Hansard — Tuesday, February 27, 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		5583

Tributes		5583
	Joseph Gosnell
	G. Coons
	David Pendray
	Hon. P. Bell

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		5583
	SUCCESS non-profit society
	R. Lee
	Women in business
	B. Simpson
	Langley Regional Airport
	M. Polak
	Victoria Honorary Citizens Awards
	R. Fleming
	Canadian National Institute for the Blind
	R. Cantelon
	Safety for women on Highway 16
	C. Trevena

Oral Questions		5585
	Disclosure of documents in B.C. Rail–CN Rail investigation
	L. Krog
	Hon. W. Oppal
	C. James
	J. Kwan
	M. Farnworth
	Funding for Mary Manning Centre
	M. Karagianis
	Hon. T. Christensen
	Expenditures by Partnerships B.C. CEO Larry Blain
	B. Ralston
	Hon. C. Taylor
	Maintenance of rural highways
	G. Coons
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Performance bonus for highway maintenance contractors
	D. Chudnovsky
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Confidentiality of information from wiretaps
	J. Horgan
	Hon. W. Oppal

Petitions		5590
	C. Trevena
	R. Fleming

Reports from Committees		5590
	Select Standing Committee on Education, report for second session of thirty-eighth parliament
	J. Nuraney
	D. Routley

Tabling Documents		5592
	Minority report of the Select Standing Committee on Education
	D. Routley

Budget Debate (continued)		5592
	Hon. C. Richmond
	G. Gentner
	V. Roddick
	B. Simpson
	K. Whittred
	C. Evans
	J. Rustad
	R. Fleming

C. James: It's my pleasure to introduce someone who is no stranger to this chamber. Joan Sawicki, who was first elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1991 to represent the constituency of Burnaby-Willingdon and was re-elected in 1996, joins us on the floor today.

Joan held many roles during this time, but I'm guessing that her two favourites were Speaker and Minister of Environment, Lands and Parks. A passionate defender of the environment, Joan now spends her time working on these issues that are closest to her heart. Would the House please make Joan very welcome.

Hon. M. Coell: I have two guests in the House today, constituents of mine, Don and Muriel Cameron. Would the House please make them welcome.

G. Coons: I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize a state leader for the Nisga'a Nation, who was recently promoted within the Order of Canada to the highest level of membership. Dr. Joseph Gosnell has spent his lifetime revitalizing Nisga'a culture and bringing modern education, health care and resource management to the Nass Valley.

His devotion as president of the Nisga'a Tribal Council and chief negotiator for the landmark Nisga'a Treaty helped to create a model of aboriginal self-government that has left its mark in history. I had the opportunity and pleasure to personally congratulate him this past weekend, and I hope the House recognizes his accomplishment.

Hon. P. Bell: It's with regret that I'm informing the Legislature that the agriculture community lost an outstanding citizen this past weekend. David Pendray, who owned and operated Pendray Farms, a dairy farm located near the Victoria Airport, passed away.

His farm is a model operation that has for years been at the forefront of adopting new and innovative practices. David worked cooperatively with the local community and took the time on numerous occasions to invite the public, including members of this Legislature, to see his well-managed, exemplary farm.

Dave was married to Linda, and they have three daughters, Jennifer, Sarah and Alicia. The service will be held at Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney this Saturday, March 3, at 11 a.m.

Hon. R. Coleman: I'd like to introduce to the House today Jillian Rousselle and David Puterman. Both of these young people are co-op students in the Ministry of Forests. They're both taking their master's degree in public administration.

For them and for any other young person out there, there are lots of jobs in the future of the Ministry of Forests. Go get involved, but come back and work for this ministry because we need young people today.

R. Lee: Non-profit organizations in British Columbia are integral parts of our society. Usually it starts with a group of volunteers becoming aware of emerging issues or need for services. They get organized, raising awareness, promoting the cause, gathering supports, delivering the services and finally promoting sustainable programs.

Founded in 1973, SUCCESS is one of the largest non-profit, charitable social service providers in British Columbia. With an annual operating budget of $17 million, 350 supporting staff and over 10,000 volunteers, it provided over 200,000 client services in 11 locations to assist immigrants to overcome language and cultural barriers. About 70 percent of SUCCESS's annual budget comes from the three levels of government.

SUCCESS provided airport reception services to new immigrants; counselling, settlement and public education; training for language and employment; services for children, youth, women, seniors and families; translations and legal clinics.

SUCCESS delivers a continuum of health care services, covering assisted living and an adult day centre, and operates a 103-bed multilevel-care facility. I have the opportunity to participate in many SUCCESS events, including public health fairs, youth leadership programs, senior groups, the gateway to Asia program, the Walk with the Dragon and the fundraising gala.

I'm sure the Premier and some members of the House were as impressed as I was last Sunday at the SUCCESS fundraising gala. The supports from the communities are tremendous.

I would like the House to join me in thanking all the volunteers, donors, sponsors, staff and board members of SUCCESS for their contributions in helping immigrants to become fully participating and contributing members of our society.

B. Simpson: A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of co-hosting a women-in-business breakfast with the Quesnel and District Chamber of Commerce. Twenty women attended, representing a diverse cross-section

of the business community, including agritourism, retail, publishing, banking, manufacturing, child care, and arts and culture.

The discussion focused on areas of concern for women trying to run their own business and work in the business community. Many of these are historical concerns that have yet to be fully addressed by both government and society as a whole.

Wage parity remains an issue. Stories were told about women who do work equivalent to senior management positions, yet get clerks' wages. One woman told her tale of being dismissed from a company simply because she asked for parity with a male counterpart. All agreed that it is well past time for this inequality to be resolved once and for all.

A representative from the agritourism sector told how this growing sector has great potential to support the diversification of our economy. However, she pointed out that this emerging sector is struggling to be taken seriously because it is comprised mostly of women entrepreneurs and because it also doesn't fit the large-scale corporate model that's the preferred model for banks and for government today.

Aside from the individual and sectoral stories these women shared, there were two areas of major concern they held in common. The first is financing. These experienced entrepreneurs and business leaders pointed out that women still have a more difficult time raising capital than their male counterparts. They argued that more must be done to support women to access capital if we are to truly realize the positive impact that women entrepreneurs can have on our economy, especially our rural economies.

The second and by far the most pressing concern expressed by all of the women at the meeting was the need for more child care support at all levels, from spaces to funding to referral and support services. Those in attendance decried the lack of support from all levels of government and asked me to make those concerns known in this Legislature.

M. Polak: In 1947 Art Seller, the first tenant of the Langley Municipal Airport, established a flight school, a spray service and a fire-bombing operation. Since that time, Langley's airport has developed a reputation as a progressive, community-owned airport that supports a valuable high-tech source of jobs and opportunities in the lower mainland. It is now home to 350 aircraft and 41 companies.

But the economic benefits of Langley's airport reach far beyond the 120 acres of land it occupies. Every year approximately $6.1 million is spent for local goods and services.

Langley Regional Airport is a jewel of an airport in a perfect setting. However, not too many years ago its future viability was in doubt. But thanks to the work of airport manager George Miller and a dedicated team, Langley Regional Airport now boasts commercial and recreational areas buzzing with activity. It is recognized as a high-tech leader in the helicopter industry not just in British Columbia but across Canada and around the world. Of the 41 companies that call Langley Airport home, half are helicopter-related, covering nearly all activities of the industry.

Recently it was my privilege to welcome the Minister of Small Business and Revenue on a tour of Langley businesses. We toured helicopter maintenance and construction operations that are available in only a select number of locations in the world.

In our current economic climate, opportunities abound for small, innovative high-tech companies in all areas of British Columbia. In Langley the pride we take in the success of our airport is matched only by our enthusiasm for its future. Langley Airport's improvement plan sets forward a vision to be the best community airport in the province. Certainly the contributions of individuals like George Miller and his team, along with countless others in British Columbia, are what make this the best place on earth.

R. Fleming: Last November I was privileged to attend the annual City of Victoria Honorary Citizens Awards ceremony. The Victoria city council recognized ten exceptional citizens by presenting them with an honorary citizen award for their service to and enrichment of our community. I'm proud to say that three of the award recipients this year happen to be constituents of mine in Victoria-Hillside.

Leni Hoover, a longstanding community advocate who works towards the well-being of people on low incomes — in particular women — was honoured. She was the founder and chairperson of Blanshard Community Centre and served as executive director of the centre from 1993 to 2004. Although technically retired, Leni continues to fight for those in need and is active on many committees in many parts of her community.

Tom Arkell, a dedicated and exceptional volunteer who has selflessly given much of his time to our community and to its school-aged kids in particular, was also honoured. In doing so, he has become a leader, a role model and an inspiration to others. Tom was a founding member of the Burnside Gorge Community Association in 1991 and is still volunteering his time to the community centre plus numerous other organizations.

Finally, Shellie Gudgeon is one of our city's hardest-working, compassionate, dedicated volunteers, and we are blessed to have her working actively in our community. She and her husband Mike are incredibly talented entrepreneurs and restaurateurs in Victoria. Shellie has contributed to and helped build a very strong community in Victoria through her countless volunteer contributions to numerous special projects and fundraising events to revitalize neighbourhoods, protect heritage buildings and enhance our community's social capacity.

It's been my great pleasure getting to know each of these incredible individuals while working with them

in our community. I would ask that all members of the House join me in belatedly congratulating and thanking the honorary citizen recipients and all those nominated for these distinguished awards.

R. Cantelon: This morning I attended a breakfast hosted by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, with many of my colleagues. Founded in 1918, the CNIB is a nationwide community-based charity that is committed to research, education and vision health for all Canadians.

The CNIB is able to provide these services due to the generosity of the general public as well as corporate donations and funding from different levels of government. The staff and volunteers of CNIB work with those who have visual impairments to assist them in adapting to their loss of vision so that they may be comfortable and confident in functioning in their work and home environments.

Degradation of vision, even vision loss, is something that will likely touch the life of someone we know. One out of nine people of retirement age experiences degenerative loss of sight, and that number jumps to one in every four people over 80, which happens to be the fastest-growing demographic in British Columbia.

It is important to remember that only 10 percent of all the people CNIB work with have no sight. The overwhelming majority have some vision. In fact, our hosts provided us with a piece of paper that you could hold up to your eye and experience a sample of what some people are able to see — or not see, as the case is.

It was a very interesting learning experience that certainly gave me a better idea of the challenges that the vision-impaired face, and I ask the House to join me and thank the B.C. and Yukon branch for all the hard work they do in assisting the visually impaired.

C. Trevena: Last year there was a flurry of activity around the so-called highway of tears, Highway 16 from Prince Rupert to Prince George. The communities along the remote route thought that at last they were being heard and that something would be done to investigate what's been happening along that sad highway — where young women have disappeared and been killed — to prevent anything happening to young girls again. But nearly a year on from the symposium where families and communities shared their grief with politicians and with police and promises were made, it seems that little has been done.

Short- and long-term goals were set, and all appeared achievable. There was going to be investment in victim prevention, emergency readiness, victim counselling and community development. There were simple options — going into schools to make young people aware of the risks of hitchhiking and getting signs placed along the highway. There was hope of building a network with safe homes along the highway, emergency phone booths and 1-800 numbers.

There were longer-term goals trying to deal with the poverty, isolation and lack of transport — all with a view, as the report of the symposium stated, to providing a serious response to a deadly serious situation. The commitment from the community there still remains, but sadly it seems that it's only those along the highway who want to keep this campaign alive. Encouragement from other sectors, including government, seems lacklustre a year on.

Plans to hold a forum for young people looking at safety and working on capacity-building are on hold now because there isn't the ministerial commitment. Plans to get signage in place is now being funded by a local CD sale. It's sad, and it's shameful.

I have to ask: is it the isolation — that these girls and young women were killed or disappeared out in central B.C.? Or is it that they're first nations? I think we should all pause in this House and ask ourselves what the response would have been if it had been at least nine young, white males who disappeared along that highway in B.C.

L. Krog: The former Finance Minister, Gary Collins, told this House that his meetings with Omnitrax representatives had nothing to do with the sell-off of B.C. Rail or the Roberts Bank spur line. New allegations cast those assertions into serious doubt. The allegations suggest that representatives of the Liberal cabinet and caucus set up the Roberts Bank spur line as a consolation prize for failed bidders. Mr. Collins was not the only member overseeing negotiations.

Can the Minister of Transportation confirm that other government ministers and MLAs sat on a committee to oversee the negotiations, and can he tell us who they were?

Hon. W. Oppal: This case is before the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The member knows that. A special prosecutor has conduct of the case. The member knows that too. Where the matter is before the Supreme Court and a special prosecutor has been appointed, it is totally inappropriate to discuss this matter in public. The member is a member of the bar. He should know better than to ask that question.

L. Krog: With the greatest respect to the Attorney General, members of this government are not currently under investigation. This is a matter before the public. In an information bulletin dated November 3, 2003, this government established a steering committee to "assist in overseeing negotiations." The committee was struck "to ensure the best deal for British Columbians."

Committee members included the current Minister of Education, the current Minister of Agriculture and the

current Minister of Energy. Did that committee ever discuss the potential of the deal collapsing if only one bidder remained?

Hon. W. Oppal: However the opposition member may characterize his question, the fact is that when he's talking about B.C. Rail, he's talking about a matter that's before the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

He knows full well that it would be totally improper for me or for any other member of this House, as lawmakers, to discuss this issue.

C. James: Within the application for disclosure, there is a long list of documents the defence counsel has requested. Those requests are now a year old, and the government has withheld the information from the special prosecutor.

To the Attorney General: why has the government refused defence counsel's requests to access information?

Hon. W. Oppal: The special prosecutor has advised us that it is not appropriate to comment publicly on any of these allegations that are made. These are allegations that are made by defence counsel. When the defence makes allegations of this sort, I can tell the Leader of the Opposition that the normal course of events is for the prosecutor to respond in court. That's where these matters are heard — in court.

C. James: I must state again that my understanding is that the government is not before the courts. We're talking here about very specific materials that have been requested. When this case began, the Premier personally pledged that the government would fully cooperate in the investigation. Now it seems that the government is withholding information. It's been over a year, according to documents, since counsel asked for this information.

So my question again to the Attorney General: why is the government refusing to cooperate?

Hon. W. Oppal: There's absolutely no evidence that the government is not cooperating. I'll say it one more time. The conduct of the case is in the hands of a special prosecutor who's at arm's length from the government. He conducts the case. He has advised us clearly — and it has got to be obvious to everyone in this House — that it is totally inappropriate to talk about a case that's being litigated in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

C. James: I'm not speaking about the specifics of this case. I am speaking about government's actions related to information to ensure that this case will go forward. The disclosure requests were sent to a representative of the provincial government over a year ago. So my question to the Attorney General is: who is the representative that received those requests over a year ago?

Hon. W. Oppal: You know, we have a trial judge who is presiding over the case. The trial judge will ensure that all those matters that are necessary for defence disclosure will be made. In the meantime, it's appropriate for us to keep out of the case and not discuss the case. I don't know how much more plain I could be.

Mr. Speaker: Just a friendly reminder to members that if we're going to continue along this line of questioning, the Attorney General has stated clearly that this is a matter before the courts.

J. Kwan: The government holds the documents that may assist in the court case. If the government can't get bidders in their privatization schemes, then there's not even the appearance of competition, and the process falls apart.

If the government doesn't release the information requested by the defence counsel and the special Crown prosecutor, how can British Columbians then be asked to have confidence and be sure that other privatization schemes have not been tainted?

Hon. W. Oppal: I'll say it one more time. Defence counsel has made certain allegations. The special prosecutor, I would expect, will reply in kind. In the meantime, the special prosecutor has advised us quite clearly and quite properly that it's inappropriate for us to comment on these matters. There may be some substance to the defence allegations; there may be none. It's foolish to assume that because the defence have asked for certain documents, they already haven't been provided.

That's why we have the rule. We keep out of matters that are before the Supreme Court or any court. We're not in a position to comment on those matters. It's inappropriate for lawmakers. That is so clear, so basic, so fundamental — as to why we observe that rule.

J. Kwan: The opposition is not asking for the government to comment on the case. The opposition is simply asking the government…

J. Kwan: …to release documents that would actually assist in that process with the court case. The Premier made a commitment. "The important thing is that neither the RCMP nor the government shy away from carrying out a thorough, complete and diligent investigation in the public interest." The Premier further said: "Obviously, it's troubling to everyone, but the important thing is that there is an ongoing investigation and that I've told

everyone to be as open and as transparent as they can about the entire situation, and I hope the RCMP will do that as well."

The opposition is asking the government to live up to the spirit of the Premier's comments by advising the public who is the representative representing the province with respect to the information that's not being released. Who is that person, and why won't the government release that information to the courts?

Hon. W. Oppal: As near as I can understand the question, the member is asking the government to release documents. We have a trial judge that does that. The application is before the trial judge. It's not before the government. It's not before us. We can't release the documents. That's entirely before the trial judge in the Supreme Court of British Columbia who's presiding over the trial.

Mr. Speaker: Just a friendly reminder again to members to be cautious, if we're proceeding along the same line of questioning.

M. Farnworth: The issue is disclosure. The question that we are asking is…. It's been a year since the request was put forward for that information to be released, yet it has not been released.

So the question we will ask — and the Attorney General may not like answering it, but it's legitimate for us to ask — is: why has it taken so long to have this information released or given to the court? How long will it be, and when will it happen?

Hon. W. Oppal: Same question with more vigour. First of all, we don't know that the documents haven't been given. I can tell you a little bit about courtrooms. Defence counsel often make allegations. Sometimes they're accurate; sometimes they're not. We have a trial judge that presides over these. The trial judge will determine — forgive me if I'm lecturing, but I am — whether or not there's any substance to the application.

In the meantime, we as lawmakers keep out of it. It's for the courts to decide on an independent basis. We don't interfere with the deliberations of courtrooms and of judges. That's why we have independent judges who decide these cases and decide these difficult issues in criminal and civil cases.

M. Farnworth: If only a few of these allegations are proven true, hon. Speaker, that will be very disturbing indeed. So once again, the question is quite simple. Can the Attorney General confirm or not confirm whether this information has at least been released?

Hon. W. Oppal: I'm not going to confirm anything. It's not my job to confirm anything. The member of the opposition obviously has the document that's been filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. That's what he's referring to. It's a document filed by defence counsel.

I'll say one more time that it would be inappropriate and it would be wrong — 100 different ways — for me to comment on it, and I'm not going to comment on it.

M. Karagianis: Well, it was my understanding that government is not a party to this proceeding. However, I will move on with a different line of questioning.

The Mary Manning Centre provides therapy, court support and victim services to sexually abused children here in Victoria. For more than 20 years the centre has provided these services for abused and exploited children in this community. But in four short months, the centre may have to close its doors because the provincial funding is running out.

It's a proven fact that the sooner that sexually abused children receive support and counselling, the better their lifelong outcomes will be. My question is to the Minister of Children and Family Development. Is the minister committed to ensuring that children have access to sexual abuse therapy when they need it, or does this government think it's acceptable for this facility to close down, forcing children to wait months and months for help?

Hon. T. Christensen: Government is committed to ensuring that children who are in need of counselling services receive those services. We have the highest budget that this province has ever had to provide assistance to children in those circumstances, and we're committed to ensuring that we work with a host of service providers to find the ways that we can best meet the needs of children in communities around the province.

M. Karagianis: Well, in 2003 this government cut funding to the centre by 50 percent. When the centre appealed it, the government was forced to return half of their funding. Then when a closure loomed a few years ago, the government gave them a one-time grant. That grant will expire in less than four months. Without stable funding, the centre will have to lay off their staff and perhaps close their doors forever in this community.

To the Minister of Children and Family Development: will he commit today to provide adequate funding for the Mary Manning Centre so that they can remain open?

Hon. T. Christensen: As I indicated in my previous answer, the government's financial commitment to meeting the needs of children around the province has never been higher. This year's budget alone sees the provincial commitment to the Ministry of Children and Family Development increasing by $141 million, the highest budget ever.

We work with a host of community service providers around the province. We work with our regional staff

to ensure that we're doing the best we can to meet the needs of children in communities around the province. That's the commitment. That's what we'll continue to do.

B. Ralston: My question is to the Minister of Finance. Larry Blain, the Partnerships B.C. chief, hosted a dinner at Al Porto Ristorante in Vancouver on June 23, 2005. The invited guests included board members and senior staff and other honchos from the public-private partnerships world.

Those in Mr. Blain's party drank their way through 13 bottles of wine: five Wild Goose Pinot Gris, three Columbia Crest Merlot, two Penfolds Chardonnay and three bottles of another Australian wine called d'Arenberg Stump Jump. They also drank a Grey Goose martini, a cosmopolitan, a rum, three bottles of beer and a glass of premium Scotch. The entire bill was paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia.

Can the Minister of Finance answer this: how many bottles of wine does it take to build a hospital?

Hon. C. Taylor: Mr. Blain's expenses are in the public domain. It is the practice for Partnerships B.C. not to pay for any alcohol. There were a couple of instances that were found out to be true, so he has repaid those expenses.

G. Coons: Seaport Limousine, based out of Stewart, B.C., provides passenger, freight and charter service throughout northwest B.C. They depend on the province to keep rural roads clear during the treacherous winter months.

Can the Minister of Transportation explain why his government is failing to live up to the responsibility to keep rural roads safe?

Hon. K. Falcon: I thank the member for the question. Obviously, I would have to check on that specific day and that specific circumstance. One thing I would warn the member of, though, is that quite often during heavy snowstorms, as we've seen this winter with some of the worst accumulations in two decades, you do get a situation where they are sometimes replacing the plows, which they have to do on a regular basis, and they're also reloading the salt trucks. So there will be periods where the equipment is still being utilized, but it's not on the highway.

Now, that's not in any way, shape or form to suggest that there's not room for any improvements. That's why we actually, unlike the previous government, have 117 people whose sole job is to audit the performance of these private contractors. I think, given the winter conditions, they've done a very good job in very challenging circumstances.

G. Coons: Yes, I do. I find it interesting that the minister talks about treacherous weather conditions when basically in the House, we were hearing lots of windstorms coming from the other side.

G. Coons: Two weeks ago I contacted the minister about this situation, and he's failed to respond. When roads aren't properly maintained, especially in the winter months, lives are at risk.

The mayor of Stewart recently led a session about road maintenance concerns. At that session, highway users expressed their lack of confidence in both the contractor and the minister to keep this highway properly maintained. They say the minister has dropped the ball.

Once again to the minister: what is your government doing to ensure maintenance and safety of our rural highways?

Hon. K. Falcon: Well, I'm not quite sure what point that member is trying to get across, because actually these are the same BCGEU employees and private maintenance contractors that serviced the highways during the ten years that they were in power. During that decade that they were in power, apparently…

Hon. K. Falcon: …that NDP member's government did not see fit to do anything extraordinary. In fact, so much confidence did they have in those private maintenance contractors that they didn't even audit the work they were doing. Under this government,

effective in 2001, we actually make sure that the performance standards that are set out in the maintenance contract agreements are to be met, and we audit and make sure they do exactly that.

I want to be clear. I don't want to pretend for a second that given some of the worst snow conditions we've seen in two decades, it will be perfect. But I can tell you that those unionized workers have been working their butts off day in and day out, delivering a very good service under very difficult circumstances.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members. The member for Vancouver-Kensington has the floor.

D. Chudnovsky: It's good to hear once again from the Ken Georgetti of Cloverdale, the Jim Sinclair of southeast Surrey, once again defending public sector workers. We thank him for that. And I'm sure that….

Mr. Speaker: Member. Can we have some silence. I can't hear what your question is, so I don't know how the minister can hear you. Continue.

D. Chudnovsky: I'm sure those working people across the province will do a thorough assessment of whether this minister is in fact their friend and is really defending them across this province.

Last week in the House the minister said, and he repeated it today: "We have 117 staff that do nothing but audit the performance of our maintenance contractors right across the province." But this minister knows that the system is based on self-regulation. It's the very companies that are supposed to do the work that are monitoring themselves on a day-to-day basis, and it's not working. He knows it; I know it. Everybody in the House knows it.

Will the minister commit to a review of the system to ensure that the services that British Columbians deserve are delivered?

Hon. K. Falcon: Actually, the member is wrong, not surprisingly. This happens on a regular basis. We in fact do have our regional managers and other staff that actually drive the highways, checking to make sure that the conditions that are set out in the contracts are being adhered to. They work very closely with the maintenance contractors — absolutely.

I could tell you, Mr. Speaker, that it's a lot better than what it was under ten years of the NDP government when they did no checking whatsoever. Under an extraordinarily difficult winter, I actually believe that in most cases — not all cases…. In cases where they didn't perform, we've been very clear about that, and we've withheld winter bonuses.

In most of the cases, these workers — who have put in a lot of overtime, have worked extraordinarily hard under very difficult circumstances — find it, frankly, a little tiring to hear an urban MLA trying to tell them how they're not keeping these roads up.

D. Chudnovsky: Interesting comment about urban MLAs. Perhaps others on the other side will take it as seriously as I do.

Let's get this straight. We've got thousands of people across the province complaining to the minister — I get copies of most of them — complaining to us, complaining to MLAs across the province that the job isn't being done on highways maintenance. These very same people are the ones whose tax moneys go to paying these performance bonuses. Perhaps the minister can explain to us what it takes to not get a performance bonus in this province.

Hon. K. Falcon: I can in fact give you an example, as we have in the past, where there was a contractor who was doing a section of the Coquihalla, essentially from the toll booth to Hope, that was consistently not meeting the standards set out. They lost their bonus, and that represents, by the way, about $168,000. It is a very significant financial penalty. It's not one, I will tell you, that we impose lightly.

These contractors — during a winter period where they're utilizing all of their equipment, bringing in extra staff to try and help deal with demands, paying overtime — are taking a big financial hit. I can tell you that, by and large, they work very hard.

Member, for you to take one drive up to the interior and discover that there's a different part of this province, discover that there are actually potholes when you have the worst winter in 20 years…. I know that was a revelation to that member. But I can tell you that these workers are doing a good job, and I'm proud of the work they're doing, by and large, right across this province.

J. Horgan: I listened carefully to the Attorney General's responses to questions earlier in question period. I just want to remind him of his view of the matter of sub judice in November, when it was revealed that wiretaps had inadvertently captured conversations between the Premier and the then Minister of Finance Gary Collins.

At that time the Attorney General was quite free and fulsome in his comments about what the courts should or should not do, and he's quoted in the Vancouver Province as saying: "Keep in mind: this is an invasion of privacy of phone calls that are lawful in every sense. If something is altered without the consent of a judge, then that's something that is a matter of concern."

My question is a quite simple one to the Attorney General. Is it only convenient to speak about issues before the court when you're defending the Premier, and it's inconvenient to do so when you're defending a government that was visited by the police in 2004?

Hon. W. Oppal: There is a clear line of demarcation between the executive and the judiciary, and that's all I was pointing out. That ought to have been clear to anyone.

Mr. Speaker: I remind the member again about the questioning. Member has a supplemental.

J. Horgan: Certainly, I'm conscious of your concerns in this regard. But when principles are movable and subject to expediency, it's difficult for those of us on this side of the House to take the Attorney General seriously — when on one day he can speak publicly without any inhibitions and on another use sub judice as an explanation.

Again I'll ask the minister: is it appropriate for the chief lawmaker in British Columbia to speak about what may or may not be appropriate with respect to wiretaps?

Mr. Speaker: I think, Member, you've mentioned the words "sub judice" a number of times. To me, this is a classic example of where we are. I think this is a classic example of the sub judice of the convention, so I will allow the Attorney to answer this last question, but that's it.

Hon. W. Oppal: Mr. Speaker, these are not a matter of convenience. There are clear principles in law with respect to what is the appropriate line of demarcation between the executive and the judiciary. I don't think I can be any more clear than that.

C. Trevena: I have leave to present a petition with approximately a thousand signatures opposing the eviction of Tom Bakken, who has been homesteading Crown lands outside Campbell River for 40 years.

C. Trevena: I'd like leave to present a petition with approximately 500 signatures opposing cuts in provincial child care funding.

R. Fleming: I present a petition from constituents of mine to immediately restore and maintain child care operating funds and to continue full funding of the child care resource and referral program.

J. Nuraney: I have the honour to present the report of the Select Standing Committee on Education for the second session of the 38th parliament with respect to the committee's investigation into finding effective strategies to address the challenge of adult literacy.

J. Nuraney: I ask leave of the House to suspend the rules to permit the moving of the motion to adopt the report.

J. Nuraney: I move that the report be adopted, and in doing so, I would like to make some brief comments.

In November 2005 the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia charged the Select Standing Committee on Education to investigate effective strategies to combat the challenge of adult literacy in our province. This report is a product of the committee's consultations with a variety of stakeholders, including people with expert knowledge of the topic, educators, learners, and literacy practitioners. It contains some startling numbers about the levels of literacy and numeracy among the adult population of British Columbians and also describes challenges within the existing programming structure.

In order to address these important issues, the report outlines an adult literacy strategy to assist the province to become the most literate jurisdiction in North America by 2010. The strategy describes four principles to guide future action and focuses on (1) the importance of all sectors of society playing a leadership role, (2) the need for an integrated approach via creation of a centralized literacy secretariat, (3) learner-centred programming and (4) the prevention strategy of screening early to detect literacy problems.

Our recommended strategy also contains specific suggestions for the four demographic groups identified in the committee's mandate: the province's adult population, aboriginal people, adults who speak English as a second language and seniors.

I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to all members of the committee for their diligence and commitment to the committee throughout this important process. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Clerk of Committees staff for their efforts, specifically Kate Ryan-Lloyd, Josie Schofield and Mary Newell. My sincere thanks to all of them.

D. Routley: I rise to speak to the report of the Select Standing Committee on Education to outline what we the opposition saw as the failings and shortcomings of

that report and to table the official opposition's minority report on the committee's assigned task of investigating challenges to literacy in British Columbia and recommending solutions and strategies for improving the level of literacy in this province.

I'd like to echo the Chair, the member for Burnaby-Willingdon, in his thanks to the staff and the other members of the committee, and I would in particular personally like to thank the member for his good chairmanship of our committee. I will seek leave at the end of my comments to table our official report.

Like members opposite, we were pleased that the government had seen fit to assign the committee the task of investigating the extent of literacy challenges facing British Columbians and making recommendations for increasing the level of literacy in this province. As the British Columbia economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based, the importance of ensuring that our young people and our workforce have sound literacy and numeracy skills will continue to rise.

Both the Progress Board and the Competition Council have pointed to the need to add efficiencies to our workforce. Indeed, it became clear to all members of the committee that if individuals did not possess what the experts termed level 3 literacy skills, they would not be equipped fully to participate in our modern economy or to move on to more advanced training.

While I believe that all members were impressed by the depth, complexity and passion evidenced in the many written, verbal and formal presentations we received during our work, the official opposition's hope was that the committee might produce a truly useful report outlining a worthwhile strategy. That hope was quickly dashed.

The committee travelled at great public expense; $135,000 was paid to support this committee. Of that, $34,000 was travel expenses. We travelled throughout B.C. to hear from people — instructors, students and experts — only to ignore much of what was said. Instead, the committee produced a final report that, in short, said that British Columbia had a significant literacy problem but that all government needs to do in order to meet its so-called great golden goal of a golden decade was to maintain status quo.

Indeed, the committee's summation of the task facing government is best articulated in its observation that the challenge facing the provincial government to attain its goal of making British Columbia the most literate jurisdiction in North America by 2010 is a manageable one. Note the date: 2010. Note the fact that we will have no means of measuring our progress until after the next election.

Based on the province's current ranking in North America and perhaps on the extent of literacy problems in the rest of Canada and in the U.S., the committee explained its real task. "By the year 2010, the year when the next international survey will be conducted, B.C. will have to match or exceed the performance of Yukon Territory." That's it. That says it all. The committee decided that things in B.C. aren't so bad, so all we need to do is not slip in the rankings, and we'll have fulfilled the Premier's great goal.

The committee decided that if we set our expectations low enough, we won't have to try too hard to meet them. Well, that's just not good enough. It's not good enough because it ignores the many cuts and barriers caused by this government's policies — cuts to colleges, 3,000 seats to 2,000 for literacy training; cuts to child care, the main barrier to women accessing programs; and barriers in the MCFD and other ministries. That kind of approach ignored the fact that cuts and changes to early intervention programs in our K-to-12 education system are leaving a new generation of young people vulnerable to a life of low literacy skills.

That kind of approach ignored the real and unique challenges that face our first nations people who want to improve opportunities for themselves, their families and their communities. It ignores the great pool of labour they represent and leaves them out of the benefits of a high point in our economic cycle. Is this the new relationship?

That kind of approach ignored the fact that even if we met the Premier's great goal, we will still have one million working-age British Columbians with low and inadequate literacy and numeracy skills. Is that what great goals are made of — leaving out one million people? That kind of approach ignored the fact that British Columbia has a huge number of well-educated, highly skilled immigrants who could become productive participants in our economy if only they were given access to better lingual skills and instruction. Instead, government appears ready to ignore the outcome.

Strangely, that kind of approach ignores the fact that while the B.C. economy is in desperate need of skilled workers to fill shortages in many industries and sectors, we have a vast pool of available workers right here at home who only need our help to meet their own potential and to fulfil industries' demands. The Premier and his government should step up to the plate and add value to our workforce. That kind of approach says: "Don't worry. We won't have to deal with this whole literacy thing until after the next election."

It sounds a bit like the throne speech and the Liberal environmental targets. It's not good enough, and we can and we must do better. We believe government should establish more ambitious goals and commit significantly to reducing the number of working-age British Columbians who have low literacy skills.

We heard that people suffering with low literacy skills are the last to benefit from a good economy and the first to be punted out the door when the cycle changes. We learned that higher literacy scores mean a better GDP. We learned that higher literacy skills mean better health, better communities and a better democracy. We believe that government should commit to restoring programs in our K-to-12 system so that the next generation of British Columbians does not fall through the cracks.

We believe that if the government wants to establish a truly worthy great goal for a golden decade, one that will actually serve the needs of British Columbians, then it must commit to something more ambitious than

simply maintaining the status quo. Following through on that kind of commitment won't be simple, easy or even necessarily manageable, but it's what British Columbians expect of their government.

Mr. Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the member for Burnaby-Willingdon closes debate.

J. Nuraney: I find it really strange that a member of the committee, who sat with us through all those times and heard so many submissions, when the deliberations of the committee took place to finally make recommendations was not present at that meeting.

However, not to undermine the work of the committee, let me assure you that the committee worked very hard, listened to various stakeholders and experts in the field and arrived at suggestions. These are substantial recommendations that are mentioned in the report.

If the person says that it's maintaining the status quo, I beg to say that maybe literacy really needs more attention.

Mr. Speaker: Just a reminder, Members, that you shouldn't make comments, whether people are in the House or in the committee meetings.

D. Routley: I seek leave to table a copy of the official opposition's report on the topic of adult literacy.

Mr. Speaker: While the rules don't provide it, I understand there is an agreement.

Hon. M. de Jong: You're correct. Although our rules don't contemplate that, we're prepared to grant leave to the motion the hon. member has made.

Hon. C. Richmond: Before I get back into the context of my speech, I just want to thank a few people before I go any further. First of all, the staff in the ministry, both in Victoria and in the field, are very talented and dedicated people who work tirelessly on our behalf to make B.C. the best place on earth to live. Secondly, my personal staff, both here and in Kamloops. I know I speak for many members here, where it would be impossible for us to do our jobs without them. They work very hard on our behalf.

I do want to take a few moments to make a few comments about my hometown of Kamloops. As I said….

As I said before lunch, the feeling when you walk down the street, I think, is the most significant thing that you notice. You walk down and talk to people in Kamloops — I know other members can do the same in their hometown — and the feeling of confidence and optimism is overwhelming compared to just a very few short years ago.

There's good reason for that. The annual unemployment rate for 2006 in Kamloops dropped to 3.9 percent, the lowest rate recorded in decades. Last year some 4,800 jobs were created in the Thompson-Okanagan region.

This is a remarkable turnaround from just a few years ago. In April of 2001 the unemployment rate in Kamloops was 14.1 percent — 14.1. And it's now 3.9 percent. What a turnaround in a few short years. It's proof that prudent fiscal management, removing barriers to employment and encouraging investor confidence work.

Local business successes are numerous in Kamloops. It's a great achievement for the people, and they deserve full marks for being some of the hardest-working, most industrious people that you will ever meet. [Applause.] I'm going to wait for the applause to die down from my colleague, but it's deserved, and I appreciate it.

Along with great employees the region is home to many progressive companies that are committed to achieving the best for their workers. Last week I had the honour to help recognize one such company, NRI, who won a WorkLife B.C. Award for promoting a balanced lifestyle in the workplace. By offering their employees flexibility in their employment, this successful company has created an environment that gives its workers a sense of being part of the family. This is something I hope all companies and employers strive towards.

Looking into the future, the jobs prospect for the people in Kamloops continues to be positive. There are help-wanted signs all over town. In fact, the Kamloops Daily News ran an article on Monday, February 19, stating that the help-wanted section in their paper is two and a half pages long and that local businesses are struggling to find workers. I know it's been said before, but I am proud to say it again. What a difference a few years

makes. From having an underperforming economy to a booming one, it's a remarkable turnaround for both British Columbia and Kamloops.

Just a couple of items I want to touch on again about Kamloops. These are two items that are top of mind in the people in the community and the surrounding area. I mentioned the airport expansion briefly in my opening remarks, and I'm pleased to see the expansion getting underway. It is coming closer to fruition thanks to a $4 million commitment from our government's transportation partnerships fund to help them extend the runway to 8,000 feet.

This is a partnership between the airport, the city of Kamloops, Sun Peaks Resort, the Tourism Ministry, our government and, hopefully, the government of Canada. Together we will develop a new air service to the region, helping further our appeal to visitors and creating even more opportunities for those who live in the community.

In addition to creating employment, the strength of a strong economy allows us to invest record amounts into critical services for my region, including education and health care, as well as to finding a solution to the challenges stemming from the mountain pine beetle, which is the other item I just want to touch on for a few moments. The devastation resulting from the mountain pine beetle has caused great harm both economically and environmentally to the Kamloops-Thompson region as well as to many other areas of British Columbia.

Our government, plus our partners — including the federal government, the first nations and those involved in the forest industry — are working hard to minimize the damage that resulted from the infestation. Through the mountain pine beetle action plan, we have committed to invest almost half a billion dollars to fight this menace. Locally Thompson Rivers University is on the front line of this battle, recently receiving nearly $380,000 in funding from our Forest Investment Account's forest science program to conduct six research projects. Not only is this assisting in finding solutions to the pine beetle problem. It is also helping students by giving hands-on experience, furthering their skills.

I would be remiss, too, if I didn't talk for just a moment about how important mining has become again to the interior and especially to the area in which I live. Mining is now becoming the economic engine it used to be after almost being shut down by the previous government. Record dollars are being spent on exploration, and mining will play a very important part in our economy in the next few years as we see the results of the beetle kill and its effect on the annual allowable cut in forestry. I know many people in our area earn their living from mining. It was great to attend their conference here the other day and see a great number of them.

I would like now to speak about some of the accomplishments in the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance. From my viewpoint as the minister, this year's budget has brought forward many positive developments for the ministry and the people it helps every day, including enhancing income assistance rates.

Before I touch on the specifics, I think it would be judicious to talk about how we arrived at this point. One of British Columbia's many recent success stories has been the movement of people from income assistance to jobs. Five years ago there were over a quarter of a million people in our province who were reliant on income assistance. This number, as I hope everyone can agree, was very troubling — far too many.

Welfare was, unfortunately, a trap that was difficult to escape and an unwanted way of life. While most longed to find work, become self-reliant and support their families, unemployment was high and jobs were scarce. Thanks to good fiscal management, our financial house is in order. Today there are over 350,000 more jobs in B.C. than there were in December 2001. To look at this number in another way, B.C. has seen more jobs created in just five years than there are people who live in the Greater Victoria region.

Last month Statistics Canada reported that there were 32,000 jobs created in British Columbia in December alone, and our unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent provincewide, tying a 30-year low. But as I said a little earlier, Kamloops is even lower than this.

Since December 2001 B.C.'s overall unemployment rate has fallen by 5.7 percentage points. People from across Canada and even the world are moving to our province in order to take advantage of our economic turnaround. These are great and undeniable successes, and for the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance, the news is very positive. Compared to June 2001, about 115,000 fewer British Columbians are dependent on income assistance, a decrease of approximately 45 percent in just under six years.

These facts are undeniable proof that our province's efforts in helping people escape the welfare rolls and find full-time jobs are working. As a former United States President once said: "We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added."

With more people working and paying taxes, businesses opening up and investment confidence at record highs, our province is experiencing record revenues. The result of this is that we are now in the financial position to make sure everyone benefits from this economic turnaround, including British Columbians most in need.

This year's budget is great news for families, children and employable singles who are on income assistance, ensuring everyone gains from a strong economy. First, we're boosting the maximum shelter rates by $50 a month for all clients, giving employable singles, couples and single-parent families the highest shelter rate in Canada.

Second, we wanted to increase rates for families and children, and we've done just that with increases ranging from $97 to well over $200 a month, depending on the number of children.

Third, we've raised the total rates for employable singles by $100, or 20 percent, to $610 a month, giving them the second-highest rate in Canada.

These increases will take effect in April of this year and will be reflected on the clients' March 28,

2007, payments. They're expected to cost $188 million until the end of the 2009-2010 fiscal year, with $58.1 million allocated for 2007-2008. Our new rate structure also takes into account all the other provincial and federal tax credits, child supports, family bonuses and numerous programs and supports that low-income families and families on income assistance are eligible for.

In addition, effective June 1, 2007, standardized payments will be made to approximately 5,000 clients residing in Community Living B.C. facilities. With these standardized payments, all clients in Community Living B.C. facilities will be provided with the maximum monthly disability rate, giving them $190 per month for personal expenses.

On top of this, a new transportation supplement is available for clients requiring travel to a drug or alcohol treatment facility, and increases are being made to the diabetic diet supplement, raising it by $20 to $35, and to the guide animals supplement, boosting it from $62 to $95 per month.

This government has taken a balanced approach in setting the new rates and enhancing levels of support, a realistic undertaking between what is fair to our clients and what is fair to working British Columbians — increases that are reasonable and are geared towards families, children and individuals who need the assistance most.

While we are pleased that our province is in a financial position to increase rates, I would like to remind British Columbians that for those able to work, welfare is a hand up, not a handout. The best social assistance program is still a job.

I should add in here that those expected to work, the employables on our rolls, spend an average of only four months on our rolls. That's an interesting statistic that most people are not aware of. Four months is usually what they spend.

To help people find work, we're investing some $70 million on employment programs. One of these is the new $35 million B.C. employment program that was launched last July, providing income assistance clients with individualized services and support. Another is the $7.5 million community assistance program that provides approximately 5,000 multibarriered clients each year with services to improve their quality of life and strengthen supports within their communities.

Persons with disabilities. Equally important is to build the best system of supports for those in need, and this includes persons with disabilities. As we've seen significant progress over the past year in achieving this goal, on top of proclaiming December 2006 as Persons with Disabilities Month, I am very pleased with two initiatives that have been developed by the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance.

Our governmentwide disability strategy builds upon the solid foundation of supports the government has in place for people with disabilities. Today we are investing more than $4 billion annually on programs and services for British Columbians with disabilities, and we want to ensure that they can access them when and where they are needed.

Last October I had the pleasure to launch our 10 by 10 Challenge with Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan. Another goal that is important to me is to increase the accessibility and inclusiveness to our communities for persons with disabilities. The goal of the 10 by 10 Challenge is to increase the employment of people with disabilities by 10 percent by 2010.

When the challenge was announced, there were approximately 132,000 persons with disabilities employed in B.C. We want to boost that number to 145,000 in three years. So many people with disabilities have tremendous talent and skill to offer their communities and local economies. These people want to work. They are able, willing and eager to work, even if it's only on a part-time basis.

There are currently 300,000 working-age people with disabilities in British Columbia. Some 34,000 have college diplomas, 30,000 have trade certificates, and 28,000 have university degrees. Yet only 44 percent of them are employed. That's not good enough.

With the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games and B.C.'s current economy the strongest it's been in decades, there have never been better opportunities for all British Columbians to fully participate in the workforce. I hope all of my colleagues on both sides of the House are fully supportive of this initiative and promote it in their constituencies.

Again, I just want to emphasize the importance of the 10 by 10 initiative that we have. It was taken up very vigorously by the mayors throughout the entire province, and they are getting behind this for us to increase the number of disabled people working.

Before I go on, I just want to make a quick mention of the overwhelming success of our Quit Smoking Now pilot project, launched in January to help income assistance clients give up smoking. Within days of being announced, thousands of people had called and volunteered for the program, which provides free nicotine replacement therapy — skin patches or gum — for three months.

The real winners of this program, though, will be the children. They will be able to live in a smoke-free environment, and their parents will have more money to put food on the table. I know all of us want to see a healthier British Columbia, and by encouraging as many people as possible to quit smoking, we can accomplish this.

I want to touch briefly on education because it is a priority in all constituencies, and it is the ticket to future success. This past year we saw the funding of 200 new post-secondary seats at Thompson Rivers University. Kamloops-Thompson school district 73 saw almost $113 million in operating funds for the current school year, up from $109 million last year despite declining enrolment.

For the future, the news for education continues to be good. Total per-student funding will rise to an estimated $7,900 per student, a new record and an increase of over 4 percent over this year's number. Our government will do even more to access post-secondary

education and trades training opportunities throughout the province, ensuring British Columbia has a well-trained workforce for the future. This includes $135 million over three years to support the creation of 7,000 additional apprenticeship spaces, 25,000 new post-secondary spaces and 2,500 new graduate spaces.

Just a few comments, Madam Speaker, about health care. As we look to the future, nothing is more important than the investment we make in our health care system. Building on the opening of the $17 million, 44-bed Hillside Centre — the second of two new, state-of-the-art mental health facilities built on the grounds of Royal Inland Hospital — health received a further shot in the arm in the budget.

Currently 42 percent of all government spending is directed towards health care, and over the next three years we will invest an additional $2.69 billion towards this most vital service. This new funding is in addition to the $987 million previously allocated, marking a total increase of $3.68 billion. In 2001 the health care budget was just over $8 billion. By the end of this year's budget, it will increase to $13.1 billion. That's an increase of 7.3 percent.

The $100 million health innovation fund will promote innovation within the health care system. The fund will assist health authorities in implementing best practices, restructuring service delivery systems and eliminating key information bottlenecks. But money alone will not fix this problem. We need to look at other methods, including preventive health and alternate forms of treatment, to make sure our children and grandchildren will have access to publicly funded health care in years to come.

This is why the Conversation on Health is so important. While the prognosis for the health of our economy is outstanding, we must always pay attention to the well-being of our universal health care system. A few weeks ago the Conversation on Health kicked off the first of its 16 provincewide public forums in Kamloops. There are those, including some in this House, who do not want us to talk to the citizens of British Columbia. In Kamloops there was a demonstration outside of those who didn't think we should be talking to our constituents about health care.

But 100 participants, representing a cross-section of the Kamloops region, came together to discuss the future of this, our most cherished component of our social safety net. I know the Minister of Health, who attended in Kamloops, was impressed by the thoughts and suggestions that were put forth by the people. All of us here are aware of the necessity and importance of our health care system, and we know it is going to have to evolve to meet the challenges of tomorrow. With our aging population, it is more important than ever to plan ahead and make the necessary and long-term investments needed to sustain the system for all British Columbians.

In December the Premier's Council on Aging and Seniors Issues submitted their report to the Premier, and I am very pleased to see that some of their recommendations are already being implemented. As announced in the throne speech, our government will introduce legislation to abolish mandatory retirement. This is a very important step forward as people 65 and older currently face a form of discrimination based on their age. This is patently wrong and forces many people out of the workforce against their will. Now 65 years of age is no longer considered old, and people in today's contemporary society are productive well beyond this age.

As my colleague from North Vancouver–Lonsdale said in the Legislature: "…65 is just a number. People are not like a quart of milk. There is no best-before date. Someone does not become disposable because the calendar flips."

We on this side of the House believe that people should be free to make their own decisions. If they wish to retire at 55 or younger or keep on working past 65, that should be their decision, not one made for them by government.

Another budget highlight, without question, is the housing legacy. When I read through everything that we're doing in housing, I find it hard to believe that there are people here who are not in favour of what we're doing in housing and say that we're not doing enough. I'm not going to go into all of the items in housing, but the expansion of the rental assistance program is great news for those who have left income assistance for jobs. By increasing the income threshold to $28,000, more working families than ever before will receive help with their housing, leaving more money in their pockets to spend on other items such as food, clothing and entertainment.

It happens right now, Madam Speaker, where they live. We don't have to wait to build housing. Thousands more people will be better off and spending less money on their shelter than they were before, and they will be able to spend that money on their families.

I was also pleased to see the threshold raised for first-time homebuyers — increased by $110,000 to $375,000. It could save first-time homebuyers up to $5,500, and that's a real boost to people. At $375,000 it covers the greatest percentage of homes, especially in the interior.

I can see that my speaking time is nearly up. I appreciate the opportunity to speak once again in the House to the people, especially in my constituency, and I thank them for the privilege of being here to represent them. This is a very forward-looking budget, and that's why I will be supporting it.

G. Gentner: I rise to address what is a falsehood, as seen as the "balanced budget." Hon. Speaker, I'm proud to represent my constituency of Delta North, and I'm proud to stand before you on their behalf.

However, most of my constituency members are angry today. In fact, they're outraged with the direction this government is going as outlined in the budget relative to, of course, the hypocrisy that was also outlined in the throne speech.

My constituency exists not just of 50,000 people. My constituency is Delta itself. It's the Fraser estuary, it's the river, it's farmland, it's Burns Bog, it's a habitat, and it's a vital jewel in the lower mainland.

I remember years ago I attended a public hearing in Delta, and the council of the day were suggesting a need to develop what was known back then as the southlands. There was a councillor who stood up and sort of made a passing remark to some of the environmentalists and the farming advocates and said, "Well, you know, birds can't vote. So go ahead. Go ahead."

The consequence of that, of course, was that pro-development council was thrown out of office for good reason. A balanced budget looks at the bottom line — the triple bottom line. It looks at the social consequences as well as the environmental impacts.

There was a strategy put in place in the early '90s, and it came forward from the GVRD, which worked tirelessly towards a livable region strategic plan that came forward in 1996. "Greater Vancouver can become the first urban region in the world to combine in one place the things which humanity aspires on a global basis, a place where human activities enhance rather than degrade the natural environment."

When you look at this budget, degradation is exactly where this government is going in how it's going to deal with land use in the lower mainland. It goes on to say: "…where the quality of the built environment approaches that of the natural setting" — again, look at the budget and see what the Ministry of Transportation has for my community — "…where people control the destiny of their community."

Again, when you look at the heavy-handedness of the government and how it treats local government, it is clear where this budget is going. Certainly, it isn't one of consultation.

When you compare the budget to the throne speech, they're certainly at opposite poles of each other. There is theory, as derived through the throne speech, versus the practice. In the throne speech they talked about the need for climate change — but a budget that's very hypocritical.

My community is going to have as much severe impact as some would say, possibly, what Site C might be doing to that community up north. I hope, not only for my constituents but for all British Columbians, to fully understand the type of destruction that is underway in my community of Delta.

When you look the globalization, it all starts at one place. All things start at the port. We hear all the accolades about the Pacific gateway and the provincial gateway and how the wonderful trade is going to enhance our lives. Well, trade is not a commodity. We are very vulnerable in the global community. If you read the Bloomberg report, Canadian stocks fell the most they have in eight weeks after a huge overnight slump in the Canadian stock market. That has raised concern that demand for commodities may slow in the world's fastest-growing major economy — the Chinese economy, which is driving the Gateway program.

Companies and financial experts are saying: "Don't panic. Don't move your assets into bonds yet. Let's give it a day or two." Hot off the press: "Chinese stocks tumble the most in ten years after the government approved a special task force to clamp down on illegal share offerings. The index dropped 9.2 percent, wiping out $100 billion from a stock market that doubled in the past year."

That's how vulnerable we are. We can put all your money into these assets to build this infrastructure, to bring on the trade, but when you're dealing with globalized trade, it can change in a flicker.

The government has been sort of mute on the point that there's going to be a merging of the ports, something that the throne speech talked about briefly — about gateway and the same with that of the global economy, the Asia-Pacific. The merging of ports, of course, is a derivative of the globalized approach of this government. The merging of the ports, however, doesn't address at all the local interests of communities that are wondering what type of influence they're going to have when you have this consolidation of interests on one megaport. That's lost.

We know why the port is being merged — namely, because the Vancouver Port Authority is looking for more land from the Fraser Port Authority. Of course, one of the big reasons given is the need for efficiencies. But if there were efficiencies put together and we were able to put those ports together and make it work…. I don't necessarily believe you have to put $1.3 billion in a South Fraser perimeter road if you're going to make sure those ports work.

What is being suggested through this budget is something that is not sustainable, because what it's going to do is wipe out the farmland in the lower mainland. It's going to wipe out Burns Bog, contrary to what members opposite say — that it won't. It's going to impact the Fraser River, the most important salmon-bearing river in North America if not the world. Close your eyes for a moment and think for a second that all that we have fought for when it comes to land, land use planning, will be wiped out by the avaricious nature of the government opposite.

We can talk about the development on Roberts Bank and the expansion. But you know, one thing we don't really look at — never really considered — in the environmental assessment process is: what's the impact of climate change? After all, that's what the throne speech was all about, and of course, the budget never addressed it.

Well, climate change means ocean levels are going to rise, and with the port expansion already destroying the habitat, the mud flats and marshlands are going to be wiped out in 50 years. There won't be a Roberts Bank. The estuary, the delta ecosystem itself, is going to be heavily impacted by climate change, yet this government has put nothing in the budget to see how it's going to impact my community.

The government talks at great length about the port and how we're going to change all the horrible emissions by, as we know, the year 2015. Particulate will be the number-one concern of air emissions in the lower mainland. It has mentioned a green plan — but again, nothing in the budget on how we're going to deal with the port air emissions.

The Environment Minister talked on the Bill Good Show recently. He talked about electrification, how we're going to hook up the ships to AC or DC. Yet the Port of Seattle has a program of cold ironing, which has greatly reduced ship emissions while in port for some time. This is our competition.

Moreover, the use of off-peak weekend power enabled Seattle City Light to offer favourable rates, which makes the project economically feasible. The total cost of the project was $2 million, including half a million dollars per ship to connect each vessel to electric power ashore. The project will reduce 1,400 metric tonnes of fuel use over a summer cruise season. But here, hon. Speaker — not a dime.

We keep hearing about the studies that are underway, but there are no viable results in the budget. When you take under consideration the makeup of international shipping — whether they be ships from Liberia or from China — are we seriously going to work with our federal government and liaise a deal with international shipping companies to ensure that they hook up to electrification? I don't think so.

I think it's hypocrisy — in order for a throne speech that says you might do it, where a budget clearly has no vision at all — to take to the forefront what California ports have been doing now for five years relative to the reduction of sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides, up to a 92-percent decrease.

The Port of Long Beach has enacted a comprehensive air-quality improvement plan to achieve measurable long-term reductions in air-quality emissions from port operation, in particular diesel particulate matter. Here we hear talk, no action. The Port of Long Beach, our major competitor, and its tenants have cut nearly 600 tonnes of NOx per year and 70 tonnes of particulate per year. More than 600 pieces of cargo-handling equipment have been retrofitted with diesel oxidation catalysts at seven container terminals.

The Port of Los Angeles, another competitor for containers. Back in 2001 Mayor James Hahn called for no net increase in air emissions at the port, and they have succeeded. Alternate maritime power is one result of this groundbreaking effort to reduce emissions at the port. Alternate marine power ships plug into shoreside electrical power, which is literally an alternative power source for marine vessels.

While cold ironing has been used for naval ships, ferries, assisted tugboats and some Alaskan cruise ships, the Port of Los Angeles is the first port in the world to use AMP technology for service container ships. Where in the budget do you see that type of inspiration and type of leadership? It's not there.

San Pedro Bay terminals — they too have been innovative. They've looked at changing night runs for trucks, targeting 40 percent of their truck shifts for truckers to work at night and for warehouses to stay open on non-residential impacted roads. Food for thought — but again, hon. Speaker, empty words from the members opposite.

Where else is this taking my community — the Vancouver Port Authority? More noise, more light, more pollution. Quite recently, poor little Delta has been trying in desperation to address this onslaught of container trucks. They came forward with a new bylaw to separate the containers from its very rich industrial land. It did so mainly because of the erosion of its industrial tax base and the ability to plan where the trucks can go through its community.

On December 3, 2006, after two years of consultation with the business community, the municipality passed its third reading. The purpose was to flag containers in the industrial zones where containers were taking up the valuable service lots.

Unfortunately, however, this bylaw went to the Ministry of Transportation, and the ministry stepped in and used the unthinkable section 52(3) of the Transportation Act and refused to sign off on the bylaw. Imagine that. Here is a community undergoing huge changes because of globalization, the plans by this government, yet this government will not even work with a local government that's going to be severely impacted.

Section 52(3) is an obscure section that allows the government to intrude on municipal authority. Any zoning in relation to land within 800 metres — not feet — from a highway or provincially funded road can be stopped, and that is what this government has done. In its heavy-handedness it has said to Delta: "We know best. We're industrializing you. We're saying to heck with the farmland, we're saying to heck with Burns Bog, and we're going to run a freeway right along the Fraser River."

I want to briefly talk about Burns Bog. Here we have a carbon sink that scrubs the atmospheric carbon; it stores it. What's this government doing? It's going to put a freeway on the transition zones of Burns Bog, on the South Fraser perimeter road. It's going to impact the hydrology, which is going to destabilize the ecology in such a way that the nutrient level is going to increase. By doing so, of course, you're going to see very fragile fauna completely dissipate. That's a shame, because many members of this House on both sides, many members of organizations and, of course, Delta and the GVRD worked tirelessly to save Burns Bog.

South Fraser perimeter road — 200 homes in my community are going to be expropriated. Many members of my community are livid. They're irate with the lack of consultation of this government and its inability to look at the larger picture, look at all options, look at sustainability. They're fuming at the notion of not two lanes but four lanes and shoulders along the fragile ecosystem itself, along the riparian habitat — namely, the Fraser River — more air pollution, more noise pollution and bulldozing internationally recognized heritage sites. Seven ravines that are fish-bearing streams are going to be totally compromised. Tree lines along the Fraser riverbank, gone; shade that provides important features for species, wiped out. Erosion — therefore concreted slopes. Talk about a vista there. What an eyesore this government is giving to Delta.

There are options, but this government won't listen to them. The council of this day has asked to maybe look at a snowshed approach to cover it up. There's a Surrey diagonal to take some of the load off. Some members of my community are actually suggesting a tunnel, but they're riled at the point that this government won't listen, won't even consider options. It's got its blinders on, and it's paving. It's paving the lower mainland. It's gone. It's all earmarked. You can read about it — fast-breaking news in the budget.

Now, of course, there is a vision. There is a way. We can look at sustainability through the merging of the ports, if we are able to somehow coalesce the movements of shipping up the river rather than putting it on flat decks at a cost of close to $1.3 billion — the South Fraser perimeter road. We've got to say to the people up in northern British Columbia, most of whom agree, that expansion at Prince Rupert is needed and necessary and has to be done very soon indeed.

That is planning. That is planning not only for the lower mainland, not only for those up north, but for British Columbia as a whole. It also means intermodal yards placed up in Prince George and Kamloops to take that container traffic away from sensitive areas in the lower mainland, areas where industrial land is worth close to a million dollars per acre. But this government has no vision. It has no plan.

This government's ultimate plan is to destroy the agricultural land reserve. Make no bones about it; that's where we're going. Ex-Premier Dave Barrett said: "If it had not been for the agricultural land reserve, Vancouver today would be a bloody mess." He's right. There are urban areas all over North America looking in envy at what we have in this province. The one that surrounds Portland, Oregon, was adopted by the agricultural land reserve here in British Columbia.

There'd be no farmland left if there was no agricultural land in Delta. There'd be no farmland left in Langley or Abbotsford. The Fraser Valley would be a freeway on top of a freeway on top of a freeway. Urban sprawl would be everywhere. Think about it. We'd truly then have Liberal utopia. It'd be a bloody mess. That's right — a brave new world made of the automobile with many more Wendy's takeouts and Styrofoam containers everywhere thrown right out the window. I know, hon. Speaker. I've been to Orlando, Florida, and I've seen the tolls on every freeway — a tollbooth every two miles to pay for all the concrete.

Think about it. For all the urbanites living downtown, it wouldn't be the downtown you know today. It would have a major freeway through it. There'd be no critical mass because housing would be sprawled all the way up the valley. That's how vitally important the agricultural land reserve is. It's been part of our culture for over 30 years, and now we are seeing this government destroy it.

We wouldn't see bistros or boutiques on Robson. There'd be no critical mass. There wouldn't be condos. We'd have big boxes way outside the core with people in automobiles driving to and from. Do you think there would be a great demand for housing in False Creek? False Creek wouldn't be what it is today.

The containment of urban sprawl in this province, particularly in the lower mainland, is directly related to the fact that we have protected that land through the agricultural land reserve. Perhaps we may not even have a B.C. Place. We may have something called the Phil Gagliardi memorial stadium way up in Abbotsford. Get in your car and drive up there.

The Minister of Transportation would have his heyday over there. He would be like a kid in a sandbox playing with Tonka trucks. Boy, oh boy. Engineers would be knighted around this province. He'd be so excited that he wouldn't even be able to contain himself. The Fraser Valley would be one big drive-through, and every ministry official would drive a big eight-cylinder car with big fins and plush leopard-skin upholstery and long horns on the hood. Yep, this is the world. It's Liberal utopia. That is what this government believes in, because we would not have the ALR.

Urban sprawl does not just impact the need for more freeways, but it also stretches infrastructure. Major waterlines and sewer trunks would have to run up the valley to treat all this urban sprawl.

New watersheds. The cost saving because of the agricultural land reserve is enormous. If Vancouver had grown like Seattle the last decade, the data suggest it would have converted approximately 18,000 additional acres — an area equivalent to about 1/8 of the agricultural land reserve within the Greater Vancouver area, or about 4/5 the size of Burnaby — to sprawling suburbanite development.

I know that some of the Minister of Transportation's developer friends are elated with Liberal utopia. And the Transportation Ministry would be blissful. It's a destructive ministry that thrives on congestion, that wants to widen all the freeways. This will, in the words of the Livable Region Coalition, likely transfer the region in the foreseeable future into sprawling, low-density, automobile-dependent urban agglomeration.

Now, the agricultural land reserve has also been the basis of what's known as the green zone, which currently constrains sprawl in the lower mainland. It's one of the four pillars that make up the livable region strategic plan passed under the previous leadership of a mayor who is now the Premier. The green zone, which is now going to be wiped out in Delta when the land's taken out of the ALR — a thousand acres…. Some 220 acres will be out to supply the purpose of the South Fraser perimeter road. Gone. The most arable land in the world — gone.

This government doesn't care. They think that through their globalization and…. You know, maybe the so-called business friends across the way…. They should maybe take a look at Bloomberg today and just see what's going on out there. Put all that money into the infrastructure without fully understanding where the world economy is going.

I believe, with all due respect, that most Vancouverites don't generally appreciate the agricultural land reserve.

But, you know, hon. Speaker, the rest of the world does. Most recently, the plan was chosen from more than 500 submissions as the one that demonstrated best practices, improved the living environment, at the prestigious 2002 Dubai international awards.

My community is exasperated. It's offended and enraged by what is happening. The impacts that are happening through this budget hit my community more than any other community in the province. The amount of transformation and change that's going to happen in my community is appalling. There is no triple bottom line, and there is no sense of sustainable development.

There is some good news here. At the recent Liberal convention in Whistler, the delegates rejected a motion that called for the land commission to be modernized so that local municipalities could more easily move lands for other uses. Now maybe the rank-and-file members of the party over there are saying that maybe the ALR is a good thing, but this cabinet has different plans altogether.

Regardless, it would be close to tragic to see the lower mainland, which was a pioneer 30 years ago, reverse course just as the rest of the world is trying to catch up to us. We have a productive, secure agricultural land base in British Columbia which is vital to our ability to maintain agriculture as a viable industry, to secure our food supply and to act as an urban containment boundary. We understand that on this side. We understand how vitally important it is.

Hon. Speaker, I realize my time is coming to a close. I want to conclude by saying that this budget should be known as the "scorched earth" British Columbia budget — a promise of a throne speech, a false hope, followed by a deluge of environmental obliteration. For my community, indeed the Fraser delta itself, this government is involved in a process of decay, of ruin and of destruction. Nothing so insidious, so utterly revolting and completely base, what this ruthless assault on everything this province holds dear…. That is what this budget speaks about.

This gluttonous devouring of the Fraser River ecosystem…. The delta, the estuary, the farmland, the most important salmon-bearing river in North America are threatened by nothing more than an army of — I don't know what to call them — beasts, Teutonic-like thugs marching through marshlands, bogs and farmland — thugs who are so vile and on a vile mission to assault my community, our province and our planet. My community is outraged with this budget.

V. Roddick: Thank you for that clarification, Madam Speaker. The member opposite seems to forget that he's supposed to be representing Delta North and is not still a council member.

Our country was built on trade — world trade — and I'd be interested to know where the clothes on your back actually came from.

Our throne speech is a plan. We are not a knee-jerk government, as the NDP were for ten years. We work with the federal government, and one of our golden goals is for the best air quality and water quality ever. For the record also, the local business community via the Delta Chamber of Commerce did not support the container bylaw, and the ALR without a doubt has support both in the lower mainland and throughout the province.

It is an honour and a privilege to stand and represent my community. Delta South is one of the major gateways not only to our province but to Canada as a whole and beyond. Delta South still manages to be a community in the true sense of the word. Ladner was a precursor of today's multicultural and multi-ethnic society. The small village boasted an aboriginal population as well as Caucasian, Chinese and Japanese employed in the canneries and boat-building and repairs and fishing and farming, as well as sundry other entrepreneurial business ventures.

Descendants of these pioneer families continue to thrive in Delta South today. They and hardy newcomers are staunchly committed to maintaining and enhancing our forefathers' vision in a beautiful — actually, a spectacular — place to live.

I've pounded this podium on several basic issues over the last seven years. Many of these issues will have decisions made during this term of office.

Health care in our community now includes our unique local liaison group, Delta Healthcare Association, which keeps Fraser Health Authority abreast of our community issues and allows us to discuss what fundamental changes we must make to improve our health and to protect our precious public health system for the long term.

The Delta Healthcare Association, in conjunction with the Fraser Health Authority, held a hugely successful health fair last October, attended by over 800 people and opened by the new Minister of State for ActNow B.C.. And they are now planning a local conversation on health to support the provincial Conversation on Health because of the pressures we are facing in the health care system, which continue to escalate.

Your government will continue to listen and learn from British Columbians and to innovate and explore new ways of delivering better health services. This will not be easy, and it won't be without controversy and change. Actually, the most effective health promotion strategies we have discovered to date are education and individual action, such as the school fruit and

veggie snack program, which is in 50 schools this year and will be in every public school by 2010.

The ActNow B.C. program is making progress in fostering greater physical activity, healthier eating habits and tobacco reduction. Ag in the Classroom is putting agriculture back in the curriculum. The Action Schools B.C. program is spreading into our classrooms across the province to promote healthy living among our students. The Select Standing Committee on Health reports, the current one and the 2005 one, both encourage us to take charge of ourselves and our individual health.

We have initialled a treaty with the Tsawwassen First Nation and are in ratification mode. It is anticipated that this will be the first urban treaty signed in B.C. British Columbia is determined to take Canada and walk the path together with lasting reconciliation.

While there are serious concerns arising from the removal of land from the agricultural land reserve, we must remember that all communities have used agricultural land to expand and grow over the centuries. This aspect is nothing new. What is new is that we in the Fraser Valley, our province's food basket, are facing the loss of critical land mass, the ability to rotate our crops as well as the loss of bird habitat for the Pacific joint flyway.

We need to think outside the box to find solutions. How do we replace lost land and enhance bird habitat? Believe it or not, I actually have a suggestion, as opposed to the member opposite, on how to tackle this, which I will mention later on.

In my 2006 throne speech I pushed for the reinstatement of the original Delta Port liaison committee to assist in addressing local concerns. We need to work together because we want sustainable, vibrant, creative communities that live in balance with the natural amenities that make Delta so special.

I am delighted to announce that the Vancouver Port Authority as well as the corporation of Delta are working to relaunch the liaison committee this spring. The liaison committee can also work with those involved with the merger of Vancouver and Fraser port authorities.

We have in Delta three respected proponents of the port merger that our member opposite was so concerned about: Peter Podovinikoff, former CEO of Envision Credit Union and current chair of the Fraser Port Authority board of directors; Allan Baydala, president and CEO of the North Fraser Port Authority and chair of the B.C. AIM Consortium and tourism and communities organization — lives in Ladner; and Allen Domaas, president and CEO of the Fraser Port Authority. They are recognized, valued and respected for their background experience and local knowledge of the community.

I believe that the port merger can benefit not only Delta and the Fraser River but also the province and the country. We can turn the port merger into a positive, with Delta on the receiving end of much-needed infrastructure, environmental and cultural amenities, etc. We can say to the world that our community has found a way to incorporate and reconcile the advantages of small town, rural living with our global responsibilities.

A merger will make it easier for us to communicate effectively, with one agency rather than three. One authority will work to our advantage dealing with the debris trap and dredging.

We need to accept our responsibility to be part of a community greater than Delta, which leads me to agriculture. Exactly a year ago Planning for the Future — Growing B.C. Agriculture was launched at the Pacific agricultural fair in Abbotsford. The agricultural plan will go a long way to ensure that B.C. leads the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness; leads the world in sustainable environmental management, with the best air and water quality and the best fisheries management; and the creation of more jobs per capita than anywhere else in Canada.

The MLA group has travelled the province listening to every level of the agriculture industry. It has been fascinating, enlightening and encouraging. That doesn't mean that there's a silver bullet to resolve all the complex issues facing our sustainable food supply, but I do feel people are listening, participating and, above all, are actually interested in where their food comes from.

We must tackle our growing urban-rural agricultural divide. Become involved. Agriculture is our only sustainable natural resource. It is our key to the future because we and our wildlife still have to eat to live.

It is also imperative that the Gateway program not only listens but hears our community's concerns. The general public is trying its level best to be heard and understood. We are hard-working citizens who pay taxes so that the publicly funded entities can hold hearings and make decisions that affect all our lives. Our message must be heard. As taxpayers and citizens, we deserve no less.

Over the past year there's been a decision made on the South Fraser perimeter road, south of Highway 99, proposed as one of the possible routes 12 years ago by the Delta Farmers' Institute. It is to follow the railway track, hook into Boundary Bay Airport and attach to Highway 99 at approximately 72nd.

We need to start phase 1 now — immediately. Delta South is being throttled by traffic. Let's get busy here and have phase 1 up and running by 2010. It can be done. It must be done.

Vancouver made the decision not to have freeways running through it like Seattle, so Vancouver must as a result not ignore its responsibility to the outlying areas for absorbing the movement of goods and services. We need collective help here. Let's get together. Let's get started. Phase 1 will work.

Delta South is a community with many challenges and much potential. We have it all — Burns Bog, thanks to our government; Boundary Bay; unique urban spaces; historical village; agriculture, marine and industrial areas. We have much to protect and share with the rest of B.C.

Delta South is faced with a number of multi-jurisdictional and contentious issues, but let us be the doorway, for heaven's sake, not the doormat of the province. We must develop a plan for the people who

live in Delta South, not one for those who simply drive through it on the way to somewhere else.

British Columbians' tax dollars paid to build the St. Lawrence Seaway 50 years ago. Those investments consolidated Canada's place as the Atlantic's primary entrance to the heart of North America. All Canadians benefited. It's time for Canada to make the same commitment and seize the opportunity for its Pacific gateway. The potential for mutual benefit is enormous.

After the last election I said I looked forward to the opportunity for the B.C. Liberal government and the municipality of Delta to forge a new relationship that could address local concerns in a positive, constructive manner that would benefit everyone. This relationship would also need to include input from the two Delta MPs, both Delta MLAs, mayor and council, and the Tsawwassen First Nation.

To represent Delta effectively, Jim Lornie, former mayor of Campbell River, has been working as a mediator-facilitator to bring the sides together to create a workable formula for successful resolutions to Delta concerns. I'm pleased to report that baby steps have been taken in this direction, and baby steps inevitably lead to full-grown adult steps. A multilevel government presentation to Delta council was held in January, and a town hall meeting in North Delta is in the planning stages. We will follow up at one of Delta council's Monday workshops when schedules permit.

With the enormous challenges facing the doorway community of Delta South, this is a very positive achievement to help us plan for the future and to develop a big picture approach to problem-solving. We must not be afraid to look for solutions beyond borders, beyond party lines. The strength of our province has always been the strength of its people as leaders, builders, innovators, risk-takers and pioneers of opportunity.

As I mentioned earlier, there is an opportunity to work at increasing our local supply of agricultural land. Like most solutions, there is no quick fix. We need to partner with the DFO, the David Suzuki Foundation, the land trust and the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust, to name just a few.

Our migratory birds, which are part of the Pacific joint flyway, are smart cookies. They recognize the farmers' fields as first-class restaurants, and now much prefer them over the ever-increasing local marshlands. Sea Island, Lulu Island and Westham Island are all man-made. Our pioneers built dikes to create the farmland that exists today. Why don't we take another look at that original plan? Can we all work together to grow and enhance our bird and fish habitat and at the same time build up our agricultural land, as well as planning for global warming and rising sea levels?

To borrow a phrase from a constituent, there has to be a better way. Investment in our infrastructure development is critical. Careful and thoughtful planning, combined with cutting-edge technology, leads to a much cleaner environment. This province is in the forefront; we are leaders. We do what we say we're going to do. We have labour peace, the lowest unemployment and the best employment for women and youth, ever.

There is nothing to gain in this world by being negative, destructive or pessimistic. We need to be optimistic, positive builders who have confidence in our province and its people. The golden decade of opportunity indeed lies ahead, because we do have a better way as laid out in the most progressive throne speech of February 13, '07, and the budget speech of February 20, '07. We can find the resolve to ask more of ourselves than we demand of others, to lead Canada in partnership with first nations, to tackle challenges of global warming and unplanned urban sprawl, to increase affordable housing, to reduce homelessness and to help those who cannot help themselves.

We can improve quality, choice and accountability in our two most important public services — education and health care — to open up Canada's Pacific gateway and strengthen our economic competitiveness. These are the elements of the Pacific leadership agenda. British Columbia is taking the lead in Canada. We designed a foundation in the throne speech to build a workable plan for the province, a climate action team, a citizens' conservation council, plus 33 achievable global warming initiatives. It's bold; it's courageous.

Climate should not be a partisan issue. It's up to all of us. Work together, and we will succeed. So later this spring your government will invite all Pacific coast governors and their key cabinet members to British Columbia to forge a new Pacific coast collaborative that extends from Alaska to California.

A new, unified B.C. green building code will be developed over the next year with industry, professional and community representatives.

The cost of climate change is directly related to our consumption. For our goals to be met, citizens must take primary responsibility and make choices that reflect their values.

The challenges of housing, homelessness, addictions and mental health require us to rethink the actions of a generation. New approaches are needed. Your government believes municipal governments with populations greater than 25,000 should identify and zone appropriate sites for supportive housing and treatment facilities for persons with mental illness and addictions in official community plans by 2008.

Urban sprawl puts huge pressures on our limited land base and increases servicing costs for property tax payers for new roads, bridges and rapid transit, for sewage and water services, and for increased energy and transmissions. Working with the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the private sector, the government will develop new incentives to encourage smaller lot sizes and smaller, more efficient homes that use less land, less energy, less water and are less expensive to own. Our communities should be places where children are cared for and are safe.

I recently met with a student from the UBC Alma Mater Society, and we discussed several current

concerns and issues, which also included Campus 2020, which will help us shape the vision of B.C.'s post-secondary system for years to come. We are listening. We're acting on all levels of our education system.

Up to 80 StrongStart centres will open in underutilized school spaces over the next year. The new ReadNow B.C. program will provide $27 million in initial funding to help British Columbians improve their reading skills. More choice and flexibility will be encouraged to better meet student needs. The graduation portfolio standard will be simplified. The British Columbia School Superintendents Association read a letter supporting what we had in our throne speech and our budget.

Provincial schools will offer new choices in curricula, new course content and new demonstration schools better tailored to unique student needs. The government will unleash our Pacific promise as a budding powerhouse of clean, renewable energy; profitable, sustainable forestry; world-leading technology; high-quality manufacturing; value-added agricultural products; award-winning wines; world-class mineral deposits; and superb tourism destinations.

We've signed TILMA — the trade, investment and labour mobility agreement — with Alberta to serve not just our two provinces but Canada as a whole. It's high time we dealt with interprovincial barriers.

In the balanced budget of 2007 there are many important themes, starting with housing, but I would like to touch on items that are hugely helpful at the street level, especially in my community. There are 13 of them — a baker's dozen, if you will.

First and foremost, a 10-percent reduction in provincial income tax to help every taxpayer. Managing the cost of today's living, Budget 2007 cuts personal income taxes by 10 percent on the first $100,000 of income, and that's on top of 25 percent in 2001 — because tax cuts really do work.

A refund of provincial sales tax will be available to a registered charity or eligible hospital auxiliary on medical equipment purchased on or after February 7. This is marvelous. It's something that our local hospital auxiliary, under Elaine Canning, and the provincial hospital auxiliary association have been lobbying for, for several years.

An excellent presentation was made to the provincial Finance Committee, and everyone listened and delivered. Why are the members of the opposition telling every hospital auxiliary that they should continue paying PST on medical equipment purchased, by not voting on this budget?

The homeowner's grant — increasing the threshold due to rising value of houses, etc. This means a great deal to each and every homeowner provincewide. Why is the NDP hitting homeowners of all ages in their wallet by not voting for this budget?

Also, the extension of eligibility to low-income seniors who are hard-pressed to pay their taxes and thereby remain in their homes, which they bought years and years ago. Why is the NDP attacking our seniors and their homes by consistently criticizing this budget? The Land Tax Deferment Act — the age has been lowered to 55 from 60. This program is a low-interest program that enables qualifying B.C. homeowners to defer the annual property taxes on their houses.

The opposition is obviously against the property transfer tax. The threshold has been raised for first-time homebuyers and will apply throughout the province. This could save people up to $5,500. The opposition is obviously against first-time homebuyers. Why else would they be criticizing this budget?

Registration and collection threshold. This measure removes the responsibility for collecting and remitting tax from approximately 20,000 small, home-based craftpersons and not-for-profit organizations that only make infrequent sales. This makes eminent sense. How can the NDP be against home-based craft people?

Roadside tire service. Currently tire-changing service is the only roadside service subject to tax. Not only does this eliminate business complexity, but it helps those of all ages who are not particularly adept at changing tires. This helps both people and businesses — something that the NDP seems unable to comprehend.

Farming breaks. Motor fuel tax. All biodiesel fuel to be eligible for alternative motor fuel status. Use of propane motor fuel for farming processes is exempt — i.e., forklifts. Grain milling and other agricultural feeds and seeds are exempt when used solely for an agricultural purpose. How can the opposition be against the farming community when we still have to eat to live?

Tax remittance. The due date for remitting tax returns is extended from the 15th to the 23rd day of the month. This really helps small business. Tax return reporting frequency — another great time and cash-flow helper. The threshold for reporting less frequently than monthly is increased, and businesses with an annual tax remittance of $12,000 or less may qualify for quarterly, semi-annual or even annual reporting frequencies. This is great news for small business.

Audit assessment limitation periods are reduced from four to six years. All businesses will benefit from this initiative, which reduces the impact of inadvertent error and the amount of potential tax liabilities. The record retention period is reduced to five from seven, reducing the recordkeeping burden for over 100,000 businesses. Believe me, is this ever good news. These are just four of the much-welcomed breaks for small businesses. Small businesses support this province. How could the NDP possibly be against these measures?

Whether it be agriculture, first nations, the environment, our children and families, health care, education, natural resources or the Olympics, this is British Columbia's time to lead. We will act with speed and purpose, because we're confident in our endeavour.

Hon. G. Hogg: With emotion and rhetoric at such a high as a result of the scintillating comments of my colleague from Delta South, I would like to propose an introduction.

Last evening as my colleagues Jennifer Cownden and Raechelle Louise Williams took Valerie Richmond out for her birthday party, we had the privilege of meeting….

We had the privilege of meeting a couple who were visiting from Vineland, Ontario, Beverley Dueck and Victor Teeson. They are out here enjoying our wonderful province, visiting grandchildren, and they were a delight to meet. They're now in the House, and I wish the House to please provide them with greetings.

It should be commented that they're celebrating, I think, their 37th week of marriage. Is that correct? Their 37th week of marriage.

B. Simpson: It comes as quite a shock to me that I hate so many categories of British Columbians. I wasn't aware of that. And to my mother and father who are probably watching: I really don't hate seniors. It's okay. It's just the rhetoric of this House.

The member for North Vancouver–Lonsdale, in amongst all of the impassioned rhetoric, does make one cogent statement. That is, she said that climate change causes us to have to rethink the actions of a generation. I would suggest that it's actions of generations.

The real challenge, I believe, of climate change is to do that rethinking. Climate change should make us fundamentally and fully aware that how we engage with this planet that we call home isn't working. It's starting to catch up to us. We're seeing it all around us. I live in the community of Quesnel, in the heart of the mountain pine beetle, and I'll speak of that shortly.

We live right in the heart of one of the outcomes of this shift in the global climate. It's not a game. It requires us to fundamentally rethink not only how we live but more importantly, to this House, to rethink how we govern. That's what I would like to spend a few moments looking at. What does climate change say to us about the way that we live, the way that we act and, in particular, about the way we are governed and that we need to be governed?

The throne speech makes a very important statement that the facts are there, the science is in, and that we have no excuse for further procrastination. Yet, unfortunately, as has been pointed out by many of my colleagues, there's a disconnect between a throne speech with lots of rhetoric around climate change and a budget speech that speaks of housing and doesn't have a budget for what's in the throne speech.

That's unfortunate, because I think a lot of British Columbians were hopeful that the government had actually woken up to climate change and were hopeful that they would see something in the budget that would address what is becoming an evident and immediate concern for many British Columbians. It's not there.

So the question that I have is: how do we get from rhetoric to substance? Many of our people on this side have spoken to the issue of rhetoric. I want to speak to the issue of substance.

Back to the member for North Vancouver–Lonsdale. One of the things we have to keep in mind is that the kind of thinking that created the problem of climate change, of mountain pine beetle, of the other impacts of this global phenomenon…. You can't solve that problem with the thinking that got you there.

I want to look at the budget and the government's plans around six reference points that I believe are fundamental for us to do the kind of changing in our thinking that we need to do. The first is around the reference point of sustainability. What is sustainability in the world of climate change?

Secondly, around the reference of our economy. What does climate change say about our economy, and what do we need to do to restructure our economy?

Thirdly, the issue of disparity — the growing disparity not only at the individual level but in rural and urban British Columbia, and the growing disparity around the world.

Fourthly, the question of citizenship versus this idea that what we are, are consumers.

Those are six filters that I think we as individuals who have been elected to govern must look at very closely in this world of climate change, because that's our challenge. That's our real challenge — not rhetoric, not targets and programs. Those are necessary, but our real challenge is what kind of shift in our thinking must occur.

To the first one, redefining sustainability. What I believe climate change shows us is that our idea of sustainability as a three-legged stool isn't working for us. I think it was necessary that we looked at balancing the economy, the environment and social systems, but what we've always done is default to the economy over all other values. We've seen that in the growing disparity in our social systems and our social infrastructure.

The B.C. Progress Board has pointed out to this government that they are failing to address those social concerns. But it also raises the question for us around what other kind of relationship we need with our environment because, fundamentally, sustainability is

derived from healthy ecosystems. Without healthy ecosystems we cannot possibly have a healthy economy, and we cannot possibly have healthy social systems. Sustainability has to be redefined.

Let me take a look at the mountain pine beetle issue as an example. There's lots of rhetoric that flies around here. "If only the NDP had done something in the '90s…" I asked those who put that forward…. I believe they do a disservice to British Columbians by doing that. I don't think it helps in the debate, because if you look at the California pine forests, they were wiped out. Is that the fault of the NDP government? The spruce forests in Alaska have been wiped out. The spruce forests in the Northwest Territories are being wiped out.

Today we no longer have a mountain pine beetle problem. We have a forest health problem, which I've raised in this House on a number of occasions. Every pest and disease that's natural to a forest ecosystem is escalating and is reaching historic epidemic proportions. Who is to blame for that? Is it a sitting government? No. The blame rests in our thinking.

For generations we believed, through arrogance, that we could actually manage complex ecosystems. We can't. We have to find a relationship with them. We have to find a way of extracting the values that we want from them in a way that doesn't damage their adaptability and resiliency, so we need to redefine sustainability.

Let me put that test to what the government has presented to us in the budget and in today's energy plan. Has that redefinition of sustainability permeated the government's thinking? Well, unfortunately not, because a throne speech with climate change in it was followed by a transportation strategy that is still predicated on individuals and cars. It's followed by an energy plan that is still predicated on oil and gas and is not driving our agenda towards alternate energy forms. It's still predicated on mining activity without addressing the global aspects of that and how we do mining and resource extraction in a carbon-neutral way.

Quite frankly, in the forest sector we now have whole-scale salvage on the coast of export logs and in the interior of so-called beetle-damaged wood and other pests and diseases, none of which meets any test of sustainability that recognizes that at the root of sustainability are healthy ecosystems, first and foremost.

I would suggest that one of the things the government could undertake is a conversation — they like to have these engineered conversations — on sustainability. I believe there's an appetite out there among British Columbians for that. They get it; they understand it. It's the government that doesn't, so let's get the government an opportunity to be educated around that.

The second filter I would put on is the whole issue of: what is our economy? Where do we need to go with our economy? For that, the government was given some advice on March 25, 2003.

Their own economic panel on climate change, their own business round table on climate change, gave them this advice: "The B.C. climate change economic impacts panel strongly believes that a made-in-B.C. approach to climate change can be done in a way that continues to develop the province's rich resource base, improves the cost competitiveness of existing sectors and grows new industries that diversify the economy and take advantage of expanding export markets."

What the panel tried to convey was a sense "of the ability to realize not just substantial greenhouse gas reductions but also a highly innovative and resilient economy, large-scale job and wealth creation, cleaner air, more accessible communities and many other benefits."

In March of 2003 the panel recommended to set additional targets for greenhouse gas–specific actions in this province to achieve that. In short, the panel said that if you set the targets, if you use climate change to drive the agenda, you will do the restructuring in the British Columbia economy that we have not been able to achieve. You will shift us away from sole dependence on resource extraction, you will make us a knowledge-based economy, and you will position us for what the world is going to demand to achieve a carbon-neutral environment.

Did we do that? No. The government set no targets. They set a benchmark of third best or something ludicrous like that. And now with the wake-up call of 2007 and the rhetoric in the throne speech, do we have targets yet? Do we have immediate targets? Do we have any sense of the restructuring of the economy that this economic panel has? No. It's not there. Again, the government in its budget fails to tell us how we're going to restructure our economy in a carbon-neutral world, and it is an abysmal failing.

We need an economy based on quality jobs. You hear all the rhetoric about how many jobs there are. I challenge this government to go out into our province and do a quality job matrix to find out how many people consider their workplaces to be quality workplaces, their jobs to be quality jobs and their lifestyle, when they work two and a half and three jobs in order to make ends meet — whether that's a quality lifestyle or not. Until we get to a quality-based economy and away from a quantity one, and until we get to a quality lifestyle in this province, then we have not done our job in providing an economy that will work in a carbon-neutral world.

B. Simpson: We need to address the growing disparity in this province. I want to speak about that at an individual level, about rural-urban disparity and then, of course, about the global disparity that we're all very well aware of.

When we have a province where one in ten people lives in poverty, when the Progress Board — the Premier's own handpicked group that was supposed to cheerlead from the sides — says in its social indicators

report that there's a problem, that is a fundamental challenge to us in governing in a world of climate change.

Let me ask you this, Mr. Speaker. When we want to move to energy-efficient homes and energy-efficient lighting, when we want to get to a point where households are sealed and efficient, how can people who are barely able to put bread on their table afford to get in that game?

That's a large percentage of the population there, and this indicator doesn't even pick up all of the other people who are living hand to mouth, barely able to make mortgage payments, barely able to get their children into universities and colleges. We know the debt load that we're creating for our young people on that. Is that addressed in this budget? Not on your life. It's not in the budget.

What the budget does speak to is the issue of housing. Well, I would argue that's a creation of this government's own making. They're trying to solve a problem of their own making and not very well. I've lived in Quesnel for 22 years. We didn't have homelessness.

We're in this robust economy that's supposed to be booming, and in my community, what do we have to do? We have to work with this government, wrestle with this government, to put in a homeless shelter. In Quesnel we have the highest per-capita industrial manufacturing in North America, possibly even the world. All kinds of primary, secondary manufacturing in the forest sector, and what are we building? What are we trying to create? A homeless shelter in our community. How does that work?

Why can't we resolve that issue? It's because this government doesn't believe that poverty is an issue. If you look at their history, their history clearly indicates that. If we want to get to a carbon-neutral world, if we want to truly embrace climate change, we must address that disparity, because we must allow everybody to engage in that new economy.

The rural disparity is very important for us to embrace, because a so-called made-in-British-Columbia climate change strategy must have something that's fundamental at its core. That is, we need a rural B.C. climate change strategy to match an urban one. Quite frankly, all of the rhetoric that I've seen in the budget, what little there is, and in the throne speech speaks to an urban strategy and not very well.

What does rural British Columbia look like? How do we address our transportation needs? How do we address our infrastructure needs? How do we live in a world of climate change in which our forests are dying, in which our plantations' survival rates are diminishing? All of that needs to be addressed. Is it in the throne speech? No, because the thinking hasn't changed. It was rhetoric, not substance.

We need to address the fiscal imbalance that we have in this province. Rural British Columbians are having to bear a greater and greater burden of the downsizing of government and the downloading of services to municipalities. That's the context for the discussion around road maintenance. We in rural British Columbia believe we are not getting our fair shake on taxes; we're not getting our transfers back. The resources we have taken from our communities and put down into the big smoke — we don't see it coming back, and that has to change.

I have argued from the very beginning that the softwood lumber agreement gives us an ideal opportunity to do that. In the softwood lumber agreement, as much as I dislike that agreement and did not believe that we had to sign it, the border tax does come back to the province. It's within the hands of the province and the hands of the Finance Minister to do with that as she pleases.

This year alone it's $251 million, and next year $376 million. Over the course of four years, because I don't believe in the averaging tax that they've got here, it's approximately a billion dollars in found money. Surely that's a golden opportunity to get that money back out to the resource communities that it's derived from, to help them with their infrastructure, to help them get in the game of climate change and look at ways that they can become carbon-neutral, to address their specific and unique issues.

What does this government say? The Minister of Forests and Range was categorical: "That's general revenue; we can't target that." Well, if you can't target something as explicit as that, the thinking is definitely wrong and shows that we have an urban corporatist government that has effectively abandoned rural British Columbia and will not help us do what we need to do around climate change or anything else.

On the global scene, if we actually did what the business panel asked the government to do in 2003, we would be four years further down the path of targets, four years further down the path of building the technologies and grappling with the issue of climate change in our economy. We would have four years of knowledge and technology to transfer to the world. Wouldn't that be an incredible feat? Wouldn't that be something wonderful that we could contribute to the world?

Instead, we've done nothing for four years, and the Premier has come to wake up to this in time to have the throne speech rewritten, but not the budget speech rewritten.

The fourth filter that I would put on this is that somehow, as those elected to govern, we have to engage the people of British Columbia as citizens and not consumers. If we persist in treating them as consumers of services, consumers of education, consumers of health care, consumers of all the public services that are provided to them, we feed that sense. I'm not quite sure how this happened in our civilization — that what we're all about is consuming.

If we go back to what I said about sustainability, as long as we see ourselves as consumers, we can't build a sustainable society or a sustainable economy. Is this government helping with that? I'd argue no on two fronts.

First, they have cut the citizens of British Columbia out of consultation on every major initiative in this province. Forest stewardship plans that will guide forest practices for the next five to ten years — are the citizens engaged in that? No. Will they be engaged in future site plans? No. Were they engaged in today's energy plan? Was that a consultative process? No.

We have the least transparent, most secretive government that I believe this province has ever seen, and that does not engage people as citizens. If we're going to address climate change, we need to wake up the citizens and every British Columbian and engage them. That's how the Premier can pass on personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility doesn't amount to anything if you don't have the wherewithal to engage the government to make them change direction. I challenge the government today: take your energy plan out and consult with the people of British Columbia. They'll tell you that they want a different set of priorities than what's in the plan that was tabled today.

The second place that I think the government fails abysmally on this idea of engaging British Columbians as citizens is the nonsense they have in the budget and the throne speech around the school system. The issue in the school system isn't restructuring school boards to boards of education. That shows you how disconnected this government is to the classroom teacher, to the students, to the parents that want quality education. We're going to change school boards to boards of education? Who came up with that harebrained idea? And we're going to add a superintendent?

I'm sure we'll find these perfect human beings that will fulfil the role of superintendent. We'll put them in there and give them a big paycheque, and they'll turn the tide in our education system. It is a false way of thinking about what's happening in our education system. We need child care. We need schools that are quality schools, which have quality classrooms and quality learning environments. You don't do that through moving education.

This budget failed to address what the post-secondary students told us, what the post-secondary educators told us, what many of the college professors and presidents told us, and what the Progress Board says. That is, you cannot load debt on our students the way that this government is doing it.

As a member of the Finance Committee, I can tell you that we were told in town after town, in presentation after presentation, that we had to address tuition, we had to address grants as opposed to loans and we had to give free ABE. They gave us a very cogent argument for all of that, and we didn't even address it in the budget. That's a huge failing, and it calls into question that whole so-called consultative process.

The fifth filter that we need to look at as to whether or not we're changing our thinking is government's role in society. The Premier made a very interesting comment when he was doing his announcement of a proposed announcement of something about climate change in the throne speech, which I find quite fascinating because we had released our work, which was a lot more interesting than what was in the throne speech, and we didn't get a nice big headline in the Vancouver Sun like the Premier got. But that's a whole other topic for discussion.

The Premier says the following in the context of climate change: "I think we've clearly established that voluntary activities don't particularly work. We have to set a level playing field for everyone." I think that's an argument for regulation, if I'm not mistaken, by the king of deregulation. If you can't address climate change through voluntary activities, then why do we have all these results-based processes out there? Why do we have all that? The reality is…. Anybody who knows how the market really works or how corporations really work…. They go to the minimum legal standards and regulations. That's where they go to. That's what the level playing field is.

The role of government is to continue to increment those standards so that we have a high, level playing field, so that everybody who comes to British Columbia and invests in British Columbia knows the rules of the game, knows that's how we want to play it. And they'll be fine with that.

Again, the Premier, over his term in office, has withdrawn government from society. He continues to do that. My question to this government is: if you have to address climate change with regulation, where are the regulations? We haven't seen them. We haven't seen any sense of what they might look like. And why can't we address all the other things that we've been arguing on this side of the House, that deregulation has gone too far, too fast? We have workers dying in the workplace, children living in poverty and forests that are having questionable practices on them — all because of this government's deregulation agenda.

It's my hope that the Premier actually starts thinking about that a little bit deeper, like the speech we got on urban densities at UBCM. Maybe next year we'll get a 25-minute speech on why regulation is actually good for society and the economy. Maybe he'll make that shift as well.

One of the big things that's missing in terms of this government's role in society is the demographic shift that we're about to undergo. For government to have a meaningful continued role in society, we need to understand clearly how many of our senior bureaucrats we're going to lose over this next little while. As a member of the Finance Committee…. We heard how dramatic that shift is going to be. If any government of any stripe is going to execute a climate change strategy, an anti-poverty strategy or a housing strategy, it will depend on our public service. We need to make sure that we have a plan in place for that. Is it in the budget? Is it in the throne speech? No.

Then you take that out to the greater economy, and there's no sense in there that this government has any inkling whatsoever of where we're going to be struggling to achieve our goals. If there isn't a role for government in establishing those priorities and working

with our post-secondary institutions and our K-to-12 institutions to feed into our emerging economy, then I don't know who else is going to do that, because it's certainly not going to be the marketplace.

The final filter that I believe we have to examine is the whole issue of pooled resources called taxes. Quite frankly — and I know the government doesn't want to hear this — I find there's a huge disconnect between what I heard on the Finance Committee…. There weren't any major submissions there that we needed to address personal taxes. There were business tax requests but not personal taxes. Just like the corporate tax break that was given, which caught corporations by surprise, lots of the folks I'm talking to are saying: "Hang on a second. I'd sooner pay fewer fees. I'd sooner have better services in rural British Columbia. I'd sooner have more amenities. I'd sooner have better roads. I'd sooner have better health care choices, better school choices."

B. Simpson: "I'd like to keep my school," in many cases. That sense of pooled resources is lost.

We cannot address the adaptation challenges of climate change, the fundamental shift in our infrastructure. All you have to do is look at…. Fifteen storms in a row in the lower mainland — 15 storms that taxed every bit of our infrastructure, as it is. How much is that rebuild going to cost so as to bring our infrastructure up to snuff, with rising sea levels, more storm events?

We're now talking about flooding in the Fraser. We can't repair the dikes in time. There's also going to be flooding in all of the communities in the upper Fraser because of the dead stands of mountain pine beetle. Yet what are we doing? We're cutting taxes, and we're not investing in the future of this province. The feedback that I get is clearly: invest in the future of the province.

To close, what I'm mostly disappointed in is that if the Premier has come to fundamentally understand — and the rhetoric in the throne speech, in particular, suggests that he supposedly understands — that this is an emergent and immediate issue, there's nothing in this budget that indicates the government actually gets it.

We need to change our thinking. We need a different way of thinking about sustainability and communities and government and ourselves as citizens. I challenge the government today to think a lot deeper and harder and to go back to the drawing board, because this budget simply does not cut it.

K. Whittred: I would like to add my welcome to the former member for Burnaby-Willingdon and former Speaker Joan Sawicki. It's nice to see you again. Joan and I have a little bit of a history, and not only as colleagues. She was the MLA for the school where I taught and used to entertain us quite royally when I brought students over here.

I would like to start by thanking the people of North Vancouver, who have elected me now a total of three times. It seems sometimes quite unbelievable that this is 11 years that I've been in this chamber. It is in fact an honour to serve my constituency, and I will continue to do so.

The theme of this year's throne speech is about leadership — B.C.'s turn to lead, to lead in the Pacific, to lead in Canada, to lead to the future and provide a better future for our children and grandchildren. The budget puts flesh on the bones. It gives colour and shape to the vision that is outlined in the throne speech.

For me as the MLA, the most important question to ask is: how does this vision translate into programs and services in my community of North Vancouver? In keeping with my usual practice in the response to these endeavours, I am going to try to bridge those things that are in the budget to my home community and to look at what's being done in North Vancouver. I want to ask the question: what does this budget do for my constituents? What does this budget enable me as the representative of North Vancouver–Lonsdale to do for my constituents?

The community of North Vancouver–Lonsdale is a complex community. I often speak of it as a true microcosm of the province. It is a very small riding, an urban riding, but as urban ridings go, it is sort of a huge cross-section. It's like a cross-section of the entire GVRD in one small package.

We have in North Vancouver–Lonsdale, of course, the port. We have, in fact, about a third of the Port of Vancouver right at my doorstep. We have a small but fairly significant business district. We have a financial sector, and we have several head offices. We are a transportation corridor, having transportation routes that follow both Highway 91 and Highway 1. And of course, we have tourism. Tourism is very important in my community, and I don't need to point out to members in the House that the two most often visited sites in the lower mainland are both on the North Shore. Those would be Grouse Mountain and the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

My community is also a community of contradictions. On one hand we have a very, very highly dense area of population. It is very upscale. It's often called Yaletown North. We also have areas of very low density with grand properties and grand houses. We also have the 59 percent of the households in my riding that are renters. That compares to 39 percent in the GVRD. That is something most people don't very often associate with North Vancouver — that we have a very large percentage of people who in fact do not own their own homes.

In terms of the economic spectrum, we span the whole range, from people who are living on very low incomes — we do have a homelessness problem in North Vancouver — to people who enjoy very, very high incomes and lifestyles.

That is the context on which I base my remarks and on which I will address the areas where my community is served by this budget.

Budget 2007 addresses several challenges. It asks: "How do we ensure that those most in need have shelter? How do we help the single working mom or dad who is having trouble making the rent? How do we help the young couple afford their first home, or after they've contributed for so many years, how we do help our seniors stay in the homes where they've raised their families?" Those four challenges exist in spades in my riding.

I'd like to just start by speaking a little bit about the people that are most in need of housing and how this budget will help to address those needs in my community. In my community — I think it was 2001 — we opened a homeless shelter. This was done in a partnership between the federal government, of course, the Ministry of Employment and Investment and the city of North Vancouver. The problem ever since that date has been that not all of those beds were cold-weather beds. Of course, it's been a long route, and I get numerous representations in my office from people at the shelter telling me why these cold-weather beds should be made 12-month beds.

I'm pleased to say that this budget addresses that issue. It's going to mean more than just making those beds 12-month beds for these individuals. One of the problems that results in shelters when you don't have year-round beds is that it makes it difficult to offer the supports the individuals that are accessing these services require. Now that these beds are going to be extended, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, the mental health people and the addictions people will all find that the services they are endeavouring to provide will be much more able to be offered.

Another example in my riding is a house that deals with the…. It's a first-stage recovery home for people with addictions. This is a very interesting model, Madam Speaker. I'll tell you about it. Last summer I was invited to the ribbon-cutting of this house. I actually hadn't even heard of it. I looked at the address, and it was really not very far from my home. It was a hot day in August, I remember, and I actually walked. So that's how far it was from where I live.

I got there, and I discovered that it was a six-bed home for people suffering from addictions and that they would stay in this home for approximately three years. The thing that pleased me so much about it was that this home appeared to be a very well-accepted model by both the mental health people, the addictions people — everyone who was there. There hadn't been one iota of NIMBYism in the community about this. It exists now. It's been there now for several months — not one bit of comment that I have heard about it.

I offer this because there are supports listed in this budget for that kind of model. We also have money available for looking at other innovative models. So I mention that just as an example.

A third model I'd like to mention that will be helped, I think, in my community is a second-stage housing development for women escaping violence. This is something I've had, like I'm sure many members have had…. The person that runs the transition house has often said to me: "You know, we get quite adequately funded for the transition house." I've said to her: "What is your greatest need?" And she said to me: "My greatest need is for second-stage housing."

That's the area where I've devoted my interest. We now have additional funding for that sort of endeavour, and I am going to make sure we get that second-stage housing for women escaping violence.

Something that pleases me about all three of those models is that the government has listened. We've gone out, and we've heard from these folks. We go back to caucus and tell our ministers that these are the sorts of things that we need in our communities. I am extremely happy that this budget addresses some of those concerns.

Another area where I think my community is going to really benefit is in the area of upgrading various aspects of social housing. I believe it was yesterday that the Housing critic on the opposite side actually belittled the idea of providing more money — I think it's $45 million over the next four years — to upgrade up to 750 of our social housing units.

You know, that has already been addressed in my community, and that is a huge issue. I said that my community was a community of contradictions. Well, we have many, many seniors, and those seniors cover many levels of income. I know that the Kiwanians in North Vancouver, who provide a huge amount of seniors housing, have been looking at this. They are delighted to see it.

These are low-rent apartments, and it will enable those apartments to be upgraded to a sufficient level that the individuals in them can age in place. For the most part I'm already talking about very elderly people. I'm not talking about youngsters. I'm talking about very elderly people who will, in fact, be able to stay in their homes. I think that that is not an aspect of this to be belittled. I think it is one to be applauded.

I also applaud the mention in the throne speech where it talked about looking at new models and encouraging municipalities to partner with organizations such as B.C. Housing. We have a brand-new seniors complex going up at the corner of St. Andrews and 15th Street, which is going to be for seniors. This has gone up amazingly fast. It's one of those where the hole was dug, and now the siding is on and the roof is on. You look at it, and you say: "My goodness, that's really coming along, given the usual speed of many of these projects."

The reason that it has buzzed right along is because of the partnerships that exist. The city of North Vancouver has stepped up to the plate, and they have deferred the development costs. B.C. Housing has accelerated their process. The Kiwanians have been right onside with their contribution, and this is well on the way. I think we are going to have people living in that probably within a very few months. So I commend

those individuals, and I'm pleased that this budget again acknowledges that and gives us opportunities to go forward with more projects of that nature.

The Housing critic opposite, in her remarks yesterday, belittled the program to enable rent supplements. I think it was said that rent supplements don't work. There have been many comments on the other side of the House to that effect — that rent supplements don't work.

I want to quote just a very brief little statement here, and this is from a report that was done by a consultant working for the GVRD. It was an organization that for the most part was not being very supportive, if you like, of our government's endeavours in the field of housing, but it goes on to say: "One exception to this is B.C. Housing's Shelter Aid For Elderly Renters, the SAFER program, which provides rent supplements to eligible seniors in market housing." It goes on to say that this should be duplicated in other areas, and we are actually doing that.

I want to tell you a story about a constituent I had in my office just last week. It was really quite coincidental, I guess, that she came in. She's a young woman with two children. She is low-income. Her income is just slightly more than $20,000 a year, and her story was like one that many of us hear. She was literally at her wits' end. She said: "I'm going to have a breakdown. I can't afford my rent. I've got child care. I've got all of these expenses." I'm very pleased to say that by extending the rental subsidy to $28,000 a year, this person will now be eligible for increased rent supplements.

Now, I'm not going to suggest for one minute that this is the magic bullet for all the problems of society, but it is going to help this one woman to stay in her apartment and to make her life a wee bit easier. Again, I am very pleased that my government has listened to people in that low-income group and has said: "We're going to try to help you. We're going to try to make your life a little bit easier."

Something I learned when I was in the seniors portfolio is that huge numbers of what we call low-income people earn around $25,000 a year. That is a figure that sticks in my mind. We have now looked at that group of people, and we've said: "We're going to assist you to make your life a little bit easier." As I said, my constituency is an area of contradictions, because we have that group of low-income people, and they are now going to be a little bit better off. For that, I extend my thanks to this budget.

Another aspect of this budget that's going to make it just a little bit easier for many of my constituents is that part that deals with first-time homebuyers and the extension to $375,000 in terms of having the property transfer tax removed. That's an increase of $50,000. I see one of the members opposite smiling as though, well, gee, that doesn't make much difference.

You know, before I spoke today, I went and looked on the MLS website. In my riding that added 20 homes to what was in that…. If you call that affordable…. It's certainly more affordable than the others. More significantly, those 20 homes were actually in what you might call the family home model. In other words, they were condos with a couple of bedrooms — there was actually one three-bedroom — in not bad neighbourhoods. These were actually quite good condos and would be quite suitable for a young family with a couple of kids.

It now makes it at least more possible for those young families to get into the housing market and to have the ability to not have to raise that extra $5,500. What it saves them is $5,500. Again, we have made that a little bit more possible for some of our folks.

I want to comment on a couple of other groups in my riding, and these are the fixed-income seniors. I spoke a few minutes ago of my riding being an area of…. You've got the dense sort of Yaletown North, and then you've got the grand properties. When I go door-knocking in what I'm calling the grand properties, I can knock on door after door after door, and it is almost always answered by a senior. In many, many of those homes, living there is often just one elderly person, usually a woman. Sometimes it's an elderly couple.

These are people who often are called asset rich and income poor. Many of them have fixed incomes. In fact, most of them I've encountered have fixed incomes. They bought their houses 40 or sometimes 50 years ago, and they have scrimped and saved and worked all their lives to raise their family. I guess they're reaping the reward of the increase in value, and they very much want to be able to stay in their home. Sometimes small amounts of money make a big difference.

So we have, again, responded to that. We've said it doesn't matter what value your house is. If you're a low-income senior, you are going to be eligible for the homeowner grant. That, again, is huge in certain parts of my community. That is a very big thing, and it responds once again to some of the things that we hear almost on a daily basis. I think that my colleagues who are on the North Shore with me and, I'm sure, even some members opposite hear this frequently from their folks on fixed incomes.

The homeowner grant has also been increased to $950,000 for those that aren't on fixed incomes, which will certainly mean that the vast majority of individuals will get the homeowner grant.

About those things that actually are helping my constituents. The day after the budget I got a call at eight o'clock in the morning. I picked up my cell, and this person said to me: "Thanks for the tax cut." That's another way that we have put money in people's pockets. We're helping individual people.

Members opposite act like none of these things actually impact real people, and I'm trying to illustrate today that they do impact real people. For a young family, a typical young family…. That was the person that called me. He was a young man. His wife works at the Royal Bank, and they are going to benefit probably to the tune of about $1,000 a year more that's in their pocket. That is going to come in very handy as they try to put their kids into activities and all sorts of things.

They were most appreciative of that. These are all things that we have put in this budget that impact real British Columbians.

Finally, I want to talk about the legacy endowment fund, because this is another thing that many members opposite have sort of made fun of. There's an organization in my riding called HYAD. It stands for Housing for Young Adults with Disabilities. This is an organization that came to me and said: "We would like, as a group of people, each of us to invest $50,000 in a building, and we want this building to be a place where our grown-up children with disabilities can live."

This is something new, and it wasn't sort of in anybody's program. You know, Community Living says, "Well, gee, we don't do that," and somebody else says: "We don't do that." They came to me, and I said: "Well, why not? Why wouldn't this model work? Why can't we take a look at it?" Well, we are, and it's my hope that through this fund — there's now some money available for this — we can now proceed with this project. The people in my community that are part of this are extremely excited about it.

I've already mentioned the house that was an innovative addiction place for people who are overcoming addictions and how well that has worked. The endowment fund gives us an opportunity to look at other models. It gives us an opportunity to go to other jurisdictions, and it gives us a chance to say: "Okay, you know, the stuff that worked 40 years ago maybe doesn't work today. Maybe there's new stuff. Let's have a look at it."

We mentioned the seniors things. There are ways that seniors can age in place. I was going to read you just a little bit from an organization in my community that talks about future housing options for seniors, and this is from the Lionsview society. Lionsview is a very well-respected organization, and they did a very comprehensive report on seniors housing on the North Shore. They say that when asked what type of housing they would like to move to, over 50 percent said they'd consider seniors housing for those who can live independently. The one thing we do know about seniors is that they all want to be independent.

They also said that they would like to move to a unit that was adaptable to their needs as their health changed. Again, I go back to that fund that we've set up to adapt seniors' apartments. Doesn't that make perfect sense? We're actually doing something that seniors said needed doing.

There were other things that the seniors said. For example, they also wanted places where they could keep their pets. That's another thing that we know about them. These are things that we can look at, but we need to look at what are alternative ways. You know, in all the time that I worked with seniors and seniors groups, and I still do, I've never once had a senior say to me: "I really want to go to a nursing home." I've never once had a senior say that to me. Our job as legislators, I think, is to try to look at what models will work, and this legacy, this endowment fund, permits us to do that.

I was particularly taken by the remarks in the throne speech about looking at alternatives to the big houses that we're building, particularly in Greater Vancouver. I recall that I was raised in a house that I suppose was around 1,200 square feet. It was considered a pretty good-sized house. I often wonder: what has changed in our society? Why do we now figure that we need 4,000 square feet of house with five or six bathrooms? I don't know whether I'm unique. I don't want to clean that many bathrooms.

I think that we have to go back to looking at something that is sensible, and I really like the idea of looking at smaller lots, at smaller houses. When I was a child, one of the things that used to be really common in the community I came from was that people would buy a lot and would build the house over a period of time. Regulations, for the most part, don't allow that anymore.

Maybe we can change the regulations so that people would actually put up a frame and would finish enough of it to live in while they finish the rest of it. That makes sense. I think we have to start to be creative. We have to be innovative about how we are going to house people and house them in the manner in which we can keep the values that people like and, at the same time, make it something that they can afford.

Those are all examples in my community about ways in which this budget impacts real people. Those aren't the only ways. There's also in this budget $468 million to enhance services for children and youth at risk.

There's a project in my riding that I am very, very much involved with — and which I am extremely proud of, actually — and that is the Westview project, which is part of the StrongStart program. Again, it's a partnership between the school district, North Shore Neighbourhood House and the city of North Vancouver, and it is all about early learning. It particularly targets children and families that need supports.

One of the things that enlightened me in my time on the Health Committee was…. One of the things we discovered is that many families that really need the kind of supports we're talking about simply don't know. I mean, one of the challenges we have with children and nutrition is that their parents, their mothers, don't know. They don't know how to cook. They don't know how to buy nutritious food. This sounds a little bit far-fetched, but it's absolutely true. Programs like this at Westview are there to address that sort of thing.

I have one of my communities in North Vancouver that is really, really visiting me a lot and complaining about inappropriate activities that are going on in their community. They think that there's too much crime and so on. Therefore, we have $178 million for policing and corrections that will help to deal with that.

There's $189 million to strengthen communities through local infrastructure. Okay, all of us have infrastructure. What about my community? We have projects around both bridges — the Lions Gate Bridge and the Second Narrows Bridge — that we are working on. They haven't been okayed yet, and we're really hoping we can get those through. I'm hoping that this

budget will address those. When they say infrastructure, I think, yes, we all hope it means our community.

The budget provides $38 million for LocalMotion grants. We have a project in North Vancouver — the trail. We want to build a trail. This is an initiative of the four North Shore MLAs — I believe my colleague from West Vancouver–Garibaldi already spoke about this — for a bike and walking trail from Horseshoe Bay to Deep Cove. This is our real vision. We have another trail network in North Vancouver that's called the Green Necklace, and both of these projects are the kinds of projects that are funded from that LocalMotion project.

In my time in this government I have seen the Health budget go from $9 billion to $13 billion. Regardless of that, I keep hearing people on the side opposite talking about Health cuts, and I want to say: "Cuts? My goodness, $9 billion to $13 billion? That is really not a cut."

C. Evans: I think everybody would give leave if the hon. member wanted to wrap up. Hon. Member, would you like to wrap up? We would give leave.

I'm pleased to get up and make a speech, sort of about the throne speech and sort of about the budget speech. In fact, I think what's true is that once a year, all members on both sides are encouraged to get to their feet and speak about the throne speech, the budget speech or, essentially, about their constituency or make a philosophical statement once a year for half an hour. So this would be my philosophical half-hour for 2007, and I appreciate the honour.

I want to start by saying that although what follows may be a tiny bit critical, I get wages for that. I want to start by saying that the Premier means well. I honestly believe that, and any criticism is in delivery as opposed to intention.

It's easy to feel that the Premier means well because I come in here all the time, and I hear glowing, wonderful ideas that it would be impossible for anybody at home or working here to disagree with. A couple of years ago there were the five great goals. They were really good ideas. Then we had a seniors' budget, which everybody would agree with. Then we had a children's budget, which everyone would agree with.

Okay, maybe we weren't so happy about the trip to Europe, but you remember that then there was the trip to Europe that the Premier went on with the brother-in-law and some other people. Then we had a green agenda just two weeks ago. That was the throne speech, which I thought was wonderful because it said we were going to grapple with climate change. Then — swoop! — we went over to a housing budget, and who could complain about the housing budget?

There's a whole bunch of good ideas. I guess I've got a little bit of trouble with the delivery, hon. Speaker, because the five great goals…. Let's start with the beginning — whoops. They were here for a day or two, and then someone criticized and said they sounded like Chairman Mao. Never heard about him. Again.

Then we had a seniors' budget. We did a bunch of stuff for seniors, and then after the budget, what do we see? Swoop! Every emergency room in British Columbia stuffed up with seniors who've got no place to live and no help for them there, and they live in the emerg. The seniors' budget didn't help, so well, then we had a children's' budget, which I thought sounded wonderful. You know, a children's budget. How cool is that? Then we kill child care, and we wind up with the highest child poverty in Canada. It turns out that having a children's budget didn't exactly help the children.

Then we had a climate change…. Now, here's a wonderful thing, eh? I don't think there's a citizen in this room, at home, in the gallery or anywhere who could possibly say that for a government to announce in its throne speech that it was accepting the idea of climate change…. It was not a socialist trick. It was, in fact, a biological condition that we had to deal with. It's a wonderful thing. My heart soared. I thought that we were going to be part of the generation that actually deals with it.

Then, one week…. I guess I could be forgiven. It was ignorance, but I think that most people felt that if you said you were going to now change how you operate, you would come in, and when the budget was tabled…. A budget, hon. Speaker, is essentially the skeleton of the government's intentions.

The budget gets tabled, and one week after we're going to deal with climate change — swoop! — it's gone now. We kind of messed up there. We weren't really dealing with…. It's a housing budget.

Of course, I think that housing is cool. Like, you've got to start with a job and a house in order to live. Housing would be good. But it seems to me that the legacy of year after year of constantly changing your mind and announcing something that I think sounds wonderful and the people at home think is, you know, nirvana and then not being able to deliver or sometimes making it worse…. Having a seniors' budget, and then making them go live in the emergency room; having a children's budget and cancelling child care…. Sometimes it makes me think that either the Premier who means well has a difficult time focusing, that there's no follow-through or that, maybe, the government simply moves on to the next agenda too fast to be able to cope.

I was trying to figure out: what does that mean? How would it work? I looked it up in our own B.C. HealthGuide. What do you call the condition if you have a difficult time following through? It turns out that here in British Columbia when it applies to people, sometimes our kids, we call it attention deficit disorder.

Here's the definition. I'm going to paraphrase this because, of course, I'm applying it to a government. Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder is the behavioral condition in which governments have

difficulty paying attention and focusing on tasks. There are three types. I would submit that our type is inattention. Paraphrasing again, this is the most common symptom. In addition to having a difficult time paying attention, governments with this symptom often are unable to consistently focus or remember or organize. They may be careless and have a hard time starting and then completing tasks that are boring, repetitive or challenging.

I think that that there is probably, somewhere in the world, a clinical treatment that governments could go to, to learn. Citizens can. I hear that we're cancelling the program available for citizens of B.C., but I know that in some places there is clinical help for attention. I think the Premier means well, and we should get some clinical help.

Talking specifically about the budget, which actually didn't deal with the green agenda, I think it's wonderful that we have the second surplus budget in a row. How could you possibly complain?

C. Evans: It's the third, fourth. Okay, I'll do it with this hand — fourth. How could anybody complain with a budget surplus? That is a wonderful thing. When you have a surplus, then you can actually figure out what a government believes in.

When we fall on hard times, everybody talks about "tighten your belts." They say, "Short-term pain for long-term gain," and we watch cuts happen. But when you have a surplus, then we can read what a government believes in — values, vision, belief system. In trying to understand exactly what it was that the government might put back now that they have $2 billion spare cash, I went back to 2001 to look and see what we'd lost. I want to talk about what we've lost under this government since 2001 from a specifically rural perspective.

The first thing that happened is that the Premier, who means well, came in this room and announced that he was going to freeze the budgets on health, education and social services, which is 60 percent of the budget, and therefore cuts would have to happen from 40 percent.

The next thing that happened. The Minister of Finance came in here and made $2 billion worth of tax cuts to the rich. That meant that we had to find $2 billion from 40 percent of the budget. That happened in 2001.

To the government's credit, in 2001 the government sent out a group of MLAs, wonderfully chaired by the MLA for Peace River South, to ask us what we thought about cutting the budget by $2 billion to give tax cuts to the rich and then saving that from 40 percent of our activities. I attended that committee on the budget in Trail on October 16, 2001, and I want to read some of the things I said. Remember now, this is eight years ago. This is a bit of prophecy. This is what I thought would happen.

Hon. Speaker, what happened after they found $2 billion worth of cuts from 40 percent of the budget? In the year 2000 we had 34,000 civil servants managing the land base — our wealth — and in two years we cut it to 23,000 people. Layoffs in Nelson were so heavy that if it had happened in Vancouver in one day, it would have been 60,000 people — that's ratio and percentage.

The cuts were essentially to forestry, fisheries, highways and the like. In small towns, where those people tended to work, the people were devastated. Our capacity to manage the ecosystem was eliminated. This isn't rhetoric.

Here are some comparisons, if you want to imagine our situation compared to the United States. Following

the cuts, there is one government worker looking after the land base and the people in British Columbia for every 178 citizens. Now, in Oregon — that bastion of free enterprise to the south — it's one government worker to every 75 citizens. In Washington it's one to 57; in Idaho, one to 50. You get the gist of why, when you phone the government in British Columbia, you get a message machine.

There's a version of economic theory that says it's actually impossible for a corporation or a government or even a family to literally cut costs. When you cut costs, you simply give them to somebody else. Here, when we cut those costs, we delivered those costs to citizens, land and community.

We can't run a transportation system anymore, so what do we do? We off-load it and start building privately held roads and bridges. We can't run a railroad anymore, so what do we do? We lease it for 999 years. We can't manage forests anymore, so we move to an audit system and let the companies run it themselves.

We cannot answer the phones, so we make people talk to message machines or sometimes to contractors in Texas pretending to be the government. We cannot generate power anymore, so we lay off the engineering capacity of the government and buy power from private sources.

I don't know if it's true, but I have heard that we have off-loaded costs in British Columbia to the level that last year citizens became net borrowers for the first time in history. Imagine that. The time of wealth, the time of four surplus budgets in a row, the time they make all these jobs, the time that everyone says we have surplus wealth, and for the first time in history the citizens are borrowing more than comes in?

Our parents, after World War II, put money in the bank. They had nothing. They didn't have a car and put money in the bank. Now, with this great wealth, the citizens have become borrowers for the first time in history. Is that true?

Without the workers on the land anymore we can no longer manage endangered species, and we've got all kinds of trouble. We can't manage interface fire, which all rural communities face. We can't manage invasive species along the highway or on the farmland.

We can't manage a competitive, complex forest industry anymore. We used to have a social contract sawmill in every town, and people tended to work in their own communities. Now we have turned it over, essentially, to two monolith monopolies in the interior and two monopolies on the west coast because we can't manage the land.

Let's talk about log exports. What are the monopolies doing? They don't really want to compete with themselves, so once a month we close a pulp mill or a sawmill in British Columbia. We are nearing the day where the government that manages the land won't have any choice except to allow log exports because we will not have the processing capacity inside the province to do it.

For all of Social Credit time, Liberal time and New Democrat time, we exported logs only when nobody in British Columbia would bid on them. If we close our capacity to the point that we can no longer process the logs, essentially they're gone. They are gone under any government. We haven't got the government workers to manage the land, so we turn them over to monopolies who don't really want to process wood here — close it and sell the wood.

Is that what becoming vassals on the land is? Is that really the future we've always been…? The future that we have been afraid of is now here? You know one of the sad things that happens when you lay off most of the government workers? You turn those who are left, who started out to be employees of the people, trying to manage the land and doing things, into bureaucrats. You turn an honest person who went to college to go do a job into that slur. Among some classes I think it's a swear word: bureaucrat.

I have a friend who works for the Ministry of Children and Families. He has done it for 30 years. Just the other day he said to me: "Corky, I went to college, I cared about people, and I became a social worker. Now I have become a bureaucrat. I process paper and say 'no' to people."

My friend who logs for a living…. The Forest Service was his kind of partner for all those years. Now when he applies for a cutting permit, what happens? It doesn't go to Castlegar. It goes off to Grand Forks. It goes to the bottom of the pile, and it waits for three months. By the time he finally gets the cutting permit, he hates the government worker who is supposed to process it. The guy who was his partner before is now a bureaucrat, and he wants less of them. That is what we have done to the people who manage the land.

I guess what I'm saying here is: exactly what is the Premier's vision of the future of British Columbia, which is essentially a land-based home? Sure, we have a surplus. We've got a surplus budget. That's a wonderful thing. We have a surplus budget. Now, let me try to explain this to folks in terms of their own lives.

I, hon. Speaker, probably just a bit like you, have a mortgage on my house and land. I've got a couple more loans. I've got a truck, I've got a tractor, and I work and I manage those debts. But if I sold the truck and the tractor and the house and the land, we'd have one whacking big surplus, wouldn't we?

We could have a surplus too. We could live on the cash flow and abandon the idea of passing on wealth to future generations. I submit that that is the vision of this government. That is the result of essentially abandoning the caretaking of the land that we began in the year 2001.

The Italians have a word, and they call it "patrimony." I've never lived there, and I don't speak the language, but I think it's a lovely word, because to me it means something that I inherit from my grandparents, and I pass on. It tends to be the productive wealth in the dirt and the water and the ore and the mountains and the natural gas under the ground. It's the patrimony. We have a surplus. How come we've got a surplus? Because we're cashing in the patrimony of our grandchildren. Of course we can have a surplus if we quit living on productive work and live on cash flow.

I have been sitting here in this room for a couple of days, and I haven't much liked the debate. I think this debate is a bit reactionary. When I was a kid, I was taught what reactionary meant because I wanted to understand. Older kids were using the word to describe government, and I said: "Well, what is reactionary?" They said: "Reactionary is what happens when you have a government that doesn't believe in anything except denying the other guy's power. Your government is in reaction to somebody else rather than their own vision and principles and beliefs."

Day after day people here get up and ask questions. What kind of answer do they get back? They get back the answer that says: "Never mind; it's better than if you governed." There isn't a vision. We're people living on the cash flow, selling the patrimony and doing it simply to keep the other guys from governing. I want the people who present the green throne speech to believe in their own words. I want them to go back to the seniors' budget and believe in that too, and the children's. I want them to believe in what they say and put the people back on the land that used to care for the land.

Hon. Speaker, it's starting to feel to me like the government is mirroring the larger culture. When you and I, being kind of the same age, were teenagers, a pension fund — the largest investors in the stock exchange — invested for an average of 45 months in North America. They would buy a stock and leave their money there for 45 months before they moved it on. I read recently that that time is now squished down to four months. Now pension funds buy stocks and only hold those stocks for an average of four months before our money moves on.

Of course, in four months you can't deliver anything. You can't have a vision or a plan. You can't, in a corporate sense, even create a budget and then build anything. You can't build a board or a bunch of boards in a sawmill. You can't build a car. You can't build a mine. In four months you can't do anything except manage image — image and the value of your stock. And I would submit that what feels like governmental attention deficit disorder is actually a government managing image and cash flow as a substitute for believing in anything.

I want to go back to the days when government measured not just wealth and cash flow but equity. I want members opposite to actually think about the fact that the people own the land base here, and you are their stewards. They sent you here to manage our productive capacity and our future and our sustainability. You are the stewards, and through you, the people you employ manage that land base for the future. I submit that unlike every other province in Canada, unlike the American states, unlike other governments that I can imagine anywhere, you have eviscerated your capacity to manage the land base.

Realizing it, in ways that we call outcome-based management, you have turned over fisheries, mining, forestry and hydroelectric power to the people who we used to regulate. We used to be partners with the corporate classes that worked on the land. Now you have turned over control of the people's patrimony to those people, and I don't think — whether you believe in that sustainable vision in your throne speech about green or not — we can manage it. I think that smart, intelligent people like the folks opposite and even the people sitting next to me would, if we carry on in ten years, decide to sell the land because we cannot run a farm without any farmers.

That is the sort of old mining role instead of the farming role. That is the traditional way that colonial governments have mined the land base and left it wasted, rather than managing it. I would argue that we've got to turn it around, and now I have a suggestion for one little thing that we might do to make us think differently.

I submit, and I've said it lots of times in this House, that the way we manage British Columbia from this building, which I love and respect, is flawed. It is an imitation of the English model in which they used to manage an empire from London. I think we manage British Columbia on a colonial model. For some reason the folks who went before us, instead of putting government, say, in the middle of the province in Vanderhoof or even on the mainland where they started out in New Westminster, moved it to a rock on the other side of the water to make it relatively inaccessible to its citizens.

To sit in this room and decide on the resource base in Fort St. James and what to do with the agricultural land reserve in Delta and what to do with the forest where I live in Slocan…. It is about as connected to the land base as the colonial government in London was to the people they controlled in Asia and Africa.

This outfit here used to…. You know, when Social Credit worked here, they had jets — remember? They used to fly jets to the towns where there were problems. Now there isn't even a way to get there to talk to them in a timely way.

I would like to suggest that the way the government is operating, at least for rural communities, will result in the destruction of our capacity to sustain rural communities and that we could maybe make a step towards turning that around if we, as a group of people, both sides, decided to go and meet once a year in the communities that actually live on the land.

Here's my suggestion. I argued vociferously for a fall session. I think that democracy is important; I think we should come to work. Since we're arguing about whether or not to have a fall session — the folks over there don't want to have one, and the people over here do want to have one — I have a compromise to offer.

Mr. Premier: like, here's my idea. You don't want a fall session here in Victoria, where there's press gallery and bothersome television and all of this urban trouble and BCTV and all that blah, so I suggest that once a year we go to the rural communities and have a fall session. The first year we go to Prince George, and the next year we go to Kamloops — four weeks in Kamloops, four weeks in Prince George — and maybe

Castlegar the next year, Williams Lake. I would like to see the Clerks, I'd like to see the pages, and I'd like to see the Hansard people and everybody here go sit for four weeks in Williams Lake. It's impossible to theorize climate change and the pine beetle in Williams Lake.

I want to go sit in Castlegar, so when we're talking about the Columbia River, we're smelling it. I want to go to Prince George. I submit that the majority of the people that get elected to this House had never even been to Prince George on the day they got elected — halfway up the province — and a whole whack of them don't bother to go later.

I submit that we take the fall session and get it out of here — end the colonial model, go out and work on the land, talk to the people and find out how come those 7,000 people that we laid off were actually doing a real job. That's my suggestion. It's a compromise, Mr. Premier. It's my idea of how to get along with your government and also put forward our point of view.

We won't sit here. We won't bother you. We won't have BCTV. We'll go to Prince George every fall, and then maybe I'll never have to stand up and make this speech about colonial-style government again.

D. Hayer: I would like to introduce to the House six good friends and my constituents. They are visiting the Legislature today. They are Dr. Pavittar Bassi, Dr. Sukhpinder Sidhu, Dr. Avtar Yubi, Dr. Dilbag Rana, Dr. Harjinder Sekhon and Dr. Ravinder Maan. They really liked our throne speech and budget speech, and they wanted to hear both sides debating it today. They'd really like to see our Gateway project, especially the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and widening of Highway 1, completed as soon as possible. Would the House please make them very welcome.

J. Rustad: It's a great pleasure today to rise and to respond to the budget.

I'd just like to start off with referencing a comment from the member for Nelson-Creston. I just want to initially start to thank him for the passion he really brings here. The entertainment is almost worth the price of admission. The comment I wanted to bring on is that he said, "You know what? We need to build something for our children and for the children of this province," and I couldn't agree more.

I think that is exactly what we are doing here. We are trying to build a future for our children — not taking our debt from $17 billion to $34 billion and squandering it away on wasted projects without any value to the province whatsoever, but building a true future, building something that is sound, that is fiscally solid — that they can build on to give them hope and a future. I applaud you for bringing that thought here and presenting it in the House, although I think we may differ a little bit as to how that should be delivered.

Madam Speaker, it is truly an honour to represent Prince George–Omineca. Every day that I get to come into the House and we get to debate, bring forward motions and discuss bills, it truly is an honour to participate in the fundamentals of democracy that help to govern our world. There are places around in the world that don't have this and that don't have what we're doing here.

I'd like to start off just by making a comment about our troops we have overseas that are fighting on our behalf, fighting about freedoms that we take for granted. I just wanted to thank them very much and to thank their families for what they give, for what they have done for us both in the past and in the present, and for those that will in the future.

I'd also like to take a little bit of an opportunity to talk a little bit about my riding and the place I come from. As the member for Nelson-Creston said, not everyone gets a chance to go out to the corners of the province and travel around. I've been very fortunate so far in this position, in that the committees I've been on have done some travelling and have travelled around.

I do want to boast a little bit about my riding. Whether it's from Endako Mines and the Fraser Lake area, which is so picturesque and such a beautiful area, up to Fort St. James and the skiing there — and, to tell you the truth, the wonderful people; it's truly such a welcoming place — and Vanderhoof and the fields, the agriculture and the forestry in there, and Prince George as the regional centre…. All throughout my riding the one thing that I have noticed so much — and it's such a great pleasure to be able to travel through — is the people.

It's the people who live there that make it thrive, that really make it a place that I am so proud to come from and proud to represent. I just want to thank them once again for giving me the honour to be here.

I'd also like to take a moment just to thank my staff that I have working for me — in particular, Maureen Haley and Cathy King in my Prince George office. All of us in the House here have tremendous responsibilities and a tremendous job. There's no possible way to be able to fulfill all of those commitments, to be able to meet the needs of our constituents without having the great staff that we have in our offices.

I know that everyone here has them, but I just wanted to say thank you, especially to them and for the work they're doing, as well as to Linda Page, who is working for me in Vanderhoof. She spent a year working with me. I really want to thank her and wish her the best wishes in her future endeavours, whatever they may happen to be.

Finally, I'd also like to thank my staff here in Victoria. Once again, on the kind of schedules and the kind of work that we do, it's next to impossible to try to pull all the stuff together without having that support. So I'd like to thank Tim Morrison, Matt McGinnis and

Eric Bekker, because they really do add tremendous support for what we're doing.

On with thank-you's, I also want to raise one other thing. I'd like to thank my wife, Kim Royle. She has really been a rock for me, and her love and support…. All of us make sacrifices to be here. All of us care about the people of the province, the people of our ridings, but it really is our family that is at our heart.

Without my wife's support, there's no way I could be here and doing this job. So I just wanted to say: Kim: I love you very much, and thank you for your support and for your continued support in allowing me to do this job.

One last thank-you, as well, before I get into some of the meat of what I want to talk about, and that is to my parents, to Molly and Lori Rustad. I couldn't have asked for more in parents. So thank you very much, and I love you both.

Madam Speaker, I want to paint a little picture here. I've listened intently to debate — back and forth on both sides, on both the throne speech and the budget. What we've really heard and what I think we're seeing emerge from this debate is optimism, and real leadership versus opposition and, quite frankly, negativity.

I know that's been said many times in this House, but I want to paint that picture a little bit. For example, when I talk about optimism, the difference today from ten years ago in this province is unbelievable. Some of it has to do with global economics, but I can tell you something. The difference that we've made with the policies in this government has allowed business to flourish and has allowed people to flourish to really reach their full potential.

That is what I hear echoed in my riding more than anything. When I go through my riding and I talk to business owners about how things have been — and I've got many businesses in my riding that have been around for 20 or 30 years — they say that at no time in the past has business ever been like it is today.

There is such optimism and opportunity, and you can just see it in our unemployment numbers. In our province we are at 4.3-percent unemployment. That is below what is considered to be full employment. There are jobs out there for anyone who wants to find them and to work — and not minimum wage jobs, as the opposition may suggest. Hourly earnings in this province have risen to the highest level ever. I mean, this is phenomenal for our province. There are such opportunities there.

There are more women participating in the workforce than ever before. There are more aboriginals — more of our first nations people — working in the workforce than ever before. They're participating at record levels. There are more jobs for youth in this province. They are also participating at record levels.

This is optimism. This is the difference that real leadership makes. All you have to do is go back ten years and see 16-percent unemployment — more than 16-percent unemployment in my riding — and know what despair can look like and know why people look and say: "How can I build a future here? I'd better go and look to more fertile ground, perhaps Alberta or other places."

We saw that net migration, and quite frankly, it was devastating for our area. I mean, family members moved, and friends and neighbours moved — very, very good people. They left because they lost hope. They lost the ability to be able to look forward and say: "Tomorrow I have a future, and I can raise a family here and know that my children can have a future." That gets back to what the member for Nelson-Creston has been talking about: building something for their children. That is what this government has been doing.

In 2001 when we took over and formed government, we needed to lay the seeds that can grow to build this prosperity. We did that. We did that particularly through tax reduction, and it worked. The amount of optimism that it helped to create and the real leadership that it created made a real difference. The Leader of the Opposition, when she was out touring around, and looking for the leadership role in previous years before that, actually suggested — you know what? — that she was against the idea of the tax break that we did and that she might even consider reversing it.

Could you imagine where this province would be? We look around at the skills shortage that we have and the labour issues we have with 4.3-percent unemployment. Yeah, we could solve that problem right now. All we need to do is jack our taxes up high enough so that people don't want to live here, so that people don't want to build a future here — and guess what? We don't have a problem with unemployment any more or with a skill shortage. We can go back to what we had in the '90s. That seems to be where they want to go.

This current budget that we just brought down — a 10-percent tax reduction. That's 35 percent on our taxes that has been reduced. That is phenomenal. What that has done is put us at the forefront in this country. Anybody earning less than $108,000 now is paying the lowest taxes possible.

What that means is that our hands are not in the people's pocket as much as they were in the '90s. It means that people have more money in their pockets, they can provide better for their families and they can provide business opportunities. That is what helps to drive optimism.

When we look at the throne speech that we had brought down and we look at the targets we had and that we've set with regards to the environment…. You can't do that unless you have, first of all, the fiscal house in order, which is taken for granted now. These people seem to forget the fact that, when they were running massive structural deficits and nothing was getting done and we had higher taxes, we had to do significant restructuring to get us on a sound footing.

But now that we're on the sound footing and we've laid those seeds and we've seen the fruit come from those labours, we're now laying new seeds in our

environmental plans and our targets. We're going to be going out, we're going to be talking with the people around the province, and we're going to be developing a greater plan. Next year and in the future years, as our economy continues to roll and we have the ability on the budget, we're going to be developing those plans. We're going to be bringing them forward, and I'm going to be looking forward to debating them here.

As the member for Cariboo North had been talking about — sustainability, being able to build things in an environmentally safe way…. You can't just do that on a whim. You can't just say: "Okay, we're going to do this, so let's go throw $400 million at fast ferries or let's go throw $400 million at Skeena Cellulose." We know where that goes — wasted money.

What you need to do is to be able to have a plan. You need to be able to plant the seeds. You need to be able to tend the field properly so that when it grows, it does bear fruit and we see real results. That is what this government is about.

When I also think about optimism and leadership and the things that we have done in this province…. Look at the labour peace that we have had in this province now. Last year we were looking at a serious situation. We had many of our contracts up, and we sat down and laid out a fair package on the table. We sat down, we negotiated, and we bargained in good faith — and guess what? We have signed contracts of four and five years' length that offer fair wages, good benefits and security for the people that are working for our government.

We had the opposition talking about the fact that there may be people leaving and that we don't have a plan around how to try to have successorship for the people that are going to be retiring. It is that security, it is those options and it is those types of packages that we negotiated that are exactly the key towards being able to build for that part of that future.

You know, they don't see that. If it's not a big flash that, quite frankly, has always gone down the drain for them…. They don't see that when you lay the groundwork, you can build on that and you can have that kind of optimism.

Education. Coming from a school board past, education is, to me, something that is near and dear to my heart. This year we're going to see funding, with this budget, raise up to more than $7,900 per student, the highest level of funding ever — a 4.1-percent increase over last year. I can tell you that when I see the phenomenal things that are going on in the schools, when I see the work that the teachers and the teaching aides are doing and the success they're having around the province, that to me suggests real success.

Yet I believe it was the member for Cariboo North who said: "We need to turn things around. We need to change the tide in education." I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in a tide that's going back out to sea to drown. I'm interested in the momentum that we are building and the work that we're doing — the work that we're doing with aboriginal students and the work that we're doing with the rest of our students. Quite frankly, it's phenomenal, and that's success, and that is what our leadership is all about.

Staying with education and advanced education, back in the '90s there was a freeze on tuition rates. Not only was there a freeze on tuition rates, but there wasn't any additional funding coming in from government. Over time what ended up happening is that universities were starved. They couldn't provide the options and the kind of flexibility that we're able to do today.

Yes, there had to be a readjustment on the tuition rates. I've talked to students. Some students are not interested, and some students say education should be free, but there are many students who also say: "You know what? We understand that we need to invest in our future too. But what we want is to make sure that we have quality. We want to make sure that when we graduate, we have the best education possible."

It is this government that has put the funding into post-secondary education and has made the adjustments that are necessary so that when those students come out, they have the skills they need to fill the job spaces that we're going to have in our markets in the coming years.

Along education, we have particularly seen a big component around skills and skills development. Back in 2001-2002 there were about 14,000 people that were in our trades training. Today, through the efforts that we have done and the initiatives that we've created, we now have more than 29,000 students that are in trades — that are advanced in the skills and are meeting the needs. But we're not stopping there. We have a commitment that we're going to grow that by another 7,000.

That has now gone from 14,000 to where our projection is, which is 36,000. That's a huge difference in meeting the needs of our economy and in making sure we can continue to have the success that we're having.

Once again, that is real leadership, because when you look across and you listen to the debate that goes on in the House on budget and throne speech, do you hear any of that from the other side? Do you hear them pointing out where they think they could go and how they could potentially achieve that? Not a chance.

One of the pieces in our budget that I'd like to talk about…. Housing is great, and I'm going to get to some of those points. One of the things that I like in our budget is the 10-percent tax reduction. I spoke about that a little bit before. I heard here in the House…. There was some debate. I think it was early on Monday. The member for Nanaimo said that the solution is quite clear. To deal with this sort of thing, he actually suggested that we take the money from the tax reduction and spend it on housing — $1.5 billion and spend it on housing. You know what? That might make a big difference. I suspect that it could potentially do things.

But then let's add on some of the other things that they want. For example, the member for Cariboo North said that he wants to see more health care. He wants to

see more money in education. He wants to see improved services. He wants to see more money spent on roads. He wants to see more, and do you know what that translates? That translates into taxes. That translates into needing more tax dollars.

I challenge any one of them right now, anyone in the opposition, to stand up and say: "You know what? We don't think that tax reductions are worth it. We believe that we should crank up taxes and that we should drive this economy in the ground so that we can provide better services, because we don't believe that you as the citizens of this province can manage your finances better than we can." Because that is what they've been saying.

If you listened to all of the rhetoric that comes through, that is the underlying tone. They believe we should raise our taxes. They believe that we should raise our money, balloon our spending and balloon the way government is so that they could have some pet projects that they'd like to work on.

Well, I tell you, the success is quite clear. In the tax reduction from 2001, we saw tax revenues, which were stagnant for about five or ten years before then, balloon. They just took off. Why? Because people had more money to invest. They had more money to build opportunities. They had more money for their future.

We're going to see the same thing from this 10-percent tax reduction. We're going to see revenues generated for the province increase because people now have more options and more abilities to be able to do things.

In the face of 4.3-percent unemployment and in the face of the booming economy that we have, I want to read a quote here, which I find quite interesting, from the member for Cariboo North. He says: "We're going to fall off a cliff. I want to inform" — he's speaking to city council at this point — "council what a cliff looks like. The mountain pine beetle is killing everything. The world is awash with fibre. We need to admit the challenge and not hide and run." He goes on in another quote to say: "…we have an economy that is not structurally sound and has not been for some time."

Well, you know, that kind of commentary, that Chicken Little type of vision of the world…. I understand. I mean, if he's thinking of the '90s and where things were going in the '90s…. But there is now opportunity. There is hope in this province. Once again, that is the difference between real leadership and no leadership. Between the B.C. Liberals and the NDP.

But now that I've touched on pine beetle, I want to carry on that frame a little bit. The member for Cariboo North, of course, is quite passionate about pine beetle and passionate about his area, just as I am, as our two ridings are two of the ridings that are going to be the most impacted by the mountain pine beetle epidemic that we have in this province.

Pine beetle has created a real challenge and a real difficulty in our province. It's going to change the way that forestry is undertaken and the way we do things. That change can scare some people, but we can take a Chicken Little approach and say the sky is going to fall, or we can take the approach to say that there is opportunity there.

I know companies that are looking at using new models on the land base to try to get fibre to go through much faster and look at different products they can produce. Those opportunities wouldn't be there except for the changes that are coming. But change is the key. They have optimism about building a future. That optimism is built from the leadership we have in this province, not from what created this epidemic.

I know there are environmental issues that help to feed this epidemic and the impact, but I want to talk about two things that I think, quite frankly, are just a disaster. The first one is when the pine beetle took hold in the park close to my riding. Tweedsmuir Park was the perfect breeding ground. It was old pine. It was to be untouched. There hadn't been any fires that went through. It was the perfect breeding ground, and the beetle took hold in there. It flourished, and it became a problem.

Everybody recognized the problem when it was in the park. The Forest Service developed a plan. They were going to go in and do a broadcast burn in the park to try to eradicate the beetle and try to minimize some of the impact that was coming out of there. What happened?

The NDP cabinet of the day in the 1960s told the Forest Service: "It's too risky." There was a nice, stable high, but there were dry conditions. There were the perfect conditions for a really good forest burn, but they said: "It's too risky because it's too dry. What happens if it gets away?" So they waited, and they floundered and waited for wetter conditions. Then they finally said: "Okay, let's go and do it." Under the wetter conditions, the Forest Service did their best. They tried to get the burn going, but it was ineffectual.

That is the difference that can come and make an impact that could have…. We wouldn't have eliminated it, but it certainly could have helped bring under control and prevent some of this problem that we're having today on the magnitude that we see. Okay, so they decided to interfere politically when science was saying that they should be doing something.

I want to throw something else out there. This is a little bit of speculation, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway. Back in the days after the bug got out of the park and started spreading rampant in the area, there was a call from industry and from forestry to go and increase the cut and to focus the cut in those areas of the pine beetle and, in particular, to increase the cut to try to remove some of the damage, mitigate some of the spread and to be able to get a good fight on it.

At that particular time, and this is now turning to politics, the Green Party was gaining momentum in the polls. One of the planks of their platform was a 20-percent reduction in the annual allowable cut. How would it have looked — and by the way, they were gaining support on the back of the NDP's losses in their

support — if the NDP had stood up and said: "You know what? We've got to do the right thing and increase the cut to try to help to mitigate this problem"? How would that have looked to those people that were thinking about moving over to the Green Party, that thought a 20-percent reduction in the annual cut was a good thing?

Once again, you see that the grounds were there for this to be political — creating and magnifying the problem. The member for Cariboo North I think said it best, because it typifies where we were and what they were thinking about in the 1990s, and that is: "We've had beetle epidemics in the province throughout history, and the standard and acceptable response to managing such epidemics in the past has primarily been to let nature deal with the problem — specifically, hope for a cold snap."

We have a real challenge in this province. It is going to change, and it is going to impact on some communities. I think those challenges, quite frankly, are going to be opportunities. But when you look at that type of thinking, that's how we got here. That's why it is as bad as it is.

We can never, ever go back to that kind of thinking and that kind of non-leadership because it's quite clear how devastating it can be. When you think about that from an environmental perspective and from the impact that's had on our environment, they have no right whatsoever to stand and say that their government or their party believes that they can stand and do something for the environment.

I want to switch gears a little bit on some of the things that were in the budget and just talk about some of the things that I think are going to be good, both for my riding and around the province.

First of all, of course, it's the fourth consecutive balanced budget. That in itself is a feat, considering that we had eight under the other government that weren't balanced. Think about this for a second. First of all, we are going to be returning some of the part-time beds to year-round beds. That's going to be an increase to 300. We've got $38 million for homeless housing. We have got $6 million for transitional housing for women. We have increased the shelter rate by $50 a month, which is now the highest in Canada. Those people with multiple barriers have increased by $97 a month, which is also the largest single increase, to be able to help the people who are truly in need.

For seniors who want to stay in their homes, we're putting $45 million aside for upgrades to be able to help in terms of supporting seniors for housing. We've taken the SAFER program — which, quite frankly, is a great model that we've now got — and are extending it to a rental assistance program for families, which we're now increasing from families earning $21,000 to $28,000. This is real leadership on serious issues that we have in this province. This isn't hot air and rhetoric. This is what you call real leadership.

I also want to talk a little about one of the other things in the budget that isn't talked about a whole lot; that is, we've extended the mining incentives for the flow-through share tax credits for exploration, but we've also increased that for the areas impacted by pine beetle.

What that does is it means companies that want to explore now are going to have an easier time to be able to raise money to be able to go and do the kind of exploration that's required to find those mines and to build those jobs.

When you are looking at the pine beetle epidemic, it's creating more roads. It's creating more opportunities. But it's allowing us to get in there, and this is exactly the kind of option that allows people to get in and to be able to make a future, to be able to build options for people.

I notice that my time is running low, so I want to focus on one last thing. Throughout the six years that we have been in power we have seen budgets and throne speeches come in. We have seen the impact they've had, and we've seen how they have built over the years.

This particular budget speaks about housing. We're going to be laying out a great plan that's going to be developing over the next year and beyond, and we're going to see how that grows.

We've laid out our throne speech on the environment, and we're going to see how that grows. We're going to lay the seeds, and we're going to do the work, because at the end of the day, it all comes back once again to the children. It all comes back to what we're going to be able to do for our future to be able to support our parents and our grandparents, to be able to support our families and to be able to build that vision and build that hope.

That is why I'm so honoured to be here and so pleased to be able to rise today to speak to this budget, because it gives people hope. It builds upon successes that we already have. It builds upon those opportunities, and it is going to create, just like our other ones have, a much better place — quite frankly, the best place — in B.C. to live, to work and to play.

R. Fleming: Constituents in Victoria-Hillside will share much disappointment with others around the province at not just the contents of this budget, but most importantly, what was left out of this budget.

Let's first talk about some of the skepticism that British Columbians are rightly applying to the government's latest budget and to the intentions announced in its throne speech that preceded that budget. I noticed that even CanWest Global, numerous editorial boards this year, displayed a healthy dose of skepticism this year about the so-called housing budget.

Perhaps that's because two years ago we had something that was called the seniors' budget introduced in this House, and what did it do? Its highlights were to repackage broken 2001 commitments to build assisted living — commitments from 2001-2002. We're still hopelessly

behind on that broken promise. That so-called seniors' budget also failed to replace home care programs that were cut in the Liberals' first term.

In more immediate context, in the last quarter of last year's budget, which was dubbed and called — branded by this government — the children's budget…. In the last quarter of that budget's fiscal year we had an announcement that 15 percent of child care budgets would be cut in the upcoming year.

One of the most important things to the quality of life for working families in the capital region is access to affordable, quality child care services. We know that we need it if kids are going to have the best chance in life to succeed at school, to grow up. Early child care services are absolutely critical for their positive development. Our system has already been under strain prior to 2007. Thanks to this budget it will get much, much worse.

Parents have already figured it out. They know what this budget means to them. Parents who have children in child care programs understand that they will pay between $75 and $90 more per month because of this budget. They know that that significantly outweighs the so-called tax cuts that were put in this budget by the government. I think that more and more British Columbians are understanding what they're going to lose in this budget.

Let me just stay with child care for a moment. The child care resource and referral centres in B.C — 45 of them. The one in my community has been in operation for 17 years continuously. These programs go back to the 1970s, and in this fiscal year they may have ended for all time thanks to this government's budget.

In my community the child care resource and referral centre moved to a brand-new building just this January — the grand opening of this facility. The lease was signed and approved August 1, 2006. This building is now scheduled to close in September 2007.

Never mind the government waste, the $200,000 to outfit and fund the moving of this centre into better, more prominent space in our city. Never mind the waste of the employees that will have to be dismissed and the talents they've applied to this community. Let's focus on what the parents are going to lose from the closure of this centre.

Now we have the so-called housing budget. Could there ever be in the history of this place a more disconnected budget from the throne speech which preceded it? Let's go back to that throne speech. The Premier said very clearly, and I quote just one brief passage: "The science is clear. It leaves no room for procrastination."

A week later, after that speech, after those words that quoted the Premier were uttered, and despite the urgency in those words, the government has chosen to not make climate change a priority at all in this budget. It's mind-boggling, the disconnect. It speaks perhaps to the hastiness, perhaps to the shallowness of the government and the Premier's sudden conversion on the issue of climate change.

The three-year rolling budget estimates speak louder than those words, as actions often do. They project a total of $4 million over the next three years to tackle climate change. That's the total provincial spend to address global warming in this jurisdiction — $4 million in this fiscal year, zero dollars over the next two — incredible. There's even a substantial cut in alternative energy programs in the Ministry of Energy and Mines to serve this goal.

The tax cuts that were introduced in this budget were not targeted. They were not blended with business tax rates. They were not made in support of any particular economic diversification strategy. They were not tied to try to induce or bring incentives to any particular behaviours which we may wish to change or influence in our economy.

I noticed that the government tried to claim bragging rights on PST relief on hybrid cars. This is not new. It's also interesting that the same tax relief that is available for a hybrid car is also available to the most gas-guzzling vehicles that can be purchased in British Columbia. I guess that's the government's sense of balance and the government's sense of change.

I want to talk about what wasn't in the budget in terms of public transit, in terms of redressing the six-year record that this government has in Greater Victoria and 50 other communities across B.C. in terms of cuts.

There are 15 percent fewer buses on the road in this community today than there were in 1998. That is the legacy of this B.C. Liberal government. This government will continue the trend to download funding for local transit systems to property tax payers. That's the commitment that we see to public transit in this green throne speech and in this budget document. Now the minister apparently wants to recentralize — under a greater goal, perhaps. He wants to crush any development toward regional planning and greater autonomy in Victoria and, perhaps, in the lower mainland.

"Never mind the Community Charter; central government is best. We will cut your funding." This is the message being sent out. "We will tighten our control on your governance." That's not what Greater Victoria is looking for in its transit system, and that's what we're getting in this budget.

Let's look at the housing budget where it actually meets reality. Just last week at the same time that the government was packaging this undirected tax cut as, somehow, a commitment to housing, when it need not have any connection to it at all…. In Greater Victoria a development worth $280 million was being approved in the downtown — in my constituency, as a matter of fact.

It's one that I'm very pleased that city council approved and that downtown residents seem to embrace and support. It is a project all about shifting towards densification. There will be three towers on this site. It's the old Hudson's Bay building. Many people will know where that is. There was no anti-development NIMBYism, no anti-density sentiments there. Council approved it. The residents came out in support of it. Unfortunately, it's 100-percent market housing.

Now, the developer apparently met with provincial officials, and he concluded that there's nothing in this

budget, nothing in this government's programs through B.C. Housing and through the ministry, for commercial developers to create incentives for below-market housing — to have a mixed community.

R. Fleming: One of the members over there objects that there's…. Perhaps he thinks there's no need for below-market housing. Well, I can tell you. Our workers; our employees in the retail and service industries; those who support many industries here, including tourism — where are they to live if there's not affordable housing available to them?

Greater Victoria is among the 25 most expensive places to live in the world now. This is no time for half-measures from the government, six years on, to release a so-called housing budget that contains no programs for developers to be able to develop mixed communities.

Let's look at some other elements of the so-called housing budget. It has given, in terms of its homeless strategy, the Streetlink shelter 30 percent more capacity, if you will — 30 percent more crammed mats in an already overstressed shelter system. That already occurs during the cold- and wet-weather months of the winter, and now, apparently, that's a right that is going to be extended year-round. That is not the same as building more shelters. That is not the same as building permanent housing, which the homeless population in Victoria desperately need.

The homeless population in this community has tripled under this government, and this is the response that we get six years on — that you can cram 30 percent more people in the one existing major shelter that you have near downtown. Not good enough.

There are some excellent projects in this city. Tillicum Station, built under the Homes B.C. program in 2001. That is the last housing development built for low-income families in this community. There's Mike Gidora Place, a project built for at-risk youth. There's the Johnson Street Manor, transition-stage recovery housing to support those struggling with addictions.

Those were all built under the previous government. It's as if the government says that those were bad projects, because they no longer have those programs available. They cancelled them in 2001, and they didn't even come back in the so-called housing budget.

The other thing that we must put the housing budget into context with is how much revenue this government has taken in from the real estate boom that North America and the world has been engaged in, in the last five years. The property transfer tax has produced a significant windfall to this government, one that brings in annually more dollars than gaming and lotteries combined.

Over the last six years approximately $4 billion has come into this government. It's now $925 million, I will remind the member across the way. It's approximately the same as the returns from gaming to the province's coffers, unless there's more money coming in from this government that supposedly doesn't support expanded gaming that I'm not aware of.

It's a significant windfall. Over $4.5 billion over the last six years have come in, in a windfall tax through the sale of real estate, through the sale of residential properties primarily, in this province.

Now we look at the comparative reinvestment. We're talking about $130 million of that $4.5 billion over the last six years to be reinvested over four years on a homelessness strategy — six years into the crisis that they created. A totally inadequate response.

There are some other bizarre things happening. Members bring information on almost a daily basis in terms of the goings-on in their health authorities. I'll bring up one in this budget response, if I may. That is, in 2005 I clearly recall the Minister of Health standing up in this House and announcing $60 million over three years for public health programs.

I applauded that. I calculated that that would be $2 million or $3 million more per year in just the Vancouver Island Health Authority. I applauded the goals that the government set out — that by 2008 they would reduce the incidence of HIV infections by 50 percent and increase the proportion of those who are HIV-positive, those individuals who are living in our community…. It would increase their linkage to appropriate care, to treatment and to support service by 25 percent.

But here we are in 2007. A promise was made by the minister here for significant amounts of new funding for public health spending, and in the lower Island we're talking about a $450,000 cut for exactly those programs that the government said it would support. So that's what we've come to expect from budgets from this government: fine words, sometimes fine announcements — appalling results.

I would like to see some things out of this legislative session — I would have liked to see them referenced in the throne speech to give an indication that the government has a commitment — dealing with the realm of consumer protections that are so desperately needed in many areas in our province, where legislation is needed. One of them is home inspection.

Currently in this province anyone can hang a shingle out and call themselves a home inspector. There's no licensing system. There's no requirement that they carry an insurance policy that is adequate, should the buyer rely on that inspection for the purpose of their purchase. There's none of that.

Yet, as a matter of course, as a matter of business, banks require this service as a condition and a subject to for mortgage approvals. We don't have a regime to regulate or to license those people who can do business here in the province, and that is a sorry state of affairs. I dearly hope…. I know that if this government won't introduce legislation, perhaps my colleague from Coquitlam, who is the Housing critic, will do so. I hope the government side will support that.

There's also an urgent need for reform of the payday lending industry in this province. I've spoken about it before, and I've introduced a bill myself. The current unregulated, unlicensed state of affairs for the

payday loan industry does not ensure this. It does not protect the interests of B.C. consumers in what is a fast-growing industry whose presence is visible on the main streets of almost every town and city in this province.

Payday lenders currently loan money at a rate that typically is greatly in excess of the annual rates allowed under federal law in the Criminal Code. This industry is out of compliance and is in violation of the law as a matter of daily business practice. Unlike five other provinces, British Columbia doesn't even have any licensing requirements for this industry, for payday lenders, nor does it have any serious regulation at all for this industry.

I hope the government will support my bill, or better yet, bring in their own so it ensures that it will be passed. The Solicitor General — I think I have his attention on this. He's had lots of time to respond to this. He's had officials in his ministry sitting at a table in Ottawa for over five years, dealing with exactly this question. Other provinces have moved ahead, but B.C. still remains behind.

It's time to bring integrity to the payday loan industry and to protect vulnerable consumers here in British Columbia.

R. Fleming: Here in British Columbia we can do it. The laws have been changed federally. You have that permission.

There is a lot to do in terms of regulating payday lenders. There are lots of consumer measures that can be done on that industry short of the interest rate requirement.

Deputy Speaker: Member, all debate and discussion is through the Chair, and you're only to refer to members.

R. Fleming: Okay. I think he used the pejorative "you," but I will speak through you, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

R. Fleming: I appreciate that. I'm his friend now, and I hope that this will be friendly.

We do have the ability to regulate the payday lending industry now. Let's get on with it. I would like to see that happen in this session, because it is a tremendous debt trap for individuals out there.

We are talking about some of the most vulnerable people in society, who are preyed upon by this industry and who are not well served by this industry. There are things that we could be doing to make that not the case, to change this state of affairs in B.C. I think that if the Solicitor General is sincere that he shares this concern, both sides of the House can cooperate on that.

Let me spend the balance of my remarks on the subject of advanced education in my capacity as the critic for the New Democrats.

Currently in British Columbia, after five or six years of this government, low- and middle-income students and their families are left in the lurch when it comes to post-secondary education. Since 2002, undergraduates in B.C. have been subjected to a 96-percent increase in their tuition fees. They're now paying, on average, 15 percent more than other students in other parts of Canada to study for college, technical training and university programs.

It's interesting. Just before the last election the B.C. Liberals disavowed their earlier confidence in deregulation of tuition fees. They placed a cap on future tuition increases. But since 2005 they haven't done anything to undo the damage that their tuition fee escalation policies caused.

This budget was a tremendous opportunity to fund, from its $2.8 billion surplus, tuition fee relief and the full restoration of years 1-to-4 student grant programs that were eliminated by the B.C. Liberals and that contributed so heavily to the growth in student debt in British Columbia.

Recently the Millennium Scholarship Foundation reported that B.C. students are burdened with the country's second-highest student debt loads. From 2003 to 2006, B.C. experienced the sharpest three-year increase in debt load in Canada, and the average B.C. student now leaves, after four years of study, his or her post-secondary with a $26,675 debt.

That's a growth of over $10,000 in just a few short years in debt loads in B.C. What kind of experiment is this with our youth, with the next generation that is supposed to be addressing and can help address the skills gap that we have growing in our province?

There are things that governments can do. The U.S. Congress recently addressed student debt by cutting student loan interest rates in half. There are other jurisdictions — Newfoundland, Saskatchewan — that are reducing tuition fees in legislation. Others are dramatically increasing the non-repayable part of student aid, but none of this is occurring here in B.C., with a $2.8 billion surplus.

There's neither concern nor creativity to help students and to help our economy meet the growing skills gap in this province. Instead, incredibly, this budget actually reduces student assistance by $23 million in fiscal 2007-2008.

Let's talk about student spaces, because the government never tires of repeating a mantra about its commitment to student spaces. A recent review by the Office of the Auditor General shows how hopelessly off course the B.C. Liberals' seat expansion program is

in this province. The Auditor General concluded in his report that the government failed to plan, fund and implement the program properly and that in the first two years of the six-year program government had met barely half of its seat target.

The report also noted that enrolment is declining in many constituencies where government members sit. They should be concerned about this. Enrolment is declining in many rural colleges. College of the Rockies, Selkirk College, Northern Lights College, College of New Caledonia, North Island College, Langara College, Vancouver Community College — all of them have experienced significant enrolment declines during this time when the government committed to expand spaces right across B.C. in every institution.

Administrators have requested that the government establish a more transparent and fair funding formula. We haven't seen that in this budget. The ministry needs to be clear that money meant for seat expansion is not consumed by inflationary costs. That's what is at the root of sabotaging its seat expansion plan.

The pressure is really real when one considers that per-student operating grants have, when they're adjusted for inflation, actually declined by 11 percent since 2001. In the next three years of this budget, it will decline further in real dollar terms.

I think that British Columbians welcome the idea of creating more spaces for post-secondary education, but the efforts have to be sincere. Failing to properly plan and fund system expansion will not simply result in voters being left with a broken election promise but with students being denied a proper and affordable post-secondary education.

Why is this government so hopelessly off course with its seat expansion? Let's look at the explanation by the Auditor General. Remember, this isn't the NDP saying this. This is an independent examination of the government's very weak performance on seat expansion: "Post-secondary education enrolments are sensitive to several factors: tuition and fee increases, revised student aid provisions, changes in debt levels, fluctuations in the labour market and shifts in demographics. British Columbia has experienced changes in all of these areas in recent years."

It goes on to say: "The impacts of these interacting factors help explain the softening in student enrolment. We expected the ministry and institutions to be well aware of these influences and to have been developing strategies to offset any negative impacts. We found, however, that softening enrolment caught…the ministry by surprise."

Massive tuition fee increases, the elimination of student grants — the total elimination of those grant programs…. When opportunities for low- and middle-income students disappear, when those incentives to get them into study at an institution in their community or somewhere else in the province…. When those disappear, it's not rocket science that you're going to see softening enrolment.

You know, the "25,000 spaces by 2010" slogan of the government…. It may sound ambitious, but when you actually look at the demographic trends put out by B.C. Stats — when you look at the fact that by 2010 the population of 18-to-29-year-olds will have increased in this province by 75,000 persons — it actually means that the seat expansion doesn't plan to address or increase participation rates in post-secondary education. That means it doesn't address the skills gap. It means it's a status quo — just keeping pace — seat expansion.

It's very much like the province's literacy goals discussed earlier this afternoon by my colleague from Cowichan-Ladysmith. It is status quo dressed up as fool's gold.

I want to speak a little bit about other aspects of student financial aid. I suppose that this budget did attempt in very modest, peculiar ways to address the growing student financial needs and gaps in programs in British Columbia. The so-called baby bonus program was, I think, originally scribbled on a cocktail napkin in Penticton before the Premier made an address to his convention on the final day. That led to a very bizarre launch of a $1,000 education trust fund for children born after January 1 of this year, in this budget.

Presumably, that strange policy is designed to help provide student debt relief in the year 2025-2026, when the first student of that age will be able to redeem it. Well, $1,000 barely buys you a three-credit course under the B.C. Liberals' tuition fees today. I can only imagine what it's going to buy in 2025-2026.

The program is tame, and it is useless. Curiously, this 2026 baby bonus program wasn't coordinated, either, with any of the other time horizons going on within post-secondary education. We have Geoff Plant out there doing the Campus 2020. We have the 2010 seat expansion, which I've already covered, and we have the 2026 baby bonus program.

Let me speak briefly on Campus 2020. There was some suggestion by the minister that one of the reasons why there are no ideas and nothing in this budget for students is because they're waiting for that report to be delivered. I must say that this side of the House is very puzzled by the government's decision to appoint the former Attorney General, Geoff Plant, to head that Campus 2020 process.

While he may be a very accomplished lawyer, I don't know what it is about this government that makes it repeatedly ignore the members' conflict-of-interest guidelines, which prohibit former members of cabinet from receiving a contract or benefit from government for 24 months after they cease to be a cabinet minister — yet he was appointed anyway. I mean, surely there were dozens of better choices out there of people to lead this process. Looking ahead 12 years from now….

R. Fleming: Name one? How about Martha Piper, Charles Jago, any other recently retired university presidents who served with distinction in this province? I can name dozens.

I did search Mr. Plant's Hansard record, just to see what kind of background…. He never served as the Minister of Advanced Education; he didn't have any particular involvement. I searched Hansard, and I found one reference to advanced education during his entire two terms as MLA in this place. It barely warranted a paragraph. There you have it.

Skills training. By separating skills training, we still have not listened to anyone in the sector. We have not listened to college presidents. We have not listened to anyone on the front lines of apprenticeship and skills training in this province who has concerns about how this government divided the Ministry of Advanced Education with the Ministry of Economic Development for that responsibility.

The colleges still deliver the programs. The funding envelope is with that other ministry. It has created frustration and confusion over who sets policy, who makes the funding decisions, which ministry or government agency colleges and institutes must coordinate their efforts with, and who they must report to.

Colleges who are interested in expanding in-demand trades programs were ignored. Instead, the government has devalued trades training in pursuit of simplified alternatives to apprenticeship. Let's look at the results that still go unaddressed in this budget. Years on, with only 75 percent of our population, Alberta now produces twice as many fully trained apprentices per year as British Columbia. That wasn't the case six years ago; it's the case today. The graduation rate for fully qualified apprentices in B.C. is appalling.

Adult basic education. We have declining enrolment there in B.C. The prohibition against social assistance recipients who are trying to better themselves in life and get out of poverty — even persons with disabilities — from attending literacy upgrading training or adult basic education while receiving that assistance still goes on. It's absolutely counterproductive to raise people out of poverty and bar them from gaining those skills in education. Yet that is preserved in this budget, as it has been for many years now in British Columbia.

In conclusion, government and post-secondary institutions play a critical leading role in positioning our province and its businesses to meet the challenges we have. Universities are going to remain the significant site of research and development, a driver in scientific information and economic development in new companies. B.C. still ranks — and after this budget it won't change at all — last in terms of its support for research and development.

Government needs to play an active role in supporting emerging industries, and it needs to directly invest in its own strategic assets. Community colleges will need to be supported to meet the skills needs of our changing workforce and demographics. In B.C. we are discouraging young people from pursuing their dreams by constructing insurmountable financial barriers to higher education. Our province will continue to pay a huge price if the growing skills-and-training gap continues to widen.

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