Hansard -- Thursday, March 27, 2003 p.m. -- Vol. 13, No. 7 (HTML)



CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page

Introductions by Members		5693

Statements (Standing Order 25b)		5693
	Transit services in Victoria J. Bray War against Iraq J. MacPhail Kitimat anniversary R. Harris

Oral Questions		5694
	Gaming funding for B.C. Paraplegic Association J. MacPhail Hon. R. Coleman Workplace safety regulations H. Bloy Hon. G. Bruce Addiction treatment services B. Locke Hon. G. Cheema Cruise ship industry in B.C. J. Bray Hon. R. Thorpe Nursing strategy J. Les Hon. S. Hawkins Government policies on women's issues J. MacPhail Hon. L. Stephens

Petitions		5696
	S. Orr

Ministerial Statements		5697
	Severe acute respiratory syndrome Hon. S. Hawkins J. MacPhail

Committee of the Whole House		5698
	Agrologists Act (Bill 4)

Report and Third Reading of Bills		5698
	Agrologists Act (Bill 4)

Second Reading of Bills		5698
	Foresters Act (Bill 5) Hon. M. de Jong P. Bell R. Visser

Committee of the Whole House		5700
	Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2003 (Bill 22) Hon. G. Abbott J. MacPhail

Reporting of Bills		5702
	Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2003 (Bill 22)

Third Reading of Bills		5702
	Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2003 (Bill 22)

Second Reading of Bills		5702
	Forestry Revitalization Act (Bill 28) (continued) K. Krueger R. Harris R. Visser T. Christensen P. Bell S. Brice Hon. M. de Jong

Committee of Supply		5717
	Estimates: Ministry of Energy and Mines Hon. R. Neufeld P. Nettleton J. MacPhail

Royal Assent to Bills		5721
	Agrologists Act (Bill 4) Coastal Ferry Act (Bill 18) Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2003 (Bill 22) Supply Act (No.1), 2003 (Bill 26)

Deputy Speaker: Good afternoon, hon. members. I have the pleasure to make the first introduction. In the gallery is Fran Crowhurst, legislative counsel with the Attorney General's ministry, and joining her is Michelle Fletcher on exchange from parliamentary council office in Canberra. Joining her is her husband, Karl. Would the House please make them welcome.

Hon. R. Thorpe: Today in the members' gallery we have a very special visitor from Japan. Mr. Suzuki is the chairman of the Listel group and owns Listel hotels in Vancouver and Whistler as well as a travel company, Choji Travel Canada Ltd. Mr. Suzuki is an active promoter of Japanese tourism to British Columbia and Canada. We greatly appreciate his contributions in developing new trade and cultural exchanges between British Columbia and Japan.

Mr. Suzuki is visiting British Columbia in celebration of his recent seventieth birthday, and his visit will be subject to a documentary film in Japan. He is accompanied today by Mr. Zhou, vice-president of Listel Canada, and Mr. Okamoto of NHK, Japan's national radio and television. Would everyone in this House please welcome Mr. Suzuki to British Columbia.

K. Manhas: Today in Victoria we have a group of grade 11 students from Terry Fox Secondary School in Port Coquitlam led by Mr. Don van Os, Mark Prinster, Bruce Moore, Bill Mullan, Andrea Gielty, Bruce Kiloh and Scott Parker. They're all outstanding teachers at Terry Fox Secondary School in Port Coquitlam, who have brought along their classes and 280 of their favourite students up to Victoria for an annual visit to the Legislature and to visit our House and the capital city. Would the House please make them very welcome for their visit here to Victoria.

R. Stewart: Not to be outdone, we've got two outstanding teachers and their grade 11 socials class from Centennial high school in Coquitlam visiting the Legislature today. Teachers Joe Gluska and Steve Fukui and their grade 11 class are entering the gallery right now. Would the House please make them welcome.

J. Bray: Today I wish to speak about a very important issue in my community, the provision of transit services. Public transit is a vital component of a healthy, sustainable community, one where people are able to travel between work and home, school and home, and to other community services and events. Next year in Victoria, transit will carry over 20 million passengers. Good public transit connects people.

Currently, the Victoria transit commission is conducting a review of services in my constituency. Possible changes being proposed may impact some of my constituents. Let me review B.C. Transit's mission: "To excel in the provision of safe, reliable, cost-efficient and market-focused public transportation systems that support the social, economic and environmental goals of customers and the communities that they serve."

In Victoria many of the decisions regarding transit services and funding are made by the Victoria regional transit commission. In Victoria the commission is responsible for determining route configurations and transit service levels, setting fares, reviewing and making recommendations for the annual budget, and raising the local share of the annual cost of transit.

In my latest constituency newsletter I asked for feedback on important local issues. Given the possible changes proposed for transit service in my community, many constituents have identified transit as a major area where they look for my involvement. To that end, I have met with the Minister of Transportation to discuss issues around transit and the impacts of service changes to seniors, students and others who rely on transit for their participation in the community. I have met with the Victoria transit commission again to discuss these issues.

In March 2003 the transit service review is asking for feedback over the next couple of weeks. The final recommendations will go to the transit commission. I encourage all residents in my community to read the transit review document and provide their feedback directly to Victoria transit. Constituents can contact my office for copies of the latest report and information on how to submit their views.

I can assure my constituents that I will continue to work for strong public transit in my community.

J. MacPhail: The war in Iraq is on the mind of every British Columbian. Whether we agree with the decision to go to war or not, we all watch with horror as the violence and death of war unfolds on our television screens. We are all deeply concerned for the combatants, for the Iraqi people and for the children of war for whom this must all be a bewildering nightmare.

On Monday I asked for an emergency debate in this House to express support for an end to the hostilities and the pre-emptive strike against Iraq. That request was denied. However, I have tabled a motion that can be called for debate today. I respectfully ask that the government allow this House that opportunity.

Ultimate responsibility for Canada's involvement in the war lies with the federal government. However, I believe that the provinces and communities must also

play a role and take a stand. Already dozens of cities and communities in North America have passed resolutions opposing a pre-emptive, non-sanctioned war in Iraq. In British Columbia this is our first opportunity to engage in a debate about the most significant event of our time and one in which the whole world has an enormous stake. In my view, as elected representatives we have a moral and practical responsibility to take a position on a war that will have massive humanitarian, economic and social implications.

Already the consequences of war are being felt here at home. Its effects are rippling through our economy and disrupting our daily routines. British Columbians are asking how we can play a role in helping relieve the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding.

British Columbians come from every part of the world. We celebrate every faith, and we are joined together by common values: peace, civility and tolerance — values which in these dangerous times must be given voice. We have a collective responsibility to take a stand for the values that British Columbians cherish. For future generations and for the security of the world, we must take a lead role and encourage peaceful solutions.

I ask that my motion to oppose the pre-emptive strike in Baghdad be called for debate and that this body act as a strong voice for peace and justice in the world.

R. Harris: It's my pleasure to inform the House about the fiftieth anniversary of a unique community in my riding. On March 31, 2003, the district of Kitimat will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its incorporation as a district municipality.

The story of Kitimat is not a normal story of a crossroads that grew, attracted more residents and then commerce, and finally became a community. Rather, it's a story of how the post–Second World War efforts to open up B.C.'s north to industrial development led to the founding of a brand-new, fully planned community which now makes a very significant contribution to the economy of British Columbia. In the 1950s the Alcan development of the aluminum industry in Kitimat was featured in the National Geographic Magazine.

I'd like to take this opportunity to extend Kitimat's invitation to the people of British Columbia to visit during these fiftieth-anniversary celebrations. While in Kitimat, visitors will be able to enjoy some of the best deep-sea river fishing for salmon in the province, if not the world. They will find a community of great rugged beauty, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and providing some of the best outdoor recreational opportunities and amenities in our province. A visit to the neighbouring community of Haisla offers an opportunity to experience a wealth of first nations heritage and culture. Kitimat is a modern community with a new hospital, a good school system and recreational facilities that are the envy of many larger communities, thanks in many ways to the impacts of its industrial development.

I am pleased to distribute to the members a special invitation. As the MLA for Kitimat, I expect to play a role in the fiftieth-anniversary celebrations and hope that many of my colleagues and people of B.C. will grasp this opportunity to see and celebrate with this unique community in 2003.

J. MacPhail: Can the minister responsible for gaming explain why the B.C. Paraplegic Association is losing close to a million dollars in gaming funds, threatening programs that help British Columbians with spinal cord injuries?

Hon. R. Coleman: I'm actually meeting with the B.C. Paraplegic Association tomorrow to discuss the issue with them. Basically, in the past there has been some disproportionate funding to provincial organizations under the grant program that existed. We've sat down with the organization and looked at a transition plan with them, and I'll be sitting down with them tomorrow.

J. MacPhail: I'm aware the minister is meeting with the Paraplegic Association tomorrow. He has actually got his facts wrong. The former government worked with the B.C. Paraplegic Association to consolidate its ten regional gaming licences into one to actually cut red tape. That saved both the government and the association thousands of dollars in administrative costs and allowed the B.C. Paraplegic Association to concentrate on what it does best — helping people with spinal cord injuries.

Now this minister is going to turn back the clock and force this important organization to jump through bureaucratic hoops while cutting close to a million dollars from its budget. Again to the minister: can he explain why he thinks it makes sense to throw up bureaucratic obstacles, impose red tape and at the same time cut the funding of an organization that thousands of British Columbians with spinal cord injuries depend upon?

Hon. R. Coleman: The member is aware that we have been dealing with the direct access program and trying to see how we can revamp it to make it sustainable for all British Columbians. As we've done that, we've run into some things like the Paraplegic Association finding themselves in some difficulty. Each time that happens, I meet with the organization and try and figure out long-term strategies to solve their problem. I'm doing that tomorrow. I look forward to meeting with the organization and coming back and sitting down with my officials to see how we can deal with some of their issues.

J. MacPhail: As always, it is left up to the agencies that provide services in this community to bring this government to its heels and to its senses in doing the right thing. This government always tries to do the wrong thing first. Yes, the minister is meeting with the Paraplegic Association tomorrow, and here's what they will tell him. They will tell him that they help 100 people a month at G.F. Strong to recover and to leave hospital early.

That saves the health care system hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but the program at G.F. Strong, as of this day, may have to go entirely in order to make up for this minister's budget cut, costing the taxpayers millions over the long term. Will the minister commit that after his meeting tomorrow, he will announce that every dime of gaming funding cut will now go directly back into helping British Columbians with spinal cord injuries?

Hon. R. Coleman: Once again, a nonsensical statement from the Leader of the Opposition. There has not been one single dime cut from gaming to charities in the province. Next year it will go up by over $3 million. Under that government, it was not a sustainable program. In the last year of your mandate, over 500 charities applied for money and didn't receive a dime. This is the first time in many years that we've had a sustainable grant program in British Columbia, and over 400 more charities were helped this year than in years past.

H. Bloy: My question is to the Minister of Skills Development and Labour. This morning the B.C. Federation of Labour presented a brief on the impact of deregulating WCB regulations. They claim that the changes will seriously water down work safety standards and hurt the health and safety of workers. Can the Minister of Skills Development and Labour tell me if this is true, and what are the reasons for the changes?

Hon. G. Bruce: I appreciate the question. In fact, what we're attempting to do is to revamp the WCB so it's an agency that is useful and worthwhile in being able to help and protect and improve the safety of the worksite.

Currently, there are 34,000 regulations in the province of British Columbia around safety at the worksite. Tragically, it would be important to note that in respect of the forestry sector and the deaths in the forestry sector, in spite of the fact that we have twice the number of regulations from a number of years ago in respect to WCB, we still have the same number of deaths or even, in some years, higher. That's simply not good enough.

The other aspect of things…. If one looks at thinking that regulations are what make the difference for a safe and protective worksite, in the oil and gas sector in our northeast sector, compared to that in Alberta…. Alberta has 38 regulations; British Columbia has 88 regulations. Alberta has 52,000 people that work in the oil and gas industry. We only have 2,000, and their injury rate is considerably less.

B. Locke: My question is to the Minister of State for Mental Health. Surrey is a community of over 370,000 people. Along with that big-city population come big-city problems, not the least of which are drug addictions. One of the issues that is important to my community is the availability of addiction services. To the minister: can he tell us what this government is doing to ensure that services are available for those people wanting and needing the help in Surrey?

Hon. G. Cheema: An addiction is not a character flaw. It's a disease of the brain, and that needs to be treated like any other disease. It's important to note that 70 percent of the patients in B.C.'s addiction system are also patients of the mental health care system. As of April 1, 2002, and for the first time in B.C.'s history, our government has brought addiction care directly to the health care system. We are also integrating mental health and addiction services to serve patients more effectively.

Hon. G. Cheema: Our restructuring is helping the health authorities to revitalize their addiction service. This will ensure that the services are provided on the basis of evidence-based studies and are carefully managed throughout the regions. The Fraser health authority's plan for addiction services will also result in more detoxification services for youth and many others in our province.

J. Bray: …is to the Minister of Competition, Science and Enterprise. Recently news reports have indicated the potential growth in the number of U.S. cruise ships visiting B.C. ports, including smaller ports like Victoria. As I've mentioned before, cruise ship visits are very

important for our local economy. This year 119 ships are expected to visit Victoria, which potentially brings millions of dollars into our local economy. Can the Minister of Competition, Science and Enterprise explain what government is doing to foster further growth to ensure that port communities like Victoria and others along the coast can maximize the opportunities from growing cruise ship visits from the U.S.?

Hon. R. Thorpe: This year the cruise ship industry will generate $34 million in economic activity in the Victoria area. Last year our government eliminated the 7 percent tax on bunker fuel. This year we eliminated the tax on fuel for gas turbine engines. Our government is working in partnership with the federal government to build a cruise ship facility at Prince Rupert.

Together with my colleague the Minister of Sustainable Resource Management, the government is working on a ports strategy for the coastal communities of British Columbia. For the first time in the history of British Columbia, on May 23 of this year there will be four cruise ships docked in Victoria. It is a new era for cruise ships in Victoria.

J. Les: My question is to the Minister of Health Planning. One of the challenges that we've had in British Columbia is the provision of qualified nurses throughout the province. Our government's nursing strategy demonstrates its commitment to addressing this challenge and the shortage that exists in British Columbia. Can the minister explain to the House the results she has had thus far as a result of her efforts?

Hon. S. Hawkins: Our government decided to act very quickly, in fact, to address an issue that had been ignored by the previous government for ten years. We implemented a nursing strategy. We invested $42 million, and to date we've seen results in our ability to attract, retain, recruit and educate nurses. In fact, the Minister of Advanced Education added 1,266 more nursing seats.

We've had initiatives to encourage B.C. nurses who aren't working to take a refresher course and come back into the health care system. We've trained 400 nurses who weren't working to do that. We've recruited more foreign-educated nurses to help fill those hard-to-fill spaces in our ICUs, our emergency rooms, our operating rooms, and labour and delivery. We've given new opportunities for nurses to get specialty training across the province, and we invested $15 million last year in funding bed lifts for health authorities outside the lower mainland.

The Minister of Advanced Education also implemented a forgivable student loan program, the first of its kind in Canada, which ensures that nurses who work in underserved areas can get their loan forgiven over a period of three years. We've seen some real benefits to that. We now have a net of 538 more nurses this year than last year, and in the face of an aging and retiring nursing population, I think that's great. We've also decreased the nurse vacancy rate by almost 60 percent. The RNABC reports that 73 percent of 2002 nursing grads are working in permanent positions today, compared to 24 percent in 1997. So that's good news.

J. MacPhail: It's always disappointing when this government continually fails to realize that we live in a global economy. This morning the International Labour Organization censured this government once again. A few weeks ago another UN body censured this government for their record on women's equality, but did the Minister of State for Women's Equality pay any attention? No, she's at it again, talking to her local paper and attacking the organization that she's supposed to be working with — the very organization she's supposed to represent. This time she set her sights a little higher, attacking the United Nations. Why? Because the UN released a report criticizing her government's record on women's equality issues.

To the minister: what conspiracy theory does she subscribe to that would lead her to conclude that the United Nations would release a politically motivated report criticizing her government — exactly what she accused the UN of in her local paper?

Hon. L. Stephens: Once again, the Leader of the Opposition is completely wrong — completely wrong. This government is one that has made sure we have protected those critical services for women. We have the third-highest level of legal aid funding in Canada. We have the programs in place that make sure women have the services they require. We will continue to do that. We have, in fact, put in place our safer community strategy that we're going to be working on and we will be releasing shortly.

This member here continues to talk about what she thinks is relevant. In fact, she continues to get everything wrong. She needs to go back and look at what was said. She needs to look at the women's centres, which are the ones that were talking about the kinds of problems that the UN thought they were addressing. It is the women's centres that are looking at making sure they, in fact, put forward the wrong information that we continue to try to address.

S. Orr: I rise to present a petition. This petition has 334 signatures from the parents of Richmond Elemen-

tary School in my riding and their concerns about and opposition to possible closure of their school.

Hon. S. Hawkins: Over the past 24 hours there have been significant developments regarding an outbreak of a rare and potentially fatal respiratory illness. This has been causing widespread concern around the world, and the origin of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, remains a mystery.

Since November 2002 more than 1,400 people worldwide, including 28 cases in Canada, have been diagnosed with SARS. A total of 53 people around the world, including three Canadians in Ontario, have lost their lives.

In British Columbia there is one probable case of SARS, and 12 other cases are being monitored for SARS. Four of these cases look suspect, but in all cases symptoms of SARS were reported after returning to Canada from areas where SARS cases have been confirmed. Four of the 12 cases meet the suspect definition of SARS, and isolation precautions have been taken for all of these cases. To date, no British Columbia health care worker has been impacted.

I want to assure every British Columbian that our government continues to monitor the situation closely, and we are prepared to take any necessary action to safeguard public health in relation to this outbreak. Through the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and the office of Dr. Perry Kendall, who is our provincial medical health officer, we're receiving regular updates on the provincial, national and global developments regarding the spread of identified cases of the syndrome and the latest efforts to respond to this global public health issue.

Working closely with our health authorities and the network of medical health officers across the province, we're ensuring we have access to information around any potential or emerging cases on a regular basis. We also continue to work closely with Health Canada and the other provinces and territories to share information and ensure consistency in our approaches at the national level.

Anyone watching the news last night or who picked up the paper this morning will be well aware that Ontario has been hard-hit by this illness. In fact, as of Wednesday afternoon thousands were advised to remain at home in quarantine for a period of ten days. The province of Ontario officially declared a public health emergency.

Based on the advice of our senior health officials, we have been advised that it is not necessary to take this step as yet in B.C., given the small number of suspected cases here at home and the strong surveillance networks we have in place.

I want to emphasize, though, that we will act swiftly if the situation changes. I want to say, as well, that in British Columbia the situation has remained well in hand because of our ability to respond quickly, given the smaller number of health authorities and the improved coordination across the spectrum of our health care system, which includes our network of public health and disease surveillance.

Today we have posted the most current information about SARS on line on the B.C. government website at www.gov.bc.ca, on both ministries of Health webpages, and I encourage the public to explore both the Health Canada and B.C. Centre for Disease Control websites for further information as the situation develops. I understand we'll have the links to those on our webpages as well. In addition, our NurseLine, which can be accessed by calling 1-866-215-4700, is available to any British Columbian with specific questions around the symptoms of SARS or who have concerns about their own health.

I think it's really, really important to understand that a history of travel to the Far East — to Hong Kong, Singapore, Hanoi, Taiwan and the Guangdong province in China — or known contact with a SARS case is necessary for a diagnosis of suspect or probable SARS. Those are key factors, and we want you to understand that, as the symptoms of SARS are consistent with many other conditions. We want to avoid unnecessary alarm. Again, I want to emphasize that our top priority as a government is to ensure public health and safety. We will continue to be vigilant in our efforts to monitor and respond to this developing situation.

At this time, I do want to acknowledge the work of the provincial health officer, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, the health authorities, their medical health officers and public health officials who are doing just an amazing job in keeping us informed and keeping the situation under control.

Deputy Speaker: Responding to the ministerial statement, the Leader of the Opposition.

J. MacPhail: Thank you to the Minister of Health Planning for providing the opposition with her remarks. Also, thank you to the minister for making note of the opposition's request to have information posted on the website.

In these times of high anxiety about so many issues affecting us nationally, internationally and locally, it is important that everybody have the most current information not only to make sure the issue is managed safely, securely and quickly from a health status but also to ensure that the high anxiety does not create disturbances beyond the health issue, particularly as it comes to travel and how that may affect our economy.

Anything the opposition can do to ensure quick and proper access and distribution of information, we will do in order to handle this most serious health issue.

I. Chong: Joining us today is a group of ladies who make an annual trek to the buildings. They're not always the same people, but they are a club: University Women's Club of Victoria. They are led by Ms. Sylvia Camp. I believe there are 14 women accompanying them. If they're not already in the gallery watching, I know they soon will be. I still would ask the House to please make them welcome.

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 4; H. Long in the chair.

Hon. S. Hagen: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Bill 4, Agrologists Act, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

The Foresters Act, Bill 5, repeals and replaces existing legislation that has been in place since 1947. It also contains a more concise, modern and enforceable definition of professional forestry practice.

The act also modifies the name of the regulatory body that oversees the forestry profession, changing it to the Association of British Columbia Forest Professionals. That association name change reflects the inclusion of registered forest technologists within the organization. The transfer of forest technologists into the association represents, in my view, a significant step forward in support of the regulatory design of the Forest and Range Practices Act legislation introduced and passed earlier by this Legislature.

The Forest and Range Practices Act relies on the judgment and accountability of resource professionals and technologists to ensure that environmental standards are maintained under a workable results-based code. The key to maintaining this commitment is being able to depend upon highly trained, dedicated, accountable professionals and technologists to make sound resource management decisions.

Forest professionals will be held more accountable on the plans they approve. A lack of diligence can lead to sanction of a member of the association, as amendments to the Foresters Act provide stronger capacity to sanction poor practices and poor practitioners. This bill makes the discipline process outlined in the Foresters Act more cost- and time-effective by better enabling the association to take the necessary actions to hold its own members accountable, by clarifying the investigative powers of the association as well as the role and powers of the panel charged with conducting hearings into the competence or conduct of members with complaints that are made against them and, finally, by formalizing mechanisms to assist in resolving complaints against members and make the process more approachable for potential complainants.

The new Foresters Act also provides association members with protection against adverse actions such as suspension or discharge taken against them for exercising their professional obligations and raising complaints. With this new Foresters Act, the judgment of forest professionals can be relied upon as a cornerstone for the results-based era that this government promised and has now acted upon.

P. Bell: I'm very happy to stand in support of Bill 5 today. I believe that even though this bill has received little publicity and, really, little focus, it's a key part of the equation in moving towards a new era of forestry in the province — just as significant in many ways as some of the other acts we have passed and will be passing in the coming weeks.

I think most significant is the focus on moving foresters into a true professional association. I think that truly brings a new honour to the profession of registered professional foresters. I believe it indicates their responsibilities to society. It really, I think, mandates an entire new era for the profession and moves them to a new level.

More importantly, without this particular piece of legislation, Bill 74, the Forest and Range Practices Act, really would become far more complex. It is a significant piece in the sense that in order for Bill 74 to function appropriately, we have to rely on the accountability of professionals.

I was always kind of curious. Oftentimes we would have an engineer design a bridge or a tall building, and we would rely on that engineer's stamp on a document or a piece of paper and presume that that individual had accepted responsibility for that, when there are literally thousands or perhaps millions of lives at stake as they travel over that particular bridge or move around that building. Yet in the forestry community, when we have a registered professional forester sign off on a document to cut down a single tree, that has in the past not been good enough. We had to have multiple signatures and multiple stamps. This moves us to a mechanism that will allow for professional accountability. This allows that individual, upon completion of their degree at one of our wonderful universities in the province, to sign off on a document and accept responsibility for their actions and the impact that individual would have on the environment. I think it's a tremendous step forward for us. I think it's extremely important.

I think the inclusion of forestry technicians and the recognition that technicians are, in fact, individuals that are very responsible and have received significant training…. The reliance of those individuals and the advice that they give…. I can speak from the perspective of an individual who worked in the forest industry for a number of years, and I oftentimes relied on the opinions and judgments of forestry technicians. This has truly given them a new sense of responsibility and a new authority that they need to accept and move forward on.

Probably most important is, I think, the fact that this moves us to the results-based objectives that we stated very clearly in our New Era document some two years ago. We wanted to move to an era in British Columbia where we allowed people to take responsibility for their actions, and when they had received a period of education and when they signed off on a document, we understood that they were accepting that responsibility and that they would provide us the result we were looking forward to. Although this particular piece of legislation has not received a lot of attention, I am certainly very happy to speak in support of the legislation, and I think it is very significant for many, many thousands of professional foresters in our province who look forward to the anticipated results.

R. Visser: I just wanted to take a couple of minutes out of the House's time to talk a bit about Bill 5 and the professional foresters and engineers that I know up my way. I have met with them on a number of occasions and actually had the privilege of going and lecturing to the fourth-year forest policy class at UBC's forestry school a few weeks back. I know firsthand of the work that they do, the commitments that they all have to their communities and what they contribute to the forests of the North Island.

As I travel from Holberg to Woss to Gold River to Campbell River, the people that show up and want to talk about forests — who want to communicate with government about how we're going to behave in the forests and how we should act in the forests, about the relationship between the ecology of the environment and their jobs as foresters — are true professionals in every sense of the word. They believe in what they do, and they've wanted some recognition and some freedom for a long time. They wanted to be understood in the broader context of public policy for the role they play. There are four pieces of legislation that have gone through, in my mind, in the last year — Bill 74, as the member for Prince George North talked about; the Forest and Range Practices Act; and this bill, Bill 5; along with the Agrologists Act and the professional biologists act — that really speak to this government's commitment to embrace professionals.

You know, one of the most startling things I learned from lecturing the fourth-year class is that kids aren't taking up the profession these days. The number of kids that have graduated out of the University of British Columbia's forestry school is scheduled to drop by a factor of half over the next three years.

That's simply not good enough. That speaks to the attitude that we've had in this province for a decade, about what they did, what their job was about and what they contributed. I think this bill and Bill 74 and the attitude that this government's shown and that the minister's shown towards professional foresters are going to go a long way to making sure that we get young people, bright young people from all over British Columbia, back into a profession that we should be inherently proud of, and one that we lead the world in. I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to speak in favour of this bill, thank the minister for recognizing this profession, bringing it to the House and moving it forward.

Hon. M. de Jong: Thank you to the members for their comments and for their observations about the importance of this piece of legislation as part of the overall results-based new era that we are creating.

Hon. M. de Jong: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 5, Foresters Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. G. Collins: I call Committee of the Whole for consideration of Bill 22.

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 22; H. Long in the chair.

Hon. G. Abbott: I move the amendment to section 10 standing in my name on the orders of the day.

[SECTION 10, in the proposed amendment to Schedule 2 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, deleting "Chair" and substituting "Chief Executive Officer".]

Hon. G. Abbott: In the proposed amendment, the term "chair" would be deleted, and the term "chief executive officer" would be substituted.

J. MacPhail: Sorry. I said I was just going to discuss 11, 12 and 13, but I do have a question on this. Why is it necessary to remove it from the Freedom of Information Act?

Hon. G. Abbott: Just so it's clear to the member, they are not being removed from the schedule. The Freedom of Information Act will still apply. It's just a change in terms of the designated responsible authority.

J. MacPhail: Mr. Chair, with the indulgence of you and the minister, perhaps we could discuss the amendments to the Heritage Conservation Act. My questions flow amongst all of them, if I may. I'm sure the minister has heard the feedback and the anxiety level being raised by these changes amongst heritage conservationists. There was an article earlier this week and then one last week as well. I'll just quote from the one last week, March 21, in the Times Colonist: "But anxious heritage activists say very few heritage sites in the world make money, and even with the best will in the world the new operators are unlikely to be able to make ends meets — let alone pay for upkeep and maintenance."

Their concern is arising because I think what's happening in these amendments to the Heritage Conservation Act is that there will be a British Columbia heritage legacy fund created. It will be given $5 million in seed money, and the fund will be administered by a non-profit society that will be put together by Heritage Society of B.C. and the Land Conservancy. Let me ask the minister why he's moving in this direction.

Hon. G. Abbott: There are actually two processes here, and I'll just provide the member with some clarification so there's no confusion around the two.

The first process that the member alluded to is what we would term the devolution-of-management process. In that process, what we are attempting to build on is the experience over the past decade in heritage sites — for example, Emily Carr House or the Grist Mill at Keremeos — with private sector or non-profit management of heritage sites. It's my view and certainly the view of government that government continues to have a vital role in heritage around things like legislation, policy, the setting of standards, the quality assurance, assurance of stewardship — all of those areas — but it is not necessary for government to be a direct delivery agent in terms of the management of heritage sites.

We are building on what is actually a well-established track record at places like Emily Carr House and the Keremeos Grist Mill with that private sector or non-profit sector management of heritage sites. It has been very successful, and we're very confident that the process we're involved in now is going to be successful. There is, I think, some misunderstanding, which was reflected in the Times Colonist article, with respect to whether the Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services expected that all the approximately 15 heritage sites in the province would be self-sustaining and self-supporting in the future.

That's not the case. We expect some will continue to be supported, but I don't think that is universally understood among some of the heritage advocates. I know some see this as a substantial change, and that's fair enough. The articles reflected that concern, and that's fair enough as well. But I think, certainly, that for some of the heritage advocates I've spoken to, once they have a clear understanding of what we're attempting to do, their fears will be much allayed.

Again for the member's information, that devolution process is distinct from what we are doing in this bill, which is moving away from the B.C. Heritage Trust, a trust inside government that has enjoyed only funding from government, to a model that will see in a conjunction between the Land Conservancy and the Heritage Society of B.C. the creation of a new trust that will be external from government.

We have, as the member noted from one of the articles, provided $5 million as the initial endowment for the new trust. We believe, and we're very confident of

this point, that as an entity outside of government, the new trust will be the recipient of individual donations, of family bequests, of corporate endowments, and so on, that as a part of government, the outgoing trust simply couldn't attract. We think this is a better, stronger, more workable model for heritage programs in the province than what we had before.

The Heritage Trust inside government had been around for awhile. At one point it was funded, I think, to the tune of perhaps several million dollars annually. As the member knows, in the early 1990s we saw — as governments, including her own, faced fiscal challenges — that the contribution from government to the trust was diminished. That pattern certainly continued with our government. It's one of the areas that suffered as we were looking at measures of retrenchment.

I think that by moving it out of government, by getting it on a sustainable ongoing basis, in fact, the new trust will be an ongoing and a very powerful method or vehicle to advance the interests of heritage in the province. It is very much modelled on the National Trust of Britain, which started out with even smaller resources than the $5 million with which we've endowed the new trust. We believe the new trust is going to be very successful and is going to be a great vehicle for allowing us to preserve, promote and celebrate the heritage of British Columbia.

J. MacPhail: I wonder if the minister has been able to offer that comfort to heritage activists.

Hon. G. Abbott: I believe the answer is yes. I think there will always be some who are critical of a new path, who are only comfortable when the environment is entirely unchanged. I think that for those, while I respect their views, it's not a view which I do or can share at this point.

Some may always feel some measure of discomfort with anything that changes in the world. I do have to say that certainly the meetings I've had with the Land Conservancy, with the Heritage Society of British Columbia — which is the largest and really is the umbrella organization for virtually all of the major heritage organizations in the province…. I think they are very comfortable now with the new model, very supportive of it. They're really excited about the opportunities and that they're going to be able to go out and raise matching dollars from the individual, family and corporate areas.

So I think they're very excited, very much energized by the new approach to heritage in the province. I think, having worked closely with them in recent weeks and in recent months, that the level of comfort is much higher today than it was, for example, a year or 18 months ago.

J. MacPhail: I assume that the not-for-profit agency may provide tax deductions for donations?

Hon. G. Abbott: Within the bounds of charitable donations as are currently reflected in the tax laws of British Columbia and Canada, charitable donations to this foundation certainly would be acceptable.

J. MacPhail: I was interested to hear the minister's comments that some heritage sites still may require support. How will it be determined what will be a self-sustaining heritage site and one that will require government support?

Hon. G. Abbott: The subsidy arrangements that exist on different sites are a product, I guess, of the historical experience the different sites have gone through. There are obviously great differences across the 15 sites. Some operate without subsidy and never have operated with a subsidy. Some of the larger ones — for example, Barkerville and Fort Steele — have had extensive subsidies at times — most of the time, in fact.

The size of the sites is one of the determining factors. The marketplace, the size of the adjacent community — all of those are factors that come into play. What staff are looking at particularly as we're moving forward here are the business plan proposals that various entities have brought into play through the request-for-information or request-for-proposal portions of the devolution process.

J. MacPhail: During the devolution process, do the heritage sites have to reveal fee increase strategies? How do fee increases occur? How will they occur?

Hon. G. Abbott: I'm going to try to provide the member with a thorough answer here, even though she may want to give some thought to picking this up in estimates. It's not actually a part of this bill — this part of it. Nevertheless, I'll oblige with the best answer I can.

Part of the devolution process is that it will put more decision-making power into the hands of those who will, as a non-profit or private sector entity, be operating the sites. They would obviously look again at some of the factors we talked about earlier: the size of the market, the public interest in the site and so on. Those would likely be the principal determining factors as they set out in their business plan what the admission cost to the site would be. Rather than cabinet determining those things, the site operator would be looking at that much more closely and have much more control over that than was the case the past.

J. MacPhail: Yes, I accept that this isn't part of the bill, but it may be a consequence of this change.

Does the minister's answer also apply to changes in hours of work or hours of operation or the potential for sites being threatened with closure because of lack of support?

Hon. G. Abbott: Again, I'm going to oblige the member by responding to the question. Just for clarification, there is no expectation on the part of this minister or on the part of my ministry or the government that in creating the new Heritage Trust, somehow some portion of the interest accrued from the $5 million that we've endowed the trust with will be used for heritage sites. That will continue to be the responsibility of government as opposed to…. They're two very different things.

To respond to your questions, because I don't want to be difficult about it, things like when the facilities will open and close, hours of opening and all of those kind of operational details, while likely to form a part of their business plan, are issues that we would in large measure leave in the hands of the site operators or site contractors. That having been said, I do want to underline that the first and primary issue that my staff looked at in terms of evaluating the requests for information or the requests for proposals was stewardship of the sites. We fully expect that the sites are going to be managed in ways that will celebrate, promote and maintain public access to and appreciation of the wonderful cultural heritage that we have in British Columbia.

J. MacPhail: Perhaps the minister can then just answer my last question in this area, which is the relationship between the not-for-profit society and municipalities. Again, media speculation was that there may be a potential for downloading onto municipalities. What reassurances can he give against that?

Hon. G. Abbott: Again, I never take exception to critics of the government having an opportunity to bemoan theoretical downloading. I think it would be pretty much a stretch to make that argument here. We certainly have never discouraged any municipality from expressing an interest at request-for-information or request-for-proposal stages in this. There is some municipal interest in some of the sites, and we certainly welcome, encourage and try to foster that interest, but there certainly has never been any explicit or implicit demand that communities look at this. I think they, in most instances, are looking at these as opportunities to build local tourism, to kind of bring the site closer into the culture of the community. It's something that I think is valuable and welcomed. From those who have taken an active interest in this, I haven't heard any suggestion that they feel they're being downloaded upon. I think that concern comes from rather more predictable critics of the government.

Hon. G. Abbott: I move the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendment.

Bill 22, Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2003, reported complete with amendment.

Bill 22, Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services Statutes Amendment Act, 2003, read a third time and passed.

K. Krueger: When we adjourned debate we had just heard from the urban socialists with their particular rhetoric. I took the opportunity….

K. Krueger: The member points out there is only one urban socialist speaking in the House anymore. That's a good thing. There are a lot of us in this House who represent heartlands ridings, where these changes to forest policy are very welcome good news.

I mentioned a little bit earlier that the things that worked or appeared to work decades ago with the so-called social contract haven't been working very well in the year 2003 or, really, all through the nineties. An American representative regrettably referred to what he called Soviet-style forest policy here. We don't agree with that characterization, but we do agree that when you're getting the kind of dismal results we've been getting in British Columbia in the forest industry despite all the advantages we have, it's time to have a look at those results and look for ways to deliver better ones.

It is bizarre that with the best wood available in the world competing with fast-growing varieties grown in plantations elsewhere, which are so weak compared to our wood that the construction companies in those areas actually prefer to use our wood over theirs; the best technology available in the world; the best ma-

chinery in the world — in fact, manufactured right here in British Columbia in places like Salmon Arm — and the best-educated workforce in the forest industry in the world, somehow we have dropped $600 million per year in revenue since 1997-98. The trend has not been positive.

One of the issues, of course, has been that most of our eggs are in one basket in the marketplace — that being our good friends to the south, who have about 87 percent of our market. Of course, we have a good market in Japan, but it's always been a wonder to me that we send our very best wood cut in places like Vavenby, in my constituency, to Japan. I wonder why that is. What they do with the finest wood we produce is mill it, turn it into things like banisters, doors and window frames — things we could certainly be doing here. We have found ourselves competing in primary manufacturing of dimensional lumber — 2-by-4s and 2-by-6s — even now, these many decades later, when Third World countries are able to compete head-to-head with us in those areas with much lower labour costs and a much less educated workforce.

We're proud of our primary wood manufacturing industry, proud that they have responded to the many challenges and are doing as well as they are, but it's long since time that we embraced the value-added industry more and the entrepreneurial spirit here in British Columbia that would like to harness all those assets I spoke of and really compete at a whole new level. I applaud the minister for the changes he's made.

Unlike the Leader of the Opposition, who spoke as an urban socialist, I speak for an area that has real-life experiences with the problems that have existed in the forest industry. Most notable and most recent for us is the closure of the Vavenby Weyerhaeuser sawmill. That took away 184 of the best jobs in the North Thompson Valley — the best paycheques gone. It's an economic impact something like losing a hundred thousand of the best paycheques in the lower mainland with several months' notice. It's devastating for people in Vavenby and all through the North Thompson Valley. The ripples of that, of course, reach out all through the valley's economy. People who count on their homes as their retirement package have seen the value of their homes devaluated because of this very unfortunate event. Of course, there was fear and tremendous upset in the North Thompson Valley when this closure was announced.

I went up to Clearwater, a little community where 400 people came out to talk to me and the other elected people who had come up and representatives of the company about their fears and their hopes and their desire for government to do some changes that would help them cope with this economic catastrophe. I want to say on the record that Weyerhaeuser has been a model corporate citizen in the way it dealt with this closure. I accept that they had sound business reasons to do it in order to be able to compete. They have to max out production at their remaining three sawmills in the southern interior. I never thought they would choose Vavenby if they had to close one of the four, but they did.

As I say, they've got good reasons. One is that there isn't natural gas supplied in the North Thompson Valley, so it was much more expensive for them to acquire the necessary energy to run what was a very modern operation. They have been really principled about the way they dealt with this whole unfortunate matter.

I'll talk a little bit about some of the solutions we're coming up with, but I can tell you that one of the reasons we're able to be confident about finding solutions and we're actually putting a pretty substantial silver lining around this big black cloud is our Minister of Forests, who listens. I've talked many times in this House about how proud I am of a government that actually is listening to the people who elected us. A structure has been set up where, through the government caucus committees, we're able to feed input in. Ministers and the Premier pay very close attention, and decisions are made with that input in mind.

I came back from that meeting, and I wrote a letter to the minister and said that my constituents are alarmed. They're saying that some of the answers are: "We'd like to see more woodlots. We'd like to see more community forests. Specifically we'd like to see a Clearwater community forest. We' like to see better participation for the first nations people, the Secwepemc people" — our people tend to refer to them as the Shuswaps — "all through our area, but certainly the North Thompson Indian band, who've been tremendously patient about that concern."

Chief Nathan Matthew of the North Thompson Indian band, who's now the chair of the Shuswap nation tribal council, was talking with me one time about their hope that they would get a share of a 200,000-cubic-metre partition that the ministry did. He said to me: "You know, really, Kevin, this is a guts-and-feathers deal as far as we're concerned. We get some participation in these little one-off deals, but we deserve a share of the cut." I always thought he was right. That's what I heard at that meeting. It's one of the things I put in my letter to the minister. I asked the minister to do what he could to facilitate Weyerhaeuser's willingness to actually give up some of its AAC.

They were talking about sharing it with Slocan if Slocan could take some of their displaced employees. They were also talking very generously about supporting value-added enterprises that might be interested in their site, in their land and in their equipment. I wrote the minister all these things, and he came to me a few weeks later and said he thought he could support everything in my letter except one thing. He never told me what that one was, so I'm counting on him for all of it.

I can tell you that this act and these policy changes that we're debating this week in the legislature are really good news to a heartlands community — a place where trees actually grow, which people cut and take to market. I always thought it was quite a joke during the 1990s, when the NDP held power, that they had a

thousand registered professional foresters living and working for government right here in Victoria, and there hadn't been any logging during my whole term in Victoria. People up in the North Thompson Valley live by logging and live by the proceeds from the forest industry. For way too long now, they've been shut out of new opportunities, and we have not been getting the value that we should out of individual logs. It's been a real struggle for people looking to create new opportunities.

Well, now we have a government that has decided it's going to open up new opportunities for those British Columbians far too long denied; a government that is going to aggressively pursue new markets worldwide and has put the machinery and the money in place to go after those; a government that is going to ensure environmental standards remain here in British Columbia, the best of the industry anywhere in the world; a government that will make sure that our industry is no longer hamstrung by government and its arrangements. We're going to be delivering an actual market system. What a novel concept. What a good thing to finally be doing. We're going to be compensating private enterprise for the changes to their private property with regard to takeback of tenure. We're also going to be vastly increasing the value of the remaining 80 percent of their tenure because of all the artificial constraints that are going to be taken away — the shackles that are going to be knocked off the legs of industry — so that they can actually flourish doing what they're good at.

For example, we're no longer going to insist that if you are a manufacturing company in this industry, you also have to be a logging company. Many of them don't want to be. They had to play really artificial games in order to get some access to fibre when they really didn't want to be loggers. That day is gone. We're going to be stabilizing the industry, allowing it to modernize and to pursue the markets that are out there. There are lots of markets worldwide. We're going to be allowing them, of all things, to actually have a return on investment. I believe we're going to see those Crown revenues increase once again.

Forestry in British Columbia has never been a sunset industry. It never will be. It'll always be an industry that's of tremendous value to British Columbians, especially British Columbians out where I live, the people I represent from the heartlands. It's been sad to see jobs drop from 100,000 in the late nineties to just over 87,000 in the forest industry now. We can reverse that.

There's one company in Kamloops that's called Paul Creek Slicing, and it slices white pine cants — 32 slices to the inch — into veneer. Beautiful stuff. They splice it back together. They put it on the face of particleboard furniture all through the United States, down the west coast and also in Quebec and along the east coast of North America. They can sell as much of that as they can cut. The only limitation to them is that they haven't been able to get the white pine. We're constantly scrambling, trying to find them the fibre that they need. In order to get that fibre, they would have to bid on timber sales when, as I said, they really didn't want to be loggers. They would log timber they weren't really interested in and then be in a position of having to try to trade those logs for white pine logs so they could finally get down to doing the business they were actually there to do, which was slicing up white pine. They were ground very hard by some of the licensees who had more timber than them. They had to give three logs for every one white pine log. I always thought that was regrettable, because they are willing to expand. They have the markets to expand. They have around 200 employees. They're almost all women. It's very light work. They really enjoy it. I've gone and visited them many times. Many of them used to be on welfare; many are single moms.

By the time Paul Creek Slicing is done with a thousand board feet of lumber, it is worth $2,000 in gross domestic product, where a thousand board feet of 2-by-4s fluctuates just over $200. It hasn't made sense that anybody is cutting white pine into dimensional lumber when it could be going to an operation like that. That's only one example. Everybody tells me that nobody can outbid a log home builder when it comes to bidding for the logs they want. They have a terrible time getting them. There are all sorts of value-added plants that are going to benefit by the changes that are embraced by this legislation.

I have a lot of small-scale loggers in my constituency. It's been like beating my head against the wall all through those five years — the last term of the NDP, when I was in opposition — just finding a way to allow those people to work in the bush. They have equipment. They know what they're doing. They're environmentally sensitive too, but because of the tremendous regulatory overburden that the NDP had imposed on this industry, the government couldn't find anybody to oversee their work and put through the necessary paper. They were effectively shut out of the bush.

I finally talked Dave Zirnhelt into providing one officer through FRBC who would actually oversee them for a couple years. We got a bunch of people back to work. At one time I was told there were 100 salvage loggers operating, where many of them had been on welfare in the past just because they weren't allowed to work. Lo and behold, they do things like small portable sawmills. One of them developed a contract for dry fir in Alberta; all that he could produce. They get tremendous opportunities like that. Another one I heard of recently was that the oil patch up in northern B.C. needed dry fir for corduroy road over the muskeg. It's the only way they can get equipment in. They couldn't get any dry fir, so they were bringing up oak wood from the United States and building corduroy road across the muskeg with that. One of my little sawmills had an opportunity to bid on a tremendous contract for supplying dry fir for that purpose.

We always should have been really going after salvage logs. When we do it's a forest health initiative, because if those dead trees are allowed to remain in

place they often give rise to bug infestations. We've seen calamities recently in British Columbia from those. They also become forest fire hazards. I really believe in salvage logging. Again, I congratulate the minister because I wasn't sure he believed in salvage logging at first, but he listened. He's accepted the input he has. He's struck a committee of MLAs to bring on success for salvage loggers. He's appointed the member for Prince George North to chair that committee. Salvage loggers figure very prominently in the plans of this government moving forward in this industry. I'm very, very pleased with that.

The minister is freeing up the flow of fibre in British Columbia. He is providing a new source of fibre, where people don't always have to go to the Crown begging for a share of the tiny bit that wasn't already spoken for. About 98 percent of the annual allowable cut in British Columbia has been really completely sewn up. There hasn't been much to work with in trying to settle the legitimate aspirations of first nations and all of these entrepreneurs who are bringing on these tremendously job-productive new operations in British Columbia.

Existing licensees will be able to sell portions of their tenure. What a good idea. What a commonsense thing to do — to allow them to make their own business decisions. This problem we've had with an oversupply of manufacturing capacity and a shrinking timber supply won't be the case any longer when people actually have the opportunity to be assured of fibre and can build the kind of new processing plants that British Columbia needs to really maximize the use of every log in B.C.

We did have — I guess still do at the moment — the highest costs in our industry of anywhere in North America — anywhere in the world, actually. I remember seeing a sad statistic while we were in opposition — that in five years Sweden had gone from 1 percent of the Japanese market to 17 percent at our expense. Our industry had been hobbled by regulations that made us such a high-cost producer of wood fibre. I'm glad to see the end of those days. It's great that we're going to have an increase in the amount of wood available for auction, because people ought to be able to bid on it and bid on the sizes and the species they want. We ought to be able to prove that we are providing a legitimate evidence of the actual market price. In all of these areas I'm absolutely delighted with the legislation and with what the minister is doing.

I was sorry to see that the IWA were making the kind of comments they were about these changes, because that is very old-fashioned thinking. We just can't continue to pretend that what worked in the past is going to work in the future. The IWA has been the one big disappointment in the community in the North Thompson Valley. All the elected people working together, the industry people — whether it's loggers or Weyerhaeuser itself or Slocan…. Everybody has been pitching in, but the IWA repeatedly turned down opportunities to help create jobs for their members who are going to be displaced from Vavenby. At one mill after another, the IWA refused to make the necessary changes, for example, so that their workers, their members, could work on Sundays in the remaining three mills — work at straight time, granted, but it's still a job. A job at those wages, at straight time, would be the envy of the world as far as the workers in this industry elsewhere. But they wouldn't do it. In the end a number of people are being laid off, having their jobs terminated, whom Weyerhaeuser would have employed in one of those other mills if the IWA had been more flexible. The IWA in those decisions caused their brothers and sisters to become unemployed persons when they had the right to choose otherwise, and I very much regret that.

I'm proud of this government. I'm proud of this minister. I'm delighted with the fact that we are making these changes. I support them wholeheartedly, and I congratulate the government for moving in the right direction.

R. Harris: Like the previous member…. This is a great bill, and I want to talk about all the good things about it. After listening to the Leader of the Opposition this morning, I think there was some shock and awe here. Maybe I had it. First of all, I couldn't believe the comments that she was referring to. At the end of the day, after a nice bowl of soup at lunch, I realized that the shock and awe…. I shouldn't have been in such shock at all. She never did get it. They never got it in the past, and they still don't get it. They don't understand the problems in this industry.

I listened to some of the comments she made this morning — "lack of discussion." I think she made reference that it's taken two years. I actually think that when we took two years to talk about this thing with industry, with labour, with communities, with log salvagers and with associations, this minister had more meetings, went around this province more often, talking to more people — as a matter of fact, probably…. People in my riding would definitely say they wish that this had come sooner. In fact, it's the right stuff, because we did take the time to consult. Two years, I think, is the appropriate time because the product we've got here, in terms of legislation that's going to set the framework for the future, is just an excellent piece of legislation.

I personally would like to thank the minister for the meeting he had in Terrace. At our meeting we had everybody there. We had a representative from every one of the first nations communities in my riding. We had labour there — the IWA. We had pulp mill workers there. We had the sawmills. We had value-added people. We had elected municipal representatives. We had people just out of the community. It was a great meeting. It was a great exchange of information, an opportunity for the minister to talk about what he was proposing and for him to get some feedback.

Anyway, it was a great meeting and a real opportunity for people to have the input that the Leader of the Opposition says never existed. When she talks

about no input and no consultation, she just hasn't followed anything that's gone on. It is always, as it usually is, more about politics and less about the results.

She talks about loss of jobs in rural communities. She talks about mill closures. "Communities will be devastated." I don't know where she's been living for the last ten years. I really don't.

I talk about the fact that in one of my other lives I was the board member of Local 171. It had a membership of about 5,000. It covered the Queen Charlottes on the north coast, down to Bella Coola from Prince Rupert and right into the Terrace area. That local actually doesn't even exist today. It's been gobbled up and amalgamated as its membership dropped. That's actually what's been going on in rural communities for a long time.

I am not surprised when that member doesn't know what's been going on and is surprised and doesn't see a need to change. She talks about reallocation as if it's the great evil, as if all of a sudden, by taking 20 percent of the timber away, it just vanishes into the air. I guess the reciprocal is that she's implying that the present allocation system works absolutely, perfectly fine. Nothing can be further from the truth. It's time to wake up and smell the roses. It's just unbelievable.

She made reference to Skeena Cellulose in her comments. Terrace and Skeena are in the heart of my riding. Skeena Cellulose is an operation that contains one pulp mill, four sawmills, one TFL and five licences, and covers three ridings. People that used to work there don't work there today in most places. That's because the workers thought that their union seniority gave them job security. The Bill 13 contractors thought that that legislative tool gave them job security. The communities thought that having cut control as it was, as it is today still, gave them the security of knowing that those facilities would run and their taxes would come in.

Lo and behold, they all forgot the one key ingredient. If the company doesn't make money, all the legislative tools in the world aren't going to work. They didn't work there, and they haven't worked there — well, three times in the last five years and probably seven or eight times over its history.

You know, it is time for a change because the status quo doesn't work. That's why this is such a great piece of legislation. The minister, when he got up, talked about two things that I'm going to spend a little bit of time on and will probably repeat myself a lot about: access to fibre and log markets. That's what's so critical about this.

When the Leader of the Opposition gets up and rants about the fact that we're a big-corporation government, I get quite a kick out of that. What have we done? We've gone out to major licensees and taken 20 percent back. We've used a formula for calculating compensation that her previous government put in place. Then we put a number to it that we brought to the public and did it in a very open manner, so that there are no secrets here. We're going to reallocate that timber to small communities. In most cases, I suspect it will go to small, community-based organizations, whether it's community licences or small business sales or woodlots. I mean, that somehow doesn't resonate like the big-company government that we are. You know, this rhetoric just goes on and on, and I got to admit it wears pretty thin on me.

What else have I got here? This bill really finally puts in the hands of government the tools that we need to start to revitalize this industry, and the minister referred to it. That's the trees. That's what this is about. It's about trees. That's where it starts.

For people like me, it has been a long time coming. This legislation and this series of legislation we're putting through around forestry are in fact the reason I ran. It was an opportunity to start to let local communities have impact on the resources that surround them. That's actually what we're about.

Our communities were built on this industry. They're going to be there a long way into the future, but they can't be exactly the same industry they were in the past. Every day in my office — literally every day — I have salvage loggers coming in or phase loggers, first nations, full-phase contractors. Every single walk of life in my community is tied to this forest industry, and they all have these creative ideas of things they can do, different widgets they can make.

I have value-added mills in my community that aren't operating today, and all of them have the same problem: no fibre, no access to fibre. Why isn't there access? Because we as a government don't have the tools. We can sit there and tell them it's a great idea. It's the kind of thing we should be doing. We can support them in principle and support them in theory. We can support them in everything we want, but the one thing we can't support them with is what they need: access to fibre.

When you get that access to fibre out there and you create an industry of harvesters…. People should remember the harvest sector is a sector that actually creates the most employment. It's also the sector of the industry that has the most capital investment. Yet you get those people out there harvesting logs, you get them in, and you create a log market. Today in Terrace we actually have a log market. We have it because to some degree we have been able to take some of the fibre that belonged to SCI and get it out there for people to work.

It is that access to log markets that allows people who want to build a better widget to get access to fibre. This is the way you change the industry. You change it by bringing more players into it. When that member talks about how this is going to centralize the industry into single core companies, nothing could be further from the truth. I can't believe for one moment that a community is going to get a community-based forest licence and turn right around and sell it to Weyerhaeuser or that a first nations community is going to go out there and get a first nations forest licence and turn around and sell it to Weyerhaeuser. They want these licences because they want to have impact on their

communities. They want some say in the resources that surround them. These are exactly the right kind of tools.

In the timber sales program, which is going to see a significant increase in fibre, those are community-based businesses that in most cases are going to be logging that. These are the community-based businesses that buy locally. They hire locally. Theirs are the families that are going to live in our communities, fill our schools and provide us with that mass of people to support the small business and our chamber of commerce. These are great, innovative people, and we shouldn't undersell them.

Where I live up there, you know, we like to say a lot that we don't think all the geniuses are sitting around tables in the urban centres all the time. We have some incredibly creative people that live in our communities and I would say some of the sharpest minds in the world, especially when it comes to this industry, because we live it. We live it, we're in it, we're around it, we smell it, and we touch it. These people have great ideas. They're innovators. In many cases, they understand niche markets.

We have an individual, Mario, in Terrace. All he needs is about one or two spruce trees a month. It takes him two or three people and three or four days to get them out of the timber and get them to his yard. Then when he's in the yard, he cuts them into pieces that are 18 and 20 inches long if it's the right fibre, and they go to make guitars. This is one tree that employs probably half a dozen people for a week. This is the kind of high-value product we have to get.

I was at the member for North Island — not North Island; we try to go to his riding every once in a while, but it's too far — or North Coast last week in Port Clements….

In Port Clements in the Queen Charlottes I was there with a friend of mine, Randy O'Brien, who has a logging operation and is a small contractor over there. He just spent half a million dollars, and he's installed a log peeler. Not only will it allow him to make poles out of the cedar he gets, but it will allow him to actually now get into the log house product line.

This is a great business for them over there. The Charlottes are actually blessed with that product. But you know what? He's got the same problem everybody else does. He's got no access to fibre. There are sawmills over there that, because of timber-harvesting and timber-processing agreements that force all that timber to have to come down to mills down here, can't get any wood.

When I hear people tell me mills are going to close…. This isn't about mill closures. This whole system is about: your mill just may not make 2-by-4s anymore. It's not that you're going to lose a mill; it's that you have an opportunity here to have two or three different kinds of mills. This is the kind of innovation we have in our communities.

I hear this urban rhetoric, and you know what? I'm just tiring of it, because you know what? We know how to run this business. We know how to do it right. We know how to turn our communities around and get them growing again. This is the kind of legislation that's going to do that. It's going to do it for each and every one of our rural communities right across the northland. It's about embracing it, not fighting it all the time.

I think the previous member talked about the fact that we live in a world where our forest policies are 50 years old, but the world is a lot different today than it was 50 years ago. It's that new competitive market and that entrepreneurial edge we're going to need if we're going to compete in the global marketplace. I think this bill starts that process. It starts it by providing the access to fibre. It starts it by opening up a whole bunch of new doors to access fibre by doubling woodlots through salvage programs, through community licences, through the timber sales program, through first nations initiatives.

Another creative way of accessing fibre is going to be through a new rolling cut control period, which doesn't allow people to carry the cut forward. Another access point for market opportunities is going to come through the ability of licensees to sell off. This is a great opportunity for people in the value-added sector. One of the other aspects I like about how this bill has been crafted…. I think that is the right word — crafted — because it's the result of talking to a huge number of people from every sector and trying to accommodate where you can in a way that's measured but allows people to create a transition to what I think their future really looks like.

I want to end by just sort of saying to the minister that I think you've done a great job of putting this bill together. I think you did a great job of consulting, and I think it is in fact very much the start of the right tool for rural communities to start to take back charge of their lives. This is the kind of stuff that's going to help us start to rebuild the population by actually introducing entirely new industries to our communities.

R. Visser: I was reminded today — when the Leader of the Opposition, who sits in front of me here, was speaking — about the other day when we were talking about her misguided and rather irresponsible private member's bill for closed containment fish farms. When she was talking, she introduced or made reference to some friends she had in the gallery who were here from the Suzuki Foundation, and I thought that was really kind of her to acknowledge her speechwriters. I was upset that she didn't acknowledge her speechwriters today from the Western Canada Wilderness Committee or others.

You know what? I'm from the north end of Vancouver Island — that's the heartland of British Colum-

bia — and I can tell you that when I hear her, as the Leader of the Opposition, stand up and ask if people like me will have the courage to speak to a bill like this, or say that we'd better not speak to this bill because it will be reported in our papers back home, you know what? I'm going to do it, because this is probably one of the best pieces of legislation that this government has tabled today.

It's part of a package, a package that started two years ago with the election of this government, a package that has been guided by this Forests minister — through the results-based code, through countless meetings, through the direct award piece for first nations, through all of that stuff — to get to where we are today, revitalizing British Columbia's forests and forest industry. This is stuff to be proud of.

When she stands up and speaks, it is painfully obvious to all of us — whether you're from Skeena, the North Coast, the north Thompson, all of British Columbia — that she doesn't know what she's talking about when it comes to trees and forests.

You know, I've been involved in the industry for a long time, and I've represented that industry's interests for a long time. When I talk about the industry, you know who I talk about? I talk about that guy that runs a log loader. I talk about the guy that drives the truck. I talk about that forester that lays out the road, that cruises the timber, that does the ecology studies. I talk about that biologist who looks at endangered species and how they interact with the logging plans of the tree farm licence. I talk about those people that coach those hockey teams, that take their kids to school in the morning. I talk about those people that join Rotary, that form the Lions Clubs, that volunteer in their communities, that live there, that feel a profound connection not only to their community and not only to their industry but to the forests and trees around them.

I come from a part of the world that's a forest exporter. We export. We have one sawmill on northern Vancouver Island — one sawmill. We're responsible for probably 60 percent of the cut on the coast of British Columbia, and we have one sawmill. That's not a comment on whether it's bad or good. It is a comment about something that's fundamentally important to this bill.

This bill, and this series of bills and every step we've taken so far, recognizes a historical fact that in the infancy of this province and in our desire to build rural communities and our desire to spread ourselves out amongst all of this land, we thought we should build a mill and grant access to trees. In essence, what we're doing is building policy that took us from the mill to the tree. Fifty years later, 40 years later, 30 years later, that's not going to work anymore. The member for Skeena talked about how that's not going to work anymore, how that didn't work for him and his people and the people he represents and works with and knows.

I'm encouraged by this shift. It didn't work, so we're going to change. What we're doing now, and this is what this bill is about…. We're going to make policy starting with the tree, and we're going to take it to the mill. Now, people say that's fairly simple, and I agree. But in that simplicity is something very profound.

The member for Skeena is right. The harvesting sector does employ more people. The harvesting sector is as capitalized as and probably more capitalized than the manufacturing sector, but what I want to add to that comment is that it all begins in the harvesting sector. It all begins with an understanding that in rural British Columbia, in the heartlands of British Columbia and on northern Vancouver Island, we need forest policy that encourages us to grow the trees, to make them grow faster, to make them grow better, to utilize that resource in a way that's more acceptable. That's what this bill does.

This bill gives effect to what I think are three very important things. It requires that large licensees grant back to the Crown 20 percent of their harvest levels so that we can reallocate it to encourage new entrants, to encourage new opportunities, to meet commitments that we have to first nations — first nations on northern Vancouver Island that are involved in the forest industry in ways that are remarkable and other first nations there that want to share in the prosperity and those successes.

It gives effect to and allows us to distribute fibre in an auction system where those that are willing to pay the most for that tree, so that we who own and live and work near those trees can get the return we deserve for those trees…. That auction system will allow it to occur. It provides for woodlots. Those people can stand there amongst their trees, and they can pick up a handful of soil and let it sift through their fingers and tell you for hours endless stories about that soil and its relationship to that tree and how that tree can grow faster if only we could get out of the way.

This is good stuff. This gives effect to the idea that communities are important and that communities like Sayward, like Gold River, like Tahsis, like Zeballos and like Holberg can embrace the notion of community forests if it is something they would like, if it is something that community thinks is important to them. They want to embrace as a community the relationship they have to those trees. We have the tools to do it now. We didn't before.

The previous government paid lip service to it all. We've seen some of the most heinous words expressed to this industry I represent, to these folks I represent, by the previous government that was supposed to be such a friend of that industry. The former Premier said that not one single job will be lost on Vancouver Island due to a land use decision. It's not true. We've lost whole communities because of land use decisions. "The jobs and timber accord will create 40,000 new forest

We can't put a number on these things. It would be a fallacy to try to put a number on these things. It's not what this government does. We build the fundamentals, and we do it in a way that makes sense, so when we require that 20 percent gets taken back, we also say we will compensate fairly for it. The bill gives effect to this.

This bill gives effect to the notion that governments have interfered with rights that had been granted in the past and that we need to respect those and understand those if we want to maintain a relationship with the investment community that at the end of the day, like the member for Skeena says, provides us with the capital to access all of those trees and provides us with the capital to have those jobs. What I think is most important in this bill is the setting up of the B.C. Forestry Revitalization Trust.

I'll come back to that in a second, because I want to talk a little bit about this consultation process. The member is right. You know what? There wasn't a royal commission. The Leader of the Opposition is right. We didn't hire a whole bunch of people to traipse around the province holding huge public meetings, rehashing everything over and over with endless rhetoric. Do you know what we did? We went out and did it ourselves. The minister went out and did it himself. All of the private members went out and did it themselves with the stakeholders in their communities. We talked to them. For two years we talked to them. We talked to them about results-based codes. We talked to them about all facets of forest protection, forest fire protection — everything. This is a complex and important industry. We gave this industry, those people — all of them — the respect they deserve in this process.

We talked to the unions. We brought them in. There was a process where the licensees on the coast; the union on the coast represented by Dave Haggard — IWA — the contractors on the coast and government went into a room for a year and talked about how we can make this industry better. We hired Dr. Peter Pearse to produce a report to give us a diagnosis of the state of the industry today, and we used that as the template to move forward, to base the discussion on.

For two years I was in every community in my riding talking about the things Dr. Pearse talked about, the things that the minister talked about. I'd go, and 40 or 50 engineers and foresters would show up in an evening. We'd talk about what we thought was important for the forests of British Columbia and what was important for the Holbergs and the Tahsises and the Gold Rivers of British Columbia.

When I go home tomorrow and when I go home to, as the member of the opposition says, "face the wrath of the people," you know what? They're going to say: "My God, Rod. You finally got on with it. You talked about it for two years."

This is thoughtful stuff. More importantly, this is meaningful stuff. It's meaningful because when we listen to those people…. The IWA said: "You know what? We've got an old workforce. We can't be productive and competitive in this global industry with such an old workforce. We need something to help. We need pension bridging." So in this trust is embedded the idea that pension bridging is central.

It hasn't been done before. The previous government's response to all the folks that were laid off in this industry was to shrink the basket, lay people off and retrain them as welders. Well, out where I live, the welders work in the forest industry. If they've shrunk the basket and laid a bunch of people off, they don't need quite as many welders as they once did. But thanks for retraining them all. They're all in Alberta now. We want to bring them home.

This bill isn't about shrinking the fibre basket. This bill is about redistribution. This bill is about opportunity. This bill is about respect for the industry, respect for the communities and respect for those trees.

This is good legislation. This is good for the province of British Columbia. I'm very proud of this minister, and I'm very proud of our Premier, and I think we're going to go places with stuff like this.

T. Christensen: It's indeed a privilege to be able to rise in the House and speak in second reading to the Forestry Revitalization Act, Bill 28. The announcements made by the minister yesterday, of which this bill is a critical part, show that this is a government committed to the forests of British Columbia, to the people who work and play in those forests and to the many communities throughout the province that rely on the many values that our forests provide to us.

Yesterday the minister announced a broad range of reforms necessary to revitalize the forest industry in B.C. and put it on a footing for sustainability so that not only can my generation rely on the great values that forestry provides to this province and the great benefit it provides on a wide range of values, but so that my children can rely on it as they grow up and, in fact, so my grandchildren can. It's a long, long overdue step that the minister and this government have taken.

There has been a lot of discussion on a wide range of issues in the 21 months since this government was sworn into office in June 2001, but I'm pretty confident that there is no issue and no area of policy that has been discussed more and consulted on more than forestry — and rightly so, given the importance of this industry in every single corner of this province and in the middle part too.

There's been broad consultation. I know every member on the government side has spoken with their constituents about what is important in their constituency around forestry, whether it's forest harvesting values, whether it's recreational values, whether it's new industries relying on getting access to the forest resource so they can prosper, whether it's industries that have been there for years facing challenges in how they operate. We've all heard from our constituents around forestry. Certainly, in my experience many of

the folks who have come to talk to me have actually got a later opportunity to speak with the minister himself or certainly with officials from his office. I do very much commend both the staff within the Ministry of Forests and in particular this Minister of Forests for making himself available to many, many people around the province, many stakeholders if not all stakeholders in every single part of the province to discuss these very, very important issues.

I want to extend, as well, a thanks to my constituents who have met with me, who have taken me out into the forests to show me what they do out there — and thankfully brought me back, didn't leave me out there. They've ushered me safely through their processing facilities so that I get a better understanding of what's happening there. They've told me about the challenges they face in ensuring their business is going to succeed and in ensuring they're able to make a continued living in forestry in this province. They've certainly allowed me, somebody who does not have an extensive background in forestry, to come to better understand the many challenges for those that are working in the forest industry and in different parts of forestry, the many factors that are at play and the conflicting interests that are there. I do very much want to extend thanks to all of those constituents who have taken the time to do that, because certainly it has been of immeasurable value to me.

As I've said, there's a great diversity of stakeholders in the forest industry throughout the province. In my own constituency of Okanagan-Vernon we've got a good representation of pretty well all those stakeholder groups. We certainly have major licensees who have been there for years and have provided a great deal of value to my community, who are very strong corporate citizens in the many causes they support and who provide employment and a good living to many people in my constituency. We have the remanufacturing industry that continues to grow, notwithstanding that they have been particularly hammered by the softwood lumber tariffs. We have an increasing number of value-added businesses that are seeing new opportunities with forest-based products and finding markets for those products around the world. We've got log home builders that are making world-class products and, again, finding markets around the world. We've got businesses cutting and packaging firewood and, in fact, sending that all around this continent. We've got logging contractors, we've got woodlots, and we have what has become a very dear part of my constituency to me and those who have in fact taught me a lot. We have salvage loggers in my constituency.

With that broad range of folks working in forestry in one way or another, there's a huge diversity of interests. Those are strongly vested interests that have been there for a long time, in many cases, and there are very strongly held opinions. I am thankful people have expressed those strongly held opinions to me and have explained to me the importance of their part in the industry, and I very much respect those opinions. I've learned very quickly to very much appreciate the deep commitment and dedication of those many people who are working in our forests.

What's become abundantly clear to me is that the future of any participant in our forest industry is wholly dependent on access to fibre. Over the long history of the practice of forestry in this province — and it's a long and honoured history — we've developed a myriad of rules, regulations and legislation that have a very direct impact on the distribution of fibre in this province. Quite frankly, from what I can see, it really has nothing to do with allowing the value of a particular tree to be maximized and to go to its best end use.

Yesterday the minister announced changes to cut control, to appurtenancy, to the subdivision and sale of forest licences. All of those are going to have some arguments around them, but all of them will facilitate the market operating to ensure that each tree is put to its best and most valuable use. If we strip away all the other stuff and we ask what we would want to do if we were just starting a forest industry in British Columbia today, I can't help but conclude that one of the number one things we would want to do is ensure that if we're going to cut down a tree, we get the maximum value out of that, we get the best product out of that, and we get the best end use out of that particular tree. Many of those changes are dealt with in Bill 28, and I certainly look forward to commenting on those more specifically in the coming days during second reading debate on Bill 28.

The minister also announced new and expanded opportunities for first nations, which is a critically important aspect of these announcements, particularly as we move forward in improving our relationship with first nations in this province — as well as an increased allocation of timber to woodlots and to community forests. I want to comment a little bit on those aspects just briefly. In respect of community forests, there's a community in my riding called the village of Lumby. The village of Lumby, unfortunately, is a community that…. It's a wonderful community, wonderful people, hard-working people, but they're a community that suffered as a consequence of what's happened around forestry over the last decade. They are a community that has lost not one, not two, but three mills over the course of the last decade — two of those since 1997. It's, unfortunately, one of many communities that was home to one or more of the 27 mills that have closed in this province since 1997.

The minister's announcement of the available fibre for community forests and woodlots comes as extremely good news for a community like Lumby. When they lost their Weyerhaeuser mill back around 1997, that community identified a community forest as one of the things they felt they needed to ensure that they continued to be a community that thrived on forestry in this province. Well, guess what. There's a good bunch of people out there who worked very, very hard over a number of months and years to get a community

Now, I can't stand here and guarantee that Lumby is going to get a community forest as a consequence of these changes, but I can tell you one thing for sure. They've got a heck of a lot better chance of getting one now that there's fibre available for it, now that there's a government in place that recognizes the value of that fibre to communities around the province and a government and a minister willing to work with them to ensure that community forests are an integral and important part of forestry as we move into the future.

When it comes to woodlots out in Lumby, there's another unique thing going on. There's certainly a number of folks who have woodlots and do a wonderful job of managing those, but there's a bit of a unique program in that Charles Bloom Secondary School, the high school in Lumby, has a forestry program, and they have a woodlot. Unfortunately, I haven't quite got out there to see the woodlot, but I certainly plan to do that in the next couple of months. I was speaking with the principal just last week, and he indicated that they were going to have a bit of an open house to show off the woodlot. Unfortunately, it is a day I'm down here in the Legislature, but I will make a point of getting out to visit the woodlot.

I know one thing about that woodlot. This comes from speaking with the folks who work with the students. That woodlot provides an extremely valuable experience for the students at Charles Bloom Secondary School, who often have a history in their families of working in the forest industry. This is their introduction to new opportunities in harvesting and in what you can do on the land in forestry. It's a wonderful factor in the education program provided in school district 22. I am hopeful that, certainly with the announcements made by the minister, perhaps that same opportunity can be extended to other schools around the province that may be interested in providing their students with those same very beneficial experiences.

Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention small-scale salvage. As I indicated earlier, that's something near and dear to my heart. I think — and I've said it in the House before — even prior to being elected, one of the first groups that got a hold of me when they knew I was going to be running in the last election were the small-scale salvagers out in Cherryville in the eastern part of my riding. They wanted to ensure that I understood some issues in the forests. I'm very thankful to them. I remember sitting with them initially, and they explained to me what they did. I said: "Well, this is a bit of a no-brainer. This program has to expand; it has to succeed. It employs so many families. It provides such benefit to our community and to the forest itself." I'm very thankful to them for explaining all that.

Yesterday the minister announced that the government will introduce legislation to create a new form of salvage tenure called community salvage licence, which will allow communities to take an enhanced role in the small-scale salvage industry if they want to. I know the minister mentioned the interests of the North Okanagan regional district in his comments on second reading of Bill 28. I thank him for that. I know, certainly, the minister has worked very hard with the regional district to ensure that we can move forward.

Quite frankly, this is a textbook example of a government listening to MLAs, who listen to…. You know, I listened to my community and sat down with the minister and said: "Hey, this sounds like a really good idea." The minister met with those folks as well and, recognizing the value that's there and the interest that's there in the community, then said: "How do we make it happen?" Not, "What are the many difficulties in terms of making it happen?" but: "How do we make it happen?" That's what good government should do. I'm very thankful to the minister for the time he spent with me in discussing it and certainly the time he spent with my constituents in discussing it.

Getting back to the specifics of Bill 28. What Bill 28 is, is the catalyst that's going to make everything else happen. It is what facilitates getting more fibre out there, so these other potential uses of that fibre can be acted on throughout the province — whether that's for community forests, woodlots, first nations, additional fibre going to value-added facilities, the wide diversity of potential uses. Bill 28 is what facilitates that. It is the foundation on which everything else is going to work.

What Bill 28 signals is that a new day is dawning for those who want to work in the forest industry in British Columbia. Forestry is not a sunset industry in this province; it's a sunrise industry. We're going to have a diversified and sustainable forest industry in this province that maximizes the value of each tree cut, that produces a wide variety of products and that leads the world in product innovation and environmental stewardship.

It's going to take some time. It's going to take some adjustment to get there. It's going to take a new way of thinking. We have wonderful forest industry players in this province that have been doing things a certain way for a long time. Like anything, when you make a relatively dramatic shift in what the ground rules are going to be, it's going to take some time for people to get their heads around that and figure out how to operate and take advantage of that in the future. There's no question in my mind that the folks working in forestry in this province are very capable of doing that. I think we have very, very good things to look forward to.

I'm proud to be part of a government that in developing a plan to revitalize the forest has clearly listened to MLAs from around the province, to people working in the many parts of the forest industry and to communities around the province. The Minister of Forests said this morning that he was proud of what has been accomplished in introducing this legislation and the announcements made yesterday. This minister has every right to be proud. The changes initiated by Bill 28 are monumental, and they are long, long overdue. I very much look forward to working with the minister over the ensuing months, certainly with my caucus colleagues and with my constituents to ensure that as we

move forward with this new dawn of forestry in this province, British Columbia and all its citizens are the ones who benefit.

P. Bell: I'm going to try and be brief here, but I think it's very suitable, actually, that we have a number of young individuals in the gallery today, because this bill is about creating a future for you up there. That's what this bill is about.

For years this province has not had trees for its future generations. We've tied our trees up in the hands of a few individuals, a few corporations, and if a new young person came along and wanted to develop a business, they wouldn't be able to do that. What this bill is all about is creating that opportunity for our future generations to make their careers and their lives in the forest sector. I certainly congratulate the minister for his efforts. I think he's done an excellent job here.

Let's just review for a moment what this particular bill, Bill 28, is all about. This is about: how do we compensate forest companies when we remove something of value that they currently are contractually entitled to? I think it's worth looking back in history for a moment, if we may, and two words come immediately to mind for me when we think about compensating forest companies. Those two words, of course, would be "Carrier" and "lumber," because the courts very clearly spoke in the Carrier Lumber case, not even a year ago, about what compensation should most appropriately be given to a forest company when tenure is removed for that company.

This government recognizes that there is an entitlement and there is a value to tenure, and if you're going to remove tenure from a forest company or from anyone, for that matter, there is compensation that is entitled to that individual company. That's what this is all about. I think that's extremely important, because rather than burying our heads in the sand and suggesting that there is no compensation required and that we can simply legislate it away, and then fight through the courts over the years and have the courts tell us, "No, actually, you're wrong. That company is entitled to compensation," we've been upfront with people. We said that there's a cost to making this change. There's a cost to creating the future for these young folks in our gallery today and saying to them that they're going to have the types of opportunities that some of the older members of this House, such as the member for Peace River North, may have had. I think there was a little bit of tenure still available when he was in his childhood, although I'm not positive that would be the case.

You know, the years of inactivity, in terms of dealing with this compensation issue and in terms of dealing with tenure takeback…. The previous government has paid lip service to the issue of tenure takeback. They've talked about it; people have for years. There have been many reports delivered, certainly to committees of this House, that suggest it's appropriate and it makes good sense for us to take some of that tenure back that was originally signed perhaps in the fifties or sixties, and put it back out on the open marketplace and see what you can create with it. I think it's a very exciting time in our province when we do that.

Now, the Leader of the Opposition said earlier that this is a giveaway — that we're rewarding our friends in industry, and we're simply handing dollars out the door. Well, what are we going to do with this volume? What are we going to do with this tenure? What are we going to do with these trees, these roughly eight million cubic metres per year that we're going to make available? She suggests that we're simply rewarding large corporations. Well, we're taking that tenure. Yes, we're going to compensate companies for it, but what are we going to do with it? We're going to take that tenure, and we're going to sell it on the open marketplace. We're going to award it to first nations to help build certainty around the land base so that we can move forward as a society.

This isn't just a good business decision for first nations. It's not just a good business decision for forestry. It's also a good business decision for anything that relates to tenure on the land base — whether it be a mining operation, a tourism operation, an energy operation, a trapping operation. Anything that requires tenure over the land base can benefit from certainty over the land base. When you create capacity in the first nations by taking timber and working with first nations to create wealth, to create jobs in their community, to put people back to work, you in the end have the certainty over the land base that you need.

We're going to take some of that timber. We're going to sell it competitively on the marketplace, allow people to create wealth and allow people to create jobs through it. We're going to take some of that tenure, and we're going to divide it out amongst first nations in order for us to build certainty over the land base.

Another very exciting opportunity the minister speaks about is the ability to expand the woodlot program. I have many friends that have woodlots in the Prince George area. The member for Okanagan-Vernon said earlier that there's a high school program in Lumby that has a woodlot. There's also a high school program in Mackenzie, actually, attached to the Mackenzie Secondary School, that has a woodlot. I have worked with the teacher, worked with the students and seen the woodlot — very progressive activity. Those kids are coming out of school when they graduate, and they're finding jobs in the forest industry — good, high-paying jobs.

There's another great example of how woodlots can contribute to society. As I said earlier, I have several friends, and they're great stewards of the land base. I don't think there's anyone who does a better job on the land base than woodlot owners, because they really understand. I have one particular friend who has a

woodlot, and she, I think, has named most of the trees on the woodlot. They're not all named, but she certainly knows many of them. Actually, when I helped her harvest one year, I felt very honoured because she named one of the trees after me.

P. Bell: I must say that the tree was rather stout, large at the trunk and had very little on top. But it was truly a great specimen of a spruce tree, and that tree now, I'm sure, is residing partly in some homes, perhaps here in British Columbia, in the form of 2-by-4s. I felt very honoured that she would name that tree after me prior to cutting it down, although I'm not sure why she cut it down once it was named after me. However, I guess that's part of the deal.

Woodlot owners are tremendous stewards over the land base. But community forests are another significant opportunity for the heartlands of British Columbia to participate in the economy of forestry in this province. The heartlands communities have asked for years and years — certainly going well beyond our election — to participate in the economy, in the wealth that is produced in forestry. This is a very unique and special opportunity, when they have the opportunity to gain access to community forests. I think that's an excellent idea on the part of the minister.

In addition, there's the small-scale salvage program which the member for Okanagan-Vernon spoke to, the committee that I will be chairing. I'm very excited about that. That really puts timber in the hands of small operators. As little as 6,000 cubic metres per year can employ three or four people in the harvesting sector. That's significant employment when you spread that over the entire province.

Before I close, I want to say something that I think is probably more significant than anything else. This Minister of Forests has truly been inclusive in this process. I can tell you that as I saw this unfold over the last year or year and a half. There has been criticism that we haven't moved more quickly in terms of getting to this destination or at least on this journey which we started on yesterday, I guess, when this bill was introduced. But this Forests minister has been more inclusive, in my opinion, than any other Forests minister in the history of British Columbia. He's listened to the members throughout the House. He's taken time out of his very, very busy schedule to pull together groups of members who have spent time working in the forest industry, and he's always had an ear to listen to the concerns we've expressed to him.

I can tell you that when I first opened up the briefing book and started looking at the documents, what I saw was a real evolutionary process — something that developed as a result of many, many individuals giving input. I can tell you that whether it's the loggers from Prince George, the first nations groups from across the north and the central interior, the large processors, the individuals that produce primary products in this province, the value-added manufacturers or the silviculture sector — everyone — their thoughts are reflected in this document. I think this minister should be congratulated for his efforts, his inclusiveness and his hard work.

S. Brice: I, too, rise to give my full support to this bill, and I do so rising as an urban MLA. Many of my colleagues from rural parts of the province have stood, supported this bill and elaborated on the impact it will have on their community. I recognize that every community in the province is a forest-dependent community, and my community is no less impacted by the health of our forest industry than any other community.

I stand against a backdrop of the Leader of the Opposition when she stood with her remarks, of course moving to hyperbole immediately and invoking the image of the Iraq war and really turning up the temperature talking about pain and suffering, talking about negativity. To support her argument, she made reference to a column in today's Times Colonist. As she was speaking, I thought to myself, well, I've read that article, and certainly I got a somewhat different impression than the Leader of the Opposition was trying to leave. So I went back to that article. She had picked through it and picked up all the negativity that supported her negative position, and I went through just to see exactly what the message from the columnist was.

Here's an excerpt the member for Vancouver-Hastings, the Leader of the Opposition, refrained from including in her comments this morning — part of that article. I'd like it to be put into the record, because certainly her parts of the column were entered into the record. This is what the columnist says: "Politicians get criticized so often for short-term thinking, you have to give the government a certain amount of credit for looking a bit further down the road…. At the end of the day, these measures may preserve some jobs and create a few more." That is the message that the columnist wanted to leave, certainly not the impression that was left by the Leader of the Opposition.

As I have had the opportunity to travel with colleagues around this province in the forest practices review, I've had a chance to get to the communities so vitally impacted by this legislation. Forests, of course, are our heritage. The forests have paid for our health care system, our education system. They've put food on the table and a roof over the heads of many families for more than half a century. But those heady days are gone. Things have changed.

In the last few years 13,000 forest workers lost their jobs, and 27 mills shut down. That's a lot of people; that's a lot of work. Did this happen because the NDP wanted to hurt the forest workers or wanted to hurt the forest companies or wanted to hurt the forest-dependent communities? Of course not. It happened as

a result of a number of factors, some of them international and some of them domestic.

The domestic ones the former government had the responsibility of trying to mitigate and improve upon, and they failed. The NDP under Glen Clark tried to give it the old razzle-dazzle — razzle-dazzle 'em, try to patch it up, give it a coat of paint and send it back on the road — and of course, we know the result. The facts speak for themselves: 13,000 forest workers lost their jobs; 27 mills shut down. So it falls to this government under this minister to do the job.

This legislation does change things, and those impacted are rightfully anxious. Change is tough, and people's lives are impacted. Bill 28 is an instrument of change. It enables government to take back harvesting rights, and at the same time this bill enables government to provide for fair compensation to those affected. The Minister of Forests must be congratulated for making the big change. British Columbians from all corners of this province are watching these changes and are grateful that our government is taking on this major reform.

With that, I will conclude my remarks by saying that from all corners of this province, every community will be impacted by the health of the forest industry, urban and rural. As one of the urban MLAs, I am proud to support this legislation.

Hon. M. de Jong: Thanks, Mr. Speaker, and to all the members who have participated in this all-important debate, my thanks. I am obliged to them all for their comments — perhaps more obliged to some than others — but I appreciate very much the insight, the observation, the contribution not just to the debate but to the work that has been undertaken in order to get us here.

I should say, as well, that we are all the beneficiaries, in my view, of the tremendous amount of work that has been undertaken by a small but incredibly dedicated and professional public service team who have over the course of the past year and a half dedicated themselves to the task of bringing together the information, the views and sometimes the disparate views that are part and parcel of what people feel and believe about British Columbia's all-important forest sector — yeoman service.

Though we may in this House have differences of opinion about the product and will, I am sure, have a spirited debate as we have had today and through committee stage and through the other bills, I know that all members will pay tribute to the work this dedicated corps of individuals has contributed to putting us in the position we now find ourselves in and to the product we are now dealing with.

I listened with obvious interest to the comments. My colleague — the last speaker — who hails from the Victoria area, from Saanich South, correctly pointed out and emphasized the interest that we all share as British Columbians. I come from Abbotsford. People don't often think of Abbotsford as a forestry community, but in fact our second- or third-largest employer is a value-added firm.

The member's comments went further than that, though. It is not purely a function of how many processing facilities are located in your town or in the riding you happen to represent. It is the fact that the benefits that accrue to us all from the performance of our industry very much impact on the level and quality of services that government — any government — can provide in British Columbia. That is a shared interest. As I and others have commented upon, at the end of the day when the revenues to the Crown that flow from forestry decline as dramatically as they have over the last half-dozen years, that impacts all British Columbians, not to mention the impact on families and communities where the jobs have been lost.

We've also heard today from members of this assembly who, I must say, possess something that I do not: an intimacy and a feeling for this industry that one can only acquire from having lived, breathed and worked in it in your own lifetime.

There are members of this assembly who, prior to becoming elected to this place, carved a living out of working in the forests. When our time here is done, they will return to carving out a living working in and with the forests. They possess an instinctive knowledge of that industry — and of its impacts on the communities that they represent — that is very telling and very obvious. I do assign, in my own mind — and have for some time now as we have engaged in this process — a tremendous amount of value, a tremendous amount of validity to the commentary that they bring and the observations they bring. I am appreciative of the fact that a number of them have commented favourably on the responsiveness of this package to the concerns that have been brought to the government from their communities via their offices. I thank them for it. They live it. They breathe it. They touch it, as one of the members said.

I have also listened with interest to the comments of the Leader of the Opposition. I am obliged that she would be here now to hear my very brief response. I know that we will engage in a subsequent debate on other pieces of legislation and at the committee stage. I thought, perhaps, in her presence in this chamber, I might offer some brief comments on her observations.

The fact that the Leader of the Opposition calls Vancouver home, for reasons that I have just alluded to, in no way disqualifies her from offering opinions around the management of British Columbia's most important resource and industry. I am inclined to listen to those views and compare them to the views of those somewhat more intimately familiar with the communities she has referred to. I also understand the important role that the Leader of the Opposition plays in these debates — in this debate. It is not to cheerlead. It is not to do anything other than critique and point out where,

I have been somewhat puzzled as I listened to the member's remarks and her observations about the impact this is going to have on communities in British Columbia. I thought that I would hear her call some evidence to support that assertion, and I didn't. Perhaps that evidence is coming.

Hon. M. de Jong: She says the people are coming. Well, that's good. I am mindful when I hear her talk about heartland communities. I ask myself, within this forestry family, who actually represents the heartland communities. If we take those groups that one historically and traditionally associates with forestry, community-based groups — because the Leader of the Opposition has made her views clear on large licensees, and I don't know if she differentiates when it comes to smaller licensees…. I'm not certain how she distinguishes the two.

I have always thought — and we have heard these comments about the harvesting community and its importance in this industry — that organizations like the Truck Loggers Association, at the end of the day, present a pretty good barometer of the feelings of our forest-dependent communities. They are, without a doubt, the small independent operators that represent the backbone of our industry and certainly our harvesting industry. That's 650 employers representing over 7,500 employees. That's a big, big chunk of the harvesting community.

I do assign a degree of import to the commentary from that group who have now had an opportunity to examine the package in its entirety. Yes, we had extensive discussions. I don't know, when the Leader of the Opposition talks about secret meetings, if she considers the extensive consultations we had with the truck loggers, who represent 7,500 working men and women in British Columbia, as secretive. Maybe she does. The only published comment I have heard from the Truck Loggers Association, that right-wing, ideological group that I suppose the member would place in the category of multinational corporations….

Hon. M. de Jong: She says she never talked about them. Well, she didn't, and I suppose it's because she doesn't like what they, the working men and women of the forests of British Columbia, have had to say. That's not her job. Her job is not to bring a balanced view to this. It is to critique what the government has done.

Here's what the truck loggers say: "We're happy with their" — the government's — "intent to bring market forces to the industry in an effort to get it in line with the rest of the world. We're in favour of the changes." The truck loggers, those 7,500 men and women that work in the forests of British Columbia…. Does their view of this matter? I suggest it does.

Let's look at that other bastion of multinational support, the salvage loggers. Now, that's small business. That's small entrepreneurship at its most basic level. I have not spoken with these individuals, but here's what is reported in that respect: "Small salvage logging operators in B.C.'s interior said the legislation will mean an end to the red tape. 'The government is on the right track,' said Rick Biller of Castlegar-based Juggernaut Development. 'We've been trying to tell them for years. It sounds like they're finally listening.'"

The Leader of the Opposition disagrees and apparently dismisses out of hand the thousands of men and women who earn their living in the salvage harvest business. What a statement, and they will be interested to hear that statement. They will be interested to hear about that.

Brink Forest Products, a value-added operation in Prince George, is planning to double its workforce — double the workforce. Perhaps a different workforce than the one we have historically thought of….

Hon. M. de Jong: And the member says, "than the IWA," telling me that for this member…. She has a very specific concept of what success in the forest sector means. I know that the member for Prince George North…

Hon. M. de Jong: …will send to the employees who work for Brink Forest Products the comments of the Leader of the Opposition, who dismisses the significance of their jobs and the wages they earn in a way that shows her utter disregard for the men and women who work in forestry in this province.

Hon. M. de Jong: "I'm very optimistic," says Mr. Brink, "in the medium to long term." He says, fairly: "Short term, there's going to be some pain, but we have to be 12 to 24 months ahead of everyone else." He's right.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member has just asked where the quotes are from Skeena Cellulose. The new owner of Skeena Cellulose, who is working to try to get

J. MacPhail: Completely. Completely, I dismiss. Not one job has been restored.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member for Skeena will be pleased to hear that: "Not one job." Then we rate that beside the hundreds of millions of dollars that member spent, and what was the result? The place went bankrupt. Now….

Hon. M. de Jong: Old habits are hard to break. I didn't think this member would have the temerity to sit or stand in this House and actually use the term "thousands of jobs," because when did we hear her say it last? It was the jobs and timber accord. Thousands and thousands of jobs that we've lost — thousands and thousands of jobs. Shame on her, Mr. Speaker. Shame on her.

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, I'm still obliged to the Leader of the Opposition for coming back into the House. I know we're going to have a debate. I know the member doesn't like to hear comments from people like Eugene Foisy, a fourth-generation Cherryville logger who is reported as saying: "This is exactly what we've been asking for." You know what? I think he's being overly generous, because I don't think any government gets it exactly right. But I am convinced that we are headed in the right direction. I am convinced that, unlike some who choose to utterly disregard the fact that over the past decade this industry has slid into steady decline and would apparently opt for the status quo and defend….

Deputy Speaker: Member, I ask you to come to order. The minister has the floor.

Hon. M. de Jong: I sense a degree of sensitivity on the part of the Leader of the Opposition, who is having difficulty with the notion that the government would actually sit down and embark on a working relationship with the IWA. I don't apologize for it. I'm proud of the fact that we've been working with the IWA, and we're still working with the IWA.

I risk launching into a lengthier debate than I had intended today. I want to perhaps conclude the debate, recognizing a criticism that the Leader of the Opposition tabled earlier. In fairness, she utilized a tool — a media report — as the instrument of her criticism, and the member for Saanich South quoted it as well.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member shouldn't be so sensitive. I wasn't being critical of her for doing it.

The member, in her second reading comments, was critical and said, in quoting from a Times Colonist report, that in the long term it probably makes sense. She then went on to criticize what she perceives to be a lack of regard for what will happen in the short term. We will have a debate about that.

I take a certain degree of comfort — in fact, I take a great deal of comfort and a great deal of pride, on behalf of the government and on behalf of my colleagues, so many of whom have contributed so much to this reform package — that the criticism would be: how dare the government plan for the long term of British Columbia's most important industry? We have planned for the long term. We believe in the long-term prospects of this industry. We believe in the heartland communities that are tied to forestry. With this package we know that forestry will be there for them and that they will be there for forestry.

Hon. M. de Jong: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

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

Hon. G. Collins: I call Committee of Supply. For the information of members we will be debating the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Before we begin, I'd like to introduce to the House the folks with me today. I have Ross Curtis, the acting deputy minister, on my left-hand side; Steve Roberts, ADM, policy and legislation, on my right-hand side; and Doug Callbeck, ADM with corporate services, directly behind me.

I'd like to say a few words about the ministry I'm fortunate enough to represent in the province. Noting that we talked about another great natural resources ministry here just a minute ago, the Ministry of Forests, we should all remember that the Ministry of Energy and Mines is also a dynamic, money-generating ministry that enables health care and education and social services to be provided around British Columbia.

The industries I represent, both the mining and the oil and gas — and I'm also responsible for B.C. Hydro — represent some of the highest-paid individuals in the province. In the mining industry I believe the average salary is about $75,000 a year, and they're long-term, well-paying jobs in communities, and they give communities stability. The oil and gas industry averages about the same, on average. Both industries employ thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the province, and also B.C. Hydro.

All too often we forget the importance of those industries in our everyday lives. Last night a number of members in the House put together an evening with some mining people. We had the Mining Association of British Columbia come over to Victoria, along with some students from the University of British Columbia who are training to be mining professionals in the province. These students are dynamic. They're young, anywhere from a four-year graduate to someone who has only been there two years. They talked to us about how passionate they were about the industry, about mining in British Columbia, about the good jobs that it provides and the opportunities they have to actually go around the world and work in different areas in the mineral industry.

As I said, the mining industry provides a huge number of jobs, a lot of revenue to the province from taxes, and it keeps some of our trains running, especially in the mining of coal from the East Kootenays and the northeast. In this ministry we've worked hard, and we're going to work harder yet to try to expand those opportunities in the province for mining.

We know that investment in exploration is actually on a curve up. That's much better than it was over the last eight years, probably, when it was on a curve down. Investment in exploration is up over $40 million this past year from the year before. That's good news. The dollars that are spent in British Columbia on exploration are now at about 9 percent of the Canadian total, up from about 4 percent. That's good news. Is it at a level that would sustain the industry? No, it's not. We know that $40 million or $40 million-plus is not enough in exploration to sustain the industry. We probably need, on average, about $150 million to be able to sustain the industry well into the future, and we want to get that industry back there.

We worked with some targeted geoscience projects last year which proved out very well — in fact, discovered a large copper deposit in the Atlin area that created a small mini-staking rush in the province, which is good news in British Columbia and good news around the world.

We want to see if we can't work harder with the people who explore, who work on the ground — the prospectors and those people — to see if we can't facilitate them to get on the ground in a better fashion and quicker, to be able to make those discoveries. We all know that's what creates the mines. They find the mines, and the juniors come along and begin to develop them. Then the larger mines will come along and actually invest the money, which could be up to a billion dollars to put a mine into production. It's good news for British Columbia.

In fact, the young people from the University of British Columbia reminded us last night how much we use mining products in our daily lives. I'm just going to list off a few of these. There are all kinds of these, but we tend to forget. An average six-room house requires

39 tonnes of aggregate. The exterior may be brick made from clay or stone. Insulation is glass wool. These are all products of mining. Interior walls are generally faced with wallboard made from gypsum, metal nails and screws. The fireplace may have steel lining. Electrical wire is made from copper or aluminum. Plumbing fixtures are made of brass, copper and zinc or stainless steel. Rain gutters are made out of aluminum; doorknobs, locks and hinges out of brass, copper or steel. Those are just a few of the items that we use in our everyday lives, which we forget come from mining.

Actually, there's another interesting statistic: 193,000 metric tonnes of gold have been discovered to date. Sixty-two percent of that is found in just four countries on Earth. To date, 1.52 billion metric tonnes of copper have been discovered; 56 percent is found in just four countries on Earth. In fact, British Columbia represents 50 percent of the copper production in Canada. On average in a 3,000-pound car, there are 139 pounds of aluminum, 28 pounds of copper and 20 pounds of zinc.

The list goes on and on. In fact, to maintain our standard of living, each person requires about 40,000 pounds of minerals each year — 9,700 pounds of stone, 7,600 pounds of sand and gravel, 724 pounds of cement, 350 pounds of clay, 383 pounds of salt, 1,683 pounds of non-metals, 12,000 pounds of iron and steel, 42 pounds of aluminum, 19 pounds of copper, 11 pounds of lead, 11 pounds of zinc, six pounds of manganese and 24 pounds of other metals. It's interesting how all of that is required in our everyday lives and that we would consume that much in a year. That's why the mining industry is so important to this government. We want to see it come back to life in the province.

We should not forget oil and gas. We consume an awful lot of oil and natural gas in the province. In fact, we produce, on average, about 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas every year. Of that, we consume about half of it domestically. We use that to heat our homes, to in fact run kilns for the forest industry to dry lumber — all kinds of things like that.

We produce about 17 million barrels of oil; we consume about 55 million barrels of oil. We're a little short. That doesn't mean there isn't the resource out there. We just have to get the economics right in the province. We're trying to do that so the industry can actually go out there and explore for that oil, to get us up to at least being self-sufficient in British Columbia for oil.

Many maybe don't realize that every time they start their car, the gasoline is from oil. If they fly in an airplane, the jet fuel is from oil. If they have a diesel vehicle, as some people do, that's made from oil. Asphalt that we drive on, on our streets is a mixture of oil and aggregate. It's used in an awful lot of, in fact, pharmaceuticals. We use those things on a constant basis. We want to increase the development of those products in British Columbia.

We have all kinds of other things that we can do in British Columbia with coalbed methane, which is interchangeable with natural gas. It does not have the sulphur content that natural gas has, so it is actually cleaner burning. We want to explore the ability to be able to do that.

What the Ministry of Energy and Mines direct royalty, lease sales and mineral tax bring to the province this year is estimated to be about $1.8 billion. There are 234 dedicated souls that work in the Ministry of Energy and Mines. That's pretty phenomenal when you think about what happens in British Columbia in trying to get the mineral industry going, to try and sustain the oil and gas industry, to in fact enlarge it, to get the mineral industry enlarged — that 234 people work and develop that kind of revenue for each and every one of us, which goes towards health care and education for each and every one of us across this wonderful province.

There are huge opportunities out there that we can actually access — more of those opportunities — and have industry go in there and create the private sector jobs, the jobs that we need in British Columbia so that we can carry on that lifestyle. With those few words I'll open it for questions.

P. Nettleton: Thanks for an opportunity to ask a few questions of the minister. On Tuesday B.C. Hydro and Accenture named their appointees to the board of directors of the new company to be called Accenture Business Services of British Columbia, which is taking over the management services of B.C. Hydro as of April 1, 2003. Who has the responsibility of appointing board members to Accenture Business Services of British Columbia?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I erred when I made my opening remarks. We will begin with the Ministry of Energy and Mines, that being mining. We will deal with policy and legislation. We will deal with resource development in the ministry and then move forward from there into the Crown corporations. Rather than mix up the Crowns with the ministry, although I'm responsible for a Crown, we're going to leave the Crowns until the last.

P. Nettleton: It certainly would have been helpful had the minister responsible given me some prior notice with respect to how he has structured the estimate process. I had discussed with the House Leader my intentions with respect to these estimates — with the Leader of the Opposition — and had come here prepared today to put those questions to the minister.

I'm not happy that the minister didn't provide me that opportunity. I think that out of courtesy, he certainly could have done that and should have done that. It now falls to the Leader of the Opposition to carry the estimate process. I would ask this, however — that, in fact, there be provided to me an opportunity to pursue a line of questioning with respect to the whole question of Accenture some time prior to the estimates process ending.

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'll just clarify that. That opportunity will be there. We would not close debate without

you having the opportunity to ask your questions. I make that commitment to you here that we will do that. If we get through the ministry part of it before we adjourn tonight, we'll try to answer some of the questions. The reason that this happened, just so you know, is that we've been holding B.C. Hydro people here for a while because of what's happening in the House. They had some important business that they had to do in Vancouver, so we let them go back to Vancouver. It's not our intention to close debate tonight, but to deal with the ministry budgets.

I'm sorry that the member didn't find out and maybe the Leader of the Opposition didn't find out, but this is not abnormal. In fact, last year — the year before, in fact, any…. I've been through estimates processes in the opposition for ten years with the last administration, and this is the way it was generally structured.

J. MacPhail: I just heard the debate in the House. The member for Prince George–Omineca has exactly the same standing as I do in this House. This government denied any official opposition, so he has exactly the same standing. I'm surprised that the minister, the House Leader, has not treated him with the same regard as any independent member — exactly the same status.

While I accept the fact that I will be doing estimates here and have come fully prepared, it is not acceptable, in my view, that somehow this member is not able to ask his questions now. Estimates are for the opposition, of which there are only two in this House right now, and perhaps it is only through my own experience that I come here prepared for everything. But it is simply unacceptable, the way the member for Prince George–Omineca has been treated in this area.

Hon. R. Neufeld: We're not mistreating the member for Prince George–Omineca one bit. In fact, obviously she didn't listen to the last part that I just said.

Hon. R. Neufeld: In fact, the member for Prince George–Omineca nodded to me, and he said: "It's okay. That's fine. I will ask my questions when we get to the B.C. Hydro issues." The member knows quite well that when she was in government and responsible for Crowns, they didn't jump through the ministry and into Crowns all the time. That's a normal procedure in this House. That's been longstanding. The member will have.…

Hon. R. Neufeld: The member will have all the opportunity he needs to ask all the questions he wants in regards to B.C. Hydro. We will, in fact, sit here for weeks while he asks all his questions.

J. MacPhail: Yeah, and it is not my responsibility to defend anybody in this House except my colleague from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. My only point here is that this government often shows less than full regard for the proceedings in this House, and I'm not quite clear why that member has been treated with a lack of respect in informing him of any of the proceedings of the House.

I must also say…. Don't laugh. There's absolutely no point on which I'm going to agree with the minister at all. I'm just saying it is only in the ability of this opposition to be able to accommodate ministers' schedules that there's any ability to get through estimates at all. There is not an accommodation in the reverse.

The Georgia strait crossing is the first topic I want to discuss. It's interesting, the government's attitude toward what's happening in Sumas versus the Georgia strait crossing. Could the minister tell me what lawyer is handling the matters for the Sumas generation plant and what lawyer is handling the matters for the Georgia strait crossing?

Hon. R. Neufeld: We don't have the name of the legal representation for either, but we will get back to the member with that. In fact, we can have that by the time we come back to estimates.

I just want to go back to the last discussion here a little bit. You know, it's interesting how quickly some people forget. I was an independent member in this House for quite a while, while she was part of a government. There were two of us. I can tell you that if we were told 10 percent of what was going on in this House, we were darn lucky. And the only reason we found out about it is that we had to go ask and beg from the House Leader, whoever that happened to be. That's what happened under that member's administration when there were two people in this House, Mr. Jack Weisgerber and myself, when we were in opposition as independent members. To talk about fairness — to stand in this House and say we're being unfair, when I offered all the time the member wanted to ask questions about B.C. Hydro — is just a little bit hard to take.

I've been here as long as this member. I also came into this House with seven other members. Seven Socreds were elected. I can remember how much information that government gave to us on a daily basis about what was happening in this House or how many hours they ran this House or how they actually pushed it through, sometimes 24 hours a day, to make sure they got their agenda going. We're not doing that. I think we're doing a pretty good job of trying to accommodate everybody in this House, understanding that it's a little difficult for the Leader of the Opposition and the independent members to be able to attend all the estimates.

The Chair: I think it's important to remember, members — both the minister and the opposition — that we will stick to vote 20.

J. MacPhail: Maybe the minister should be guided by the Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The only thing I recall about this minister is that he was in maybe two, three — was it four? — parties during his time. Whatever gave him the greatest advantage…

J. MacPhail: Socred, Reform, independent, Liberal — that's what that member did.

The Chair: Member, when I call order, please…. I just wanted to clear it up with everybody….

The Chair: Please sit down. I want to clear it up that this has gone far enough. The minister had his response to your original comments earlier, and I think it's time we got on with the estimates.

J. MacPhail: I'll answer my own question. It's interesting that the minister doesn't even know the answer about this issue around GSX and Sumas. The same lawyer is handling both files for the government. We'll start from that point of view. The Vancouver Island generating plant, Duke Point, will add some 930,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas per year to the atmosphere. Those are the additions to the airshed Nanaimo shares that will have to be offset by B.C. Hydro elsewhere. Can the minister tell us how or where B.C. Hydro will find the promised offsets to the additional greenhouse gases produced by the Duke Point plant?

Hon. R. Neufeld: B.C. Hydro has been purchasing offsets in the past. Before the member asks the next question, I can't tell her exactly where those offsets are, because the B.C. Hydro folks have gone home. But we will get that information for the member for the next estimates.

J. MacPhail: Well, this matter is beyond B.C. Hydro. It's the construction of a plant. This government is taking a self-righteous point of view at the Sumas generation plant wanting to be put in place by Washington State, and they're doing exactly the same thing in the reverse with the Georgia strait crossing, the Vancouver Island generating plant at Duke Point. It's the same lawyer handling both files, doing a complete reverse of argument. They're trying to defend the interests of the member from Chilliwack, I think it is, who has taken a strong, self-righteous stand to stop the Sumas generating plant in Washington State because of the greenhouse gas emissions it will create in his neighbourhood. At the same time this very same government is doing exactly the same thing at their own initiative at the Duke Point plant to the people of Nanaimo. Does the minister have any idea what impact this generation plant will have on B.C.'s ability to meet its Kyoto targets?

Hon. R. Neufeld: The reason we are opposing the Sumas plant — and the member knows it quite well — is because it's in the wrong airshed, not because of a natural gas–fired plant. The airshed in the valley won't, I'm told, handle that much more. That's why we're opposing that plant.

The plant on Vancouver Island is in a different airshed. The plant on Vancouver Island…. B.C. Hydro has now applied for a certificate of public convenience to be able to build it through the BCUC. The BCUC will have a hearing. There's an environmental assessment process ongoing on Vancouver Island with the Duke Point plant, and I would suggest that a plant that is going to deliver 265 megawatts of electricity by generation from natural gas will be a lot less than the plants that the last administration was going to put at Port Alberni, which would have burned natural gas and generated some 650 to 700 megawatts of electricity.

J. MacPhail: The difference is that we listened to the community about that and didn't proceed with it. This government, actually, doesn't bother to listen.

Well, there's more common ground than what the minister is letting on between GSX, the Georgia strait crossing, the Duke Point plant and Sumas 2. The reason why I wanted the minister to actually have to admit on record who the lawyer is in both these cases — same lawyer…. It's the same lawyer hired by this government in both cases. Actually, this government continued the use of the lawyer at the Sumas 2 hearings that the previous government hired, which this government refuses to acknowledge whatsoever.

During the National Energy Board hearings on the Georgia strait crossing pipeline, the Liberal government's lawyer argued that the end use of the gas that will flow through the pipeline could not — or rather should not — be considered by the board in its deliberations. But the same lawyer, on behalf of the same government, argued that the economic and environmental viability of the Duke Point power plant was irrelevant to the application of the pipeline itself. Same lawyer, same government — flip-flop.

Self-righteous grandstanding at Sumas 2, and when it's their own business in the back yard of the Nanaimo airshed, it's: "Oh, don't dare look at the end generating plant, National Energy Board. You should do it in Sumas, but you can't do it at Duke Point." The government and indeed the very same lawyer have argued before the National Energy Board that in the case of a hydro transmission line from Sumas, Washington, to Abbotsford, as the line is an integral part of the power plant, any decision on the line must consider the environmental effects of the

plant that produces the power. Sumas 2, National Energy Board, lawyer — government lawyer.

Energy board, you have to consider the entire project — the transmission line and also the power plant attached to that transmission line. GSX, Duke Point, same government, same lawyer. National Energy Board, you can't consider the power plant when you're looking at the transmission line — in this case, a gas pipeline.

Can the minister explain why the government is arguing that source pollution is important in relation to the approval of a transmission line in Abbotsford but is not important on Vancouver Island?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Pollution, regardless of where it's at, is important. This government has looked carefully at all those issues that have to do with the Duke Point plant and have to do with the….

The Sumas plant, as I said earlier, has to do with airshed quality. In fact, it's this government that had the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection get involved. The last government neglected asking any questions about the Sumas plant, any questions about the airshed, and in fact didn't do any intervening on the part of the Sumas plant. It was the opposition at the time that actually did that and now, as government, is talking about the airshed quality in the Fraser Valley.

On the issue around the Duke Point plant, yes, we did make representation to the National Energy Board. This was before what we talked about at Sumas, to say we wanted them to deal strictly with what we thought they should be responsible for, and that was the pipeline. They elected, in their own minds, that they would expand that jurisdiction. We thought it would be a little bit tough for the whole province if the National Energy Board expanded its role into all issues further down the line than just what they should be dealing with. So we're dealing with that issue on Vancouver Island now. The hearings are going on for the pipeline, the GSX crossing.

K. Krueger: I thank the minister for his remarks and the Leader of the Opposition for her questions.

We're going to interrupt the estimates debate with the Ministry of Energy and Mines, because the Administrator is about to be in the precinct. I move that we rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Committee of Supply B, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Deputy Speaker: Members, if you'd just stay in your seats, we'll await the arrival of the Administrator.

Her Honour the Administrator entered the chamber and took her place in the chair.

In Her Majesty's name, Her Honour the Administrator doth thank Her Majesty's loyal subjects, accepts their benevolence and assents to this act.

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Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


	YEAS — 39

Coell	Hansen	Bruce
Santori	Barisoff	Lee
Collins	Bond	de Jong
Stephens	Abbott	Neufeld
Coleman	Chong	Orr
Harris	Bell	Long
Chutter	Mayencourt	Johnston


R. Stewart	Christensen	Krueger
McMahon	Bray	Les
Locke	Nijjar	Bhullar
Bloy	Visser	Brice
Sultan	Hamilton	Sahota
Kerr	Manhas	Hunter

	NAYS — 2

Nettleton		MacPhail