works in our education system has to maximize the value of every single education dollar and to make sure that every resource that we have is dedicated to improving the education of students.

There is no question: education dollars are as scarce as any other dollar. This government has committed to protecting the education budget. But that means, like in any other time, that we have to ensure that every dollar is spent well, that the result of every dollar is a better education for every child. That means we need to create a system that's based on children, that makes its decisions based on children's needs.

The bill allows school communities to make decisions based on the needs of individual students, as I've said. That's because we want to put students at the centre of our decision-making. I think it's fair to say that for years previous governments have believed that they in Victoria could make better decisions than school boards could make. And I should point out to the House that school boards, as you know, are locally elected by people in their communities. Their purpose is to reflect the needs of their local communities. The reason we've created school boards is because we know, I think, that Victoria isn't the best place to make decisions for children across the province. We know that Victoria can make many, many good, big-picture decisions. But the best place to make the decisions about individual children and how their learning needs will be met is surely at the local level. That's why we have school boards.

Today we're saying that we want to put those years behind us, years where governments believed that they knew better than local people. Today we're saying that we think local school communities, local parents and local school trustees also have an interest in making sure that children are well educated and well cared for in their communities.

The strictures that contracts have put on the system over the years have built a system that responds, in my view, too much to the needs of the adults that work in the system and too little to the students who depend on the system. Our students have paid the price for these one-size-fits-all solutions. The class limit rules in collective agreements are absolutely inflexible, and they make it difficult for school districts to plan in advance, because they do not know how many students will be showing up in September.

There are stories of children…. I'm sure many people in this House have heard this. I'm sure that almost every MLA has heard from a parent who's found themselves in this situation: children who have been shuffled from one classroom to another at the beginning of the school year because schools are scrambling to meet the collective agreement obligations. There are stories of students who move across the street from a school but are forced to travel a long distance to another school because inflexible rules make it impossible to accommodate them at their neighbourhood school. In North Okanagan–Shuswap, for example — and my colleague from the area has spoken on this eloquently in the House — five five-year olds had to travel an hour and a half every single day because they couldn't be accommodated in their local classrooms.

The Minister of Labour referred to an example of a first nations student in a community. I want to elaborate on that a little bit. He said that the first nations student found himself assigned to a school in his catchment area with the rest of the members of his band. He was assigned to that school, but after all the band members had been accommodated in that school, they hit the class size limit for grade 4. So that boy wasn't able to attend that neighbourhood school. That school — which had all of his friends from his local

band in it and which had supports for first nations kids, special cultural programs for those kids — couldn't accommodate him.

That young boy, in grade 4, had to travel to a different school. The school that he went to had no supports for first nations kids. The school that he went to had almost no first nations kids in it. In some cases, first nations children certainly face challenges that other children don't. This young boy found it uncomfortable to be at a school where he didn't know anybody, where there wasn't a single other aboriginal face in his school and where there wasn't any aboriginal programming for him. That boy almost quit school altogether in grade 4 because he was so disheartened by what had happened to him.

Eventually, the school district was able to figure out a way to accommodate him at the first school. He was able to reintegrate with his friends; he was able to be in a community where there were other first nations students. But that took six weeks. So that young first nations boy, who may also have encountered other significant challenges in learning, lost six weeks of his grade 4 because of that situation. Those kinds of situations don't make any sense, but that's exactly the kind of thing that happens because we have such inflexible class size limits that aren't focused on students' needs.

I'm going to give you another example. A recently separated mother of three — she had children in grades 10, 2 and 3 — moved into an apartment near an elementary school because she wanted all her children to be able to go to that school. She wanted her older children to be able to escort her younger children to that school. There was a secondary school in the neighbourhood as well. She was not, however, able to accommodate one of the smaller children in that school, because they'd reached the class size limit. So that meant that one of the young children and the grade 10 child were able to go to school together. One was able to walk the other one to class. That youngest child, however, wasn't able to do that.

We're talking about a single mother. I know the members opposite certainly express a lot of sympathy for people in those kinds of situations. Here is an example, a concrete example, of a family who was very adversely affected by the fact that we have such strict class size limits.

No one in this government will argue against the value of smaller class sizes. That is why we are putting class size regulations in legislation for the very first time in this province. We will, however, argue very strenuously against putting in place rules and regulations that make it impossible to make decisions based on what's best for children.

Then there are the click-down rules. Click-down rules exist in 22 of the 60 school districts in British Columbia. For members who may not be familiar with this term, because I wasn't familiar with it not so long ago, these rules automatically reduce the class size for every special needs student without regard for what that special needs student may actually need. Click-downs mean that schools are forced to put their special needs dollars into exactly the same solution for every single special needs child. Every one of these children is different, and they do not deserve to be treated the same.

You might have noticed that Cathy Abraham was here when this legislation was introduced. She's the co-chair of the North Vancouver parent advisory council. She has a special needs child, and she will tell you that she is fed up with her special needs child being treated like just another widget. She's fed up with her child's needs being cared for by a mathematical formula in a collective agreement as opposed to her child's needs being assessed and looked at and decisions being made about how her child's needs could be best met by what her child needs.

I'll give you another example. There's a school in the lower mainland where there was a designated special needs student. They moved to the school in October 2001 from another school. There was no room for a special needs student in that grade 3 class at the new school that the child had moved to. Three neighbouring schools could also not take that student, so finally that special needs student was bused way across town in order to find a school that could accommodate him. Last year the same school had to send four students to a different school because they were over the limit in the classes. By the end of the year they ended up taking three of those children back.

Anyone who's had any experience with children who have special needs knows that for many children continuity is incredibly important. Breaking that continuity, as happened in these cases, certainly works against those children's best interests. That's one of the things we want to fix with this legislation.

Non-classroom teachers like counsellors, learning assistants and ESL teachers provide valuable services for our children, as I think all members have pointed out. But currently school boards, principals and vice-principals don't have the flexibility to decide how they will deploy these non-classroom teachers. They aren't able to look at the mix of the students in their school and say: "This is the mix that we need to be able to deploy based on our student population." Instead, the mix that they are forced to have is the mix that is set out in the collective agreement that was brought into effect in 1998. Those ratios don't necessarily reflect what's going on in that school district, and those ratios haven't been updated since then. Those ratios may have, in many cases, very little to do with what's actually going on in that school district.

I'll give you an example. The Vernon school district has a ratio for non-classroom English-as-a-second-language teachers of 13½ to 1. Vernon has a small number of special needs students. It's an integrated community, and most — probably not all — of the children speak English at home or elsewhere in the community. They're exposed to English in settings other than school. Vancouver, on the other hand, which has a large population of English-as-a-second-language students who may only be exposed to English at school, has a ratio of 57½ to 1.

Where's the logic in that? I would argue that there isn't any logic in that, but that's the kind of outcome that we see when decisions about students' needs are driven by collective agreements, by rigid ratios that have been set down, not based on student needs but by folks who are sitting at the bargaining table.

The other effect of the rules that we have on non-classroom teachers means that some of our most experienced educators — and those are principals and vice-principals, many of whom are specialized in areas like English-as-a-second language or teaching special needs children — are not able to practise their trade in our schools, because the ratios and the collective agreements don't allow it. School boards and principals should be able to decide how many non-classroom teachers they require based on the needs of the students in their local communities.

This bill replaces those rigid provisions and inflexible ratios with common sense and good judgment. We have got to make these changes now. Local school boards and individual schools are not able to adjust to meet their changing students' needs, and they cannot, as a result, manage their cost pressures in a rational way. It makes sense for teachers, trustees, principals and, of course, parents to work together and decide on the support services that our kids need rather than having those supports determined by mathematical formulas entrenched in collective agreements. If we're serious about protecting education for students — and we are — if we intend to back those words up with action, to really introduce more choice and flexibility into the system, then something needs to change.

While some people will be unhappy with this, I have no doubt there are many, many people who will be delighted with these changes. The B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils…. The president, for example, of the Victoria parent advisory council had this to say: "Educational policy protects school services and our kids. A collective agreement is no place to set educational policy. Please do not be so misguided as to presume that government can establish public educational policy inside a collective agreement. The way to do it is in public policy."

That's one parent in Victoria. We've heard from Reggi Balabanov, who's the president of the provincial association. She agrees. We've heard from Cathy Abraham, who's the co-chair of the North Vancouver parents association. She agrees. We've heard from the principals and vice-principals. They agree. We've heard from the school superintendents. They agree. We have heard from the B.C. School Trustees Association. They also agree.

For goodness' sake, it is time to make these changes. There are enough parties in the system who care about children who want to make these changes, and the opportunity to do that, ladies and gentlemen, is today. This bill will provide school districts and individual schools with the flexibility they need to make the best use of the resources available to them, and they will be able to make those decisions based on the needs of students. It removes the straitjacket that has prevented lots of smart, well-intentioned, commonsense people who care about kids from making that system work well.

The action we're taking through this bill to remove class size limits from the bargaining table and entrench it in legislation is good for students. We set out class size limits in legislation, and then we allow districts some flexibility from class to class so that we don't see any of the silly situations that we've all seen, that we've all heard about, some of which I've talked about today, and we can dramatically reduce those in the future. September will again be a time when our children start right away learning in the classroom rather than bouncing from school to school because there isn't a class that can accommodate them.

We all agree that class size is important, especially from kindergarten to grade 3, where research shows conclusively that smaller class sizes do contribute to student achievement. That's why, for the first time ever, we are enshrining not just class size averages but also class size maximums for kindergarten to grade 3 in legislation. For grades 4 to 12 we are making sure that class size averages across the school districts are no greater than 30. And by removing questions of class size and class composition from the bargaining table, we are ensuring that decisions will be based on what's best for students.

The same is true for the assignment of non-classroom teachers, such as librarians, counsellors, special needs assistants and English-as-a-second-language teachers. These teachers play key roles in the success of our children, but the inflexible ratios that I've spoken about, which were imposed several years ago, do not reflect changes in student population, and they certainly do not reflect the unique student needs. These ratios, imposed over the objections of the vast majority of school boards, were set in stone, and they did nothing to ensure that students' needs in the individual school would necessarily be met.

Under this bill, all that is going to change. Instead of hiring non-classroom teachers based on mathematical formulas, districts and individual schools will now be able to assign non-classroom teachers based on what schools and parents say they need and based on the actual needs of those children we're trying to serve. Some schools might need more librarians; some schools might need more counsellors. Some might find that their needs change from year to year depending on the makeup of their student population. Now they'll have the flexibility to be able to assign those resources based on student need. We promised more choice and flexibility for students in our school system for the benefit of students, and this legislation delivers on that promise.

In addition to that, for the first time we are putting in some real new protections for special needs children. We are requiring that school districts report publicly about how they've organized their schools, about how they've assigned their teachers. In particular, we will be consulting on a regulation that will require school districts, for the first time, to go out and tell us in the pub-

lic and report to the minister about how they are assigning their resources for children who have special needs.

We are also making sure in this legislation that we are able to deal with the problem that special needs children have when their teaching assistant is bumped because of seniority in a contract. As I've said before, special needs children require continuity in their teaching. For those special needs kids who have a special needs assistant that might be bumped in the middle of the year, it seriously undermines their educational success.

This legislation provides for a regulation by the minister that would make it impossible to bump a special needs teaching assistant in the middle of the year just because a collective agreement says you have to. As I've said, the changes in non-classroom teacher legislation will mean that we are able to assign non-enrolling teachers based on the needs of the students in a school.

If a school has a higher special needs population than another school might, they can reassign non-classroom teachers to make sure that those special needs children have the support they need. At the moment, they're prevented from doing that. As I've said, people like Cathy Abraham, people who have special needs children, support this legislation for those very reasons.

Before I finish, I want to touch on the issue of scheduling flexibility, because the members opposite did talk about it. I think it's fair to say that the members opposite didn't really present a fair picture of what the government is attempting to do in allowing for more flexibility in scheduling in schools. In my district in Coquitlam, for example, we have a whole host of schools that have flexible schedules, and those schools work very, very well.

What they've been able to do as a result of changing their scheduling is take those educational resources that might otherwise have been spent on capital and pump it instead into other areas that benefit kids. That might go into teaching resources. It might go into textbook resources. It might go into computer resources. I don't know, but that's the advantage of being able to maximize your capital resources.

In addition to that, scheduling flexibility means that we can build more choice into the system. I don't know if anyone in this chamber has any teenagers in their family, but it may be that you have a teenage child who wants to get up early in the morning and go to school early so that they can get to a job later in the afternoon. They want to prepare themselves for the world of work. It may be that you have a teenage child that has a different clock, that perhaps doesn't like to get out of bed at 6 o'clock in the morning.

Perhaps we should be providing school districts and schools with the ability to be able to start school later in the day to accommodate some of those children. Perhaps that might be a way to improve grad rates. It might be a way to interest those children better in their school. It certainly might be a way to capture them at a time of the day when they're prepared to pay a little more attention to what's going on in their class.

The purpose of this change in the legislation is to ensure that we give school districts, in consultation with staff and with parents, the ability to build in these kinds of changes into their school system. That, after all, is what choice is all about.

The Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act is about giving parents and the community a say in how our schools are run. It's about enabling school boards and individual schools to get the greatest possible education benefit for students out of every single tax dollar we spend. Good management, increased flexibility and an absolute dedication to meeting students' needs are where we are at today, and that's where we're headed in the future.

This bill marks a turning point for public education, a turning point for every student in British Columbia. It marks a move toward a more flexible, more responsive, better-managed system that meets students' needs, one where students' needs win out over mathematical formulas, one where decisions are made by all the education partners in the system, and one where meeting students' needs is the absolute number one priority.

I am so proud to speak in support of this bill, and I look forward to getting on with the job of building a top-notch education system for British Columbia.

B. Lekstrom: It's certainly a privilege to be able to speak on Bill 28 here this afternoon.

The choices before us are difficult, but I'm thankful to be part of a government — and this government in particular — that has allowed us the right to cast our votes based on the principles and beliefs that we bring to this House.

I will vote against this bill based on my deep personal beliefs. I want to make it very clear at this point that my Premier and my colleagues have my full support, but for reasons that I indicated earlier I will be casting my vote against Bill 28.

It's healthy, I believe, to have differences of opinion, and it's to the credit of our Premier and this government that those can be recognized in this House. If each of us casts our vote based on what we believe is right in our hearts, that is what true democracy is all about.

Changes must be made in this province, and I'm proud to be here to be part of those changes. No one ever said that the road would be smooth while we made those changes, and the differences that we bring as individuals to this House are healthy differences.

I won't take up a lot of time in what I have to say, but I've simply made a choice — a choice that accounts for my personal values. I will be held accountable for those values by two forces: myself and the people in my constituency who saw fit to elect me to represent them as their MLA in this House.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to close by saying that I respect each and every member that sits here as a representa-

tive. With that, I will be casting my vote against Bill 28 based on my deep personal beliefs, but reflecting that I have the utmost respect for each and every member in this House.

J. Bray: It is also an honour for me to rise, and I rise in support of Bill 28. This is a bill that is very important for students in the province in secondary, primary and post-secondary school.

Part 2 of this bill, as we've just heard from the Minister of Education, does what collective bargaining was unable to do and puts the needs of students first.

I know that part 2 will achieve all the goals that this government, this Premier and the Minister of Education have set forth. I support every single one of those goals, and I know this bill will achieve that.

This bill also enshrines the importance of class size and takes it out of the collective bargaining agreement, where it does not belong, and puts it into public policy, where it belongs. I'm proud of that fact.

Part 1 also ensures that the needs of post-secondary students are first and foremost. We need post-secondary students in order to make this economy grow and thrive, and I know that part 1 of this bill will help achieve those goals.

However, I would have liked to have seen in two sections of this bill that government and the unions could have arrived at an agreement without legislation. It is for this reason that I will not be able to support section 2 and section 4 of Bill 28.

Now I am proud, as the previous member said, to be part of a government that supports free votes, believes in free votes and allows members to do their duty. The Premier, every member of cabinet and every one of my colleagues has my complete support 100 percent. I also know, Mr. Speaker, that I have the support of the Premier, each member of cabinet and my colleagues. This allows me to do my job the best way that I feel I can, and I'm grateful for that.

Also, let me be clear that I do support Bill 28 and all of the goals and efforts to ensure that students are put first. There are just two parts that I have questions with, and I will be voting in committee stage.

Mr. Speaker: On Bill 28, the Minister of Skills Development and Labour closes debate.

Hon. G. Bruce: While I was pleased to hear the Minister of Education rise and speak, I hadn't realized…. My four children now have gone through the educational system, as I had mentioned, and have now left home and come back to home, and left home and come back to home. I had never realized, actually, this whole new philosophy of a different clock, and you've shed a lot of light on that for me today, Minister of Education. I know, as Hamish comes along…. I shouldn't comment on whether there'll be any more Hamishes or not, but it'll be fun to watch you, madam minister, with the different clocks that will run in your family as well. Some of them are sleepy clocks, and some of them are alive clocks.

It's interesting today for me to be able to speak, in closing this bill, after several members have risen, as well, to speak in opposition to this bill on the whole basis of free votes. In my time past here in this building…. I guess it was ten-odd years ago now. After that period of time, I had reflected on how this House ran, or perhaps I looked at how it didn't run the way I thought it should have run. I spent a period in my life traipsing around the province, talking about the need for free votes in the Legislative Assembly and how this assembly could really be responsive to the needs of the people of the province. I vowed, in a way. I didn't think that I would ever get back to the House in Victoria here, until the day that there were to be free votes so that this place could run and operate the way it was meant to work.

In the mother parliament in Westminster in the early seventies there was a situation where they were working on the whip basis. It wasn't until that period of time that they allowed all members, apart from the executive council, to vote according to how their opinions were, how they saw an issue and how they wished to represent their people from their constituencies. You know, the first few times that that happened, there was a great kerfuffle. Now it happens all the time, where members in that House — members on the government side, members from the opposition — will rise and vote according to how they see the issue unfolding.

It's ironic today, I think, that I stand as the minister that had presented this legislation and find myself back in this House and have two members of our party voting against it. You know, it's because there was a certain individual that just happens to be the Premier of this province. When he came, and we talked about how I perhaps might get involved in politics again, I said that I would never come to Victoria again unless I knew that, deep in this heart, we would allow free votes in this assembly and that this assembly and the parliamentary process would be returned to the way it was meant to work.

I'm honoured today to be able to stand in this House as a member of this party, of this government, with a leader who had the vision and the courage of his convictions to say that there would be free votes in this House. Here we have an issue that isn't a frivolous issue. It's a deep issue that we have the first true free vote taking place here in the House. Mr. Premier, I think you do this province proud.

In closing, in regard to the legislation that was introduced today, let us be clear. What this legislation does is enshrine class size through legislation in the School Act. There are other issues that you've heard canvassed and debated today, but that's what it does. It puts students first. That utmost commitment that we've had as a party — as a government now — in saying that education will be a number one priority of this government, and of that priority, students will be placed first…. Today with the introduction of this legislation and the debate that's taken place, we are indeed putting students first. I move that the bill now be read a second time.

	YEAS — 70
Falcon	Coell	Hogg
L. Reid	Halsey-Brandt	Hawkins
Whittred	Cheema	Hansen
J. Reid	Bruce	Santori
van Dongen	Barisoff	Nettleton
Roddick	Wilson	Masi
Lee	Thorpe	Hagen
Murray	Plant	Campbell
Collins	Clark	Bond
de Jong	Nebbeling	Stephens
Abbott	Neufeld	Coleman
Chong	Penner	Jarvis
Anderson	Orr	Nuraney
Brenzinger	Belsey	Bell
Long	Mayencourt	Trumper
Johnston	Bennett	R. Stewart
Hayer	Christensen	Krueger
McMahon	Bray	Les
Locke	Nijjar	Bhullar
Wong	Suffredine	MacKay
Cobb	K. Stewart	Visser
Brice	Sultan	Sahota
Hawes	Kerr	Manhas
	Hunter

	NAYS — 3
MacPhail	Kwan	Lekstrom

Bill 28, Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. G. Bruce: I move that the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act be read a second time.

This bill is intended to give employers in health care and social service agencies the tools they need to put patients, children and people with developmental disabilities, who are some of the most vulnerable in our society, first. It corrects provisions, many of them the result of political interference by the previous government, that made it virtually impossible to restructure the system to make it work better for the people it's supposed to be there to protect.

This bill introduces flexibility into health care and social services that was given away by the previous government. This bill makes several changes to deals made by the previous government that put political interests ahead of the people of British Columbia.

In the area of health care it gives employers the flexibility to reorganize the delivery of services by transferring functions or staff to meet patients' needs. It allows employers to reasonably assign health care workers in more than one worksite where patients' needs require it. The bill eliminates the inflexible job security provisions that made it impossible to reorganize efficiently because of the staff layoff process that has been far too expensive, out of proportion with that in other sectors.

In the area of social services this bill eliminates three political union-leadership side deals that were signed by the previous government and union leadership outside the collective bargaining process. These deals guaranteed that social service workers would automatically receive huge wage increases when their agreements expired in 2004 — literally a financial time bomb that the previous government knew it wouldn't be around to pay: a $415 million unfunded liability.

This bill is about repairing the damage caused by the political interference of the previous government. It's about getting back on track so that we can manage vital health and social services in the interests of the patients, the children and the social service clients. The system as the previous government left it was inflexible, unmanageable and, quite literally, an impending financial disaster. Through this bill we intend to turn that around by providing the health and social service agencies with the flexibility that they need.

The reality is that our health system has been on a fast track to collapse. We've got to get the situation under control so we can meet the needs of the patients and the needs of the people of British Columbia.

The Ministry of Health budget grew from a huge $8.4 billion in 2000-01 to $9.3 billion in 2001-02. That's the fiscal year we're currently in. In July, after we came into office, we found that there was an additional $200 million worth of pressures on top of that increase of $900 million — virtually $1 billion, already, within three and a half months. I know that my colleague the Minister of Health is now trying to look after and control another $175 million in additional pressures.

The situation has been out of control for too long. After a decade during which the previous NDP government simply threw more and more money at the problem, it's time for us in this province to do the difficult thing and to get this situation in hand. If we're going to meet the needs of patients and put them first, then we have to fix the system so that more out of every health dollar goes directly to caring for patients.

By giving the new health authorities more flexibility to reorganize the delivery of services, we're making it easier for them to match resources to patients' needs.

With our province's six new health regions it's essential that health authorities have the ability to transfer functions and staff within the region or between regions, as long as it doesn't force employees to travel long distances, so that we can provide the care that we all wish for, for those that find themselves in need.

Currently, the collective agreement stops employers from temporarily assigning or permanently transferring services from one employer or worksite to another, except through the use of a really intolerable 12-month layoff provision. By introducing greater flexibility, by allowing our health authorities to transfer functions and staff within reason — there's a limit, of 50 kilometres, on how far one would be expected to travel — we will add flexibility to make decisions in patients' interests. Health authorities will be able to improve the quality of care for patients by innovating, sharing services and making more efficient use of the resources.

The same thing will happen as a result of allowing employers to reasonably assign health care workers in more than one worksite. Currently, health care workers who work for more than one employer can't be full-time. They're limited to casual status, and they find themselves with limited benefits. What if there are two health care facilities in the same area and part-time opportunities at each? Why can't a full-time employee work at one site for part of their time and at the other site for the rest of their time? What if there is a pressing need at one facility and more than enough staff at another facility? Doesn't it make common sense for employers to have the flexibility to assign workers to more than one site if that's going to meet the needs of our patients? We think it does make sense, and that's what this bill does.

If we're really considering patient care to be the number one priority, then why don't we allow health authorities the discretion to decide on the most efficient and cost-effective way of providing administrative support services, such as accounting, laundry, security and food services? Why would we tie the hands of health care agencies from being able to deliver the best patient care? This bill gives health authorities discretion over how to deliver services other than the clinical services provided to a patient admitted to a hospital bed. That means that the health employers can explore whether there are more cost-effective ways of delivering services ranging from accounting and laundry to security and gardening.

This bill also replaces unsustainable job security provisions that put the political union leadership interests ahead of other considerations. What we're doing here is eliminating that and putting the patients first. These provisions, which started out as part of a side deal between the political union leadership and the previous government, gave employees instant, ironclad job security that's out of step with the protections afforded to other British Columbians. How many workers in British Columbia potentially could get 56½ weeks of job security after just one day of work? How many British Columbians would be happy knowing that the former government crafted a side deal, with their money, focused on generous layoff provisions rather than meeting patients' needs?

If we are going to renew our health system that has so few precious resources, we're going to have to do things differently. We've got to do something about these excessive job security provisions. This bill does that. It does it by reducing the job security provisions to a more reasonable 60-day maximum. Workers who wouldn't receive more than 60 days' notice of layoff under the terms of their collective agreement are not affected by this change.

It also removes lengthy and unworkable layoff provisions that make it impossible to restructure health services in a timely way to meet patients' needs. The current bumping provisions, where the displacement of one worker ends up disrupting the lives of other staff, typically result in job changes for four other employees and can take up to four months to complete. That can happen when the health authority simply needs to change one job in the workplace. Imagine the complications if the employer tries to undertake a more significant restructuring in order to build a patient-first health care system.

Until now some agreements have provided for unlimited bumping, meaning that a single layoff could trigger a very long and complicated string of bumping. A laid-off employee will now have 48 hours to decide to bump another worker at the same worksite and seven days to decide if they wish to bump an employee at a different worksite. This is reduced from the up to 31 days per bump provided in some collective agreements before. This change makes it easier to restructure while reducing uncertainty for workers who have until now always been at risk of multiple bumping.

In the area of social services, such as group homes and services to children and the most vulnerable in our society, this bill eliminates three costly union sweetheart side deals that were worked out by the previous government and the union leadership. These deals are offensive, first, in how they were created and, second, in what they do. These side deals were an attempt to lock in expensive and cumbersome provisions that might have been good for the union leadership and the previous government, but they were not good for the children and the vulnerable social service clients who depend on these services.

The first of these deals guaranteed that unionized social service workers, who were already receiving a 34 percent wage increase over the course of their contract, would automatically receive wage parity with health employees union workers on the day that their agreements expired. We're not talking about a small increase. We're talking about a 28 percent increase on top of the negotiated 34 percent increase. This was granted through legislation virtually one week before the election. All of these different agreements were clipped together, and it really resulted in a $415 million unfunded liability. It was a somewhat unpublicized side deal, and if we allowed it to go ahead, it would really amount to a financial time bomb set by the previous government. We don't intend to allow that to happen.

A second side deal that we're eliminating virtually ended competitive bidding on government contracts in the area of social services. It did this by forcing automatic unionization on a new contractor taking over an existing contract where union workers previously did the work. By forcing a new caregiver contractor to hire the previous contractor's workers if they needed additional staff as a result of taking on the contract — even if the change in operators was being made because of concerns over the quality of work that was being done — they were forced to take those union employees. What non-union contractor would bid on a contract if they knew they'd automatically be unionized? Not only would they be automatically unionized, they would have a former collective agreement foisted on them without any right to negotiate.

These agreements were virtually a whole process of forced unionization. That was a bad deal for the caregivers in this province. It was a bad deal for the workers. It was a bad deal for the taxpayers. It's an even worse deal for parents who might want to change the caregivers for their children but find that they can't do that. This government puts vulnerable children and persons with disabilities ahead of that type of political deal.

The third deal this bill eliminates was one that imposed excessive job security provisions on the unionized social services sector. Under this accord that was established, residential care workers would potentially get 52 weeks of job security after just one day of work, compared to six weeks for BCGEU members in the provincial civil service and 1½ weeks for IWA members in the private sector.

I think it's instructive. I realize that this is unparliamentary, so I won't actually hold it up for the cameras, but this particular chart in regards to the layoff provisions…. Just so that one would understand, a five-year employee working in a job today — a non-union job, if you like, and under the B.C. employment standards — would receive, if there was a layoff, 35 days, or 1.2 months. An IWA worker would receive 45 days, or 1½ months, of layoff. A BCGEU worker would receive 237 days, or just about eight months, and an HEU worker would receive 575 days, or 19.2 — virtually 20 — months.

Now, I don't know about you, but I know we've been in some pretty difficult times, which we've seen throughout our communities. We've seen a great number of IWA workers that have been laid off and had difficult times. I'm not sure how they would feel this time when it would be their wages, their taxes, their income taxes paid to government paying for these provisions, where a five-year employee in that instance, as an IWA worker, would receive 1½ months, or 45 days, but an HEU worker, a health employee union worker, would receive 20 months, or 575 days. That's 575 days of layoff provision, a great deal if you happen to be that person. One has to really reflect on what was taking place in these past ten years and on the government that was there, which was supposed to be representing all of the people of British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, we've changed these provisions so that workers affected by layoff would receive 60 days' notice if their current agreement provided for 60 days or more. As for health sector workers, who wouldn't receive more than 60 days' notice of layoff under the terms of their collective agreement, they're not affected by this change.

These are difficult decisions in government that we're having to make today. They're dealing with provisions that were recklessly put in place by the former NDP government with no consideration for the impact they would have on the people of this province. In correcting them, we open the door to exciting new possibilities in health care and in social services. We need to find creative new solutions that put patients and the most vulnerable clients first.

This bill will help provide the necessary flexibility to find those solutions to these enormous challenges facing our health and our social services. This bill, as difficult as it is to deal with and as the challenges that it presents for all of us are to face, is right, because this bill puts patients first, puts clients first and puts the citizens of the province of British Columbia first.

J. MacPhail: I hope everybody else has settled back in their seats, because we're going to have a really interesting discussion on this one right now.

It is very, very challenging to sit here and listen to that minister talk about things that simply aren't true, bring forward examples that are just simply wrong and use that as cover for what his government is really doing with this legislation, which is to try to mask the dramatic draconian outfall of its failed economic policies. That's all this bill is about.

There is nothing new that has come as a surprise to any one of these MLAs unless they've been living in Lalaland for the past ten years — not one surprise. I'll just go about proving how we've debated these issues over the last ten years on the record in Hansard, that there were no sweetheart deals and the absolute balderdash of using an example that is a patent untruth.

It's a patent untruth that somebody gets 56 weeks of job security after working one day. It's going to come back to haunt this government, perhaps in court — the absolute untruth of the repetition of that kind of statement. The absolute untruth of this government somehow taking office on May 17 and being shocked about the wages and working conditions of our health and social services community is just going to have to be revealed at length.

Why is the government bringing in this bill? Why do we have this bill before us? Well, even though there's nothing new here, even though this government knew absolutely everything in detail about the wages and working conditions from the public record, from private meetings with individual unions, private meetings with individual constituents, with even newspaper ads describing the wages and working conditions and articles, somehow they say: "Oh, my gosh, we woke up one morning and we discovered the truth. And the truth was horrible."

Here's the nature of the truth. First of all, the NDP is the evil empire. That's rule number one. They woke up the morning after the election and NDP — evil empire. Second, it occurred to them that Glen Clark was Satan. Third, the union labour leaders were the soldiers of Satan, and they were going to strike them down. That's what this government said. That's what the ruse is, the cover that they're trying to use for their own incompetencies that just have to be revealed now.

This government believes that if they say, "NDP, evil empire, Glen Clark, Satan, and union leaders, the soldiers of Satan," that they can be forgiven everything and nobody will look to their actions. That's what they're doing right here. That's exactly what they're doing here. Tens of thousands of workers who spend each and every day looking after the vulnerable and have for decades are now having their working conditions destroyed.

Why is the government actually doing this? It just simply isn't accurate to say that (1) they didn't know anything about this, (2) there were side deals and (3) they didn't know the cost of them before they gave their huge tax break. So why are they doing it?

Some of it needs to be revealed in the context of this new voodoo economic term that the government has come up with that's become the laughingstock of all of Canada again: a structural deficit. The government has created a structural deficit, and that's why they've had to freeze health care funding. With their structural deficit, where they've had to freeze health care funding, their incompetencies in this area have forced them to rip up a document that outlines wages and working conditions for people who deliver services for patients that are most vulnerable.

Let's just look behind the origin of the structural deficit, because I bet you this is coming as news to some government members as well. It is encouraging to note that as we debate the issues and as government members have access to the truth, some of them make informed decisions, and they should be honoured and recognized for that.

What is this myth of this government, always carried with great enthusiasm by the Minister of Labour? What is this structural deficit that gave this government no choice but to freeze health care funding and therefore have to cut the real services to British Columbians? The Premier and the Finance minister have continually stated that a $3.8 billion structural deficit left them no choice but to slash government spending programs and jobs, and today we see legislation confirming that.

I'm reading, actually, from a well-known economist in British Columbia: "This claim is nonsense — an ideological fabrication to justify these destructive cuts. Manufacturing a 'crisis' of this sort is a classic" ? I love this ? "neo-liberal government strategy — create a phony crisis and then say you have no choice but to deal with it." But there's been a new element added to it too. Wake up one morning and say: "Oh, my God, I knew nothing about this crisis either."

The government defends its claim of a structural deficit by citing last summer's report from the Campbell-appointed fiscal review panel. However, as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives wrote at the time, "the fiscal review panel's deficit forecasts were based on a number of hyper-conservative assumptions. First, approximately one-third of the so-called structural deficit, $1.25 billion, is actually a forecast allowance" — created by the government itself — "a huge revenue cushion that the government may never need. Second, the fiscal review panel assumed that revenues would actually decline next year." I think it's declined by 2.7 percent, the fiscal review panel said, even before accounting for the tax cuts.

"This would be amazing, indeed, as revenues haven't declined in absolute dollars in decades. The fiscal review panel bases this ultra-pessimistic forecast mainly on a steep decline in energy prices, yet the government's own energy task force" — which the Minister of Energy and Mines touts incessantly every day, it seems — "recently stated that it believes that energy prices will rise."

Interestingly, though, it is the view of this economist that the Premier and the Finance minister don't truly believe that there is a structural deficit of $3.8 billion. Here's why.

"The fiscal review panel projected a structural deficit by 2003-04 of almost $3.8 billion, plus a further deficit of nearly $2.3 billion as a result of last summer's personal and business tax cuts." This is the government's own economists. "On January 17 the B.C. government announced spending cuts that will escalate to $1.9 billion by 2004-05. Therefore, the Black Thursday cuts will, at best, merely recoup the lost revenue due to the tax cuts.

"This leaves two possibilities: either the Liberals don't actually believe their own rhetoric about a structural deficit, or there are more cuts, and sell-offs, coming." This economist says that, hopefully, it's the former.

"These numbers also mean, quite clearly, that the spending cuts are directly related to the government's need to pay for its tax cuts. In many respects we are witnessing a straight transfer of income from the poor, in program cuts, to the wealthy, who disproportionately benefit from the tax cuts." And we can add another transfer from workers who deliver essential health and social services from their pocketbooks and their paycheques to the wealthy, under the guise that somehow the government didn't know and that these were sweetheart deals.

"The notion"? again, back to the economist ? "that we cannot afford our public programs, that B.C. has been living beyond its means and has 'the most expensive social programs in Canada,' as this government keeps repeating, is simply untrue. B.C.'s public sector is already the second-smallest in Canada, measured as the number of public sector employees per capita. B.C.'s government spending relative to GDP, the size of its economy, is already the third-lowest in Canada." What that means is that we have lean public services that deliver a heck of a lot for British Columbians, and that's what's under attack. That's really what's under attack to cover for the reckless tax cuts that this government brought in.

This puts the lie to a structural deficit. The government itself doesn't believe there's a structural deficit. It touts that revenues are going to rise for energy prices. Its forecast allowance of $1.25 billion is ridiculous, and its assumption that revenues are going to fall for the first time in decades can only be by the creation of its own silly, reckless tax cuts, so it ain't a structural deficit. A made-in-B.C. Liberal deficit is what it is.

What does this government do instead of admitting that it got it wrong that tax cuts pay for themselves? It opens up war. It rips up collective agreements and opens up war on some of the lowest-paid workers in all of British Columbia who are delivering services to the most vulnerable. That's what it does, and it does it with mistruths, by completely misleading people about what the wages and working conditions are of those workers.

It's embarrassing, actually, to keep reading the knowledgable papers in this country. It's particularly embarrassing to read our national newspapers, which keep attacking this Liberal government for their ridiculous economic policies. This one was in the Globe just last weekend. There's one of these about every weekend. "B.C. Shouldn't Expect an Alberta-Style Revolution."

He says that the Liberal government in British Columbia got it butt-backwards to other provinces who have tried the big tax cuts, that they completely misunderstood what happened in other provinces. They got their reckless tax cuts backwards, and now British Columbia, because of that, is on the verge of becoming a have-not province.

That's what they're saying in Alberta. Not because of past actions but because of current actions of this government, B.C. is on the verge of becoming a have-not province. Now tens of thousands of workers, some of whom I'm going to describe to you in a few moments, are having their collective agreements ripped up to make up for the lousy economic policy of this government.

Am I making that up? Am I making it up about how it wasn't the evil empire and Satan's soldiers who got us here, as this government would have you believe? My apologies to anyone if I'm offending on the religious front. Here's a letter from a chartered accountant. The letter came in last week from a chartered accountant in Victoria:

She was stunned, but she did go and get the official books and found out that there was a surplus.

Then she attaches the summary of financial statements just in case we weren't aware of that.

A non-partisan chartered accountant got to the truth. I have heard the Minister of Labour talk about the wrack and ruin of the province. This is the truth. Yet it is unbelievable how the executive council opposite stands up and reads from their little notes, repeating misconception, mistruth after mistruth, and somehow if they attach NDP, Glen Clark, to them, nobody'll notice. That's what you're doing.

We get it. You know what? We get it. We're a small but hardy band. There are two of us, and we know what you're doing. We know what you're doing to cover up for your recklessness and your own incompetence of a mere eight months. But you know what? It is only now that the rest of the public is seeing through what you're doing and is judging you on it, judging you on who you're attacking — the most vulnerable — in order to transfer wealth to the richest in this province.

There's the reason. It isn't — horror of horrors — that you finally woke up and figured out that, my gosh, here's how the health care system and the social services sector is run. Let's just go through who supported these things and what was on record and who knew what when about these terms and working conditions. Let's put it in the context of what you're doing elsewhere, the cuts you're making to programs and services out there in the real community, and now you have to cover those cuts in programs by attacking the workers that deliver them. Is it working? No, it isn't.

Again, to Vernon. The member from Vernon is really under a lot of pressure. His community is extremely distraught. Agencies issue a rallying cry. Is this a rallying cry that the Minister of Labour would have you believe — to blow up collective agreements because they're outrageous in their richness for people who deliver social programs in this province? No. It is exactly the opposite. Supporters of community-living agencies rallied and said they were extremely upset with the looming cuts that they were going to be experiencing — those looming cuts to agencies that provide support to the physically and mentally challenged.

Somehow this government would have you believe, though, that those agencies are separate and apart from the people who deliver the services to the most vulnerable, that you can attack the people who deliver those services but at the same time say we support the services. Those are the kind of ridiculous myths, exaggerations — I'm trying to think of parliamentary language here, Mr. Speaker — that you would think could pull the wool over the eyes of British Columbians. Well, they don't believe it, and they're rallying against it. Also, these same people understand exactly what the terms and conditions of the people who deliver those services are. It's not a shock to them. The wages and working conditions are not a surprise to them.

Here's actually what happened when there was an 11-week strike by the very workers that you're now saying cut a sweetheart deal — an 11-week strike. During that strike, let me show you what each and every one of you received — you MLAs who were elected in '96. That member received it; that member and that member received it. Here's the document from those very workers, saying what they were asking for, why they were on strike, who they were and what they were negotiating. You met with those workers.

The member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and I met with these workers, as well, and they were pressuring us. They were saying: "We've met with the Liberals, and the Liberals will support what we're asking for."

We were under huge pressure because we were trying to be fiscally responsible but at the same time not cut programs. It's on the record. It's on the record that you did that. You will have to face your constituents with what you told them at the time.

Here's what your constituents told you in 1999 when they met with you and you said: "We support you." They said, "Historically, it has been an underfunded, underpaid sector" — the community social services sector — and you nodded your head when you met with them. They said: "We deliver services to the community living sector. There are 4,000 of us who do that." The community living movement took developmentally disabled people out of centralized locations like Glendale, Tranquille and Woodlands. They went on and said: "There is a recognized need for high-quality service and caring for the developmentally disabled." You nodded your head and said: "Yes, workers. We agree."

Do you think what this is really about is that you didn't know what they were paid or that you want to get rid of them altogether? Is it really about the fact that you're cutting those programs anyway — that's what you announced last Thursday — and instead of just admitting that you're cutting the service, you want to attack the workers that are delivering the services, as a cover? Yes, maybe that's what it is.

This document was delivered to each and every one of you. You met them and gave them courage. You gave them succour on their 11-week strike, and you said: "We support you." That's what you did, and you'll be meeting those workers and the clients they serve over the coming weeks, probably in your own neighbourhood. Does that have the making of a secret deal? No, it doesn't have the making of a secret deal.

There's even more proof. Thank God for Hansard. Often I'm terribly distraught by Hansard, because they report me accurately, and I don't like that sometimes. However, that is their job: to report us accurately. What's under attack here is what people have called the Munroe award, because here's what happened. Our then-government struggled for 11 weeks of a strike, where we were trying to balance the needs of the taxpayer with the people who were delivering the services and those who were receiving the services. Finally we asked a well-respected arbitrator and mediator, Mr. Don Munroe, to come in and mediate a settlement, and he did. It was called the Munroe award. And then we funded the Munroe award.

Did this come as a surprise to the Liberal members? Let's look. I have the Debates of the Legislative Assembly of June 27, 2000, 1¾ years ago. The debate goes on and on between the now Minister of Education, the Deputy

Premier and the then Minister of Children and Families, about the Munroe award, about the cost of the Munroe award, about who's covered, about exact figures around the cost — quite a lengthy pursuit of exactly what the details of it are, what the terms and conditions of it are, the life of the agreement. There it is, on the record. I hate it when Hansard tells the truth. I hate it when Hansard tells the truth, because you know what happens? It comes back to haunt you later.

It turns out that the government knew all about the Munroe award, the cost, the effect, who was covered, the arrangements. However, there's the government denying that they knew anything about it. My gosh, isn't that too bad?

The media likes to spin this as the Premier of the day — that was the Premier who was then from the riding of Vancouver-Kensington — being in shock, that he was shocked to find out the costs of these agreements. Well, that's not true. That's not true at all. The then-Liberal opposition was saying over and over, "It ain't zero-zero-and-2. It ain't zero-zero-and-2 that you're giving these workers. Why don't you come clean and admit it? Why don't you add up all of the agreements you've made?" We then tabled every single news release on the various accords. We brought them all together and tabled them in the Legislature on April 6, 2000.

It wasn't new information, as some would have you believe. It was a gathering-up of all of the public information under one document, a full 13 months before the Premier sat down with this very set of workers and said, "I'm not going to rip up the agreement" — a full 13 months before he gave that interview. There it is, right there. This wasn't the first time it was revealed, of course, but we did put it all under one place to put the lie to the accusations of the Liberal opposition that we were holus-bolus making "side deals."

By the way, every accord was about improving patient services and education services. That's what every accord was about.

That was a full 13 months before the Premier misled workers. That's what happened. Then what did the Premier do? There are many workers today who say he betrayed them. How did he do that? The Premier sat down with those soldiers of evil — union representatives — the soldiers of Satan. He sat down with them in December 2000, so he had the information in the same year, but about seven months before. Armed with the information about what these arrangements were, what the collective agreements said and with the information held by his caucus about what these agreements were about, he said: "I don't believe in ripping up agreements. I have never said I would tear up agreements. I am not tearing up agreements." That was to the Hospital Employees Union Guardian magazine editor, December 2000 — fully informed of all of the details. The now-Premier didn't have to take the word of our government, because, of course, that was Satan.

The union itself briefed the Premier on everything that was in those documents. Is it any wonder today, Mr. Speaker, that the members covered by an agreement duly negotiated, fully supported by the then opposition, with the then-opposition fully informed, and now have it ripped up(? Is it any wonder that they're suing the government? Is it any wonder today that they're suing the Premier for breach of contract and for defamation? No, it isn't any wonder.

What are the agreements that this government has under attack and that somehow the Minister of Labour…? My gosh, once again Hansard is just going to be a pain in the bottom for the Minister of Labour, because it's going to reveal the truth once again. The Minister of Labour says: "Oh, my God, that evil empire under Glen Clark made all of these side deals, and we have to destroy them." Oh, really.

Bumping, which the Minister of Labour says creates havoc in our health system and which actually allows people who work in the health care system to stay in the health care system — which I thought was a goal we all had…. This legislation does away with the bumping clause. Guess when that bumping clause was negotiated.

I don't know; I think the Minister of Labour at one time was a member of the party called Social Credit. It doesn't exist anymore, but he was a member of the Social Credit. I think he was actually elected as a Social Credit…. I think one of the Premiers elected as a Social Credit Premier was W.A.C. Bennett. It turns out that W.A.C. Bennett, Social Credit Premier, negotiated that clause. Oh, my gosh.

Layoff notices. That's been there in the collective agreement since 1972. Oh, my God. Gosh. My apologies. I'm sorry. There's another section here that was negotiated by another Social Credit Premier. Now, wasn't he a member of the Social Credit Party that got elected? In 1982: contracting out. Mr. Bill Bennett was Premier when that was negotiated. These are the very provisions that this government is attacking now.

Oh, I see. That was the evil empire that did it, eh? Not only is he a skittish little party member, where he can move from party to party; he's willing to disown completely and attack completely the Premier who was in charge when he was a member of that party. My gosh. He tells mistruths, and he attacks the historical record of the party to which he belongs.

I asked some working people about what difference the community and social services sector agreement made at the time. During the strike we were extremely concerned, as the then government, about the fact that the majority of these working people were women delivering very undervalued services, extremely important services, at the time. We were facing a fiscal dilemma. We were under huge pressure by the business community, the corporate backers of this government now, to balance our budget. Deficits were evil. We were under huge pressure. Yet we knew how valuable these working people were, that the services they were delivering were services that government couldn't deliver on its own and that we needed those services in order to make our social safety net strong.

We struggled. An 11-week strike is nothing to be proud of — nothing to be proud of — but we were facing

huge dilemmas at the time. Eventually the matter was resolved through a mediated settlement, and then the collective agreement was fully funded. What it brought about, say the working people themselves, was rationalized, equitable, standardized working conditions.

To read from the mainly women who were covered by this agreement: "The Munroe recommendations were part of an historic award won by a group of social services workers in 1999 with the aid of their unions. This award provides standards of remunerations and benefits for a sector that has traditionally been very inconsistent in wages and benefits for people doing the same work — in some cases, even when they worked literally across the street from each other."

That was what the bargaining was all about for this sector in 1999, and bringing the rest of the unionized sector into the same pattern has been a primary goal of employers and workers. This government would have you believe that employers are fighting tooth and nail against giving their workers fair wages and working conditions.

Let's talk about what this bill is doing. First of all — irony of ironies — this legislation is ripping up a collective agreement imposed by this government. My gosh, again we're guinea pigs for the incompetence of this government. British Columbia is a guinea pig on all sorts of fronts. We were here — when, in the summertime? — imposing a collective agreement on paramedical professionals and nurses, imposed by this government — imposed by this government. Now we're ripping it up, all because of the fiscal, financial and economic incompetence of this government. Here's the pattern being set, government caucus members. Minister of Finance makes prediction of great glory in the economy. Tax cuts save the world. Revenues grow. Minister of Finance admits he's wrong. Government rips up collective agreement.

That's the pattern that's being set by this government. What next? Are you going to wake up one morning and the Minister of Finance is going to mess up another economic forecast? You're going to wake up and say: "Well, we ripped up your collective agreement. We imposed a collective agreement by legislation, but now we can't afford to pay your salaries so we're not going to do that either." Is that next? Because that's the pattern being set so far.

Anyway, there we have a group of health care professionals — nurses, lab techs, physiotherapists, all of them very dissatisfied and in short supply, I might add — who had an agreement imposed on them by this government. Now, today, they're going to have their jobs contracted out. Wow. That's doing a great job for health planning in this province.

This government would have you believe that non-clinical services, as the Minister of Health says, are about laundry and food and housekeeping. That's what I heard him say yesterday in a very condescending way: "I'm not in the business of laundry or meals. I'm in the business of patient care." As if the two could be separated. He would have you believe that if you delivered "professional services" this bill wouldn't touch you — another complete misleading by this government. We know the truth — that clinical services are defined as the service you give to a patient in a bed. If you step away from that bed, it's non-clinical. That's what this bill does.

It ain't about laundry, housekeeping and meals. Here's what's affected that's going to be contracted out in a province that's crying out for health care professionals. Here's what you did: you imposed an agreement on them, ordered them back to work, and now you're contracting out their jobs — not care aides, not laundry workers, not housekeeping people, all of whom are integral to our health care system anyway. Here's what your non-clinical service is defined as — and the media, of course, missed this completely: they're radiological and lab technologists, they're radiation therapists, they're pharmacists, they're occupational therapists and physiotherapists, they're dieticians, they're nurses, they're infant development consultants, they're alcohol and drug counsellors, and they're social workers. Those are the non-clinical services that you're going to contract out, as well as laundry services and housekeeping services.

Come clean. Come clean, Minister of Health, and tell us that these are the services you're now contracting out. It is unprecedented across Canada how you are bringing destruction to our health care — unprecedented.

Let me just tell you a little story that occurred this week. Two University of Victoria nursing students, third-year students in the bachelor of science nursing program, came to interview me. They were interviewing me on what it's like to be a politician compared to what it's like to be a nurse. I was greatly heartened by the education they're getting, and I was greatly heartened by their dedication and their commitment to their new profession. They were in third year. They have to go to fourth year, and then they graduate. One was a young man, and one was a young woman.

I said: "Oh, I'm so glad you're studying nursing, and I hope you're going to stay in British Columbia." It was just them and me. The young woman said: "Well, yes. Yes, I'm going to stay." The young man said: "I'm sorry; I can't make that commitment." He said: "You know, there are recruitment fairs. I've attended two recruitment fairs where there have been about 52 booths set up." About two of the booths were from places in British Columbia, and the other 50, he said, were from the United States. That was this past week. Believe me, he said this without guile. He was not in any way making a political point: "You know, what the Americans say as you're walking by their booth is: 'Come on. Don't worry. We're not going to rip up your contract. Come and work for us. We're not going to rip up your contract.'" He said they'd heard what was happening here.

How does that feel? How is that good for health care in British Columbia? Tell me how that's good for patient care. You tell me how that makes patient care better in this province — and that was before you had actually done what you've done. These university stu-

dents couldn't possibly have known the length to which you would go to attack them.

Is it that the workers are putting incredible pressure on the health care system? Or is it about the fact that no matter that you're getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government over the course of the next three years, you're going to give it to the large corporations and not put it in the health care system? Could it be about that? Could it be about your underfunding health care through a freeze to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars? Certainly, that's what your own health authorities are saying.

My gosh, the pressures on Vancouver Island are huge. The Minister of Labour would have it pitting forest workers against public service workers. That's the kind of inclusiveness he does.

Here's what's happening on Vancouver Island with the health authority: they're facing pressures of $70 million right now because the government has frozen funding — not for any other reason. The government has frozen funding. In fact, it wasn't the evil empire and Glen Clark that caused those pressures. It wasn't Satan's soldiers. It was the Liberal government. Over the course of the last seven weeks, the pressures have increased by $20 million. Staff layoffs — that's in hospitals…. There are 710 full-time-equivalents Islandwide that will need to be cut. They're considering closing hospitals, not because of the collective agreements but because of the funding freeze of this government.

So here we are. We have a collective agreement under attack as a ruse to cover for the cuts in services that this government brought about completely on its own. Here are the services the Liberal government is cutting — 24 courthouses.

Actually, I've got seven pages of programs cuts, so I'll just try to highlight the ones that are relevant to these. The Minister of Labour would say: "This is about making patients first and education first and clients first." Oh, really. Would those be the clients that need family advocate programs? Would those be the clients that need Crown victim services programs? Would those be the clients that need alcohol and drug testing in alcohol-drug programs? Would those be the clients that offer day care and child care? Would those be the clients who need adult community living services that have been cut? Would those be the clients who are children in care that are being cut? Are those the clients and the patients who need home support services? Are those the clients that rely on audio books because they're blind?

The very people you're attacking now by destroying their wages and working conditions are the very people that did deliver those services, but those services are being cut. What's going on here?

I got asked out in the hallway whether these bills are a prelude to what can come. I said: "Are you kidding? This is act 2. Act 1 was the draconian service cuts, and act 2 is attacking the workers left who have to deliver those services."

Let's take a look at just one area — Children and Family Development. We had a nice little service plan delivered on Black Thursday. It was all nicely redone by the Premier's Office. The actual ministry service plan was very specific about what the changes and cuts were going to be. Then it got nicely tarted up without any specifics, but we know what the ministry service plan does. The very people that the Minister of Labour says this bill is to help are having their services cut — people who live in group homes, the developmentally disabled who live in group homes — because we as a society said that institutionalization was wrong.

The Tranquilles of the world were wrong. Riverview was wrong. Glendale was wrong — not the evil empire. The evil empire didn't come up with that idea. It was the Social Credit government that came up with that idea in the early eighties, and everybody said this was a government of compassion. You're right: people shouldn't live in institutions. They should be living in safe, suitable group homes, and they need care ? yes, they need care ? but they shouldn't have to live in institutions. Over the course of the 1980s and the 1990s governments of the day, whether it be Social Credit or NDP, invested in group homes for people with developmental disabilities.

It was a relief for the families, and it was wonderful for the adult with a developmental disability. Now, what the government is going to do, although you didn't hear that in the service plan, is shut down those group homes. They're going to go to congregate care ? the new word for institutions: congregate care. Or else what the government is going to do is move these adults into family foster care, even though there isn't any family foster care available. That's what's going on.

So why not rip open a collective agreement for those workers who spend their lives and their hearts and their souls looking after people with development disabilities? Why not take away all their rights to deliver their jobs professionally, by ripping up their collective agreement as the cover for this government for ripping, yanking adults with developmental disabilities out of their group homes and putting them into some other form of family foster care? That's what you've got planned; that's exactly what you've got planned.

Of course, attack the agencies that deliver social support services in the community because you're going to shut down their programs anyway. You're ending all funding to neighbourhood houses. My neighbourhood house is chock-a-block full every single day, all day and on the weekends with dedicated social workers, care aides, child care workers, employment training counsellors covered by the community and social services agreement, delivering much-needed programs to my constituents. You know what? Those programs invest in people so that they go out and get their own jobs. They're well-trained. Adults who can't speak English have a way of having community care. All those programs are cut. You cut the programs, and then you attack the workers. You somehow say that you have to rip asunder their collective agreement as a cover.

That's the real agenda of this government, but you know what? A lot of people are on to it. The child, youth and family advocate has figured it out and has

written to each and every one of you telling you what your agenda means for the most vulnerable in society.

Now, you as a government have cut her budget — not us. We voted against cutting the budget — not the child, youth and family advocate. You voted to cut her budget, but she remains strong and is still advocating on behalf of families and children, whom you are now attacking.

What are some of the other implications of this legislation? Well, the employer can now reorganize at will in the health care sector ? completely reorganize at will. You now have the right to transfer any functions or services anywhere within the health sector, across regions or employers. You have the power to transfer employees along with the functions and the services. They can move an employee anywhere for a time-limited period with no right to decline and no posting or other rights except, perhaps, covering their accommodation expenses. Somehow the Minister of Labour says this is just bringing it into line with what other workers face, and he quotes IWA workers. Sorry, IWA workers would never put up with this, ever, nor would their employers ask them.

Draft regulations set the time limit for forced temporary relocation as 30 days in any four-month period. That means that in every four-month period a worker can be arbitrarily relocated for 30 days. It also gives employees who are being permanently moved more than 50 kilometres the right to use bumping to stay in their workplace. However, there are severe restrictions on bumping rights that have been in place for decades.

The employment security agreement is gone. The health care and labour adjustment authority is dismantled and gone. This is an adjustment authority that actually made our health care system strong. It took people who may have been laid off in one area and helped them adjust to being utilized in another area. It kept them in the province and kept them working in the health care sector. You've dismantled that.

Somehow you suggest that you've got hundreds of millions of dollars of unfunded bills because legislation was passed to bring two bargaining units together — the community sector bargaining unit with the facilities bargaining unit. Well, here's the truth. Here's the real truth: the health care system under the previous government was very much moving toward care in the community, that people shouldn't be in hospitals, that they should be in their communities being looked after in a community care model. But you still needed expertise — professionals — whether you were looking after an older person in her home who needed IV or a person who was in a hospital. There still needed to be a professional.

We also said: "Hey, in this round of bargaining, we're not going to amalgamate the two units. We will settle the collective agreement with you, fully fund it, and in the next round of bargaining starting in 2004 you can bargain as one." That actually made a lot of sense for health care. It was a way of dealing with the ever-growing pressures in our health care system.

Somehow this government is now admitting: "We're going to have to be the bargainers in 2004. Gee, we've now costed it as if we were going to have to give absolutely everything away that the workers would ask for at that time. That's how we arrived at our figure of $400 million of unfunded pressure." Well, you sure seem to have the ability to stand up almost every month in this Legislature and attack workers with your heavy hand of legislation.

Is it that you don't have the guts to actually bargain? That's all the legislation said. In '04 you had to bargain with employees as a group. You weren't committed to anything else, and now you somehow say that was a $400 million unfunded pressure. Come on. Admit it. You don't like free collective bargaining. You didn't like the fact that you were going to be asked to bargain collectively, so you just wanted to do away with the bargaining regime.

Now, the Premier had something different to say. Here's what he said: "I am for free, open collective bargaining. I thought that zero-zero-and-2 was a very bad piece of public policy." That's right. The Premier and the then opposition member said that over and over again to the workers. "I don't think it worked in terms of really negotiating sensible contracts. I'm for free, open collective bargaining."

You either believe in collective bargaining or you don't. I believe in collective bargaining — really. Yet what the Premier is doing today is attacking and doing away with a bargaining structure. That's all that was. It was bringing in place a bargaining structure that you would be asked to bargain in, but you weren't being asked to do anything other than bargain fairly and diligently on behalf of the taxpayers. You've put a false $400 million price tag on that.

It goes on and on — the attack that this government is making on working people. Its incompetence and its refusal to admit to its economic failures mean that we're here today with the most draconian legislation this province has seen. No, the evil empire and Satan and Satan's soldiers never brought in legislation like this, even though the government would have you believe that it's occurred in the past. Well, it hasn't.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for bringing real sense to this debate. It's time for us to not proceed with this legislation. I am moving a motion that I believe the Clerk has — a motion for second reading of Bill 29:

J. MacPhail: Why do I say that? It's not a hysterical accusation. It's because of the information that we've

received in the last 24 hours. We've been inundated with information, but you know what? Every single member in this chamber has been inundated with the same information, so they can be fully informed in the debate, as well, about the conflict and the confrontation that these members are bringing to the province by their overriding of freely negotiated collective agreements. Let me read some of them.

These are in the last 24 hours. That's why we need to stop this legislation. It's this legislation that is creating

the crisis and the confrontation in this province, nothing else. You cannot look to anyone else.

There are more and more of these coming in. And they're not coming in simply to our offices, they're coming into the offices of every single MLA in this province.

Why is it that the government has us sitting here on a Saturday night ramming this legislation through? It's not because of what the Minister of Labour said, because he's completely inaccurate — raising the spectre of 56 weeks of employment security with one day of work. Prove that. And if you can't prove it, stop saying it, because it's not accurate. Yet that's the ruse that he is using to attack health care professionals, to attack nurses, lab technologists, care aides, people looking after the most vulnerable in our society. This government is ramming this legislation through.

What we are saying is: stop the legislation. Stop the crisis that's being created out there that will affect our most vulnerable. Stop this legislation. Get back into your communities. Talk to the people who are writing to you. Answer their correspondence. Meet with them. My gosh, I would only ask that they meet with their constituents. Instead, the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and I get phone calls, e-mail, letters every day saying: "My MLA won't meet with me. Will you meet with me, please?" Every day we get dozens of them.

J. MacPhail: Oh, well, let me just give you an example, then. My gosh. Here's one. I received this on January 24, 2002. It's a copy. Let me just read it. Attached to it is a letter sent August 17, 2001.

J. MacPhail: Oh my god — these are the people in charge? I can't believe it. Did you hear that? Not knowing when they were actually elected.

It's a letter to the Deputy Speaker. It's a letter discussing exactly the issue that this government is legislating out of existence. It's from a speech-language pathologist. Here's what she sent to us: "At least 15 phone calls were made to the MLA's office. No response to the letter as of January 24." Are the members still laughing? Not even a letter confirming receipt. Not once, to a letter sent August 17. Not once. Fifteen phone calls followed up on this letter. We have dozens of those examples, and we'd be happy to table them in the Legislature — because of the arrogance of these Liberal MLAs, to laugh and guffaw that somehow this doesn't exist. So we'd be happy to do that.

Mr. Speaker, it is essential that we pass this amendment. Failure to do so and ramming this legislation through will bring crisis to our health care system like we have never seen before, and it will be a Liberal government, made-in-B.C. health care crisis.

J. Kwan: I rise to speak in support of the amendment. My colleague the member for Vancouver-Hastings is dead-on about the need for this government to stop this process to ram through these legislations this weekend and give the MLAs an opportunity to go out and talk to their constituents, to visit the worksites of their constituents and talk to the people whose services will be impacted because of the changing conditions of the working environment for health care professionals, the nurses, the people that we value in providing those services to the most vulnerable, the sick, the ill, the patients, and to give comfort to the families who have members who are sick and who depend on that support.

Hon. Speaker, the Premier said many things during the election. Actually, most recently it was reported in the Report on Business magazine of February 2. I got a copy of it. He was quoted in this magazine as he talks about the importance of accountability, the importance of his integrity, his word — that his word counts for something. I'm going to read this little paragraph for all of the members for them to hear the words of their Premier. Here's what he said. Maybe they will stand up and hold their own Premier to account.

Yes, the members cheer. Yes, the Minister of Health Planning cheers. The wannabe minister from Coquitlam cheers, but you know what? I wonder if they will go now to the Premier's office and ask the Premier how it is that he said prior to the election that he would not break collective agreements, that he gave people his word that he would not do that. How is that abiding by his own words that were just spoken on February 2,

recorded in probably one of his favourite magazines, Report on Business magazine?

These are not my words. These are not my commitments, but the Premier's, who said that he's going to hold himself accountable, that he was going to deliver what he said, that he was not going to let politicians get away with saying one thing before the election and then after the election deciding to do something else.

Let me just refresh those members who cheered. Maybe they can go and ask the Premier now to come into the House and speak to this question and answer this question. Prior to the last election the Premier made an unequivocal commitment to respect existing health care collective agreements. He said: "I don't believe in ripping up agreements." He promised. He also pledged to set new standards for honesty and integrity in government.

Well, we're now before the legislation. What are we doing? We're ripping up collective agreements, when the Premier said: "I don't believe in it." He goes on to say: "I have never said I would rip up agreements. I'm not tearing up any agreements." These are direct quotes from the Premier. When asked the question, "So will there be no legislative initiatives to remove it from the collective agreement?" the Premier answers: "I don't plan on it, no." Then the Premier goes on to talk about how much he cares about workers, how much he values them, how important and how hard their jobs are in the system.

For the members who cheered, I challenge you to go and ask your Premier the question now and hold him accountable now and say: "Gee, did you break your word — the words that you said and that were recorded, word for word, in an interview before the election — that you would not break up collective agreements that are now before the House this very moment for the collective agreements to be broken?"

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Just one moment. I would remind the hon. member that we're speaking to the amendment, not to the bill.

J. Kwan: Yes, absolutely, we're speaking to the amendment, Mr. Speaker. I raise the issues that I have just a few moments ago because the amendment is to stop, take pause and go out and talk to the community, go out and be held accountable on what the Premier has said and what the Liberal Party had campaigned on during the election, be held accountable and to stop this process right now. That is the amendment, and I am speaking to the amendment.

I am challenging the members of this House to go out there and do that — starting with their very own Premier, starting with their own leader, who says: "It is time for the public to hold politicians accountable. Do not let them get away with saying one thing before the election and then doing another afterwards." I challenge the barking seals — pardon me, the MLAs — who cheered at their desks when I talked about the accountability that their Premier had promised them and the electorate of British Columbia — to go out.

There are many, many letters that have been sent, and they keep coming in, from distraught community members who have learned about this bill — service providers, family members, individuals who receive the services. They are beside themselves. They're completely distraught about it.

This is one constituent from Victoria–Beacon Hill, James Cavalluzzo. He writes:

A constituent of Victoria–Beacon Hill, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps the member for Victoria–Beacon Hill will go out and talk with his constituents who deliver community social services to his riding, to the people who need the support, who need the help, in the community.

A letter from another British Columbian, Angela Leslie, who is with the View Royal community living sector day program.

The potential ramifications of this legislation are so enormous that community members are coming forward using words like "evil" to describe it. Don't you think we should just stop for one moment and go out and listen to the community members — go out to their

worksites, talk to the people who receive their services and get their viewpoint on what they think of this piece of legislation?

This is a government that campaigned on integrity and honesty, on being accountable and doing what they said they would do during the election. At the first opportunity, the government chooses to break those promises. On the tax cuts alone the government decided, instead of giving tax breaks to the lowest two brackets, to give it to the wealthiest, big corporations, creating a structural deficit.

Don't you think that members of this House, the government members, should actually go out and talk to their constituents about that inconsistency between what they promised during the election and what's being delivered now and the impact of this legislation that is before us? Don't you think it's incumbent on them, that it's their responsibility to actually do that, hon. Speaker?

A surprising element of the bill around nurses and health care professionals is legislating that there would be multi-sites for workers to be in, when only back in January 2002 the BCNU held a meeting with the Minister of Health Services to establish a floating team of nurses to ease emergency room overcrowding in the lower mainland. The minister agreed to take the idea to a meeting with the new health authorities to determine how best to proceed.

That offer was made back in early January, and now not only does the government not go back to talk to the BCNU, but they brought in legislation to ensure that there would be reorganization and multi-site placements. In fact, the labour sector had already offered to do the very thing that they are now legislating. It's not a matter of the community sector, the health professional sector, the nurses saying: "No, we don't want to do that." They've already offered to do that, and in fact there is flexibility in the language right now. Why would you the government bring in a piece of legislation that legislates that, when there's no dispute in the community and when people offer to do exactly that?

I'd like the members in the House to go and talk to the BCNU, the health care professionals and the community services sector about these issues. Why wouldn't they, when they say that they're going to be open and accountable, when they say they want to be consultative and when every action they have taken to date speaks to the contrary? It makes no sense.

We can stop the proceedings with respect to this piece of legislation, allow the MLA for Victoria–Beacon Hill to contact Karen Wickham, who is going to lose health benefits and life insurance, who has a spouse who is disabled with a progressive illness. Maybe talk to her and her spouse and her family about the impacts of this legislation, and maybe give them an opportunity to come to this House to speak on behalf of his constituents who are negatively impacted by this. bsp; "My bsp; "We bsp; "Ripping bsp; "Signed,

I know that some constituents from Kensington went and spoke with the MLA from Kensington, and I know that the MLA has said to his constituents that he did not support the tearing up of contracts. He did not support the breaking up of contracts and in fact urged his constituents to lobby the government not to do that.

If we stop the proceedings now, it would give the MLA from Kensington an opportunity to lobby and reflect those thoughts of his constituents to his caucus, to the Premier, and to remind the Premier what he's said. Hold him accountable for what he's said in the Report on Business magazine, February 2, and actually act to hold the Premier accountable. It would give the MLA from Kensington the opportunity to do exactly that and to be an advocate for his constituents, not to be deafeningly silent on this issue but to actually speak up. Be the voice that he said he would be during the election in representing his constituents. Be that voice.

There are many letters from many people throughout British Columbia who have grave concerns about the direction of this government on this bill. They want government to listen to them, to pay attention to what

they're saying because it impacts real lives in a real way. It's not just some obscure people out there who are just doing a job. It's more than that because the services they deliver make a difference in peoples' lives. That's why we need to stop and pause and take a moment to go out and talk to the people, to find solutions and to work out solutions that have already been offered by nurses and health care professionals about reorganizing the workplace, transfers of workers in the workplace.

There is no need to rush through in one weekend, to pass it through with the speed of lightning without allowing for the community to speak on the issue. There's no need for that. The need is a self-imposed need created by the government. Perhaps they want to do this because they want to create an illusion to cover up what's really behind the agenda and disallow those truths and those viewpoints to surface, to try and stifle debate, to try and disallow the community to speak their minds and to be heard — for their voice to be heard in this chamber, for their voice to be heard and reflected through the actions of the government members in this House.

"The passing of Bill 29 greatly disturbs me," writes Owen McGwen in another letter from Victoria–Beacon Hill.

These are strong, strong feelings from the constituency of Victoria–Beacon Hill. They were writing letter after letter after letter when they learned of this bill, and it hasn't been that much time since then. The bill was introduced only yesterday, and letters are flooding into our offices — just flooding into our offices, with people expressing their points of view. They want to say: "We want you, the member for Victoria–Beacon Hill, to hear these words, to heed these words and to speak in the House on our behalf." These constituents are saying: "Talk to us. Listen to us. Come and see the work we do and see what happens in our community."

Mr. Speaker, I think it is essential that we support the amendment, that we stop the proceedings on this bill and allow for every one of the government MLAs, including myself and my colleague the member for Vancouver-Hastings to go out and talk to our constituents, to receive their feedback with respect to this piece of legislation and come back to the House to have another debate on this matter at another time. I urge the members to support this amendment.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. members, we are debating the amendment to Bill 29. On the amendment, the Minister of Skills Development and Labour.

Hon. G. Bruce: I rise to speak in opposition to this amendment. We have heard the members opposite talk about the need for consultation, and they've gone on at great length about the need for consultation through this province. This party, in the fall of 2000, conducted a dialogue on health throughout the province to 28 different communities, I believe it was. Extensive presentations were made, all concerning the situation in health care and the fact that people were concerned about what was happening in regard to the health care system.

More recently than that, the Select Standing Committee on Health tabled this report, called Patients First, which I'm sure all members have seen. Just to refresh everybody's memory, this committee visited ten communities over 30 days during October and November. The committee heard from more than 350 witnesses and received more than 700 written submissions.

To quote from the press release, solutions to ensure that the health care system was improved "…were as diverse as the population itself but have highlighted the need for restructuring the regional model of health care delivery."

The Select Standing Committee on Health had representatives from this House, including the members for Delta South, Saanich South, Victoria–Beacon Hill, Cariboo South, Maple Ridge–Mission, Skeena, Vancouver-Fraserview, Powell River–Sunshine Coast, Burnaby-Edmonds, Nelson-Creston and, of course, Vancouver-Hastings — one of the two members opposite suggesting that we continue to delay.

This is a serious bill. I understand the ramifications of it. We have a serious situation that is there today presenting to us in regards to health care in this province. We have a Minister of Health Planning and a Minister of Health Services who have been working hard to bring about the necessary changes so that we can get our system working properly again.

This government has said that we are going to put patients first. We're not going to delay. Work needs to be undertaken. We're here this evening, and we'll carry on with the work that's before us.

	YEAS — 2
MacPhail		Kwan
	NAYS — 72
Falcon	Coell	Hogg
L. Reid	Halsey-Brandt	Hawkins
Whittred	Cheema	Hansen
J. Reid	Bruce	Santori
van Dongen	Barisoff	Nettleton
Roddick	Wilson	Masi
Lee	Thorpe	Hagen
Murray	Plant	Campbell
Collins	Clark	Bond

de Jong	Nebbeling	Stephens
Abbott	Neufeld	Coleman
Chong	Penner	Jarvis
Anderson	Orr	Harris
Nuraney	Brenzinger	Belsey
Bell	Long	Mayencourt
Trumper	Johnston	Bennett
R. Stewart	Hayer	Christensen
Krueger	McMahon	Bray
Les	Locke	Nijjar
Bhullar	Wong	Suffredine
MacKay	Cobb	K. Stewart
Visser	Lekstrom	Brice
Sultan	Sahota	Hawes
Kerr	Manhas	Hunter

J. Kwan: Speaking to the main motion. Maybe I should just give a few moments for members who may wish to leave the House.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. members, if you wish to leave the chamber, please do so quickly and quietly. Thank you.

J. Kwan: Before we took the vote, I was talking about the Premier's word on being held accountable, when he said that he will hold himself accountable and he asks the voters to hold him accountable. There were two members in this House who said that they would hold the Premier accountable. I actually didn't see them rise up to go and talk to the Premier about making sure that he's held accountable on not ripping up contracts, something that he had promised before the election.

But that wasn't the only thing that the Premier promised. There was another question that was asked at this exclusive interview that was on tape, that's now been recorded in writing. The question was asked by the person writing for the Guardian: does a 48-year-old housekeeper, who has finally, after decades of struggle, come up to the average wage in B.C., have anything to worry about in terms of privatization from the Premier's government, the Liberal government? The Premier responds: "I say no. What she's going to find is that people in British Columbia and the government are recognizing the value of the work she does. Most importantly, she's going to find the quality of work she's able to do more rewarding and more fulfilling."

Then the question: "You have gone on record saying that the B.C. Liberals have always supported pay equity. Can you elaborate?" The Premier responds: "As far as I'm concerned, we always have. Clearly I don't want people paid different amounts of money because of their gender."

The legislation before us attacks the provisions of pay equity for many of the social service sector workers and health care professionals, the lowest-paid workers in British Columbia. I guess now they wouldn't be the lowest-paid workers because of the six bucks campaign that has now been put on by this government and been imposed on British Columbians.

You know what? The pay equity provision was fought for long and hard by these workers who provide critical aid to our family members and community members who are in need of help. The Premier promised in this interview that people have nothing to worry about. The 48-year-old housekeeper who took decades of struggle to bring up the wage for herself has nothing to worry about from privatization. Now the legislation that's tabled before us is talking about contracting out her work, contrary to what the Premier said — that she has nothing to worry about.

The Premier says he supports pay equity, that he does not believe in different amounts of money because of gender. The people who fought for and won the pay equity provisions have just been wiped out by this legislation. Just as valid, I guess, as the words of the Premier prior to the election when he said he would support pay equity.

You know, it's not just the people that he made these promises to, who provided the services, who received these services, who are concerned about it. Other people are concerned about it, too. According to John Winter, the president of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, who I know the Premier knows well, the business community said: "It would clearly be a concern if they" — that is the Liberal government — "started opening up these contracts and walking away from them. A government that unilaterally broke signed contracts would not provide the element of certainty that's key for business, and if there's a notion that government is not good on its word, then we have a problem." That was said on the Voice of the Province, December 12, 2001 — not that long ago. Less than a couple of months ago, these words were said.

The business community is concerned. Imagine, if you have a government that can just break a contract, just like that, even though they said they wouldn't, what message is being sent to the business community. Those that I know the Liberals want to invite to invest in British Columbia — what are they going to think on the question around stability, integrity and honesty? When they look at what the Premier said on the days of the election and, immediately after the election, his actions, they do not measure up. The words and the actions do not equate. They're contrary to each other. What's the business community going to think of that?

Not only that, not only can you break contracts, but this piece of legislation legislates the fact that when contracts are broken, governments cannot be sued. There is no legal recourse available to you — the fundamental right, the democratic right of going to the court system to seek justice, particularly on issues around contracts. They're not just contracts; they're not just words that are exchanged. They're legally binding contracts that were signed knowingly by all the parties. They're legal contracts that were signed, contracts that this government and this Premier had said they would respect.

I know that the government members would want people to believe that somehow there has been a sweetheart deal on these issues, but the facts are differ-

ent. The facts do not speak to that. My colleague from Vancouver-Hastings has already gone on at length to dispel the untruths that the minister has tried to convey. She has already done that, but I just want to add a few more words to this.

The collective agreement speaks to contracting out, and the legislation speaks to contracting out and the breaking of those provisions. The minister from the retread Socred government, who is now the new-era Liberal minister, wearing different names at different times at different stages…. Perhaps his memory fades, but let me remind him: the contracting out provisions were brought in, in 1982. The collective agreement provisions on contracting out are the norm in bargaining relationships.

Bumping. Bumping provisions somehow mysteriously appeared in collective agreements. It's not so mysterious, because those were introduced in 1968. Bumping was first introduced in the HEU hospital collective agreement in 1968. They weren't mysterious. They weren't brought in by the previous government; it was before that. Actually, hon. Speaker, you would recall that too. Yes, you would indeed, because you, too, were part of that era back then.

Severance allowance — 1972 was when that was brought back. Like most collective agreements, the health sector deals contain severance provisions which date back to at least 1972. That is not news. It wasn't introduced last week or in the last government, it was introduced back in 1972.

The social service Munroe agreement was introduced by the previous government in 1999. Was it a backroom deal? Absolutely not.

I actually understand, you see. I know that the members in the House on the government side are suffering from selective memory. They may not recall that back in 1999 the arbitrator, Don Munroe, had ended an 11-week strike. Vocal voices of the community lobbied long and hard for the Munroe agreement to address issues of pay equity and issues of bringing the lowest wage earners in British Columbia, who provide health services amongst other services to British Columbians, to a level playing field. That came through in the Munroe report.

I remember it really well, and it was very public in 1999. I was a backbench MLA then from the government side. I remember the community and social services sector people coming to my office and lobbying and picketing for changes in the adoption of the Munroe report. I remember inviting them into my constituency office, and we sat down and had tea. They explained to me clause by clause by clause what they were advocating for and what changes they were demanding. Then I remember going back and in my caucus discussions expressing those viewpoints.

There was nothing secret about it. It was open for the world to see. It was reported in the paper. Some of the MLAs that were elected then would have received these packages, because they sent it to everyone. Every member in the House, I believe, received the package that they sent out. There was nothing secretive about it. They went and briefed everybody — anybody who would listen. That is the truth, hon. Speaker.

The legislation before us I think speaks very clearly to the workers in the field and the people who receive the services from these workers in a very simple way with one message: "We don't value your work. We don't value the services that you provide to community members." That is very troubling.

It is also contrary to what the Premier has said when he was asked the question: "Put yourself in the shoes of an HEU member; what do you think their workday is like? What is it like on the front lines now in a fairly difficult time in B.C.'s health care system?" The Premier's response: "It's pretty tough. I think it's pretty stressful for HEU workers now."

Most workers in the health care system on the front line are working extremely hard under very difficult circumstances, and they're worried. They're worried about whether or not they are able to deliver the services that people expect of them and that they want to provide to people. I've heard that from HEU workers. I've heard it from nurses. I've heard it from physicians in the health care system. I think that the politicalization of health care doesn't help them at all. I think they're trying to provide excellent service, and they understand how important the service is to people. I know that they're under a lot of strain and a lot of stress. The question always in their mind is: is this person or these people that we're now supposedly caring for — are we able to do that? There are days, I'm sure, when they go home and they get exhausted, and they wonder how they're going to start the day the next day. There is a lot of pressure on them right now.

If these words from the Premier prior to the election were genuine and sincere, then the onus is on him to reflect that in his actions now as the Premier. If he doesn't, it sends a clear signal to everyone that he didn't mean those words. He did not mean those words. He just said it because he wanted to pretend and create the illusion that he really did care and that he was going to change for the better, with patient care first in mind.

So far, from what I've seen, none of that has happened. What is the top priority for this government? The top priority has been giving big tax breaks to the wealthiest British Columbians and tax cuts for big corporations, and not only that, but taking away services and supports from the most vulnerable in the community, taking away those services to fund these big tax cuts.

This so-called structural deficit is created by the Liberal government themselves — almost $2 billion for big tax cuts that would not generate revenue back into general revenues for health care services, for education and for other services that community members depend on the government to deliver. This structural deficit is a creation by the Liberal government, and the people who are paying for it are the people who depend on government services: health care sector services, social community workers, health care professionals, nurses. They are the ones who are paying for it.

There's a letter signed by Joanne Dyck from Sorrento, B.C., and it is a very interesting letter. She says:

Hon. Speaker, these are the real impacts of this piece of legislation. These are the real words of the people who are delivering those services, who serve their clients, who see their clients day in and day out. After years of service to them, they need to be considered. Their voice needs to be heard. They need to be listened to, not in a patronizing way but in a real way.

Where is the Minister of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services on this issue? Why isn't he delivering what he promised at this all-candidates meeting in Salmon Arm when the election was underway? Why wouldn't he do that?

The legislation talks about the community members who've had their contract broken and limiting their ability to bring the matter before the courts — a legal right that ought to be afforded to them in any democracy, in any civilized society. The very basic foundation of our democratic right is the right to go to the court system and to seek justice.

This government, by the stroke of a pen, has decided that these community people do not have that right, that justice will not be afforded to them. Maybe it's because 24 courthouses are going to be closed throughout British Columbia. That was announced through Black Thursday, on January 17.

Maybe that's really the reason why, but I suspect not. I believe this is a fundamental breach of the community's rights under the Charter — the right to justice. I thought that's what Canada stands for. I thought that's what British Columbia is about — the right for an individual to have their day in court, to ensure that justice is afforded to everyone. This legislation bars people from access to that day in court, to their day for justice. Right off the top it eliminates the opportunity for them to bring the matter to court.

"No action for damages or compensation may be brought against the government or any person because of this act"— irrespective of the fact that it breaks a legally binding contractual agreement. Where's the justice in that? If the government so believes in their action, why would they have to put in a provision to disallow the people to seek their day in court? Let the judges, who are completely independent, decide on whether or not the breaking of contracts is a legal thing to do. Let the independent judges, the members of the bench, make that decision. It's not for the government members to decide unilaterally that people's right to their day in court is taken away just because they want to, just because they feel like it. It is absolutely an affront to our democratic system, to our system of justice.

The legislation goes on to legislate the nurses, the health care professionals, on the issues around multi-worksite assignment rights, on the right to reorganize service delivery, when the fact of the matter is…. The Minister of Health Services should know this, because the BCNU actually met with him and offered the opportunity to do exactly that, but the minister decided

Mr. Speaker: Thank you, hon. member. The amendment is in order. Please proceed.

J. Kwan: I've tabled the amendment to allow for a six-month period for consultation and for input from community members, all those who have expressed concerns and who are sending letters that are flooding into the office of the opposition caucus, and to allow for the members to go out, go home, back to their communities and talk to their constituents. I know I've said this before, but I really do urge the members to go and visit the worksites, to visit the people who are receiving these services who would be impacted by these services and speak with them. Talk to the people who receive services — to this person who's received 20 years of service, who's been in the field for 20 years — to make sure that they hear and see firsthand the impact of this legislation.

I actually think that words are not enough to convince the government members. I really don't think so. But if they take the time to go out and visit these individuals and talk to them directly, there might be some impact on them. They might actually change their minds, especially the backbench MLAs. They might. I think that stopping for just a few moments to make sure that opportunity is afforded in fairness to all British Columbians…. I think we need to do that.

There's no urgency to rush through this matter. In fact, it's interesting, because it will actually give the Minister of Labour and the Premier a chance to get their lines straight. The Minister of Labour in this House says: "This has to happen because it's a financial matter. It must happen." The Premier, just now, a short while ago on CKNW, did an interview and said: "It's not about financial issues at all. It's about giving more flexibility to management." Well, if nothing else, just stop and give some time for the Minister of Labour and the Premier to work out their stories and their lines, to see which it is. Is it financial, or is it management and flexibility? Because the Premier just said on CKNW, as I understand, that it's not about money; it's about flexibility and management. So if we stop right now…. If what I understand from CKNW's report is accurate, there's a discrepancy. It would be wise for the Liberal government to sort that out before they move on to the next stage.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. member, if I might just interrupt you for a moment. It has been brought to my attention that it is a well-established parliamentary practice that in moving an amendment, a member speaks both to the main question and to the amendment which they are moving in their one speech. This is Beauchesne, sixth edition. When the time allocated to the member to debate the main motion is also applied to the amendment, I have to remind you that your time has now expired.

The Leader of the Opposition, however, has the right to speak to the amendment for a two-hour time period if she so desires.

J. Kwan: Then I will just wrap up by saying that I urge the members to vote in support of this amendment so that you can go out for a six-month period to talk to your constituents, receive their feedback and bring that feedback into this House so that we can have an informed debate. I urge the members to do that.

Mr. Speaker: On the amendment to hoist the bill for six months, the Leader of the Opposition.

J. MacPhail: When you brought the rules to the attention of the House, I noticed a great rumbling of support for my being able to address the amendment for two hours, and I was heartened by that, I must say — to know how this chamber values the words that I bring forward. I thank my hon. colleagues for that great motion of support.

It won't require two hours of debate. But I do think that the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant has brought a very salient point to the debate here in the Legislature that's heightened by her motion to hoist this legislation. That is the late-breaking news, literally, of the discrepancy between the agenda of the government as it's articulated outside the House and what the Minister of Labour is saying inside this chamber.

We attach no evil intent to the discrepancy, but there is a huge discrepancy. I think it is time that British Columbians themselves were able to engage directly with their MLAs about what is the true intent. You've seen it over and over today and yesterday and in a dramatic news conference led by the Minister of Labour, the news releases of the government. We were told over and over and over again that there was $415 million of unfunded pressures as a result of these sweetheart deals.

That has been broken wide open as being simply inaccurate and misleading, but now we hear that the Minister of Labour wasn't correct in articulating the intent of the legislation. The Premier himself has said this won't save money. It's not a cost-saving exercise; it's about giving management rights. Yes, I see this is coming as news to the Liberal MLAs as well, and rightfully so, because it's what the Premier said outside of the chamber very recently.

I think it's incumbent upon all of us, then, to go back into our home communities and say: "Look, we have a government here that's radically changing the health care system, not to bring greater resources to the health care system but to give management unfettered rights." You know, management doesn't deserve unfettered rights. If the government wants to give greater

flexibility in an unfettered way to management, they need to allow the public to have input into this.

There have been occasions over and over, demonstrated through the collective bargaining process, where working people have brought to the attention of management greater efficiencies, greater cost-saving exercises, greater patient care, more responsible patient care and more compassionate patient care and where the collective bargaining process has brought forward greater efficiencies but greater input to our health system.

It would be an entirely different debate, I would hope, that we would be having as MLAs about this new information that this is to give management greater flexibility. I expect there would be many who would be very troubled by that.

Mr. Speaker, it is incumbent upon us — and, particularly, upon the government caucus MLAs — to be very clear on what their government's intent is here. Now we're not. We're confused. We're terribly confused about this. If the government thinks somehow that this isn't about cost-saving, because they're going to give greater flexibility to management so that they can contract out services — not save any money but just privatize services — then I'm sure the public would want to have a say in that.

I'm sure many British Columbians would want to understand why this government is so hell-bent on contracting out and privatizing if it's not going to save money. I want very much, Mr. Speaker, to urge my colleagues from throughout the province, all the MLAs in this Legislature: "Please don't proceed with this far-reaching, wide-ranging, irreversible legislation if you're not clear on what it is that you wish to achieve."

The Premier campaigned on being open and accountable. Well, this simply is a case where that's not going to happen. British Columbians will wake up tomorrow more confused than ever by the mixed messages they're receiving, and these issues are far, far too important to allow them to be voted upon, passed and imposed in a state of such confusion and uncertainty. Too many lives are literally at risk, and too many families will be irreparably harmed by this legislation.

Let me just read one letter from a person who, my gosh, is so articulate in what the consequence of this legislation may mean. He lives in Kamloops, and his name is Peter Kerek. He actually addresses this directly to the Speaker — to you, Mr. Speaker.

This is, again, what I referred to earlier. I pause from the correspondence to say that the government's real intent is to shut down group homes and have people put into lower-cost family foster care. This care worker is addressing that question, and he goes on:

J. MacPhail: Yes, it is, actually — heartfelt, terribly heartfelt — but I won't read it into the record.

Now we see that perhaps this person, this constituent writing from Kamloops, maybe has the agenda right. It isn't about cost saving; it's about privatizing and contracting out. All of the professional expert care that over the years has been built up to offer the developmentally disabled is put at risk because of the government's agenda to give greater flexibility by contracting out to employers.

Mr. Speaker, we have had a very reasoned and very thoughtful debate, not because of the volume of participation ? definitely not ? but we have had calm, rea-

soned debate in this chamber. I have no idea what the fear is of government caucus members for having that same calm, reasoned debate in their own constituencies.

We can have that debate, and perhaps the government caucus MLAs will come back to the chamber, weeks, months from now, and say: "Yes, even after we talked to our constituents, we're on the right track." It is incumbent upon them to at least have that debate, because without that debate and that honesty and openness and accountability with the government caucus members' own constituents, they then have to be responsible for their actions ? solely responsible.

They cannot say, if and when their actions fail and people are put at risk and endangered, that it was what the public wanted, because they don't have that mandate now. All we ? my colleague from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant and I ? are asking the government to do is to go out and get a mandate from your constituents before you impose this legislation.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. members, we are voting on the amendment to Bill 29. I will read the amendment so there is no misunderstanding. Moved by the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant that the motion for second reading be amended by deleting the word "now" and substituting, therefore, the words "six months hence."

	YEAS — 2
MacPhail		Kwan
	NAYS — 72
Falcon	Coell	Hogg
L. Reid	Halsey-Brandt	Hawkins
Whittred	Cheema	Hansen
J. Reid	Bruce	Santori
van Dongen	Barisoff	Nettleton
Roddick	Wilson	Masi
Lee	Thorpe	Hagen
Murray	Plant	Campbell
Collins	Clark	Bond
de Jong	Nebbeling	Stephens
Abbott	Neufeld	Coleman
Chong	Penner	Jarvis
Anderson	Orr	Harris
Nuraney	Brenzinger	Belsey
Bell	Long	Mayencourt
Trumper	Johnston	Bennett
R. Stewart	Hayer	Christensen
Krueger	McMahon	Bray
Les	Locke	Nijjar
Bhullar	Wong	Suffredine
MacKay	Cobb	K. Stewart
Visser	Lekstrom	Brice
Sultan	Sahota	Hawes
Kerr	Manhas	Hunter

Hon. C. Hansen: This bill that is before us does not provide us with any solutions to the challenges that we're facing in health care, because quite frankly, there are no easy solutions. The pressures facing our health care system are severe, and they're growing. They're growing every day, far beyond anything that lends itself to a quick fix.

If we're going to put patients first, and we in this government are absolutely committed to putting patients first, then we need to enable our health authorities around this province to get the greatest possible benefit to health care, to patients, that every health care dollar will allow. It is a big job, and the results will not be instantaneous, but it's a job that must be done. This bill provides health authorities with the tools that they need to get that job done, to focus the system on patient care, to find new efficiencies and to come up with the innovative solutions that we are all so anxious to see.

We have a huge problem in health care with sustainability. The health care system as it is structured right now is not going to last. It is facing collapse, and we as a government, as legislators, have an obligation to individual British Columbians and to the patients of this province to provide the strong leadership that is necessary to ensure that the needs of patients can be met tomorrow, next year, the year after, ten years from now and 20 years from now. Those are not easy solutions that we have to impose to make sure that our health care system is in fact sustainable.

A decade ago the government of British Columbia devoted about a third of its budget to health. Last year it came in at 38.9 percent, and it's growing. It has an appetite to consume more and more health dollars. Those aren't dollars that simply fall out of the air. Those are dollars that have to be put into the health care system at the expense of other programs that we have heard about from our constituents and that are dear to everybody's heart. Yet we have to ensure that we have the resources to ensure that these are sustainable.

Health care costs in British Columbia over this period of time have grown three times faster than British Columbia's economy. That is not sustainable. Labour costs in British Columbia are by far the largest factor in health care, and in British Columbia we have the highest labour costs of any province in Canada.

For non-clinical support service staff our province's wage rates are up to 30 percent higher than the rest of Canada. In an interesting statistic, you may have heard that for more years than not over the last ten, our health care spending per capita has been the top of any province in Canada. Right now, we're actually at about number two. I think we may have been number three for one year. But more often than not over the last ten years, we have been the number one spender on health care per capita of any province.

Now if you look at all of the different cost components that make up health care spending across Canada, labour rates are the biggest chunk. If you take that amount of money out of what we spend in health care

today on labour, on wage rates, if you remove that cost and you replace that cost with what we would be spending on health care if we spent the Canadian average for labour rates, we would not be number one spending per capita. We would not be number two. We would be number eight. So, in other words, if we had the Canadian average labour rates in Canada instead of the labour rates we have today, our spending on health care would be eighth out of ten provinces.

We made a promise to British Columbians in the election campaign that we would maintain a health care budget of $9.3 billion and would increase that budget as revenues to the province increased as a result of economic growth. We have been facing some big challenges when it comes to the budgets in this province, but we have delivered on our promise to make sure that that health care budget is not reduced. In fact, the Minister of Finance in his economic update last summer provided for an extra $200 million to go into that health care budget to bring it up to its current level of $9.5 billion.

Even if we are faced with no reductions to that budget over the next couple of years, we are facing huge cost pressures. In the next three years we are facing cost pressures on the health care system of $1.5 billion, if we were to have made no changes at all. We will be facing $750,000 million of that in this coming fiscal year alone. The biggest chunk of that is around wage costs. We have to manage that.

We have taken some actions already to ensure that we can continue to deliver effective patient care around this province, community by community, and still live within the budget that we have committed to of $9.5 billion. We have made some changes to Pharmacare. There was certainly lots of fearmongering around this province leading up to the announcements of what that change entailed.

We made changes that, yes, certain people have to pay a little bit more when it comes to their deductibles on Pharmacare costs. We protected seniors in terms of low-income seniors. The 50 percent of seniors who are on premium assistance will not face any increase in their annual deductible on Pharmacare. Higher-income seniors are facing an increase in the deductible of $75 — which is important to individuals on fixed incomes; I don't want to minimize that — but we tried to do it in a responsible way so that those who could least afford it, those who were most vulnerable, were not impacted in any significant way.

We made some changes to supplemental benefits. I know everybody in this chamber has had calls from constituents who are anxious about their access to the very good care that we can get around this province from chiropractors and physiotherapists. We made changes in terms of optometrists and routine eye exams and to the other suppliers of supplemental benefits, the allied professionals, as we know them.

Those do impact on people. But, again, we've tried to do them in a way that would ensure continued coverage for those who could least afford the increased cost that they might face. We've tried to be responsible, but at the same time we have to find ways of managing those cost pressures. A lot of people throughout British Columbia told us, as we travelled around this province, that we have to get administration costs under control in health care. We've started that process.

A week ago Friday, with the announcements about the service plans for the various ministries, I'll tell you, it wasn't fun to have to announce that we were going to be reducing the number of FTE positions in the Ministry of Health Services by 854. The net reduction of people that will actually involuntarily lose their jobs is going to be several hundred, and those were people who were counting on those jobs, needless to say. But we have tried to send out a signal that we want to put in an administrative structure that allows us to deliver effective patient care, but only to the extent necessary. We will not put administrative costs in place unless they are absolutely necessary, because we want every single available health dollar in this province to be devoted to patient care. We have sent that same message out to every single one of the health authorities — that they'd better look pretty carefully at their administration costs and they'd better make sure that not one extra dollar is spent on administration that doesn't have to be spent on administration. We want those dollars diverted to patient care.

The rigid collective agreements that we are facing in health care in this province have made it impossible for health authorities to do what they need to do to ensure that patient care is improved through innovation and finding ways for cost savings. The health authorities have had very little flexibility to address the sustainability problem that we're facing. Some provisions of some health care collective agreements are simply not in keeping with the best interests of patients. Those provisions make it difficult or in fact impossible in many cases for health authorities to reorganize to become more efficient to meet patient needs. Rigid layoff positions that require extremely lengthy notice undermine the ability of health authorities to manage service delivery and make sure that resources are going where they are needed most. These provisions have made it impossible for health authorities to transfer staff where they are required to meet patient needs.

A perfect example came recently, when St. Paul's Hospital had to close its emergency room. We know that at that time all hospitals were facing stresses, but nothing like St. Paul's was facing. And it was impossible for them to transfer staff from a hospital that wasn't facing that degree of pressure to assist the front-line staff at St. Paul's, the emergency room nurses that were just being run off their feet at a time when they had 38 admitted patients in their emergency room and didn't have the beds necessary to place those patients. There was no way that we could take the stresses off that. They were forced…

Hon. C. Hansen: …to do something that I thought was unthinkable — close…

Hon. C. Hansen: …the emergency room in a major hospital in British Columbia, which I think is unacceptable. We have to do everything within our power to make sure that it never happens again. In fact, I wish I could tell you in this chamber today that it will never happen again. But unless we get the management tools that are necessary to provide patient care as a first priority, I'm not in a position to guarantee to this chamber that a major emergency room in British Columbia will not be shut down again.

I guess that even more ridiculous are union contracts that often prevent hospitals from even temporarily transferring a worker from one floor to another in the same facility, even when the jobs are identical. The rigidities prevent health authorities from doing what's best for patients. We're left with duplication in some areas and shortages in others. This, in a province where we truly believe that patient care must be a first priority, is simply not acceptable.

We aren't just going to throw up our hands, blame the previous government and do nothing about it. We weren't elected to live with the mistakes and the sweetheart deals of the previous government. We were elected to fix what's wrong, manage the province's affairs better and truly put patients first. That's what this bill will enable us to do.

It's not easy, but it is essential. Health authorities will be able to shift employees and functions between agencies and worksites to meet their challenges. If it makes sense to relocate a function to consolidate disparate activities in a single location or to relocate to a more appropriate worksite, then that will be possible. By allowing employers to assign health care workers to multiple worksites, this flexibility will be further increased.

I've talked to nurses, and one of the complaints I hear from young nurses in particular is that after they get their certification, their licence from the RNABC, the best they can find is a whole series of casual jobs. There are no full-time placements available to them. In the lower mainland, just as an example, they wind up picking up a casual job at one hospital, another casual job at another hospital, then another casual job at another hospital.

It doesn't give them that security of employment. It doesn't give them the benefits that full-time and permanent employees enjoy. This arrangement will allow us to create full-time positions that will be part of float pools, which will actually allow nurses to have the permanency they're looking for and, at the same time, give the flexibility so that they can go to the worksite where they're needed most that particular week.

By allowing health authorities more flexibility through contracting out, we believe they will be in a better position to manage a lot of these challenges. If a job can be done most effectively by in-house staff, then that's great. There's nothing in this legislation that says they have to do otherwise. If getting non-clinical tasks done another way can generate savings, then we've got to be open to find the savings so that we can reallocate those resources to meet the needs of patients.

We are implementing more reasonable notice and severance provisions. I know that the Leader of the Opposition was concerned about the reference to the 56 weeks' notice and severance for an employee who has been on the job in a regular employed position for one day. That is a fact. I know that the member for Vancouver-Hastings took exception to that, but that is a fact that was carefully checked out.

If an employee has worked in a regular position as a regular employee for one day, they become entitled to layoff and severance provisions of 56.4 weeks. We think that is unreasonable, especially when the dollars to fund that have to come out of direct patient care. In fact, those kinds of provisions are so onerous that managers are reluctant to create full-time positions, because they lose any ability that they have to manage the system.

We hear the complaints from nurses in particular — and it's a valid complaint — about the increased casualization of the health workforce in British Columbia. Much of that casualization is driven by the fact that once a manager makes a position a permanent position, they are then faced with these onerous layoff provisions that are simply unworkable.

Instead of creating the permanent position in the first place, those managers will do the only thing they have available to them now, and that's to leave those as casual positions. By changing this provision, it will allow more full-time positions to be created. It will allow us one more tool to address the casualization issue that has been a concern to many of those front-line health care professionals.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need to make these sorts of changes. The system would already be flexible and sustainable, and it would be focused on patient care. In a perfect world the previous government would not have allowed the system to become bogged down in cumbersome and expensive accords and union contract provisions that are simply unworkable. I would argue that anybody who signs a contract with payment obligations that they know they cannot fulfil is not signing a contract in good faith. It is in fact irresponsible for anybody to sign a contract with payment provisions that they know they cannot pay in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude by saying that the provisions that are in this legislation are really quite serious, and we understand the seriousness of them. These are not easy decisions for anybody to make. It was only after lots of soul-searching and lots of exploring of all other options that we came to the conclusion that we had to bring in these provision. It's an obligation that each one of us has to the residents of British Columbia. British Columbians are anxious about their health care system. They know that the way it is structured today is not sustainable, and quite frankly, if we cannot ensure that we can bring responsible use of health dollars in British Columbia, we will

not be able to protect the publicly funded health care system that we all feel so strongly about and that we want to ensure is sustained into the future.

These changes will help us to meet the needs of British Columbians, and they will help us to ensure that our funded universal health care system can in fact be sustained into the future.

Hon. G. Hogg: Last summer the parents of a severely mentally handicapped resident at a mid–Vancouver Island group home wanted to move their child into another home. They had concerns with respect to the quality of care that their child was receiving, and licensing officials confirmed that complaint. However, the agency operator did not have enough evidence to change the staff, and under the successorship accord, if the child moved, the union employees were eligible to move with the child and to claim the work. In order to continue to protect the child, the ministry was forced to negotiate a buy-out, because the successorship rights of the accord said that the work was the child and therefore the employees moves with the child.

In Kelowna, parents of a young child with severe special needs have determined that their child is not receiving the kind of care that they feel would help their child to thrive. They want to change the service providers, but the terms of the union agreement do not allow them to change care givers. Their child had, under the terms of the accord, become the work, and the staff stayed with the child.

A family in the Fraser Valley is receiving wonderful care for their special needs child. The worker comes to their home and is respectful and gets along with her and with the siblings and the family. However, the agency which employs the worker reorganizes. The current union rule of bump means this wonderful caregiver is out of the position, and the family is devastated. The child loses significant gains that he has made thanks to the close attachment and the quality of care that he had received from the first worker.

In a recent case in the Bulkley Valley the successorship accord specifically prevented a client's move to a resource that had been identified and chosen because it would best meet the client's needs. The accord precluded a case decision made in the best interests of the client.

A Salvation Army agency served notice two years ago that it would not renew its contract for an alcohol and drug residential program for youth, so the ministry issued a request for proposals. Several agencies expressed interest in bidding. However, when they learned of the successorship provisions, only two agencies actually submitted bids. One was a non-union agency. After reviewing those submissions, the non-union agency was deemed to be the best bid, but that bid was eventually rejected because the agency was unable to integrate its non-union staff with the union worksite, and today that contract remains unfulfilled.

The head of an aboriginal agency has expressed concern with the Munroe provisions. This community leader stated that these provisions have been a hindrance to their agencies being able to get their foot in the door in a contract-bidding process that no longer provides a level playing field for aboriginal communities.

In yet another example a CEO tells us that he is having difficulty recruiting volunteer board members to serve his non-profit agency. Volunteer board members are worried about the liability for such things as the rich employment security language provision. They state that for many of the non-profit agencies this provision could cause bankruptcy.

Yesterday the Community Social Services Employers Association sent out a memorandum to its members containing the following paragraph:

This, Mr. Speaker, is the organization to which the majority of service providers, and certainly all those who are unionized, are required to belong to. That is the position they've taken.

We have also spoken to many service providers across this province, and here's an example of some of the things that they're saying.

"The successorship accord precludes the not-for-profit sector from competing for contracts in many areas of social services." That's from Peace Arch Community Services.

From Options Society: "The accord is a barrier to agencies that want to improve service quality and achieve administrative savings by refocusing and consolidating their services."

From the Children's Foundation: "The Munroe accord is a major barrier to creating the real program changes that are needed to meet the needs of children and families and communities in a timely way. Job security provisions in this accord would bankrupt many community not-for-profit agencies."

Again from the CEO of Options: "Agencies must be able to offer good benefit plans to employees. Many believe they can both deliver those benefits and achieve savings if they can choose their own benefit plans and providers — outside of the health benefits trust — another side deal negotiated outside the collective bargaining process."

From the Association for Community Living: "The health benefits trust represents a significant unfunded liability to many social service agencies."

We believe that services must be client-centred. The client's interests must come first. We believe that our approach to serving the client must be flexible. We serve thousands of individuals and families in this province from backgrounds as diverse as anyone can imagine. Our legislation, policies and procedures must be equally flexible — flexible enough to respond to the

real needs of people in every part of this province. We believe that we must offer choice. One-size-fits-all solutions do not fit. The Child, Family and Community Service Act demands that in all cases the best interest of the child is to come first.

We want families to be involved in decision-making that helps to determine the best plan for their children. These accords undermine and detract from their ability to be involved and to make these choices. The rigid system that has evolved over the past decade is anything but child-centred. It denies service providers the opportunity to offer innovative and responsive choices to their clients. Despite massive increases in social services funding since 1998, there has been virtually no enhancement to either the quantity or diversity of services available to people who depend on this troubled sector.

The accords effectively prevent families and communities from moving toward the complex job of serving vulnerable people in ways that offer choice and flexibility, ways that best respond to the needs of clients. Managers are prevented from building on the strengths and capacities of clients and their families because the system is no longer primarily designed for the clients.

One of the provisions affects the severance that must be paid to unionized social service workers if they are displaced from their jobs. Essentially, it guarantees that a unionized worker who gets laid off, even if it's only after a short period of time — and as my colleague pointed out, that could be one day — will receive layoff security and severance totalling at least 52 weeks. It is a provision that prevents restructuring of the system, locks employees in for better or for worse and is totally out of proportion to what happens elsewhere in the labour community.

Another side deal affects successorship. It expands this labour relations term to mean that a new contractor must take over the previous contractor's union contract and must fill any job openings that result from taking on the new contract with the previous contractor's employees. It doesn't matter if the predecessor is bringing in a new contractor because of the substandard work. The provision means that if people need to be hired to do the job, it must be offered first to the same people who might have been providing questionable service beforehand.

The contractor must take on the existing union contract without any right to sit down at the bargaining table and negotiate with his own workers. It doesn't matter if the new contractor's workers want to be unionized or not. It doesn't matter if workers and the employer want to work out their own collective agreement to meet their mutual needs or not.

This situation discourages service providers from submitting bids to provide service. The Salvation Army's experience graphically reflects that fact. The same challenges are affecting the range of choices available to many parents of children with special needs.

The parity accord means future unfunded costs of $295 million — $295 million of additional expense to taxpayers, without a single dollar's worth of improved service to show for it.

By reducing the severance provisions to a more reasonable, industry-based level, the bill removes the unfunded liability for not-for-profit agencies. It will reassure volunteers and volunteer board members that they will not be held liable for unrealistic, unfunded commitments.

By removing the successorship provisions, parents and communities will be able and be encouraged to make decisions with and for their loved ones, decisions that can be based on the individual's and the family's needs, preferences and conveniences.

By allowing choice and flexibility regarding the provision of employee health and welfare benefits, service providers can seek savings to reinvest in client services.

These decisions are difficult, but we must make these difficult decisions if we are to achieve our mandate of meeting the needs of vulnerable people. We need to put vulnerable children, patients and students first. Government has limited resources during these challenging fiscal times, so it is especially important that we keep our priorities straight.

This legislation will mean that parents with mentally disabled children will have the ability to move their children to a different environment, one that they feel is better suited to their children's needs. The young Vancouver Island woman and the Bulkley Valley youth with developmental disabilities will be able to receive the care that best suits their needs.

This legislation will mean that parents of children with special needs who have found a caregiver that gives their child the chance to thrive will be able to maintain that relationship. The Kelowna parents of the child with special needs will be able to choose the worker that helps their child to thrive.

This legislation will mean that more service providers will be in a position to bid on contracts in order to offer more services to people in their communities. The managers and directors of social service agencies will be freed to improve service quality and generate administrative savings — savings that can be reinvested in client care.

Mr. Speaker, children and families are a priority for this government, and this bill is a balanced step towards doing a better job of meeting their needs. I am delighted to speak in support of this bill.

B. Lekstrom: As I spoke on the previous bill, I stand before this House again to speak in opposition to the bill because of my deep personal beliefs that I know we each have, and as individuals we stand by those. I have the full respect of all of my colleagues, as I indicated before, and I respect them for their decision, but I believe one has to stand up for what they believe is right in their heart. It doesn't mean you're right and somebody else is wrong. What it does mean is that you're standing up and being accountable to yourself, to the people you represent. That's how I live my life, and I know that's how my colleagues live their lives. I will cast my vote in opposition to this bill for the same reasons I spoke of on the previous bill.

Mr. Speaker, I won't take a lot of time, but I can tell you that each and every member in this House spends many, many hours looking over every bill, making decisions based on what they feel is right. It's certainly not with any ease that any member in this House is going to cast their vote, but each one is casting their vote for what they believe is right. I respect that with all of my heart. I will be casting my vote on what I believe is right. At the end of the day, I will support the wishes — and the majority's wishes — of this government, and I will walk out and work to make our province a better place. I thank you for your time.

J. Bray: It's a pleasure again to rise in support of our government bill, Bill 29. I've listened to the debate, and I certainly understand the dilemma that we and taxpayers and patients have been put in by deals made by the previous government that were simply unsupportable. These have staggering cost implications and also make it virtually impossible for health and social service agencies to implement innovations necessary in the delivery of service. I fully support the overarching purpose and goals of all of Bill 29. I understand that the government is doing what must be done to put patients first, and I fully support that.

No one was fully aware of all the ramifications and impacts of these agreements until recently. Some of them are so unreasonable and so expensive that government must take action. However, as with the previous bill this evening, I would have liked to have seen the union and the government arrive at agreement on all provisions in this bill without legislation. For this reason, I have concerns about section 6 and section 9 of Bill 29 and will be dealing with those in committee stage.

I am proud to be part of a government that allows MLAs to vote their conscience, their beliefs, their views and the views of their constituents. I am pleased to have the support of all my colleagues as I do this. I want to reiterate my unwavering support for this government, for cabinet, for every single member of the government side and for all the goals in this bill, which is putting patients first in health care and the most vulnerable at the centre of community services.

Hon. G. Bruce: We've heard many things this afternoon in respect to these bills, and particularly this bill here that we're having second reading on.

A couple of things are important to understand in the comments that I've heard. We're not doing away with severance. We don't want that confusion left in anybody's mind. There will be bumping provisions, but they will be reasonable. The degree of secrecy or what one person knew or didn't know as to how these accords were developed in the past…. Well, that debate will rage for years to come. It doesn't make it any easier to do what we need to do simply because it was some form of secret agreement between the Premier's Office and the union leadership — or how it was that they actually came to put it together.

During the period we've worked on this legislation, each and every one of us has felt and known the responsibility of how it plays in this House, the democratic principles, the fact that there are 77 of 79 members representing the people of the province here all from one party. When you think about the responsibility that all of us have, the overwhelming majority that we have, and when you think about the seriousness of the legislation that we're bringing forward, it can weigh heavy on many people, and we appreciate that.

But when it comes to doing what has to be done for the people of this province and to being able to maintain, sustain and improve our health care system and the lives of, really, the most vulnerable in our society, tough decisions have to be made. We in this House know that. We know that from this period forward there will be some rocky times for all of us, but we know that the people of British Columbia, back in May when they elected as many of us as they did, didn't ask us to come here to Victoria to do the easy things. They asked us to come here to set things right. The cabinet, the caucus and the Premier of this province have shown the courage to stand up to the plate and do those difficult things.

	YEAS — 71
Falcon	Coell	Hogg
L. Reid	Halsey-Brandt	Hawkins
Whittred	Cheema	Hansen
J. Reid	Bruce	Santori
van Dongen	Barisoff	Nettleton
Roddick	Wilson	Masi
Lee	Thorpe	Hagen
Murray	Plant	Campbell
Collins	Clark	Bond
de Jong	Nebbeling	Stephens
Abbott	Neufeld	Coleman
Chong	Penner	Jarvis
Anderson	Orr	Harris
Nuraney	Brenzinger	Belsey
Bell	Long	Mayencourt
Trumper	Johnston	Bennett
R. Stewart	Hayer	Christensen
Krueger	McMahon	Bray
Les	Locke	Nijjar
Bhullar	Wong	Suffredine
MacKay	Cobb	K. Stewart
Visser	Brice	Sultan
Sahota	Hawes	Kerr
Manhas		Hunter
	NAYS — 3
MacPhail	Kwan	Lekstrom

Bill 29, Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act, read a second time and referred to a

Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.