Hansard -- Volume 4, Number 1 -- Monday, March 11, 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

Private Members' Statements		1679
	Private land rights D. Chutter Hon. J. van Dongen The film industry S. Orr R. Hawes Policing D. MacKay Hon. R. Coleman Role of British Columbia hunters and anglers in conservation B. Bennett B. Suffredine

Motions on Notice		1687
	Representation of small communities at annual provincial conference (continued) Hon. T. Nebbeling K. Krueger Tuition fee freeze J. Kwan

D. Chutter: Today I would like to talk about the importance of private property rights, as it is an issue of interest to many British Columbians and one that we as government have recognized. In fact, it was one of our new-era commitments to the people of this province to protect private property rights, to prevent government expropriation without fair compensation.

Property rights, the right to own and enjoy property, form the backbone of a free market system. The three critical elements of property rights are that they be clearly delineated, protected through the rule of law, and the owner must be free to transfer title to another. Through these three aspects, private property creates powerful incentives for proper stewardship of economic and environmental resources and contributes to the development of prosperity by creating a secure investment climate for individuals and industry. Where property rights and freedom are denied, economic growth is inhibited.

What are property rights, and why are they so important? Right now in British Columbia property rights exist. That is to say, people own land and have a legal right to say who goes on it and who does not. Within certain restrictions and guidelines, they can decide what to do with that land. Essentially, the rights belong to the people who own the land. Private property rights are a fundamental and necessary condition if people are to be truly free and able to prosper. Without private property rights, ownership of property, individual freedom of choice is essentially meaningless.

However, setting guidelines as to what one can do with their own property can be controversial. In the U.S. the Endangered Species Act has been used to prevent landowners from using their land as they please and in some cases from using it at all — in many cases causing financial loss, exorbitant expense, and offering little protection for species.

Here in B.C. we have the Agricultural Land Commission, formerly the agricultural land reserve, created in 1972 and designed to protect agricultural land from overdevelopment. Whether or not you support this method of preserving land with agricultural capability, the Agricultural Land Commission Act was an uncompensated expropriation of the development rights on agricultural land. A similar statement could be said about the streamside protection regulation — seemingly unfair — to make social gains at the expense of individual landowners.

The historical precedence of property rights goes back centuries and has played a key role in the evolution of Canadian society. Property rights can be traced back to 1215, when the Magna Carta was signed. The right to own property was also included in the English Bill of Rights in 1689, and in 1948 Canada signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included, "Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others," and: "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property." Property rights are also recognized in the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights, which affirms the right of the individual to enjoy the property and "the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law."

What role does the province play in protecting property rights? The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, established in 1982, clearly states that only the provincial governments have the power to enact laws to govern property within the province. The discretion we use in setting provincial laws overseeing property rights goes to the basic fabric of society. Property rights include all things to do with basic personal freedoms from our right to a safe and secure home to our assets and financial stability and, in the case of agricultural, our basic right to earn a living.

It also goes to the wealth of our people as individuals and as a society capable of caring for one another and offering basic services such as health care and education. To put this in context, I'm going to use an analogy first published by Dallas lawyer David Witts in 1993. He pointed out that private property, not natural resources, is the basis to the creation of wealth. For example, South America and Africa are the richest continents in the world when it comes to natural resources. Ironically, they also have the world's poorest people.

He then compared the situation to that of Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, who have extremely limited natural resources, but they have some of the richest people in the world. Why? Because they have the ability to own their own personal property.

A piece of land is not property unless it is owned, and without ownership there is little incentive to improve upon it, increase its value and thus increase the wealth of the jurisdiction in which it lies.

Here in British Columbia we have the best of both worlds. Not only do we have a vast array of natural resources to draw on, but we recognize each other's fundamental rights to own property, develop property and sell property to others for profit. It is because of this system that we have a strong economic system that allows us to provide for others who are not so fortunate.

I would also point out that the notion of property rights appears to have a great deal of public support among both property owners and those that don't own property. A poll commissioned by the Canadian Real Estate Board in 1987 found that 81 percent of Canadians considered either very or fairly important that the constitution be amended so as to include property rights.

Various other national organizations such as the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Real Estate Association

Securing property and establishing sound property rights is essential to not only our freedoms but our economy. Who would invest in British Columbia if people could not determine with some basic guidelines what they could use their property for and fear that they may one day lose their rights to that particular property? It could be compared to the basic philosophy of allowing access to Crown land, as our government has committed to. If we don't allow for our resources to be utilized, it is impossible for us to grow and prosper as a province.

In conclusion, private property rights go to our basic democratic freedoms, which we pride ourselves on a great deal in this province. It is fundamentally important that as a government, we set guidelines that prevent the expropriation of these rights without fair and equitable compensation. Secure property rights are linked with the confidence to invest and so are necessary to achieve prosperity.

Hon. J. van Dongen: I am pleased to rise in this House today to respond to the statement by the member for Yale-Lillooet on property rights. Certainly, I think it was a very well spoken statement and a critical one.

Private property rights have long been a critical issue particularly to farming, ranching and people in rural British Columbia. There's a deeper appreciation by rural British Columbians for the real, true meaning of the right to own property. There is an attachment to the land by farmers and ranchers. Farmers and ranchers, because of the issue of private property rights, are in turn good stewards of their land. This is a very important issue that the member has brought up. We need to foster a greater understanding of what it means to rural property owners to own their own property and have, within the context of good public policy, rights on that property that are respected.

When I look at a range of government policies that impact on that property right, I'm just going to raise a few examples. The Fish Protection Act that was tabled by the previous government and all of the other fish protection legislation that we see are examples. The success of that legislation, I submit, depends on a recognition up front of a person's property rights.

Where the legislation starts to fail is when it expects a private property owner to look after what is in fact a public good and basically very seriously restrict the use of their land for a public benefit. Too much of our fish protection legislation fails to sufficiently recognize the property right. In so doing, we limit the ability of the legislation to be successful in actually maintaining the riparian zones — those lands and streams — in a state that may be good for fish.

It's important in fish protection legislation to at least recognize the principle of property rights, to attempt in some reasonable manner to provide some form of compensation or some level of offsetting benefit to the property owner. That in turn will result in greater success in achieving the intent of the legislation.

Another good example in rural British Columbia — I see one of the members here from the Kootenays — is in the management of wildlife. We see many examples of wildlife that encroach on private property, whether it's in the wintertime, eating the haystacks of that rancher, or in the summertime, eating the pasture and the forage that the private property owner has set aside for hay production or grazing. It's another example of a public good or public benefit being funded at sometimes very significant cost by a private property owner.

Again, the principle has to be that the public should be there to pay for the cost of that public benefit and provide some kind of an offset to that property owner.

The third issue that I want to raise with respect to farm property and rural property rights is the issue of drainage. The member for Yale-Lillooet talked about the agricultural land reserve having been imposed with no compensation and having been somewhat of an encroachment on private property rights. That is an encroachment that I tend to agree with, in that there is a public benefit and a long-term benefit for agriculture by the agricultural land reserve, but at the same time I think it's important that that encroachment for a public good is accompanied by a right to drainage where it is necessary and by access to water for irrigation purposes where it is necessary. So I think there is some offsetting benefit there to those farmers and ranchers in the agricultural land reserve. Certainly, as we go through in trying to improve productivity on those lands, that's a critical issue.

So private property rights are an important issue, and I thank the member for raising it.

D. Chutter: My thanks to the member for Abbotsford-Clayburn and particularly so in that I hope to pursue this subject further in the future. I know I'll benefit from his comments today.

Private property is not just land; it also includes houses; a car; investment; RSPs; business tenures, whether it be leases or permits; and even assets of non-profit organizations. The problem is that current governments, both federal and provincial, can erode the right of property ownership by imposing legislation which supersedes common law and denies compensation. If new legislation either expropriates property or regulates property use, legislation includes specific provisions to deny the responsibility for compensation. In the past courts have upheld property rights under common law. Examples of legislation that supersedes common law are the U.S. Endangered Species Act and, in B.C., the acts which give the force of law to the agricultural land reserve.

Existing Canadian law which applies to property rights. I'll just briefly review them. The BNA Act, 1867, states that property and civil rights are under the ex-

clusive jurisdiction of provincial government. Canadian Bill of Rights, 1960, grants the right to individual life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property but does not clearly acknowledge property ownership. Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982, does not limit provinces' ability to legislate limits to property rights, but it does not mention property rights as a fundamental freedom. The existing U.S. law which currently applies to property rights is the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without the due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

In conclusion, the current Canadian and B.C. laws offer little protection for private property rights without compensation. They can easily make it legal by legislating that no compensation is required. Secondly, nothing in current law prevents governments from taking private properties without compensation. They can easily make it legal, as I mentioned.

Securing property rights is an important component of liberty and necessary to achieve prosperity. That is a very important fundamental point. Secure property rights give us the confidence and the sense to work hard, to create, to risk and to invest. Secure property rights lead to greater social stability and healthier land in contrast to land held by government. I take you back to the tragedy of the commons that I think we are all so familiar with.

Mr. Speaker, liberty, which is the state of being free, is the result of the two basic rights: the right to life and the right to property. Let us recognize the right of property and just compensation if taken for a public need.

S. Orr: I rise today to speak about the film industry in my community. I'm sure that if you've driven around Victoria in the last few weeks, you'll see these lovely great white trucks everywhere. That's telling you that the movies are in town. That is very significant to us in Victoria. The more we see them, the more we like it. We don't even care if they block our roads; we're just happy to see the trucks.

I wanted to share this with you. I've worked in my community for a long time, but about six years ago I decided I wanted to get even more involved. I got together with a group of business people and interested citizens to discuss how to grow the movie industry in our region.

We had already been serviced, previously, by a film liaison person. He had worked with limited resources. He had worked with public funds, and those funds ran out, so the job of film liaison officer was taken away. We got together with a group of people, and then in entered the private sector. This is where the good stuff really started. This group of people all pulled together, and it was headed by Mel Cooper from CFAX radio.

The first group met in Mel's kitchen. Mel provided muffins and a lot of enthusiasm, so the legend goes. I think it will become one of those urban legends: how the film industry was rejuvenated in Victoria by Mel Cooper and his muffins. We knew we wanted to do this. We knew we wanted to grow this industry, but we didn't know how to start. And that's what I want to share with you today.

As we all know, the bulk of the film industry is done on the lower mainland. But we knew that we had a lot to offer, so we started. We put together a volunteer board. They were all business people. We chose, like all boards do, to become a society. We found business people. We had a lawyer and an accountant. It's interesting about the film industry, if you choose to do this in your region, that people are very enthused about coming to these meetings because the film industry has a nice ring to it. The chamber of commerce was on board, as were many other businesses. The chamber of commerce gave us free space. So here we are. We have a board with very qualified people, and we have an empty space.

Then we said: "Well, how are we going to do this? How are we going to make this grow?" We knew we needed a film commissioner. We needed a very qualified film commissioner. We'd done a lot of phoning, and we'd spoken to Vancouver. What we discovered was that the front-line person, the film commissioner, was your key to success. But we didn't have any money. We're private sector; there are no public funds. So what did we do? We went to the private sector. We started fundraising. We also went to the federal government, and the federal government had a plan under HRDC that we could apply to. We applied to the plan, and they in fact gave us funding. In the meantime we were growing within the private sector.

We finally had enough money to hire a film commissioner, so we put out a proposal call and interviewed some very qualified people. We knew that our film commissioner had to be extremely connected. The whole film industry is based on relationships and relationships only, so they have to know everybody down in Los Angeles and everybody in Vancouver. We also learned to recognize that we were but the poor country cousin to Vancouver. So instead of standing back and saying, "We're doing it on our own," we actually went to Vancouver and said: "Would you help us? Would you link arms with us?" And they did. In fact, the members of the B.C. Film Commission in Vancouver came onto our board as associate members. That's how we got started.

We found a film commissioner, Kate Peterson, who was extremely well respected in the film industry. She came to town. We had only enough money for her, but we have a large volunteer force. She sat us down and started to guide us through what we really needed to do. Now, you get boards together in your local communities, and you think you've got it made. You have no idea what you're really doing until the professional comes in and says: "This is what you have to do."

First of all, we had to raise more money. Secondly, we had to do a thing called setting up a film library. This is a very extensive thing, and it's very expensive. A producer from Los Angeles will send a script to Victoria, and they will say: "We want you to look at this script." We then have to go through the script and come up with a photo file and send it down to Los Angeles, the turn-around being 24 hours. Well, that doesn't happen just like that. You have to have people who know locations, who go out and take photographs and know how to put this together.

Kate Peterson got an assistant, and we got her to work at the beginning for free. Eventually, we found more money through our corporate sponsors, and she came on full-time.

I could go on and on about how this works. I'm very passionate about it, because I was there at its inception. I grew from not knowing anything about film to learning a lot.

We did all sorts of things. We took business people to Vancouver, we hooked up with the Vancouver film industry, and they showed us around their studios. They showed business people how you can and cannot make money in this industry. We took mayors; we took familiarization trips to Vancouver.

In turn, we brought the producers from Los Angeles. We raised enough money. We spoke to hotels, restaurants and even nightclubs, and we said: "We are bringing up half a dozen producers from Los Angeles." They flew up. That's how you build your industry; you build it on relationships. We took them around the city. We took them golfing. They met the business people, and so on and so forth. This went on over a period of a year and a half or two years of intense marketing. Eventually, it started to pay off. We would get the phone calls; we would get the scripts sent up to us.

We also had to find a crew. You need a base crew in your area. That is not an easy thing. A lot of people live on the Island, but they work in Vancouver because the industry's so big there.

S. Orr: I'm going to just say that if you are really interested in getting your film industry going in your area, please feel free to contact our regional film commission, and we will guide you through it. Thank you.

R. Hawes: I'd like to thank the member for Victoria-Hillside for raising this topic, because it's one that is also important in the Fraser Valley and to the folks that I represent. The film industry in the Fraser Valley is alive and well, and it's growing.

We, too, struggled with developing a film commission. Rather than employ people through the regional district and through the cooperation of a number of municipalities in the Fraser Valley…. I was involved, as mayor of Mission and later as the chair of the Fraser Valley regional district — and the member for Chilliwack-Sumas was involved, as well, in his capacity as the mayor of Chilliwack and the chair of the regional district in the Fraser Valley — in forming a group that built a digital library much like the member for Victoria-Hillside talked about.

That's very, very important for attracting those who want to come to your area to shoot film. The digital photo library includes things like barns, historic buildings, railroad crossings and road scenes — almost every conceivable scene they might want to shoot. That's all digitally filed. Rather than hiring people in the valley initially, the thought was to file this digital library with the British Columbia film commissioner's office in Vancouver. I believe we are in the process of doing that right now.

In the Fraser Valley, however, we have a fellow named Danny Virtue of Virtue studios, so we have the good fortune of already having great contact with the movie industry and someone who has many, many years of experience. Mr. Virtue started a studio in the Fraser Valley perhaps 20 or 25 years ago on a very small acreage out in the hinterlands in the valley. Since acquiring that piece of land and attracting some filming, he's bought more and more land. In fact, he's been forced to buy land because often, as he was filming, neighbours might be mowing their lawn or whatever, and he'd have to go over and ask them to stop mowing their lawn while they were shooting a film. That was a great inconvenience, so he would just buy his neighbours out. He's bought enough land now that he has the ability to film without interference from neighbours, because he has virtually no neighbours. He owns it all.

He has produced such things as Neon Rider, which was produced at his studio ranch. The recent CBC series, Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy, was filmed there. A couple of years ago I visited his site while they were filming an HBO movie called By the Dawn's Early Light. That was with Richard Crenna. I got to watch as they were filming that and watch stuntmen in action. It was an extremely interesting thing to watch.

More importantly, looking at the numbers of people who were employed doing all manner of jobs really is something that convinces you how important this industry is to all of us in this province. It's a huge employer of people. It's a clean industry. It's an industry that is growing, and it's growing exponentially.

There is an attack here on the film industry from Hollywood, much like there is with the softwood timber. Those in Hollywood feel we're somehow subsidizing the movie industry here and want to stop the outflow of dollars coming from the United States into British Columbia for the film industry. I think that's a huge danger we face. We have to be very mindful of what's happening in Hollywood and the fact that there are many in Hollywood who are trying to stop money from coming here and to shut down our film industry. I can tell you that it's going to take a great deal of work on everyone's part to make sure that flow of money continues.

Mr. Virtue has a plan in his studio ranch to build a very large lodge that would be used to house both the actors, who would be working and filming, and the producers and executives. When there isn't a film being shot there, his plan is to run a film school. He'll bring all kinds of people in and train them — everything from extras to set designers and set builders; a full-line film school for the subordinate help around a movie set. What he wants to do is train these people and then get them into the union and allow them to work on film sets throughout the Fraser Valley — the idea being that if you have trained people ready to go on the ground, you're far more attractive than having to import people and pay travel time, etc.

I really wish Mr. Virtue well. I know, Mr. Speaker, that you as well as myself will do everything we can do to make sure that his venture is a success.

I just have one more word of caution. I listened some time ago to the film commissioner from Vancouver speaking about the kinds of things that happen in Vancouver. There was a time in Vancouver when the film industry was a novelty. There would be a film set on the street, and people would come out of their homes to see if they could spot a star.

R. Hawes: That's now developed to the point where people say: "When are these people getting off my street?" We can be our own worst enemy sometimes. Thank you to the member for Victoria-Hillside, and thank you for the opportunity to respond.

S. Orr: I want to thank the member for Maple Ridge–Mission for his comments. You can see how passionate we get about film. We need longer than ten minutes; we need hours, because it's so exciting. I want to concur with his comments. He's absolutely right about Hollywood being a little concerned about us.

I want to conclude by saying that we are now under the umbrella…. Our new film commissioner is Tom Crowe. We did so well that we managed to lure Tom away from working with the B.C. Film Commission in Vancouver.

We've done such a good job that I just wanted to say that the $1.2 billion industry that is right now in Vancouver and the lower mainland is approximately 96 percent of the whole industry, while the rest of the province gets 4 percent. Our own film commission takes the lion's share of that; we get almost three-quarters of that 4 percent. That spells out to be $20 million that we've brought into this region through this industry. It started out at less than $1 million when we took over. If you take the multiplying factor, that's over $50 million in economic impact.

This year, starting in January, we are booming. We have got movies. We've got a movie called The Core right now that spent three days filming in Victoria. They spent over $400,000 and over 120 hotel rooms in just three days. We have Alliance Atlantis here spending $3 million to $4 million, and because of that our economy is feeling it.

We have a minister who is very committed to the film industry, and this is extremely important. This is an industry that although it has grown in British Columbia and is at $1.2 billion…. I don't understand why the film industry in Hollywood — which, I believe, is at something like $27 billion — is concerned about the $1.2 billion that comes up here. We have the location. We have the will. This government is committed to film, so I can only encourage everybody, in their area, to look seriously at bringing more film and, again, at speaking to us, speaking to the people that are involved and speaking to Vancouver so we can really pursue this.

I just want to say that we've also had very, very strong support from all our municipal governments, and they have all come to the table with funding. So I encourage you, also, in the smaller regions to talk to your own municipalities to help you with the funding formula.

D. MacKay: Today I'd like to talk about a subject that I'm familiar with in a previous life. Before I got involved in politics I spent 28 years with the RCMP, joining out of the province of Alberta and, after training, winding up in British Columbia where I spent 26 of my 28 years with the force. Policing is something I have a bit of background knowledge on, and I thought today would be an appropriate time to discuss some of the issues we face in policing in this province.

I going to take you back in history a little bit, back to 1829 when a man known as Sir Robert Peel passed the Metropolitan Police Act in London, England, and is basically known as the founder of policing as we know it in this country today. I would suggest that then, as today, policing is paid for by the people who use the services — paid for by the state or the province. I would suggest that policing costs have gone up considerably since its inception in 1829. Actually, I guess that would be an understatement.

In 1952 the province of British Columbia had its own provincial police force, and it was replaced in 1952 by the RCMP. The RCMP, since 1952, provide municipal policing; federal policing in areas such as customs and excise, immigration and passport, and drug enforcement; and provincial policing for smaller communities throughout the province. We also have several large municipal police forces located throughout the lower mainland and Vancouver Island.

Paying for policing in the large municipal police forces is the responsibility of the municipalities. The cost is borne 100 percent by the municipalities that actually have their own police forces. Other large municipalities have also contracted out policing services to the RCMP. These costs are shared to a small degree by the federal government, and the remainder is paid by the municipalities.

In this province communities with a population exceeding 5,000 are required to phase in policing costs over a number of years. However, the total cost of policing is also shared, again, to a small degree by the federal government, if the contract is with the RCMP. Policing, once the population of the community exceeds 5,000, costs the municipality 70 percent of the cost; 30 percent of that cost is borne by the federal government. It remains at 70 percent until the municipality reaches a population of 15,000. At that time, the cost of policing is passed on to the municipality at a rate of 90 percent, and the federal government pays the remaining 10 percent.

Policing costs for municipalities, small and large, are based on a formula which looks at the number of police officers needed to provide the services of that population. The formula looks at a number of issues. It looks at the total Criminal Code caseload per man in that municipality. It also looks at the police-public ratio, which is police jargon known as the PPR, to decide how many members they need or want to provide services to the communities.

To give you an example of some of the PPRs, Vancouver city police has a police-public ratio of one police officer for 495 people. Victoria city has a PPR of 421 people to one police officer. Surrey RCMP has a PPR of 890 people to one police officer, and the small community that I live in is now paying for policing and has a PPR of one police officer to 674 people.

Regardless of the ratio and the location of the service, policing is getting to be a very expensive item for the communities. I'm going to give you an example of some of the percentages of total budget expenditures for the communities that I just described to you previously.

Vancouver city presently consumes 20 percent of its entire municipal budget for policing. Victoria city is not much different; they spend 19 percent of their budget on policing. Surrey RCMP spends 22.7 percent of its municipal budget on policing. In Smithers, the small municipality up north, we spend 21 percent of our entire budget on policing costs.

The total cost for police officers around the province also varies. It depends on the collective agreements for the large municipal forces, but not for the RCMP, who have not been allowed to organize into unions, because the Supreme Court of Canada has said that we were, at that time, an essential service and that we could not organize.

To put an average RCMP member on the street in Surrey costs the municipality about $98,000 a year, or $110 per capita. Victoria city police spends $110,000 per man per year, or $261 per capita. In Smithers we spend $77,000 to put a police officer on the street, or $115 per capita.

We now have the added responsibility of having to look after some of the smaller communities in this province because the UBCM said there was a unfair playing field, an unfair cost for the large municipalities. Because of the result of a resolution from the UBCM, we're now having to look at how we can equalize and get everybody to pay an equal share for policing costs in this province.

This is going to be a big challenge as we embark on this process to ensure fairness to all those small communities in the northern part of this province, in the East Kootenays and on Vancouver Island that presently don't pay for policing. The cost of policing is getting extremely high, and we're going to have to find some way to equalize the cost of policing throughout this province. With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to have a response from the Solicitor General.

Hon. R. Coleman: Thank you to the member for bringing this issue forward to the Legislature today. As the member knows, for a long period of time in British Columbia there has been a sense of inequity relative to policing from community to community, from city to city and from small community to large across this province.

Last September at the Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting I met with 14 communities that were emerging municipalities looking at possibly going over the 5,000 mark in this fiscal year and thereby having to go from zero dollars paid for policing to 70 cents of every dollar being paid for policing, with the federal government picking up the other 30 percent.

The member used some statistics earlier about 20 percent here and 22 percent here relative to policing happening, but the emerging municipalities find those numbers closer to 35 to 40 percent all of a sudden on their municipal budgets — overnight, as far as they're concerned.

There are two arguments that could take place on that issue. One is that if you've been under 5,000 for the last 50 years, you've had free policing, and you shouldn't whine if all of a sudden you have to start to carry your own costs when you hit 5,000. On the other side of that argument is: what about the rest of the communities that don't pay for policing, and what about those communities that are outside areas like this member's own community where there are in excess of 5,000 people who have chosen not to incorporate or not to participate in their community policing relationship simply because it's a huge cost saving to their taxpayer?

The Premier charged me with trying to find a new formula for funding policing in British Columbia over the next year or two. Make no mistake; this is a challenge. There are 700,000 people in this province that today don't pay anything for policing. Therefore, those 700,000 people, out of a population of four million, are being subsidized in one way or another relative to their policing costs in British Columbia.

My challenge is to find a formula, so this is what's going to happen. We're going to get some options for formulas. We're going to take those options out to a symposium of the smaller communities at UBCM so that they can kick it around, have a discussion around it, talk about phase-in ability and about the ability to

pay. Nobody is all of a sudden going to jump up and find that they're paying a huge cost for policing overnight. The average across the board will be that if you're smaller, maybe you pay less than somebody that's larger, because you might have a different tax base.

The reality is that I've been charged with finding a formula, but it won't be done without consultation. It won't be done without phase-in, and it'll certainly be done in relation with UBCM, the smaller communities and with some input from the larger communities as we go through it. We will come up with a formula, because part of that formula is also how we go forward and integrate policing in B.C. It's how we build a five-year plan so that all the specialized services of policing are integrated across our province — how the technology feeds into policing so that we know from time to time or place to place where crimes are being committed and how we can track them; how we can integrate our traffic enforcement in British Columbia so that we can make sure that the carnage taking place on our roads is being handled by our police services in a way that they can handle it, because there's actually an integrated plan in order to address that and to also move forward with regards to how we will coordinate everything in policing to make policing successful in B.C.

It isn't something that communities should be afraid of. It's something they should welcome as a discussion, because at the end of the day I think it'll be fair for everybody. It certainly isn't going to be something where somebody in a very small community is going to be paying the same price as somebody in a larger community, because they get a different level of service. They get a different level of service in policing, and they have different needs relative to this issue. Certainly, having been charged with the issue and having seen the number of studies over the last 15 or 20 years that have been done on the issue, I do not underestimate the challenge of trying to bring these communities together to have this discussion. I look forward to it; it will be a challenge. At the end of the day, I hope we can find the formula that works for everybody.

D. MacKay: Well, I'd like to thank the Solicitor General, the member for Fort Langley–Aldergrove, for those comments. It is going to be a challenge, and I look forward to working with this government to find a resolution to this problem. I do have to agree that the numbers I quoted when we were talking 20 percent of the municipal budgets for policing…. I think those numbers are, in fact, low if you look at the total cost. The challenge is going to be to find a formula that will work for all the small communities. One of the things we're going to have to do is look at their tax base and their ability to pay for policing which, as I said previously, is getting to be more and more expensive.

The difficulty that we're going to encounter in rural British Columbia is that small communities that do not have RCMP detachments physically located in those communities…. I can think of a small one just outside of Smithers named Telkwa.

Probably the most difficult one that I can foresee is going to be in the Hazelton area. We have three Hazeltons. We have the district of New Hazelton with a municipal government. They have a very small population of around 400. We have a south town and an old town. There are three small communities all policed out of New Hazelton by a 15-man detachment of the RCMP. Now, the total population of the three small communities I just described is around 1,400 people. To pass on the cost of 15 RCMP members to a small population of 1,400 is going to be unpalatable for those small communities, and it's going to be unaffordable. Part of the policing cost for the New Hazelton detachment includes several native Indian reserves which are also located close by. When you look at the population of the small native communities, it increases pretty close to around 7,000 people. Somehow we're going to have to involve the federal government to provide some funding to help offset the huge policing costs that these small communities are going to encounter once we go down that road.

There should be no doubt in anybody's mind that finding a fair and equitable funding formula is going to be extremely difficult. We have started on that process, and we are getting some negative feedback from those small communities, but it's a necessary project. It's going to require a great deal of understanding from all the people involved. Because I represent so many small communities in my part of the province, I will be watching with great interest and making sure the interests of those small communities are in fact heard as we go down this step, which is going to prove to be unpopular in some areas but will be fair and equitable once the process is completed.

B. Bennett: My topic today is recreational hunting and the contribution hunters make to conservation in B.C. This is a topic near and dear to my heart. It's one of those issues that MLAs think about when they think about going into politics and perhaps getting elected and having an opportunity to represent constituents on issues often not raised in this House.

I grew up fishing and hunting with my father and brothers in Northumberland and Hastings counties in southern Ontario. There were always guns and fishing tackle around my house and wild meat and fish in the freezer. I remember well the smell of fur, feathers and fish in our back kitchen when I was growing up. As a younger man I worked 21 tourist seasons in northern Canada, in northwestern Ontario, northern Manitoba, northern Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Moving into the East Kootenay eight years ago was like coming home for me. The East Kootenay has been called the Serengeti of North America, with all its species of wildlife.

I speak this morning on behalf of the hunters in the East Kootenay but also for all those men and women in B.C. who hunt the mountains and valleys of our province. With respect, I will be their voice in this House today. These are people who oftentimes are the only ones to volunteer to assist wildlife during severe winters and disease cycles or to help with labour-intensive wildlife habitat restoration projects — people like Mario Rocca from Fernie, Carmen Purdy from Cranbrook, Kent Petovello from Sparwood, and Jim Zimmerman and Bill Hanlon from Elkford.

I also speak today for my father, who is turning 82 on March 19 and probably doesn't have too many hunts left, although he plans to once again head to the woods this November with men one-third his age and spend two weeks hunting white tails, as he has done since he was 18. These are the people who know the land, its mysteries, its satisfactions, its beauty and its hardness to those who do not respect it.

I want to make two points today: (1) that hunters make a critical contribution to conservation in B.C. and (2) that hunting is a legitimate activity for British Columbians to engage in, is an important part of our heritage and should be recognized in law. There are those who have much more talent than I do, who have described why we hunt. Rick Bass of the Yaak Valley in Montana is one of those. The Yaak Valley is just south of my riding of East Kootenay. All hunters in B.C. will understand Rick's works:

For those who don't hunt, I think it's difficult — maybe impossible — to understand how and why hunting can facilitate such a strong intuitive connection to the land we live on. In fact, some environmental groups would have us believe that hunters are a threat to wildlife. Let's think about that for a moment. No species of wildlife in North America has been endangered or threatened by hunting since President Teddy Roosevelt and Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier got together before World War I to establish rational hunting regulations.

Where does this criticism of hunting mostly come from? It most often comes from urban-based groups. B.C. Report's Link Byfield said a while back in one of his columns: "Urban areas contribute more than their share of garbage, sewage and exhaust, but urbanites often decide that hunting is wrong, meaning that is against their morals. Urbanites often want to tell us, who live in the most pristine part of the world, to clean up our acts. Often these same critics are people who, with high incomes, are preaching to people with low incomes how to live more humbly and ethically."

Unfortunately, those folks raised on a steady television diet of Disney, Winnie the Pooh, Goldilocks and Bambi have come to believe that nature should be viewed, adored, even worshipped, but never touched or used. These are the same people who motor to work in their automobiles while burning fossil fuels, only to get to the office and burn up electricity with their high-powered computers, consuming huge volumes of paper, water and plastic.

Often those who oppose hunting are the same people who come into the rural areas of B.C. to hike, ski and camp. Sometimes they're the same people who oppose logging and mining. Hunting, on the other hand, is often done by the men and women who work in logging and mining and who live and raise their families in the small towns and rural areas of B.C.

When urban-based environmental groups try to take away B.C.'s hunting heritage, they are trying to steal a piece of the soul of rural British Columbia. Hunting traditions for humans are about two and a half million years old. B.C. hunters contribute more than $8 million each year to provincial coffers through hunting licences and tag sales. In addition, hunters contribute with each licence purchase to the B.C. habitat conservation trust fund, which was originally established by hunters to assist in habitat restoration and wildlife conservation. It is now used for a multiplicity of conservation and, unfortunately, preservation purposes.

Making a distinction between preservation as opposed to conservation is a key to understanding hunting and hunters. Candis McLean of B.C. Report did an article a few months ago. She points out that preservation is based on the assumption that humans do not belong in nature and that humans have only a negative relationship with nature. Conservation, on the other hand, is based on humankind being part of nature. Far more plants and animals are reproduced each year than can survive. These excess plants and animals are resources to be harvested within a careful context of responsible regulations and practices.

Hunting is a vital part of wildlife management and conservation in B.C. I am proud to call myself a hunter and a conservationist. I believe that recreational hunting is an important part of our British Columbia heritage and should be recognized in law as such.

B. Suffredine: The member for East Kootenay raises a good point. Of necessity, hunters play a big role in conservation. My riding alone is 5.5 million acres. It has roughly ten conservation officers to cover all that territory. It has some of the best examples of conservation projects, sponsored by local conservation groups composed of hunters, that exist. There's a 17,000 acre Ducks Unlimited project at Creston. There's

the Creston Valley Wildlife Centre. The local rod and gun club in Nelson, where I live, has been integral in supporting the restoration of wild turkeys on the east shore of Kootenay Lake. They've helped restore a caribou herd on the Kootenay pass and build a herd of bighorn sheep on the same pass.

As rod and gun members…. I am also a rod and gun member. I've attended the annual meetings between hunters and conservation officers where conservation officers get advice on the populations of deer, elk, grizzly and black bears, cougar and other species that the hunters observe when they're out hunting whatever it is they seek to get a licence for. Hunters are a great source of that information. The conservation officers could not obtain that information by themselves.

Populations of species of wildlife can vary wildly from year to year if left to nature alone. For example, the populations of white-tail deer are quite high in the Kootenays right now. The conservation officers are recommending a higher harvest than normal to bring that population down so it won't be wiped out by a sudden cold winter, where all the population might starve.

Hunters also help the conservation officers enforce the laws and often report poaching and other illegal activities. The member for East Kootenay is absolutely right. I know many hunters. They care about recreation and conservation. They enjoy their recreation with their family and friends. I support the member for East Kootenay when he says we should recognize their contribution.

B. Bennett: I'd like to thank the member for Nelson-Creston. It's a testament to his many years at the bar that he's able to respond to my statement on such short notice. By experience at the bar, Mr. Speaker, I want to make clear that I mean as a practising lawyer.

Hunting and fishing have been recognized in law as an important part of the people's heritage in Nova Scotia and also in Ontario. The Nova Scotia Legislature passed an amendment to their Wildlife Act in 1989 called An Act to Recognize Heritage, Angling, Hunting and Trapping. Clause 1 states that the province recognizes "that angling, hunting and trapping are valued and safe parts of the heritage of the province and that continuing opportunity to participate in those activities will be maintained in accordance with this act and the regulations."

The Ontario Legislature tabled an act on November 10, 2001, called An Act to Recognize Ontario's Recreational Hunting and Fishing Heritage and to Establish the Fish and Wildlife Commission. In the preamble it states: "Recreational hunting and fishing have played important roles in shaping Ontario's social, cultural and economic heritage. Recreational hunters and anglers have made important contributions to the understanding, conservation, restoration and management of Ontario's fish and wildlife resources. The best traditions of recreational hunting and fishing should be valued by future generations."

Hunting has been a part of the fabric of British Columbia life for generations. British Columbia derives cultural, economic and social benefits from recreational hunting. A portion of the tourism industry in B.C. is also based on recreational hunting.

Hunting groups such as Ducks Unlimited, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Kootenay wildlife heritage fund contribute greatly to conservation and to habitat restoration. Hunting promotes healthy youth participation in outdoor activities. Hunters provide invaluable information on wildlife habitats and population patterns to government, which government cannot afford to gather itself.

Legislation that recognizes the heritage of recreational hunting in British Columbia would have no impact on aboriginal rights under the constitution and, in fact, would perhaps draw aboriginal and non-aboriginal people closer together in recognition that it is the land that binds us all together.

On behalf of those British Columbians who share this honourable tradition of hunting and who share their reverence and respect for nature, I suggest that it is time for the government of British Columbia to recognize in law that hunting constitutes a valid part of our British Columbia cultural heritage.

REPRESENTATION OF
SMALL COMMUNITIES AT
ANNUAL PROVINCIAL CONFERENCE
(continued)

Hon. T. Nebbeling: I would like to speak in support of the amendment to Motion 9. The reason is that I believe the amendment truly strengthens the opportunities for local governments and smaller communities to participate in a dialogue on provincial issues, issues that pertain to smaller communities. It opens the opportunity for dialogue in a much broader way than the original motion represented.

I would like to speak for a minute on the provincial congress. It was indeed a very unique experience to participate in an event where, through the initiative of the Premier of this province, all elected officials in the various areas of government were represented.

It was an amazing experience to get together in one room with Senators, Members of Parliament, members of the Legislature in British Columbia, members of the aboriginal communities and members representing communities throughout British Columbia by the municipal associations in the various regions throughout the province.

I don't think that in the 16 years I've been involved with local government — first, of course, during my period in Whistler as a councillor and as the mayor, then as a member of the opposition and now as a member of this government — I've ever had the opportunity to see such a broad representation of elected officials who represented the voices and votes of British Columbians in one room together.

I should also say that for me what was very telling was that almost all the members who participated in this congress came together not to fight with each other, not to score political points or any other points, but truly came together for a dialogue on how we as elected officials in this province have an opportunity to share information, to share ideas on all the issues that are so extremely important to this province.

Mr. Speaker, there was one member who, at the end of the day, expressed his feeling of the experience of the dialogue that happened that day in the Wosk Centre for Dialogue in Vancouver. He was a member from the Kootenays representing the Canadian Alliance, and he said: "When I came here, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't think that this was going to be very productive; after all, we all come from different political backgrounds. We all come from different areas, different demographics." He truly didn't think something constructive could come out of that meeting. He concluded the meeting with a feeling of sheer optimism. He was just overwhelmed — and these were his words — by the consensus that was already developing in that group of elected officials. He was overwhelmed by the sense of positive, forward-looking attitudes that each and every person who spoke and participated in this congress represented.

What I think is that he, as an MP, truly represented the feeling that almost all other participants in this congress shared. I personally felt very encouraged to see leaders of British Columbia come together and focus on what really is important for British Columbians.

I think that's one of the consequences of this very first congress we held in Vancouver. I think it is a foundation that in the future will help us as elected officials working together with our colleagues in other areas to enrich that foundation, to strengthen that foundation. I know that in the end, British Columbians will do better because of that new foundation of dialogue which was created during that congress.

What has that got to do with the motion? Well, Mr. Speaker, there has been a concern expressed by the opposition that small communities in British Columbia do not really have an opportunity to stand up and talk about their problems, stand up and express their needs. To their credit, smaller communities have the desire to stand up and say: "We also will make a contribution to the well-being of British Columbia as a province; we also can make a contribution to make this province a stronger province, make life for the people in British Columbia a better life."

The member who introduced the original Motion 9 felt that voice was not really heard in the context of the congress. I was quite surprised to hear that, because, as I say, we had representatives from every part of the province. I felt it was a bit of a slight to our Members of the Legislative Assembly to say that voices of smaller communities could not be heard in this type of format. After all, all these members have been elected — in many cases, by the community members of smaller communities. I think our MLAs that represent smaller communities — and the overwhelming majority of us do — are very much aware of the needs in individual communities, very much aware of the aspirations that smaller communities have in the context of the overall picture of where British Columbia is going.

I can also say that these members speak up for these smaller communities all the time, even in the context of the congress, when the debates are going on. There is no doubt about it. If a point has to be raised that a local or smaller community needs to see as part of the agenda, needs to have on the floor for discussion, these members are more than suitable and willing to play that role on behalf of these communities.

The other thing, of course, is the five members who represent the regional areas through the municipal associations. Most of these members participating in the congress are actually from smaller communities. These members, again, speak up with a very clear and articulate voice on what they believe the provincial government, the federal government and the participants in this congress have to hear.

One of the members who played that role admirably was the member representing AVICC, the Association of Vancouver Island Coastal Communities. These are all very small communities. Considering what's going on in this province with the forest industry and other resource industries today, all these very small communities are having a difficult time.

One of the first speakers when the floor was opened up was the president of the AVICC, Mary Ashley. She is a councillor from Campbell River. She not only spoke very compassionately and articulately in expressing the concerns of smaller communities, but she also presented smaller communities' desire to be part of the solution. There are ideas within smaller communities that we should all hear, and she expressed that very eloquently. Clearly, smaller communities were very well represented by the president of the AVICC. I don't think they could have had a better

Another very compassionate speaker who spoke on behalf of smaller communities in British Columbia was one of the leaders or representatives of the aboriginal community. Mr. Bill Wilson spoke very much about the needs of aboriginal people. Aboriginal people do live in small communities. That they are called reserves is neither here nor there; they are small communities. We had very clear, well-articulated points raised by Mr. Wilson.

What was so important for me was that he was not only raising points that mattered to his small communities in British Columbia, but he did it in a form of dialogue. It was not an attack. It was: "Look, here is what we face. This is where we have to go as a direction." That tone of voice really led everybody to say: "Yes, we can find that common ground, that base from which it can work."

The point is that Mr. Wilson spoke on behalf of smaller communities in British Columbia. I believe the voice of small communities was there. It was articulated; it was represented very well.

To conclude my series of people mentioned who spoke for smaller communities, I'd like to remind us of the president of the UBCM, the Union of British Columbia Municipalities. He is, as president and as a member of the UBCM, representing rural areas. He's from the Kootenays. Again, this is a member who comes from a small community and knows what happens in small communities. Whenever he speaks, he speaks on behalf of all members of UBCM, but he speaks with the knowledge of what's happening in small communities.

The original Motion 9…. To say that smaller communities were not represented adequately in this congress, I find false. I know they were very well represented, and I think smaller communities, through the representation of those that I have spoken of, are part of this dialogue. It's necessary. Smaller communities do need to know that they are part of the dialogue that is happening right now in British Columbia on how we as members from small or large communities can work together with the various levels of government to make things happen that will enhance the quality of life, the opportunities for people and certainly the opportunities for future generations in the province.

My point about the congress per se and role of smaller communities. I hope I have been able to explain that it is there, that it is strong and that it will continue to be strong.

There is more. Over the last couple of months I have, as the minister responsible for the Community Charter, made every effort to ensure that small communities, just like large communities, have a major role in creating what will be the community charter for local governments. I have to go quickly over what we as a government have done in order to ensure that the voice of the smaller communities truly is not only an integral part of the process but also a strong part of the creation of this community charter. When we introduced the bill in the House five or six months ago in order to create a Community Charter Council, we made it very, very clear that when the Community Charter Council was going to be created, the rural areas had to have full representation on that charter council. That has happened.

That charter council was given a mandate to go out into the province to all the regions and meet with local council members and elected officials to let them know what the community charter will do for all communities in British Columbia and why it is time to replace the Local Government Act with a charter type of governance that will allow local governments more power to enhance opportunities in their own communities ( give that power to the elected officials to make decisions that will be to the benefit of the communities and the citizens.

I don't think that without having gone into this consultation process whereby we, as a Community Charter Council, visited every region, had meetings with all the representatives of the small and large communities in a region and did five- or six-hour work sessions to ask more questions, to ask for more input…. At the end of the day, after going for three months through this process of soliciting input from every community in British Columbia, that input has been used to put together a draft of the charter that will be introduced in the House in the near future after cabinet has seen it.

The most important part of the draft of the charter is the way it has been created. The most important part is how the people who will work in the future with a community charter can do their work as elected officials in the communities. These tools have been created by these people. It is the smaller communities throughout all the regions that have come out in large groups, participating in that process of listening and giving them the opportunity to direct the direction of a charter.

I can say that in the process of going through the regions, we have met with over 600 local elected officials. When we were in Creston we had 120 local elected people right there — 120 elected officials coming from small communities. Their input and suggestions have all been incorporated into a document that the Community Charter Council has been working on for the last five years.

My point is that, yes, we had the congress. Yes, small communities were very well represented during that congress, and I have laid out some of the participants, but we have made more strides to ensure that the voice of smaller communities is involved in everything that happens with how small communities can develop. They have had a voice in creating the tools to make smaller communities stronger as participants. They have been part of putting out the issues that are important for them as smaller communities to be part

of the dialogue through the community charter as well, and I think we have succeeded.

So, Mr. Speaker, where is this going to lead us now? Last Saturday I was in Campbell River. There were about 150 representatives from smaller communities along the coast and from the islands, and I laid out there how they will continue to be part of the process creating a new relationship with all communities in British Columbia — a relationship with urban areas and rural areas, a relationship based on respect and cooperation.

I believe that local governments today, including in smaller communities, are aware of our commitment as a provincial government to indeed treat smaller communities with all the respect that we treat larger communities — treat them with an open mind and cooperation, just as we would have that sense of cooperation with larger communities. In our eyes, in the provincial government's eyes, large or small communities are all equal. They all play a role in making British Columbia a much better place. I don't think smaller communities feel, at any time, that they are excluded from playing that role in our provincial government's objectives of making a province that truly reflects the quality of life for all British Columbians to which people in this province aspire.

I have said everything I did in favour of the amendment. I hope that my colleagues — with this background I have given them about how local government and smaller communities are involved in creating a new future for this province, as a very active and very important participant — can also support this amendment.

K. Krueger: I also rise to speak in favour of the motion as amended by the Minister of State for Intergovernmental Relations.

I was at the provincial congress — as you know, Mr. Speaker, the first of its kind — and it was a tremendous success. There was a little bit of self-serving soapboxing by Mr. Svend Robinson, who stood up to make some political comments and disappeared for much of the afternoon, but overall the people who were there were there in the spirit for which the provincial congress was intended.

We were there to accept input from people from around this great province and to talk about opportunities for British Columbia, about how to move our economy forward, how to pull ourselves out of the economic doldrums we spent much of the 1990s in and to move back to the position of leadership in Confederation that British Columbia was always intended to hold and that, historically, British Columbia did hold.

It was a very successful congress. I want to quote for a moment from the New Era document where the Premier and the B.C. Liberal Party — the government — set out this intention as a new-era commitment: "A B.C. Liberal government will invite all members of the B.C. Legislature and all B.C. Members of Parliament to hold annual joint conferences aimed at publicly identifying and overcoming issues of regional alienation within Canada and B.C."

The original commitment, as that quote says, was Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Assembly. Along the way to making the first provincial congress a reality, the government decided to include representatives from first nations, the UBCM and the regional municipal associations. It decided to include as many mayors as the facility would provide for — in the end, 15 mayors. Local government was added in addition to the commitment that the government was fulfilling by bringing on that first provincial congress.

Our colleagues from the New Democratic Party — our opposition colleagues — have said they don't think that's enough. The member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant said on March 4 that she thinks it's critical that there be equal representation at the provincial congress table to hear firsthand from the almost 200 smaller communities throughout British Columbia and for their voice to be direct and to have a place in the provincial congress, and so on.

The problem with that is that there are so many people, it would be difficult to actually hear from all of them. If you had 200 additional people and they spoke even three minutes each, it would be ten hours of further conversation — certainly not as productive as what actually went on at the provincial congress.

That being said, it's tremendously important. I think everyone in this House agrees, and the tenor of the debate indicates agreement that small communities must be heard from and be well represented. I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that they are well represented.

Every small community in British Columbia — every last one — is represented by a B.C. Liberal MLA. Hallelujah. What a great day that was for British Columbia — May 16, 2001 — where we saw that grand sweep across the province, and every small community embraced B.C. Liberal MLAs to represent them in this government. The two NDP members surviving that purge obviously are from a very big community — the largest one in British Columbia.

Why is that? Why did we have such a total sweep of small communities by B.C. Liberal MLAs? I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the members of the opposition that it's because people in those small communities agreed with the B.C. Liberal platform. They agreed with the approaches we committed to take. They still agree with them.

People are happy with the directions that the B.C. Liberal government is taking. There is a hue and cry, largely led by the supporters of the bygone regime. People in small communities are looking for change. They've been aghast, as we have been, as the economy of this great province went from best to worst in the 1990s in a boom decade for North America, in a time of fabulous opportunity when governments everywhere were paying off debt, long ago balanced their budgets and began to have productive debt management plans.

North America did great through the 1990s, except for British Columbia. There were a lot of NDP MLAs from small communities. In my first term in office,

1991-96, I remember some of them with fondness — nice people. Bill Goodacre, who represented Bulkley Valley–Stikine — either his voice wasn't heard, or it wasn't listened to. When we saw things happening like the elimination of the grizzly bear hunt throughout British Columbia regardless of the health of grizzly populations or the input of those NDP private members, we realized and those communities realized that their people were simply not being represented in the decisions that the government was taking.

We have to go back to recall how many mayors from small-town British Columbia were invited to the provincial congress previously held by the NDP government. The answer, of course, is none, because there was no provincial congress previously held by an NDP government — ever. There was lots of talk about consultative processes, lots of talk about inclusion, but time after time the consultative processes which the NDP launched turned out to have the results that everyone expected before they were launched — that is, the results that the NDP thought were a good idea before they ever launched the process. They didn't hold provincial congresses, and it seems ironic now to hear them criticize the invitation list for provincial congresses being held by this government when they had ten years to do things like that, and they were never particularly interested. They certainly had the opportunity, but they didn't want to do it.

Well, let's think about the successes the NDP had for small communities in British Columbia. I have lots of experience with small communities. I've lived in them all around the province, and I represent many of them right now. I grew up in what people would call a small community: Dawson Creek. At the time — I graduated from high school there in 1972 — it was a thriving small community — agriculture based, lots of tourism and transportation, people going up and down the Alaska Highway. It's mile zero of the Alaska Highway. Already, then, it was doing well in oil and gas exploration and production. It was a bubbling little community, and we were very proud of it. It was substantially larger than Fort St. John, and it was much more successful than Grande Prairie, Alberta, just across the border. We always sort of felt a little sorry for Grande Prairie, because we thought Dawson Creek was doing so much better than Grande Prairie.

Well, that all changed in the 1990s. We had a government in charge in British Columbia with its philosophies of tremendous overtaxation, tremendous overregulation, and it drove investors and jobs out of British Columbia. Where did it drive them to? Well, largely to Alberta but to many other places as well. Alberta boomed as a result of British Columbia's flawed approaches. Grande Prairie boomed. I visited it recently, and I was amazed. I think it's over 40,000 people now. It has been growing rapidly and steadily, and Dawson Creek, sadly, has been shrinking. It's not as vibrant a community as it was. It's doing better again now, thanks to the able representation of the members from the north and south Peace and the success of the oil and gas sector.

The NDP had a track record of turning relatively large communities into smaller communities. I would think they would be ashamed to hold themselves forward as any sort of representative of the interests of small communities. Clearly, small communities didn't think they were, by their ten-year track record in government, because they rejected them. Every small community in British Columbia, judging by the choice of MLAs sent down to Victoria on May 16, 2001, rejected the NDP as the representative of small communities.

The Leader of the Opposition, in her remarks on the motion before it was amended, embarked on quite a litany of complaints regarding government restructuring and spending reductions and the effects on small communities and, as always with the NDP, was totally oblivious to the fiscal realities of British Columbia — fiscal realities which she and her government created for the province, blissfully ignoring her responsibility and that of her colleague the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, who are the only NDP survivors and who were both cabinet ministers in that ill-fated regime, blissfully disregarding their responsibility for the financial morass into which their party plunged British Columbia.

They were in cabinet. They had the chance to do things about some of these debacles of the past: the $400 million of taxpayers' resources that were sunk into Skeena Cellulose, and we all know the sad history of that enterprise; the $463 million that were sunk into fast ferries that nobody wanted, that don't work, that stand today as a monument of NDP incompetence and ineptitude, because nobody will buy them; the $1.17 billion spent on a SkyTrain extension that was not the technology that the lower mainland wanted, wasn't desired by anybody but the NDP, was run through a number of constituencies — it always seemed to me — chosen at the time by the fact that they were represented by NDP members, but a technology that wasn't necessarily in the best interests of even those constituencies, let alone the rest of us…. Mr. Speaker, $1.17 billion.

The $1.2 billion spent on the mid-Island highway…. I always find it phenomenal as I drive that highway — and I frequently drive the Coquihalla Highway — to note the difference in the results between the $800 million spent building the Coquihalla Highway and the $1.2 billion spent on the mid-Island highway where you don't have any cloverleafs or overpasses, and you come to more than a dozen stop lights as you travel up the highway. It seems preposterous: a four-lane highway, a 100-kilometre speed limit and continual interruptions of flashing lights and then a red light — stop and go. As freeways go, it's a bit of a joke by comparison to the Coquihalla Highway, and yet it cost 50 percent more. That money was all borrowed money because, of course, the government we followed had no

history at all of generating revenue successfully for British Columbia and British Columbians.

All of those expenditures and all of that money had to come from somewhere. It was big dollars. Where did it come from? Credit — the NDP ran on credit. They would have run on credit forever if the electorate had allowed them to stay in office. British Columbia always had good credit. There have been tremendously successful governments prior to the NDP, of course. They earned a sound credit rating because of the progressive things they did. We had men of vision as Premiers prior to the NDP — people like W.A.C. Bennett, who always stands out as the example in my mind. A man of vision who built highways, dams and an economy for British Columbia, he set us up for success. We were enjoying that success until we had the misfortune of coming under the governance of the New Democratic Party.

The NDP took advantage of that credit rating, that favourable economic position, and spent money like drunken sailors. Premier Glen Clark at one time bragged that they were spending money as if they were shovelling it off the back of trucks. That was not good news for British Columbians. It has been a bad outcome. It wasn't just the big items either. It wasn't just the fast ferries, Skeena Cellulose, the mid-Island highway, the SkyTrain extension. It was thousands of smaller yet costly decisions, all of which continued to add up to a financial nightmare for British Columbians and left us — as you know, Mr. Speaker — with a structural deficit approaching $4 billion, something we had to come to grips with.

When the Leader of the Opposition stands up and harangues us about having to close or at least end the funding to inland transportation ferry services, that hurts. I don't like seeing that happen. Two of those ferries are in my constituency. Ferries across the North Thompson River — one at McLure, one at Little Fort — have been there since First World War days. Local people rely on them. Not a lot of local people do, in the Little Fort case. I'm told the service costs about $20 per rider for the ridership it had last year. We don't charge that for people to come across the big pond from the Vancouver side to here. It's unsustainable for a government that was left so far in the red.

I went and met with a number of community groups recently about the McLure ferry. It was hard to have to deliver news to them that when we shake the piggy bank, there's nothing in it but IOUs. There ought to be funds. We ought to have been left in good shape after a government had control over this great province for the entire time of the 1990s, but of course we weren't.

We're not giving up. We're saying that the provincial government can't afford to pay for those things, but we're looking for alternatives, and alternatives are there. I'm pleased to report to this House that there is good interest in taking over the ferry service by community groups, by aboriginal people and by the people who use the service. I'm hopeful that we won't have to end the service, that we won't see it end. We may in fact see an increase in service hours. If those ferries are marketed as tourism opportunities, it may well be that they'll have better ridership than before and will actually have entrepreneurs, communities or aboriginal groups perhaps making money by operating those.

It is galling to hear the Leader of the Opposition raise the fate of the inland ferries as something with which she seeks to rebuke this government, since her government was the one that spent the money in hundreds of millions that we now have to pay off in the way of debt. Yes, we're having to look at services that cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it seems like small change compared to the expenditures of the government that preceded us. By comparison it is, and yet that is the position we're left in.

The Leader of the Opposition also spoke of health care in small communities and the concerns of small communities, and that is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart. As I said, I grew up in Dawson Creek. I also lived in Fort St. John. My dad homesteaded 1,600 acres of bush north of Fort St. John. We lived near a little community called Buick.

Small communities do have very legitimate concerns about health care. One of the major concerns is that they don't have enough doctors and nurses. Once again, I call the previous government and its surviving members here in this House, the opposition members, to account for that.

How are doctors chosen in British Columbia? How are they trained? We only have one medical school, and that's UBC. It's now up to 128 recruits per year, and we're going to improve on that. How are they chosen for this wonderful, very costly, heavily taxpayer-subsidized education? Well, you look at the results of who is chosen, and you begin to get a flavour of why we have a problem finding doctors who want to serve in rural communities, small communities, in British Columbia — because not too many come from there.

I submit that the selection process has been heavily biased in favour of urban people. Even if the selection process manages to allow through a few people from small communities and rural communities, the education itself keeps them cloistered in Vancouver for so long that they are very likely to have adopted an urban lifestyle and perhaps found an urban spouse long before they ever graduate.

A lot of these people who graduate from medical school don't really have the attitudes that doctors used to have when they went out to provide the medical services where they were needed throughout the province — throughout the world, really. Some of our graduates pretty much want to work bankers' hours, and they want to have short careers. If you're regarding the career as a source of income, then it could provide for a healthy retirement in a very few years, but I submit to this House that this is not what the taxpayers of British Columbia are looking for when those decisions to allot those precious spaces are made.

We're looking for people with a service attitude, people who want to go out and practise medicine

where the people of British Columbia need them, people who want to go out and serve the communities — not people who are looking for a short career where they can save a big bundle of money in a short time and then retire, but people who actually want to be doctors for a very long time practising medicine where the doctors' services are needed.

Again, I suggest that the representatives of the previous government, now in opposition, have much to answer for when it comes to the issue of the tremendous shortage of physicians in British Columbia. I personally think it's wrong, and I'm ashamed of the fact that British Columbia for decades has been pirating doctors from Third World countries where they desperately need their doctors. I'd like to see an end to that.

I'd like to see our medical school geared up to provide 300 doctors per year to replace the 300 that we lose through attrition ( or more. I'd like us to be able to send doctors around the world to teach in Third World countries and to help the desperate nations of this world cope with their burgeoning populations and their health care problems. I'd like to see medical schools expanded and to have a medical school satellite in Kamloops and perhaps one in Kelowna. There's already a plan to bring it about for some of our interior communities, and specifically Prince George.

I'd like to see us recruit people from rural communities and small communities. I'd like a contract with them that if they're going to be taking one of the new spaces that are created, they will also serve where they're most needed. As you know, we have made a decision ( we made it a policy commitment in the election campaign; we've fulfilled it already ( that we would try to deal with this problem of a shortage of health care professionals in small communities by forgiving student loans for nurses, doctors and other graduates who would locate where they were most needed in British Columbia, and we're living up to that. Mr. Speaker, 20 percent a year for five years — their student loans are completely forgiven and no interest payable the whole time. That was a good idea, and I think we should do more things like that. It is difficult to hear members of the opposition in this House speak about the health care concerns of small communities when they were more than instrumental in creating many of the circumstances that have led to those concerns.

There is no end, actually, to the list of decisions and policies that this opposition, when they were government, made and undertook, which have actually hurt small communities. We used to go on opposition caucus tours through the northwest, for example, and we would see communities that I love, communities that I have frequently been to, shrinking and hurting because of the overtaxation and overregulation policies of the previous government.

I lived in Smithers for three years in the 1970s and early eighties and loved the community. It's a wonderful community. It's still doing better than a lot of the other communities along Highway 16. Many of them were hurt very badly by the tremendously onerous Forest Practices Code, by the government of British Columbia of the 1990s having made British Columbia the highest-cost producer of wood fibre in the world and by the fact that we lost so much of our market because of those increased costs that we were ill-poised for events such as the softwood lumber dispute.

It's wrong for the members opposite to in any way impute blame for the softwood lumber issues to the present government, when it was a situation that we all saw coming. We should have been doing everything we could as a province; they should have been doing everything they could as a government to prepare our industry for the hassle that was coming and that we've now been living through for the past many months.

They certainly shouldn't have been kneecapping the industry with the imposition of crazy regulations. I remember the member for Peace River North standing up one day and talking about how loggers building winter logging roads in his community were obliged to put culverts in the roads even though the Forest Practices Code would require them to tear those roads up and take those culverts out before the snow ever melted. He said that the only water that would ever be in the culverts was if one of the workers happened to chuck a snowball in them.

They were put to that tremendous additional expense for no other reason than a government having gone wild in its love of regulation. Mr. Speaker, as you know, all of that is changing. For example, this government has made a commitment to a results-based Forest Practices Code, has made a commitment to cut British Columbia's regulation by one-third in our first three years in office and has appointed a Minister of State for Deregulation, who is zealously working at his job.

This government has made a commitment to cause income taxes in British Columbia to be the lowest in Canada for incomes up to $60,000 per year by the end of our first term in office. The cabinet moved forward on this so quickly that on their first day in office, they made that promise a reality. Somehow, the opposition thinks it's grounds for criticism of this government that our cabinet went further and extended the tax cuts to higher-income earners as well. The opposition repeatedly refers to that wise move as a giveaway to the rich. It always confounds me — and most people, I think — why anyone would consider tax cuts a giveaway. If you're taxing people, you're taking their money from them; if you decide to take less of it, then that's the right thing to do. It's hardly a giveaway. It confounds people how that opposition party or anyone else could consider tax cuts to be a giveaway.

The taxes that rural British Columbians faced, the taxes that people living in small communities faced, hurt those small communities and those rural British Columbians throughout the NDP years, and it hurts them still. Many of them left. Thinking again of Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, a lot of people who lived

in those communities chose to move their residences to the Alberta side of the border in order to enjoy the much more attractive tax regime and a much less onerous regulatory regime that the neighbour just across that artificial line — the border — was able to provide to them. I think the examples are legion.

We're clearly getting pretty close to the time when this House adjourns for lunch.

I won't belabour the point, but I would say to the members of the opposition that they ought to consider their own record in office, their own lack of success and their own dismal results, before they ever criticize this government for its representation of small communities. I assure them that even though they're not in the caucus room, and they may never be in a government caucus room again…. The private members and the cabinet ministers who represent small communities throughout this province, as I said earlier…. Every last one of us is a B.C. Liberal.

There are no NDP members representing small communities anymore. That should speak very loudly to the members from the opposition. All of us who represent small communities represent them very well. We raise their issues. We weren't at the provincial congress to harangue anyone. We were there to listen.

When the member for Vancouver-Mount Pleasant rebukes our private members, and she chose some of them to reproach for not having spoken at the provincial congress, she clearly doesn't understand what we were there for. We were there to listen. The Premier himself didn't do a lot of speaking at the provincial congress except in a chairmanship role. We were there to listen, collaborate, bring together members from all levels of government for the first time — a historic first in British Columbia — hear what they had to say, get our ideas together, get our heads together and come up with ways to benefit the economy of British Columbia and bring it back to where it ought to be.

I like the amendment that the Minister of State for Intergovernmental Relations moved: "Be it resolved that this House recognizes small communities throughout British Columbia experience unique challenges and that those challenges and the people who face them are as important as any other citizen and should therefore have strong and effective representation at the government's annual provincial congress."

Almost every Member of the Legislative Assembly was at that congress. We had some illness, so not everybody made it.

I'm happy to report to this House, Mr. Speaker, that your deputy is doing very well. He expects to be back with us relatively soon. I spoke with him on Friday. He was grateful for the prayers and the support of everyone in this House. He's made an amazing recovery. He did have cancer. The doctors in Kelowna whisked him into surgery. They cut his bowel. They did a stapling operation. He doesn't have to have chemo or radiation, because he got superb medical treatment. I know we're all very thankful for that, and I'm pleased to report it. He wasn't there only because of his illness.

Almost everybody was there. I submit to you that there was excellent representation for small communities in the members who were there from this Legislature, in the representatives from the regional municipal associations — Okanagan Mainline Municipalities Association in my case — the UBCM representatives themselves and the first nations representatives.

No one should ever discount the role of first nations in providing economic opportunity throughout British Columbia. The Kamloops North Thompson Indian band, Whispering Pines Clinton Indian band, Little Shuswap Indian band and Adams Lake Indian band are all tremendously involved in the local economy, as you know, in our region — partners with Sun Peaks on various joint ventures, developing housing complexes of their own and in many ways adding to an economy that, in spite of all the misfortunes of the 1990s, is doing better than anybody could have expected in our area.

I submit that small communities are very well represented in this House, were very well represented at the provincial congress and will continue to be well represented. That being said, there is always room for improvement in how we conduct anything that we do. I know that the Premier, the cabinet and the government have been seriously weighing the input of everyone who has spoken on the record on this matter. I look forward to the next provincial congress, and I thank you for this opportunity to speak.

J. Kwan: Pursuant to standing order 31, I ask that motions 1, 2 and 3 as listed in schedule D be allowed to stand and retain their precedence.

I move Motion 5 standing in my name on the order paper. Motion 5 reads:[Be it resolved that this House opposes the lift of the tuition fee freeze.]

Hon. Speaker, the tuition fee freeze issue has been one that I would say dominated the minds of students and British Columbians alike for many years. The reason why the tuition fee freeze is such an important item for people seeking post-secondary education is, of course, the issue that centres around access. I personally know, as a person who comes from a low-income family, that access to post-secondary education means affordability. The question rests on whether or not the individual would have the financial means to enter into post-secondary education.

For many British Columbians, for many students young and old, affordability is a barrier, which is the reason why the previous government brought forward the tuition fee freeze — with the aim not only to freeze tuition but, over time, to work towards reducing the tuition so that many more people would be able to get

access to it, so that not only the richest people from the communities would have access to post-secondary education.

The current government, though, prior to the election, promised that they would continue to support the tuition fee freeze. But after the election, what have we got? The Minister of Advanced Education announced that they would deregulate the tuition fee freeze and deregulate education to allow the institutions to determine what fee would apply.

We saw just this weekend in the Vancouver Sun that at UBC the tuition would be boosted up by 321 percent. There would be an increase of up to 321 percent. The impact for students for this coming September will be stunning, to say the least.

Quite frankly, if I was just graduating from high school now and contemplating post-secondary education, with this news I know that the post-secondary education option that I was able to get into would not be an option. This is me, working three part-time jobs during my post-secondary years and with a student loan. Those were the fees almost ten years ago.

It's unbelievable that this government would like to have you think that increasing the tuition would not create barriers for students to access post-secondary education. This Liberal government would have you believe that it is a good thing to deregulate education, that it is a good thing in the name of flexibility and access — the euphemism for if you are not from the richest categories of British Columbians, the euphemism for the most privileged British Columbians. In the name of access and flexibility, this government would think that lifting the tuition fee would actually be advantageous.

Hon. Speaker, I have much to speak on, on this item. It is one that is very important not just for the students today but for the future of British Columbia in our economy and in our socioeconomic development.