Hansard — Thursday, February 22, 2007 p.m.

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Introductions by Members		5475

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		5476
	Lunar new year celebrations
	R. Lee
	Revelstoke heritage buildings
	N. Macdonald
	Coast Mental Health Foundation Courage to Come Back Awards
	H. Bloy
	Cowichan Valley Hospice Society
	D. Routley
	Mineral exploration worker training in northwest B.C.
	D. MacKay
	2007 B.C. Disability Games in Powell River
	N. Simons

Oral Questions		5477
	Approval process for geoduck farm licences
	N. Simons
	Hon. P. Bell
	G. Robertson
	B.C. Hydro appeal of decision on Alcan power sales
	R. Austin
	Hon. C. Hansen
	Deni House
	C. Wyse
	Hon. G. Abbott
	Highway maintenance in Revelstoke area
	N. Macdonald
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Performance bonus for highway maintenance contractor
	D. Chudnovsky
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Funding for rural highway improvements
	H. Lali
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Move of Wild Duck Inn for Pitt River Bridge construction
	M. Farnworth
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Government targets for climate change initiatives
	S. Simpson
	Hon. B. Penner

Motions on Notice		5483
	Legislative sitting hours (Motion 40)
	Hon. M. de Jong
	M. Farnworth
	A. Dix
	Hon. G. Abbott
	L. Krog
	J. Horgan
	H. Lali
	D. Routley
	N. Simons
	C. Wyse
	C. Evans
	R. Fleming
	M. Karagianis
	D. Cubberley
	B. Ralston

N. Macdonald: It's my pleasure to introduce, from Revelstoke, Tom Tischik, Gerry Gardner and Adelheid Bender. They're here for the tourism conference. As well, I'd like to introduce the mayor of the city of Cranbrook, His Worship Mayor Ross Priest. Would the House please join me in making them welcome.

Hon. S. Bond: We are delighted today to have in our gallery Darrell Rouse. Darrell is actually a Canadian who for years has been living in Florida, but he and his family are now thinking about repatriation. Although he was born in Ontario, he has seen the light, and he's hoping to make this very great province of British Columbia his future home. He is joined in the gallery today by his sister-in-law Diana Beatty. I know you'll want to welcome him not only to the gallery but to our province in the future. Please join me in making him welcome.

M. Karagianis: In the gallery today we have a group of students visiting us from Royal Roads University. They are, in fact, the new members of the course "Writing for Media." I'm sure that we will all inspire them today and welcome them and show them what the media buzz is all about in the afternoon session.

B. Lekstrom: It's my pleasure today to introduce a number of friends that are visiting from the great Peace country. Joining us in the Legislature today are His Worship Mayor Mike Caisley; along with the economic development officer for Tumbler Ridge, Ray Proulx; as well as His Worship Mayor Jim Eglinski and his wife Nancy from Fort St. John. Will the House please welcome them.

N. Simons: It gives me great pleasure to introduce in the House four guests, three from my constituency and one who should be. Up in the gallery today are Bill Forst; his wife Pat Forst, a well-known ceramic artist from Gibsons; as well as Erin Sikora and Sam Heppell, former co-chairs of the YND. Will the House please make them welcome.

J. McIntyre: It is my pleasure today to introduce to the House a very special friend and colleague, William Roberts. He is the founder and president of the Whistler Forum for Dialogue, which is a centre for public policy and leadership associated with the Aspen Institute. He also spearheads the Leadership Sea to Sky program on building collaboration, which has been a real benefit to all of us in our riding. This is the third year of training up-and-coming leaders and bringing to life some of the key issues in our corridor. Would the House please make William Roberts feel welcome.

R. Cantelon: It's my pleasure today to introduce some longtime friends who have travelled far to be with us today: my first cousin Lynn, who has recently retired from phys ed teaching but still plays ringette with women 30 years her junior.

I'd also like to introduce Albert Lubkowski. We used to play high school basketball. Albert now runs the very successful Blackfish charters.

Also with him is Doug Lang, Lynn's husband, who bikes some 15 kilometres — again, an inspiration for ActNow — to work and back every day, which wouldn't be astounding except that they live in Winnipeg, and he does it year-round. Would the House please give these prairie stubble-jumpers a warm welcome.

Hon. G. Abbott: In the gallery today is my wife Lesley. Joining Lesley is her sister Kathryn Temple from Creston and Kathryn's daughters, our nieces, Erin and Brenna Temple — also originally from Creston, now from various university towns. Would the House please make them welcome.

Hon. I. Chong: I do have some special guests to introduce today. One is all the way from the city of Shanghai, China: Ms. Li Huang — Lisa, as she's known by — a professional of urban infrastructure project management. She is being hosted here in Victoria by Ms. Lian Hong, who has been a resident of Victoria for approximately 15 years. She also was originally from China.

They're joined by two others, Ms. Muriel Gentlemen and Mr. Guangkui Hong, who are from Victoria as well. Would the House please make them all very welcome.

S. Hawkins: Today in the gallery is someone who's very special in my life. Three years ago he put his life on hold so that I would have a chance to regain mine. For six months he literally looked after me and did everything for me that I needed and basically kicked my butt if he thought I wasn't working hard enough at my recovery.

When he was born, my parents named him Lakhvinder Ahluwalia, but we sisters chose to call him Lucky, not because he was a New Year's baby and not because he was Canada's centennial baby. No, he's Lucky because he has five older sisters who love him deeply, and we're lucky to have him as a brother. Please help me welcome my brother Lucky.

R. Fleming: In the gallery with us today is a friend of mine, Troy Sebastian, who is native to Victoria but left for Cranbrook and environs with his lovely wife Jen some years ago. It's nice to have him back here in the capital city. Would the House please make Troy Sebastian feel welcome.

R. Lee: Many British Columbians are celebrating lunar new year this week. Last Sunday I participated in the lunar new year parade in Vancouver's Chinatown with the Lieutenant-Governor, the Attorney General and many other members of the House. An estimated 50,000 spectators and over 50 community organizations participated this year in this multicultural event.

On Sunday I also participated in celebrations organized by the B.C. Taiwan Chamber of Commerce and the Burnaby Crystal Mall. An evening gala with 1,000 people completed the day. Many countries and territories, especially those in the Asia-Pacific region, celebrate the lunar new year, also known as the spring festival.

In mainland China the spring festival comes with a seven-day public holiday; in Taiwan, five days; Vietnam, four days; in Korea, Hong Kong and Macau, three days; Malaysia and Singapore, two days; Brunei and Indonesia, one day. This holiday allows family and friends to spend time together.

Although there is no public holiday in Canada to celebrate lunar new year, there are celebrations in many Canadian cities. Canada Post has issued postage stamps and numismatic coins for years to commemorate the spring festival.

British Columbia, as a gateway for Canada to the Asia-Pacific, has established many economic and cultural linkages with the Asia-Pacific region. Presently there are no public holidays between New Year's Day and Good Friday in British Columbia. Perhaps it's time to consider proclaiming a public multicultural holiday to celebrate the spring festival.

Xin nian kuai le. Sun nin fai lok. Sin ni khoai lok. Sae hae bok manhi baduseyo. Gong xi fa cai.

N. Macdonald: This week we are celebrating Heritage Week in B.C. B.C. has an incredible number of stories, and it is by looking after physical aspects of our history that we keep those stories alive.

A great example of community leadership in heritage protection is the city of Revelstoke. I'm from Golden, so it was first in the election as I walked door to door with longtime Revelstoke residents such as Jeff Nicholson and Mike Dragani that I was introduced to the wonderful public buildings but also the private heritage homes of Revelstoke. This is a community of 8,000 people, but that community has four museums, and they're great museums. So it's a community that treasures and looks after its history.

They've also organized themselves to preserve their heritage buildings. The buildings the community has protected include the courthouse, which is a beautiful neoclassical building built in 1912 and now owned by the city. Its copper-top dome is a city landmark. The city hall is of modern architecture, built in 1939. The post office was built in 1911 in the neoclassical style. Private homes include Holten House, Minto house, McCarthy House and Taylor House.

Each of these have stories. I'll just give you one quick example. The post office sits in an unusual place in Revelstoke. It sits partway away from downtown, halfway towards the old part of the city. The reason for that is because you did at one time have two small communities, Farwell and Revelstoke, that have since merged. Both communities wanted the post office. They were writing to Prime Minister Laurier. His solution was to put the post office right between the two cities in a uniquely political decision.

So for each building, there are stories. There is history. Our past is worth preserving. Many communities do that well, but certainly Revelstoke is one of them.

H. Bloy: I rise today to speak about some truly inspirational individuals. Each year the Courage to Come Back Awards honour British Columbians for their courage to overcome in recovery from illness, injury or adversity.

Last year I had the pleasure of attending the Coast Mental Health Foundation's eighth annual Courage to Come Back Awards ceremony. I was amazed and inspired by the stories I heard that night. Randy Miller and Gladys Evoy overcame their long battles with addiction to become healthy contributing members of society. Randy now speaks to school students about the dangers of drug addiction, and Gladys has earned her alcohol and drug counselling certificate.

Jeneece Edroff has a genetic condition that causes tumour growth in the tissues that surround the nerves. She underwent her first spinal operation at age five, and her parents were told she would never walk again. But Jeneece did walk again, and now at age 13 she has raised over $400,000 for Variety Club.

Hearing their stories and seeing the pride on the winners' faces, I knew I had to get involved. After speaking with Lorne Segal, a driving force behind the Courage to Come Back Awards, and Peter Legge, a volunteer extraordinaire in British Columbia and volunteer emcee for the awards, I accepted the position as ambassador. I will be contacting everyone in this House to bring names forward and to assist in this worthwhile cause.

This year I am honoured to be a judge for the ninth annual Courage to Come Back Awards, which will take place on April 19 in Vancouver.

D. Routley: I rise today to bring attention of the House to an amazing group of people who serve my constituency. These people who serve the Cowichan Valley Hospice Society have done so for over two decades. They have a history of incredible volunteerism and generosity to community. Like so many other

volunteer groups, the body of volunteers are made up of those who have recently or in the past cared for dying relatives or friends and have turned their grief into positive energy, which they apply back to the same issues.

The current status of the Cowichan Valley Hospice Society is threatened by a lack of core funding. The society provides services such as palliative one-to-one care in the community, formal adult grief support groups, telephone support to the bereaved, bereavement follow-up with family, self-care clinics, volunteer support to hospital programs and patients, libraries for those they serve, as well as training of volunteers.

This incredible contribution of value saves great resources for the Vancouver Island Health Authority. In October of this year, of their 30 clients, 15 were referred through VIHA programs of mental health, home care nursing, health care centres or hospitals.

Many of our hospitals have been downgraded, and we have lost many of the beds which used to support these patients. Currently in my riding, there is one palliative care bed in the Chemainus hospital centre.

With the great dependence of this service from VIHA and the need for core funding, I want to bring the attention of the members to the circumstance of this group and many other hospice societies like them, who struggle to offer the service that they feel from their hearts to people that they care about in their community. With our help, we can continue to offer that service.

D. MacKay: Mr. Speaker, $265 million spent on mining exploration in B.C. in 2006 compared to $20 million in 2000-2001. That's an 800-percent increase in dollars spent on exploration in this province. As a matter of interest, between the mineral exploration and the mining sector they generate over $6 billion in annual revenues. Almost half of the dollars that were spent on exploration were spent in the northwestern part of British Columbia. Bulkley Valley–Stikine was on the benefit side of those exploration dollars and will benefit once we see some of those exploration dollars become mines.

But it's not all rosy. We could not find enough people with experience to help with the exploration that was underway from diamond drilling to on-the-ground exploration to camp setups and other related jobs so necessary to help with the exploration of minerals that was taking place.

Northwest Community College, in concert with the Smithers Exploration Group, decided to do something about the lack of skilled workers for the mining industry. They embarked upon a program to train people that were needed by the industry. The province contributed $1.5 million and the feds $1.9 million for a total of $2.4 million to train people through the Northwest Community College school of exploration and mining in Smithers.

It's been a huge success story. The greatest attribute of the program is that it's mobile. It takes the program to the students throughout the northwest. Students live in the camps and instruction is provided on site. Recently at the mining roundup in Vancouver during the latter part of January, I worked a booth that displayed the mining school program and can report that it was a very busy booth with people from around Canada and around the world interested in how the program was being delivered.

A big thank-you goes to those involved in the delivery of such a program: Gary Thompson from the Smithers Exploration Group, Christine Ogryzlo, Judi L'Orsa and the Warren family — Joyce, Lorne and Chris — and the great staff at Northwest Community College.

N. Simons: I'm very proud to announce that B.C.'s 2007 Disability Games are being hosted by Powell River this coming July. More than 700 visitors from across B.C. will be joined by three international soccer teams from the Netherlands, Russia and Ireland.

The theme of this year's games is "No boundaries." Visitors to Powell River, which lies in the traditional territory of the Sliammon Nation, will include athletes, attendants, officials and family members. It's an excellent opportunity to showcase the city as a model community.

The model communities project is headed by Dr. Geraldine Braak, a member of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of B.C. It is a project that strives to make communities accessible to everyone regardless of their abilities. Last June, in fact, Powell River joined Whistler and Vancouver at the World Urban Forum as examples of such communities.

Already a city with a huge volunteer base, Powell River will be recruiting and training approximately 600 volunteers, all of whom will be directly or indirectly involved with the games. The city of Powell River, Sliammon First Nation and school district 47 will join regular major funding partners: the province of B.C., B.C. Games Society, B.C. Disability Sports and Air Canada Jazz. Local unions and businesses have already jumped on board as friends of the games, as providing volunteers, funding or in-kind donations.

We're looking forward to welcoming the Premier, the Minister of Tourism, Sport and the Arts, esteemed dignitaries and all British Columbians at the opening on July 11. When a community is accessible to people with disabilities, it is indeed a model community with no boundaries.

N. Simons: Recently the Minister of Agriculture and Lands has granted three geoduck licences off the Sunshine Coast. My question is for the Minister of Agriculture and Lands. Before these licences were

Hon. P. Bell: It would be helpful if the member did his research. In fact, there has been one licence issued and two additional applications for a potential issuance somewhere down the road, upon full consultation. This process actually started back in 1991. There's been in-depth consultation with first nations and local communities since 2001, and it is part of a pilot project.

N. Simons: In fact, the Minister of Agriculture and Lands is on record as saying that the consultation was adequate and that it served its purpose. If you ask the Chief of Sliammon Nation, you'll get a different story altogether. In fact, I'll quote. When asked whether or not the consultation was adequate, he said: "In no way is it adequate. Despite our opposition and despite the complete lack of meaningful consultation, the ministry approved the geoduck farms." He went on to say: "If I do not hear from you in the near future, we will assume that litigation or direct action are the only options available to us."

Will the minister admit that the consultation process was a farce, and will he go back, respect what is being referred to as the new relationship, and engage in meaningful consultation with the Sliammon Nation and the other first nations involved?

Hon. P. Bell: Well, I find it interesting that the member is all of a sudden finding some religion on shellfish aquaculture. This is one of the least intrusive forms of aquaculture that can take place on the coast. It's broadly accepted by first nations up and down the coast. Further, this was a process that the previous government actually started in 1991. They were the ones that issued the first licence in 1996.

N. Simons: The minister should not have a quarrel with me. This is about the new relationship, which seems to be failing when at least three first nations have stated unequivocally that the consultation process was inadequate. That is insulting to the first nations of British Columbia.

Will the minister do the right thing and at least suspend those licences until proper and meaningful consultation has taken place?

Hon. P. Bell: It's a good thing the member only gets two supplementals. I'm concerned for his heart, moving on to a third one there.

Clearly, there has been in-depth consultation that has gone on. This process for these sites actually started in 2001. Communities engaged through that period of time. These sites were picked as pilot sites only, to expand on the view of whether or not there is a long-term potential for geoduck farming in British Columbia. We are being very cautious and very careful through this entire process, and the sites are only moving forward after extensive biological baseline work and consultation.

G. Robertson: I fail to see how the Minister of Agriculture thinks 935 acres of geoduck aquaculture is a cautious step.

Not only did the minister fail to consult first nations, but he failed to follow his own rules around science. Earlier this week the Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture heard from the minister's own staff and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that there's no independent science to show this type of farming has minimal impact on the environment. There is none. Yet the minister says that science will guide this government's decisions.

Can he explain why he is pushing ahead with these tenures, against the will of first nations, when he has no independent science whatsoever to back up his position?

Hon. P. Bell: I guess it must be Thursday afternoon, and the opposition is getting desperate for questions.

This process started in 1991. That's 15 or 16 years ago now. There was a licence issued actually in 1996 under the previous government. In 2001 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands went through intensive baseline biological work and detailed consultation up and down the coast to identify ten potential sites for an expansion of the pilot project.

This is one additional site. They can't even get right that there's only one site been approved, not three.

G. Robertson: Just to correct the minister, there is one site issued, and two more have been approved by this government. I think one plus two is three.

G. Robertson: Speaking of minimal impact, to put these farms in place, the clam beds must first be purge harvested, strip-mined of their wild populations. That sounds like very significant impact to me.

The State of Washington knows there's uncertainty. They understand there is significant environmental risk. The Washington legislators are currently pursuing a moratorium until the independent science is done.

Again, to the minister: why has he abandoned the first nations, abandoned independent science, abandoned the new relationship and abandoned the precautionary principle — all to force these farms on coastal communities?

Hon. P. Bell: The member's math actually reminds me of a previous NDP Finance Minister. Three kinds of people — right, Member?

You know, I have to tell you, Mr. Speaker. I don't know how complicated this is. There's been one additional licence issued and only one additional licence issued. The other two are going through detailed reviews. It is very presumptuous to say whether those other two licences will ever be issued. They're issued under a statutory decision-maker process. It's done independently.

If that member wants to question the integrity of professionals within the ministry who do their work dedicated day in and day out, why doesn't he just say that?

R. Austin: In December the B.C. Utilities Commission rejected a sweetheart deal with Alcan that was negotiated last year in the Premier's office. The commission, in its ruling, declared the agreement to not be in the public interest.

Earlier this week we learned that the Premier has directed government not to appeal the decision by the BCUC. Will the Minister of Economic Development — the minister responsible for the Industrial Development Act and the person who inked that deal — now direct B.C. Hydro to withdraw its appeal of that decision?

Hon. C. Hansen: Earlier, before we got the detailed ruling, the province of British Columbia and B.C. Hydro filed notice of intention to appeal, at least as a placeholder. The province has now decided that it will not proceed with that appeal. B.C. Hydro has the ability — they report through the Ministry of Energy — and they will make their own decisions in that regard.

R. Austin: Is it really a matter of the government not wanting to direct B.C. Hydro or not being able to? I have a copy of the long-term energy purchase agreement between Alcan and B.C. Hydro. In that agreement it states that should B.C. Hydro fail to support the sweetheart Alcan deal at the Utilities Commission, Hydro would be liable for a $5 million fine, payable to Alcan.

Is that this government's interpretation of standing up for taxpayers — by negotiating a deal that binds B.C. Hydro to support an agreement that they did not negotiate, forcing Hydro to defend that deal at the commission and then, when it fails there, to further force Hydro to appeal the ruling? Is that standing up for the people of British Columbia?

Hon. C. Hansen: I find this line of questioning rather surprising coming from the opposition. Actually, if you go back to 1996, it was the government of the day in 1996 that negotiated a deal with Alcan that allowed Alcan not only to sell power at record volumes but to sell it to the United States. That was a deal that was actually inked and signed by Premier Glen Clark at the time.

Hon. C. Hansen: The ramifications of that 1996 agreement have actually been quite huge and extremely complex for the province to try to deal with, and to try to get through and beyond the ramifications that could have happened under that particular agreement. I find it surprising that this opposition is now standing up and cheering on the B.C. Utilities Commission, when they were the party that actually gutted the B.C. Utilities Commission. They were the party that said that B.C. Hydro would not be subject to any reviews of their regulatory…. We're the party that actually said that as government, we're re-establishing the B.C. Utilities Commission and re-regulating B.C. Hydro.

C. Wyse: Since the seniors delegation from Williams Lake came to Victoria to present the community's case for keeping open Deni House, a seniors care facility, the minister has received correspondence from the Seniors Advisory Council, the Cariboo regional hospital district and the city of Williams Lake. The correspondence challenges the information used by Interior Health Authority to justify the permanent closure of Deni House. It is this substantiated information that has undermined the community's confidence in Interior Health Authority's ability to properly plan for seniors care in the Williams Lake area.

My question: will the minister commit to keeping Deni House open until he has reviewed this information and he has personally visited Williams Lake to view and meet with community representatives?

Hon. G. Abbott: I have complete confidence in Interior Health. I think they do a great job on behalf of the thousands of people they serve and the many communities they serve in the interior of British Columbia. In fairness to Interior Health, they have made major investments in the community of Williams Lake. Never, qualitatively and quantitatively, have the frail elderly been so well served in the community of Williams Lake.

With the investments that have been made in Williams Lake and with the project that is currently being completed, Williams Lake will incrementally have 23 more units than they had when we took office in 2001. Further, those will not be multibed wards, as they were under the NDP. They won't be narrow hallways,

wheelchair-inaccessible. These will be wonderful units, and people deserve those wonderful units.

N. Macdonald: Mr. Tom Siddon, a former minister in Mr. Mulroney's Conservative government, phoned me yesterday. He and his wife were in a head-on collision just outside of Revelstoke. Luckily, there were no serious injuries, but he's absolutely outraged with the road maintenance in the area, with no sanding, no plowing. He was clear that it was not the weather at the time. It was a road that has just not been maintained properly.

I have a folder full of letters that have been copied through to the minister saying the same thing — incredibly poor maintenance, particularly around Revelstoke, on Highways 1 and 23. I want this fixed. The minister knows it. It has been a problem all winter. What is the minister going to do about it?

Hon. K. Falcon: I thank the member for the question. I'm sorry to hear that Mr. Siddon was involved in an accident, and I'm pleased to hear that he wasn't personally injured, it would appear.

I think it's important to point out that we've seen some of the worst snow accumulations we've seen in 20 years in British Columbia. I think we have to be fair-minded here to the workers, many of them — most of them, frankly — BCGEU workers who do a very good job, day in and day out, under extraordinarily tough conditions, working very hard to keep our highways clean.

I am not going to allow people, under very challenging circumstances, to just openly attack and try and pretend that they're miracle workers. They have done extraordinarily good work under difficult circumstances, particularly in the Revelstoke area.

N. Macdonald: What Mr. Siddon said to me was: "Very clearly, it is not the fault of the people behind the plow." That is not the problem. The problem is with the contractor that does not put enough trucks on the road, and that has consistently happened.

A December 14 letter to the minister from the Columbia-Shuswap regional district told the minister that his contractors were "not responding in a timely way. The roads were difficult to drive on — dangerous or impassable." That was December 14.

On January 29 the mayor of Revelstoke and 25 truck drivers met with his ministry staff and maintenance contractor staff to discuss consistently poor highway maintenance. The chamber of commerce executive that is visiting here plowed through snow on Highway 23. That cannot be the acceptable standard for roads in this province.

The minister has a problem. It is with that contractor. When is he going to fix it?

Hon. K. Falcon: Actually, there is one extraordinary difference. You know, these workers have actually been contracted maintenance workers on our highway system for over 15 years now, including ten years under that opposition when they were an NDP government in the dismal decade.

Hon. K. Falcon: There is one very important difference, however, between when they had responsibility over those maintenance contractors and when we do. The difference is that we actually put into place standards that we hold them accountable to.

Hon. K. Falcon: …government, there were no standards. There were no measurements. There was no auditing. All of that is in place under this government and this Premier.

D. Chudnovsky: It appears that the people who drive on those roads, who live in those communities, who visit those communities and who have to deal with the situation on those roads don't believe that the standards have been adhered to this year.

My question to the minister is: can the minister tell the House whether the road maintenance company referred to by the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke — that's HMC — will be receiving a performance bonus this year?

Hon. K. Falcon: No, Mr. Speaker, this is a very important preface. I want to congratulate that member, because that member actually left urban East Vancouver and drove the Coquihalla Highway to find out what the rest of the province already knows — that winters can be pretty tough in British Columbia.

There's actually the occasional pothole in northern British Columbia. With respect to that contractor, as

I've said, we have 117 staff that do nothing but audit the performance of our maintenance contractors right across the province. All of them are held to standards that were never, by the way, applied or in place under an NDP government but that we do have in place now.

That contractor, to the best of my knowledge, will be receiving its performance bonus at the end of the season. I believe they've done great work under very, very challenging circumstances.

H. Lali: It's becoming abundantly clear that the minister has not travelled the Coquihalla Highway recently, because they're beginning to call it the pothole highway.

Tuesday's budget was a big disappointment for my constituents, especially those living in the Lillooet area. There's been nothing in the 2007 budget for rural British Columbia. The B.C. Liberals have yet again abandoned residents living north and east of Hope when it comes to transportation needs for the people.

H. Lali: That would be the Minister of Transportation, hon. Speaker. Why does this Liberal government continue to ignore the plight of Lillooet-area residents by not putting funding into fixing Pioneer Road 40 and also in finding a long-term solution to arresting the big slide on Highway 12 near Lillooet?

Hon. K. Falcon: The member opposite knows well, being a former Minister of Transportation, that we have lots of asks across the province, and one of the things we have to do is prioritize a lot of the asks. We can't do everything, obviously, so we try to make sure we prioritize in terms of the best returns in terms of safety. Public safety is always our number-one issue.

The member refers to Highway 12. The member knows well that that's been a challenge for many, many decades for all governments. It's not an easy challenge. We've invested millions of dollars to try and secure that as best we can. We've looked at options, including options to try and bypass that particular area.

I don't want to pretend that this is not a huge engineering challenge, and it's also a very huge expense for a highway that sees about 1,500 cars a day. It's a very low-volume highway. I have to make decisions based on priority, as the member well knows.

H. Lali: Again, it's becoming abundantly clear that it's not a priority for this Liberal government in terms of transportation in rural British Columbia. I'd like to again ask you, hon. Speaker: why it is that these Liberals keep trying to take credit for work that the previous NDP government had done? He's talking about millions for work.

H. Lali: It was this MLA, when he sat in that minister's seat as the Minister of Transportation and Highways, that those millions he's talking about…. That was the time that work was done under an NDP government in the 1990s.

H. Lali: While the B.C. Liberals actually have no problem pumping billions of dollars into transportation projects in the lower mainland and the Sea to Sky Highway….

H. Lali: Again, by their applause they're making it clear that the bucks stop when they get to Hope and they get to Lillooet in the mountains. Meanwhile, my constituents keep waiting and waiting and waiting for action from the B.C. Liberals. They have been waiting for six long years.

Again, my question is to the minister of highways. When will the B.C. Liberals stop discriminating against rural British Columbia? When will this Liberal government stop punishing constituencies that have voted NDP in the last election and start funding highways work such as the Pioneer Road 40, the big slide near Lillooet and the projects all across rural British Columbia?

Hon. K. Falcon: I would have thought that for his own sake, the member wouldn't have gone there. If the member actually takes a look at our budget over the last three years and the three years going forward, that member will know almost two-thirds of all spending is outside the lower mainland of British Columbia.

Hon. K. Falcon: Whether it's the Kicking Horse Canyon, whether it's the new five-lane William Bennett

bridge or whether it's four-laning Highway 97, we are making improvements in every part of this province, and we're proud of our record.

M. Farnworth: This past week the government proclaimed Heritage Week in the province of British Columbia. My question is for the Minister of Transportation. The current Pitt River Bridge that's being built has required some land to complete the project. I know the minister has signed an agreement. He has dealt with the issue, and I don't have an issue with that. But on that particular piece of land is a very historic building in Port Coquitlam called the Wild Duck Inn. The residents that were there have been moved and relocated. That, again, is not where my question is going.

The owner of that building, which has just sold to the province of British Columbia, has an adjacent piece of land. The building of concern has a heritage designation. The city of Port Coquitlam, the local heritage community and the owner of that building would like the ability to move that building from its current site to his own site, not asking the province for money but, rather, asking for the province's assistance in seeing if this can in fact take place.

My question to the minister is this. Will he work with that former owner and the Heritage Society in Port Coquitlam to see if that building can in fact be moved so that we can live up to the spirit of what we said in this House regarding Heritage Week in British Columbia, which we declared this past week?

Hon. K. Falcon: I thank the Opposition House Leader for the question. We certainly try to work very hard, as you know, especially in situations like that, where we're going to have to use land that's currently occupied by a building. I must be honest with the member and tell him that when I heard it was a heritage site, I was a little surprised. I never thought of the Wild Duck Inn as a heritage site, to be honest with you. But that's neither here nor there. Apparently it is.

I will say this to the member opposite. I'll look into that for the member. My understanding is that there is a bit of a challenge in trying to move it, because it is an old building. It may not even be practical, but I know that staff is trying to work with the owner and also work with some of the residents that live up above to make sure this is done in a way that minimizes the impact as much as humanly possible. So I'll look into that for you.

S. Simpson: We saw in the budget that something less than about 1/10 of 1 percent of budget spending is going to throne speech promises for this year on climate change. This was confirmed. Essentially this is a confirmation of what the Finance Minister has been saying about not being prepared to fund a plan that has been cobbled together and lacks a lot of substance at this point in time.

We also know that this isn't just a question of a vacancy of substance in relation to the throne speech. We can also look at the service plan of the Minister of Environment. In that service plan, I would note that there are a series of core objectives of the ministry. One of those core objectives has no key strategies and no performance measures at all — only one — and that key objective would be climate change, where there is nothing but four paragraphs of rhetoric.

The question I have is this. In the throne speech there was one target established, and that's the target for 2020. I would like to know: will the Minister of Environment release all the supporting documents, briefing notes and analysis that resulted in that target being established, so that the people of British Columbia can have some confidence that that number was established based on some kind of depth of analysis?

Hon. B. Penner: Well, if anything's been cobbled together, it's been this remarkably weak question period performance by the sad NDP opposition.

Hon. B. Penner: We already know what one of the world's leading climatologists has had to say about our targets as laid out in the throne speech for dealing with climate change. Prof. Andrew Weaver from the University of Victoria, a Canada research chair in climatology and atmospheric research, has indicated that it's an ideal plan. It's the plan he would have chosen if he had been consulted. He said later on CKNW this week, which, frankly, speaks very well to the work done by our staff in the Ministry of Environment and across government….

I've heard the NDP's typical refrain — spend money before you have a detailed plan — which reminds me a little bit of an idea of shooting before you take the time to aim. That does tend to be the NDP's view of things.

This week on CKNW, here's what Professor Weaver had to say in addition: "It's not just about spending a whole bunch of money. It's not about taking a bunch of sticks and hitting people over the head with it. It's about showing leadership." Mr. Speaker, that's what we're doing.

Hon. M. de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I call Motion 40 standing on the order paper in my name.

I'll try to go through this in the classical "what, why and how" process. What does it do? What is it? It's a sessional order.

I'm going to take a moment to emphasize that fact, because I have heard some grumblings about the fact that, oh, here's the government trying to unilaterally amend the standing orders. That is not the case.

We have made procedural changes to the manner in which this House operates — a great many since 2001 — and I think, by and large, those have been favourably received and have functioned reasonably well. Some of those changes relate to the calendar that we have, where there is greater certainty around the time which the House will sit and not sit. There are changes that we've made as recently as a couple of years ago relating to question period and the fact that that has been extended.

Those have been changes that in some cases first appeared as sessional orders and then evolved into actual amendments to the standing orders themselves. In some cases they were actual changes to the standing orders. What's being proposed here with Motion 40 is a sessional order — and I hope members will hear this and will accept it — because this is an idea. It's an idea that the government — the government caucus, to be fair — has about how this place might function better, how the work here might get done better and how a number of different interests might be served.

If it is accepted, if it is passed, it will be the order of business for the length of the spring session, and at that point we'll assess. We'll be interested to know what members thought about the change that was captured by the sessional order, and we'll make a decision about whether or not it worked well. If it did, we'll consider doing it again. If it didn't work so well or if people had the idea that it didn't work as they thought it would, then we'll make a decision on that basis. I wanted to emphasize that to members.

This is not a proposal to permanently amend the standing orders that govern the workings of this House. It is a sessional order, obviously, that deals with the sitting hours of the House.

I want to say this, and I'll say it as clearly, I hope, as I can. This is not an attempt to trick anyone. This is not an attempt to make anyone's life more difficult. In fact, it is an attempt to create a schedule that works better for members. That, I suppose, means that various members will have different ideas. In our caucus they sure did, insofar as looking at whether or not there should be night sittings. There was clearly an opinion about that.

But when I come in a moment to one of the guiding principles that we tried to apply in crafting the motion for consideration by this House and crafting the alternative that is being presented here today…. There was certainly no shortage of ideas, and I suspect no shortage of ideas on the part of the opposition benches, about how that might be done.

We have hours of operation that have governed this House. They've changed. I won't take the credit for this. Some folks in my office helped me. We did some research, looked back on some of the past practices. There has been a variety of sitting hours for the House.

I have not been here the longest, but I have been here longer than most, and I remember when the House sat on Fridays. The Opposition House Leader remembers that. That sort of evolved. It was private members' day then, and we did some work for an hour or two into the afternoon, and that changed.

What interested me is that as best as I could tell, based on the research and going back, it wasn't until actually '01 — this administration — that night sittings were formally contemplated by the standing orders. That surprised me, because I'd been here through the better part of the '90s, and it really was the norm.

Now, there were no specific guidelines. As you moved through the session, the House would start to sit till six and then 6:30 and seven, and as you moved a little bit further along, eight or nine. Eventually you'd get to the point where it was fairly normal to be sitting till ten or 11 o'clock. And as you got to the very end of the session, it tended to sit a lot later than that.

It wasn't actually until 2001 — and I think it was a sessional order at that time that eventually evolved into an actual standing order — that there was formal recognition of night sittings until nine o'clock. Before that the latest the standing orders contemplated was Wednesday at seven o'clock. So there's been a history of change and how this might work. This, I suppose, follows in the footsteps of that.

So why look at this now? I hinted at this last week when I gave notice or tabled the motion here. It's not really that complicated. The government actually has set some leadership objectives around the notion of healthy lifestyle, healthy living, and believes that this place should try to lead by example. The people who work here, not just the members because we tend to be — some of us, perhaps myself — a bit of a self-centred lot…. We think of ourselves. But it takes a whole lot more than us to make this place tick. We have staffs. We have the support staff in the building that are a key and integral part of making this chamber and this institution function.

It struck the government that having people — many people who come in at, some of them, 7:30, eight o'clock in the morning — here until nine or ten o'clock at night probably wasn't the best or healthiest way to conduct business, never mind the fact that members and the other people that I've mentioned who work here have families. Most members have families elsewhere in the province. Some have them in closer proximity to the precincts. Certainly, the people who work here and the support staff do. There is an argument in favour of the notion that they should be spending some time with those families in the way that we expect most employees and workers do.

Those were influential in the government and the government caucus coming to the conclusion that having the House sit, in this day and age, into the night was not the best way and not the healthiest way to conduct business. There are members here now who are actually leading by example, who want to go and get some exercise. They want to go for a walk. They might want to go for a run. They might want to go to the gym. They might curl. Whatever they do, they may want to participate in some of those kinds of activities as well. When this place sits, their priority is to be here — for both sides. That link with this chamber is real for both sides.

That was determinative in coming to the conclusion that it was time to examine, we thought, whether or not an alternative schedule could be set that did not involve sitting late into the evening. I will say this for the information of members. I want to emphasize at the outset that this was not a decision and this motion is not a function of some sort of fiscal analysis. But I did ask the question.

I did ask to what extent night sittings add to the cost of operating in this chamber and was told that it works out to about $12,500 a night sitting, cumulative over a spring session — just about $250,000. I want to say to all members that was not what drove the decision to bring this motion forward, but it may be information members find useful to have in terms of the costs associated with night sittings.

There was probably a time when it made sense. There was a time when people would be elected here, come here in the winter or spring, and they would stay here. They wouldn't travel around as much. There was a certain stereotype perhaps, or tended to be almost, years ago: far more men and very few women. The makeup of this chamber happily has changed. The age of the members has changed and their family obligations. Our notion of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, I hope, has changed.

All of that has been instructive and influenced the government and the government caucus in terms of bringing this motion forward.

So if the decision was let's look at the night sittings and there being, on the part of the government caucus, a lack of enthusiasm for continuing them or at least trying to find an alternative to that, what was another guiding principle? Well, the key one was that there could be no reduction, in our minds, in the amount of time available for debate. Whatever change was made, the time that would otherwise be available through those night sittings would have to be made up otherwise.

I will share with members the calculation that I did to calculate what that time represented. There are nine weeks in the spring session. Night sittings don't start right away. They start after the throne and budget speeches have taken place. In a typical week, night sittings would occur on the Monday and the Wednesday. The House, over the past number of years, has tended to adjourn at six o'clock and resume sitting at 6:45. So about 2¼ hours twice a week — four and a half hours. So by my calculation, that meant that over the life of the spring session, the elimination of night sittings would reduce the debate time by 40½ hours.

The challenge, then, was to come up with a schedule that would make up for that time. And, as I said, a whole range of options. I hope members, particularly members opposite, will hear — I'm not sure they'll accept, but I hope they'll hear — that those options included nothing more complicated than simply starting at nine o'clock in the morning.

Now, most people would say: "Well, there's nothing unreasonable about that." But some of us have been in opposition. We actually understand that there are demands placed on opposition MLAs that extend to their constituencies in the time this place sits, preparing for question period.

I can tell you this. If we went to the public tomorrow and said, "The standing orders for this House have been adjusted so members will now sit at 9 a.m.," I don't think very many people would be offended. I think most of them think we do sit at 9 a.m.

But we said no. Based on other conversations I've had, that's probably going to cause a little more anxiety on the other side of the chamber. We don't want this to be that kind of an exercise.

Ultimately, after some toing and froing, adjusting this, adjusting that, we thought the simplest and the least disruptive way to make up that time was to start half an hour earlier after lunch at 1:30 and sit half an hour later — 1:30 to 6:30. By doing so, we gain four hours a week. If we'd started at the outset, we'd have had 12 weeks. That would have been gaining 48 hours. It actually would have given us more time to debate during the spring session.

Now we're two weeks into it. I'm not sure if this motion is going to pass or when it's going to pass, but with ten weeks to go, that would leave 40 hours. So we'd be a half-hour shy based on the fact that we'd only have ten weeks under the new schedule. I'm going to suggest to members that that, in my view, should not be fatal to the willingness of the House to entertain this kind of a change.

We think that it is worth trying. We think it is worth taking one session in which the overall time for debate won't be impacted or will be by 30 minutes only and, at the end of that, listening to members, hearing what they say — how did it work, and how did it impact on them and their ability to do the work? — and then making a decision.

I guess, as I wrap up, my contribution at this stage is to emphasize the notion that we're hopeful that we can work with members. We've made, as I said at the outset, a variety of changes, most of which I think have worked very, very well. I gather from some of the commentary I've heard in the short time that I've been on my feet that there will be allegations of nefarious attempts to somehow prevent or pervert the opposition's ability to do its work. That is not the intention at all. Not at all.

I hope that members will examine this and accept that it is a reasonable attempt to make an adjustment, to make a change — a change around night sittings that actually was formalized in the standing orders five years ago — but to do so in a way that is reasonable, responsible, well considered and — at the end of an initial experiment, if you will — will be worthy of review by all of the members of the chamber so that we can decide whether it is worth pursuing.

M. Farnworth: It's my pleasure to rise and respond to the motion and the comments of my colleague across the way. I want to address a number of the points that he made because I think it's important. This is about change, and I take him at his word that he's not…. This isn't about doing something nefarious. But the fact is that this change does have some important consequences in how the opposition does its job.

It also, I think, has some important consequences in terms of how we make changes in this chamber, which is all of our chamber. It's not just the government's chamber. It's not just the opposition's chamber. It's the chamber for all members in this House. What's important is that we make changes on the rules in this place by consensus.

My colleague across the way talked about previous parliaments — the sitting hours and how they've changed over the years. They have, in fact, changed. We did used to sit on Fridays. That change took place, but on the Fridays we started at the same time we start each day now, whether it's at ten o'clock or two o'clock in the afternoon. We would go to night sittings as we would start our way through the session. We would proceed, and we would start night sittings at seven, and we would go at nine.

He is correct. They were not formalized. But the decision and the timing of night sittings always took place in consultation between the government and the opposition, and there was a recognition by both government and opposition that, in fact, we would be going to night sittings. Members knew that night sittings were coming, and they would plan accordingly. Members are down here for the week.

We would proceed with night sittings, and night sittings would be, once we were all into them, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — four nights a week — from whence they started to when the session ended. The session would start in the spring, and it would go, quite often, until well into summer, sometimes into August. We didn't have the breaks that we have now. We didn't have the shortened week which we have now.

I would agree that that was onerous in terms of members' ability to lead a healthy lifestyle, but that was the calendar at that time. Those were the rules that were in place at that time. The changes that took place, and when night sittings would come into effect, were done because both government and opposition would consult and say, "Okay, we're ready to do this now," and then it would be done on that basis.

The government changed in 2001, and a new set of rules were brought in place. A number of these changes were discussed prior to 2001 with a look to implement them. It didn't take place, but that discussion had been underway. The creation of a new calendar, I think, has been received in a positive way by members — both government and opposition.

On the issue. As the government says, it's about a healthy lifestyle. Well, that is a significant improvement. I mean, we had night sittings Monday and Wednesday — no longer four times a week but now twice a week — scheduled, no longer the Friday sitting and with weeks in between so that, depending on the year and the calendar and when Easter falls, you would be sitting for three weeks, a week off back in your constituency, sit for another three weeks and a week or two weeks off over Easter.

That's a lot of break time. That's a lot of time that most people — most working people and most business people — don't get to plan a schedule like that. We have that luxury. We're busy during those times, no doubt about it, but those breaks occur. The calendar that we have in place now is a lot more civilized than what used to be in place.

The other thing that occurred was a formalized fall sitting in terms of how things would operate. There

would be a fall sitting. The government and the opposition disagree on the nature of that fall sitting, but clearly, the provision is there for a fall sitting, which again allows a considerable amount of time, in a very orderly fashion, for government work and business to be done.

I make those points because I believe it's important that we understand what we used to do and what we do now.

Now, the issue at hand from the government perspective is a healthy lifestyle. Okay, fine, but the reality is that adjourning at 6:30 is…. The Government House Leader may not want to go, and he may well be able to say that he will not attend or go, but I guarantee it that that time he now talks will be freed up to pursue a healthy lifestyle will, without a doubt, be filled with meetings that are scheduled by his staff, by the Premier's office, by the Leader of the Opposition's staff and by our own staff.

If anybody thinks that adjourning at 6:30 is going to somehow free up hours for them to go and lead a healthy lifestyle, they are dreaming because the schedulers who control our lives will see it as a block of free time, and they will fill it up.

They will fill it up with what they perceive to be important business. Guess what it is? Maybe it is important business, or maybe it's busywork. I don't know. But I know one thing: it will not be as important as the business we do in this chamber, which is the people's business, and that's what we are here for. I think we need to bear that in mind.

The other thing that I think we need to recognize…. My colleague the Government House Leader has said: "Okay, the time — we're not losing time. The time will still be the same." In fact, according to his calculations, under the way it's done now, we would get an additional 30 minutes. Well, we need to look at that, and we need to examine that.

If, at the beginning of the session, that's in place — okay. There may be some additional time. But here's the challenge of the work we do, and how it's done. We come in, and we do throne speech and budget speech all at the beginning. The real work in terms of scrutiny of government actions, government estimates and government legislation takes place after the throne speech and the budget debate days are finished and dealt with.

By removing the time from finishing those night sittings and front-end loading that time at the beginning of the session, in essence you are shortchanging the ability of the opposition to scrutinize government estimates and government legislation.

Now, that might not be so bad if I felt, and if we as an opposition felt, that there would be a fall session. But the fact is that there is no guarantee there will be a fall session. We didn't have one last year — well, apart from an initial day stretched to four days.

A truncated session. So what happens is that the time that we do know we have as an opposition is important. I mean, if there was a guarantee that there was a fall session, hey, maybe things would be different. But there isn't.

The time that's available to the opposition is extremely important, particularly when we see what, in the case of the throne speech, appears to be — if the government follows through on all the issues that it has raised in the throne speech — a very busy legislative calendar with potentially a great deal of legislation that needs the scrutiny and needs the debate. It's important that we have the ability to do that. The same applies to the estimates process.

While there may not be a net loss of time and depending on when things come into place…. The fact is that by front-end loading that time, you're actually taking away time from what we would argue is the most important part of the session.

The other issue that I think is important to note is that with the calendar changes and the fact that we have not been sitting in the fall, we already have the shortest, or one of the shortest, sitting Legislatures in the country. I mean, in 1998, I think it was, we sat for more than 190 days. This past year I think it was 47 sitting days we had. Anyway, it's significantly shorter than what it used to be. Again, if we had a fall session, I might be more receptive.

In terms of options…. I know the Government House Leader and I talked about this particular issue. I know that some of the original proposals…. This motion that he's tabled before us is different from what some of the government's initial proposals were. But they also, I think, miss what could have been a very doable option that would have been able to achieve the government's goal.

If they want to eliminate night sittings, they could have said, "Okay, how much time do we eliminate by night sittings?" and then said in the number of hours what that is in days or weeks, and attach that to the end of the session. Saying that we will extend the session by this many days to make up for the time would have been something the opposition would have been open to.

Now, in the same way that there are downsides for the opposition in what the government is proposing now in terms of our ability to scrutinize legislation and estimates, to be fair — and I want to be fair in this — that would have had a downside for the government in the sense that it would have meant more sitting days, which would have meant more question periods, which would have meant ministers having to be more accountable.

I know that governments don't like the idea of unnecessary question periods if they don't have to have them. But that was another way in which we could have dealt with the issue.

The other point the Government House Leader raises is that we've just moved things back a half an

hour. If we changed it to nine o'clock, the public would be happy. The public would be fine if we started at nine o'clock, and fully expect us…. You know, they start at nine. Hey, why don't we start at nine? The fact is, we do start well before nine — not in here but certainly in the work around this building. That applies not just to opposition but also to government.

One of the nice things about night sittings — and I'd just like to point it out at this particular point — is that night sittings allow something that starting at nine doesn't allow for. It allows for those men and women, and kids in some cases, across this province who do like to follow what's going on in the Legislature, in the legislative chamber, to watch it on the parliamentary channel.

Now, I know it doesn't have the world's largest ratings — not like Canadian Idol or some other shows that are on TV, but it does get a consistent…. There is a loyal following, and people do channel-surf, and they do watch what's going on. Having it on between seven and nine, it's amazing how many people do see even just a small part of what we do. They see the work that takes place in here, and I believe that that's important.

But I digress, and I'd like to come back to what I think is the key point around that and one of our key concerns. It relates to the House Leader's comments around starting at nine and just moving things a half an hour. That half an hour does have a big impact on the opposition's ability to do its job, and I will also argue that it will have an unintended consequence, too, on the government side.

Those consequences are this: everything backs up a half an hour. It impacts, in terms of in the morning around question period and in terms of the work that's taking place. This is the key function of opposition in holding government to account — that you now have to move and start a half an hour early.

Both government and opposition have their caucus meetings directly before two o'clock, when the House starts. Opposition caucus starts at one and goes till two. Now you will see that government and opposition caucuses will be starting at 12:30 and going to 1:30. You're going to find that this place is a lot more pressure on members, particularly when you have visiting delegations and constituents who are here. Many of us, when we're here, have lunch with constituents — people who come down to see us here. You're going to find that that significantly impacts on members' ability to deal with constituents on that informal basis. That's important.

The second point is that it squeezes the time that opposition has available for it to do the work that it needs to do in the morning around preparations for the afternoon session.

Those points that I have made…. The opposition has an important role to do in this place and that this impinges on that. When we have made changes in this chamber, it has been on the basis of consensus as opposed to the imposition of majority. We already have a very civilized calendar that is a significant improvement over the way we used to do things. We can have a healthy lifestyle and still work Mondays and Wednesdays between seven and nine.

I think it would be far more unhealthy if we start doing away with night sittings and those times get filled with meetings.

Our work is here. Our job is to do the people's business. The calendar works well the way it is now. We do not need to change it, and we certainly should not change it by imposition as opposed to consensus.

This side of the House will not be supporting this motion, and I now take my seat.

A. Dix: I rise to speak in opposition to the motion presented by the Government House Leader. As the member for Port Coquitlam–Burke Mountain — the Opposition House Leader — has said, in terms of the fundamental rules of parliament, one of the ways that they work is when we operate and work by consensus.

When fundamental rules about House schedules are changed by legislative dictate, by the use of the majority in the Legislature, I would suggest — at least from my experience and understanding with the traditions of the Legislature — that to impose significant changes to our schedule over the objections of the opposition and over the objections of a significant minority in the Legislature is contrary to parliamentary traditions.

It has not occurred this way. In fact, members will recall that when significant changes were made in the past — the change that allowed us to go into Committee of Supply in two places, in the Douglas Fir Room and here — those changes were recommended and brought in jointly by both the government and the opposition.

The Government House Leader refers to the situation that occurred prior to 2001. The reality of the situation prior to 2001 was that much of the House agenda, much of the House time and much of the timing of sessions was dictated by the opposition under the rules that existed. I would suggest to you that if the government at that time had acted — when the Government House Leader was on the opposition side — in imposing rules, in limiting debate and imposing systematic rules of closure around sessions, that opposition would have gone not just a little bit wild. They would have gone berserk.

The rules, the respect of the opposition that they expected when they were on this side of the House, don't apply any longer. If they want to change the hours of the Legislative Assembly that apply to every member, they do it. They drive it over us, and when they don't agree with our suggestions, they impose their agenda. That's their approach to these issues.

We've gone from a time when the opposition had a very important role in setting the schedule and in many ways defined the length of those sessions and was allowed unlimited debate on estimates and virtually unlimited debate on legislation, a time when closure was almost never used, to a time when the government is imposing restrictions on the Legislature — even in a Legislature which has the least number of sitting days in western Canada, where sitting days were restricted in the spring to allow for a fall sitting to deal with legislation, and the fall sitting was cancelled.

We don't agree with the proposal by the Government House Leader. The Government House Leader said, in preparing this sessional motion, that it was a wash and that they were not taking away hours of debate. I know that the Government House Leader wouldn't do this intentionally, but this simply is not the case. It is not the case.

This sessional order was introduced and prepared for debate on Tuesday. It's been brought for debate on Thursday. If it is brought in, we will have in this session a reduction in the number of hours for debate and a much more significant reduction in the number of hours for estimates debate. That is because the Government House Leader's calculations are based on this being brought in at the beginning of the session.

In fact, we lose five hours of debate with this motion on a restricted schedule. If this motion comes into place on Monday, we do indeed. The Government House Leader and I, I'm sure…. I'll be happy to share those calculations with the Government House Leader. In fact, we do. His figures are based on these rules being brought in place at the start of the session, which started last week. That's certainly what he said last Thursday.

I say with great respect that we'll be happy to talk about it with the Government House Leader. This means fewer hours than the current model — five fewer hours and a further four fewer hours for estimates and legislative debate. Those hours are essentially transferred to the debate at the beginning of the session with respect to the throne speech and the budget debate.

In my view, this is an imposition on an already reduced House calendar by the majority in the Legislature — contrary to the tradition of the Legislature — over the opposition that reduces our opportunity to hold the government accountable. We don't even know at this point because often the government promises legislation in the throne speech that it then fails to deliver.

All members will recall the throne speech last session promising important amendments with respect to criminal-record checks regarding children, which were promised, which were said to be important, which were in the throne speech. Legislation was promised. None was brought forward in the spring, none was brought forward in the fall, and it's not even mentioned in this year's throne speech.

We're never sure whether the heavy legislative agenda calendar is to be expected or not from the government side, but the fact of the matter is that with no commitment to a fall sitting and with what appears to be a heavier legislative calendar, there will be greatly reduced opportunities to take part in estimates debate.

This proposal, imposed by the majority of the Legislature against the traditions of parliament, will further reduce the opportunity of opposition members and even government members to hold the government accountable during estimates debate. Now, it's not for me to judge the motives of the government in doing that. I respect what the Government House Leader says about his motives, but that is the consequence of what they are doing. The consequence of what they are doing is to deny the opposition those opportunities and the people those opportunities to see questions responded to.

What it will lead to, especially if the Government House Leader continues not to give any commitments with regard to a fall sitting, is closure and a lack of scrutiny on significant legislation and less scrutiny on estimates. I don't think that the people who send us here think it's unreasonable that we give full scrutiny to estimates and legislation. I don't think that the people who send us here think that fewer hours for estimates and legislative debate on very important issues to members on all sides of the House is the way we should go. I don't think that's a reasonable approach.

If the government's intent is in fact to eliminate night sittings and talk to the opposition and come to an agreement, they should do that. That's not what they're doing. They're coming in here, they're imposing their agenda, they're using their majority in this Legislature, and they're saying: "This is the way it's going to be."

The sessional order — maybe. But the sessional order, I suspect, will beget more sessional orders, and non-consultation will beget more non-consultation and this imposition of an effort that denies the people of British Columbia reasonable access to and reasonable accountability of their government.

I don't think that it's overly painful or that it should be overly painful for government ministers to respond to questions in estimates. I don't think it should be overly painful for government ministers to in fact respect the existing calendar and to sit down and deal with members of the opposition on these issues.

We have a budget process where very significant questions need to be asked. In fact, as the Minister of Health knows, we don't even know what the budget will be in some health regions, and we won't know — that won't be finalized — until after the beginning of the fiscal year.

I think it's unreasonable for government ministers and government members to stand up and say that they want to impose a proposal that denies and reduces the number of hours we have for estimates. I think the people of British Columbia should reasonably be able to ask questions, and I think that the Minister of Health should reasonably have an excellent opportunity to answer all of those questions, as I'm sure he will attempt to do.

I don't think, therefore, that those of us who believe that this is our House — all of our House — can accept the government acting in as capricious a way as they are acting here.

The further thing I would say about the effort to end night sittings…. The member from Port Coquitlam addressed this. I think that it's not unreasonable, from time to time, for working people to have the right to see their Legislatures perform their duties and see estimates debate in the Legislature.

I agree that everyone will say…. There's always much smiling about the ratings of legislative TV, but as members will know…. I don't know if this is true of members of the government side. It always amazes me

how many people do watch and do comment and do respond, both positively and negatively, to what we do in here.

Sometimes they're grazing; sometimes they're not. But I think it is a reasonable thing, from time to time, for us to sit in hours when working people can see us perform our duties. I don't think that having a couple of night sittings a week, when maybe people who are concerned about the health care system or who work in the health care system can see the Minister of Health respond to questions in estimates, is an unreasonable thing.

Given the shortness of the session, given the fact that the government rules, in fact, have created shorter sessions in British Columbia…. The government's decision not to have fall sittings has created shorter sessions in British Columbia — sessions and timetables which, while very good in maintaining the regularity of lives, depend on the use of closure at the end of sessions if adequate time for debate is not provided.

I think we are entering into a very unfortunate time, a time when the rights of parliament are being narrowed and minimized and the opportunities for the opposition to hold the government accountable narrowed and minimized.

I want to remind people that this has been a pattern of behaviour. This is a pattern of behaviour. We've had a situation in British Columbia where over the last year we've had an acting Auditor General imposed by a majority against the spirit of the Auditor General Act. For the Auditor General Act, for independent officers of the Legislature, for our parliamentary system to work there has to be a modicum of respect for the rules of parliament.

When we pass a law that says independent officers of the Legislature must be recommended by unanimous vote of a committee and the Legislature and then the government decides to use a loophole they've created to run right through that, that's not good for parliament. When we should be deciding these important questions about our lives which affect us all, in consultation and with agreement of all sides, instead the government imposes rules that reduce our opportunity to debate and hold it accountable.

The government should not be imposing motions which change the rules, which make them less accountable. That hurts their credibility in the long run, and it hurts this institution.

That's why we on this side will be opposing this effort to restrict debate. That's why we on this side of the House believe it's a bad idea. That's why we on this side of the House believe that if the government reasonably wants to deal with people's lifestyles, then it should actually put something forward that would help us to do that — even if it costs them a week or two more of question periods, even if they have to submit themselves to that for a week or two more.

These principles have guided legislatures for a very long time — these principles of respect for the institution and respect for the minority in parliament, no matter what the size of that minority, and these rules of respect which this government has consistently not shown over time but has committed itself to changing as recently as the throne speech in 2005.

We all know that in spite of the fact that in 2001 hundreds of thousands of people voted for the New Democratic Party, they were denied party status in this Legislature by the decision of the Government House Leader. I think, at that time, and strangely enough….

A. Dix: The Government House Leader laughs. I know it's hilarious, but I think actually — and I say this genuinely to them — those decisions hurt the government's side and hurt the respect that the government's side had. I think when the government side acts to impose an Auditor General, it hurts respect for the government's side.

I think that when the government side acts to impose new rules that reduce the access of the opposition, reduce the hours of scrutiny of estimates, it hurts the government's side too because it is important in a democratic society for the majority to respect the minority. That is the greatness, I'd argue, of our system.

When those ideas are thrown away, it is important. It is important when they're thrown away in small ways — when those rights are reduced in small ways — and in big ways. It's our responsibility as members of the Legislature — not just members of the executive council but all members of the Legislature.

It's important when we make decisions about that to remember that all of us in our lifetimes have seen alternates in Legislatures. All of us have been in opposition, and sometimes our side wins, and sometimes our side loses. We should not impose rules when we win that would be unacceptable when we lose. These institutions are here. They are bigger than us. We must respect them. We must continue to do that.

That's why I ask members on the government side to withdraw this motion. That's why I ask the Government House Leader to sit down with the Opposition House Leader and for us as members of the Legislature, if we're going to change our schedule, not to do it by the imposition of the majority reducing the rights of the minority but rather by sitting down in consultation and making those decisions. That was the spirit of what was presented to us after the 2005 election.

I think we have tried on this side of the House to engage in that. Sometimes we don't succeed as well as we should. I think that the government in recent times has failed to respect some of the commitments they've made, particularly around some of these issues around the Auditor General. I think that's a dangerous direction, particularly around denying the opportunity of the MLAs in British Columbia to have a fall sitting, which was contemplated when the rules were changed, and in reducing the number of sitting days by the decision of the Government House Leader. I think all these things are unhealthy for democracy in British Columbia.

I ask the Government House Leader, I ask members of this House, and I ask the members on the government side not in cabinet. I know that as frustrated as opposition MLAs are about being heard, sometimes not being heard is also felt on the part of government MLAs not in cabinet. I ask them to consider that we are part of a parliamentary tradition that started before we were here and that will continue after we are here.

We have a duty to be good custodians of that tradition, and the imposition of these kinds of rules by majority in this Legislature is inconsistent with that tradition. I ask members of the House to reject this motion by the Government House Leader.

Hon. G. Abbott: Thank you for the opportunity to briefly provide my submission with respect to Motion 40.

I do want to thank the Opposition House Leader and the opposition Health critic for their comments. I think they displayed plenty of passion and plenty of interest in this important subject. However, I would submit that much of the arguments they made in support of their submission that we should not proceed with Motion 40 are extraneous to the issue at hand.

We have heard some lofty rhetoric — certainly a lot of that lofty rhetoric cloaked in noble sentiments about legislatures and parliaments and all of that. That's great. But I was reminded, really, of one of my kids at a birthday party frantically trying to persuade me that he didn't want to have another piece of birthday cake. I think that's what this is about.

The opposition members, I think, welcome this motion. They will never admit that they welcome this motion. They know as well as we do that this is a step in the right direction in terms of having a legislative life that is more consistent with healthy lives for the people who are fortunate enough to be members of the Legislature and the staff who serve us in this building. So I salute the arguments that have been made, but I'm finding them unconvincing at this point.

Motion 40 is about a sessional order, as the Government House Leader noted. It is not a change to the standing orders. This is a sessional order. This is an opportunity for us to test-drive a change in the hours this House will sit, to see whether it better fits in terms of our legislative lives and whether it better fits in terms of our personal lives.

I believe that it will. I am entirely confident that it will, and I think it is entirely consistent with the many steps that our government has undertaken in terms of expanding — doubling, in fact — the length of question period and many other changes that have been made, which I think have made this House a better place.

I think the members opposite know in their hearts that this change will make this place a better place as well. I know I've talked to many of the members across the floor about this in the past, and I know that they do feel that way.

This deals with sitting hours. As the Government House Leader pointed out, if this sessional order were to proceed today or on Monday, the loss would be, at this point, one half-hour over the course of the session. If it had been passed earlier on, it would have involved actually the addition of a few hours to the sitting hours in this chamber.

It's not an issue, clearly, around the number of sitting hours. This motion is about a modest, and I would underline modest, change to the sitting hours of this Legislature.

We have to ask ourselves: is it a good idea, generally speaking, to do away with those evening sittings? As all members know, we break for dinner normally about five minutes to six and sometimes ten minutes to six. We rush down to the dining room, and we quickly try to eat a dinner. Often we're stuffing it in ourselves and trying to get back here for 6:45 so that we can sit through until nine o'clock in the evening.

Why change that? Why would we want to do that? Well, I think there are lots of great reasons why we would want to do that. My experience in this chamber goes back to 1996 — not as long as the Government House Leader, not as long as the Opposition House Leader, but back a considerable distance. I can tell you that this is a change that I welcome, that my family would welcome, that the staff who serve us in this building would welcome. I don't know why I keep coming up with the old Participaction motto of "A step in the right direction," but it clearly is a step in the right direction.

Perhaps the Participaction motto is not entirely out of line given that I think this change really will allow us to lead healthier lifestyles than we currently do. I have seen lots of people who have sat in this chamber since 1996 go through the long sessions. By the end of it, we're dragged out, our health is diminished. The time that we should be getting out and going for a walk, going to the gym, getting some recreation, some exercise and leading healthier lifestyles is really diminished by those evening sittings.

I think that one of the points that the Government House Leader made is really central here. The character of this chamber has changed greatly, even in the 11 years that I've been here. It certainly has changed dramatically from 20 years ago and 30 years ago. If we want women, and particularly women with adolescent or young children, to have an opportunity to serve in this chamber and then not have them have an opportunity to see their kids in the evening…. It makes this an unfriendly environment in terms of welcoming people who have young families and who want to have some family life with those families.

It does give us an opportunity to have a life, and the members opposite are right when they say: "Of course, work goes on in and around this chamber when it's not sitting." We all have meetings, both when the House is sitting, before the House is sitting and sometimes after the House is sitting. But this change would provide us with an opportunity to in some instances catch up on constituency issues, in other cases to actually have an opportunity to see young families in the evenings.

It would, I think, just as importantly offer up an opportunity for the people who serve us so well in this

building to have more family time through the months of February through June as well. I think that's key.

There will be no reduction in terms of the House debate. That point has been made, and it does provide us with an opportunity to make this House a friendlier, more welcoming place for a lot of people who might be considering at some point serving in this assembly.

The opposition has raised several concerns during their two presentations here, and I want to talk about that a little bit. The opposition said that this was not developed by consensus, and they complained about the absence of consultation.

I think that really what they're talking about is that they want to have unanimity around this point. In fact, I understand that the Government House Leader has consulted, and people shouldn't mistake consultation for everyone agreeing.

I think the arguments here are very sound for this change, and I don't believe in any way that it affects the ability of the opposition to do their work. They will have just as many hours to do their work as they would under the earlier rules, and they will have much more of a life beyond this chamber as well, which I think is a very good thing.

The Opposition House Leader noted that the current calendar is a lot more civilized than the old days. Well, that's true. It is a lot more civilized than the old days, and this change will make it even more civilized than the old days. That is a key thing that we all need to understand. It will be a more civilized place than where we were.

The other arguments that were made, which I think I understood…. The Opposition House Leader said if we adjourn at 6:30 that will lead to our calendars being filled up for the evening by other meetings. Well, I think at least I still have some modest control over my schedule. Certainly, if there are things that I want to do other than have meetings, I still have the opportunity to do that.

But when this House sits, I typically do not have a choice of whether I see my family, or get physical exercise, or undertake some activity outside of this chamber. I'm not buying that we are somehow better off sitting because others control our schedules and therefore will fill it all up on us anyway.

The other point the Opposition House Leader made, and I think the Health critic made this as well, was that this change would have some impact on estimates and bills — how they would consider or the time that they would be able to spend on estimates or bills as the session rolled on. Front-loading, I believe, he referred to as the concern.

Well, it is the opposition that decides how much time is going to be spent on a particular ministry's estimates or a particular bill that is advanced from the government benches. It's not the government that decides that. If the opposition decides they want to spend three-quarters of their time — as I hope they will — on Ministry of Health estimates, I'd welcome that.

That's a decision that the opposition will make. If they think debating Health is more important than debating some other area of public policy, that's a decision they make. Health estimates go on as long as they wish them to go on.

Similarly, how long they want to debate a bill within the context of the overall hours is their decision as well. I don't understand that argument, and I don't accept that argument.

I think the last point I heard from the opposition benches was that if this House adjourned at 6:30, it would somehow rob the province of the opportunity to witness us in action in this chamber in the evening. Well, I guess what I would point out is that our proceedings are rebroadcast every evening on television — I'm sure to a vast audience among those who are keen to watch it.

The rebroadcast, I believe, begins at seven o'clock. You can rewatch, relive, those impassioned moments of question period. After that you can watch as the other proceedings continue well on into the evening and perhaps even after midnight, for those who really want to live it up in this province. So I don't accept that the legislative channel is going to be necessarily a change that's to the detriment. In fact, people will be able to watch the proceedings of this House as they will be able to tonight.

In closing, the change that would be produced by Motion 40 will still leave us with 24 hours in the day. We still will have some choice about how we spend those 24 hours of our days. Individual members will make decisions about how they would spend those evening hours that would otherwise be part of the ongoing work of the assembly in the evening, but staff who otherwise would not have a choice in that matter will have an opportunity to see their families. They will have an opportunity to make decisions about personal time, whether in physical activity or other activities, and I believe this House will be a better place for it.

I believe this Legislature — the members of the Legislature and the people who work in and around this assembly — will be better off for Motion 40.

L. Krog: I must say, I am somewhat surprised to hear the Minister of Health today describe the speech given by the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, which I thought was one of the finest addresses I've heard in this House in my time, somehow as rhetoric — lofty rhetoric, I believe he described it as being — and impugning, frankly, the motives of the members on this side of the House with respect to this party's position and this opposition's position on this particular motion.

I want to begin by disagreeing somewhat with the member for Port Coquitlam–Burke Mountain, my hon. House Leader. He said that this is not just the govern-

ment's place, and it's not just the opposition's place; it's our place. I would respectfully disagree and argue that it is the citizens' place.

This place belongs to the people of British Columbia. They give us great honour and great privilege by sending us here to represent them, and I am conscious every time I stand in this House of that great honour and privilege.

It is worthwhile considering here today, as we debate this motion, the history of this place. When W.A.C. Bennett was Premier, there was no Hansard. There was no question period. He called the House early, after new year, drove it till it was done, and everybody went home. That was it. There was no allowance to run constituency offices, unless of course you were extremely wealthy and this was just a place to play.

All of those reforms occurred after 1972, when Dave Barrett became Premier. We got a Hansard — probably one of the last parliaments in the British Commonwealth to get a Hansard. Members' incomes were substantially increased. They were given constituency allowances, because the message being sent at that time by that government was that what took place in this chamber was important. This is the people's chamber. This is the citizens' forum. This is the place where people who have elected government also get to elect an opposition to hold that government to account constantly.

The very fact that we have a parliament is based on the concept that instead of warring with each other over how to direct the societies in which we live, we would get together to talk.

I'm sure the members opposite know that the term "parliament" comes from the French parler — to speak, to talk. As much as I got elected to do a number of things as the representative of my constituency — I got elected to deal with their problems at home; I got elected to attend the general meetings of organizations in my constituency; I got elected to deal with local problems; I got elected to be their representative — most importantly, I got elected to talk, to speak on their behalf in this place about issues of concern to them.

One of the great reforms that the NDP brought in, in addition to Hansard and to question period, was the information and privacy act. It was this party that gave this place and the members in it the opportunity to obtain access to government documents that were never available before in order for them to do their job on behalf of the people who elect them — to scrutinize the government.

It was an opportunity, frankly, that we gave to members opposite, like the Minister of Health when he was elected — an opportunity, if you will, that we gave to the Government House Leader.

I gave credit, and I have given credit in this House, to the reform that was brought in when this government was elected in 2001 when it went to a fixed sitting schedule. I must say, on a personal basis, that I was never pleased, if you will, or supportive of the concept of calling a Legislature in the spring and having it drive itself until the opposition got tired and went home.

If you want to talk about an unhealthy lifestyle, which the Minister of Health referred to earlier today, that was unhealthy. Everyone acknowledged it was unhealthy, and particularly, it was unhealthy for the members of the opposition.

This government brought in the reform of a fixed sitting schedule by agreement with the members of the opposition, because this is a civilized place. We don't make war on each other. We come here, and we talk. We come here to address the issues of concern to our constituents.

Part of that arrangement — the deal, if you will — was a fall sitting. In agreeing to a fixed sitting schedule — in other words, agreeing to give up that right to speak until the opposition got tired and went home — the deal was that you'd have a spring sitting and a fall sitting, and the people would get their opportunity.

The fact is that it is clear now that this government has no intention of honouring the deal they made six years ago. Today, before this House, is a motion, which you can colour and change and describe any way you want, but the net effect of it is this government imposing on the opposition, over the opposition's objections, rules about how we get to conduct the people's business in this House as it is our sworn opportunity and obligation to do — and that is to oppose government. That's what an opposition does. It opposes the government. It's a long, honourable tradition established through hundreds of years of the development of parliamentary democracy.

When I hear the Minister of Health describe what's been said on this side of the House as somehow lofty rhetoric, comparing it to some charming story about a kid's birthday cake, I suspect that what we're really talking about is a complete disrespect of the traditions of this institution. It's the kind of arrogance governments that have been in power too long develop, when they think they can just run this place like their private playground and forget the objections of the people on this side of the House, who happen to represent hundreds of thousands of British Columbians who don't agree with what goes on, on that side of the House.

If I believed for one moment that this was about healthy lifestyles, I might actually have accepted the words spoken by the members opposite. But if you want to have a really healthy lifestyle, if that's the goal of coming to this place, then why don't we have a fall sitting? Why don't we on this side of the House trust the government to guarantee that there would be a fall sitting every year, in which this opposition could do its job and hold this government to account — hold them to account during question period and criticize the legislation that comes before this place? If they were really sincere about a healthy lifestyle, that's what we'd be doing.

If they were sincere about a healthy lifestyle, the House Leader would have brought in a motion on their side that said this place would shut down at five o'clock so that, notwithstanding what I regard as a bit of sexism on the part of the Minister of Health and his

remarks, not only mothers but fathers could go home early and see their children at five o'clock.

This isn't about healthy lifestyle, and the importance of this debate for me is not about whether we're even here another half-hour later in the evening and start a half-hour earlier in the afternoon. It is about respect for this institution and its traditions. It is about respect for the opposition and the role that we play in this place. It's unprecedented to impose a change in rules over the objections of the opposition. Some day the members on the government side of the House will be sitting over on our side of the House.

I see that the minister shakes his head in amazement, but I would remind the hon. minister that hubris, that great pride, always goeth before the fall. The history of British Columbia is that people who sit on one side at some point end up on the other side. That is the inevitable sway of history. But I suspect that the reaction I've just seen also reflects again the arrogance, the overweening arrogance, of this government that thinks that it can impose its will on this place over the objections of the opposition.

They've got the numbers. This vote will probably go in their favour, not surprisingly, unless there's some miracle that occurs in this place today. But if this, as I say, were about healthy living, I would suggest to the members opposite that you don't go into public life to get healthy. You've chosen the wrong occupation.

You go into public life to do something good for the public. You go into public life to make this province a better place to live. You don't go into public life in order to get out of here so that you can catch a helijet to Vancouver in the evening. You go into public life to do the people's business. That's what you go into public life for.

If I wanted to get healthy, I'd go back to practising law, and that's not very healthy either. I came here to do something for my constituents. I would like to believe that the members opposite came here to do something for their constituents. It's done best, whatever we do in this place, when there is an opposition who has an opportunity to criticize the government, whether it be through question period or to speak to motions or to attack legislation or to question ministers about their estimates.

At the end of the day, I don't think that this is anything other than a high-handed decision to restrict debate, a way of enabling this government to escape public scrutiny, in the same way that this government changed the nature of the British Columbia Ferry Corporation so that it's no longer subject to information-and-privacy laws, so that the public of this province — thousands and thousands of whom rely on B.C. Ferries for transportation every day — now have no opportunity to inquire into what goes on inside that corporation.

It is just one more reflection of an attitude about the people that the people will in time come to understand and appreciate, and they will punish the other side. They will do the right thing. They will toss them out of office. You can keep chipping away and chipping away and thinking that it has no great consequence. But when this government, as it's doing here today, says: "We get to impose on the whole of this chamber, on all of its members, the rules by which you play the game in this place…."

When you do that, you have stated unequivocally that you have no respect for the traditions of this parliament, for parliamentary tradition, for the people who elected you to this office. That is what disappoints me most. At the end of the day, this is about respect for British Columbia citizens. By doing this without the consent and agreement of the opposition, this government has said, once again: "We're here. We've got the power. We don't care. We don't care about what the people think, and we're going to do whatever we wish."

I say it is absolutely shameful. I look forward to the day when this opposition is on that side of the House, and we can bring in the kind of legislative agenda and sessional rules that are appropriate and that protect the rights of the people of British Columbia to criticize their government, to hold it to account and to do what they fought for hundreds of years to achieve, which is the rights to parliamentary democracy and to keep a government honest, regardless of how arrogant it may be.

J. Horgan: The Government House Leader will forgive me for not thanking him for being so concerned about my health or the family values that I may or may not subscribe to.

To the Minister of Health: lofty rhetoric certainly trumps hollow rhetoric every time. In the throne speech we heard that this was a time for partnership, not partisanship. What we see here today is more partisanship, no partnership.

Historically, when the orders of this place change, it has been done by consensus and cooperation. Every single thing that that side of the House does is by edict, by dictate, and it's by a tyrannical regime led by a Premier who doesn't have the gall to come into this place and defend his budget two days after it's been tabled. It's outrageous — absolutely outrageous.

Now, I happen to be one of the members living in the Greater Victoria area that could benefit from these changes. I would be able to go home and spend some time with my kids. I would be able to go home and spend some time with my spouse, eat a dinner at home rather than eating it in what is a very good restaurant here at the legislative precincts. But that's not the point. The point is that the member for Shuswap isn't going to be going home on a Monday night. He's not going to be going home on a Wednesday night.

Hon. G. Abbott: I think that the member should be advised that the presence or the lack of presence of any member of this House is not something that other members of the House note appropriately in the context of these debates.

J. Horgan: If I made reference to someone who wasn't here earlier today, then I certainly withdraw that remark. If that's satisfactory for the Minister of Health, I'll proceed.

J. Horgan: I just would repeat that lofty rhetoric always trumps hollow rhetoric. You might not have caught that remark at the doorway earlier on.

J. Horgan: Well, he missed it earlier on, so I wanted to give it back to him.

J. Horgan: Oh, did I? Gosh, it must have slipped by me. Sorry about that, Members.

J. Horgan: The Minister of Economic Development is reminding me that I've only been here for a year and a half, and I apologize for that.

Getting back to the substance of my comments, as I know that the Minister of Health will be very concerned to hear what I have to say now that he's firmly in his place to listen to my comments. The challenge that we have as legislators is that we come here from different places. I'm certain that the member for East Kootenay is not going to go home on a Monday night or a Wednesday night as a result of the order changes that are being proposed by the Government House Leader, without any consultation with this side of the House.

I'm certain that the member for Bulkley Valley–Stikine isn't going to be going home on a Monday night or a Wednesday night as a result of the changes taking place here today. What I do think is that there may be many members of cabinet who live in and around the Greater Vancouver regional district that might take advantage of an earlier departure time from here to catch a flight home. That's all well and good, and I don't blame them for that. But the question that's before us is changing the rules for all members of this House — rural members, urban members, men, women, people with families, people without families.

The substance of the debate before us today is to change the way we do business. Historically, that's been done by consensus and partnership. Since this government came to power, it's been done by directive.

In 2001 there were 77 members on that side of the House and two members on this side of the House. They introduced a fixed calendar and said: "Oh, what good boys and girls are we." In fact, I would have to give them congratulations for doing that at the time, assuming that we were going to have a session in the spring and a session in the fall.

The Government House Leader spoke with our House leader about amending the sessional orders with respect to hours of sitting, and we were quite prepared as a caucus to entertain that discussion until such time as the Government House Leader said: "Oh by the way, we're not coming back in the fall." That was after we had agreed to shorten debate on certain pieces of legislation, shorten debate on certain budget estimates, assuming that that legislation would be coming back in the fall where a fulsome discussion could take place. Didn't happen.

Question, hon. Speaker: why should we trust them now? Because they're concerned about my good health? I rather doubt it. In fact, I'm absolutely confident there's not a soul on that side of the House that gives a whit about my condition — not today, not tomorrow, not in the future.

I know that some of my colleagues on this side of the House care. The only fruit and vegetable that the minister for ActNow wants is to chuck a tomato at me. I'm confident of that. There he goes.

J. Horgan: Healthy living. I'm so delighted to hear that the government is still on message. We need to lead by example. We need to go for a jog every now and again. We need to close down the clubhouse here. Club B.C. Liberal on that side. Let's go for a jog, and maybe a cocktail later on. What say you to that, hon. Speaker? Unacceptable.

People in my constituency work hard — very, very hard — from early in the morning to late at night. Some of them are shift workers. They don't have the luxury of saying: "I don't think, employer, that I'm going to come in today. I want to lead a healthier lifestyle. I want to follow the example of the Minister of Health. I want to go for a jog. I want to take some downtime to spend some time with my family." They don't have that luxury. We do.

This is a great job. It's an honour to be in here representing the people of Malahat–Juan de Fuca. But they want me here representing them, not knocking off at 6:30 because it's convenient for those who want to fly somewhere else. It's not going to help the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke. It's not going to help the member for Cariboo South.

J. Horgan: It's not going to help my good friend right beside me here from Yale-Lillooet. Why are we

going to change the orders? If we're here, let's do some work. If we're here, let's sit in this Legislature. If we're here, let's deal with the business of the day.

We have many things that we want to talk about on this side of the House. Look at the order paper. There are numerous pieces of legislation, motions that are important to us. The government's side, the backbenchers, have good ideas they can't get in the cabinet room. They can't get approval from their caucus to be government legislation or government motions, but they've got them on the order paper, and they have every right as equal representatives in this place to bring that forward.

Why not sit until nine o'clock on a Monday night? We're in town anyway. Why not use that time? Why not take a break at six to have a healthy meal? Why does that side of the House want us to work through dinner to 6:30 — 1:30 to 6:30, a five-hour run in this place. If we're all sitting here for five hours in a row, how are we doing our best work? How are we doing the people's business?

The Minister of Health said: "No, no, we can sit here. We'll do five hours." I defy him to sit in here every day from Monday to Thursday, five hours at a time, with his honking big binders telling us truisms from Shuswap. I defy him to do that.

Having a night sitting gives the opposition time to reflect on the day's events, go into Committee A and debate the estimates of various ministries. It gives the minister and his staff time to get a meal, to sit down and debate fully, for two or three hours into the evening, issues of importance to the people of British Columbia.

These are pretty simple things, hon. Speaker. Talk to someone in your constituency. I know that the people in Kelowna expect you to be here doing their business, and you do that very capably. Why is it that the government now wants to just change that? Because they're concerned about my health, and the time that I spend with my family. What a crock. What a crock.

Deputy Speaker: Member, please use language that is with the decorum of this chamber.

J. Horgan: Well, if I can't say "crock," hon. Speaker, then I had better go through Hansard and….

J. Horgan: Crock is not appropriate language. Well, I certainly withdraw crock if it has offended you, hon. Speaker, or anyone else in this place.

J. Horgan: I would be surprised if the motives of the Government House Leader were my health and the status of my family. I would be very, very surprised.

So what is the motive of changing the orders of this place? I would suggest that the motives are to shorten debate. I would suggest that the motives are to continue the acrimony…. Although partisanship should be set aside for partnership, as in the throne speech, it's not in the actions and deeds of a single person on that side of the House. I would suggest that the reason they want to change the orders is that they want to spend less time looking at us.

They had a bit of a good run from 2001 to 2005 — 77-2, Nebraska versus Ball State. That's what was going on then, and Ball State almost kicked them in the backside — 77-2. And we gave as good as we got. Well, it's 46-33 now, and nobody wants anything to do with it.

Let's not have a fall session. Let's not talk into the evening. Let's not do the people's business in this place. Let's just have press conferences. Let's announce lofty goals and great achievements that we're looking forward to in the future and then call it a day. I think I might go out for a jog. I'll meet you over at the Grand Pacific, and we'll chat about the business of the people.

Absolute nonsense. That's why we're here. That's why people sent us here: to debate, to engage. We're using time today that we could have been using discussing the budget, discussing the throne speech, talking about you people on that side of the House, those people on that side of the House wanting to change the rules. Again: "We're just tweaking them a little bit. We're just going to tweak them a little bit. We had nothing to talk about in the fall, and we don't want to talk about much in the spring either."

Reprehensible behaviour, in my mind, and certainly in the minds of my constituents. They elected me. They sent me here to do the people's business. I've offered numerous times to assist people on that side of the House, whether they be backbenchers or ministers. The Minister of Community Services and I have a very good relationship. We work cooperatively together for issues in my community, and I'm happy to do that. Why can't we extend that cooperation to the rules of this place? Because the Government House Leader said: "No, I don't want to talk to the Opposition House Leader. I'm just going to drop this down as a motion. We've got the majority. We'll talk them out. The Minister of Health will get up and say something funny — he'll be a little bit witty, perhaps — and then we'll vote on it."

That's the approach on that side of the House. For the Government House Leader to stand up and say he's concerned about my health — unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. Well, he didn't want to disappoint the opposition, he said. He didn't want to disappoint them. He said: "We don't have any ulterior motive." There is no ulterior motive here, just concern about my well-being.

I appreciate that, but I go home at nine o'clock. My kids are happy to see me, my spouse is happy to see me, and we have quality time. We take it where we can get it. But they understand when I stood for office that

it would mean some sacrifices, and I'm happy to make those sacrifices. Members on this side of the House are happy to make those sacrifices. I know, looking at the hon. Minister of Health, that the job that those ministers are doing on that side is difficult. It's extremely time-consuming, with an enormous number of people wanting your attention and time. Sitting in here and listening to us prattle on about issues important to our constituents must be a real burden for them — a real burden.

That's unfortunate, and I'm saddened that their health is somewhat diminished by having to look at us every day, but that's our job. The hon. member for Nanaimo reminded us that this is an honourable profession, being on this side of the House. It is a good thing we're here. It makes government better. I've said that in this place; I've said it outside of this place. The government ministers do a better job because we're on their tail. We're barking at them, we're telling them they're going in the wrong direction, and they've done so many about-faces and flip-flops in the past eight months that it must mean we're doing a good job.

I know that the time is late. I look at Hansard and I know that they'd like me to keep on talking, as they always do, but there are other members in this House that have things to say. I want to conclude, though, by saying that government is all about power and propaganda — the two p's. If you have the power, you clutch on to it as if it was the last thing on the planet. That's certainly what this B.C. Liberal government is doing.

The other "p" is propaganda — hype and rhetoric — and this government is unparalleled. I think of the — what is it, 265 million? — people in the public affairs bureau monitoring our every word, checking it to make sure that we have not gone off message, getting it to the minister so they can bounce back and knock us in the nose. That in itself confines and restricts debate.

Members on this side of the House are free to say whatever they want. Members on that side of the House should be as well. But with the public affairs watching every word, making sure every jot and tittle is written down and got to the minister so they can stand up and shake it back in our face, diminishes democracy. It diminishes it all.

I should be able to say whatever I want in support of my constituents, and I'm going to continue to do that. I look at the hon. Minister of Health when I say that, and if he can't take it, tough luck.

H. Lali: I rise to speak against this Motion 40 that the Liberal House Leader put forward.

The Minister of Health — I see the look on his face. He seems to be concerned why I would be against it. Well, I'm against it for the same reasons that their own back bench are against it. Of course, they want to cancel these night sittings. We're only looking at a couple of nights a week anyway, but they want to cancel them, because they don't want to work into the night.

Do you know the reason that they're giving? They're giving reasons of health. This is coming from a Liberal government which has totally mismanaged the health of British Columbians. Yet they're concerned about my health as an MLA.

H. Lali: Isn't it ironic? After six years of being in government, they've finally realized they should be concerned about the health of the member for Yale-Lillooet — after six years.

Here we've been harping for so long. They cancelled night sittings so we can't actually harp at them and bring forward the concerns of the people of my constituency of Yale-Lillooet and put them on the table and harangue the Minister of Health as to how he is mismanaging. They want to shut us down. They don't want to hear that.

Yet you have the House Leader from the Liberal side and the Liberal Minister of Health both getting up. All of a sudden they woke up in the middle of the night and realized: we'd better do something because we're concerned with the health of the member for Yale-Lillooet.

Well, hallelujah. I have a tough time believing that. There are 4.4 million people in this province, or pretty close to it, and that Liberal government is worried about my health. They're going to cancel the evening sittings because they want me to be healthy.

Hon. Speaker, I think I'm quite capable on my own of worrying about my health without the help of this Liberal government, which doesn't care about the health of anybody in British Columbia. And I have a tough time believing that.

We've had some great traditions in this place of parliamentary democracy and how this Legislature works. It's always by consensus. You have the Government House Leader, who comes over and talks to the Opposition House Leader. Together they work out a strategy and a plan. There's a bit of give-and-take, and then they work out a consensus and say: "Okay, this is how we're going to make things work."

That's the way it's always been in the past. That's the way it was when I was on that side of the House, on the government side, during the 1990s. That's how the Opposition House Leader and the Government House Leader would get together to make sure that this hallowed place would work and that the rules would be followed. We did things by consensus.

J. Horgan: With the modern technology available to us, I've had a constituent contact the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin with a Webster's definition of "crock," and I just wanted to….

Deputy Speaker: Member, the Chair has made the ruling, and the ruling is final.

H. Lali: We did things by consensus. I see the House Leader. I believe he was an Opposition House Leader at one time. No, he wasn't, but he knows quite well that when he actually sat next to the former Opposition House Leader in the 1990s, that's how we did things. We worked them out. We talked about it. We consulted with each other — the government and the opposition. Sometimes the opposition consulted with the government and vice versa. But not this government. They want to do things by dictate.

That's exactly how the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca earlier had mentioned it. That's how that government likes to function. They like to push the opposition around.

They did that when there were only two of us — not me but the other two that were there in the last parliament. They didn't have the courtesy…. Anywhere across Canada you had actually…. Even Alberta changed the rules to give an opposition official party status when they had only two members, but not this government. Not this government. They arbitrarily, without consultation at that time, decided that they were going to change the rules.

What did they say? We were going to have the most open and honest government. They were going to have the most accountable government in Canada, if not in North America. That's what they said.

Some of the changes they made were that they decided to go to fixed sittings, fixed times and have a fall sitting as well. They said they were going to do a fall sitting. We applauded those. We applauded the government for doing that.

That's when there were only two people on the opposition benches, and they didn't seem to feel any kind of a threat because there were only two people. They were allotted only a certain amount of time where they could actually get up and debate bills and estimates or ask questions during question period.

There are 33 of us now. All of a sudden the government is having a change of heart. They're changing their direction. It's almost as if they're afraid to face the opposition, who are going to actually ask questions on behalf of hundreds of thousands of British Columbians. Now they're changing. They're changing their ways. They want to do things in a dictatorial fashion.

Last year, in 2006, they arbitrarily decided they weren't going to have a fall sitting of the Legislature. Here we were on our side of the House. There were some bills that were actually taken off the table on the assumption that we were having this fall sitting last year. We were supposed to come back. We were all ready for October 3. We had our bags packed to come here.

What does this government do? It decides it's going to arbitrarily, without consultation, cancel the fall sitting. To heck with the business of the people of British Columbia. They picked up their own bags and ran. They decided not to come here. That's what that government did. They decided that they were not going to have anybody do the people's business in this House. They arbitrarily cancelled that fall session.

As much as they like to say that we're going to have the same hours of debate…. Very clearly, the member for Vancouver-Kingsway on this side has already calculated that we're going to have five hours less in terms of debate and an additional four hours less in terms of estimates. That's a lot of time. That's nine hours. Just imagine nine hours of questions from this opposition and, yes, even from government backbenchers, who have been muted, who have been told they can't even get up to speak on this motion.

They only put up the Government House Leader and the government Health Minister, and they've told their back bench that they cannot get up and speak their minds. When you see the body language on the other side, on the back benches, we know that they're with us. We know they're with the opposition. We know they are, but they've been told they can't speak. Their body language just tells us that.

It's not the same body language as that of the minister sitting there. It's the ministers who want to go home early. The back bench on the government side doesn't. The opposition benches don't. We're here. We're here to do the government's work.

They want to go home early. Why? Because the House Leader and the Health Minister said they are worried about the health of the member for Yale-Lillooet. All of a sudden they have concern for my health. I have a tough time believing that.

In any case, it's nine hours — nine hours we could ask them questions in question period, during those debates on specific pieces of legislation and, also, in estimates, where so much important work is done.

They want to cut and run. They want to cut hours. They don't want to give the opposition the chance to ask all those important questions on behalf of the people of British Columbia. Why? Because they don't want scrutiny. They're running. They want to hide from any kind of accountability, and they don't want opposition critics asking them scrutinizing questions day in and day out, hour after hour. So they're going to cut and run, because they want to go home.

They're worried about my health. That's what they're saying. They're worried about our health. I have a tough time believing that.

You know, this not consulting and the lack of accountability…. What they really should be doing is increasing the hours. If they don't want to sit in the evenings, they can extend the number of days into June. We're ready. We're ready to be here, to do the people's business. They can have a fall session, and they are already giving hints right now that they don't to want to sit in the fall either. They want to cut and run. They're running — running from the people of British Columbia.

You know, I like to point out to the hon. members across the way that their arrogant, high-handed ways are not sitting well — obviously not sitting well with this opposition — and they're certainly not sitting well with the people of British Columbia. The people of British Columbia want that Liberal government to keep the hours as they are and have a fall sitting so we can do the people's bidding on their behalf in this Legislature.

It's the height of arrogance, without even consulting the opposition, to be arbitrarily making these decisions where we've had decades of tradition in this place where the opposition and the government work together to decide how they're going to run this place. It flies in the face of what the Premier has said — that he wants to have open and honest government. It flies in the face of what the Premier said in terms of how he's going to have this place be the most accountable place on earth. Well, actually he didn't say earth. He said North America.

Yet every single action that this Liberal government and this Liberal Premier have been doing in the last two years since there have been 33 members of opposition here is to go in the opposite direction. They're making it tighter. They're making information tighter for people to get hold of, whether it's freedom of information, or even in terms of the hours that they're cutting back so that the people's work cannot be done here.

You know, it's as if the Liberals, when they had 77 to 2, thought that they were going to have those numbers in this House forever — as if they owned the place. How arrogant could this Premier and this government be? The feeling they're trying to emanate is that they think they own this place, that they can run it the way they want in a dictatorial fashion. That's what they're saying.

Well, what they're forgetting is this House does not belong to the government. It doesn't belong to the opposition either. It doesn't belong to any one of the single MLAs sitting here or the cabinet ministers who are laughing on the other side.

Deputy Speaker: Member, we don't make personal characterizations of other members in the House.

H. Lali: Anyway, hon. Speaker, I don't think that's a point of order. Anyway, the members opposite….

As I was saying, this House does not belong to any individual member of this House. It doesn't belong to the opposition. It doesn't belong to the back bench on the government side. It doesn't belong to any single cabinet minister or all of cabinet. It certainly doesn't belong to the individual Premier in this House. This House belongs to the people of British Columbia, and their work ought to be done in a reasonable fashion and also in an accountable fashion.

The motives of this government as it imposes its will because they have a majority…. It's shameful. The actions of this particular government are shameful, and it was nowhere more evident than in the dictatorial and arbitrary way in which they chose the Auditor General. The Auditor General is an officer of the Legislature, and it is the legislative committee that is set up who is supposed to go out and hire the Auditor General, not the Premier. The Premier can't make that decision, and neither can the cabinet, but they want to impose their will.

They just want to throw all those principles that these legislative sittings have been governed by all these decades out the window. They want to throw parliamentary tradition out the window, because they don't have respect for the people of British Columbia. They're treating this House, this legislative building, as if they own it. Well, the people of British Columbia own it, and they ought to show more respect for the people of British Columbia.

At the same time, they should show more respect to their back bench. They should allow their back bench to get up and say their honest piece in this House, but they're muting them as well.

Hon. Speaker, there are a number of other speakers on this side of the House who want to speak. I have a lot more to say, but I will not at this moment. I will say it at another time, so I will vacate my speaking order and have members from the opposition benches speak in the absence of government members getting up and not saying a word.

D. Routley: We heard earlier from the Minister of Health that his concern was with our lifestyle and with our families and with our exercise plan. Most of the MLAs of this House can't go home. Our business is best done here. We're ready. We came here knowing the sacrifice we would need to make, and I assume the others did as well. The people of British Columbia sent us here with expectations.

Legislature workers were another issue of concern for the minister. I would ask this government where they were when the employment standards of this province were torn apart and workers all over this province lost standards that protected their health and welfare. Were there any negative comments coming from the Minister of Health when that occurred? I don't think so.

It's very sad. There's an arrogance of power, a government that pushes rules out of their way. It's unprecedented arrogance, unprecedented disrespect for this place and for the people who sent us here.

We came here knowing the sacrifice. We came here to play by the rules, to respect parliament. They came here to dictate to British Columbia. They came here to drive an agenda that leaves out British Columbians, to disregard the hundreds of thousands of British Columbians who didn't vote for this Liberal government in 2001 — disregard them when they denied official opposition status to the opposition party. There was no great concern for parliamentary precedent at that time either. The people of British Columbia are sick of this arrogance.

They cancelled the fall session when they were afraid to face the scrutiny of British Columbia. They didn't care, and they don't care now. The government that robbed B.C. workers of gains and working conditions hard won over many decades is now telling us they're concerned. I don't think so.

They don't care about the health of those in this chamber. What they do care about is power and the unrestricted application of it. This motion is clearly meant to limit debate over a budget that lays bare the truth that this government has given up on addressing the challenges and correcting the mess they have created in this province — the doubling of homeless rates, the burgeoning debt, chaos in the forests, the giveaway of private forest lands, crumbling infrastructure, decimated environments, denuded slopes in our valleys.

The Premier can lean on a thousand hybrids, and he'll never put right what he did to our forests and our land and our water. This is not an environmentalist. This government would rather offer up an empty, slogan-filled throne speech, dump on B.C. a budget that ignores not only their own rhetoric-filled, hastily pasted-together speech but also ignores the forestry, child care, educational, environmental and other issues of this province.

Arrogance is built on a foundation of equal parts of selfishness, ignorance, fear and anger. B.C. deserves better. We demand better. But our voices — like the voices of the homeless, the seniors, the sick, the disabled, the families ill-affected by the policies of this government, the voices of the people of B.C. — will fall on deaf Liberal ears plugged with arrogance. They will be ignored, and these Liberals will arrogantly do as they wish.

B.C. wishes for better. Too bad the Liberals of B.C. are deaf to anything but their own mantra, which is: "Get out of the way, rules don't matter, and democracy be damned."

N. Simons: I rise with my colleagues on this side of the House to oppose this motion to limit again and reduce and sculpt the House's procedures to fit the government's agenda. I believe that there are obviously many arguments to be made. The salient ones, of course, are being made at this side of the House. I don't see any opposition to that comment. I'm glad we all agree.

The truth of the matter is that this is just another way of limiting fulsome debate on issues of importance to British Columbians. If we think about it, what the effect of this particular change will be is that it's going to download most of the important work we do toward the end of the session. Estimates will be reduced, and the amount of time allocated to debating bills will be reduced as well.

I think that's a problem. When I was introduced to the political system, I came across the question of: how are you going to reduce the cynicism in the elected officials of the province? I'd like to do my part by saying that I'm pleased to be here on behalf of the people of Powell River–Sunshine Coast. It's my duty to be here on their behalf, and it's my duty to discuss issues of importance to British Columbians. I find that when there's an attempt to restrict and reduce that ability, it's antidemocratic. That's, quite simply, not acceptable, in my opinion.

I believe that the philosophy or the reasoning behind this motion has to do with convenience and luxury and the ability to spend more time, ostensibly, with family. I think that there are many things that this government can do to encourage that among the regular folks in this province who are having trouble finding the ability to balance work and home life, in large part due to the actions of the government.

I find it slightly hypocritical when suddenly there's this renewed interest in 79 members' health and family life, when in fact the health and family lives of most British Columbians have been irreparably damaged by the government's policies.

In effect, I think this is an opportunity to point out that the government intends to run roughshod over the tradition of coming to agreement on the House schedule. This is not going to make most of our lives any easier, nor should we be interested in looking for every angle to make our lives easier. We knew what this job would be like when we were hired by thousands of people in our communities to do it on their behalf.

I don't believe that having the evenings free in a city far from my rural constituency is going to enable me to do a better job. I'm here in Victoria anyway. I enjoy meeting with people in Victoria. There are a lot of offices and people we can go and meet with or who come and meet with us.

I think that the extended hours are probably bad for true debate, and I'm not sure if that's always entirely the goal of government. Perhaps it's to evade debate or avoid debate. I don't want to question the motives of government. They seem to be clear: it's about making their jobs easier.

Quite frankly, Madam Speaker, I think we knew the schedule when we came here — or some of us did. Working in the evenings, we all know we can get work done while we're in the House. I find it most problematic that this change is being imposed. I, for one, expect that this government would be able to engage in a process of consultation that when it doesn't go their way, they just end the consultation.

I think we need to consider quite carefully about other options. I won't be able to get home earlier. Most of the rural MLAs won't be able to get home earlier. Our flights are in the mornings. We have things to do. I think that it's inappropriate to be discussing an issue that is purely, I would say, motivated by personal and selfish interests. I don't think it's appropriate to undertake this change, in this manner, at this time.

I understand that it may be that some members on the opposite side in government don't entirely agree with this proposal either. I don't for a moment assume unanimity on this issue. I assume unanimity in the vote; I don't assume unanimity in their opinions. Unfortunately, that disconnect probably won't be evidenced here today.

When the Minister of Health described our dinner pattern on the nights we sit late, he talked about rushing downstairs for dinner, rushing through dinner and rushing back up. Well, as we all know, some of us are fast eaters, some of us have House duty, and some of us don't. I think it's quite clear that that's a spurious argument. I don't think most people would see it as relevant to the issue at hand, and that sort of undermines the argument put forward, I would say in general, by the members opposite.

This House is not an unfriendly place, as it was described by the Minister of Health. It has some very significant challenges in terms of getting things done in a certain way. But it's certainly not due to having to sit for three hours in the evening and debate important legislation. In fact, I'd say that that's the most important thing we could be doing.

Quite frankly, I think that because this will further reduce the hours of real debate, the people of British Columbia will once again have more reason to be cynical — and not just of government but of all of us. We're tainted, in some situations, with the same brush, and for that I'm disappointed.

I have to talk to high school classes, and they say: "Well, you cancelled the fall session." I say, "Excuse me. Make sure you know that it wasn't me cancelling the fall session," although I sometimes think I should have that authority. But it was, in fact, the government's decision to cancel the fall session, once again reducing our opportunity as representatives of our communities to discuss legislation that impacts us all.

In conclusion, I would like to say that my opposition to this motion is sincere. My opposition to this motion is heartfelt, and it's based on what I believe is in the best interests of my constituents. With that, I'll take my seat.

C. Wyse: I rise today in the House to address Motion 40 with some concerns that I have about it. Motion 40 is a city-person motion. When I reflect upon where the advantages rest for this particular motion…. If I'd been asked my opinion or been provided with an opportunity for my representatives to be involved in this discussion, that point would have been shared and would have had an opportunity to be heard. Given how we've arrived at Motion 40, I can't tell whether that point has been made.

Where I'm from — from the interior — when I arrive in Victoria, I am in Victoria. I don't have the option of returning to my riding at the drop of a hat. I have to work around the restraints of the transportation system.

When I get back to my riding, it's important for me to arrive on Friday morning so that I have the opportunity to look after the interests of my constituents and do the other part of the job that everybody else in this House likewise does and works very hard and diligently in reaching that particular objective. In order to achieve that, I get up very early on Friday morning so that I can be back into my constituency early Friday morning.

The change that is being proposed here does not affect my travel style one iota. In actual fact, it puts further restrictions upon it. It reduces my capability to remain healthy, to get on and look after the interests of the constituents where I'm from.

They equally have that right to have had that point of view heard before this particular motion was introduced unilaterally by the government of British Columbia. It overrode the normal mechanics available with the procedures to ensure that at least all members of this House would have had the opportunity for their individual situations to have been presented. That is a serious omission of the process that the government is undertaking in overriding a process that was in place.

It is the similar process that the government took when they unilaterally cancelled the fall session. I outlined in front of this House a litany of concerns that my constituents wished to have dealt with here in Victoria by their MLA, whoever that individual may have been and whatever side of the House they sat on. I ran out of time in trying to bring forward those lists of concerns.

This particular motion further restricts my ability to look after the interests of the constituents of Cariboo South — the interests of all of them, regardless of what political party they belong to. That is a serious reduction that Motion 40 brings into play.

Earlier, when the House Leader introduced the intention of this particular motion, he requested all members of the House to attempt to concentrate upon the intent of the motion as he saw it. He concentrated upon such things as health. But what he had overlooked in his presentation is the distinction between intent and effect. By rough-shodding and changing our process, all opinions and all effects did not have their opportunity to be heard.

In the Cariboo, the Cariboo treats their government, and how it works, seriously. One of the intents of this motion is that the shift workers of the Cariboo lose the opportunity to view live what goes on in their Legislature. In the Cariboo they consider government important. They consider it so important that they believe the government here in Victoria will listen to them.

This session we had seniors travel all the way from Williams Lake in order to make their point heard. This session we had representatives from the Esketemc First Nation travel all the way from Alkali Lake to have their point of view heard here in front of the House. I have presented three petitions on behalf of representatives and people of Cariboo South.

When we return to one of the effects of this particular motion, it is also equally serious. By changing the time schedule as is outlined, it front-loads all of the time to the throne speech and budget area — the rhetoric aspect of Legislature and an important part, for sure.

However, it reduces the business aspect here in the House, the business aspect around the detailed analysis of estimates, where all 79 of us have the opportunity to find out what is going on outside the Legislature, inside the confines of the offices here within Victoria, and due scrutiny being given to what has taken place — a very, very important function.

The other aspect that is lost here, besides the estimates, is time for detailed analysis on legislation. My time in this honoured place is very limited. However, within that period of time I can say that debate here has encouraged the House, in actual fact, to put an amendment in to ensure that all firefighters would be covered by WCB legislation, not just paid firefighters. That came from debate. That came from having the time to do proper scrutiny.

Likewise, discussions contributed to amendments to the northern development trust fund. It's having time that allows this Legislature to function the way it is supposed to be done. When we end up with a situation in which a government, by definition, becomes arrogant so that they continue and consistently set aside the agreed-upon rules so that they can use their power of numbers to override all the other interests of all the people of British Columbia, then the sanctity of this Legislature falls into question.

That becomes an effect of an honourable intent of looking after my health, but I was not asked what made me healthy. It has unilaterally been decided by someone else what lifestyle works best for me and what lifestyle works best for my constituents.

Madam Speaker, it is with that exception that I rest my point. I beg this House to consider very carefully not only the motion that we're voting on — a motion that further increases advantages for other parts other than the rural area of the province — but to consider all those other interests around this House. In actual fact, I would request respectfully that this motion be withdrawn for the points that I have made.

C. Evans: I don't really think any of the members present need the benefit of my thoughts, hon. Speaker, and I'm sure you don't. The Clerk doesn't. I think that people watching from home could be forgiven if they have found this a fairly esoteric discussion, difficult to follow and hard to fathom what it might mean — or what it might have to do with them.

So for the people who might be watching, I'd like to try to make a tiny bit of sense of this — about what this change in how we sit here has to do with them, their Legislature and their democracy. What is going on is that the people here — government on that side and the opposition over here — are debating a tiny little change in how we govern, which would say that we will sit only in the daytime. The historical tendency of people in this House to work in the evening, when we come to Victoria to hold the Legislature, will end.

Seemingly, that's irrelevant, whether we work daytime or nighttime. But I hope, over the course of the next few minutes, to explain that it might actually affect how your democracy works and whether or not this little, tiny amendment — I call it the Vancouver amendment, since it's obviously aimed at getting people from Vancouver to be able to go home at night — will affect how we do our job.

The next thing I want to address is whether or not anybody should care. I think folks could be forgiven for not thinking that it changes their lives one iota. They might even watch us talk and say, "Gee, they don't have to work at night," and say that the MLAs' lives would be improved.

Maybe that's true. Certainly, it's true for the folks at home and for anybody who works here and can get home at night now — people that live in Vancouver. It would probably benefit their lives. But I hope that everybody out there, for at least a little moment in their life, would care, because I hope to make the case that this is another step towards the watering-down or dismantling of the democratic function that you folks sent us here to engage in.

Hon. Speaker, I want to talk for a little bit about how a democracy actually works. You and I and everybody else here, I think, were born into the longest continuous period of peace — in the history of this continent, certainly. But previous to our time, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents fought wars for the idea of a democracy.

A democracy — as you know, hon. Speaker, but we often don't think about — requires two parts. It needs a government — those folks who work really hard to make up the budget and laws and regulations that decide how we live. It also needs an opposition to try to find out what's wrong with that. Tommy Douglas, when he governed for 30 years, used to say he needed a really intelligent opposition to keep his government from being stupid. It requires two parts.

When the Soviet Union fell apart, it broke into a whole bunch of countries. The Balkan states became countries instead of satellites, and they all experimented with democracy. They figured out how to vote, but the hardest thing for them to figure out was that they didn't get to shoot the opposition after the vote was over or put them in jail.

The opposition is an important and integral part of democracy because it has to ask the questions that keep the government honest. It works the same here in Canada as in Russia. You only get to know what's going on because we, on your behalf, stand up and ask questions.

Obviously, it's often embarrassing to be the opposition. We don't have the research staff. We don't know what the laws are before they come. We're asking silly questions, trying to get at the truth, but the folks at home only get any chance at all to know what's going on because there's a government and an opposition.

This whole building was invented for the idea of a government and an opposition. You may not know this, folks, but the space between the people sitting over there and the people sitting over here is really carefully worked out to be two sword-lengths. I could sit right there and swing a sword, and the hon. minister on the other side could swing a sword, and there's a third sword-length in between that the Speaker can go up.

That's so that in the olden days, we could be fighting with each other, but the Speaker could…. That's because this is not a place to root power. It's a place to discuss whether or not how we exercise power is legitimate or crooked or wise or stupid, and it takes two parts.

C. Evans: Five more minutes? You want me to explain Magna Carta to the modern time in five more minutes?

Historically, hon. Speaker and folks at home, the way this has always worked here in British Columbia — all the way back as far as I know — is that the government gets to decide because they won. They won an election. They got the majority. They get to decide when we come to work.

The Premier or somebody writes to the Speaker, and the Speaker sends us all letters and says: "Come to work." They get to decide when we get to come to work, and then they get to decide what's in the budget and what's in the throne speech. They read it out, and they get to decide. They get to decide what every single piece of legislation is.

They decide what we talk about. But the opposition — they get to decide when we stop talking about any bill or about any minister's estimate or the whole session. It has always been that the people on this side get to say when we're out of questions. We say: "Okay, we know we can't win the vote, but we're out of questions." That keeps the people on that side smart.

What's happened to this tradition in the last few years? To the people at home: here's my point, really. First, the folks on the other side — they won. They got almost every seat in this building in 2001. They said: "Okay, let's have a fixed session and not just come to work when the Speaker says so. Let's say the day we're going to come to work, and we'll say the day we're going to go home. It'll be about 80 days in the spring and 40 days in the fall — spring and fall."

That was a pretty good idea. Now we'd all be able to make plans. We had fixed sessions and came to work, and then we had 80 days. That meant it was tough for us to fit in all of our questions. We call our questions "estimates." Estimates are the way that we get to figure out if anybody is stealing — anybody on the government side, anybody in the civil service.

I would argue that the difference between Canada and British Columbia and most of the countries in the world is that people here don't steal. I've got lots of trouble with the men and women on the other side, but I never saw one steal. I watch deputies come in here. They manage $40 billion or $30 billion a year, and I never saw one steal. Why is that? Because we've got this wonderful process called estimates where we get to ask where every dime went.

Once, when I worked over there, I knew a guy in the Forest Service. He sold a used snowmobile to his brother-in-law. It came up in estimates. Where did the snowmobile go? We asked all the questions. It came down that the guy sold it to his brother-in-law. It came out in estimates. He was fired the next day. That's what separates Canada from everybody else in the world.

Then the people on the other side say: "Oh well, we don't really need all that. Let's not sit here that long. We'll limit the session. We'll sit and name the end date." People on this side said: "Okay. I guess we'll come back in the fall with the rest of our questions." And then last year the people on the other side said: "Oh well, we don't really need any more questions. Skip the fall."

We can't ask all the questions in the spring. Now we're not going to come back at all in the fall. Then we used to at least sit in the nighttime. I'd come here — two mountain ranges, come across the salt chuck. It's 400 miles from home. I come here to work. Let's work. We've got four months. Let's work. Let's earn that money.

Now we're going to say: "Oh shoot. You know, there are some people. They live in Vancouver. There's a helicopter over here." I bet you don't know that, folks at home. I bet most of you have never even been in a helicopter.

What's going to happen now? This thing is going to end at six o'clock. There'll be six cabs outside, and half the people in this building will get on a helicopter. They're going to ride a helicopter home like you might take a taxicab or a ride from your neighbour, and they're going to go over to Vancouver and take the evening off. Isn't that nice?

What are you going to do? You come here from Golden. Oh darn, you can't get to Golden in a helicopter. Darn. Well, let's just suck it up — eh?

Like the folks in Vancouver would go home…. I don't really care if the folks in Vancouver go home. They are my friends. Their children are wonderful people. They get to see their parents. I agree with all of that. But one more time we are going to limit the debate that happens in here. First we said we'd cut the hundred days down to 60. Then we said that we'd cut out the fall session. Now we're not even going to work at night.

You know what? I'm going to finish talking now, and this thing will get done in an hour. We'll pass the bill on Monday, and my life will improve because I can go to a movie. But, folks, your democracy — what separates you from those places where people decide by…. What do you call that? Ministerial…? Fiat? What do they call it in Third World countries, where they just have a…? A decree. Government by decree — right? What separates us from places in South America where they have government by decree is that here we have a parliament. We have a debate. Nobody gets to sit in the big chamber over there and just give orders.

You know, folks, we're going to do this thing. My team has not got enough votes to stop it. It will happen, and you will lose night sittings. My life will improve, and your democracy will get worse. I know there are folks who don't believe that any of this matters. It's nickel and dime; it's irrelevant.

I offer you the till, hon. Speaker. I offer people at home…. You are about to make an agreement, or perhaps you have made an agreement, with the people of Alberta that says all the rules in the two provinces will be the same. That would be fine, if I understood it. But I don't understand it, and the folks over there don't understand it because we're not going to debate

it, because we've moved to government by decree. Two Premiers can sign a piece of paper and change how we work.

Now, let's see. If we can govern by decree to say what the regulatory regime will be in the provinces, and then we decide that we're not actually going to have parliament in the evenings or in the summer or in the fall, exactly how is it that you're going to know whether we're crooks? And how is it that you're going to have input into what we decide? That's what's being decided here.

Everybody at home: I get to go home early, and your democracy is shortened by a tiny bit. You won't notice, but if it keeps going in this direction, the day will come when this process is irrelevant, and the democracy you thought you had is not passed on to your children.

R. Fleming: I really regret that members on this side and that members of the House are sitting here on Thursday afternoon debating this motion. The Government House Leader motivated his remarks at the beginning of this afternoon by saying that government is not making a unilateral decision in regard of what hours the House sits in and how this session will be structured. But here we are, Thursday afternoon, and that's exactly what's happening.

We're discussing it here rather than reaching a consensus and doing the business of the House as it should be done by both parties agreeing on the rules and structure of how debate and parliamentary activity are conducted. That's what's happening here today.

One of the things I wanted to talk about in regard to this Motion 40 that we're discussing today is about the role of an MLA, because we all wear many hats. We have many functions as Members of the Legislative Assembly, and before we came back into session — and we try to do this as best we can while we're in session — we are all community leaders in our constituencies. We are present in our communities for much of the year, when this place is not in session. We are representatives of our constituents always but especially in this place, where we can bring up their concerns, get things on the record, state their views and try and resolve community problems by dialoguing with ministers, as the case may be.

We're involved as MLAs in activities and projects in our community and our constituency, trying to make things happen, trying to make improvements — whether it's in the school system or the health care system or the legal system — wherever it may be in our communities where government services are.

One of the most important roles and fundamental roles of what we do and why we were elected is that we're lawmakers, above all. All of us here are legislators, and that's why we have and schedule sessions the way that we do. That's why we set aside time in the calendar for this critical part of what all of us do for British Columbians as legislators.

Most importantly, this is not a day job when we're in session as legislators, when we're doing our jobs here in the House as opposed to out there in the community. It's not a day job then either. My point is that this is how the tradition of this House has been, and this is how our job has to be as legislators.

I value very much working in my constituency, and I value my time being used to focus on neighbourhood and community-based issues, working on behalf of my constituents. I also value very much, though, the role that I play and that all MLAs play in trying to do our level best to represent all British Columbians and to speak to issues that have provincial importance, not just importance in our constituencies.

Much of that work is done here in this place while we're in session. We do it as critics in my case, in opposition members' cases. My role is the critic for Advanced Education, for example. It's something that not exclusively but primarily much of that work I try to advance — to look into issues around advanced education and educational opportunities in the province of B.C. — is done in this place, in this House.

As the Chair of a standing committee, for example, the mandate for the committee, the structure and the composition of that committee are a decision that is made in this House. Of course, fulfilling our duties as private members — whether we're on the government side or on the opposition side — who can add to and participate in debate, who can submit bills, who can engage in other parliamentary activities is something that is necessarily done in this place. It can't be done anywhere else. That is work, of course, that is done in the broad public interest.

The point I'm coming to is that it is this place, this function that we carry out as MLAs, where we in fact need more time, not less, for private members' business. That is something that applies to both government and opposition members. We need more time as private members, yet here we are on a Thursday afternoon, the second week back in a session…. And this is one that has been awaited for nine months because, as other members have eloquently and passionately spoken about, the fall session was unilaterally cancelled by the government side.

We are in the second week of a session that has waited nine months to occur, and here we are on Thursday afternoon talking about reducing the hours this place sits and restricting the ability of members to do their jobs — both on the government side, I would add, and on the opposition side.

Perhaps the government estimates how the public felt about the government's action in the fall when they cancelled that session. I know it wasn't just my phone, because I'm an opposition member, that rang from constituents who asked how that could happen and what could be done to make it not happen, who asked why the government would do that. I know that it hap-

pened to all 79 members. There was a very real sense of outrage that that was done in the fall.

I think that for the government to have taken no heed of that message from the public, from British Columbians, and to be here now sitting in the spring session after a cancelled fall session trying to reduce the hours, sends a terrible message to British Columbians about how legislators are representing them here in the capital.

One of the other members mentioned a statistic — a dubious award, if you will, that British Columbia earned in 2006. That is that this Legislature, sadly, sat the fewest days of any Legislature in western Canada. Now we're talking about reducing the hours in a session that this place functions.

People on this side have made points, and I would like to hear from backbenchers on the government side speak to this motion. I believe that opposition members have sincerely tried to speak out for both of us, in both of our interests. What we're talking about is changing the structure of the session and the times of the day that this place meets, the time from ten to 12 each morning and two to six and two to nine on Monday and Wednesday. It means for all of us, government and opposition side, that we're going to have less time in our day to do constituency work and try and juggle and balance the work that we have to do each day on behalf of our communities while we're in session here in the capital.

It means that we're going to have less time, as well, to meet with delegations that come to the capital to meet with their MLAs or groups of MLAs in our busy days already. It means that we're going to have less time, both government and opposition side, to meet as a caucus every afternoon before we come back from recess into the House.

Another concern I have is around estimates. Make no mistake. Very clearly, the implications of the government side putting through Motion 40 will mean a reduction in the hours available to the opposition for estimates.

I have to say, from my admittedly brief experience during two sessions — it should have been three complete sessions, but two sessions — I have found the Mondays and Wednesdays, in particular, to be amongst the most valuable time for members and ministers to engage in the estimates process, to ask questions. I mean, there are times when you have a break before the dinner hour where a question is asked of the minister, and they don't have the answer. The deputies and the other ministry representatives don't have the answer available to them.

It helps, when you come back from that break, when an answer is then provided. It influences the ability and the flow of questioning, and it makes estimates a more rich and valuable experience. That will be lost if we adopt Motion 40.

I also want to speak to why I think it's particularly inappropriate that this motion is coming now, in this session at this time. This Legislative Assembly has tasked to it in this session the responsibility to give British Columbians an independent Auditor General that they so richly deserve as the top watchdog in the province.

We are going to have a search committee struck again, which will have to meet and will have to recommend unanimously an individual to be the next Auditor General of British Columbia. We will be tasked with representing the next Auditor General of British Columbia. That will be work that is conducted during, primarily, the day. That's when those interviews will be conducted. That's when the committee will be able to meet. Members will need leave from House duties to achieve that. They're going to need more leave now as the day becomes more compressed and time becomes more scarce during those daytime hours. That's going to impact the work that is tasked of that committee.

There's going to be less time in general for all standing committees, to be honest — less ability to schedule them during session. I think that also is part of the diminishing hours of the day that will be available to MLAs between the set hours of the schedule as we currently enjoy it.

A point that other members have made that I think bears repeating — that's why we're here debating this ridiculous motion on Thursday afternoon, the second week of the session that we've waited nine months to have — is that this is clearly being driven by the executive. This is being driven by cabinet. This is about their convenience — primarily lower mainland cabinet members, I presume — about them being able to go home two nights a week while we're in session.

I'm sorry. That is not a convincing reason why we would compress the way we do the people's business in their Legislative Assembly. Helijets home every night — forget the cost to taxpayers. I'm sure somebody will calculate that if this motion is passed, and I'm sure it is considerable. I'm sure somebody will calculate the increase in the Premier's carbon footprint and stack that up against the hybrid he recently purchased.

It's a shame, Mr. Speaker, that that's the primary motive, as I've heard expressed by members of the government side, for doing this — that it's somehow a lifestyle choice for primarily members of the executive who live in the lower mainland.

I know that there are many government members who don't agree with this decision. I've talked to them. I know that that caucus has a difference of opinion, and I would love to hear it expressed here in the Legislature. I can't believe that this is an issue where there's caucus discipline, and this is being a whipped, enforced issue that is going to be shoved through the Legislative Assembly. It's preposterous.

I would leave with this final point. I think that if the government wants to end night sittings, at the very least, it could work with the opposition. It could agree to lengthen the spring session so that we don't see a reduction in the hours for estimates and for other parts of the business we do. Part of it should be a negotiation. We should talk about the return of the fall session. We

should link this issue and not have it forced down our throats in isolation of all the business that we do in this place.

Let's have that negotiation, as we've typically done, not here in this place on a Thursday afternoon, but in another part of the legislative life of this assembly. Let's come to an agreement. Let's retain the principle of making decisions like this in a unanimous fashion that suits both sides of the House — that suits all functions that MLAs play in their roles here in the session.

M. Karagianis: I, too, rise to speak in opposition to this motion. But I'm not standing here on my behalf or on behalf of the other MLAs and members in this place. I'm standing here on behalf of my constituents to say that I am opposed to this change in hours of sitting.

It was grossly disappointing to have the fall session cancelled in the latter part of 2006. Frankly speaking, I think that this is another slick bit of downsizing that is being proposed to us now. I know that, theoretically, we are exchanging hour for hour what we would lose in a night sitting. But, in fact, a half-hour tacked on here and a half-hour tacked on there to me is not acceptable. I don't think that works. In fact, I think that we have lost the quality of debate and opportunity for debate in this kind of piecemeal patching on of half-hours at the beginning and end of the day.

Because of that loss of ability to have proper debate here, and given the fact that we expect a very heavy agenda in this spring session — we have legislation; we have the very important budget estimates to debate — I just don't find it supportable that we would systematically continue to diminish not only access to government but opposition's right to debate that legislation.

In fact, it is both a real and a perceived systematic reduction in access to government. I'm a bit curious. I actually don't understand the logic of why government would want to be seen to be reducing its own work, its own importance and the day-to-day workings of this House. It's a bit mystifying to me as to why we would want to do that and why we would want to be seen to be doing that.

The legislative calendar that was brought in by government looked to be a step ahead for giving certainty and structure to this House and to the democratic process for both opposition and government and for the public, whom we all represent. But of course, that was very quickly thrown aside in the last fall session here. Again, what looked to be a step forward turned out to be a step backwards, because government could just throw that aside. They could toss that aside as if it was meaningless and therefore sort of show such gross disrespect to the people of this province.

Now I see that the government wants to again constrain debate and the work of government here. I don't understand why there's this continued effort to reduce public scrutiny and to reduce opposition access to debate here. It seems to me to be heavy-handed.

Certainly, under the guise of health and family, other legislatures across this country have moved to more family-friendly hours, but not at the expense of debate. In fact, as the previous speaker mentioned, we will now have the shortest sitting calendar anywhere in this country. Other legislatures that have made the change for family or health reasons to a different set of hours in the House have extended the calendar under which they sit.

I would say that there are only two things that government could do to this motion at this point that would give me any reason to support it. One would be to restructure the hours of sitting. Certainly, if you're going to take away night sittings, give us one extended week more at the end of this session. I would find that supportable. I would find that trade-off to be a supportable one, and I know that the public of British Columbia would find that to be a supportable one.

The second part of the equation here that needs to come together for me is that I would want a bona fide security from government that there will be a fall sitting in 2007. Because if this government is going to throw aside their own legislative calendar again and make sure that there is no opportunity for debate on important matters of government here in the fall sittings, then I would say that that's not a good trade-off. If I could have a guarantee that we would have one extra week sitting and that there would be a guarantee of a fall sitting, well, then that's the kind of amendment that I could actually support on behalf of my constituents.

I think, once again, the government has got every right…. We've seen it before. They can kind of crush the objections of the people, and not just of me as a member but of the people that I represent.

They are watching. I had a constituent e-mail me today, paying attention to what's going on here in the House and the orders of the day, and they thought that this was yet another example of kind of the disdain that this government has for the citizens of this province and for the democratic process here. My constituent e-mailed me today and said: "Democracy is becoming a complete myth here in British Columbia." I would say the kind of actions that we're undertaking here with this motion absolutely make that more and more a truth for constituents.

I cannot in any way support this motion, but I would support amendments that give us another week of sitting and security around the fall session. Otherwise, I cannot support it.

D. Cubberley: In beginning, I just have to say that I think that the member who spoke before me made uncommon good sense on what we should be doing here, which is engaging in a process of negotiation and attempting to find a solution — in this House, uncommon — on what we should be doing here, which is engaging in a process of negotiation and attempting to find a solution that would work for all members of the House.

I've sensed, as we've gone through this, some degree of frustration, bordering at times on impatience, on the part of members on the other side. But I would say that it's a very small price to pay for getting your way, and this is about you getting your way.

You could have gone about this in a straight-up manner. We could have sat down and had a negotiation and tried to arrive at a rearrangement of schedule that would have served all interests in the House. I think that there was opportunity to do that, and there still is opportunity to do that if minds are open. But I'm not sure that they are.

Whatever we agree to would have to in some sense meet our tests. Oh my God, the opposition would have tests? You're the government. How can an opposition have tests? And how can it impose them on government?

In actual fact we are, like you, elected to represent our constituents. Our job in the Legislature is to perform a function which is vital to democracy, and that's the function of scrutiny. So any changes that we agree to — which is what we should be doing in here: arriving at changes we can agree to — have to serve the interests of scrutiny, because scrutiny is what ensures that we do not lapse into imperial government. It's what distinguishes democracy from imperial government.

We have to be concerned on this side with tendencies, which are becoming more obvious on the other side, towards imperial government in British Columbia. It's a danger in every democracy. But it's a special danger when a government is fortunate enough to be re-elected to a second term — having enjoyed an overwhelming majority prior to that and having been enabled to do whatever it wants — and tries to find ways to further reduce the scrutiny that it's subject to as it attempts to operate.

In any case, it could have been otherwise. Negotiation was an option, and it's still an option if government has an open mind, but it wasn't explored. It's a harder path to take. You don't get everything you want in the package that you want it in when you negotiate. So it seems much easier on the other side, I'm sure, simply to impose your will on the opposition.

You are, as I say, very used to having your way in British Columbia. But we can't accept that on this side — not and be self-respecting as members of an opposition in a Legislature. Our job is scrutiny. To agree to reduce scrutiny, which is what we see in front of us, would be to not be true to those who've sent us to this place, have placed their confidence in us — and to not assume the role that we have to assume.

That would be a principle to follow in establishing a schedule that would work for all members of the House: no net loss of scrutiny. Let's put that up at the top of the list when we reframe the schedule in an appropriate manner.

The way this has been billed, I should be seeing myself as one of the fortunate ones, the very few in the Legislature who happen to live near enough to the building that not having evening sittings would work for me. I have the chance to actually return home of an evening without having to get on a helijet, so it should work for me.

Don't I welcome this? Unfortunately, I can't. Let me tell you why. One reason is that these changes don't make my life any easier — in fact, the opposite. My day is going to get tougher, in part for the reasons that the member for Victoria-Hillside enumerated. We're smooshing more into a compressed timetable. It's already too full.

We're going to run a half-hour longer on certain nights. It's going to run right into the supper hours on nights when we had a clean break at six o'clock. That's not an advantage for my family life. I happen to be a father, and as a father, I'm trying to take an active role in my son's upbringing. I try to shoulder my share of the responsibilities at home.

If I'd had a chance to negotiate, I would have told people that my responsibility involves dropping my son at school in the morning. Having my day start a half an hour earlier to accommodate what we're doing, which is the net effect it will have in my day, will make it impossible for me to do the morning drop at school without negotiating leave.

D. Cubberley: Well, I may be being silly, Member, but I am raising a family, and as a parent I'm permitted to have opinions about how that best operates.

D. Cubberley: Allow me to continue. The member seems unaware that there are certain things that go into the preparation for the day, which for some of us are not done by our staff and aren't placed in a briefing book for us. Our day begins early. It's called a job.

Anyway, that complicates my life. I would simply say that I don't wish to add a half-hour to the beginning, and I don't wish to add a half-hour to the end of the day on an ongoing basis.

I think that one of the problems in here, actually, is that the majority of people who are in here, although they may have parented at one point in time, are not parenting now. So perhaps that wasn't in front of us when we considered what would make for a healthier workplace.

The healthy lifestyle thing. I'd be the first one to agree that the job is toxic in terms of healthy living. We all know that. But I don't think that it's going to increase my opportunity to get exercise in the course of the day, to do what's being proposed here.

I think, in fact, if the cancellation of the evening sittings translated into extra days of the House, it would be much more advantageous without tacking on

additional time. But it doesn't. In fact, it goes the other way. It crams the activity into fewer hours, which means more confinement and, the way things work if you're in opposition, less exercise.

I also think, and other members have raised it…. I live close by. It's relatively easy for me to get home. Think about that Thursday or that extra half an hour on a Thursday. Who the heck would do that for MLAs who don't live anywhere near here, who don't live on the lower mainland but have to actually travel somewhere? There have got to be a few backbenchers over there who said: "Wait a minute. That's not going to be working for me." We would like to hear from them. But speaking with one voice, as imperial government is wont to do, we won't hear from them. But we suspect they're there.

You know, the end of the day…. The thing is that you win the election, the majority of seats, and you get to govern and be the government. But you don't get to act unilaterally. Our job is to stop you from doing that, and what we're trying to do today is bring you to some reason. Democracy is actually designed to constrain you so that you can't act unilaterally. What we need you to do is to recognize that your approach to this isn't the right one. You need to sit down and negotiate with us and come to an agreeable solution, a resolution.

We think that extending the existing session in order to make up for lost time would be a good trade-off for giving up the evenings. We also think that agreeing to have a fall session on an ongoing basis would be a good idea. In fact, it was an idea you had at one time, before you found it was inconvenient and wished to remove yourself further from scrutiny.

We can understand that desire, that government would wish to reduce its exposure to scrutiny, but we can't accept that idea. It would be wrong for us to do it. In our bones we know it's wrong. You used to know it was wrong. At one time you were on this side of the House. I know that it must be terribly irritating to be in government and to have to listen to the prattling and the chirping and the shots from the other side of the House, but I would remind you that you sat for some years in opposition yourselves. You were deeply irritating at times — deeply irritating.

D. Cubberley: I hope I've had a long career of public service. I hope I've made a contribution, and I hope to continue to in the future. Now my contribution has to be as a member of an opposition and an attempt to make it function as well as it can possibly function. Our job is to help you be better than you are, be all that you can be, and avoid being some of what you think you want to be. That's our job. It's a job that we feel a strong calling to do, but we want to do it in a manner which works for the interest of British Columbians. We can't do it in a way that is simply convenient for you.

B. Ralston: Speaking very briefly, I think that the government, when they started out after 2005, had a resolve to try to do things differently. Certainly, there were some innovations: the lengthening of the question period; the appointing of an Assistant Deputy Speaker; and a resolve to perhaps take the opposition, given that it had increased rather dramatically in size, more seriously and to engage in the business of the House differently.

The Premier has from time to time spoken of the benefits of a strong opposition. No doubt, increased scrutiny of individual cabinet ministers helps in the selection process of who might stay in cabinet and who might be shuffled out. So certainly, there are benefits that the government noted.

I think that when I listened carefully to the debate…. I think the debate, though, from the government's perspective, took a rather wrong turn when the Minister of Health suggested that we on this side were like children who really wanted to have a piece of cake but were just afraid to say so. I personally found that impugning of the motives of the opposition not terribly strategic, slightly offensive. And really, I think it betrayed the real motive behind the government's position on this motion.

The government's resolve to do things differently is waning. Certainly, as the member for Vancouver-Kingsway and the member for Yale-Lillooet had pointed out, in the debate and the process for selecting the Auditor General, it became very clear that when consensus could not be reached — however painful that might be — the government was prepared to act unilaterally, simply to impose its will upon the process.

This, it seems to me, is a further example of the waning will of this government to do things differently. They're simply tired of the debate, and they've decided that they want to impose their will in this particular case. That's regrettable, but it is a hallmark of a certain attitude on the part of the government that people will judge for themselves but, in my view, doesn't serve the people of British Columbia terribly well.

Undoubtedly, the government has the majority, but they don't have an absolute majority. The process of parliamentary democracy is one that on occasion requires the House to reach unanimity, however difficult that may be to achieve. Certainly, in the case of the Auditor General, the Premier, Bill Bennett, recognized the creation of the office of the Auditor General as one of the high points of his time in office.

His biographer, Bob Plecas, spoke of that in his recent book. He regarded the independence, the position of the Auditor General being selected unanimously as putting that person above reproach in a way that they could carry on their duties in pursuit of the

Auditor General Act and in a way that would be above the typical hurly-burly of politics. It would give real prestige, presence and importance to that office.

The government decided that they didn't want to do that process, that they didn't want to follow that tradition, and they just cast it aside and used a loophole in the act to appoint the acting Auditor General. This motion follows in very much the same vein.

Mr. Speaker, I have more to say. I do note the hour, and if the Speaker will entertain a motion to adjourn the debate, I move it.

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