Hansard — Monday, April 30, 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		7277

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		7277
	Call for MLA action on climate change
	G. Coons
	Relay for Life cancer fundraiser
	J. Rustad
	Seniors advocacy service at Blanshard Community Centre
	R. Fleming
	B.C. economy and retail sector
	R. Lee
	Newton Community Festival
	H. Bains
	Steelhead protection on Capilano River
	R. Sultan

Oral Questions		7280
	Statements by Office of the Premier on Ken Dobell contracts
	C. James
	Hon. M. de Jong
	J. Kwan
	G. Gentner
	Call for investigation into government handling of Ken Dobell lobbying contracts
	M. Farnworth
	Hon. M. de Jong
	Attorney General knowledge of Privacy Commissioner ability to investigate conflicts of interest
	B. Ralston
	Hon. M. de Jong
	M. Karagianis
	Hon. W. Oppal

Petitions		7284
	S. Fraser
	C. Trevena

Second Reading of Bills		7284
	School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007 (Bill 20) (continued)
	M. Sather
	C. Trevena
	G. Coons
	B. Simpson
	S. Simpson
	N. Simons
	D. Routley
	J. Kwan
	Hon. S. Bond
	Teaching Profession (Teacher Registration) Amendment Act, 2007 (Bill 21)
	Hon. S. Bond
	D. Cubberley
	N. Macdonald

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		7316
	Estimates: Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (continued)
	Hon. R. Neufeld
	J. Horgan
	Hon. K. Krueger
	C. Puchmayr
	N. Simons
	G. Robertson
	S. Simpson

Hon. P. Bell: We're joined in the gallery today by my ministerial assistant. Today will be her last day, actually, working in this government. I just want to take time to thank her for the tremendous work she has done over the years. She worked for the now Minister of Advanced Education and the now Minister of Tourism, Sport and the Arts. She has served all members on both sides of this House extremely well over the years and has been a consistent performer for six years with this government.

I know that all of the House will want to join me in thanking Sharon McKinnon very much for her dedicated service.

D. Routley: I have four guests in the gallery today. First, Doug Morgan, executive member of Local-180 of the Steelworkers; a constituent of mine and a dear friend, Rick Doman; a CA from my office, Giles Villeneuve; and a lifetime member of the New Democratic Party and constituent, Don O'Dell. Could the House please help me make my guests welcome.

S. Hawkins: On behalf of Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce new Legislative Assembly employees recently hired as part of our youth employment program — nine summer tour guide staff and six Parliamentary Players. They will be conducting tours seven days a week to tens of thousands of visitors between May long weekend and Labour Day. They are post-secondary students who will welcome tourists from around the world.

Our guides speak a variety of languages, and they'll be offering tours in English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Cantonese and Mandarin. The Parliamentary Players will be bringing history to life through their portrayal of six prominent figures from British Columbia's past.

I would ask the House to please welcome Rhea Laube, Karoline Piercy, Jennifer Ives, Sara Tuppen, Whitney Punchak, Travis Paterson, Mary Karaplis, Jessica Chu, Nicole Bowden, Danielle Janess, Kaitlin Williams, Jason Moldowan, Joel Bernbaum, Will Weigler and Scott Hendrickson. Please make them welcome to our legislative precincts.

C. Puchmayr: I'd like to introduce a guest. One of my constituents is in the gallery. I'd like to introduce Lynn Beckhart. Please make her feel welcome.

Hon. J. van Dongen: Today in the members' gallery we have a special delegation of visitors from the Portuguese Parliament. Visiting Victoria for first time is His Excellency Dr. Jaime José Matos da Gama, president of the Assembly of the Portuguese Republic. Accompanying him are four members of the Portuguese Parliament: Mr. Ricardo Rodrigues, Mr. Mota Amaral, Mr. Honório Novo and Ms. Teresa Caeiro.

Also accompanying the delegation are Ms. Maria Manuela Fischer, diplomatic adviser to the president; Mr. Fernando Anjos Lopes, lieutenant; His Excellency João Pedro da Silveira Carvalho, Ambassador of the Portuguese Republic to Canada; and Mr. João Luis Laranjeira de Abreu, Consul General of the Portuguese Republic in Vancouver.

S. Fraser: Today there's a delegation from the Steelworkers visiting to deal with occupational health and safety issues. Amongst them are Rita LaJeunesse, Jeff Bromley, Don Iwascow, Dale Johnson and Kim Pollock. Would you please join me in making them feel very welcome.

Hon. G. Abbott: This morning I had the pleasure of meeting two young men who are about to embark on quite an adventure. They are going to be cycling across Canada beginning tomorrow, starting at Mile Zero here in Victoria, and concluding about four months from now with a visit to the Atlantic.

They are David Watson and Justin McGee, and they are using this opportunity to cycle across Canada as a fundraising opportunity for the Kidney Foundation. Representing the Kidney Foundation here today to help them launch this is Mr. Ken Merkley, who does exceptional work with the Kidney Foundation.

For those who may be interested in this cycling adventure and this fundraising effort for the Kidney Foundation of Canada, you can have a look at the site www.bikecanadaforkidney.com and hopefully support this very, very worthwhile venture on the part of Messrs. Watson and McGee. Welcome to the House.

Hon. M. de Jong: In accordance with undertakings that I made to the Opposition House Leader, I can advise the House that the tabling of Bill 36 on Thursday of last week represents the culmination of the government's legislative agenda for the current spring 2007 legislative session.

I can further advise the House that the Opposition House Leader and I will begin the process of sitting down to discuss the schedule for the remaining month of the legislative session. I will happily provide a report in due course.

G. Coons: I would like to take this opportunity to present to this Legislature, to my colleagues, a chance

to make a difference. As elected officials responsible for shaping the future of this province, we must show our determination to lead on the issue of climate change.

For this reason I believe that we as a collective must take personal responsibility for the environment by going carbon-neutral. We can do this by pursuing greater energy efficiency in our offices and at the Legislature, while compensating for our remaining emissions by purchasing carbon offsets. Going carbon-neutral is one way to make ourselves accountable for the ecological impact we have every time we drive, fly or turn on the computers.

It's based on the principle that since climate change is a global problem, an emission reduction made elsewhere has the same positive effect as one made locally. If we add polluting emissions to the atmosphere, we can effectively subtract them by purchasing carbon offsets. These are simply credits for emission reductions achieved by projects elsewhere, such as wind farms, solar installations or energy-efficiency projects. Purchasing these credits will encourage us to stop externalizing the cost of personal decisions that impact the climate.

While reducing energy use must always be the first priority, purchasing carbon offsets will help us to transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. It will show our resolve to take immediate action on climate change. No amount of effort can completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. However, it is our duty to do our best, and purchasing carbon offsets is a way to minimize emissions.

The Premier's throne speech indicated that the government-appointed climate action team would identify practical options and actions for making the government of B.C. carbon-neutral by 2010. Here is a practical option and action we can undertake immediately. Hon. Speaker and fellow colleagues, we need to lead by example, and this is our opportunity.

J. Rustad: Many people have said many things about cancer in this House, and for good reason. Cancer touches all of us, and just the mention of it can bring enormous anxiety and a feeling of dread. Yet there are many great strides over the years in our fight to find the cure.

Cancer outcomes in B.C. have never been better. This progress has not come easily. Many people have devoted a great deal of their energy and resources to help in this fight. It's through these efforts that we have a bright future.

One way to help with the fight is through the Canadian Cancer Society's Relay for Life. Prince George, as well as many other communities around the province, hosts these important events. It's a fabulous opportunity for people to get directly involved in the fight against cancer through participating in the relay by walking, volunteering or donating. People can really make a difference.

Prince George has always been a community that rallies together to solve problems, and on May 5 and 6 we're hosting our annual Relay for Life. Hundreds of people get involved and really make our relay a proud moment for our community. My colleagues and I in Prince George will be participating because we know the difference that individuals can make in the fight.

I'd like to encourage everyone to get involved by coming out and supporting the volunteers or donating to the individuals and teams. Donations can be made on line through the Canadian Cancer Society's website and looking up the Relay for Life in Prince George.

Mr. Speaker, my family was directly touched by cancer when my wife was diagnosed in 2000, but through modern advancements, she's won her battle with cancer. It's really up to all of us to help make a difference. Together we can reach the goal of eliminating this threat in our society.

R. Fleming: Earlier this month I had the privilege to attend the grand opening of the seniors' entitlement service office at the Blanshard Community Centre located in my constituency of Victoria-Hillside. In 2004 seniors in my community developed the concept to establish an advocacy service for senior citizens who need help and advice and who would otherwise fall through the cracks when they're dealing with various levels of government bureaucracy.

It was with the tenacity and the leadership of Ms. Clara Halber, who is the president of the Greater Victoria Seniors, branch 191 of the B.C. Old Age Pensioners Organization, that this concept finally became a reality this year.

Doing advocacy work requires empathy and passion for the people being served. It also requires proper training on how to effectively represent people, to make one's case with the latest and most accurate information available.

Before the centre opened, five members of this organization embarked on a week-long advocacy course in Parksville offered by the Vancouver 411 Seniors Centre. This was followed by a successful application for funds through the federal government, which allowed them to purchase equipment and supplies and secure an office at the Blanshard Community Centre. I note that this seniors service office at the Blanshard Community Centre will join a teen centre, a licensed day care and a parent resource room, so it has truly become a centre for residents of all ages.

Even before officially opening, advocates have been flooded with phone calls from aging individuals who are seeking assistance with a variety of problems, including health, Pharmacare and housing issues. Of course, we all know that MLA offices do a tremendous job of advocating for our seniors in our communities. But on federal and municipal matters and where there are longstanding and complex cases at work, it's nice for MLA offices to have a partner to help seniors get the best advice and services possible.

I invite all members of this House to join me in recognizing the grand opening of this important volunteer service and sending our thanks to the many individuals making the commitment to volunteer their time as advocates.

Lastly, I would like to extend a special recognition to my constituents Clara and Max Halber, who were instrumental in getting this vital new service established for seniors in Greater Victoria.

R. Lee: This week we celebrate retail businesses in British Columbia. British Columbia is certainly the place to be. With word of our vibrant economy spreading, people are directing their attention to this beautiful province. B.C. has gained in interprovincial migration since 2003. Homes are constantly being built to meet the demand of the flow of new residents.

Retailers in my riding of Burnaby North are enjoying our strong economy. Stores in the Brentwood and Gilmore areas are expanding rapidly with corresponding housing developments.

Newcomers are realizing that Burnaby, centrally located in the Greater Vancouver regional district, offers them everything they need for themselves and their families.

This province has posted another stellar year in retail sales in 2006, let us not forget. Because people are finding work when they come to this province, it affords them the opportunity to purchase what they want on top of what they need. Department, clothing and shoe stores all recorded brisk business. Sales by computer software retailers were up significantly. What goes around comes around.

People are finding work and boosting the economy, which is creating even more jobs. B.C. and Alberta are the only two provinces to report an increase in sales at double-digit rates for a third straight year. We are also the only two provinces in Canada that reported sales growth that exceeded the national average of 6.4 percent.

B.C. is leading the country in so many areas. We're the best place on earth to live, work, play, visit and invest. We have also become the best place to do business.

H. Bains: I would like to talk about a very special day in our community called Newton Community Festival. I have attended this festival for the past several years. It is organized by a group of very dedicated volunteers. Their objective is to celebrate the cultural diversity and pride in the Newton community.

This festival is celebrating its 12th year and is usually the second Saturday of June. This year it's June 9. This festival runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is open to the public. It is held at the Newton community centre and wave pool.

There are many activities planned for people of all ages. One of the aspects of this festival is the Friends of Newton. This is an award that recognizes people in three categories: students, residents and business people in Newton. The recipients are honoured at the festival with a certificate and a brief description of their accomplishments.

There's plenty of local entertainment — games, prizes, silent auction. In the past there was even a dunk tank to dunk local politicians. There is face painting and clowns, two stages filled with entertainment for the whole family and a petting zoo. The Newton fire department is there with their fire truck. There's something for the whole family.

There are many opportunities for the people to become involved with the Newton Community Festival. By volunteering, people can develop social, interpersonal and communication skills. There are new and innovative opportunities for growth and use of volunteers' time to ensure interesting and meaningful volunteer experiences.

Last year an estimated 5,000 people attended the festival. I would like to encourage everyone to come and enjoy the Newton festival this year. This is a remarkable event, and I would like to ask this House to join me in thanking the many volunteers that worked tirelessly on promoting cultural diversity and community spirit in Newton.

R. Sultan: My riding receives its name from the wild river which bisects it — the Capilano, only 100 metres from my office door. Today the Globe and Mail labelled the Capilano the assembly line of death because each year 65,000 young steelhead smolts plunge about 100 metres over the spillway of the Cleveland Dam, with fewer than 20 percent surviving their encounter with the rocks far below.

That's only the beginning. Survivors find themselves freezing in unusually cold water taken from the bottom of the reservoir. When they come back to spawn, they find themselves with nowhere to spawn, since all of the sand and gravel, which normally replenishes the river bottom, has been trapped behind the dam. When they're captured and placed for breeding in the Capilano fish hatchery, they can become a tasty meal for the otter and mink, which recently ate all but one of them.

The public is becoming aware of these issues, thanks to the efforts of BCIT biologist Mark Angelo and journalist Mark Hume, helped by concerned individuals such as my constituent Al Lill, concerned anglers on the river and our own steelhead caucus.

Steelhead are icons of British Columbia — strong, wild and unique. They need our help. There are clear, commonsense solutions to the problems of the Capilano. Compared with the $1½ billion — that's billion with a "b" — that the GVRD is spending to enhance the drinking water capacity of the Capilano, the costs are not large.

Our Minister of Environment is interested in these issues. What is needed now is action from the Greater

Vancouver regional district to implement the solutions which have been studied for years, backed up by pressure from the public and from our own minister.

C. James: In a statement today, Ken Dobell says that he advises the Premier on three issues only: softwood, coastal forestry and ports. But it's clear that that's not the whole story. The opposition obtained a copy of the August 8 letter, referenced by the Premier's deputy in her weekend investigation.

In that letter the Premier says that Ken Dobell reports directly to him and provides the following services: acts as chair of the convention centre project, serves on the VANOC board of directors, leads negotiations on softwood, acts as a liaison to the province on the RAV project, helps to develop the Port of Prince Rupert, helped to develop the Gateway project and, finally, any other projects as assigned by the Premier.

So my question to the Attorney General: who is telling the truth, and why was this never disclosed to the public?

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, a weekend has passed — hardly a revelation. The documents, which the hon. opposition leader refers to, have been in the public domain for months and months. The issue that the opposition leader brings to the floor of this chamber — as if it's some new revelation — has been canvassed in detail, perhaps even by her in the Premier's estimates in the past.

Here's the opposition leader: "A weekend has passed, and I'm going to come in here, and I'm going to try and perpetuate this conspiracy theory around this issue."

But there's nothing new here. Mr. Dobell has abided by the guidelines. He has scrupulously abided by the requirements of a senior public servant in the days after his retirement.

If the member has an allegation she wants to make, then she should make it in here. We'll answer it. And she should make it out there, where others can.

C. James: There's only one thing that's clear. The government has had months and months, and they still can't get their story straight. Not one of them can get their story straight.

Here's what the Premier told the House last week. He said: "Mr. Dobell was put on retainer by the city of Vancouver. If the city of Vancouver decided to have Mr. Dobell on retainer, that was their choice."

In his statement today, Ken Dobell said that Judy Rogers called him to say both the mayor and the Premier had talked, and that both the mayor and the Premier would like him to work on this project.

My question to the Attorney General: again, who is telling the truth — Ken Dobell or the Premier?

Hon. M. de Jong: News flash, Mr. Speaker. The mayor of Vancouver and the Premier of British Columbia want to work cooperatively on projects that matter to British Columbia. Is…?

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, I'm going to be quiet while they're asking the questions, because if there are any more revelations on that scale, I want to make sure I hear them.

Mr. Dobell — 37 years a respected public servant, conduct beyond any question. He leaves the public sector. He abides by the guidelines. He signs a contract, which is in the public domain…

Hon. M. de Jong: …that actually enhances and amplifies the very protections that exist within the guidelines. These members and this opposition leader, in the absence of wanting to discuss any of the important issues that are confronting British Columbians today, can do nothing better than malign the character of a civil servant who has earned the respect of British Columbians.

C. James: Well, the minister can bluster all he wants. But believe it or not, accountability is important, and we believe that on this side of the House, even if you don't. The more questions…

C. James: We've now had different answers on what Ken Dobell was advising on. We've had different answers on how and when Ken Dobell got his contract with the city of Vancouver. Another day, another series of questions. It gets muddier and muddier.

Hon. M. de Jong: I'm inclined to send a few napkins across the way, because the mud is starting to stick over there. That's where the mud is.

I'll take a moment, because this is also a document that's in the public domain. When members are playing fast and loose with the reputation of a respected individual and respected public servant, it's probably worth having all of the facts on the table. So far, the opposition leader has stayed away from the document that was released to the public around the conduct of Mr. Dobell and how it conforms.

Most importantly, the fact is that in coming to the conclusion that she did to ensure that the guidelines were met — have been met, continue to be met — the deputy to the Premier also consulted with the Deputy Attorney General and the deputy minister of the public service, who concur. The opposition leader should know….

Hon. M. de Jong: That apparently is of no consequence to many of the members opposite, so I can only surmise from that reaction that they also doubt the integrity and malign the integrity of those other three public servants who are doing their job on behalf of British Columbians.

J. Kwan: If the government is so confident that there are no conflict issues, all they have to do is call an independent investigation into the matter. That's all the government needs to do, and they refused to do so to date.

On August 8, 2005, the Premier wrote to Ken Dobell outlining his terms of contract. The letter clearly states that Ken Dobell will report to the Premier. When did Ken Dobell inform the Premier that he was taking on a job with the city, and why did the Premier clear Mr. Dobell of all conflict?

Hon. M. de Jong: It does provide me with an opportunity to highlight a portion of that correspondence that the member has chosen not to refer to. On page 2 of the document, of course, in his letter to Mr. Dobell, the Premier says: "Any other work you may take on for any other party must be free of conflict and approved by the deputy to the Premier and cabinet secretary."

Every step of the way, Mr. Dobell and the parties he contracted with turned their mind deliberately to ensuring that the highest possible standards were being met. Now, that doesn't fit with the web of intrigue that the opposition wants to weave, but it speaks volumes for the integrity of the people involved, including Mr. Dobell.

J. Kwan: It wasn't until October 3, 2006, that Ken Dobell wrote to Jessica McDonald regarding the issue of conflict. That is a six-month delay, given the timeline Mr. Ken Dobell himself outlined today in his statement. In his statement he actually says: "In late March, early April 2006, Ms. Judy Rogers called me to advise that the mayor and the Premier had talked, that the province was going to grant the city $5 million for planning of the cultural precinct, and that both the Premier and the mayor would like me to work on that project."

To the government: when was the Premier first made aware of Ken Dobell's potential conflict, and was it before Mr. Ken Dobell took the job or six months after?

Hon. M. de Jong: We slowly come to the crux of the mythical conspiracy that the opposition is trying to weave. This notion that somehow Mr. Dobell, in his capacity as deputy to the Premier, decided with stealth-like efficiency that he was going to arrange to liberate money that he could later tap into as a private consultant….

Hon. M. de Jong: So two things follow from that. If that's the allegation, if that is the specific allegation, then I challenge any single one of those members to make it outside of this chamber. The problem is that they won't do it, because the facts don't support the allegation.

The problem with the theory is that the decision to provide the funding to the city of Vancouver…. My God, the province funded a project that the city of Vancouver wanted to proceed with. The decision was made almost a year after Mr. Dobell left the public service. The facts don't support the theory. The facts don't support the conspiracy.

G. Gentner: We're somewhat buoyed by the fact that the Government House Leader is slowly starting to piece it all together.

G. Gentner: Ms. McDonald says she waived the rule that senior civic servants can't take outside work lobbying the government for a year. Mr. Dobell signed up with the city less than a year after he left his job as a deputy.

Can the Attorney General or the House Leader or whoever explain, without resorting to the supernatural, how she could have waived the rule when Mr. Dobell only informed them that he may be in conflict six months after he took the work?

Hon. M. de Jong: I realize that to do so (a) would be uncharacteristic of the member and (b) would undermine the conspiracy theory that he and his colleagues are trying to perpetuate. But there is a set of guidelines that were abided by, which provide for circumstances when it is deemed to be in the public interest.

You know what? If the member wants to suggest that the cooperative working relationship that developed and continues around the project is a bad thing — that two governments shouldn't work together to the betterment of the citizens of this province — then he should say so. But before he says that, maybe he could take the time to read the guidelines. When you're maligning the reputation of a public servant who has worked hard crafting a positive reputation for 37 years, it probably behooves you to read the guidelines so you know what you're talking about.

G. Gentner: Well, it's obvious that the reputation of Mr. Dobell isn't the only thing in question. It's the Premier's office that is ultimately responsible here. The minister talks about the guidelines. Well, you know, we don't know if that was actually written on a napkin or what.

G. Gentner: Ms. McDonald's letter is after-the-fact damage control, and it only tells part of the story.

Last October she cleared Mr. Dobell of conflict, after any investigation, six months after he took work with the city. She cleared him, despite the fact that he didn't consult with her before he took the work. Now it's been exposed, and the Premier's only defence is: "Trust us. We did the right thing." Well, that simply isn't good enough.

G. Gentner: …to clear him again is not an investigation. It is a cover-up.

Now, will the Attorney General do what is right and undertake a full and complete independent investigation of the scandal? I hear there's a potential — who you can find, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, the hon. member's unfamiliarity with the guidelines is probably…. Well, it is painfully obvious, but it's also due in part to two things: (a) he hasn't taken the time to read them; and (b) in the time that the party he represents in this chamber were in power, they never had any. Isn't that interesting? There were none. There are some now.

I should also say this, and the member or one of his colleagues can respond as is appropriate. You know, we come into this chamber today and are confronted by questions built around the assertion that this material is suddenly miraculously revealed in documents that the opposition has gotten hold of through some mysterious means.

I've consulted my notes. The two letters that have been quoted from today were sent by the government to the opposition in September 2006.

CALL FOR INVESTIGATION INTO
GOVERNMENT HANDLING OF
KEN DOBELL LOBBYING CONTRACTS

M. Farnworth: The only thing that's being maligned is the reputation of this government by its refusal over the last two weeks to answer even the most basic of questions. We have had the Premier give one set of answers one week, the Attorney General give a different set of answers and Mr. Ken "I am not a lobby-

We have been stonewalled, and we will tear this stone wall down stone by stone, question by question until we get the truth.

My question is simple, and it's this. Given the facts that we have one set of answers from the Premier, another set of answers by Mr. Dobell, and we have Jessica McDonald reviewing her own work, would the government recognize that it's time to have someone independent of this file review this situation and ensure that the questions are answered and that everything is on the up and up?

I know that members opposite, desperate to try to create a story where one doesn't exist, choose to ignore the fact that a set of guidelines was in place, contrary to what was…

Hon. M. de Jong: …the situation prior to 2001. The guidelines were applied. At every step along the way, the parties deliberately turned their minds to addressing whether there was a conflict or a perceived conflict and did the responsible thing. In the aftermath, the deputy to the Premier has examined the matter and consulted with the Deputy Attorney General and the deputy to the Public Service Agency.

Now, the members opposite may have an approach that says: "If we just keep making allegations, then perhaps something will happen, and that makes them so. That makes it true." That is not the case. Simply repeating the allegation over and over again in the face of the evidence and in the face of the facts does not alter the fact that the behaviour here was correct. It was scrupulously designed to abide by the guidelines that govern these matters.

ATTORNEY GENERAL KNOWLEDGE OF
PRIVACY COMMISSIONER ABILITY TO
INVESTIGATE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

B. Ralston: The Attorney General is supposed to be the ultimate guardian of public trust, but his answers to me last Thursday weren't even in the range of accurate. How can the public have confidence in the Attorney General when he didn't even know the basics — that the Information and Privacy Commissioner doesn't have the jurisdiction to investigate conflicts of interest?

Hon. M. de Jong: It is unfortunate that this member — who is a learned member of the bar, and who, I presume, understands the significance and gravity of purporting to malign the reputation of one who has dedicated 37 years of his life to public service in this province…. That is unfortunate.

But simply repeating allegations — simply throwing mud in the hopes that somehow, somewhere we will divert attention away from the fact that the opposition doesn't have a desire to debate the issues that are of real import to British Columbians, apparently doesn't have a position on things as fundamentally important as treaties in the province of British Columbia, doesn't want to discuss the fact that we are leading the country in job creation, that our economy is performing at the top of the list again…. Simply descending into the mud pit and throwing mud isn't going to hide the fact that they've got nothing to offer. They haven't, and they still don't.

B. Ralston: Well, the public can judge what question the minister was answering just now, but my question is to the Attorney General. These are important matters of public confidence. This is an important investigation. It's the topic of conversation across the province. How can the public have confidence in him when he doesn't know the basics — that the Information and Privacy Commissioner can't investigate a conflict of interest? That was his non-response to the House on Thursday.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member went home to his riding on the weekend, and I'm not going to purport to interpret what he did or didn't hear, but I'll tell you what British Columbians are talking about. What they actually want us to be talking about in this chamber is the extraordinary things that are happening economically in British Columbia. British Columbians….

Hon. M. de Jong: British Columbians are actually excited about the fact that their provincial government is working with local governments to develop Spirit Squares and LocalMotion. They're actually pleased about the fact that as we head into a spring freshet on the rivers in this province, governments are working together with $33 million to ensure that the flood protection is there when we need it. That's what they're thrilled about, and that's what they want us talking about in this chamber.

M. Karagianis: On Thursday the Attorney General reassured this House time after time that the Information and Privacy Commissioner had the authority to investigate conflict-of-interest issues regarding Mr. Dobell. Frankly, it seemed a little odd, given the fact

that clearly we knew that Mr. Loukidelis was doing a fact-finding mission on Mr. Dobell's lobby registry violation.

Of course, it came as no surprise when, Thursday night, I received this statement from the Privacy Commissioner, where Mr. Loukidelis actually says: "The commissioner has not been empowered or requested by the Legislature or the government to investigate conflict-of-interest allegations against Mr. Dobell. These allegations form no part of the commissioner's review."

Given the fact that Mr. Loukidelis has flatly contradicted the Attorney General, I would like to know how we could have any faith in this House that the Attorney General will get to the bottom of this issue. I'd like that question put to him.

Hon. W. Oppal: I think the law is quite clear that there is no investigative power in that legislation at all. The Privacy Commissioner has agreed to do a fact-finding review of the circumstances that have given rise to these allegations. But implicit in and a part and a condition precedent of doing the review was that Mr. Dobell appear before and take part in the process.

It may well be that conflict may arise from the evidence or the circumstances that he relates to the commissioner. That's where all of that ties together. I would have thought that was fairly clear.

It's obvious that if you look at the legislation, there is no power to investigate in that legislation. We know that. And if….

M. Karagianis: Well, I do, because that actually made everything completely unclear to me in a worse way than we had anticipated up to this point from the Attorney General. At least the Attorney General has admitted that there are no teeth in the Lobbyists Registration Act to do any investigations. I think he has admitted, as well, that…

M. Karagianis: …the Privacy Commissioner is correct — that he has not been tasked in any way to look into allegations of conflict of interest. It's a bit disappointing, I must say, that the Attorney General does not seem to even understand the terms of his own investigation with Mr. Loukidelis.

On Friday the Attorney General was quoted on CBC radio as saying: "As the Attorney General, you have the ultimate authority and ultimate accountability." What we've heard here is the ultimate bafflegab out of the Attorney General up to this point.

I would like to ask the Attorney General to take the ultimate accountability for continually contradicting himself in this House and to tell us exactly what the terms of this investigation are.

Hon. M. de Jong: What is extraordinary and what is disappointing is that this opposition would come into this chamber with nothing new — the same tired, unsubstantiated allegations designed to smear and to malign — in the face of the evidence that makes it abundantly clear that the conduct here was appropriate. It conformed with the requirements. It purposely and scrupulously was designed to ensure that there were no difficulties, that any conflicts that might arise were properly identified.

What is disappointing is an opposition that is again demonstrating it is far more interested in character assassination than in talking about the extraordinary things that are happening in British Columbia — more work, more employment, more investment, more people coming to B.C. That's what this government stands for.

S. Fraser: I have petitions, again, from all over the province urging the government to bring forward the safe antifreeze bill.

C. Trevena: I have a petition with about 130 signatures from the tenants of Mercury Marine trailer park in Campbell River, who are asking that the mobile home tenancy act be reinstated so that they can get $10,000 moving expenses before they are evicted.

Hon. M. de Jong: I call in this chamber continued second reading debate of Bill 20, School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007, and in Committee A, Committee of Supply — for the information of members, the continued estimates of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.

M. Sather: I wanted to continue where I left off some days ago on Bill 20, with particular reference to

Call them czars of achievement, or über-superintendents as my colleague has called them. It's a problematic development and a concern. I think it's going to be a concern not only for educators, for the public and for us, but it's going to be a concern for the minister as well.

The language around this says that their role is to support the school board superintendents, but their powers are going to be considerable. They're going to be over the locally hired superintendents that are hired by the locally elected officials. They won't report to the elected school boards, and the school boards will have to report to these czars of achievement.

I think the minister is going to find this quite problematic, because the myriad of problems that happen day to day and week to week in schools and with parents and with students are handled by superintendents, if they come to that level. That's what their job is, and that's what they're hired to do.

If the minister is now going to put in these super-achievement czars, then I submit that there's going to be a lot of work tied up for the ministry and these four individuals in doing that. I can't imagine why they would in fact want to do that.

This is the good work that's done at the local level, and it hardly seems fitting at all that people who are answering to the deputy minister would want to take on all the problems that come forward at the local school level. I certainly know there are some problems that repeat and can be quite trying and taxing on the time of the board, and now it's going to be at the deputy minister's behest through these superintendents of achievement.

I can only imagine that either the public won't get service, because at that level I don't think it's going to happen with the four of them…. But if they do, it's going to be really problematic for the new bureaucracy that's created. The minister really ought to think over at least that part of the legislation carefully. I think she's gotten herself into quite a mess, and would be well advised to look at that and see if it really is the best model to go with.

It does fit with the overall control mechanisms that the minister is putting in to take away power from locally elected governments and to centralize it, basically, in her office. In that respect it's in keeping with the direction of this bill. But it's not healthy for democracy, and it's not good for the electorate, who depend on the people they elect locally to take care of these local kinds of problems.

Also, we're wondering about the money for these achievement czars. There's no money committed to them. So who knows? It could be $4 million. We don't know how much money it's going to take to run this mini-bureaucracy. I was calling it a mini-bureaucracy, but before we're done, it might be far more than a mini-bureaucracy. Show us the money here. Who's going to be paying for these achievement czars, these über-superintendents — and how is that going to be taken care of?

Superintendents are going to have to provide these achievement superintendents with any information they request. They will have considerable power, apparently, to extract that information should they want it, should they demand it. If they don't, if the local superintendents don't comply, then the deputy minister can appoint a special trustee to coerce them into compliance. So we certainly see the heavy hand of government. For a party and a government that supposedly pride themselves in less government, what we see here is less local government, all right, but more government in terms of the top-down kind of approach that this bill embodies.

Another thing that's of concern — it's been mentioned to me by my local board — is dismissals. If the superintendents and the boards who are responsible for their work miss the targets that are set for them, they can be dismissed. Again we're looking at an issue of where the democratic process is here and where the support for local government is.

I think that school boards — because they are there at the pleasure of the provincial government, if you will — are being careful in their response to it. But when I speak to them, they have quite a few concerns, and they have concerns about democracy. They've expressed to me that the model being proposed is contrary to what we've come to recognize as democracy practised in our province. They really do have considerable concerns about that part of the legislation.

Also, under the boards of education, I wanted to talk about the foundation skills assessment that this government and this minister are so fond of promoting. I had a chance to try to ask the minister about this before, since it's legislation. This is what my board is saying to me. The minister somewhat dismissed it in earlier comments, but they're saying: "These are going to be marked by classroom teachers, and there are going to be extra resources required." They're asking who is going to pay for it. The question of who's going to pay for it is becoming more pronounced in the province.

We see the Vancouver school board having to look at laying off some 140 teachers or so because they say — it's not the opposition saying it — that the resources are not being provided by the provincial government to them, so they have to make these hard and difficult choices.

Achievement, again, is going to be measured — these are the achievement superintendents — through these standardized tests. The B.C. School Trustees Association has expressed concern about this, as I do — that achievements, as measured by these tests, do not embody the whole child and the education of the whole child. It's limited in its scope. I guess it conforms well to the Fraser Institute's method of measuring educational success, but it doesn't compare well and doesn't stand up to what educators experience and what parents, in fact, experience with their children —

that the education of their children is not limited to and, frankly, not well defined by these tests.

What are all these standardized tests about anyway? You know, they set up restricted measures that lots of students don't achieve. It's a denigration of the public school system, and again it's that winners-and-losers kind of mentality that the government is encouraging in our system. As I said before, when I had the opportunity to speak earlier to this bill, it's another part of the privatization agenda of this government. You degrade the public school system, which provides an excellent excuse for bringing forth a privatization agenda.

I think people can see through this legislation and through the agenda of this government. They're concerned about that, because the minister will get up and say that she supports public education — I'm sure she will and has — but we don't see that. We see the undermining of public education through measures like this bill.

There are other issues that I could talk about, but I wanted to give some opportunity for other speakers to speak to this bill as well. Having said that, I'll take my seat.

C. Trevena: I rise to oppose Bill 20, School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act. I've spent quite a lot of time in my constituency talking to people about the content of this act — to individuals, parents, teachers, school trustees and school boards. There is a great deal of concern, and I hope I can reflect that concern fully. But I would like to concentrate on three areas of the act, because there are a number of people who want to talk about this.

The three areas that I'd like to really concentrate on are the changing role of school boards and trustees, which is encapsulated in this act; the shift to the academies and the potential segregation of students; and the early learning section — the StrongStarts. The bill changed the names of the boards. This isn't such a huge issue — just a name change — but it's the changing role that comes with the changing name and, as other members have mentioned, this level of achievement and the superintendents of achievement that are being brought in with that and the burden that's being placed on that….

I've talked about education and education in my constituency in this House before and about the three school districts in my constituency — school districts 72, 84 and 85. Each has its own board of trustees and its own superintendents, and each really knows the local issues. The local issues are very varying. For instance, in school district 84 there's a huge effort placed on maintaining isolated schools. For instance, in Tahsis you've got Captain Meares Elementary-Secondary School at the end of a 64-kilometre logging road where you now have, because of the closure of the mills several years ago, just 40 or so students rattling around the whole school. In Zeballos, students are isolated at the end of a logging road. Kyuquot, which is primarily a first nations school — again isolated in that community. The school board there is very determined to keep all those schools operating.

We've got school district 85 with two high schools, one in Port Hardy and one in Port McNeill, with another three schools where one principal covers three elementary schools in three separate communities. That school district has two one-room schoolhouses. These are all maintained because the school board knows and the school trustees know that all these children need to have access to public education.

School district 72 has both urban and rural issues. It encapsulates Surge Narrows Elementary on Reid Island — which is accessible by boat only — to Cedar Elementary in Campbell River, which really provides children with a very nurturing environment and has many of the issues you could see in downtown Vancouver. At Cedar Elementary it's as important to make sure that the children there have a hot meal sometimes as it is to teach them the alphabet.

What concerns me in the School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007, and the whole concept of these levels of achievement is: how are we going to match achievement? How will these school districts and these children be able to match the achievement of those in, for instance, Point Grey or West Van — where there is a much wealthier background, to be frank?

So this is a real concern. Are we going to have an equal measure there? If we're not going to have an equal measure, how is that going to impact on our children's education? Are school boards going to be penalized if they don't meet these levels, these targets of achievement that have been set that are unrealistic and are not equal?

In that case, the next logical step, according to this bill, is that the trustees will be replaced with appointed people from the community rather than the elected people who know their communities, who are dedicated to education, who work exceedingly hard on behalf of their communities to ensure that there is the best possible public education system in their communities. The minister knows the hard work of trustees, having been one herself. I would hope that this would have been reflected in this act, rather than the trustees being left with so many questions.

The thing that trustees have been telling me is, very simply, that these changes, these levels of achievement or the changing mandate of the school boards isn't going to help education. This is not what our education system needs. Our education system needs a commitment to teaching, to class sizes, to making sure that we don't have many split grades — a real commitment to the basics of education, not measuring children up to a certain level of achievement and ranking schools and classes and doing everything through tests. We've really got to make sure that we're looking at education — not a hit list of the best schools, the best classes and the best teachers to have. This should be a much more holistic view of education.

The other area that raises great concern for me is the major change that this takes — the shift from the School Act, which basically says that a board must provide schooling free of charge to every school-age resident in British Columbia and that educational

resources and materials necessary to participate in the educational program should also be free.

We saw last year a Supreme Court decision which reinforced this and opposed the use of school fees. The Supreme Court decision basically said that anything that relates to a child's education should be free. There are, I think, two real issues on this. The Supreme Court decision basically said that whether it's musical instruments or textbooks or school calculators or whatever it was, these should be provided free. But what we're now seeing is that in certain instances, there will be a charge.

What's very troubling is the way that the government looks and packages this and talks about choice — that this is all a matter of choice, and this is going to give parents choice. It always comes down to: "This is great because we're going to have choice. Our children are going to have choice. Our parents are going to have choice." But to be frank, that's sort of a derogation of responsibility.

We are legislators. Legislators make choices. This government is making a choice. By having drawn up the School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007, Bill 20, in this way, it has made a choice to say that we are now going to introduce — legislate — school fees into our public school system. It is choosing this….

C. Trevena: Whatever the minister says, this is a decision made by this government — choosing it at a time when there are record surpluses — to institute fees into our school system at a time when the province is flush, when we keep hearing from the members opposite how rich the province is.

We can't deny that the province has money. We know there's a $3 billion surplus, yet we're still seeing the possibility here for introducing school fees for some essential parts of education. The government frames this as choice and says that it's a choice — that it's giving parents choice, that it will give parents and students choice. In reality, what it's doing is choosing to download costs to parents. It's choosing to download costs to families.

Instead of providing a good, free public education system — as in the School Act, which says that the board must provide free of charge to every student or school-age resident in British Columbia free education — it is saying that we're going to start bringing in fees.

True choice would be to say that we believe in public education and believe in a free public education. True choice would be to say that we are going to make sure there is the money for that public education. Maybe we look at the way we finance other schools in our system. Maybe we look at our surplus. Maybe we look at our budget where we made a tax cut. Maybe we look at the whole financing and say: "We believe in public education, we believe in free public education, and we're going to make a commitment to that."

Maybe this government doesn't really believe in the equality of educational opportunity. I don't think the members opposite really believe in that sort of true choice. I think they believe in downloading the costs of education to parents.

The government says: "That's okay. We're going to have these fees, but it's going to be okay for everybody because we have hardship clauses." Well, there isn't a provincial hardship policy. Every school district has its own approach to hardship.

Talking to teachers and to parents, there's a concern about going and saying: "I'm sorry. I can't afford it. My child can't afford it." There is a stigma there. Any teacher I have talked to has said to me that this is a real problem when you start having hardship clauses. So we don't have a provincewide hardship policy, a provincewide hardship strategy. Even if we did, it still disadvantages the most disadvantaged in our school system. It isn't choice. It's really a sign of the true Liberal ideology and philosophy.

The other thing we hear is that it's okay because it is just music or it's a sports academy, but this is essentially a step to privatizing our public school education, our public school system. We are starting to instil and install fees for special studies. You can pay to go to your hockey academy; you can pay to go to your soccer academy; you can pay to participate in music classes. We are now saying that certain aspects of education are going to be fee-based.

C. Trevena: We are now saying, in this, because this Legislature…. The minister has raised the fact that we're now saying…. The bill actually legislates school fees, and that is what is so concerning to me.

We are also seeing that we have specialty academies. I know that specialty academies already exist, and I know they are very popular with some parents. But the next logical stage for the specialty academies is, "You want your child to play hockey better. Well, they're going to be pulled out of the school district where they are and go to these specialty academies," which is the first step in privatizing our public education system.

Public education should remain public. We shouldn't be installing fees. We should be, instead, removing fees from public education. This is hugely a retrograde step if we want to have, as this government keeps saying, a truly literate society, the most literate society in Canada.

We're starting to say that we've got the specialty academy, so we've got hockey this year, and we've got soccer academies. Where do we start drawing the line? Is it going to be theatre arts? Is it going to be language? Are they going to be having to pay for band? When will we be having to pay for other subjects, which at present have been part of the accepted basic curriculum? When are we going to start saying that it's a bit expensive to be providing Japanese to these students, so we'll have a special school, and we can do Japanese there? Or it's a bit expensive to do theatre in each of our schools, so we will have a special academy. Yes,

you're going to have to pay for it, but it's okay because a school planning council has decided that we're going to have these fees.

That's the other thing. We have these school planning councils intimately involved in deciding to go forward with fees, and school planning councils are not elected members. We've got elected people there who are the school trustees, yet now we're taking this out. We take it down to the parents, who are just involved in the school system while their children are at school. Again, it's a hugely retrograde step and a hugely antidemocratic step.

The other issue in the academies and the specialized let's-compartmentalize-our-education-system is the concept of segregation and the possibility of segregating children with special needs out of the school system. This is extremely worrying. We've seen the huge benefits that all our young people have by including special needs children in our school system. What we need to be seeing is more investment within our school system to support special needs children.

I know the minister has received a letter from the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities, whose advocacy organizations work very hard for people with disabilities across the province, who are asking the minister to suspend the bill because there hasn't been broad-based consultation. The coalition says they want to have respectful, inclusive consultation with the organizations that represent children with disabilities in their families. They're very concerned.

They say that children with disabilities are not commodities that can be warehoused away from the community and denied an appropriate, inclusive education. Not only will they pay dearly for this ill-thought-out legislation, their families — who are already under great stress — will feel abandoned.

B.C. is considered by many in Canada to be a leader in disability rights and services. The proposed changes in this sector will undo British Columbia's hard-won heritage. It's a very large organization representing many, many people. I would hope the minister will listen to their requests and make sure that this piece of legislation is taken back and wider consultation be held. As I say, Mr. Speaker, the people I've talked to are sincerely worried about all the aspects which bring in the potential segregated schools, special academies and fees into our school system.

I'd also like to talk about the StrongStart programs. I applaud the move to the StrongStart programs. I've talked to the minister about this in estimates. There have been pilot programs, and I know there are going to be StrongStart programs going across the province — a number in my own constituency. The school boards are very excited about them, and I think that there is a huge potential there.

These StrongStart programs have great components. I mean, they're universal; they're open to everyone; they're free. The staff are going to be well-paid. These are all the aspects, actually, of a good child care system, except that this isn't child care. It is school-based for three hours a day for parents or their caregivers who can come in with their children. It is, essentially, exceedingly narrow. The majority of parents can't go to a drop-in child care for three hours a day with their children. The majority of parents — single parents and working couples — are at work.

The StrongStart programs, while they may have a great basis there — you've got early childhood educators working on the StrongStart — are not the be-all and end-all of what our children need and what our society needs. Unlike child care, you're not going to necessarily have the snacks. It's going to have a different form of socialization, and it's simply not suitable for parents who are working. It is a drop-in centre rather than a care centre.

I'd ask the minister why the StrongStart system is being built up and whether this is being built up at the cost of child care. We are not hearing much from her colleague the Minister of State for Childcare, and we're not seeing much going into the child care system at the moment. Yet we are seeing a huge commitment to the StrongStart programs and what these should be.

As I was saying, I think that what's going to be covered in StrongStarts is likely going to be very valuable. It's going to have the early childhood educators there. It would be very nice to see a lot of the support that the early childhood educators in the school districts could get in the child care systems too.

My other concern about this, which is something I'm going to be raising during committee stage debate on the bill — because I don't get the answers here; I just get to posit the questions, but I would like some answers — is really on the financing of the StrongStarts. We talked a bit about this in the estimates process. It seems there's going to be only $30,000 a year to maintain these StrongStarts, which is supposed to cover staffing costs as well as all the other costs.

That's $30,000 a year for X number of children, X number of resources that need to be bought and supplied, and making sure that staffing cost is…. It's quite a limited budget for the expansion that we are looking at.

The aspect of the StrongStarts is interesting. I think it is somewhat limited as well. Early childhood education is very narrowly defined in this act. According to the act, it's "designed to improve readiness for and success in kindergarten." And it does say very significantly that it "requires a child participating in the program to be accompanied and supervised by the child's parent or other person designated in writing by the parent." It is clearly designed as part of the idea of making children literate and ready for success in kindergarten, but it doesn't deal with many of the other things that are necessary for young children who may be participating in a child care program.

It also concerns me that it comes under the need for an achievement contract when we've got such vagueness about what the whole achievement is — what the achievement means, essentially. Is this StrongStart going to include testing for toddlers? I think there is a….

C. Trevena: The minister may laugh, but there is not any definition here of what the achievement is and how the achievement is going to be measured, and it does come under the achievement contract. I would like to get some explanation on that when we get to that stage.

What I would like to conclude my remarks with are my concerns about this bill and the reason why I will be voting against it. It expects an equality of all our schools, and not every school is going to be equal. There's a huge disparity in our province through geography, through resources, through wealth. Our province is huge and varied, and that's one of the reasons why we love being here and why we're very proud to represent our constituents.

What this bill does is take many steps backwards. It limits the great hope that I would see of a public education system where every child has the real opportunity, has an equal opportunity wherever they are in B.C., for the best possible education. This bill will not allow that. It will be very damaging for many, many children in our province.

G. Coons: I rise to give my comments and interpretation of Bill 20, the School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007. Enabling or disenabling — I'm not too sure.

When we look at what it is to do, we see the narrowing definition of literacy, the increased focus on testing measurement and data collection. It's something that is going to be a real detriment in schools across the province.

I remember the Education Minister highlighting that the proposed amendments to this would ensure greater accountability within the education system and would improve quality and choice for students. But as we all know — not only in this House, but throughout the province — choice, accountability and quality have often been cryptograms within this Liberal government for far more radical changes in public policy.

We've seen accountability used constantly to justify considerable undermining of our health system, of our education system. Looking at rural hospitals — beds cut and services contracted out. Rural schools closed throughout the province. Choice became the government's grounds for deregulating everything from land use and resource planning throughout the province to health and safety rules, putting workers at risk all across the province.

Quality. Quality was this government's rationale for many of their impulsive and dismal privatization schemes, whether it's the privatization of our marine highway, the selling off and privatization of Hydro, B.C. Rail — you know, a never-ending story.

A closer study of Bill 20 shows that accountability, choice and quality — the mantra words for this government — will be hard to recognize as this government will establish and impose a critical new layer of Liberal oversight.

I do want to relate back to my background and my experience in a rural riding. Right now I represent four school districts: Prince Rupert, Haida Gwaii–Queen Charlotte Islands, Central Coast and Nisga'a. I have the honour of being probably one of the few people that represent so many school districts. I was involved in education for many years — 25 or 28 years of teaching in this fine public education system.

One thing that a lot of us in the rural school districts held high, at one point in this Liberal regime, was the Task Force on Rural Education. I remember the words of the press release back on September 5, 2003, in Logan Lake and the minister of the day, Christy Clark, saying: "We have focused on improving achievement, increasing accountability of the system, enhancing choice for students…."

The same words ring out five years later, but it's the same ringing out of a dismal performance in our public education system — the selling-out of students, the attack on teachers and parents and embedding and enshrining in legislation only initiatives that are going to privatize the system and have major detrimental effects on our public system.

Again, from the press release: "'The B.C. government wants to ensure that this new era in education also addresses the unique needs of students and parents living in rural and remote communities. Rural communities,' said Clark, 'play a vital role in our economy, and students in these communities have the potential to make an enormous contribution to our province.'" That is something that I think we should all applaud and remember.

But we go back to the recommendations from the rural education task force. There are many fine recommendations — 19 of them. How many of these can we find enshrined, embedded in this Bill 20 that we're now discussing? Very few. As a matter of fact, none.

But let's go back to the recommendations that were followed. I'll look at the recommendations first and see what this government did on acting upon them for rural classrooms and those valuable, important students in the communities that have the potential to make an enormous contribution.

One of the recommendations was to recognize the contributions of rural schools — make the improvement of rural-urban equity a priority for the Ministry of Education. Create the provincial vision for rural education by focusing on fostering equitable student achievement. Invest in rural educators and professional development. Encourage partnerships and coordination across agencies. Review funding formulas. Seek models for alternate delivery of education to counteract school closures.

From this, what happened? Well, there was the press release following the recommendations: "Heartland Schools to get Electronic Upgrade." That's all that came out of that task force for rural education. Why?

Why is nothing in this bill — in Bill 20, 21 — dealing with the dismal performance of this government on how they're acting and responding to rural education — the closing of schools?

That was about it as far as recommendations from the rural task force. Many of us put some hope in the Minister of Education of the day. Again, it was a hopeless, hopeless task that this government has done as far as rural education.

The amendments before us enable the Minister of Education to appoint superintendents of achievement, who will report not to locally elected school boards — not to those people that are entrusted in communities — but directly to the deputy minister, controlled by the Minister of Education.

More significantly, these new superintendents will have the power to override school boards and impose reallocation of board resources. Finances in a school board can be willy-nillied around by these superintendents of achievement, whoever they may be — the appointees of the Minister of Education. If the appointed superintendent believes these allocations will improve achievement outcomes, they can do whatever they want with the finances of a school district. That's shameful — taking away the power and the responsibility of locally elected officials.

The plan to rationalize school districts and force them to comply more tightly with directives from the minister is what Bill 20 is all about. In the context of improving student achievement, these new superintendents have an enormous amount of power and are tight to this provincial cabinet. These powers will only dictate teaching practice and methods and undermine what's happening in our classrooms as we speak, and undermine professional judgment.

Four of the superintendents of achievement are to be appointed and are to report and make recommendations on improving student achievement in school districts, supporting boards in teaching specific goals for student achievement, literacy programs, early learning and aboriginal student results. They'll review student achievement. They report directly to the deputy minister. They administer the new achievement contracts. Again, it's a real focus on testing and a real focus on data. That's something that is not what we want in our public schools.

Parents dissatisfied with board rulings can appeal directly to the superintendents of achievement, who have the power to overrule the board and, potentially — we haven't gone through this — collective agreements. Superintendents have broad powers of inspection. They may enter schools, inspect records, interview employees and students, attend any board meeting and make recommendations to the board. They will have other responsibilities that the deputy minister wants to assign to them. It sort of sounds like the conversation in question period — somebody wearing many hats but with no real focus.

The superintendents of achievement have the power to undermine what is really happening in our classrooms. No funding commitment so far has been announced for the superintendents, and no potential appointees have been announced. But there would be a cost. We don't know what the cost is — salaries, benefits, office support staff, travel expenses. We've got to wait and find out.

We talk about student achievement as far as Bill 20 and how the superintendents of achievement administer the new achievement contracts. When we start looking at achievement, one of the things that just sort of shrills those in rural communities, in those schools that are looked upon by the Fraser Institute as not being successful, is the FSA test.

We must realize that teachers throughout this province…. Most of us realize that the joy in teaching comes from meeting the needs of every student and fostering the love of learning. The FSA test, which achievement is based on as far as this government is concerned, does not help teachers to do this important job. In fact, it may have negative effects on teaching and learning.

I have concerns about the FSA. I'm not opposed to large-scale testing. They may help in some situations, and they can provide important information — but as long as they are inclusive and are not being divisive. Large-scale testing as used by this government and such institutes as the Fraser Institute is not very accurate for individual results and undermines classroom assessments.

What the ministry and some people may see as a simple collection of data for accountability purposes may have a negative affect on students and the learning environment in their classrooms, especially in rural areas of the province.

I come from a region where the EDI — the early development instrument done by Clyde Hertzman in the north coast, the central coast; I believe it was Haida Gwaii, the Queen Charlottes; Bulkley Valley–Stikine; Nass Valley — indicate that there's a vital need for resources, and there are very challenging issues in the school setting in these regions. Bill 20 has nothing at all for students in these situations. I'll relate, in my conclusion, about a teacher in Terrace who has major concerns about what's happening there.

The Deputy Minister of Education, in one of his updates last year, said that approximately 20 percent of all preschoolers need some form of intervention prior to entering kindergarten, and the EDI indicator suggests that many of our most vulnerable learners live in rural areas.

That's the reason why I brought up the rural task force. Nothing has been done. Nothing has been done for rural education, for rural schools, for rural students.

B.C. Teachers, in response to FSA, have experienced pressure to teach to the test, ignore important aspects of the curriculum, teach in less interesting ways and spend more time on test practice. Bill 20 will only lead to more of that in our classrooms.

Another concern I have is how the tests are being used. We have a ranking of schools and a reporting of results and improvements. Don't get me wrong. As I said, comparisons are not bad, but comparing schools with other schools, as the media does and especially as

A past press release from the Prince Rupert school district says: "Lies, damn lies and statistics." In my hometown of Prince Rupert they've been pummelled in the school district by the Fraser report because of such things as the FSA. The FSA may have a valuable concept as long as it's not used to rank students in schools and is not used inappropriately.

The concept of FSA, student achievement and what could be done lead me to the organizations that this minister does not communicate with, especially when drafting legislation such as Bill 20. We've heard in previous debate about some of the lack of communication that's been going on with stakeholders.

I'd like to refer to the Public Education Research Foundation. This was an initiative that came out a few years ago. It was launched by the Charter for Public Education Network with the support of Rob Tierney, dean of the faculty of education at UBC; Paul Shaker at SFU; and Budd Hall at UVic. They launched the new foundation, called the Public Education Research Foundation.

What do they do? They do research and dialogue, and they do it in many areas. They look at governance and how that could help public education. They look at alternatives to the Fraser Institute report and how to measure the performance of B.C. schools. They sponsor education materials, look at advertising in our schools and look at how corporations are just bombarding the classroom and seeing them as "virgin marketing territory." They look at aboriginal success and forums for dialogue. This is a group that this minister and this government has failed to communicate with.

We start looking at what happened with the Charter of Public Education. The Charter of Public Education came into effect from October 2002 until February 2003. The panel members visited 42 communities, listened to over 620 formal presentations and held discussions with more than 1,500 participants. You would think that this government would jump on this opportunity to listen to what British Columbians out there think about for public education.

The Charter of Public Education came out with their basic charter, looking at public education as a sacred trust. I'd like to comment on that as it relates to Bill 20. This is what Bill 20 should be entrusting for our students.

This is what our education system should be based on. This government, along with this Bill 20, fails in that.

Now, as far as the Charter of Public Education, which has many signatories on it, including myself…. These are some of the things that we promise. We promise to recognize that the learner is at the centre of public education. We promise to nurture and value critical thinking; to respect, encourage and foster the learner's role as a full participant; to create an environment in which each learner can reach their greatest potential. We promise to provide a safe and respectful environment for lifelong learning.

We expect government to be responsible for fully funding all aspects of a quality education and to communicate with support staff, teachers, early childhood educators, parents, learners and communities on the direction for public education.

Not only does this bill let down our public education system, it lets down the stakeholders. It lets down students. It lets down teachers, and it attacks school boards. Not only does Bill 20 create superintendents of achievement, who may inspect board records, enter schools and interview employees, it also establishes boards of education and mandates that these boards prepare an achievement contract with respect to student performance and plans for improving student achievement, early learning programs and literacy. There are no resources, no funding at all dedicated to this expanded measure.

Bill 20 reduces and narrows the definition of literacy, basically, to the detriment of what is happening in our classrooms. As far as literacy, which is mentioned throughout Bill 20, the definition this government has determined is that literacy "means the ability to understand and employ printed information in daily activities, at home, at work and in the community."

There are no universal definitions of literacy. There are no standards for literacy. Unless it's specified, it's based on the most common, traditional, basic definition, and that's what we have. That's what we're working with. That's what this government and this Minister of Education are working with. Instead of relying on stakeholders throughout the province and coming up with a definition for public education that encompasses the whole concept, we're left with this base definition of literacy.

Literacy is not just a functional ability to read and write. It's fundamentally about participation and being able to take an active part in society. It's something important for individuals and for society. It stretches beyond the traditional and functional skills of reading, writing and arithmetic and speaking and listening and must include a wide range of literacies, including complex visual and information literacy and those that have multiple forums.

We must focus on an individual's capacity, their ability to analyze and make important decisions. We have our definition: "…understand and employ printed information and daily activities at home, at work and in the community." It's pretty disappointing for the minister to come up with a definition like this.

This old-fashioned, traditional definition falls short — far short — and fails in our need for a progressive, dynamic definition that is needed in the 21st century.

Bill 20 also provides for the appointment of a special trustee. If a board does not comply with an administrative directive to meet its obligations, then this special trustee is appointed. It just follows the political whims of the Minister of Education. This act centralizes power in the ministry and tears it away from locally elected school boards.

The act also adds on an appeal level. As I mentioned before, parents who are dissatisfied with the board ruling, such as the suspension of a student, can appeal to the superintendents of achievement. It's just another level of bureaucracy, and it infringes on the autonomy and the responsibility that should be given to locally elected school boards.

I see this Bill 20 smoothing the path for the creation of private public schools. It defines special academies and allows for students to be charged fees to attend the academy. The school planning council has the power to approve the fees, meaning that possibly as few as three parents and a principal can make the decision. It also allows for fees to be charged for some courses and materials. This not only infringes upon the autonomy and responsibility of school boards but paves the way for publicly funded schools to be operated as private schools with all sorts of fees.

There's a financial hardship clause as most in the system…. If the minister had gone out and talked to people, she would have found out that this is one that does not work. It's demeaning. It expects of those kids and their families that they make it public in a way that is inappropriate and uncomfortable — coming up to the principal, coming up to a teacher, saying: "I can't afford it. Can you cover me?" I've been in a situation in many schools where that's happened. Most kids go without. They do not like the demeaning, inappropriate situation that they're put in.

Recently, a week and a half or two weeks ago, the B.C. School Trustees Association passed a motion to oppose Bill 20 that was proposed by the Education Minister.

G. Coons: Yeah, where are they today? We know where they were. They were slamming this minister for bringing forth this legislation.

The person who brought this forward happened to be somebody from Prince George, a school trustee, Bill Christie, who just happened to win the B.C. Community Achievement Award last week. As he walked up there….

G. Coons: And good for him. What did this minister do? Treats this trustee with disdain, doesn't listen to him and attacks locally elected school boards as they cheer.

They argued that the new legislation would steal power away from locally elected representatives — I'm not making this up; I'm hearing it from the minister's school board chairperson in Prince George, I believe her own town — and put it in the hands of unelected civil servants working for the government. The motion passed, and the trustees' official position is now clearly in opposition to this new set of regulations.

This bill introduces sweeping changes to public education and no funding. It does nothing to provide support for students with special needs, oversized classrooms, the composition problems that are just devastating teachers in classrooms throughout this province. It does not ensure adequate numbers of teacher-librarians, counsellors, ESL teachers, special ed teachers, learning assistance teachers and other specialist teachers.

How did we get into this chaos? The unfunded Bill 33. Is this going to be the unfunded Bill 20? It's hard to say. Among other things, Bill 33 set out specific instructions for the integration of students in special needs from K-to-grade-12, and they did not fund it. What do we see? Close to 100,000 students in classes over the limits.

In 2001 and 2002 teacher collective agreements included guaranteed class sizes, which was stripped by this government. I remember those words ringing in our ears: "We will not strip contracts. We will not sell B.C. Rail. We will ensure quality education." Again we're seeing, with the stroke of a pen, this government attacking public education and going towards privatizing it.

If we look at non-enrolling teachers, in the past five years over 1,000 specialist teachers — librarians, ESL, counsellors — have been lost to the system. Specialist teachers today are often expected to fill multiple roles in a school besides having significant documentation and paperwork to do, and this government has failed students in this province again. There are over 3,100 classes with 31 or more students. Students are waiting for support. This government has a moral obligation to fund Bill 33, and they haven't.

Again, with Bill 20, where is the funding? This government must increase funding to school districts so that class sizes and compositions that were promised in legislation can be fully implemented. We must get our education system back on track despite this government.

G. Coons: I realize it's difficult for the hon. members on the other side to hear the results of what's happened in their unfunded Bill 33 and what they've done to public education, but in Terrace, on a four-day week, we've lost $4.5 million.

It's a shame, but that's how educators in this province are feeling as they go through teaching our most valuable resource.

With Bill 20, this government is creating more and more bureaucracy while ignoring student learning. This legislation accelerates the privatization of public education, it significantly undermines democratic governance of public education, and it will lead to the destruction of the autonomy and authority of locally elected school boards. I'm opposed to Bill 20 in its current format. I look forward to clause-by-clause analysis, and I hope that this government will finally listen to stakeholders.

G. Coons: I'd like to introduce Jonathan Mears and Cameron Mears. They are the husband and son of Lucy Mears, our legislative assistant in the Legislature. I'd like to make them all welcome, wherever they are.

B. Simpson: I'm pleased to stand today and put my oar in the water with respect to Bill 20. I stand opposed to the bill for a variety of reasons that I will illuminate over the next few minutes.

On a general matter of principle, one of the things that I find interesting about a lot of the legislation that comes forward from the government is the fact that, in many cases, it's where we should start in the public debate. This legislation, in many cases, should be what we should be taking to the public and engaging them in debate because, quite frankly, the government never does sufficient public consultation on any of the legislation that we see.

It doesn't matter what ministry it's in or what minister is leading. This government tables legislation that is merely, in my estimation, the beginning of substantive debate. Hence, we get into the dialogue around clause-by-clause, asking what the intent is and finding out that, in many cases, the intent is unclear. As a result, we end up getting bad legislation.

We have a number of amendments before us in this House, many of which either are fixing previous errors and omissions or are bringing back legislation that was taken away before. I think Bill 20 typifies that. I think Bill 20 is the beginning of a debate. It should be taken out for public debate. It shouldn't be in this House at this juncture.

What should come to this House is the end of the public debate around whether or not this is the direction British Columbians want their education system to go in. I believe that the answer categorically is no.

I believe that the last thing that British Columbians want is another layer of bureaucracy. The last thing that British Columbians want is a change of name of their school boards. The last thing that British Columbians want is more bureaucracy put into the system so that our elected school boards have to be accountable to an appointee of the minister, through which all of their actions are going to be screened.

In the case of fees, as we see in this bill, we have a situation in which a small group — the principal, the teacher and some parents — get to make determinations that have substantive implications for school districts, and the board is simply a second player in that. They're not the primary player in that.

I want to speak first about the overall intent of the bill and some of the things that I think are issues in the bill that need further clarification before we could support it. It's "clarification" that I'm hearing, not just from teachers in my community but from parents who are paying attention to this, from parent advisory councils and from our trustees. They all have substantive questions and substantive concerns about the direction that this bill would take us in.

One major concern in here is the addition of mandates to the boards of education — the mandates they will have for district literacy, for early learning and for these new achievement contracts, which they have to put together and run through a bureaucratic process to get them signed off.

As the board of school trustees indicated, they believe that in the case of early learning programs, for example, it becomes an inefficient method of program implementation. It adds inefficiency to the system, not efficiency, at a time in which our school districts are struggling with the changes to the funding formula and with the rationalization they have to go through with respect to declining enrolment, school closures and the changes in what society's expectations are about achievement. So the change in mandates — the addition of district literacy and the addition of early learning — without any clarification on what the implications of that are on resources, is troublesome.

Undermining the authority of the board, as has been pointed out by members on this side, is particularly troublesome because these über-superintendents, or these superintendents of achievement, don't know what our communities' needs are. They don't know the demographics of the communities; they don't know the makeup; they don't know what, particularly in my case, our small communities are struggling with in order to keep their economic options open and available to them.

Schools are a fundamental aspect of the economic well-being of many small communities in this province. If they cannot meet these achievement targets — which, again, are not explicit in the act, still have to be determined and still have to be articulated — what does that mean? That's what the school boards are asking me: what does that mean? Does that mean that they're going to be held accountable to their worst-case scenarios and are going to be given direction on what they must do in order to fulfil their obligations under this new act to a superintendent and not to the people in the riding who duly elected them?

The other aspect of it, as I mentioned, is the role that the school planning councils have in fee determination and in the determination of whether or not we get academies. I have sports academies in my riding that are becoming an important part of our economic

future. We have led the way in many cases with a hockey skills academy. We're looking at a soccer skills academy. They are part of our overall strategy as we look at the changes — particularly in the community of Quesnel — with respect to the mountain pine beetle.

I believe fundamentally that the board should be the one that makes the determinations of how resources are allocated, how fees are determined and which academies will or will not go forward. They are the ones that the people in my riding have elected, and they're the ones that should have that choice.

What I want to spend some time on is the idea that this bill…. The bill is entitled "Student Achievement Enabling," and I guess my question is whether or not this bill actually enables achievement.

Does it get to the root of what achievement is? Does it address the issue of how we get achievement with respect to the full range of educational opportunities that our children have?

This is in particular with respect to the full range of needs that we have in our marketplace as our demographics shift — particularly as we need every child coming out of our school system to be equipped with a full range of learning capabilities, a full range of skill sets, so that they can be meaningful participants not only in our economy and in our workforce but in our society in general.

As we all know, our society is going to be undergoing a significant shift with respect to the implications of climate change; with respect to the shift in our economy around switching our energy systems; and, quite frankly, with respect to what will happen in the next few decades with local economies needing to be rebuilt, local food security and issues that need to be addressed by all individuals in our society collectively.

We need citizens who are well-rounded in their education, who go well beyond the minimalist definition of literacy and who can participate fully in an economy and an economic system that has to be significantly adaptable over the next little while.

It's a student achievement enabling amendment act, yet the reality is that what this act does, in my estimation, is to change some names, change out some words, give an additional mandate without additional sets of resources, and reorient the delegated authority of who makes the determinations on what's best for our children in this province.

We're adding "become literate" to the definition of what the boards of education must undertake, so they enable learners to become literate and to develop their individual potential. Enabling learners to become literate and to develop their individual potential is one of the definition changes.

We're repealing accountability contracts and replacing them with achievement contracts. I'll look at how that's defined in the act shortly. We're adding boards of education. We're adding district literacy plans, early learning program and, again, these superintendents of achievement.

Will any of this roll up to the enabling of achievement? I want to point out something that the government seems to fail to have taken into account with respect to education in the province. It's from their own group that the Premier put together; it's from the B.C. Progress Board. Just by way of definition, from their own executive summary of the social condition in British Columbia: "The B.C. Progress Board, established by Premier Gordon Campbell…."

I withdraw that. I'm reading from here: "The B.C. Progress Board, established by the Premier in July 2001, is an independent panel of 18 senior business…and academic leaders." The board benchmarks B.C. economic innovation, education, environment, health and social performance over time and relative to other jurisdictions. The board also provides advice on ways to improve provincial performance.

This is the Premier's own select group of people who are supposed to monitor our performance over time and who have issued a special report on the social condition in British Columbia. Why did they issue that report? It states: "The B.C. Progress Board has been puzzled by evidence emerging from its benchmarking project which suggests that B.C. is lagging in a number of dimensions of the social condition."

This report digs down to understand what is happening: "The most troubling social indicator is the proportion of British Columbians living below the Statistics Canada low-income threshold. One in ten British Columbians lives on low income for extended periods."

It goes on to say that low income matters for two reasons: "All children, irrespective of their social background, should have an equal chance to succeed in the province, and there is compelling evidence that children from low-income families are at greater risk."

This is something that I think we have to take into consideration. Again, it's a concern being articulated to me by our school trustees, by teachers and by other educators and parents.

What is it that government has in mind with these now so-called achievement contracts? If the benchmarking is merely standardized tests, then as the B.C. Progress Board report points out, there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when looking at achievement.

Now the Progress Board, of course, has an overall economic bent. We believe that needs to be metered with the idea of producing citizens and of having an educated citizenry that can participate in all aspects of our society.

The Progress Board goes on to say: "B.C. has a distance to go here as well…. The provincial government has reduced its financial support in several key areas in recent years." Now this is not the opposition saying that there's been a reduction in supports in these areas; it's the Premier's own handpicked group of people who are benchmarking. They say the "responsibility for key programs in B.C. is fragmented across a variety of ministries whose priority attention is inevitably drawn elsewhere."

They make recommendations to the government, and I particularly want to point out two. "The B.C. government should give StrongStart itself a strong start, by rolling out a program that is based on evidence of what works, that is strongly funded and that has a strong evaluation component. The province should also reinvest in the Child Care Subsidy Program."

The second recommendation I want to highlight is that they recommend that related programs with respect to "the social gradient in education and development should be consolidated into an agency whose primary purpose is to enhance the development of children."

The Premier's handpicked group says that we have a problem in this province. The Premier's handpicked group says that socioeconomic indicators of achievement must be addressed. Yet what do we have in Bill 20? We have a change in name from accountability contracts to achievement contracts. We have an increased mandate for the school boards. We have no additional resources, and as this government does year after year, we have a continuation in cuts to the basic funding for our social system in this province.

There's a problem there. Unless we address, and the B.C. Progress Board is saying it, the socioeconomic indicators; unless we bring everybody up together above the low-income threshold; unless we give our children the ability to have a truly strong start — food in their stomachs, a home to go to, parental support, all the things that this government has chipped away at since they began their mandate in 2001 — this enabling legislation will amount to a hill of beans.

What's happening in our districts? I can tell you that in my school district the buzzword around town is that despite the fact that we seem to be enjoying somewhat of an economic boom as a result of the mountain pine beetle epidemic and that short-lived acceleration of our cut levels, people are understanding that something isn't right in our communities, in Williams Lake and in Quesnel and in the other centres in my riding.

The reason for that is that we are experiencing degrees of poverty. We're experiencing the retraction of government services to a degree that is troublesome for most of my constituents. We are asking teachers now to pick up the slack for a lot of the Ministry of Children and Family Development cuts. Our teachers now are not just classroom teachers; they're having to become social workers.

They're not just classroom teachers; they're becoming counsellors — not just to the children, but also to the parents and to community members. While it's great that we have some of the caps in Bill 33, the lack of resources to Bill 33 has added an additional burden to teachers, who now may have a whole range of part-time resource assistants they now have to provide supervisory functions to, provide mentoring functions to, and they have to develop, on a child-by-child basis, clear plans for the development of those children, without additional resources for them to do that.

We have homelessness in my communities like we've never had before. How can we measure achievement of children that are coming from families that can barely keep a roof over their heads or who come into the classroom with no food in their stomach?

We do not have an adequate set of resources to engage with children — particularly first nations children — for whom school is a place that they would rather avoid. Many, many schools have to expend significant resources over issues of truancy and discipline and various other aspects of the fact that our schools and the way they're structured don't meet the needs of a significant portion of our first nations and our other children in our communities.

We talk about early intervention, and I find it interesting in the bill that they add the early learning program to the school district. I've said that we don't know what that means in terms of additional resources. The school districts certainly feel that it's going to be done without additional resources.

At the same time, as we've seen in this House this spring, we've had the cuts to all of the child care subsidies, their program dollars, the child care referral centres. So they're at cross-purposes. One ministry is cutting back on these services, and another ministry is giving responsibility to the school boards to pick up some of that vacuum.

I find it intriguing that in the definition of early learning program that the school boards are going to pick up, or these boards of education are going to pick up, is: "(a) is designed to improve readiness for and success in kindergarten, and (b) requires a child participating in the program to be accompanied and supervised by the child's parent or other person designated in writing by the parent."

One of the things that was raised for me on this issue is that we have more and more children who are at risk in this province under this government — more and more children who do not have that substantive parental or foster care or legal guardianship support. I'm curious as to what third reading will do on this, or the committee stage. But as I read this, we are going to say to a whole group of children who do not have parents who can show up with them, who do not have clear lines of guardianship, who do not have support in the foster care system, that they're not going to be participating in this early learning program.

I look forward to clarification of that, because I think that that would be a tragedy. The children that are most at risk, who have the least amount of support, appear to be excluded from what this government deems an early learning program.

The other thing that I want to address is the fact that unless we deal with the cuts to the Ministry of

Children and Family Development, and unless we deal with the cuts to child care in this province, this little tiny bit of addition to the school boards for early learning programs will not enable achievement in any way, shape or form.

My challenge to this government is: where is the overarching plan? Where is the plan that tells us how the Ministry of Children and Family Development will be involved in this, how the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance will be involved in this, how the post-secondary education institutions — who up until recently have driven the desire for standardized exams and all of the issues associated with that — are going to be involved in it? Where is the overarching plan for our education system in this province? And where is the overarching plan to address the growing systemic poverty that the Progress Board and others have pointed out?

Without that plan, this so-called amendment act that's going to enable achievement again is worthless. It is simply shuffling the decks on the Titanic.

The other aspect of this that I find interesting — and it was raised for me by some colleagues of mine this weekend up at home — is that we don't have the resources to handle literacy now. This government, through the funding cuts and the change in the formulas that they made to school districts, has basically eradicated teacher-librarians in this province. So here we are.

We have the school districts in this act now supposed to put a district literacy plan together. Oh, by the way, they're supposed to go through a consultation process on that district literacy plan, and again, we don't know what additional resources are associated with that. Will they be able to…? Through consultation, if they get a large response from the community saying, "We want robust library services in our schools," can they, under this change in legislation, come back to the minister and say: "This is what we want as a district literacy plan. This is what our people are telling us, and here's the budget for it"?

The critical piece that's missing in this so-called enabling legislation is that we need to also budget for that additional resource. So I'll be curious to see in committee stage whether or not that is a possibility — that that consultation process can, in fact, add additional resources, because the minister will look at it and say: "If that's what your community wants, we will resource it, because your community knows what they need in the way of achieving a district literacy plan."

How far does that district literacy plan go? Does it roll in literacy for all age groups? It says in the act that they're supposed to engage with anybody involved in literacy. Is that the school board's responsibility now? Will that be measured against this superintendent of achievement? All kinds of questions are begged by the wording in this.

I also want to talk about the fact that the closure of neighbourhood schools in my area because of the per-pupil funding means that many of our children are spending a lot more time on buses, travelling back and forth to schools. Now, fortunately, in school district 27 we were able to make sure that some of that busing was addressed, and some schools are being kept open. I give kudos to the school board for how they're doing their planning down there. But how does that lead to improved achievement, when kids have to spend that much time, when their schools in their neighbourhood are closed down and no longer become centres of learning for the whole community, no longer become a place that people can gather together and learn together in all-age classes…? The closure of neighbourhood schools, I believe, is a fundamental issue in many of our communities from truly achieving achievement.

I want to talk about the nature of the achievement contracts. Many members on this side of the House have raised the issue of standardized tests. I have a real problem with standardized tests. In a previous life I actually went up to Quesnel, and I originally moved to Quesnel to teach senior biology and senior chemistry. One of the things I found, as the standardized tests were brought in, was that I could not teach science as it was at the time — as it's emerging and evolving and changing — because, of course, I have to prepare students for the test.

One thing you find, particularly with the foundation skills assessment — and we're already seeing that — is that when you introduce global standardized tests, you get all of the issues of gender bias, socioeconomic bias. Test-taking abilities is really what you're testing in many cases, not the range of knowledge and skill sets that the individuals actually have, innately.

What you get is an upswing on achievement, and then it begins to plateau. After the plateau you begin to see a decline in achievement. There's a fundamental reason for that. That is because on the upswing portion of it, teachers get better at preparing the students for the test. There's a filtering that goes on in order to not get beaten up by the Fraser Institute or others, where children who are not going to be good test-takers or are not prepared for the test do not engage in the test.

The plateau is when you reach your possible range of achievement on that test because you've basically done all of the streamlining and the filtering to prepare for the test that you can. Then it begins to flatline. Then, after a while, people start to walk away from the test as a meaningful measure of anything.

What you get then is a rebellion against the test by the teachers, students and parents. I believe that we're in that phase now. We're beginning to see a significant push-back by parents against the foundation skills assessments — what it does to their children and the pressure it puts on them.

I have a fundamental problem with those kinds of standardized tests anyway, because all they do is measure a snapshot capability of test-taking on the day of the test. As someone who worked for the last 14 years in human resource development in industry and small business…. They're not looking for test-takers. They're not looking for people who can show up on a given day, take a test, regurgitate a bunch of informa-

What we need are people who can think critically, who can take a whole range of ideas and issues and figure out collaborative solutions. We need people with good communication and collaboration skills. We need individuals who have a wide range of skill sets that they can bring into the workforce and into society as a whole. Tests never reflect that. What they do is simply take a snapshot at any given time.

The test-taking debate aside, one of the challenges that we have in this bill is that it's not clear what the measure of achievement will be — particularly, again, given that the achievement contracts have to be reported to the superintendent of achievement. I'm going to be curious in committee stage what that measure will be because, quite frankly, achievement for many of our children covers a wide range. For some of our children, achievement is simply showing up day to day and learning something each day. For some of our children, achievement is the ability to come into class with food in their stomach on a regular basis and participate in their class.

I struggle with this bill. I oppose it. I believe it should be withdrawn. What we should engage in is a fulsome public debate about whether or not this is the way to enable achievement or whether or not we need a grander plan that is more integrative of other ministries and is fully resourced so that every one of our children in British Columbia, regardless of socioeconomic status, regardless of their capabilities when they enter the school, has the ability to achieve to the highest standards.

S. Simpson: I'm happy to have an opportunity to add a few comments to this discussion around Bill 20, the School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act. I am particularly interested in discussing this in terms of how I've increasingly come to view the role of education, first and foremost as it affects my constituency of Vancouver-Hastings.

Certainly, it has impacts throughout Vancouver, as an urban area, and I know that there are impacts that would be felt in other constituencies and throughout school districts across British Columbia. What we know about our schools is that they face a range of challenges in addition to those that would be seen as purely academic. The kids in our schools face a whole range of issues that are more than just those that are academic.

I know when I look at my community, at my constituency and at the schools in my constituency, I see kids who have particular challenges. The comments of the previous speaker talked about kids who are vulnerable, and I certainly have an abundance of those children who live in Vancouver-Hastings.

We know that the most recent available statistics show that one in four children lives in poverty in this province, and what we know from that is that kids don't get poor by themselves. Poor kids are the result of poor families.

The reality is that those are the kids that are in schools, and it's been suggested to me by academics that while we look at numbers that suggest that one in four children — certainly in the lower mainland area — is vulnerable in some way, shape or form, in my community the number apparently, experts tell me, looks more like one in two kids is vulnerable. That's an incredibly high number, and it's an incredibly serious situation. I know it's very serious for me, and I believe it's also serious for the minister and for people on all sides of this House.

We have our vulnerable children. We also have an abundance of ESL children. About 40 percent of the people who live in my constituency of Vancouver-Hastings are Chinese-speaking; either Cantonese or Mandarin are their first languages. English as a second language is a big challenge, so we have those pressures. And we have an abundance of children with special needs.

All of these are issues that add to the complexity of how our schools work, what their objectives are, what their challenges are. I know the minister understands this. I've had the opportunity to have this discussion with the minister in her estimates, and we had a good discussion about those challenges. I think we agree on a number of issues related to how difficult it is in every school district because every school district faces these challenges, some of us a little more than others. It's certainly not unique to my constituency or to Vancouver. It's a situation that is reflected across the province.

When we look at how we're going to meet those challenges and we look at legislation that gets put forward and at Bill 20, we have to ask ourselves: does this piece of legislation help us to meet the challenges that those kids and those families are facing in Vancouver-Hastings and in constituencies across the province? Does Bill 20 support the school board — the democratically elected school board — in its efforts to meet those challenges? Does it support parent advisory councils and those who are interested and committed to education who are working in those districts across the province, trying to meet those objectives?

I don't believe that this bill does advance those issues that are important. I don't believe it begins to address those issues in a way that we would all hopefully want them to be addressed. I'll talk about that a little bit more as we go on.

The second issue around Bill 20 that raises some concern for me, really, is the issue of accountability of our education system. We all know, and I certainly know, as the parent of a 15-year-old…. I've had an interest in education for a long time. My interest in education became somewhat more acute when my daughter went to school, and I got involved in the parent advisory council at my daughter's school and stayed involved in it until I came and got this job here. I know that my focus on education as a parent, obviously, was much more acute than it was when I was an observer outside of the system.

I know from that that I paid much more attention to my school board. I would look at the minutes of meetings when I was interested in issues that were in front

of the board, when the board was talking about budget matters and funding for special needs, and inner-city or community school issues, and the funding debate would go on. I would be very interested in that, and I would go to PAC meetings. We would have those discussions at the PAC meetings.

There was a fairly large group of parents who wanted to be part of that discussion and were always prepared to go to the school board when those issues came up on the agenda — to speak about those issues and impress upon them the concerns we had as parents about spending decisions or program decisions.

Locally elected school boards offered us that accountability. They certainly offer the ability to do that, to have those discussions and to talk about the priorities of spending. That is the democratic nature of the elected school boards. It's a critical thing, and it's something that we need to ensure that we protect.

The question that I think comes out of a number of the initiatives that are in Bill 20 here is: are we in fact protecting and are we enriching the democratic process at the local level through Bill 20?

We always hear that the closer you get to the voters — whether it be local governments, municipal governments, town councils or school boards…. The closer you get to the voters, arguably, the more accountable governments are because they are more accessible.

I think there is certainly some merit in that argument. So the question we have to ask is: are we enriching that democratic process through the initiatives that are advanced in Bill 20?

Sadly, I'm not so sure we are. In fact, I don't believe that Bill 20 advances those causes and arguably — and we've heard the comments of a number of the previous speakers, and I'll speak a little bit about this as I move on — we are eroding or taking away from the democratic processes, and taking away from those local school board authorities. When we do that, we hurt that transparency, and we hurt that accountability.

Let me talk about a few of the key aspects of Bill 20 as they relate to those two objectives. That broad objective that I spoke about, of meeting the challenges in schools and particularly — though not exclusively, by any means — meeting the challenges for those kids who have unique or special interests, whether it's kids who are vulnerable, ESL kids, special needs kids, the whole range of children in those categories…. Also, the key objective around whether this enhances and enriches the democratic process for our schools as they relate to taxpayers, to parents and to others in our communities….

The key objective of the bill, and it's certainly incorporated into the name of the bill, is student achievement. It's identified as student achievement. Now, as we know, what Bill 20 tells us about is that achievement contracts will be the tool for this. They include a whole range of things that we're going to see from achievement contracts that are to be what school boards are to look to attain with these contracts. It talks about standards for student performance, planning for improved achievement in the district, literacy, early learning, some targeting for aboriginal students and other matters as ordered by the minister as being key aspects of this.

What we know is that we now have these four special superintendents of achievement, or as one of my colleagues called them, the über-supers of achievement. They are going to have the responsibility to enforce these contracts of achievement, ensure that they're in place, that they're being adhered to and that they're meeting the objectives of the minister — and, presumably, of the deputy on behalf of the minister.

These four superintendents, who will be provincewide, won't be reporting to the duly elected trustees in districts. They'll be reporting to the deputy minister, presumably on behalf of the minister, and that's where their accountability will be — not to trustees, but to the deputy and through the deputy to the minister.

They'll administer these achievement contracts. They'll have the ability under this legislation to overrule elected school boards, should they believe that's necessary. They'll have the ability and the authority to work and to go into schools, to inspect records, to do interviews and to impose themselves quite literally on school boards in terms of the agendas of school board meetings and being able to make direct recommendations to school boards about what they should or shouldn't do.

They have this nebulous ability called, I think, other duties as assigned by the deputy. We have no idea what other duties as assigned by the deputy will necessarily mean, but it can be pretty broad-ranging, I assume. So we have these four senior officials working directly for the minister, for this government. What they're essentially doing is they have this authority to overrule duly elected boards and to drive what happens with duly elected boards.

Part of the challenge here, of course, is that the ultimate hammer sits with the minister, as well, and that is the ability, should boards challenge these superintendents of achievement, challenge some of the discussion around these achievement contracts, make the case or be resistant to complying because they believe that there are other things that better represent the interests of the district…. Of course, the minister has the ability to name a special trustee to dismiss the board, to name a special trustee if the board doesn't adhere to the minister's wishes, and that special trustee — an appointee, not an elected person — would then take over the responsibilities of the board.

I've talked with parent advisory councils in my constituency and parent advisory councils in Vancouver, and they're concerned. They have a relationship with the school board; they have a relationship with trustees. They certainly don't always agree with the school board and with the trustees, but they know how to have that discussion. They certainly don't always agree with the local superintendent, but they know how to have that discussion.

They value that ability to debate what should and shouldn't be the priorities of the Vancouver school board as it reflects their schools where their children attend and their desire to have the programs reflect both the system of the education system and their values too. Generally, they think it works not too badly. Everybody likes some more money, and we'll talk about money in a little bit, but they do believe that this would not be a step forward.

They are concerned that these achievement models may not reflect local realities and the local challenges that they're facing in the schools that their children attend. They're concerned about achievement models where they don't have a voice that they believe exists today with local boards. They're quite clearly leery about anything that they believe erodes a local authority that already is a little bit shaky and that begins to impact democratic accountability. That's a concern around the achievement model that gets reflected to me.

The other matter here is that we know one of the other issues is that we're now going to no longer have school boards. We're going to have boards of education. These boards are being renamed. They're being given other responsibilities. Others have spoken about early childhood responsibilities and literacy responsibilities. Part of the concern is that certainly in the legislation there is nothing explicit in this piece of legislation that assures there will be the additional resources there to support those early education and literacy programs. This is a problem.

It's a problem with the boards that are already facing budget pressures, already facing a myriad of demands on the resources that they have, and now they will have additional demands on them and additional expectations through Bill 20. They're not sure, quite honestly…. Parents and others in the district that my constituency is in are concerned about whether they're going to have those resources to be able to make those programs work.

On the one hand, they have these responsibilities, and then on the other hand, they lose some of their authority that has already, over the years, been eroded in some ways. They lose that authority in a few ways.

We know that there is the issue related to school fees. The bill does bring back a model around school fees. There may very well be arguments made for where those fees need to apply and why it's appropriate to have fees in some circumstances. The problem with this is that it isn't a decision that will rest with those boards of education now. It will rest with school planning councils. I want to talk a little bit about that.

The government introduced school planning councils awhile back. What we know about them is that school planning councils are basically a three-person body. In many schools the school planning council membership is, by default, filled by parents and others who are not necessarily being supported enthusiastically by other parents and their peers.

They're not necessarily being filled…. They're certainly not being filled by people who are active, necessarily, in parent advisory councils, where much of the grass-roots parent representation comes from. They certainly don't have the authority of an elected school board. Nobody elected those school planning councils in the way that they elected their school boards. Nobody can challenge those school planning councils' decisions in a way that they can challenge their school board. That's a problem, I believe.

I think it is a problem that these decisions around fees…. It's not even so much the decision that there will be fees. There may be arguments made for fees. But the concern is where those decisions around fees will rest and that those fees will rest with school planning councils instead of with duly elected boards.

The other issue…. I know the legislation talks about hardship allowances. Colleagues of mine who have spoken to this bill before, I know, have talked about some of the hardship issues. My experience, certainly, when I think back to when my daughter was in elementary school at Hastings School in my constituency…. It's a very large elementary school of 600-plus kids and a very diverse school in terms of the demographics, the incomes and the wealth of the people whose kids went to the school.

There were those of us who were middle class and had our kids there and certainly had no problem in paying fees for things when that was needed. It was never a big deal to have to put up 20 bucks here or 20 bucks there. But for a large number of the people at Hastings School, for parents at Hastings School, it was a totally different matter. Putting up $20 here or $20 there just wasn't an easy thing to do. Sometimes it was an impossible thing to be able to do.

I know the challenges and difficulties around ensuring that there were measures in place that guaranteed that those kids were able to participate without having to identify them, without having to oblige their parents to come in and make special requests, without having to put the mark on their forehead that they were poor, that they couldn't afford this.

It was a challenge, I know, for the school to find those ways that worked best, where those children felt that they were welcome and invited into those programs, and money wasn't the issue. It was the desire to participate, the desire to be part of a program and the desire to be engaged in the program. I think it is a more challenging thing to do.

So I do have a concern that, while the legislation references hardship, that it really does need to be very explicit about how you protect the interests of those families and children who aren't going to be able to afford to participate in these programs.

I want to talk a little bit, too, about provincial schools. This is another area where local school boards potentially lose some of their authority. What we know is that under the provincial schools portion of this, the legislation is not explicit in saying what those provincial schools will be for, for specific purposes. The door is open to something much broader than that.

This raises concerns. The concern has been raised to me by those who are advocates of public education and

of accountable education, and advocates of the role that school boards play in education, that this is taking us down the road towards a charter school model. They do have concerns about that charter school model, that that's what we're looking at as a provincial structure of charter schools.

We know, of course, that the Deputy Minister of Education is a very knowledgable person in the field of education and that part of his previous reputation before coming to British Columbia was in Alberta, where he actually played a significant role in the modelling of charter schools there. So it's certainly a model that is very familiar to the deputy, and one that past evidence would suggest that he has been an enthusiastic supporter of.

We now see this provincial school model that looks very much like the start of a push for charter schools. We know that these schools won't be accountable to local school boards. While there may be certain aspects, certain times, when it makes sense to put unique programs in place, you have to ask yourself whether in fact provincial schools are the answer.

I know when I look at some of the people who are identified as proponents of provincial schools…. I look in my own constituency at an organization that I've had the opportunity to visit a number of times, the Learning Disabilities Association. They're a very important organization that works extremely hard for the parents and for the kids that are members of that organization. I know that they have expressed some support for a provincial school model around their children.

But I also know from discussions with a number of those parents and activists in that area that that support for some other model is, as much as anything, the desperation they feel that they're not finding the resources within the current system, within the current schools and within the other areas of social services, education services and children's services in government to meet the needs of their kids.

As a consequence, they're looking for anything that will help get them where they need to go with their children. I'm sure they're looking and saying: "If a provincial school gets us a little farther down the road to meeting our children's needs, then the provincial school it will be." But their concern, as they've said to me at different times, is that this has to do with the frustration about not meeting their needs today. It doesn't have to do with necessarily embracing this model as a model that they think works particularly well for them.

We have a number of issues that I think are critical in education today. There are issues around vulnerable kids. How do we begin to meet the needs of those vulnerable kids? Are the current funding formulas — the way we support schools and the way that we support our districts — the best way to get at the needs of our vulnerable children?

I think there's a sincere interest to do that, but quite frankly, I don't think we're there yet. I think we have a lot of work to do to decide how to meet those challenges. I think that's where we should be putting the emphasis of our attention. I don't think Bill 20 does that.

We have a concern about the reduced enrolments that are happening around the province and the impact that they have in terms of school closures. What's that impact going to be? How's that going to affect how education works in our districts? What's the role of the provincial government to support districts to be able to deal with and support those issues? I don't think that Bill 20 begins to get at or to deal with those questions, and I think that's a matter that we should be discussing.

School funding models. I talked about it around poverty. I know that funding is a complex thing in schools. We have a model that's largely driven by the per-pupil funding. I understand that model. I respect and appreciate why that model's there. I don't think it deals with the broad and increasing complexities of our school system. I think we should be discussing those things, but I don't see that discussion happening or being addressed in this legislation.

The other thing around that is that we have a whole issue around the consultation that went into this. I'm just not convinced that parents, in a broad sense, have been talked to about the issues and solutions that are raised in this piece of legislation. I'm not sure that school trustees have been adequately consulted around these models, whether these are the solutions that they think will work, whether administrators have been consulted around these models. I know that administrators I talked to in my district…. Their priorities and the support that they require certainly aren't reflected here. Their issues and their priorities are very different. They don't see that being reflected in this piece of legislation either.

I do think that we need to get back to looking at how we deal with those questions, how we deal with that equality of opportunity and how we deal with enhancing the democracy of our school districts, not eroding the democracy of our school districts. In making those districts more accountable…. I think you give people the authority to make the decisions, and then you hold them accountable. I fear that this model holds them accountable but takes the authority away for making those decisions. I don't think that's wise.

I won't be supporting this bill, but I do look forward in committee stage to having a discussion around the legislation and, hopefully — either me or through my colleagues — being able to explore some of these issues more directly with the minister as she has an opportunity to explain more clearly her support for a number of the aspects of the legislation.

N. Simons: It gives me pleasure to be able to rise and add my…. Well, we'll evaluate the value of it after. Maybe we'll do an achievement test halfway through and see if I'm making the grade. I'd just like to add my points to this particular bill, which I believe is not just unnecessary but over the top in terms of what it attempts to achieve or what it will attempt to achieve.

What I believe is fundamentally flawed is that there is an association — an almost automatic association — between our ability to measure and the success of what we're measuring. What we're looking at in this particular case is Bill 20, the School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act. It really has nothing to do with assisting students in achieving anything or enabling them to achieve anything; it has to do with someone's arbitrary measurement system to see whether or not we can see a trend in their scores. Essentially, that is what is being done by this legislation.

What's underlying this — what seems to be underscoring this legislation — is the assumption, somehow, that not every principal in this province is interested in the best education for their students, that not all teachers in this province are interested in the best achievement levels of their students, that we need to have an act to tell teachers and principals that we want their students to do better. We know better, and we're going to come in and tell you how to do it. We're going to tell you how to do it by asking questions, by getting in the way and by basically asking teachers, administrators and everybody else in the school system to spend time and resources on measuring something, while in fact they should be actually concentrating on that something. That something is the ability for students to achieve what they're capable of achieving in all facets and all aspects of life.

What we hope from our students is not only success in their academic achievements but success, as they've been prepared in the school system, for life. I believe that in this particular circumstance, what we have before us is legislation that is not going to have any impact on whether students are happy in school, any influence on whether they have enjoyable memories from school, nor any measurement of a child's relationship with their teacher, of the child's comfort in the hallway or of a child's ability to work with others and to get along with others.

For someone who has never worked directly in the education system, in my role as a social worker I've had a lot of interaction with students and children who have had some crisis and some negative interaction with the education system. Oftentimes issues would come to my attention from school employees, family members and community members who were concerned about something they'd seen in school.

I know of children who went to school hungry, as you all know. I know of children who went to school without adequate clothing, as you all know. I had children on my caseload that went to school tired, scared and unprepared for the challenges that school would offer — sometimes even in social interaction, but definitely in the academic field.

I'm afraid that the focus on measurement is a detriment to the focus on high-quality academic and other forms of learning, including social learning. I understand the government's concern about this number they've been bandying about: 11,000 students who don't graduate from grade 12 every year. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you multiply that by a little bit — four — and realize that in four years that'll include 44,000 people not graduating. But this is an attempt to create a sense of fear or concern that's undue in this particular circumstance.

Sure enough, every student who fails to achieve their diploma or Dogwood certificate is one student that somehow we've not managed to teach the curriculum. But we should not assume by those numbers, first of all, that they represent an abject failure of the public school system. In fact, I believe — and I'm not an expert in the school system — that we have one of the highest-functioning, most respected public education systems.

Why, in a time like that, would we start looking at ways of judging — not even adjudicating, but judging — school administrators, teachers and, of course, students? What this perpetuates is an idea that somehow students and their teachers are not working towards the same goal.

The issue at hand is that 11,000 students not graduating from grade 12 says something about the ability of schools to offer what is necessary for their educational system. Nobody has questioned whether or not this 11,000 is an accurate number. No one has necessarily questioned the reasons behind their failure to achieve. But I would say without any doubt whatsoever that if you ask any social worker or early childhood educator working with children in this province, we can identify at a very early stage in the child's life whether or not they are going to have difficulty in the public education system.

Knowing that, we should be primarily focused on making sure that the courses, staffing and supports necessary in the school are adequate, that children are supervised properly on playgrounds and comforted when they're scared, that they're encouraged when they're fearful and given praise when they achieve levels of success they were previously unable to achieve.

Our public school system is one which we must invest in, one we must consider the foundation of our democratic society — in fact, in a way, the great equalizer, if I can go that far. Students coming to school should be able to, indeed, find ways of achieving their potential when other factors in their life may put them behind the eight ball.

That involves supporting school systems and programs in schools that encourage those kids who are less likely to have the same academic skills upon entrance to the school. Focusing on new ways of evaluating the performance of the professionals in this system is, I believe and I've been told, insulting. It's an insult to those working in the public school system to say that the solution to the problems of achievement is in measuring administrators' abilities to measure.

Essentially, that's what is happening here. We're creating a new layer. There used to be something in the bureaucracy of the province that was called delayering. When we take different levels of management away, unfortunately it often results in new layers of management.

We have created four new superintendents who are, as far as I can tell by this legislation, not accountable to the people in their community the way school trustees are. They are the only elected people from our communities specifically responsible for overseeing our public education system. What this legislation does is cut the feet out from underneath them and put a cap on top of what they can do. Unfortunately, this is interpreted as — and I am not likely to contradict their assessment — an insult to the school trustees as well.

I am disappointed, because we often say that we judge societies by how well they treat those who are outcasts, vulnerable and marginalized. In this particular situation what we have is an education system that is lauded by educators in many parts of this world, who look to British Columbia and Canada to a public school system that offers children an opportunity, at least. When our focus becomes entirely on whether or not arbitrary levels of achievement have been reached, in and of itself perhaps that's not the issue. But when it takes away from the resources and when it takes away the focus from what is at the core of education — that is, adequately supported programs, good teaching in a cohesive community school — we look at an entirely different issue.

I don't understand the rationale behind achievement superintendents, except that it seems to me that it smacks of a bit of public relations. If there are some people concerned about achievement levels in schools, you don't just necessarily go measure and say if they're right or not. If people are concerned about the graduation rates, we need to look at the fundamental causes. How well we measure it is not going to help. A coach doesn't go into the dressing room after a game and keep telling the players how much they lost by. What we need to actually do is ask: what is the fundamental change that will allow us to achieve more? It's not to remind them of the score.

Nor is it: do we assess the quality of a summer vacation in a station wagon as to whether we got to the gas stations on time every time or if all the children were happy in the seats assigned to them in the back seat? No, no. It's the overall experience in education that creates the diversity we have in our society. Some people do extremely well in certain courses and less well in others. There is variety in our society. In fact, by focusing on trying to homogenize not just measuring techniques but trying to bring all those measuring techniques to the same score with different children every year, I'm afraid the logic of that escapes me. I'm glad to say I'm not alone in that particular escapement of logic.

Many people seemed to indicate to me that at a time when school boards and schools are struggling to offer courses and classes that are small enough to learn or with a composition that is adequate for everyone to have the right amount of attention, here we are focusing on achievement levels. Is there not maybe an underlying purpose? Perhaps we are setting the stage to find some failures, which will result in yet more changes to the education system. It may be. You know, it's something to consider; it's something to watch for.

A lot of people are concerned about, perhaps, previous indications this government has given us that the attempt is for the private sector to have a greater role in the public school system. I would like to categorically reject that as an option. I think we need to make sure that the essential principles of public education require adequate financial support, adequate personnel resources and not more people to measure, not more people to essentially take the temperature once a year and somehow extrapolate the conditions we are living under.

The snapshots that we're being offered don't provide us with what is really a life. You don't take a snapshot and extrapolate what you shouldn't from that particular snapshot. In this particular case that seems to be what's happening.

Accountability and achievement are obviously not the same thing. But it's the words that I would say are fundamentally important to analyze. When we hear the government's justification for the changes that they make — and they frame it in such a way, calling it choices…. The rebranding may fool people. Unfortunately, it does.

I think what teachers want to make sure of is that we recognize they are trying to ensure that the children in their classes achieve their highest potential. Every student and every teacher is accountable to one another. We have a system of checks and balances. We have a system that finds teachers who aren't performing. It finds students who need help. But what it doesn't do is focus on that as the fundamental underpinning of an education system.

An education system should provide young people with the necessary skills with which to learn more — the necessary curiosity to find answers about issues that have piqued their interest in school — to learn interactions with peer groups, learn how to play, learn how to work, learn how to meet a schedule. That's not always successful.

It's far more than the academic results in standardized testing. It is so much more than that. I come from a family of educators, and I do see an important role in assessing students' achievements. But when we spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on how we measure, focusing on a measuring system that is fundamentally flawed — if you ask anyone who teaches research methods or….

It's not something that I even feel we need to debate. We know very well that a child's achievement in school is based on their comfort in school, their ability to learn, their willingness to learn and the conditions from which they come to school.

Let me just mention some of the issues in particular that I'm going to have some severe problems with, and it might start with the hardship policy. I know the minister is probably quite concerned about this aspect of the bill, which stands to separate those with the means from those without the means to access certain forms of education.

Now, I'd like to see — if there was such a thing — a hardship policy where no child will ever go to their

social worker and say: "I'm not asking my mom for a clarinet. I'm not going to ask my mom to participate in figure skating. I'm not asking my dad if I can go to shop." It's not about whether the parents feel that they're going be called poor or targeted one way or the other. It's the children who know better than to ask their parents, who will be frustrated once again about not being able to make their car payment, rental payment, food payment and still have enough for the clarinet and the reeds that go with it.

It's one thing for a parent to come to a school official and say, "I can't afford this amount of money for a class," but that parent only goes to the teacher or the administrator for that purpose if they know their child is interested. If the child doesn't show interest early, because he knows better, has never had a treat from the store before or has never been able to get an extra dollar for his or her allowance, then what are the chances of that child going to their parent — feeling sad because they have to ask their parent in the first place, and knowing their parent is going to be sad at having been asked?

I know of children and first nations children in this province who have been denied the opportunity to experience what other children in this province experience, and that is a shame. That should be what this minister is focusing on — not measurement. That's what this minister should be focusing on: making education accessible to all children, whether they're white or not, whether they're on reserve or not. Wherever they are in this province, children should have a right to education. They shouldn't come to school worried about asking their teacher for particular things because their parents are going to be upset. This is not an equalizer. The hardship grant will not provide that.

I think the minister should probably listen to the concerns raised by critics across this province instead of choosing who she talks to and where she's going to get advice from. Listen to the actual people in this province who represent the majority — not a few people, not a little select group, not somebody in this little community or that community, but everybody. Find out what the community of teachers says about the hardship. Find out what the community of administrators thinks of this, etc., etc.

We know the social indicators are the main indicators of a student's achievement. This government can cut social programs and wonder why children don't achieve later. The logic seems to have failed the government. They don't understand how it is. How come kids don't achieve in school? How come we have the highest level of child poverty in this province? I ask everybody in this House, if that doesn't smack of hypocrisy — if you can't fix the problem, measure more.

I'm sorry. It doesn't wash with me, and it doesn't wash with anyone with an ounce of common sense. Obviously, I'm cutting close to the bone, as it's said, because perhaps the minister knows of the vulnerabilities of this legislation. Perhaps the minister knows it has upset most teachers in the province. Perhaps the minister knows that most parents wonder what the heck the government is doing finding out new ways to measure teachers instead of investing in the public school system, instead of investing where the need has been demonstrated year after year — that's in children who come to school unprepared.

What's happened to child care, I wonder? Ask anybody in this House. What's happened to child care? Have we heard the minister say anything in support of child care? No. We've had cut after cut. "The federal government did it," they said. "It's their fault," they said, but not a whimper about: "We demand." After 20 years of fighting for child care in this province, we're going to go out with a whimper and let the federal government abandon and abrogate its responsibility. "Oh, it's not our fault. We didn't do it; they did it."

Now they come in and say that the reason people don't do well in school is because the administrators don't know how to measure. Well, well. Isn't that a surprise? Now, I'm sure the minister is going to have plenty of opportunity to respond, and I have no problem with that. What I'm suggesting to the minister is that there is going to be a little bit of fun in the third reading of this debate, because we're going to go through it clause by clause. I can tell you….

N. Simons: Committee stage. I'm glad to see the Minister of Forests and Range was listening to me. I'm honoured.

N. Simons: Thank you very much. The Minister of Health also points out the importance of moi. That's a bit of French which could also be….

I think it's pretty clear. We've got three education bills before the House right now, and it's troubling.

N. Simons: That's what happens — for the audience in the gallery — as soon as you find a vulnerability of government. They wonder if I'm against protecting children. Now that's a logical question, isn't it? I admire the minister for being able to come up with something so unique and original. Perhaps the minister wants to bring up the '90s again. In 1990 I was 26 years old and happy to be working for the government and dealing with the problems that we all had to deal with.

Obviously, the minister is probably interested in hearing what I have to say that's nice about the government. That's all I could think of, so I should go back to the bill. Now….

N. Simons: Thank you. The minister is probably measuring my ability right now, and I'm probably failing, in her mind. I apologize to all those….

You know, I think an MLA from West Vancouver put it exactly right. It probably reflects the government's intention more closely than the public relations words we hear from government on this particular act. That is, if we're not pushing school trustees, not pushing the administrators and not pushing students to higher levels of achievement, then we're failing.

Hon. Speaker, what kind of government expects that they're going to achieve what they want by pushing people? I find that a little bit aggressive, a little bit misguided and a little bit shortsighted. What we really need, and I'm sure the minister agrees with this, is an education system in which all children are able to flourish, feel safe and feel supported — and not having to have legislation to say that you're safe, you're supported and you're learning.

We have hundreds of years of history to show that legislation in and of itself isn't going to have an impact on the performance of people. Legislation, unless it's used as a deterrent…. Are we using education legislation as a deterrent? Are we using it as a threat to administrators?

I'm sorry. I'm reflecting what I've heard from community members about this particular piece of legislation. People shrug their shoulders and roll their eyes, but I wouldn't get very far in Hansard if that's all I did.

I can tell you that there are a certain number of serious problems with this legislation. I've just glanced over a few, and I believe that committee stage will be a time when we can maybe dissect this particular piece of legislation more closely, find out if there is anything else hidden underneath a particular section of the statute.

I think it would be nice if the government would recognize that achievement in school has to do with a child's ability to grow up safe, to have supports — you know, social programs that work. I can tell the minister that I know people who are not going to benefit simply by having their test scores measured year to year. They would much prefer to see, perhaps, fewer children in the classroom, a better mix, more support to teachers. I note that teacher-librarians and assistants to teachers, child care workers …. All those areas were cut.

The social support systems that used to be in place are not in place and that used to assist in the school system. That's where the hypocrisy is. The hypocrisy is that we have this huge surplus in the province, which they like to take credit for. And now we have a situation where we have students who are….

All of a sudden, the minister decides the reason for the school achievement levels, which are pretty stable year to year, has to do with the lack of uniformity in measurement or lack of consistent application of that measurement tool. That's simply what this is. I just would prefer to see that we would maintain some democratic oversight of our school boards and not implement new levels of control that basically can do the government's bidding.

We've seen it in other parts of legislation in this province since 2001. We've seen the attempt to limit local government's authority. We've seen attempts to limit social workers' authority. You name it. We've seen attempts of this government to have more and more centralized control over areas where it has no business.

I'm really pleased that the minister was listening to my words, and I hope she takes some of those to heart.

D. Routley: Thank you very much. It gives me another great pleasure to be able to rise again and speak again of this government's history of attacks on public services, on public education, on public health — its history of attacks on democracy and the instruments of democracy.

This bill provides several threats to the continuing coherence of public education in British Columbia. The history of public education in British Columbia is one of stellar achievement, world-renowned achievement.

In fact, our British Columbia system ranks second when measured against all systems in the world. It only comes second because we don't offer free post-secondary education. The country that comes first has no standardized testing right up to grade 12 and through.

So why on earth would this government want to move towards a system of more and more standardized tests, a more and more data-driven agenda for education and less and less spending on what really matters: classroom time for teachers with students, with class sizes they can work with and class composition that doesn't destroy the effectiveness of that work.

When this government came forward with its accountability agenda — which has now morphed, or in their words, "transformed" into an achievement agenda — they brought the wrong one. The accountability agenda and achievement agenda that this province really needs when it comes to education needs to be directed at the B.C. Liberal government.

The B.C. Liberal government needs to be accountable for the drastic cuts and deprivations it brought to public education over the past six years. It needs to be accountable for all those disabled children who have gone without the service they require. It needs to be accountable for the decimation of classroom conditions through the increased levels of special needs children in classrooms without support.

It needs to be accountable for all the specialized professionals that had to be cut to meet the cuts of this government and for the downloaded increased cost that this government brought to school boards — so that those professionals who would help these disabled children, who now occupy our rooms in record numbers, were among the first to be cut.

This is not only sad; it's deceitful. It is awful for a government to label policies like this the way they do, when in fact the outcomes are opposite. Achievement is harmed. Accountability is erased because this government won't stand to account for the damage it has done.

We look at school boards, and we wonder: why do we have school boards? Why would the entire com-

munity be asked to elect a board of trustees to govern public education? My goodness, I'm sure that, with the demography we face now, the majority of the people in the community don't have children in the system. So why would they have an interest in electing school trustees? They have an interest because public education is a public interest.

Public education prepares children for our society. Public education helps children learn to deal with different people from different backgrounds and different challenges. Those are precious lessons. Those are the subtle lessons that will never be measured in any accountability or achievement contract.

Those are the experiences that lead to better and more efficient workplaces. Those are the qualities in education that lead to better and better democracy, and better and better communities. Not more tests. More resources are what our schools need — more resources. In fact, even if the government were to replace the resources it took, that would be a start. But they're not doing that through this board.

Instead, they're attacking the broad community interest in publicly elected school boards by undermining their authority above them and below them, by appointing four provincial superintendents who will have new authority over elected school boards, and by taking some of their authority and giving it to school planning councils — very narrowly elected, small groups of people, not accountable to the broader community, not accountable for all those subtle qualities of education that put us where we have been for so many years as superlative achievers in education. Those are the subtle things that have been pushed aside by this data-driven agenda.

A high school teacher I know — a history teacher in Ladysmith — told me that before the data-driven drive came to his classroom, he would get three to four research projects from his students each year. Research projects not only taught these students about history but also engaged the other skill sets they were learning: reading, writing, research skills, working with others — all of those things. Those things are washed away in the face of more testing, and that's a shame. That's a terrible shame.

Mr. Speaker, you and I sat on the committee for literacy, the Select Standing Committee on Education. We examined adult literacy. I noted before we started that process that the province last year had made great fanfare over their appointment of a Minister for Literacy, that being the Education Minister. If the Education Minister is the Minister for Literacy, I would suggest that she read some of the submissions that came to the committee. I would suggest that she look at her definition of literacy, because it needs vast expansion.

It needs vast expansion, and she needs to go to her other cabinet colleagues and impress upon them that the many cutbacks in their ministries are hurting her ability to deliver adequate literacy training. Barriers of child care, barriers of transportation and barriers in the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance that bar people from literacy programs….

That's what the minister ought to be doing instead of submitting herself to this data-driven agenda that does nothing but commodify education and provide the government with an excuse and a diversion from the effects of its policies, which have drastically impaired the ability of teachers and school districts to deliver coherent and quality programs through our public education system.

Achievement contracts and accountability are a testing obsession, a great cost to the system for so little benefit. Testing, testing, testing. It's like asking the participants in a 100-metre dash to stop every ten metres and report their progress. It impairs the race to do what teachers really need to do — to deliver quality educational programs to their students and to harness those teachable moments rather than being buried by new obligations and a terrible lack of resources for teachers that has taken them to the edge of their own professional self-respect.

The data-driven agenda is not only costly; it's absolutely unreliable. As a school trustee, I was asked to endorse accountability contracts that had as their goal 1-percent and 2-percent gains in reading, writing, math or numeracy — 1-percent or 2-percent gains when the size of the sample, the students, would tell any statistician that the plus-or-minus range of error, the range of variance, was 17 percent and 25 percent.

With that kind of variance, we could be measuring a 2-percent gain in literacy when in fact we're witnessing a 15-percent decline. Then the next year we'll have a new goal, but we'll have a new set of students with a new set of challenges and a new set of abilities.

That stream of data is corrupted. That stream of data is worthless except to anyone but the Fraser Institute and the editorial board of the Vancouver Sun, who like to sell newspapers with that Fraser Institute piece of pseudo-science. This is pseudo-science that goes to damage our ability to deliver to our children quality educational programs. It is harming our system, and this government ought to take the right step and move to have confidence in the teachers of this province and remove these onerous and burdensome requirements.

We see that this bill addresses school fees and school planning councils. This gives school planning councils the ability to decide, for that entire broader community that I spoke about, whether or not school fees will be allowed, whether or not educational programs can be delivered in academies versus the public school system as it stands.

This is another assault on the community's overall voice when it comes to public education. It undermines school boards by taking some of the authority of school boards and placing it in the hands of very, very narrowly elected school planning councils with self-appointed agendas. The principle of universality is assaulted by the bill's emphasis on provincial schools.

The disabled should be striving for more inclusion, as they are, and this House should support that effort. This House should be doing everything we can to live up to the spirit of our charter, which guarantees those

children the right of the fullest participation possible to them. But this bill steps in the way of this. This bill undercuts all the efforts that have been made in the past to include those children and to improve their participation in community.

Programs across the province like therapeutic swimming were cut very early in the mandate of cutbacks of this government. Those programs are every bit as core curriculum to disabled children as English and mathematics or any other core subject might be to other students. They are very important to their physical and social inclusion in our community, and they have been cut. They were one the first things that had to be cut — all targeted by this government and all casualties of their policies.

Choices as offered by this bill undermine boards. Choices offered by this government have consistently undermined boards and the delivery of public education. In my own district, in Cowichan, we have two high schools that operate on different programs. As soon as the choice option was offered to parents, we found ourselves in a position of having to bus 200 kids back and forth between the schools every day — 200 children — at a very great cost. But we had to do it. It was offered by the government; we had to do it.

When we had to meet other cutbacks in the transportation department, we considered stopping that busing, until it was pointed out that it would have only taken six or seven students going to the private system to eliminate the savings of $40,000 that we would have had by not busing those children, so we were trapped. We either lose the funds by delivering the service, or we lose the students and have greater declining enrolment because they're being driven out by B.C. Liberal policies. That is what's happening.

This government has embarked on a program of attack on public services. This government has addressed public education, as it did through Bill 33, and has failed to deliver. They deliver words, but they don't deliver the resources. As a result, school districts around the province are again scrambling to fill the void left by this government's irresponsible negligence of their duty.

They promised to fund Bill 33. They promised that they would address the conditions that brought the labour disruption to our schools two years ago, and they failed. They failed. The word I would like to use would have you remove me from the chamber, Madam Speaker. They failed.

We have great reasons to do better. Our society demands it. We live in a time of a skills shortage brought to us by a demographic that is aging, particularly in this province where so many people are coming to retire. We see a human resource challenge throughout our economy, and this government disinvests in children. Be it child care, education or health care, this government disinvests in children.

The skills shortage makes our children an even more precious demographic than they ever were. At a time when we can least afford it, this government is creating a huge deficit in the conditions in public education. It puts the threat to the success of that precious demographic that comes behind us and that we will depend on to fill those positions, to support those retirement plans, to keep our society running.

How shortsighted is it for this government to make those disinvestments? The real Minister of Education, Emery Dosdall, brought an agenda from his experience in Alberta which was damaging to their system and is now damaging our system.

The minister ought to realize and listen — listen to the trustees, listen to the communities of this province — and take to task those who fed her this agenda and tell them that she won't allow it. She's the elected Minister of Education in this province. She's presiding over the dilution of one of the best public education systems this world knows, and she denigrates it by this type of bill, which attempts to put onus on those who serve and have been responsible for our great placing at the expense of her narrow, shortsighted political agenda.

It's time for this government to give up its attack on public services, time to end the provocational and negative management tactics, time to fund what it promises, time to reverse the cuts that were the downloaded costs of the accounting systems. There were the downloaded costs of teachers' contracts.

On and on the downloaded costs go, and then the minister waves a flag of funding here and there. She put eight rocks in our shoes, and she comes back to take two out — then wants us to shake her hand as our best friend. I don't think so.

This government has damaged the educational experience of a generation of students. That's not something where you can turn the tap on and off. Many of those children have been handed deficits that they will struggle with throughout their entire educational careers, and that will be the legacy of this government.

Just as the children who graduate now — three and four years after Mike Harris — in Ontario are dubbed Mike's children, the children of B.C. four, five, six years from now who will struggle with graduation will be the Premier's children. But he won't be here to stand to account for that.

The real accountability and achievement agenda will never be realized until it is focused on those who have truly threatened that, and that is the B.C. Liberal government.

J. Kwan: I rise to speak to Bill 20, the School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007. I rise to speak to this bill because there are clearly a number of issues within this bill that I think warrant discussion.

I know that the government is very good at the blame game. I know that they're very good at shifting responsibilities. They're very good at pointing their finger at someone else and making sure they put the responsibility where this government ought to be owning up. We know that this government likes to and continues to try to hold someone else accountable for their failures, instead of looking at their own actions.

I know that the government says this by virtue of this bill title, which is School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act. The question is on that basis: what is the government doing, exactly, to assist students to better achieve in the education system? If they truly want to know and if they truly want to do that, they may actually listen to some of the people in this education system.

They may just pause for a minute and listen to what the B.C. School Trustees Association has said to the minister, both in writing and at their conference that they just held a week ago, where they passed a resolution on April 22. That resolution says: "That BCSTA strongly oppose the continued erosion of the autonomy of locally elected school boards as outlined in Bill 20 and demand the minister withdraw this legislation."

In the letter they wrote to the minister, here's what they actually called on the minister to do on the issue around achievement contracts:

That's what the B.C. School Trustees Association is calling on the government to do; that's what the B.C. School Trustees Association is calling on this minister to do. If this government and this minister truly want to ensure better achievement for students in our education system, they might be wise to listen to the words of the B.C. School Trustees Association. This excerpt that I have read is from a letter dated April 2, 2007, to the Minister of Education.

This is not news to them. It's not news to any of the government members, I'm sure. In fact, I'm sure that all MLAs would have received a copy of it, and I would urge the government MLAs to stand up and advocate for this point of view.

That's where I think a real difference could be made, not just simply saying to the school boards: "Hey, school boards, what I want you to do is come forward with these new achievement contracts." Signing the contracts and trying to measure student achievement without providing the support to the students who need it the most would not mean heck of a lot.

I know that in my riding of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant we have a lot of students and families who are challenged. I spoke with one principal who told me they have a student who has moved around so much that they don't even know whether or not the student is still enrolled in that school or has gone somewhere else, just because of the instability of the child's family situation.

It goes on regularly with many of the students who face challenges in Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, to be sure. For those students, stability and support means a whole heck of a lot, and providing the special attention, the special supports required in the classrooms would make a difference.

That's not just for the students who have unique circumstances or special needs. It would be for the rest of the classrooms too — for those students who wouldn't require that — because then, with that kind of support in the classroom, those other students who are not challenged would get the attention they need from the educators in the classroom.

Instead of doing that, all that the government is doing is looking for simple answers just so they can go and grab a headline to say: "Hey, we have the best achievers. Hey, we've done our job in terms of accountability measurements. We have told the school boards to go and ensure that there are these achievement contracts in place." Well, it doesn't really get at the core of the issue, does it? That's the real question I think the Minister of Education, the Premier and the government MLAs need to contemplate.

I want to raise another issue, because student achievement on these achievement contracts is one component, a piece within this bill. The other piece that the government talks about is the issue around, I would say, scapegoating school boards. Now the government has this approach in their documentation where they're calling for superintendents of achievement in this bill.

The government is calling for superintendents of achievement. With that, they think that somehow the issue of ensuring better student performance and the issue of accountability are addressed in the education system.

In the letter, what the B.C. School Trustees Association had said to the Minister of Education was that they're calling for the government to increase support for school districts, "particularly in the area of developing leadership skills that will enhance student achievement." While "the 'supportive' role of the superintendents of achievement is, therefore, commendable," they would "strongly encourage the minister to place significant emphasis on the positive, supportive aspects of the superintendents of achievement."

They believe that the current staffing complement of superintendents of achievement "may not be sufficient to adequately fulfill this supportive developmental role." They're calling on the government "to ensure that this portfolio is adequately resourced."

The question is: what is this government doing around that request? Has the government even heard the message from the B.C. School Trustees Association where they're calling for the government to address this issue? I think that the answer is no.

I would love to be proven wrong. I would love it if the minister got up in her closing remarks to say, "The member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant is completely wrong. In fact, we will fund the school boards and provide the supports for them on the issue around superintendents of achievement. In fact, the government will fully fund the achievement contracts, and more particularly, will fully fund the students who lack the support in the education system so that they can truly, fully achieve."

The government may well get up and say, "I will fully fund Bill 33." Remember that bill — Bill 33 — where the government said that they support our students and educators? They brought in the bill with much fanfare. Afterwards, what did they do with it? Well, they forgot to fund it.

We didn't see any supports to fund Bill 33 in the budget that came forward. Here we are dealing with Bill 20, with the government saying that they want to measure how well the school districts and the school trustees are performing.

I would submit that the government is only trying to set up the school boards, to scapegoat them — so that they wouldn't be held accountable, so that they can divert from the real issue at hand: the lack of educational supports in our education system.

I'd like to raise another issue around the concerns that I have with Bill 20: the provincial schools. Bill 20 makes provincial schools possible in B.C. These schools would not be governed by the local school boards. It is no longer a requirement that these schools provide specialized types of education.

There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that the failure of the special education system is actually a governance issue as opposed to a resourcing, staffing and training issue. There's no evidence whatsoever, but what the government is doing here is simply looking for an easy out so that they can say: "Hey, I've given you a new governance model — problem solved." Not so.

Let's just take a moment and review the history of these kinds of schools. I would submit that B.C. has a terrible record with provincial schools for students with special needs. In the 1950s, students with special needs were excluded from public education entirely and were institutionalized.

Students at provincial residential schools like Woodlands, Glendale and Jericho Hill School for the Deaf were confined to provincial institutions, where they suffered physical, sexual, emotional and/or psychological abuse. There's still a class action lawsuit against the government — including 1,500 former Woodlands residents — that's going on today.

In July 2002 the Ministry of Children and Family Development released a report on the history of the Woodlands School. The report was by Dulcie McCallum, who's the former Ombudsman for B.C. The report is called The Need to Know. Ms. McCallum provided the ministry with records regarding specific former students, where she believed abuse might have occurred.

Eventually, parent activism and support for inclusion in public schools led to students being included in the general public stream. These are true records of the past. Here we are today, and the government's talking about provincial schools for special needs students.

In the situation with Vancouver, the Vancouver school board had called for public consultation. By the way, the board is dominated by the NPA — a political party that's more aligned with the government side. They voted unanimously to tell the Education Minister to outline her plan for public consultation and that such a school should be established only after the public has had a say. At the minimum, the government could have done that. At the very minimum, there could have been public consultation on the issue.

Special needs advocates. I come from the non-profit sector, and I do listen to the non-profit sector very intently when they have views to offer, especially on the areas they specialize in. A wide group of special needs advocates have written letters of concern to the Minister of Education about this possibility of provincial schools.

They include the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities, the B.C. Paraplegic Association, the B.C. Teachers Federation, the Lower Mainland Down Syndrome Society, Moms on the Move, Parent Advisory Committee on Inclusive Education, STEPS Forward Inclusive Post-Secondary Education Society, Vancouver Autism Parent Group, Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council and Vancouver Parents for Successful Inclusion — just to name a few.

On this issue, it does raise the question: if the government had actually funded special needs kids in the regular school system, would there even be a need to look at this so-called new model of provincial schools? I wonder whether or not the minister has actually done a full evaluation of the needs of special needs kids, of the kinds of supports in place for them and of whether or not there are adequate supports for the special needs students in our education system.

Bill 20 also calls for the government to allow for parents and students to appeal decisions that have been made by the school boards. The B.C. School Trustees Association is concerned from this point of view:

Thus, it raises the question of the government eroding the board's autonomy and their level of accountability, as they are directly elected by the electorate.

I just wonder whether or not the Minister of Education has done any work in estimating the cost of this extra layer of bureaucracy, if you will, in this process. How much would that actually cost taxpayers? Is that actually a wise investment of taxpayers' money?

In light of the facts that the government has not fully funded Bill 33; that on the achievement issue the government would be better off in providing more financial support to the school system so that students, particularly those who face multiple barriers, would have better opportunities for enhancing their achievement in the educational system; and especially, that the government wants to do achievement contracts on students, they might be wise to take those factors into consideration.

The government may even want to direct some of those moneys into supporting families who are living in poverty — so that they can better support their children, so that they face fewer barriers — and actually work towards rebuilding the social safety net so that those families can provide stable environments for their children. The government might be wise to think about that.

The other issue around Bill 20, of course, deals with administrative directives. In this letter to the Minister of Education, the B.C. School Trustees Association says very clearly that the administrative directions give them significant concerns and that they assume the purpose of administrative directives is to provide the minister and the superintendents of achievement…. They say that they would be better off to provide the minister and the superintendents of achievement with a mechanism to enforce the achievement contracts.

J. Kwan: Madam Speaker, my apologies. My allergies kicked in today, so they're at full force. Of course my colleague behind me says: "We're allergic to the government members too." But that wasn't really what I was allergic to. It's not something that the House Leader said, either. Anyway, back on track.

I was saying, about administrative directives, that the BCSTA are very concerned around administrative directions and that they assume the purpose of the administrative directives is to provide the minister and the superintendents of achievement with a mechanism to enforce the achievement contracts.

They feel very strongly that the provision is too sweeping and represents a violation of the principle of co-governance of the education system in which each of the co-governors respects the jurisdiction of the other. "Boards have a distinctive, democratic responsibility, and the imposition of an administrative directive changes the fundamental principle of local accountability. Any unpopular decision of a board that is overwritten by administrative decision would destabilize local decision-making and would have no direct accountability back to the local community."

So there is a real issue, again, in terms of the autonomy of the local school boards around decisions that would impact their community and the opportunity for the government to step in and take away that autonomy. One wonders, because the government did contemplate actually getting rid of school boards altogether. They actually toyed with that notion. One wonders whether or not there are some plans here to consider that — to further erode school boards' authority, their autonomy and, ultimately, to look towards getting rid of school boards altogether.

The B.C. school trustees also say, and it's true, that with Bill 20, the government has expanded their mandate. However, they are questioning that that expanded responsibility must be matched with resources to fulfill that mandate.

I quote from their letter. They say: "The majority of boards in the province continue to struggle to meet increasing costs to support existing K-to-12 programs. While we acknowledge and welcome the investments made this year…." By the way, those only funded the collective agreements that the government put forward but did not fund Bill 33, as mentioned, and did not fund the education system in such a way that will ensure that the education system and the needs of the school system are provided for.

In their letter they say: "We're concerned that if funding mechanisms are not changed to ensure sustained support for the expanded mandate of boards, early learning and community literacy initiatives may be limited, and K-to-12 programs will be negatively impacted."

I know that the government has gone out and that the Premier, in particular, has said that he wanted British Columbia to be the most literate province by 2010. That's a headline that the minister and the Premier and the government have gone out to try and grab. But what are they doing to actually fully realize this? The school trustees are saying that they need the financial supports for them to ensure that literacy issues are being supported in the education system, particularly in the K-to-12 system.

They're also unclear, the B.C. school trustees, about the community literacy role that the ministry foresees for the boards. They say: "As you know, there are numerous stakeholder groups involved in community adult literacy. It is unclear to us at this point whether you envisage boards having a role of direct responsibility over coordination of, or merely partnering with, other local providers."

So there are some legitimate questions. I would actually even say this. The government claims they want to support early learning, yet it is this very government that actually did not fund child care supports.

When the federal government pulled back on their agreement with the province with child care supports, this government didn't step up. Not only did they not step up in providing the funding, they didn't even go and advocate for it. The opposition and community

advocates called on this government — called on the Premier, the Minister of Finance, the Minister for Child Care — to step up, to call for those supports. Yet we didn't see any action taken.

B.C. is left without that financial support. Consequently, child care programs are being eliminated. We know that's happening in a variety of areas throughout British Columbia. We certainly know that the child care resource centres — and in particular, Westcoast — lost their funding.

Westcoast Child Care Resource Centre provides for provincial support all throughout British Columbia. Without consultation, without acknowledgment from the government — poof! They lost their funding just like that.

Now parents are scrambling. In fact, one of the child care centres in my own community said to me that they don't know what to do. One parent expressed to me that they have been waiting to hear back from the government on whether or not their subsidy has been approved through the process. They've been waiting and waiting without word, and the child care centre is saying: "You've got to let us know. Are you going to be able to pay for your fee or not? Because we can't sustain this any longer." That child is at risk of losing that spot. Why? Because they can't get through the government bureaucracy, since the system has changed, to see whether or not they're going to get child care funding.

How is this relevant? It is relevant because the government claims that under Bill 20 they want to increase the mandate and the responsibility of the BCSTA to include early learning and community literacy. But the supports for early learning and community literacy are woefully inadequate. It starts not just in the K-to-12 system, but also in the preschool years, and that is the point.

So if the government wants to actually ensure that there are results in the area of early childhood and literacy, then they need to ensure that they are supporting the school system and also the preschool system in that way.

Finally, I just want to close with this. In the Vancouver school board area, the board is struggling again on a budget situation in that in 2007 and 2008 they plan to cut three vice-principals, seven supervision aides, one systems analyst, 34 special ed assistants and 133 teachers — mostly non-enrolling teachers who support libraries, ESL and special needs education.

How's that for you? When the school boards don't have the money they need to provide for and support the education system and the education environment, how are the students supposed to be able to perform? How are they supposed to be able to better achieve?

I would say that the minister would be wise to actually look at and review the letter from the B.C. School Trustees Association, review the motion on their call for the government to reject this bill and to act on their recommendations to support the education system in that way.

I would like to raise just one other issue and touch on it very quickly, and that is the issue around school fees. I would say yes, hardship is a component piece of it, but the issue is: how is the government going to ensure that those who face hardships will actually get their education supports and make sure that the children are not stigmatized in that process?

I urge the minister to consider these comments and to respond appropriately, particularly to the B.C. School Trustees Association.

Hon. S. Bond: I'm delighted to be able to stand up at the end of what has now been several days of discussion about Bill 20. I think that one of the questions that has been asked by the members opposite…. I'm very much looking forward to committee stage so that we can actually go through this bill, section by section, and in fact correct much of the information that's been mentioned by the members opposite.

One of the questions that was asked is: what does this government have in mind in Bill 20? I think it's fairly self-evident. When we look at what's happening in British Columbia today in public education, of course we want to celebrate those things that are excellent and good, but I can assure the members opposite of one thing: when we know 11,000 children in this province in this year alone will not graduate, that's not good enough. We also know that 53 percent of our aboriginal students in British Columbia are not completing a high school education, and that is also not good enough.

I can assure you that what the public education system requires is leaders that will actually challenge the status quo on those children's behalf, and that's exactly what we're going to do. In fact, when we look at making changes in public education, of course it creates some discomfort for people involved in the public education system.

We've been clear. We are doing some things extraordinarily well — in fact, doing them better than anyone in the world. But we are not going to be satisfied until we see the number of students that graduate in this province increase, and we begin to close the gap for aboriginal children in British Columbia.

We've heard comments like: "We're concerned that some of these initiatives might waste money." In fact, what we're worried about on this side of the House is the wasting of human potential — those 11,000 students who, while they are making progress in some areas, don't stay in the system. They simply don't have a system that works for them. We're going to make sure that we expand the opportunities and possibilities for those students.

We've heard people speak against choice. We've heard comments like: "What are you going to do when parents make comments about wanting different options for their children?" Well, we're actually going to listen. I can assure you of one thing: we do not intend to move away from the principle of inclusion in British Columbia. But we do intend to listen to parents who

are coming to us and saying: "Please at least allow us the chance to talk about choice and opportunity to help our children be more successful."

We've had discussions about accountability over the last number of days, where the discussion was: "Should we hold school districts accountable?" Of course we should. We want to hold ourselves accountable as well, but we want to make these kinds of changes because our students are absolutely worth it.

We've heard people who are apparently against academies and choice programs. Hundreds and thousands of parents and students and school trustees came to this government and said: "Please make some changes in legislation that would allow us to retain those academies and look at choice within public education." In fact, trustees asked for that part of Bill 20, yet there seems to be some uncertainty about that on the other side of the House.

I can assure you that we're going to work hard. In fact, today as we've been listening to members of the opposition speak, we brought together school board chairs and superintendents for the first time. We couldn't believe that that was actually an historic meeting today because that discussion has never taken place — not ever. When we were talking about what the kinds of things are that we're going to do, we decided that we would make sure that that happened not just today but in other opportunities.

As I have travelled across this province and visited hundreds of classrooms and schools across this province, we've been talking to trustees, parents, students and communities about what matters to them. That's what shapes Bill 20, and we're going to continue to move forward to make sure that 11,000 students in British Columbia have opportunities within public education.

Hon. S. Bond: I move that Bill 20, the School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007, be referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 20, School (Student Achievement Enabling) Amendment Act, 2007, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. G. Abbott: I call second reading of Bill 21, intituled Teaching Profession (Teacher Registration) Amendment Act, 2007.

Hon. S. Bond: I move that Bill 21, Teaching Profession (Teacher Registration) Amendment Act, 2007, be read for a second time.

Parents, guardians and school trustees have requested better access to information to ensure that students are safe in schools across our province. These legislative changes follow through on advice that government received from parents, educators, administrators and trustees on how best to protect our children and enhance accountability in the education system.

This legislation also fulfils our election platform and throne speech commitments to establish a registry administered by the B.C. College of Teachers to report publicly the names of teachers disciplined for misconduct involving emotional, physical or sexual abuse.

Nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of children. As parents, our greatest concern is for the safety of our children. As Minister of Education, our number one priority is the safety of our students. This legislation will help protect British Columbia's students and provide the public with information to make sure that all of us focus on student safety.

These amendments to the School Act, the Independent School Act and the Teaching Profession Act will establish separate discipline and employment registries for public school boards and independent school authorities. The amendments will clarify the duty to report any suspension or dismissal or any discipline for serious misconduct of a member of the College of Teachers, a holder of a letter of permission to teach, or a teacher certified by the inspector of independent schools.

The amendments set out the following. Firstly, the amendments set out what disciplinary action should be reported, who should report and the consequences for failure to report. The amendments define discipline that must be reported as any discipline for misconduct that involves physical harm, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation or significant emotional harm to a student or a minor. In addition, a breach of the college's professional standards of conduct or competence must be reported when it is in the public interest to do so.

The amendments place the duty to report on the superintendent of schools in a district. If the discipline involves the superintendent, the school board will report. For independent schools the duty to report will rest with the school's principal or with the independent school authority if the discipline involves a principal.

In addition, the education minister may now appoint a special adviser to investigate the circumstances surrounding a failure to report. The special adviser's findings can then be forwarded to the College of Teachers. The inspector of independent schools may also authorize an investigation into the circumstances surrounding a failure to report.

Secondly, the amendments set out what information should be included in a discipline registry and who should have access to it. The B.C. College of Teachers must create an on-line discipline registry that any member of the public can access.

The registry must include the name of the person who has been disciplined; the current status of the person's certificate of qualification or letter of permission to teach; a record of any suspensions or cancellations of the person's certificate of qualification or letter of permission; and a record of disciplinary action taken by the college for misconduct that involved physical harm, sexual abuse, sexual exploitation or significant emotional harm to a student or minor or conduct that breached the college's standards.

The reasons for the discipline must also be reported, unless doing so would cause significant hardship to the person who was harmed, abused or exploited.

The inspector of independent schools will be required to maintain a discipline registry for educators certified under the Independent School Act.

Thirdly, the amendments set out what information should be included in an employment registry and who should have access. The B.C. College of Teachers must create an employment registry to be made available to any board, authority or band that is considering becoming an employer of a college member or an educator who holds a letter of permission to teach.

A school board will have a duty to provide to the college the names of any member or letter-holder employed by the board during the previous 12 months. The inspector of independent schools will also be required to maintain an employment registry for teachers holding certificates or letters of permission issued by the inspector.

These legislative changes will ensure consistency in the B.C. College of Teachers reporting structure for misconduct and discipline. Under the legislation, the discipline registry must include the name of the teacher disciplined. The registry will also provide a summary of multiple disciplinary actions that the college has taken against a teacher or a member. This new legislation will ensure that any member of the public can access information through the College of Teachers website.

These legislative changes are a result of the discussions with parents, educators and school trustees. We asked for their thoughts and input on how to keep British Columbia students safe, and we listened. Student safety is a top priority for this government, and parents have the right to know if an educator has been disciplined for serious misconduct. That's why our government is delivering on its commitment to establish a discipline registry that will give school trustees, parents and guardians the information they need to make important decisions about their children's education.

Madam Speaker, we are working to make British Columbia the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent. We can only do that if our students feel safe and protected and if parents feel good about sending their children to school every day.

D. Cubberley: It's a pleasure to rise and speak to Bill 21 on second reading. This is a significant piece of legislation which sets out to create two registries affecting the members of the College of Teachers. One of those is to comprise the employment history of all members, while the other is to comprise the history of discipline involving suspension, dismissal or letters of reprimand by the college for serious breach of the code of conduct.

The employment registry is open to employers, who are obliged to treat materials obtained there in confidence. The on-line registry is open to the entire public, with no shielding of identity permitted except where the college determines that significant harm would be done to a victim or a victim's family.

This legislation also amends the Independent School Act provisions regarding the reporting of dismissal, suspension and discipline and specifies when, where and how such information must be communicated to the college for certificate teachers. Additionally, it mandates reporting and creates an additional on-line registry under the auspices of the inspector appointed under the Independent School Act where it concerns "authorized teachers." Authorized teachers are teachers not certified under the college but given a certificate of qualification or a letter of permission by an inspector under the Independent School Act, which is to say by the Ministry of Education, which enables

This latter group, authorized teachers, are an important segment of the independent school teaching cadre, which to this point may be as many as 40 percent and, as far as I'm aware, have not been subjected to the same level of regulation and scrutiny as public school teachers or certified teachers. One important question is whether the inspector — that is, the government — will be required to maintain an employment registry for employers in independent schools so that there is a level playing field. I'm sure the minister would agree that children's safety is equally important whether those children are at public schools or at private schools.

There are also questions to be asked about how and whether the inspector maintains an employment record for non-certificate teachers and what changes, if any, will be required after this bill is passed. We would certainly want to ensure that non-certified teachers operating under a permission from the minister in private schools and under the control of the minister's designate are held to the same standard of scrutiny as certified teachers and their self-regulating professional body.

This new employment registry has been identified as a way of trying to plug a presumed gap in the current system, where someone might not have been forthright about where they were employed in the past when presenting their resumé to a prospective employer. This information is actually available through the college today, so this part of it isn't new, but the bill will affect how the information is compiled and accessed. This is important, because it may make it easier to detect someone who may be hiding something in their past.

Government says it's truly concerned to increase due diligence by employers in vetting the work history of prospective employees, and I hope that it is. If it is, then to us it would have made sense to place an obligation on employers — a visible and public obligation — that before hiring anyone, they consult the registry that government is mandating be created. That's one of our most serious concerns. If school and student safety is of paramount importance, as the minister contends and as we agree it should be, then securing full review before teachers are hired is the most effectual control. That's an employer's obligation, an obligation that an employer under due diligence should meet.

We all should reflect upon whether that in fact should be left as optional — i.e., left to individual employers to determine whether they do or don't consult the registries. Why create a registry and then leave it to chance whether or not it is used? If it were obligatory to consult both registries, the protection of children would be increased. As it is, consultation appears to be voluntary. Once again, it appears that the legislative hand is happiest when it's imposing things on certified teachers or giving the minister broad and sometimes unspecified powers to act.

Many will ask why there isn't as great a concern with the behaviour and diligence of employers, when they in fact have the power to decide who's hired and placed in positions of trust with regard to school-age children. One of the most notorious instances of an offending employee — a repeat offender — in the history of British Columbia, who was enabled to get new positions, is much more a matter of employer failure to track his history than of his history not being available, had it been tracked. An obligation of this kind would seem essential to realize the full potential of the bill and to ensure balance in the way the bill is used.

The absence of such an explicit requirement highly visible within the bill can only fuel the feeling that this is as much about optics as it is about effective action to protect children. One wonders whether government isn't jumping at yet another opportunity to stir things up with certified teachers.

The on-line registry that the council and the registrar of the college must develop and maintain under the bill has for its principal purpose the making available to any member of the public the record of disciplinary action taken by the council with regard to members and persons to whom a letter of permission has been issued under section 25 of the Teaching Profession Act.

This is linked to name, status of certificate of qualification or letter of permission, record of any suspensions or cancellations of the certificate or letter, and a record of disciplinary action taken by the council with regard to three areas, which the minister mentioned: misconduct involving physical harm to a student or minor, sexual abuse or sexual exploitation of a student or minor, or significant emotional harm to a student or minor. We believe there can be no objection to making serious offences of this kind public. They're career-ending offences, and as such, a public record achieves a transparency that's appropriate.

However, that said, the bill continues, after specifying the serious kinds of offences that require this level of exposure, to remove any discretion on the part of the college council regarding the posting of information about other disciplinary action for conduct or competence that breached the council standards of professional conduct or competence.

The minister mentioned that that clause is subject to a phrase, "when in the public interest," but when I consult the bill, I don't see the phrase "when in the public interest." I think if you look at (ii), what it suggests is that there is a blanket requirement that all cases which breach the college's code of conduct be posted.

Now, this may be a case of government simply wanting to dramatize the most offensive instances of such conduct, breaking the three out, the ones everyone would be likely to agree should be posted on a website, but then introducing a subclause that covers all forms of discipline assessed at the college level. Some may question whether the latter was actually needed in light of the former, or whether the former was needed in light of the latter. It is curious that they're both in there.

Section 27.3(2)(ii) effectively covers every kind of discipline, and it removes any discretion in every cir-

cumstance from the college. One wonders: did the government in its wisdom consider whether there could be instances where the college would want to discipline but doesn't want to prevent the teacher in question from ever teaching again? That is where discipline is used for its traditional and primary purpose: as a strategy to convey a punishment proportionate to the misconduct but for the purpose of leading an individual to correct a flaw in their professional behaviour.

I don't have a particular instance in mind that would exemplify what I'm talking about, but it's almost certain that there is one. When legislators agree to this level of exposure for every disciplinary action, then we need to ask whether, inadvertently, we risk ending careers that might be saved because an appropriate correction of behaviour might have been made. I'm not talking about any of the three instances that were broken out for specific attention.

One of the purposes of a disciplinary procedure is to rectify behaviour, to bring it back to a mandated standard. In the cases explicitly outlined in the legislation, there's no scope for rectification and no rationale for allowing a second chance. There may be no rationale in most cases of a breach in the code of conduct, but are we sure it's true of every case, regardless of context?

I raise this matter because we should not for a moment kid ourselves. If a name appears with a disciplinary record on line, that career is over — kaputski. That is the intended effect for the specific misconducts identified in the bill, and we support that. But is it true for every misconduct without qualification or reservation? On-line exposure is a very powerful thing.

One has only to look at the consequences of an inadvertent act not directly related to teaching children, not at a school, playing out in the life of a school principal and his school community at Harrison Hot Springs Elementary — someone placed on administrative leave by the Fraser-Cascade school district because of a photo taken by his wife appearing on a family website. This is in reaction to a complaint by a parent who became aware of the photo from the Web and acted on it, and who wants the principal let go. Was it a mistake to post a photo on a family website of himself in the buff? Unquestionably. Was it a firing offence, cause for suspension, an indication he shouldn't work with children ever again? Absolutely not.

Indications are the principal's community overwhelmingly supports keeping him because they recognize that it was a minor error in judgment — "one of those stupid things that people do," as the school board chair put it. Yet there are sustained calls from some that he be fired. All of which I mention to simply illustrate the power of personal identification on the Web.

As noted, a significant part of this bill amends the Independent School Act to place similar obligations upon school principals and authorities to report either to the College of Teachers or to the inspector of independent schools in the case of suspension, dismissal, discipline or retirement.

It also places new obligations on the inspector, who is the minister's agent with regard to private schools, with regard to what are called authorized teachers, who are persons holding "a certificate of qualification issued by the inspector" or with "a letter of permission issued to an authority by the inspector." The inspector will now be required to create an on-line discipline registry similar to the one mandated for the college to capture disciplinary infractions for non-certificate teachers and for principals at private schools.

While the college has always maintained both an employment registry and a disciplinary record for certified teachers, it isn't clear at this point that private schools employing non-certified teachers have had similar requirements placed on them.

The provisions of the existing act apply only to certificate teachers and their college. Are others teaching in private schools subject to employment and disciplinary transparency to a similar degree? Is their current employment history kept as a registry by the inspector currently? Will it be in the future? The legislation, as far as we can see, doesn't mandate it.

We believe that anyone teaching kids, no matter how their right is established, should be subject to the same protective requirements, whether in public or private schools. If government has been remiss in this regard, that should change as part of this bill.

We look forward to asking questions on a subsequent clause-by-clause reading about the current state of affairs with respect to non-certified teachers teaching in private schools under the minister's authorization.

One final matter that we would urge government to consider regards the costs associated with developing these registries in whatever form the minister ultimately mandates. Both the college and her inspector — i.e., herself — are required to develop an on-line registry. Would it not be useful to benefit from developing a standard approach and, at the very least, cost-sharing in the development of that model, since this is groundbreaking? Ditto for an employment registry which, while not publicly available, could and should have similar parameters between certified and permitted teachers.

These are not trivial matters. The costs involved in designing the system for transparency are not small, and there should be community interest in getting it done as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. We would welcome the minister acknowledging in any fashion the value of that approach.

In closing, I will have, as will some of my colleagues, other matters to clarify on a closer reading of the bill. We on this side do not oppose the bill. We're supportive of the main provisions of the bill. We would like to see more attention directed to several areas that we have raised, and we would hope to hear further from the minister on that.

N. Macdonald: As we go through a series of education bills, Bill 21 is the one that we can find reasons to support. As with all of these, I'd like to start by mentioning that my career has mainly been as a teacher. I have also spent time as a principal.

There are two parts to this. The employment registry is fairly straightforward. There will be questions around cost, but essentially, it is something the trustees, I believe, have asked for, and it is reasonable.

The second part of it, the teacher discipline and having that on line — the critic has essentially caught it correctly. If your name is on line, then your career is finished. This was raised during the election in 2005 by the B.C. Liberals. I'm not sure if it was in the platform or not. At the time I heard it, I assumed it was aimed at antagonizing or eliciting some sort of response from the teachers union.

This legislation as it appears, though, doesn't really change very much from what exists in that there is a disciplinary registry. It is not on line, and that's different, but there is a system of discipline. If you get to the college and your name is put out publicly, then the fact is that you have been found to do something that is very serious — not dissimilar to what's laid out in this legislation.

To teach or be responsible for children is an amazing privilege. Here in this House, most are parents or grandparents. We know that. An awful lot of us coach or volunteer with Guides or Scouts or lead choirs or give music lessons, because to work with children is a wonderful experience. That's the appeal of teaching as well. You get a tremendous amount from the children.

A teacher is expected to be like a parent, as close to a parent as you can be, and that is something that is a high standard to live up to. You're entrusted with other people's children, and we know that our children or grandchildren are the things that are most precious to us.

As a teacher for 20 years, I know that you're in a position of tremendous power and influence, and to break that trust is truly beyond contempt. Sometimes there are mitigating circumstances, bad occasions that need to be taken into consideration, but I think everyone would agree that you cannot be forgiven for breaking the trust in looking after children.

I would put it to the House that this legislation really changes nothing substantial. There will be due process because there needs to be, and teachers have organized themselves to make sure that there is through the Teachers Federation. Due process is needed. It gives certainty and fairness. It does not protect the guilty. I've never seen that.

I need to make the point that around education…. Since coming here I've seen a series of bills that indicate that very often the government plays games with the education system and with educators. There is no question in my mind that there is often a goading of teachers or a goading of the Teachers Federation, and I think that's destructive. Frankly, we need to mature beyond that.

The education system is nevertheless resilient, as mentioned with the first bill and this bill as well. People recognize that it is one of the best education systems in the world, and that's a testament to educators and those who have given their careers to making sure the education system is strong.

I would put it to the House that the key for children's safety lies in one area. Safety and well-being of children comes with the right person in the classroom, given the right training, with the resources that they need. If you're serious about the safety and well-being of children, that should be the focus always for government. We know that for the most part that is the case here in B.C. You do have the right people in the classrooms, and for the most part they are well-trained, and they fight to make sure that they have the resources they need.

There is a discipline system in place for educators. It should be rigorous. My experience is that it is. Expectations should be high. My experience is that they are. I'm just going to tell you about three people in the time that remains, because I think it illustrates the point that I'm making here.

The first one is Sheila Nystoruk. She taught kindergarten at Nicholson Elementary School, where I was a principal. I'll use her as an example, not because she was exceptional in any sense, but she was dealing with the children that were the most vulnerable. They were kindergarten students. They were young. She knew these students before they came to school in September. She made sure that she was prepared for them. She thought through every part of the day that she was responsible for them, teaching them social skills, teaching them about safety, teaching them about proper transition from one activity to the next.

I'll tell you about one part of the day just to give you an example of how that preparation worked. It was towards the end of the day when I would see them. So I would come out as they left to make sure they made the transition either to the bus or to their parents' car safely.

What would happen is at 11:45, before any other students were ready, Sheila would walk them out. They all had their notes that they needed to take to their parents. They had mitts on that she had made sure were dry. They had their hats on if they needed them. They would walk in a single line. They would walk quietly. They had been taught not to poke each other or to push or to run. They would follow her out. At the end of the line was a special ed assistant, Polly Potter, who would make sure nobody was distracted along the way and would get where they weren't supposed to be.

They would get to where they were supposed to stand. The parents would have to walk up. They were not allowed to sit in the car and wait for their children. They would walk up, and they would stand by Sheila.

Then, at that time, the student would be pointed to, and they were allowed to come to Sheila. They'd get their hug. They'd get a little sticker on their hand or on their forehead or wherever they were. They'd then go with the parent.

If the parent was not going to pick them up, there had been arrangements made so that everybody knew who was going to pick them up and that it was the proper person. Then they walked safely with their parent to the car or, if they were going to go on the bus, they waited and they were put on the bus.

That's just one example of a day full of activities that the teacher has thought through. In all of those things they are making sure that the student is safe and not only nurtured and taught, but also that they will come to no harm and that the child who has been entrusted to that teacher by their parents is properly looked after.

I'll give you a second name: Ian Robinson, who was a principal at Lady Grey Elementary School. What he reinforced was the same idea. He was a principal. I went to see him when I was taking over a principalship. He was going to be my mentor, and he said: "The first thing I'm going to tell you is the most important thing. Look after your teachers. They will look after students."

Ian Robinson was true to that. He made sure that his teachers were given the resources that they needed to do their job, and I tried to do the same. You make sure they have the classroom set up. You make sure they have reasonable numbers of students. You make sure that the supports they need with special education assistants are there. And you allow them to look after the safety and the health and the nurturing of the child. You make sure they are not put in a position where they may find the job stressful. All of these things are important to safety and to the proper nurturing of a child.

I see that you're looking at the clock, and I'll just take one more minute to wrap up. The third person I want to mention was Peg Davidson. She was support staff. She came from Kimberley, and she was somebody who was an expert in special ed. She was not only there as a resource to give us the skills to teach students who brought many, many challenges, in some cases, to the school system, but she was also there for her wisdom. She reinforced that same point: if we are looking after children and we are making sure that they are going to be safe, then you need to give teachers the resources.

I'm going to wrap up with that. This is a bill that I would say does not substantially change the way things are done. Discipline has always been strict in the school system, as it should be. You have always had those teachers who have lost their licences, and that result has always been public, as it should be. They are essentially finishing their careers at that point. With this public registry the same thing is happening.

The strength of the public system…. If you are truly interested in safety, then you invest in children. You make sure you've got the right person with the right training and with the resources they need to excel, and you'll have the system that you're looking for.

Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. R. Neufeld: As I understand it, we're going to continue on with the Mining portfolio. I think that was the agreement. Then whenever you're done with that, we'll go back to the oil and gas or to wherever you want to go. Okay?

J. Horgan: When we left off last week, we were discussing aggregate and other such issues. I just have a few questions for the minister — one in my neighbourhood and one in his. Then perhaps we can have a more fulsome discussion going back to the aggregate issues, which I don't believe were fully canvassed to my satisfaction after reading the Blues.

The first issue is a mining endeavour in my constituency called Emerald Fields Resource Corp. It's proposing to do some work in and around the Carmanah Walbran Park. I'm wondering if the minister could update me on this corporation and give me an indication of what status they have or what processes they are currently involved in within the ministry or within the Environmental Assessment Act.

Hon. K. Krueger: The critic has managed to stump me. There are 1,300 gravel pits and quarries in the province, and I am not familiar with Emeralds Fields. But if the member would like to read his question into the record, we will provide him with a written answer promptly.

J. Horgan: I think I might have misled the minister by referencing aggregates, but there are iron magnetite

J. Horgan: It's just outside of Malahat–Juan de Fuca, northeast of Port Renfrew, toward the Carmanah Walbran Park. That's the concern of people who have approached me: this claim is very, very close to the park and, certainly, well off the beaten track on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Hon. K. Krueger: We will explore the matter for the member and respond in writing, if he'd like to read any further detail into the record or provide us with a written question. The names of these projects move around. I was astonished to find out, for example, that I had one entitled Foghorn Mountain in my own constituency. These things just pop up.

The other issue that I want to quickly canvass before we move back into the issues…. Just because I have the paper, it's top of mind. I've just received this. I think the minister knows more about it than I do. It's the Buck Hill issue in Clearwater.

I've been approached by the Friends of Buck Hill with a series of questions. I know the minister has met with concerned individuals in the area. I'm wondering if the minister could explain how his ministry would propose to address the caribou issues as well as the potential loss to tourism revenues and activity when you take a volcano such as Buck Hill and turn it into a mine.

Hon. K. Krueger: I have asked ministry staff to provide me a full briefing on the Buck Hill situation. I'm not certain that caribou are involved. The reason they call it Buck Hill is that mule deer frequent the area. This is, as I understand…. I haven't seen it. But I'm looking forward to seeing it and would invite the critic opposite to come and visit me in my constituency, and we could go and look at it together, if he likes. It's between the community of Clearwater and the beautiful Wells Gray Park, but the formation is not part of Wells Gray Park.

Apparently, it's a volcanic cone, a unique geographical feature, but no governments to date have included it in park boundaries, nor is it in a protected area. Lo and behold, someone has staked the area and wants to mine lava rock. There are local residents who are concerned, and we're checking it out. I will advise the critic further when I get results from that.

J. Horgan: My understanding — again, just on this preliminary briefing that I have received — is that Buck Hill is one of three cinder cones in and around Wells Gray. It is within an area that's considered mountain caribou habitat, and the entire hill is under claim. So the removal of lava rock — or lava rock mining — around the base is one thing, I suppose, but to have claimed the whole hill…. Residents are concerned, and I look forward to the minister providing me with that briefing as well, once he receives it.

The other issue I wanted to get back to, then, is aggregates. As the minister will know, we had a couple of my colleagues who had some questions at the end of the day on Thursday. I had just touched the surface from my scan of the process document that I received recently. I had asked a question and then had to leave. I did read the response.

It was to do with whether or not the Ministry of Transportation had any particular place in the approval process more significant than a regional district, a municipal council or local residents. The minister gave an answer, and I'm wondering if I could pose the question a different way and perhaps elicit a response that will better help me understand the process.

There is a particular quarry operation in and around the Cobble Hill and Shawnigan Lake district in my constituency. Virtually every resident along Hillbank Road was opposed. They attended public meetings. They corresponded with the ministry, and the Ministry of Transportation, as I understand it, said the public road wasn't adequate for the volume of trucks that would be coming and going from the site.

Despite, in my mind, not meeting the criteria that should be laid out for these sorts of things — and that would be inter-jurisdictional or inter-ministry discussions of projects such as this — the quarry was approved and is proceeding. Now, as I understand it, the Ministry of Transportation is engaged with the citizens to improve the roadway to make up for the activity that has been approved by the ministry.

Again, is there a set of criteria? Is there a hierarchy of concerns? If another ministry of the Crown says that this might not be appropriate activity, does it carry any weight at all?

Hon. K. Krueger: Certainly, this ministry pays close attention to what other ministries have to say. At the end of the day, the Ministry of Transportation is regarded as the expert ministry on highways issues, and this ministry issues mining permits. So we pay very close attention to what the Ministry of Transportation has to say.

We put conditions on permits reflecting the outcome of the discussions and the consultations with the public and with other ministries and agencies. After the mining permit is issued — if it is — the Ministry of Transportation still has the authority to place restrictions on what sort of operation of trucks there are on the adjacent road. If there are load concerns, restrictions can be applied. If there are concerns about material falling off or flying off loads, restrictions can be applied for screening. The ministries work in collaboration on these issues.

J. Horgan: How many staff does the minister have to enforce permits once they've been issued, in terms of

Hon. K. Krueger: There are frequent inspections of operations. We covered this with the member for North Island at the end of last week, after the critic needed to absent himself for other responsibilities. There are 20 full-time employee positions for permitting inspectors around the province. They are allocated four to a region, but they are shared between regions when that's necessary. So the answer is that there are 20 staff in the division devoted to this.

Health and safety is a top priority of the division, with a very proud record. Mining in British Columbia is arguably the safest heavy industry in Canada. The reason it's arguable is that our oil and gas sector is doing very well, too, and wanting us to say "one of the safest" because it's us and them. We are the safest heavy industries in Canada — oil and gas in B.C. and mining in B.C.

C. Puchmayr: You feel old? Well, you'll feel older when my colleague here is through.

I just have a few questions — limited in the time here — and they're with respect to the chief mines inspector. How is the chief mines inspector hired? What's the process for hiring the chief mines inspector?

Hon. K. Krueger: We have been actually going through this process, because the chief inspector of mines left us for the private realm. The chief inspector of mines is a public servant, so hiring is done in accordance with the Public Service Act. The position is posted. It is advertised across the country. In our recent experience — the process that's been underway for the last couple of months — we had responses not only from across the country but internationally.

There's a fair and open competition. There is a clear winner. An offer has been made. If the offer is accepted, a formal appointment will be made by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.

C. Puchmayr: Could you just tell me a little bit about the terms of reference in that position with respect to actual safety itself?

Hon. K. Krueger: The terms of reference are actually posted and made public. We'll provide them to the member for his convenience this afternoon.

The person who is appointed chief inspector of mines under the Mines Act by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources is responsible to administer the health and safety code. So those qualifications are a very high level of criterion for the appointment.

The candidate the offer has been made to actually has a PhD in health and safety in mines.

C. Puchmayr: I'm going to talk a little about safety with respect to the Sullivan mine disaster, where the four workers died: two paramedics, the Teck Cominco employee and a private contractor. I'm not going to make any comments outside of what is already public information, in view of the fact that on July 9 there is going to be an inquest in Kimberly into that.

My questions are with respect to that investigation, the previous mines inspector who you have alluded to and the fact that he has gone to work in the private sector in mining. Was the ministry aware that the chief mines inspector was in fact leaving the public service and going into the actual industry that he was inspecting?

Hon. K. Krueger: I thank the member for the delicacy with which he approached these questions, and I want us all to be very careful. It's a tremendously sensitive matter for the families of the deceased workers.

I'd like to say to start off with that our thoughts and our prayers continue to be with the survivors of the deceased workers, their families and friends. We want to be very careful how we deal with these issues. As the member said, an inquest will be held in July. Their names are Bob Newcombe, Doug Erickson, and B.C. Ambulance Service paramedics Shawn Currier and Kim Weitzel.

Mr. Fred Hermann was the chief inspector of mines. This terrible accident happened in May, almost a year ago. The chief inspector of mines, Mr. Hermann, departed in late September, and it wasn't known that he was going to leave until not long before his departure. By then his investigation was substantially complete.

His investigation was immediate after this tragic loss, and he acted on his responsibilities to make recommendations and, on an interim basis, enforce those recommendations. The process has all unfolded as it should.

C. Puchmayr: To the minister: I believe that there were three violations of the mine safety and reclamation code that were identified in the event. I know there was a notification sent to mines across British Columbia warning of what the incident was. It also came to a conclusion that certainly doesn't answer the questions that are required, and I'm going to leave that to the inquest.

The concerns that I have are with respect to jurisdiction on those sites with investigation. Would it not be better to have an independent group such as WorkSafe B.C. possibly work with the mines ministry in investigating fatalities on minesites?

Hon. K. Krueger: I wish to correct the record on my previous answer. Mr. Hermann actually left the position in October. He gave notice in September. I think I said he left in September, but he gave his notice in September.

The member mentioned that notification was sent across B.C. This tragic accident attracted attention from all around the world because no one had ever heard of something like this happening before. We know what happened. There is a group of experts, including UBC experts, working to determine specifically why it happened.

Again, I appreciate the member's sensitivity in saying that we want to wait and see what the inquest has to say before we try to go into detail on a matter that's obviously beyond our technical expertise by a long shot. Our ministry, the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, is delegated as the authority to investigate accidents under the health and safety code. The ministry follows up diligently on any fatality and in so doing works very closely with the management of mines and the unions that represent the workers in the mines.

Certainly, the staff apply themselves diligently. In order to do this job well, an investigator has to have very specific knowledge about the mining industry — a much more specialized knowledge than a general knowledge of industrial sites. One of the reasons for our exemplary record overall in health and safety outcomes is the expertise that the ministry has available to us.

There have been studies by WorkSafe B.C. and by a royal commission that have concluded that the ministry and the legislation guiding it for workplace safety are performing very well. Again, mining continues to be one of the safest heavy industries. Accident statistics have shown continued improvement for several years.

The current method of enhancing mine safety involving close cooperation of mine management, unions, occupational health and safety committees and the regulating ministry has proven to be very successful. An ongoing review and update of the Mines Act and code in reference to the most current associated regulations reflect the benefits of a one-industry regulatory body, which is the ministry.

C. Puchmayr: Well, I was hoping the minister wouldn't say that this has never happened anywhere else in the world, because that is very contentious. The families were very offended by that comment by the ministry. They were extremely offended by the comment by the mines inspector, and it caused a lot of hardship with the families.

The issue with health and safety — there were three violations of the mine safety and reclamation code with respect to confined space entry. There were no tests done. There was no logbook at the site. Had there been a logbook and the first person went down, the second person coming there two and a half days later would have opened the logbook and wouldn't have responded to a drowning, would have quite likely responded differently.

The paramedics responded to a drowning, thinking that this had just happened. There was no implementation of the safety code at that time. Three serious violations…. I just want to parallel something. In New Westminster a sawmill worker died because a $30,000 investment wasn't made by the mill. Criminal charges were preferred. They're not going forward, but WorkSafe fined $270,000.

Here four workers died. Three breaches of the mine safety and reclamation code — and some are alleging even more breaches. An inquest will find that out. Yet there was no penalty, no fine. There was merely a notice that went out and said: "Make sure that you uphold the regulations." So I'm very concerned with the minister's understanding of that situation and how that affects the families.

Because I have to leave this chamber, my final question is: would the minister look at the confined-space policies that are implemented with WorkSafe B.C., look at the confined-space policies that exist with the mine safety and reclamation code, because they are different, and bring the two of them up to the highest standard possible so that both worksites are engaged in the highest degree of safety standard that is available to them?

Hon. K. Krueger: The technical issues I won't presume to address. We will await the result of the coroner's inquest. The Health, Safety and Reclamation Code is being reviewed by a code review committee which is established under the act, and it includes representatives of management, labour, government and also, in this case, because of this tragedy, members of the B.C. Ambulance Service.

C. Puchmayr: There's just one final comment I would like to make before I leave. In this incident, it was an incident where one person followed another person who followed another person who followed another person to their death. That is very common in industry. It happened on a barge accident in 2002 in New Westminster — very similar scenario where one person went in and people going to look for them went in, and we almost lost one of our firefighters as well.

That is what makes this so contentious: when the ministry can say that this is an unavoidable accident — never happened anywhere else in the world. That was definitely a confined space. There were definitely violations of the safety code, and four people are dead. So I would like the minister not to use those comments, because I would like to wait until the coroner's inquest comes to a conclusion and makes a decision on what really happened in that case.

J. Horgan: Before my colleague from New Westminster took the floor, we were talking about the 20 inspectors housed within the ministry to deal with gravel inspections. I assume that those inspectors also work at other pits, whether they be mineral or coal?

J. Horgan: So if I caught the minister, he said there were approximately 1,300 aggregate operations underway in British Columbia at the present time. Could he break them down in the five regions? How many in each region?

Hon. K. Krueger: We don't have that data with us, but we will provide them in writing.

J. Horgan: If there are approximately four per region, I'm assuming, based on the minister's comments

and my understanding of the sector, there is going to be a concentration of aggregate operations close to urban centres or to population centres where that aggregate can be put to best use.

Hon. K. Krueger: That is a safe assumption. The more construction activity that's going on, the greater the demand for aggregate and the likelier it is that the industry will be trying to source that aggregate close to the construction sites.

The material is very heavy. It wreaks a lot of wear and tear on the transportation infrastructure. Of course, in our day and age of recognition of climate change and the problem with emissions, that's another reason to try and limit the distance that trucks need to travel to bring this heavy material to construction sites. So yes, there is a greater concentration in areas where there's greater construction activity.

I have a map in my office of the gravel pits around the province. Pretty much every tiny community needs a pit of its own or more, and the larger the community, the more construction underway — within reason. Obviously, the city of Vancouver doesn't have many aggregate operations close in, but the industry needs to source those materials as close as possible to where they're going to be used.

J. Horgan: I'm pleased to hear the minister make reference to the wear and tear that these operations place on our transportation infrastructure. I'm wondering if that is factored in when we're establishing resource rents. Does the industry have to be responsible in any way for replacing or upgrading infrastructure deteriorated as a result of their activity?

Hon. K. Krueger: It's a very good question. The industry does contribute to the cost of rehabilitation and maintenance of roads. Local governments set the amount that they contribute through soil removal bylaws, which set fees to cover rehabilitation and maintenance.

J. Horgan: If the infrastructure is a provincial highway, how is funding for that rehabilitation found?

Hon. K. Krueger: The industry and the businesses that comprise it pay taxes like other businesses. Their taxes flow into general revenue. General revenue is disbursed to the various ministries, including the Ministry of Transportation. There is no specific charge to aggregate operations by the Crown for those specific purposes.

J. Horgan: Well, not every business sends 1,600 trips a week with heavily laden twin dumptrucks up and down provincial highways.

Is there any consideration being given to ensuring that the cost of this industrial activity somehow has a resource kickback to the Crown so that the rehabilitation work that needs to be done for the damage done by these operations can be found through other means beyond the corporate tax or the small business tax?

Hon. K. Krueger: This industry, like other industries, pays its taxes, buys its licences and pays its insurance. Government doesn't make a distinction between this industry and others.

Personally, I've probably heard more about the aggregate industry than any other aspect of the portfolio in the time since I've been appointed, and I've learned a lot of interesting things. We use between nine and 15 tonnes of aggregate per capita in British Columbia, which means crushed rock, sand and gravel — every year, between nine and 15 tonnes.

Some 70 percent to 75 percent of what the industry produces goes into rehabilitation and maintenance, not just for the roads that the trucks around that operation are using but the roads all around the province — hospitals, schools and everything that is going on with regard to construction around British Columbia.

This is the least expensive construction material. We're fortunate to have it. I felt very fortunate to have an industry that could respond immediately when we realized the flood threat that we're facing this spring.

We asked them, if we opened up the hours of their permits, whether they could stockpile — even knowing that we weren't committing to buy the material — against the need, over and above the $33 million we're spending on emergency flood protection. The answer was yes. They're doing that right now. They're holding the material for us until August 1 in case we need it.

It's an absolutely essential material. We're fortunate to have it. It's a big part of the success of our economy and the good things that are happening in British Columbia. We don't levy any sort of punitive or specific extra charge against the industry for a material that we're very pleased is available.

J. Horgan: Well, the industry didn't create the material. The industry is making a profit from the material, and I think there's a significant distinction to be drawn there.

I don't disagree with the minister that aggregate is the foundation of a robust industrial economy. That's not the point. The point is that the activity is causing significant harm, predominantly in urban areas.

I read to you at the start of our discussions what was characterized as a crisis in Kelowna. I've had numerous discussions with the member for Maple Ridge–Mission, the government Whip, about the work he is doing with the ministry and others in the sector to try and find some common ground on this.

This is not an insignificant issue in communities. I don't know what happens in Kamloops–North Thompson on this front. But I know that on southern Vancouver Island, where gravel extraction has been going on for a long, long time in multiple locations, it has an impact on the roadways of the community. If we had Olympic events on southern Vancouver Island, perhaps we might be able to get some infrastructure funding on Vancouver Island so that we could address some of the challenges of a rapidly growing economy and the impacts that that's having on infrastructure.

My question is not specifically around the importance of the…. I'm Irish, hon. Chair. I like making cement and sticking rocks together. It's genetic. It hurts my back, but I like doing it nonetheless. I appreciate, and I use the material. I am an unabashed user of aggregate and sand and other products.

However, there are people in my community who are concerned about the proliferation of sites and what appear to be criteria that are unevenly monitored. That's why I wanted to know if the minister could…. And he will. He's undertaken to provide me with a sense of just how many sites per region there are and whether these four inspectors per region are getting around to look at all the sites and seeing the impacts they're having on infrastructure and on the quality of life for those in and around the pits.

I'll ask again a question specific to my constituency. I only have one colleague here, and I'll take some liberties and expand questions in my community. There's a pit on West Coast Road which is also known as Highway 14. This is a provincial road, a provincial highway. I believe the operators name is Arden. It has been operating in and around the Sooke district for many, many years. It would have to be on the list of bad neighbours. I'm wondering if the minister could tell me how many times this site has been visited in the past 36 months.

Hon. K. Krueger: First, to the general, and the critic's comment that it would be nice to get some of that activity on Vancouver Island. I watched with amazement the cost of the construction of the mid-Island highway all through my first term, which was five years in opposition from 1996 to 2001. There was substantially more money spent building the mid-Island highway than had been spent on the Coquihalla, which always looked to me like much more of an engineering feat. But a lot of material went into the mid-Island highway.

Also, when the member speaks of his constituency and the proliferation of sites…. I actually checked how many sites were approved in the member's constituency. Up to now, during the six years that our government has been in office, it has been 24 gravel pits and quarries. In the previous ten years, with an NDP administration, it was 41 gravel pits and quarries. That's pretty close. Yet I think we have somewhat fewer gravel pits and quarries over our time in office, despite a far more robust construction economy. It's a necessary material. It's needed. Industry, thankfully, is out there developing it, and they'd only be doing that if there was a market for it.

The member alluded to people, perhaps, thinking this is an insignificant issue to municipalities. We never said that. I said that it's a very significant issue. I didn't say that in those words but that I had heard more about it than almost anything else. It's a real issue in the Okanagan, for example — one of the busiest construction areas. I empathize with the people who are raising the concern.

At the same time, I note that in the Oyama area, for example, where there is vociferous opposition to new gravel pits, much of it is coming from a group of residents living in a reclaimed gravel pit who are also lobbying the Minister of Transportation for a $60-million highway bypass which will require a lot of aggregate.

On the specific site that the member asked about, since last July — so in the past less than a year — there have been four visits by inspectors. There was an application by the operator to expand. The expansion was turned down because there were problems with the application in the ministry's view. The proponent has done further work and has reapplied, and that'll be considered with the usual due process.

J. Horgan: Again, we don't have a dispute about the importance of the product. We don't have a dispute about the necessity of mining aggregate and other similar products for industrial expansion, and residential expansion as well. It's not confined to heavy operations. Everyone uses it. We agree with that.

What's concerned me and what's concerned many of my constituents…. Like the minister, I've only been at this coming up two years. People are knocking on my door and bringing issues to my attention. I'm amazed at the number of people that approach me on these issues. That's my motivation for getting a better handle on how it works.

I'm concerned, in the discussions I've had with the ministry and the discussion I'm hearing from the minister today, that ensuring the industry runs smoothly and efficiently and its needs are met is at the top of the list and that somewhere down from there is the impact on community. I'm wondering: am I missing something here, or is that the hierarchy? Is that how the minister and his staff review these issues as they come forward? Is it industry first and community second, or is it the other way around?

Hon. K. Krueger: I'm trying to answer the questions as the critic puts them. I said earlier that we pride ourselves — the ministry does…. I can't take much credit for it; I haven't been around very long specifically in this ministry. But the ministry has every reason to pride itself on its health and safety record. That is the primary consideration — the health of the workers involved, the health of the community, the health of the environment. That's the first consideration.

When the critic starts off saying we don't have a dispute with the worth of the industry or the need for the material and all of those things, that's pretty much what everybody concedes. But then, we all tend to think, including me: why does it have to be in my back yard?

A year ago, long before I was appointed to this position, a proponent brought forth an application. His application was for an operation that would be in my constituency, and right across the road live a number of people in the constituency of my colleague, the member for Kamloops.

It was a difficult thing to work through. The ministry helped us work through it, and in the end the proponent withdrew his request for a quarry and went

with just a request for a gravel pit. Although those residents had all these same concerns — traffic safety, potential dust, noise and all of those things — in the end they accepted that with permit conditions, it could be an acceptable operation. At the end of the day, we do need these things.

It's easy to say that we don't quarrel with the value or the worth of the industry, because we don't. But then, it's harder to say and accept that there are going to be some such operations in our constituencies.

J. Horgan: Again, one of the issues that you have in urban areas is that people want things left the way they are when they arrive. I happened to arrive here by birth. Others come through other channels. When they get here, they want it to stay that way. I appreciate that's a balancing act and a challenge for government.

When my constituents hear of success stories like the Orca Sand and Gravel project, the Polaris Minerals Corp. partnership in Port McNeill…. The minister had discussion with the member for North Island on this. When they hear about a community that embraces the activity, has an abundance and is shipping it to California rather than shipping it to Richmond or Nanaimo or Victoria…. If it's on a barge, why not stop somewhere in and around Victoria rather than having mine activity in the capital regional district? I'll leave that with the minister to think about.

It's a disconnect for people. They go: "We're exporting this product." Yet there's an insistence that my idyllic, pastoral scene in the Cowichan Valley is going to be disrupted by numerous trucks a day. When I signed on here, I thought I was on agricultural land. There are processes, and they're followed, and I understand that. But it's a disconnect for the public when they hear about barges heading south.

With that, I'll give the floor to my friend from Powell River–Sunshine Coast, and we'll be wrapping up shortly.

N. Simons: I think everybody on the Sunshine Coast is interested in hearing the minister's statements about Pan Pacific Aggregates, which is a proposed quarry mining operation on the Sechelt Inlet.

I'm just wondering if the minister would be able to tell me when the public's involvement will be considered in this process and what weight that involvement will have on the ultimate decision-making of the ministry regarding that particular project.

Hon. K. Krueger: There is a tie-in with the critic's summary statement, so I'll just quickly cover that.

The cost of aggregate material has a lot to do with the cost of transporting it. Amazingly, transporting it by water is by far the cheapest way to go. While I was at the Minerals North conference, I toured the new Swamp Point project, which is on the Portland Canal just across from Alaska.

Amazingly again, it's only 62 acres, but it's going to generate $800 million of wealth and economic activity. A third of that is going to be spent on shipping. That's a lot of money, but compared to the money that'll be left, it's a modest investment. It costs $6 per tonne to take that material all the way from Swamp Point to California. Compared to trucks on urban roads and the cost of paying drivers and the wear and tear to the infrastructure, that's a very modest amount.

That's why places like Orca Sand and Gravel in Port McNeill can make good money doing what they're doing. But I feel assured and can assure the member that I think Orca Sand and Gravel would be delighted to sell their material in our urban markets if that's feasible. In fact, Swamp Point hadn't anticipated that they would be selling material to Prince Rupert, but it turns out that because of our rapid expansion of the Port of Prince Rupert, that is a major customer for them. They are very pleased, of course, that they only have to go to Prince Rupert instead of all the way to California.

To respond specifically to the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast, I wanted to say that the Orca Sand and Gravel operation took about two years — it's a very large aggregate project — to go through the process, but Pan Pacific Aggregates is still at the very early stages. The terms of reference for the environmental assessment are not even ready yet.

When they are ready, the public will be invited to make comment on what people think of them. Public involvement will be given a great deal of weight, and there will be public involvement invited at every step of the process. We're still in the very, very early stages of that operation. The deputy minister has toured the site, and I intend to tour the site this summer.

N. Simons: In fact, the former minister also toured the area and did his own fact-finding.

I'm just curious, partly, because it seemed clear from the onset of this that it was going to run into difficulty because the particular operation is on the inlet facing probably the largest number of bed and breakfasts in the area. What concerns me is that the regional district, the district of Sechelt, the Islands Trust, the Nanoose people…. The Nanoose, I should say, were just added to the terms of reference about a month ago when it was determined that in fact their traditional territory included Wood Bay. The Sechelt Indian Band even held a referendum.

I'm just wondering: how can all of that public involvement in the process not, at this point, have yielded any response of any significance from the government? I'm asking that because as we speak, we look at the land that is being denuded by the operations that are considered exploratory.

I should point out — obviously, and you well know — that my community is home to many operations that provide not just good corporate citizenship to the communities, but excellent job opportunities up and down the coast. So it's not a question of being for or against this type of industrial activity. It would happen, in this case, to be the second one within very close

proximity, perhaps even the third at this point, with Columbia National's gravel quarry going up in the Dakota Ridge area.

I'm just wondering: what should I tell the constituents of mine who have had their voice heard through their regional government; through their municipal government; through their neighbours and friends, the first nations; through the Islands Trust, who have control over the area where they'd like to put the conveyor belt?

How is it that that has all neglected to actually affect the process that's been going on for almost two years?

Hon. K. Krueger: I'll ask the member and his constituents to have a look at the record of the exchange we just had and to think about what he just asked. It seems manifestly unfair to say there's been no response by government. We've said we're in the very early stages of the process. The member told me himself that my predecessor, the former minister, came out personally. I told the member, and I think he probably already knew, that the deputy minister has been out. The assistant deputy minister has been out.

I was probably remiss in not introducing the people that are with me right now. They're the same people that were with me on Thursday, although not all. Greg Reimer, the deputy minister, is seated to my right; Mr. Doug Callbeck, the assistant deputy minister for management services division, is on my left. Mr. Ron Bronstein, the acting executive director of regional operations for the mining and minerals division, is behind Mr. Reimer; and Mr. Eric Partridge, the assistant deputy minister to the division, is with me.

I've already said that I'm going to come out, so the only person facing you, out of five, who hasn't been there, and perhaps doesn't intend to be there, is Mr. Callbeck, who looks after the books for us. Somebody has to be minding the store. It isn't really a fair thing to say that government hasn't paid any attention. Also, it's not like we're behind a stone wall here. We're all in touch with people all the time. I've heard a great deal about Pan Pacific Aggregate. The regional district has visited me. A number of people from the constituency have written me, and we've written back. There's been a lot of input.

At the end of the day, there is a process. We have to be fair to everybody. If somebody applies, we've got to follow due process. We can't just say: "Well, we're hearing a lot of chagrin from people, so go away." That's not going to work.

I'm concerned about it personally. I don't like the sound of a seven-kilometre conveyor belt across that countryside. I think everybody is concerned. I'll put it on the record that I haven't heard a single person speak in favour of this operation — not one. The proponents haven't contacted me since I've been minister. But we follow due process.

N. Simons: I really do appreciate the minister's forthrightness in his response. I think what it essentially comes down to is that I recognize the government has paid a lot of attention. Maybe I meant that they haven't been able to do anything in terms of stopping the process, which has been requested partly because of what appears to be the overwhelming opposition to this project.

There seems to be something strange about a process…. It's perhaps very well thought out, but there's a very long time between the initial application, and a lot of things can happen in our…. Well, it's considered Canada's oldest forest up in that area. There are fish-bearing streams where government officials have found problems, and whether they have responded in a way that satisfies people is another question. Roads have been cut off from public access.

There are a number of issues that have caused concern in the community. That's partly why the frustration over the length of time between the expressed desire of the community and anything that is actually in response to that expressed desire. I look forward to giving the minister a tour, if that's part of the plan.

J. Horgan: I just have a few more questions for the minister, and then we'll move on to the oil and gas section of the estimates. I'm wondering if the minister could articulate for me his government's policy on uranium mining.

Hon. K. Krueger: This government's policy on uranium mining is exactly the same as the policy of the government we replaced. It hasn't changed at all since the 1990s.

There are currently no live applications before our government for uranium exploration — certainly not for mining. Mining of uranium, if it had ever occurred in British Columbia or is ever countenanced, would be under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Exploration would be under the purview of the provincial government, but there is none presently.

J. Horgan: Lastly, I'm wondering, now that the minister has found his feet and has spent some time in the position, if he ever accesses the good services of the public affairs bureau. If so, how many people are there availing themselves or preparing to give him advice on media issues?

Hon. K. Krueger: There are two that touch on my responsibilities as far as communication with me from time to time. The entire Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources has seven people dedicated to it in the public affairs bureau.

J. Horgan: So the two that the minister referenced come from the seven that are available to the entire ministry?

J. Horgan: With that, I'd like to pass on any further questions to the Minister for Mining and move back to the Minister of Energy.

I think we're trying to wrap up with the Oil and Gas Commission and the oil and gas division. I don't know if the minister wants to do those together. We might as well; I think they're the same hats.

G. Robertson: It's good to be back. I have some questions, first of all, for the minister regarding oil and gas tanker traffic on the B.C. coast and pipelines potentially related to tankers.

Referring to a letter from August 2005 from the minister to Mr. Guy Jarvis, the vice-president of Enbridge, the minister's closing states:

Given that this is a dated letter, I'm curious what the minister's current position is on tanker traffic on the B.C. coast and its potential risks of spills from tankers, marine pipelines and the devastating impact that could represent to the coast.

Hon. R. Neufeld: A quick reminder that these are estimates for 2007-2008, not 2005. My opinion is no different than what I wrote at that period of time.

G. Robertson: So the minister's opinion continues to be that oil tankers or pipelines feeding those oil tankers on the B.C. coast — as long as they are within Canada and not foreign vessels transiting the coast — continue to be acceptable and possibly encouraged. Is that correct?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'll say it again, and Chair, I look for your guidance. We're not talking about 2005 estimates. We're actually talking about '07-08. My opinion in regards to the letter stands exactly the same as what the letter and what the member read into the record….

G. Robertson: Is there any budget allocated within the ministry to assess any of the risks associated with tanker spills, marine pipelines or any potential oil and gas spillage that could impact coastal ecosystems?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Actually, it's the responsibility of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Coast Guard, along the coast, in regards to cleanup. If in fact there was a spill, those processes are in place, and I'm sure the federal government has got that well in hand.

The province of British Columbia has been moving oil in and out of the Port of Vancouver for I don't know how long — decades, probably. It's not new to the province. So I think all of those regulatory requirements from DFO and the Coast Guard are well in hand.

G. Robertson: I'll take that as a no, that there is no risk assessment whatsoever performed through this ministry. Therefore, just to clarify the ministry's role, it is purely on the promotion side of tanker traffic on the B.C. coast versus anything to do with regulation or risk assessment.

If the minister would clarify that and also clarify whether in fact this minister is supportive of foreign-owned tankers having access to the B.C. coast.

Hon. R. Neufeld: I refer the member back to the letter — to read it clearly, understand it clearly. I think it's pretty straightforward. When he says, "There is no risk assessment within this ministry…." I just finished telling the member that actually it's DFO and Coast Guard. In my understanding, that's two federal departments that are actually responsible for this and will have regulations in place to do it.

It's not my job or my ministry's job to second-guess what the DFO does in risk assessment on those kinds of things or what they do through the Coast Guard. Those are federal responsibilities. I'd suggest the member ask federal members.

G. Robertson: I'm fully aware that we are in 2007 estimates for the ministry, and that is why I'm asking for his clarification of his position with regards to foreign-owned tanker traffic on the B.C. coast. Is the minister supportive of this and encouraging the federal government to rescind its moratorium on foreign-owned tanker traffic on the coast? Does he welcome that traffic here?

Hon. R. Neufeld: The moratorium does not cover shipments that come into British Columbia's ports for British Columbians in the Port of Prince Rupert, Kitimat, Vancouver, or whatever port you want to go to along the coast.

I stress again that the letter the member read into the record from 2005 is still the opinion of this government. It is still, as I understand, a responsibility of DFO and the Coast Guard in regards to dealing with issues of that nature along the coast.

G. Robertson: I'm a little confused by the minister's statements. The minister's own words in that very same letter state that in 1972 the federal government announced a moratorium on foreign oil-tanker traffic transiting the Canadian coast through Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. So given that that moratorium is in place, does the minister support that coming to an end?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'll explain it again. When a ship comes to port in British Columbia — that's what I'm talking about in that letter. Foreign ships that actually…. Most of that is for transporting oil from Alaska to the southern 48. That's what you are referring to in the moratorium.

G. Robertson: In terms of what the minister is clarifying here, is he clarifying that foreign-owned oil tankers indeed have access to the B.C. coast at this time?

Hon. R. Neufeld: It's interesting questioning. There are all kinds of foreign ships that come into the Port of Vancouver — all kinds of them for all kinds of goods. There are all kinds of foreign ships that come into the Port of Prince Rupert for all kinds of goods. Yeah, there are, and there will continue to be. They will not all be registered out of British Columbia or Canada. They're registered from all over the world.

G. Robertson: I have lived in Vancouver for much of my life. I've lived north, up the coast, for a number of years as well, and I have yet to see an oil tanker anchored or steaming past any of my homes on the coast of B.C. So I know there are a lot of ships that come and go of every shape and size and flag imaginable. I'm directly questioning the minister as to whether there is currently access by oil tankers — foreign-flagged oil tankers — to the B.C. coast.

Hon. R. Neufeld: As I said earlier, foreign-flagged tankers arrive in the Port of Vancouver, and have for decades, to load oil and take it out of the Port of Vancouver. I don't think that's a surprise to the member. As he says, he's lived in Vancouver for most of his life. That's happened.

Along the west coast of British Columbia — and I know a lot of people that are opposed to oil and gas development along the coast don't want to recognize that — there are at least two VLCCs that ply the coast on a constant basis between Alaska and the lower 48 for 365 days of the year. It happens constantly and will for as long as I guess there is oil in Alaska and we need oil.

G. Robertson: Somehow the minister doesn't seem interested in directly answering the question. My question specifically is if foreign-owned oil tankers have access to B.C. ports up the coast, other than Vancouver, where we have storage of oil. We certainly have a lot of usage of oil and gas, in particular through the bodies of water — the Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound, the Inside Passage. Do those foreign-owned oil tankers have access to those coastal waters of British Columbia at this time?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Again, I'll say that if in fact they are arriving in the Port of Prince Rupert, let's say, or in the Port of Kitimat and the oil was destined for us in British Columbia or some place in Canada, yes, they would have the same access that they have had for decades into the Port of Vancouver.

G. Robertson: It seems like it keeps getting qualified with "into the Port of Vancouver." I'm referring specifically to the Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Strait, Dixon Entrance — the ways to get into the inner coastal waters of British Columbia.

The minister is reluctant to clarify whether foreign-owned oil tankers have access to those waters or if indeed he supports them having access to those waters in the future.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Maybe we're just trying to spend a little bit of time here and spin the wheels a bit. If that's the case, fine. My last answer that I gave is exactly the same as this answer that I'll give. It's no different. Yes, if the oil comes to British Columbia and happens to come to any one of the ports…. It might even come to Stewart, I don't know, but if a foreign-flagged tanker comes to British Columbia to actually dispose of its cargo, which happens to be oil — and I know the member hates oil; likes to consume it; hates it — they actually have the right to do that. DFO and the Coast Guard are responsible for the coastline when it comes to those issues, not the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.

G. Robertson: Well, I'll caution the minister on putting words in my mouth about hating oil or loving oil or whatever he wants to bend it into. I don't think the minister has a clear understanding of my perspective with regards to oil and gas.

I'd like to move, after such a murky set of responses to the current conditions for foreign-owned oil tankers on the coast, to some questions on oil and gas royalties. The minister and I had a number of exchanges on this in last year's estimates, and I thank the minister for providing information as requested following those estimates to clarify exactly what subsidies exist for oil and gas companies in B.C. — and as well, through to the Minister of Finance, I suppose, for including more of that information, finally, in the budget and fiscal plan that was published this year. Specifically, in the appendices there is now a section on royalty programs and infrastructure credits.

There has been progress in terms of transparency, on the one hand, and some information provided, as it should be, to taxpayers about royalty and subsidy programs. But generally, I think there is a lot of mystique around the royalty schemes and the royalty system that we have in place here in B.C. Certainly our neighbours next door in Alberta have come to the end of their tether in terms of understanding and rationalizing their royalty programs. Their entire royalty system is currently being reviewed, and according to many citizens in Alberta, that's long overdue.

My questions specifically around royalties start with royalties paid on natural gas. Can the minister confirm that the base-nine royalty of 9 percent, which was originally discounted from 12 percent a number of years ago by NDP governments and has since then been reapproved — and I believe entrenched without an expiry date; the minister might be able to confirm that for me — is the extent of the royalties collected on natural gas by the province?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'm sure the member is aware — obviously, he has done lots of study on these issues — that the royalty rate fluctuates with the price of the product, whether it's oil or natural gas. It's a complicated equation to figure out, and it ranges anywhere from 9 percent to a high of 27 percent, depending on the price of the product.

I want to remind the member — and I'll put it in the record — that he may class this as subsidies. That's fair ball. I know where he's coming from. It's the philosophy over there. But I would say it's more of an incentive, and there's a reason for those incentives.

I have lived in the north all my life. I have worked in the industry most of my life, and I know why some of those incentives are in place. Actually, so do the people that live up there. Most of them have appreciated very much what's taken place in northeastern British Columbia since 2001 with the oil and gas industry and with the incentives that are in place, although we're not without detractors up there also. There are some people that have the same political opinion as the member opposite.

What we're trying to do is make sure that people can work year-round, that people can actually have a family-supporting job and that communities can depend on the industry — because it's our main employer in northeastern British Columbia — to be able to build our communities and provide services to people. It's probably no different than some things that happened in Vancouver over many years to make Vancouver the city that it is.

We actually call these incentives, because they are broad-based across the industry. It's not aimed at one company or another company. It's industrywide.

The member refers to Alberta having a review. Alberta is having a review of all their royalties. We watch that with very close scrutiny because our royalty structure in British Columbia has to actually be much the same as Alberta's, understanding that we want to incent some things differently than in a province where oil and gas covers the whole province. It's a huge industry where they drill 23,000 wells a year compared to our 1,400. When you think about it in those terms, our industry in B.C. is pretty small but does bring in an awful lot of money.

What we want to do is make sure that people are kept working, that they can depend on their job — men and women — and have good facilities, good roads to drive on and all those good things that go along with a great economy.

G. Robertson: I'm not sure how much of that had anything to do with the base-nine royalty rate. Although the minister did clarify that the rate fluctuating from between 9 percent and 27 percent….

My understanding is that the royalty rate is capped at 27 percent once natural gas rises above $3.40 per thousand cubic feet. So in effect, I would assume it's been stuck at the 27-percent royalty rate for some time now, as gas has been considerably higher than that for a number of years.

My question to the minister is: what is the average royalty percentage rate that is budgeted for this budget year? Is it in fact the 27 percent that we will max out at?

Hon. R. Neufeld: The average that will be paid, the ministry tells me, on natural gas is 23.4 percent of the value.

G. Robertson: It's 23.4 percent for '07-08. Therefore, the implicit royalty rate that's specified in the budget and fiscal plan refers specifically to the average royalty rate that is returned to the province. I would assume that those numbers are what match up there. It was not described as such in the budget and fiscal plan, but it sounds like we have a fit in the numbers there.

Can the minister give an average royalty rate for oil in the province this year?

Hon. R. Neufeld: We don't have the average royalty rate for oil right here, but we'll get that number. The staff will be watching right now, so they'll get those numbers up to us.

I remind the member that we produce very little oil in British Columbia. I think it's down to about 11 million barrels of oil.

In terms of taxes on the companies that are extracting oil and doing oil and gas development, does the ministry capture an average percentage of the value of that oil and gas, similar to the fashion that they do with royalty? Do they capture a similar number in terms of taxes that are paid basically, then, to gross up the total return to the province as a percentage of the oil and gas extracted?

Hon. R. Neufeld: To the member: are you talking about corporate taxes? I'm not sure exactly what taxes you're talking about.

G. Robertson: It would be all of the taxes — whether corporate taxes or the combined tax base that's generated by the sectors — in effect, to get the total revenue returned to the province.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Again, if you're asking about the gross aggregate of all taxes the industry pays and whether I have that information here with the Ministry of Energy, Mines, then no, I don't. All those taxes are not collected by this ministry. In fact, royalties aren't collected by this ministry. They're collected by the Ministry of Revenue, and there's also the Ministry of Finance. No, I don't have all those, but we'll get the average charged for natural gas — and, as I said, for oil — for the member so that he can know what that number is.

G. Robertson: I think it's been frustrating for many people looking at what royalty programs or systems exist in various jurisdictions and comparing how we're doing in B.C. to surrounding jurisdictions, to other countries.

The oil and gas companies can take a look in detail at every jurisdiction they operate in and know exactly what percent of the take stays within their business and feeds their bottom line, versus those of us in individual jurisdictions. We have a very difficult time being able to assess the different royalty rates, subsidy programs, tax bases generated.

It would be excellent, in the spirit of transparency and accountability, for this ministry to look at what we're taking out of the ground — what, in terms of our natural resources or public assets, we are selling off — never to return to our balance sheet. It's a one-time sale. It would be good to know the entire package, in terms of revenues that are generated by this sale, in order to rationalize how we're doing it and really to know….

You'd think between all these jurisdictions there would be some free flow of information so that provinces or countries could remain competitive, yet ensure that their citizens got the maximum benefit and return for the resources they're giving up. It would be very nice to see this ministry take the lead on that and be able to generate that information, in future, for the taxpayers of B.C. to know what kind of value we're getting from our resource and how it compares to our neighbours and our competitors in the markets.

As that does not seem to be ready to roll here, I'll ask just a question about capping the gas royalties. Many other jurisdictions have a sliding scale far beyond the 27-percent cap. Indeed, when natural gas prices have skyrocketed in recent years as high as $14 a thousand cubic feet, in their jurisdictions their sliding scale runs up to 70 percent or even 90 percent in terms of an escalating royalty rate.

Those countries are able to capture a significant return and benefit from the sale of that natural gas when it's at very high prices, rather than all of that accruing to the companies, the corporations involved.

Has the minister considered looking at a sliding scale that increases — seeing as the price of gas has been above $3.40 for almost all of the last several years and doesn't show many signs of retreating? Given that the supply of natural gas is fading here in B.C. and next door in Alberta, is the minister looking at a sliding scale beyond the 27 percent, which doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense when the price is always higher?

Hon. R. Neufeld: To the member: I direct him to the ministry website. It's a convenient place to go. A competitive review was done two years ago, comparing British Columbia and its incentive programs to encourage industry to invest in the province. It's being updated as we speak.

I think the member knows full well that we need to be competitive with those jurisdictions around us. We have a mammoth beside us in Alberta, which has a tax structure that in most cases is much lower than ours. We need to encourage industry to develop the oil and gas resources in British Columbia.

That's specific to me in northeastern British Columbia and for the province. That over $2 billion a year goes to pay for health care and education for all British Columbians. Let me tell you, it goes to employ a lot of people where I work, where I live and where I'm elected. I know it may seem foreign to the member. I'd invite him to come and spend some time in northeastern British Columbia and get familiar with the industry when he wants to talk about it.

As I said, we have a sliding scale for royalties. We're much on tap with everybody else. We review our programs to make sure they're fair, to make sure that we encourage that industry to operate in British Columbia.

The member made another statement which shows that he hasn't actually reviewed the website that closely. He says supply is fading in British Columbia. Well, supply in natural gas is certainly not fading in British Columbia. In fact, British Columbia is one of the only jurisdictions in North America where supply is actually increasing. In-place supply has been increasing over the last number of years as we've moved forward. I think that's good news for the province.

I believe that we should get out of the resources that we extract…. Whether it's forestry, minerals, oil and gas, on all of those items we should actually extract what we should get, remembering that there's a competitive economy out there.

Those companies that the member always talks about — money going to their bottom line…. I can only assume it had better go to the bottom line, or people aren't going to buy their shares. That's kind of how they operate on the stock market, as I understand. They have to actually make a profit. If they don't make a profit, they go bankrupt. Guess what happens then.

What we need to is to make sure that we're competitive in the marketplace in an area where companies can go worldwide. They can, at the drop of a hat, take their investment out of British Columbia and go someplace else. We've seen it during the '90s in minerals and in oil and gas. We don't want that to happen again. I don't want to see the ghost town that I lived in, in northeastern British Columbia for a while during the '90s, until the latter '90s when the price got so high. In fact, I think the price hit about $13 or $14 in the latter years of the NDP.

Guess what happened to the royalty structure. It didn't change. It's the same today as it was back then, other than…. The member should know — and maybe he doesn't know but would like to know — that during the ten years that the NDP were there, to encourage oil development they actually changed the royalty structure and did some subsidies to one company that I know of in one area of the province. That's a subsidy — not across everybody that produces oil, but one company. Gave them a subsidy.

They went to another company and eliminated any royalty for oil — totally eliminated it — in an area that happened to be on the Alberta border and that was serviced out of Alberta, where the only thing that would accrue to the province would be the royalties. And yet they produced oil there for a long time, paying no royalties at all, no employment, nothing for people in northeastern British Columbia to actually hang their hat on and go out and work at.

We have taken a way of looking at the oil and gas industry that we have to have some incentives in place for some certain things. We're vastly underdrilled. That's why our supply is not fading for natural gas in

northeastern British Columbia. It's actually increasing. We need to get into some of those areas that are very highly expensive to get into. We don't have a huge network of roads.

When I talk about roads in northeastern British Columbia during the '90s — nothing was done. Zilch. Zero. Just ask the people. At the very end of the NDP's term they finally cottoned on that they better put some more money back into roads, so they bravely passed a bill to spend $100 million over five years.

That was in the last year or two of their administration. Until that, they didn't spend anything on the roads and had people, as little work as was there, out working on substandard roads and substandard conditions. That was unfair.

We have to look at how we build that up so we can keep an industry going and, most of all, keep the communities whole, keep them as vibrant as they are today and make sure that men and women can depend on those jobs as family-supporting jobs.

G. Robertson: Just a question for the minister: I didn't hear a response or an answer from him regarding the royalty rate increasing beyond 27 percent, with 27 percent being the royalty rate when gas hits above $3.40 per thousand cubic feet.

To remind the minister: in terms of the three-year fiscal plan, the forecasted natural gas price fluctuates over the next three years between $6.49 and $6.70, so almost double what that royalty rate of 27 percent was set at — to kick in at $3.40. In effect, for double that $3.40 — which we may be at for these next three years, according to the government's forecasts — we will see nothing beyond that 27-percent royalty rate.

For the sake of perspective, that 27-percent cap was set back in the '90s when $3.40 was thought to be a price that gas would be unlikely to ever reach, at least in the near term. Therefore, that ceiling was fixed then.

It's a little disconcerting to see that the minister isn't interested in a balance between benefits back to British Columbians through royalty programs or systems that make sense based on the numbers that are forecast and the value of the commodity, versus seeming to put most of his allegiance on the side of the shareholders and the returns to those shareholders, which of course are important to keep those businesses operating and succeeding.

But there has got to be balance here. I'm surprised to see no acknowledgment that, with the price of natural gas double what was anticipated when that royalty rate was set and capped, there is no movement on this government's behalf to get better value for British Columbia citizens from the resources we're selling.

The minister refers to the royalty programs specifically to get at these marginal, low production and ultra-marginal wells in the northeast and perhaps well beyond that. What is disconcerting here is to see, in terms of these subsidies — or, as he calls them, incentives — to business, from what was budgeted last year…. For example, $49 million was budgeted for marginal, low production and ultra-marginal wells. That jumps up by the 2009-2010 plan to $133 million in subsidy or incentive, depending on your definition — a 171-percent increase.

Is that 171-percent increase in subsidy back to companies to develop these wells specific to the northeast? Is it more broadly arrayed to get these companies operating in different parts of the province? Is that related to the supply of gas in the northeast — if indeed this is for elsewhere — starting to fade, which ministry presentations over the past few years have indicated is happening?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'm going to ask the member to listen carefully. Actually, I answered your question last time at the very beginning. Two years ago we did a competitive study. If you want me to explain what a competitive study is in the oil and gas industry, I'll go through it and explain for the member. But I think he understands. He's been in competition. He's been in business, where he had to be competitive. So I'm assuming he knows what being competitive is.

I said clearly that we did a competitive study, which compared all of our royalty rates and programs across government in the oil and gas industry, to make sure that we were getting for the public what they should be getting and to make sure that we can continue to get the investment that we've become accustomed to in British Columbia and that we want to continue.

It's being updated. I asked the member to actually go to the ministry website and search out that competitive study, have a read of it, understand the competitive study and understand that that competitive study is being updated.

I hope that answers the member's question. All the other things that I said to the member were the reasons why we're doing what we're doing.

Now that may disconnect with the member because he doesn't understand the industry, and he doesn't understand the northeast part of the province. That's understandable. You live in Vancouver. So I can understand that. But I think it behooves the member to get a little more information about what goes on instead of coming with just one point of view on a constant basis.

What we need to do is continue to be competitive. The province has to be, to encourage that investment. Again, I'm going to say to the member: when you say reserves are fading, nothing could be further from the truth. You ought to go check again the website for the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

You ought to be proud of the fact — don't put it down — that, actually, we're going against all other trends in North America. Our reserves are growing. When you look at the dollars — and this is the answer to the question; this is the little box — where it increases the royalty incentives, the dollar amount, is because we're slowly moving into more shale gas and tight gas. It's a little harder to extract, a little more expensive and lower-productivity wells. Don't confuse that with a fading resource.

It's a different resource that the industry has not produced for a long time. They're doing it not just in

British Columbia. In fact, they're doing it all over North America where oil and gas is found.

They will extract natural gas out of granite. If you've never seen it, you should ask for a presentation of where they get that natural gas from. You'd wonder how they could extract anything out of solid rock, but they do.

Is it a bit more expensive? Do they produce less per well? Yes, they do. But you still have wells in the foothills that will produce an awful lot, because there are some, as the industry coins it, elephants out there. There was an elephant actually hit when the NDP were in power: Ladyfern. That was what they classed as an elephant. It produced like you wouldn't believe for a number of years, and then it's out like a light. It's not producing as much as it used to, but there are other discoveries going on in other places. That's how the industry works.

It's not that you drill a well and that's the only well you drill and you produce it for 30 years and then you are done. They reinvest on a constant basis anywhere between $4 billion and $5 billion a year in northeastern British Columbia in looking for, exploring for and producing natural gas.

G. Robertson: A question, returning to the budget and fiscal plan and the $263 million in incentives or subsidies for oil and gas development: can the minister provide a top-ten list of companies that are the beneficiaries of those incentives?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Clearly, what I want to say to the member is: it's a competitive process. The ministry has to make sure that they're careful with that information, so as far as what each company or numbered company received in credits, that is not available to the public because of the competitive nature of it. But you have the gross dollars, and you can see that from 2003 to 2006, after you discount the incentive programs, the province was over a billion dollars better off than they would have been had they had no incentives.

Those are just royalties and lease fees. That doesn't have anything to do with…. And I want the member to really start helping me. I want to help him understand here what happens to people in that part of the province when they don't work. Maybe you can put it in the concept of when you had your business.

If you just ran your business for three months or four months, at max, a year. Just think about it. Could you actually hire people year-round? Could you actually have the business opportunities to carry on for the other eight months of the year by just operating on four months?

That's what generally happens and happened for years in northeastern British Columbia. Let me tell you, I'm familiar with it. I worked in the industry from the bottom up. I know what happens. I know what it's like to be laid off at the first part of April and not get hired back until mid-November. Let me tell you, that's not a family-supporting job anyplace. I don't care whether it's Vancouver or Vancouver Island.

What we need to do is levelize that kind of work year-round. To do that, you need to actually build some roads and pipelines. You need to actually get into some of those areas that we haven't been able to get into, instead of just doing all the work in the three or four months in the wintertime.

It's not just the billion dollars that came to the province, which the member's constituency shared in as much as mine did, but it's actually looking at the people. It's looking at the small service sector in the northeast part of the province that provides all of the services to that industry. They can't go out and buy million-dollar pieces of equipment only to work it three or four months out of the year. It doesn't work.

All of that was imported from another province called Alberta. Not all but a huge amount of it came across the border into B.C. Still, a certain amount of that does come across the border, and what we're slowly being able to build is a strong service sector in northeastern British Columbia.

If you came to northeastern B.C., you would see the growth in Dawson Creek. You would see the growth in Hudson's Hope. You would see the growth in Chetwynd. You would see the growth in Fort St. John, and you would see the growth in Fort Nelson and how those communities are starting to build up all of those services that that industry needs on a year-round basis.

That is a big part of this, and I hope the member understands that. I know the member was in business, and he knows in the bottom of his heart that he couldn't have run that business on operating just four months out of the year, keeping people employed and all the capital that was needed to run his business. It makes good common sense to be able to actually have those things happen, have safe roads. What's wrong with safe roads?

When we talk about incentives to the oil and gas industry, let me go back to the forest industry. All the roads that are built in the forest industry on a regular basis…. Those costs aren't even actually analyzed or capitalized. What happens is that the company, whichever the forest company happens to be…. This was the same in the '90s as it is today. What they did is they harvested and paid a royalty rate, and whatever it cost them to build the roads and maintain them, they just subtracted from the royalty.

We're not doing that here. We're actually looking at certain areas where we'll partner with industry on a 50-50 basis, and industry has to up front the money. It has to go into an area that's going to benefit not just one company but a number of companies. It's actually been very successful. It's innovative. It's a different way to do business — a way different way to do business.

Actually, working in northeastern British Columbia is a lot different than working around Calgary or Edmonton. I can tell you that because that's where I was born and raised. It's a whole different world.

Your dog can leave home in Edmonton, and you can see it run for four days straight. In Fort St. John, northeastern British Columbia, that doesn't happen.

There are mountains and rivers — huge rivers — that have to be crossed to actually get to the resources.

What we're trying to do is to build a solid economy in northeastern British Columbia that will benefit the whole province. It's demonstrated so far that it can benefit the province in a huge way.

G. Robertson: In terms of the companies that are benefiting or receiving the oil and gas incentives, just noting that from my calculation of the $263 million that is being provided in this year's budget, only about 12 percent of that is targeted for roads. Roads seem like they do present a number of benefits to residents and other people — other businesses involved — in the northeast.

Focusing on that $263 million, the minister said that he will not share information about which companies are receiving. Can he tell us how many companies are receiving funding through those incentives?

Hon. R. Neufeld: The drilling royalties will apply to any company that happens to be drilling and actually fits the criteria that the incentive would cover. So that should answer that.

Secondly, roads are not to every company. The ministry will decide, along with help from the Ministry of Transportation and Highways, which roads we should do so that we actually benefit more than one company. We don't want to benefit just one company. We want to be broad-based — an incentive that's broad-based — and it's the same with any pipeline company.

I'll give the member a few numbers. Since 2003 till the end of this last year, there were 13 companies in pipe — 13 companies in 17 different projects. In road, there were 15 companies in 57 different projects that took place.

G. Robertson: I'm disappointed that there isn't more transparency in terms of what companies are involved here. I appreciate the minister providing the numbers of companies for two of the royalty programs, although what would be ideal, I'm sure, for taxpayers in particular is to know why this information is not available.

Why can the public not understand which companies are being incented to further explore and develop B.C.'s oil and gas resources? Is there a rationale for why these companies and the incentives being provided to them cannot be made public?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Certainly. We'll have a review of it and see if we can release some of that information to the public, understanding that there is some confidentiality around these things. There are some rules within the government of British Columbia — within any government — that you can't just provide all of this information to everyone. We'll review it and see if we can. I'll tell you how I found out about the two programs where the NDP actually reduced royalties on oil: it was when I got to be minister. It was not transparent. It was never put out there. No one knew until I became minister, until I started searching some of the records.

It's amazing, actually quite interesting, some of the things that I found out. In fact, the critic and I had a good little discussion the other day about the reduction in water rental rates in the province for IPPs. Through some of my digging, I found out that it was the NDP that reduced water rental rates to independent power producers by 57 percent. Here we are today having the NDP criticize us for following that same route and encouraging independent power producers.

We will have a review of it, but there are some confidentiality things around this. I'm not trying to hold anything back. In fact, if we could make it public, we would make it public. We certainly made public the royalty incentive programs that we have so that they're all out there for the public to see. All of that's on the website. It's with the ministry, and it's with the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Finance. All of that information can be found, but I think we need to be very careful about what we say we're going to make public when it comes to dealing with private companies.

I'm sure the member, having a private company at one point in time, would agree with me. I don't think the member would like for a government to make public what you paid in taxes. I don't think you'd probably like some of those things. I think we have to be careful about these things and do it in a way that maintains some confidentiality but gives some transparency.

G. Robertson: I think in this case, given that the natural resources are public assets belonging to the citizens of this province, that transparency is critical. In fact, we'll appreciate the minister providing information to us on the companies involved, as I think it's important for citizens to know where their tax dollars are going, in effect, as these are fixed assets. We are converting them — in effect, liquidating long-term assets here. Really, citizens have every right to know what value we're getting for those resources.

In terms of clarifying where we're at in the bigger picture here, my concern…. Though the minister assures everyone here today that our natural gas reserves are going up — and perhaps in his mind there's an infinite supply here that somehow B.C. has tapped into in the universe — according to presentations the ministry has made in previous years, the graphs all look like we hit peak on natural gas anywhere between 2004 and 2007.

Maybe that's been extended with new reserves being discovered. The fact remains that our neighbours next door in Alberta are seeing their natural gas supply and reserves plummeting. In terms of revenue to the Alberta government because of that — and despite the fact that Alberta royalty rates for natural gas are higher with the inventories dropping — people in Alberta are screaming for change. That's basically what has triggered the royalty system review that's taking place in Alberta. Oil has been cheap, had low royalties. There's

plenty of that to come out of the oil sands, but it's not going to pay the bills the way that natural gas has in Alberta.

Given all that, we can't expect, I don't think, in any realistic scenario an unending supply of natural gas in B.C. Appreciating that the minister has the latest information in terms of our reserves, it would be good to see more scrutiny on what our reserves are, what our royalty scheme is and, really, as our neighbours in Alberta are doing, a public process around reviewing our royalty system and ensuring that it is doing what it needs to be doing to ensure maximum benefit to the citizens of B.C.

We did not, as we're pressed for time here, have a chance to talk about the heritage fund — whether the ministry has any current activities in establishing a heritage fund and putting revenues from these non-renewable activities into a heritage fund, as all our adjacent jurisdictions have done. That could be part of the review into the royalty scheme as well.

Finally, we haven't had the chance to talk about how the oil and gas strategy, the royalty system and subsidies being generously provided by the government of B.C. to these companies fit within the context of climate change. I know my colleague here has raised the issue of climate change and asked questions of the minister as to how it fits within the lens that the ministry does business.

I'll include a quote here again from Terry Tamminen, the Governor of California's special adviser on climate change and former Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency in California. Instead of subsidizing oil companies and automakers through huge tax breaks, Tamminen proposes collecting damages. He states: "Oil companies don't absorb external costs that their production imposes on the rest of us: health care costs; crop losses; damage to materials, buildings and forests; water pollution."

What is clearly shifting — certainly with our neighbours to the south, who seem to have significant influence now, at least in the Premier's office — is the recognition that the exploitation of fossil fuels comes at great cost, and it comes at great benefit to this generation and certainly to the regions which are seeing, as the minister's own remarks have brought forward, huge growth.

Whether that growth is sustainable over the long haul with a finite resource, I'll leave to the minister to speculate on. I would hope that the minister is pressing for a much more long-term, sustainable approach in terms of the management of resources in his own region and for the benefit of the whole province. My hope is that the wisdom that the Premier's office appears to have tapped into from the state of California with regards to managing these resources and setting clear targets and actually taking action on those targets, which we have yet to see on greenhouse gas emissions…. My hope is that this minister will, in earnest, carry that work forward within this ministry.

With that, I will pass the torch back to my colleague from Malahat–Juan de Fuca.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Interesting comments. One day, dislike the U.S.; the next day, love California. Interesting to hear comments like that come from that member across the way.

Let's talk about greenhouse gases for a while. Maybe I'll just respond a little bit. I can tell you that at least we have come forward with a program and a target to reduce greenhouse gases while we actually increase the development of oil and gas. The member surely knows, through his experience by the consumption that his company had of natural gas, that it is actually a product that each and every one of us uses on a regular basis. All those little plastic bottles that held Happy Planet juice actually came from natural gas. It's a by-product.

Hon. R. Neufeld: The member looks at me and says: "Oh, I didn't know that." Anyhow, it's interesting. It's natural gas and oil that you get plastic from. If we actually take out of the system natural gas and oil, we'll have a huge cascading effect in other areas that we have become dependent on.

As for a heritage fund — interesting. Even when the NDP were in power and had a couple of years of relatively good revenues from oil and gas, they never thought about a heritage fund. They never came up with a heritage fund — just actually blew it in operations and went out and borrowed more capital and created more debt in British Columbia.

We're pretty fortunate in British Columbia with our reserves increasing. As I said to the member, I think we're the only jurisdiction where that's taken place with natural gas. Maybe, just for the member, he could look on the website and find this, too — maybe he has, and maybe he hasn't — about some of the reserves.

He talks about some of the reserves in the province. Let me qualify this. We produce 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year right now. In conventional natural gas we have 98 trillion cubic feet of estimated reserves; coalbed gas, 84 trillion cubic feet; tight gas, 300 trillion cubic feet; shale gas, 250 trillion cubic feet; offshore gas, 42 trillion cubic feet; gas hydrates, anywhere between 113 trillion and 847 trillion cubic feet.

On top of that, estimated reserves of oil are 17.6 billion barrels, and offshore oil is 9.8 billion barrels of oil. Those numbers are in the energy plan. I'm sure the member has read the energy plan cover to cover and looked at all of it. If he hasn't, I encourage him to. It's also on a memory stick. You can plug it into your computer and have a quick look at the whole energy plan fairly quickly. If you can't access it that way, just go to the Ministry of Energy and Mines website, and all that information will be there for you to see.

J. Horgan: I'm wondering if the minister could comment for a moment on oil worker fatalities from 2001 to 2006. The data I have from WorkSafe B.C. shows that from 2000 to 2005 there were 43 fatalities. Could the minister comment on how he feels we're

doing in that regard and what steps, if any, the OGC is taking to try and improve that record?

Hon. R. Neufeld: The member brings up a very important point, and I know he fully agrees with me that one death is too many. No one likes to see those kinds of things happen. In fact, my notes tell me that 32 deaths and over 1,400 injuries occurred in British Columbia's petroleum industry between '01 and '05. This is not to prop this up at all, because 32 deaths are 32 too many. But it is the lowest among resource industries.

That doesn't mean that government and the Oil and Gas Commission just rest on that. They're actually working with WorkSafe B.C. and Enform. The commission has actually created a safety management position to liaise with Enform and to increase safety communication from the field.

Some of the other things that we're doing…. It's something that I talked about quite a bit with your other colleague from Vancouver in regards to roads and the safety of roads and those kinds of things. Those are some of the efforts that this ministry is trying to make, and some of the other things, not just dollars and cents, that make good sense for men and women that work in the industry — to actually be able to travel on some safe roads. We're always looking at ways that we can reduce those types of accidents with people travelling back and forth to work and, in some cases, being killed going back and forth to the job.

J. Horgan: StatsCan tells me that as of April 2006 there were 12,658 people working in the oil and gas sector. Is that a number that jives with anything the minister's got over there?

Hon. R. Neufeld: StatsCan comes up with that number. I don't always agree with StatsCan's numbers. I would say that there are a lot more people working in the oil and gas industry than 12,000. I've seen the population of Fort St. John increase dramatically over the last number of years, as has Fort Nelson, Dawson Creek, Chetwynd and Hudson's Hope, which hasn't seen any growth for a long time.

I wouldn't say that all of those are attributable to the oil and gas industry, because the forest industry has been pretty strong in northeastern British Columbia, too, with one of the largest fibreboard plants, I'm told, in the world being built in Fort St. John and open through the last number of years. Obviously that contributed to a fair amount of jobs also.

It's a number that's used all the time. It's the same number that you go to for the mining industry, so we tend to use that number, but I would suggest that there's a lot more than that.

J. Horgan: I would have been inclined to agree with the minister, but that's the data we have, so let's accept that it's ballpark. Alberta, by contrast, same data: 108,860 people in the sector, yet the fatality rate is dramatically lower. I'm wondering if the minister or the Oil and Gas Commission can reconcile that. Is it a result of it being a relatively new industry in British Columbia versus the time that Albertans have been working in the sector, or are there some other explanations for that discrepancy?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I think the expansion of the industry over the last number of years both in Alberta and British Columbia would actually show that we've increased in both provinces with fatalities and injuries. That's a lot to do with training, with actually having younger people out on the job, in some cases, that haven't been, shall we say, fully or properly trained. A lot of these young men and women work on these jobs and are able to go out there and secure the jobs, most relatively easily.

Most companies have a very stringent health and safety program, and I know that I've met a number of times with CAPP and with different companies, saying that we need to get better, that one death is too many. Most of them would agree with me. I think that's part of the Oil and Gas Commission's response in setting up a liaison officer within the Oil and Gas Commission to work closer with WorkSafe B.C.

J. Horgan: Perhaps the minister could expand on the position that he just identified. Again, when you look at 108,000 souls in flatland Alberta where the dogs are running away for days and 12,000, let's even say 15,000, in northeastern B.C…. In fact, I think that number probably includes some other locations as well. Who knows? Let's say it's a significant difference in the number of people in the sector.

I appreciate also the argument of training. When I was in Chetwynd, I got offered a job, not on a rig but at a 7-Eleven slinging pizzas. It looked tempting. I don't know if there was a pension with it or not. I thought about it for a minute, and then I said: "No, I've got something else I'm doing right now." But I wanted to leave my options open.

I appreciate we all know that the labour market is challenged for all sectors, but I think we need to be alarmed if…. Again, when I was coming out of high school in the '70s, there were fish boats; there were lumber camps; there were places. I worked in a pulp mill for a time. That's what you did when you got out of high school. You went looking for the largest dollar you could get. It's not surprising that the children of this generation would do the same thing.

We are finding, I think — and this is why I raise these issues — that we are employing in the oil and gas sector in the northeast young men and women from all around British Columbia, and in fact right across the country, coming to the prospect of high-paying jobs in abundance. I'm concerned that perhaps training isn't what it could be. We have some concern about that. Also, oversight is the issue that, of course, we have some control over as members of the Legislature.

I'm wondering if the minister could expand a little bit more on what the Oil and Gas Commission is doing

to address (a) human resources, (b) the age of the individuals that are coming and (c) ensuring they're appropriately trained before we put them into dangerous situations.

Hon. R. Neufeld: I think one thing that we should be cognizant of is that in Alberta, which is an industry that's been there for over a hundred years…. In British Columbia, it's only about 50. We'd have to see how they make that count. You can't compare all the people that work in the industry. I mean, if you look at downtown Calgary or Edmonton when those towers are emptying every day of people that work inside of a building doing whatever they do for those oil companies that are headquartered there…. We both know that in Canada it's Calgary. In the U.S. it's Houston. There are thousands of people emptying out of those buildings every day.

There is a huge industry around providing services to the oil and gas industry like building rigs, building equipment that's used in the industry. Across the whole province of British Columbia they've had a huge gain on us. We haven't yet experienced that kind of influx of people into British Columbia. We're trying to encourage it through some of the programs that I dealt with, with your colleague from Vancouver.

What happens in northeastern British Columbia is you have the drilling industry and the service industry. I mean the men and women that actually service the oil and gas drilling rigs, moving those drilling rigs, building those leases, actually going in and cleaning up those leases. All that kind of work is probably — in fact it is; I know, because I've been there — a lot more dangerous than actually working in a tower in downtown Calgary.

If you took our drilling industry that drills in northeastern British Columbia and compared it to the drilling industry in Alberta, I think you'd probably find us not much different. If you actually took the amount of people that work in that industry and you subtracted the amount of people off that 100-some thousand that you talked about that actually work in the service industry moving those rigs and those kind of things, I think you'd find it's almost the same.

In fact, while I'm talking, I remember a gentleman who was actually a CEO of one of the large drilling companies headquartered out of Edmonton, saying that our WorkSafe rules were superior to those in Alberta and that we shouldn't think about reducing any of those kinds of rules and regulations we have in WorkSafe B.C. because we do a much better job of protecting workers.

The part about training workers and new workers is obviously a challenge. Let's remember that all of these things are hitting us at once. This is a new way to think in British Columbia that started in 2001 — actually having an industry, a service industry, and people being able to work year-round in British Columbia, much different than it was previous to that. I'm not going to refer just to the '90s but even before that, when everybody was quite comfortable for most of the service sector to come from Alberta to do the work.

What we want to do is build that up, so we're experiencing from the ground up the first part, the part that's most difficult and that's probably the most dangerous. That is, as I said, the drilling and the moving of the rigs and those kinds of things.

We need to look forward to how we train more people. The Ministry of Economic Development does a great job of that. The Ministry of Advanced Education does a great job of that. For instance, we've expanded services in the colleges all across northeastern British Columbia, in fact across the whole province, to train more people.

I know specifically in Fort St. John that we secured $6 million from Advanced Education here a year and a half ago. I went to the industry and actually got $6 million from them to augment the $6 million we got from within government, from the taxpayers, to build a centre of excellence in Fort St. John on the Northern Lights campus. That will be to be able to further train people.

We've had companies like Nabors drilling donate service rigs to the college. They are sitting there on a regular basis to train people to work on rigs — those kinds of things. These are things that only ever happened in that province east of us, Alberta, for a long time with some of their training facilities. We want to bring some of that into British Columbia.

That's one thing this government is determined to do and will continue to do — much different than what took place the decade before. That's one way that we're going to start training people more. We now have some mobile vans that are going around — one actually to start with, I believe — doing training and helping people get their tickets in all kinds of aspects, and not just for the oil and gas industry but for other industries.

I think the member would agree with me that those are all steps in the right direction. Do we have a long ways to go? I would agree with the member that yes, we do have a long ways to go, but at least we've begun the process. I think it's working out fairly well.

J. Horgan: The OGC service plan has an objective to increase the number and nature of field inspections. That's the number one objective, as near as I can tell. There's an expectation that the number of wells in the northeast will increase year by year. It's 1,600 this fiscal, 1,700 next and 1,800 the following year. Yet when I look at the service plan and performance measures, the minister and the OGC anticipate fewer visits: 4,361 last year, a downward trend to 4,990 by 2010.

I'm wondering if the minister could advise the committee how you have more rigs, fewer inspections and still meet your performance measurements.

Hon. R. Neufeld: The oil and gas commissioner informs me that what they're doing is spending more time inspecting those wells which may have a higher sour gas component or that maybe are closer to communities, where there could be some health risks for whatever reason — inspecting the companies that may have shown up on their inspections more regularly

than others. Those are the ones they're actually going to target in a more effective way, and I think that's what the public would ask for. We're asking for some risk-based inspection — that's what it's called — to make sure that we look at the ones where the chances of something bad happening are larger than an average well — an older well that's been operating for quite some time.

We're increasing in the number of wells being drilled, although this year…. I want to forewarn the member. Maybe he's going to ask me about it. There won't be as many wells drilled this year as we anticipated, simply because the demand for natural gas has obviously decreased across North America. Everybody is seeing a downward trend in the production of natural gas because there's no place to send it to.

J. Horgan: The risk-based inspection is something that would appeal to me if I had limited resources, but the plan outlines increasing the number and nature of field inspections. That's a quantifiable thing, and I know the government is keen on performance measures.

We look at the data. There was an expectation that wells would increase. At the same time that that document was being prepared, another document was being prepared saying the number of inspections would decrease. I can understand that demand reduces and the need for inspections would also reduce, but when these numbers were put before the Legislature and the public, that wasn't known — certainly to this member. So I'm wondering, again, how you reconcile an objective to increase the number and nature and then have the data going in the other direction.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Hopefully, this helps a bit. The commission tells me that it had a total of 4,892 inspections in the fiscal year '06-07. These were completed during the fiscal year to the end of December. It's not the whole fiscal year; it's till the end of December. They exceeded their service plan target for the entire fiscal year, which was to complete 2,550 inspections. So obviously, they were way over by the end of December the number of inspections they contemplated making, and they still had three months to go.

J. Horgan: Again, I go forecasting outward. The '06-07 forecast was for 5,100 and the '07-08 for 4,370. Then it jumps up a bit to 4,990 in '08-09. Again, it's a statement that says, "Increase the number," and you see numbers decreasing.

These are targets; they're not actuals. It strikes me as a misleading statement. I know there was no intent to be devious. That's not the objective of my questioning here. It's just some clarity as to how that can be your number one objective, and the numbers just don't make sense.

Hon. R. Neufeld: While the commissioner searches out that information, if you want to continue on to another question and maybe actually save some time here for you — if that's okay.

J. Horgan: That's fine with me. Another issue I'd like to canvass is pipeline oversight. That's an issue that has been brought to my attention. I haven't done this research, so you'll forgive me. I have tremendous confidence in the individual who passed it on to me, however. If I misstep, I know the deputy is at your hand there, and he'll correct me.

The United States has the Office of Pipeline Safety, where anyone can access information on line. I'm advised it provides summaries and reports about frequency and type of incidents, what or who caused those incidents and who owns the pipeline. Similar information from the National Energy Board, the Transportation Safety Board as well as the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board….

But the OGC has not yet adapted that technology to its website. I understand that when you log on, you have to first establish an account, and then the amount of information that you can access is restricted.

Again, when we think about incidents…. I was on a plane to Dawson Creek. I know the minister flies there all the time. This is no surprise to him that on planes up to the northeast, you're going to be accompanying experts in the field who are coming to address issues that may have arisen over the course of the workweek.

I had occasion to sit beside a fellow who didn't know I was a member of the Legislature. I guess you should disclose these things. I'm new at this, and I think that over time I should be disclosing this. I wasn't probing him for information.

This individual freely gave me a bit of an outline of what his job was. He was regularly called to the northeast. He was an environmental consultant to address pipeline issues and incidents.

Again, after he got about halfway through, I told him who I was. What a surprise: he didn't want to talk to me anymore. It made for a longer flight than it would have been, and he was uncomfortable. Once it got to the point where he was going to tell me more than he should have, I more or less told him he should shut up.

But that raises the issue, and I want to put it to the minister…. Going back to accessibility of information on the website, does the OGC have any plans to try and meet the standard that's set by the Office of Pipeline Safety in the United States or, at a minimum, our counterparts in Alberta?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I was just conversing with the commissioner to see how they are moving along. I think the member will understand that the Oil and Gas Commission — and he will know as much as I do — is relatively new. There is a lot of information and things that are ongoing — I think there is about a $4 million or $5 million IT program — trying to bring a whole bunch of things into line in the province, he tells me, by the end of May. Those kinds of things, similar to the

That pipeline issue was the first thing they targeted. From there they'll go to all the other things that deal with the Oil and Gas Commission, so it's going to take them some time to get it up and running.

He also reminded me, when the member talked about pipeline safety in the U.S. and that you could log on and get all that information, that there is a certain amount of hesitancy within countries now, with all the things around terrorism that are going on, to just publicly have everything laid out there — that you just hit a computer and you can find out where everything is at.

I think probably everybody is starting to think a little bit more about who they give that information to and — for good reasons — why they should give it to somebody who just accesses a website to find out where the pipelines are, whether they are in British Columbia, Alberta or North America. That's a bit of caution I think all of us probably could agree with.

I think we would all agree with the fact that we need to have that same or similar information on a website for individuals to be able to access. If someone wants to do some work, though — let's say digging up the ground or something like that — they can actually access the Oil and Gas Commission or the companies that are operating in that area to find out where their pipelines are.

J. Horgan: I thank the minister for that information. The end of May is just around the corner. I know the commissioner would be disappointed in me if I didn't log on, on May 30 and check it out, so I'll do that.

The minister makes a good point about security. We don't think about those…. I don't, because as an opposition member I can kind of go wherever I want. I can sit beside people on planes, and they don't know who I am. I'm comfortable with that. In fact, someone said: "Why don't you have a picture on your this or your that?" I said: then people would know who I was, and that's not my objective here. I'm here to keep the government honest, and people don't need to know what I look like to do that.

In terms of environmental incidents — breakdowns, pipeline damage, issues of public concern — I think there we need to have a higher…. One of the government's goals is to be a world leader in this regard, and in order to do that, you have to put the data on the table so that the public can measure you.

On the performance measurement front, having been a public servant, I'd give the government some credit for the work it has done in a whole host of areas, to better understand the work that public servants here assembled, and across Victoria and the province are doing. If you can't measure what you're doing, you don't know if you're winning or losing. I guess that's part of a jock thing as well. I need to know the score; people are comfortable when they know the score.

Going back to the website, without compromising security, I think that it's pretty important that we have a good understanding of how the industry is performing in terms of health and safety, which I touched upon, and also with respect to the environment.

I know it is a new agency, and IT dollars tend to expand like Scotch broom on Vancouver Island. As soon as you start with one program…. I think the Premier's portal project is a good example of a good idea gone terribly, terribly wrong, because it's an endless pit of people who can click and log on and do things that the minister and I can't even fathom, hon. Chair. If you don't mind, I'll put you in our number of people who would prefer if someone else takes care of the computing. But it is important data, and I'm glad that the minister and the OGC are going to be working on that.

The other issue I want to touch on is flaring and the energy plan and how it relates to the climate change initiatives announced in the budget. I wanted to know, first off the mark, if the minister could advise me if his ministry or the OGC did an audit or any studies of the total emissions from the sector in British Columbia prior to the throne speech.

Hon. R. Neufeld: To the last question about flaring and routine flaring that we have in the energy plan — of reducing it by 50 percent in five years and eliminating it in ten years — we have some routine numbers within the ministry as to the amount of tonnes and the amount of flaring that happens in British Columbia. The Oil and Gas Commission tells us that we have reduced some flaring in the province — not as much as we'd like to see, not as much as a person who lives in northeastern British Columbia would like to see. That's why I'd like to see us actually get to routine flaring.

I want to stress that routine flaring and flaring for production or testing a well are two totally different things. So it's routine, the average thing that happens at a well site. You drive by it day after day, 365 days of the year, and it's burning. I can think of one just north of town a bit that has been there probably for 20 years doing that, and nobody's actually said that we need to contain it and do something different. Technology today allows us to do that, and we ought to be responsible enough to make that happen.

The industry itself has done a lot of it on its own, but what you find is some companies are out there doing it on their own, actually being good citizens and trying to reduce flaring and those kinds of things. Then because there are no requirements…. For some of the other ones that maybe want to cut a corner, there is no requirement. What you need to do is bring in a regulation that says that all of you will do it across the board. That's the type of information we had previous to the throne speech.

I want to go back to what the member talked about, about incidents and pipeline and public concern. If he ever talks to the commissioner — and I hope he does once in a while, to find out what's going on in the oil and gas industry — he will be reassured that I'm on the commissioner constantly about these kinds of things, and the deputy. It's not just the commissioner; it's the deputy also. I want to see these things resolved. There

are a whole bunch of issues that take place in the oil and gas industry that we've just taken for granted for the 50 years that it's been there. It's been a small industry.

Nobody put into place all of those things like the pipeline integrity, how you put it all on the website, how you have all of these things so that the public can log on and find out what's going on or what might be on their land. We need to do that. There is a huge amount of catch-up to do from many years of not actually paying attention to it. That wasn't just one government; that's a number of governments that haven't done that. I guess you could say that we have become of age, and it's time we started looking at all those issues so that they don't get away from us.

I'll use an example of orphan wells. You know, to be honest, orphan wells were something that I asked about all the time when I was the critic and orphan wells were left. When I became the minister, I said that we're going to do something about orphan wells, and the government is actually going to put in a program that says we're going to put up a fund. We're going to assess the industry a certain amount to keep that fund whole, and we're going to go out after the orphan wells that are out there that no one owns. They're just there. The oldest one, I think, is from 1906 or 1908 — a long time ago, long before me or you, that's for sure. It was interesting to me where it was at. It was in the Kootenays.

We need to look at all those things and start addressing them in a realistic way before they get out of hand. I had some pressure from the industry, because what they'd have to do was look at all the wells that they drilled in Alberta and Saskatchewan and start thinking about an orphan fund there. They're looking at it in those provinces also.

We're leading the way, in many ways. But that's one way that we can start catching up to some of the ills that have been there for a long time and have plagued many landowners — and not just landowners but also the Crown. Some of those orphan wells are on Crown land, not just private land. We're doing the private land ones first under that fund. I think it's a successful program.

Those are the kinds of things we're trying to catch up on, Member, and it will take us a while to get there. It doesn't happen overnight. I know he's aware of that, having been involved with the oil and gas industry to a certain degree prior to being elected.

J. Horgan: The minister is right. There certainly is an advantage to being the local guy, because it's your neighbourhood. It's not just the northeast, the oil patch, the Peace; it's your neighbourhood. I understand there's a heightened sensitivity, and that must make it difficult for the two fellows that are on your right there, and that's good. That's all to the good.

I want to go back to my initial comment. That was what I'm trying to get at. I think the minister and I have been pretty candid as we go along here. My concern is that we arrived at a place where the throne speech was tabled and that the due diligence had not been done — not been requested, perhaps — to better inform how we proceed from February 2007 into the future.

When I asked if there were any studies or audits done specifically with respect to fugitive emissions, to routine flaring or any other emission activity, or activities that may cause emissions in the oil and gas sector, it was a specific question to that. Did the ministry, on behalf of the people of B.C., prepare for the throne speech by doing an audit of greenhouse gas emissions out of the sector?

Hon. R. Neufeld: About the energy plan and what we laid out in the throne speech. We had been working with industry for over a year prior to the throne speech being released in regards to the oil and gas industry and what we could do and what we could accomplish in reducing flaring and fugitive gases and all those kinds of things. So the ministry and the Oil and Gas Commission…. Although they're a regulatory body, the industry has to report to that regulatory body a lot of things. We can gather a lot of that information. Industry was fully aware of what we were doing to be realistic about reducing flaring by 50 percent in five years and eliminating it in ten.

J. Horgan: Could the minister tell the committee the total greenhouse gas emissions from the sector in 2006?

Hon. R. Neufeld: To his question: we get the information from Environment Canada. That's because the industry has to report to Environment Canada, depending on how large an industry it is. We have the 2004 data in metric tonnes in total, including the industries, pipelines and fugitive gases, and the total is 12.9 metric tonnes. We have, I'm told, just received the 2005 data. It's not here, but we can get it for the member if he wishes it.

J. Horgan: I thank the minister for that. Could he ballpark…? Does anyone know, again, just from looking at the data, if it is higher in 2005 than it was in 2004?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'd said metric; it's megatons. The deputy tells me it's marginally higher — just a little bit higher. What marginally is I don't know exactly, but we'll get it.

J. Horgan: That's marginal megatons, I guess. Wow. Okay. Well, I appreciate that, and I take the minister's commitment to get me that information. It certainly assists me and my crack research team behind me as we prepare for the year to unfold.

I'd like to stay on the selection of 2016 as the date…. Hon. Chair, the minister and I…. You weren't in the chair. It was a riveting discussion on self-sufficiency and the electricity sector. We talked back and forth about why we had different views on the matter. What we did agree on was that you couldn't just create electricity on a Friday afternoon. Both the minister and I were committed to that.

But yet something I think fairly significant: creating electricity from nothing — whether it be through windmills or run of the river or large hydro — is something that we're striving to do in a time period that's ambitious. Yet to reduce what the industry recognizes, and the minister and others have recognized, is a pretty basic function of shutting down unnecessary flaring, addressing fugitive gas, takes the same period of time.

I'm wondering if the minister could advise the committee…. A ten-year horizon is reasonable were it not a critical issue. If we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by megatons, and I'm not suggesting that we can…. If we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by taking these fundamental steps of reducing routine flaring and addressing fugitive gas issues, it would strike me that that would be something we'd want to get on right away.

Could the minister advise: why the ten-year horizon? Does that indicate that this is not a significant issue that requires immediate attention or just one that he wanted to give the industry some broad room to address?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I agree. We want to actually target flaring, one of the things in fugitive gases, relatively quickly. As I said earlier, we had discussions with industry of accomplishing 50 percent in five years. That's a relatively tall order. We want to make sure that we don't actually create an uneconomic playing field for British Columbia in regards to other jurisdictions that we compete with for those same dollars for exploration in B.C. The ten-year time line is something we agreed to with industry that we could reasonably get to zero routine flaring across northeastern British Columbia.

The member is probably well-aware that it's a little more difficult in British Columbia to actually get to that target as compared to Alberta, because Alberta's industry is spread all across the province of Alberta. They drill up to 23,000 wells a year. They've almost drilled every part of Alberta. There are pipeline facilities. There is access to deal with those issues probably a little bit easier in Alberta than it is in British Columbia, where it's a lot more sparsely drilled and in some very tough terrain.

We want to make sure we do it in a responsible way and we actually meet the goal. If we meet it before ten years, that's great. There's nothing that says we're going to wait and just capture the last well at the tenth year if we can get there quicker.

Technology may take us there a lot quicker than what we think today — technology that's not even with us today. We all know that it changes dramatically in short periods of time. In ten years the technology could change dramatically and get us to a point where we can hit that target before ten years.

J. Horgan: The minister and I had a chat about the cap-and-trade approach versus carbon-ledger approach to emissions last week. I'm wondering: are these going to be actual reductions we're going to see, or will it be a carbon credit situation? Are we committed to 2016, and it's over?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Routine flaring, those issues…. Those are actual hard caps — 50 percent in five years and zero routine flaring in ten. Unless something terrible goes wrong between now and then, I can't imagine that we won't make that target.

In the climate action plan, there are obviously offsets that are going to be allowed. I think the member is well aware that we have signed an MOU with the western United States in dealing with that. Interestingly, Manitoba is there also. Saskatchewan is now talking about it. Probably it won't be long, and Alberta will be there.

The federal government is, I think, moving in that direction. I haven't had a chance to delve into the climate action plan the federal government brought out. Besides, that's the responsibility of the Ministry of Environment.

J. Horgan: I'll give the minister a head start. He should wait for the one after the next election. That might be more realistic than whatever we've just heard. So that's wise. Good balancing of your reading material. I know you get swamped with this stuff.

I'm pleased to hear that those are actual reductions in the short term. Perhaps I'll just throw out that the minister might want to contemplate credits for those who are still required to or compelled to flare for exploration or volume reasons. It might be another way to green up the industry. You have an image….

My colleague from Fairview talked about Terry Tamminen, who is the advisor to the governor and has come to speak to the cabinet committee. It's a hard act that you've got there, and I think any effort to capture, even through credits, some of these other emissions would be a good policy initiative for the ministry to pursue.

While we're on the subject of the cap-and-trade versus the ledger, did the ministry participate, advise, inform, or work with the Ministry of Environment prior to the signing of the agreement in terms of what are the various approaches that are being contemplated — failures or successes, depending on your perspective, in Europe — and the whole need to deal with the North American issues of trading?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I know that the other day I mentioned there was something that had to do with transportation, and the member across the way said: "My goodness, the Transportation estimates are done. I can't actually discuss that with the Minister of Transportation."

The Ministry of Environment has full responsibility for that part of the question that the member just asked. Our ministry will obviously be part of that. We'll have to be a part of that. We will provide information and work with the Ministry of Environment.

It's not just the Ministry of Environment. It's numbers of ministries across government that are going to have to deal with this. There's Finance and the Min-

istry of Housing. A whole cross-section of ministries will be involved in this, but the file will be led by Environment.

J. Horgan: The energy plan speaks to establishing policies and measures to reduce their emissions in coordination with the Ministry of Environment, so I'll take from what the minister said that that's the lead and that EMPR is advising as best as possible.

I'd like to touch a bit now on coalbed methane or coalbed gas, as the minister calls it. My colleague the member for Vancouver-Hastings and I have been travelling about the province talking to people about this issue. I have to say that I haven't met an enthusiast yet beyond those who may well be on that side of the House.

I'm wondering if, first of all, we could have the minister give us a bit of a breakdown on where the significant plays are. I know that the Klappan, the Telkwa, the Comox and Campbell River areas on Vancouver Island, and the Elk Valley are spots of interest — and, I think, Princeton and, of course, the northeast. Maybe if the minister could just give us an overview before we get into some serious questions about where it is that the ministry is focusing its energies.

Hon. R. Neufeld: There are regions across the province, as the member is quite well aware. Where there's coal, there's coalbed gas — almost always. We have an abundance of coal spread across the whole province that could be accessed for coalbed gas.

I'll just lead off a little bit and say to the member opposite that coalbed gas in the province has brought some concern from residents. Member, you and I spoke about this when we first started our estimates. In many cases, that's from people — from individuals to environmental agencies to those that don't want to have anything happen on the land base — going out and talking about how terrible it is, how much it can ruin your life, and all of those kinds of things.

In fact, when I first got to be minister, I was hearing that, because we were pretty transparent about what we were doing across British Columbia with coalbed gas. There's a huge resource there that we can access. It's clean. It's not sour gas; it's clean gas. It actually will be beneficial for British Columbians if we can access coalbed gas.

I did take a trip down through Colorado, Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming with a number of leaders — first nations leaders and community leaders. What I asked the ministry to do was…. I wanted to see the good, the bad and the ugly, and we did.

There are differing ways that coalbed gas was developed. Most states that had lots of problems just went at it. They didn't have any rules or regulations around coalbed gas at all. They went forward, produced it and just let the water go out on the land and cause some huge problems. Others states learned from that as they moved forward and started treating their water.

Sometimes it's fresh water. I think it was Wyoming I was in where they actually bottle it and sell it. It's called coalbed gas drinking water. In fact, I brought some home. It's in plastic bottles. There are different kinds of water that can be produced out of the coalfields, from highly saline to fresh water.

In British Columbia what we did was work with some environmental groups to design a produced water plan — one that had not been in the province up until that time. No one previous to us cared about these issues, I guess. We worked with the environmental groups to put together a plan of how you dispose of produced water in the British Columbia. It's a plan that's worked quite well.

It seems to me is that it comes down to people going out there, trying to scare individuals and residents around the province who are not accustomed to oil and gas, as I am — that this would be a bad thing. It has obviously caused some problems for the ministry in trying to move this file forward across the province.

What we did in the last energy plan…. We said that most of what we hear about coalbed gas is water, so what we've said is that all water produced from coalbed gas must be reintroduced into wellbores far below any domestic water aquifer. That's in the new energy plan. It's a standard that I don't think is anyplace else in North America. It will limit us in some places because the geology is not always there to actually pump it back down. I guess we'll just lose the opportunity on producing that gas, but there is still opportunity across the province to do it.

J. Horgan: Certainly, I don't think it was a case of no one caring before. No one has been aggressively promoting the activity until now. I think, as with all things, it is cause and effect. Were there no discussion about coalbed methane activity coming to a community, people would probably stay home or do something else.

But certainly in Smithers and environs people were coming out by the hundreds. This is a cross-section, and as the minister will know, Smithers is a unique and diverse community with unique and diverse individuals who rarely land on the same side of an issue. With the case of coalbed methane, we had the "end the gun registry" group, first nations, environmentalists, expat Vietnam folks — the gamut. The whole cross-section of society — doctors, lawyers and health care workers; you name it — opposed this activity.

So I'm wondering: at what stage does the government say to itself that this may not be an activity that is suited for locations like Smithers and like the Comox Valley, an agricultural area on Vancouver Island with a tourism focus at this point in time, not an industrial focus? At what point does the ministry cut its losses and focus on areas where the activity is welcome? Again, if I were an investor, I'd rather go where I was going to be embraced rather than where I was going to be run out of town.

Hon. R. Neufeld: I know that the member has been out around the province with the Environment critic, actually talking, as I understand, to communities about

coalbed gas. I hope they are being reasonable in what they are saying. I can only imagine they are being reasonable. I don't know. I hope when they are out there and talking to people that they are actually being reasonable about the benefits of coalbed gas across British Columbia.

It's interesting that the member says: "Well, maybe we should only do it where they're used to it." I guess that would mean northeastern British Columbia. You are okay to punch more wells in northeastern British Columbia, but by golly, you had better not go anyplace else. I'm going to tell the member that there are other places in the province where we should be accessing a lot of our oil and gas, and coalbed gas is one thing we're talking about.

The member is well aware that in the interior and in the northwest there are some real problems with beetle wood. If the member is saying that we shouldn't try to replace some industry and some jobs in those areas, then that is the NDP position. That's not our position. We don't want those communities to die. We actually want those communities to continue to survive, and this is one thing that can help them survive. Those communities consume natural gas — not coalbed gas, because nothing is commercial.

So if the opportunity is there and if we don't have people going in and raising alarms that aren't needed…. I think the member is quite well aware of what I'm talking about, and it happened while the NDP were in government. I want to remind the member that he should think a bit about history. He was an adviser to a previous Minister of Energy during the NDP years. I guess it was by stealth at that time.

At least we're transparent. At least what we did…. What I said was: "We're going to go to the communities and actually talk to them before we think about letting tenures out to drill for coalbed gas. We're going to let them know what it is because of all the fears around coalbed gas and all the — I am not going to say lies but — untruths about what takes place with coalbed gas. The member knows full well that during the '90s almost as many wells were drilled — coalbed gas wells — in British Columbia as there have been since 2001.

But guess what. You never went and talked to the people. You never went there and told them. You never once were transparent about that. Not once did the ministry — and I live in northeastern British Columbia — come to northeast B.C. and say: "We're going to drill for coalbed gas in northeastern British Columbia." Not once did you let the public know.

Now all of a sudden today because we're transparent and people are actually going out there and telling people that there are a whole bunch of things wrong with coalbed gas…. I'm not going to say there will not be some problems with it. There are with any industry. My goodness, I think we're all old enough in this room to understand that. There are ways that you can produce that coalbed gas. It happened in the Kootenays under the NDP, it happened in the northeast under the NDP, but all of a sudden we shouldn't do it anymore.

It's an interesting revisit to history that I constantly hear from that side of the House about how: "Wow, you should do it different today." You know, had you been as transparent from 1991 to 2001 with all the wells that were drilled for coalbed gas, maybe it would have been a little bit easier for us to actually be transparent with the public today — which we are being. It causes some problems — there's no doubt about it. I can well imagine the problems it causes, but we need to actually look at more development of that kind of resource and the jobs it provides.

J. Horgan: Well, again I'm pleased that the minister gives me credit for all of the positive policies and initiatives in the 1990s. I was around, I hung out with the member for Nelson-Creston on occasion, and we did some very, very good things in the Kootenays, some fantastic things in the Kootenays. I know that the member for East Kootenay is aware of that.

What I would like to know from the minister is: if this is such a boon for employment, were there to be a facility on Vancouver Island, how many jobs could we expect in the construction phase, in the drilling phase and then in post-production?

Hon. R. Neufeld: I don't actually have those numbers filed anyplace. It depends on how successful the wells would be. It's the same as the conventional oil and gas industry in northern British Columbia.

Can I tell you how many jobs there are going to be ten years from now? No, because I don't know how successful those wells are going to be or how much the investment is going to be. But there is significant investment that comes. Someone doesn't decide on Friday, and on Monday there's a whole industry up and running. It takes a while.

We talked about this earlier with the member from Vancouver, where building a service sector for the oil and gas industry in northeastern British Columbia just started in 2001. It actually takes a long time for those processes to take place, for people to have confidence to invest the money and actually have that service sector up and running and be able to operate it year round. So I don't know that.

The member talks about the Kootenays. Well, that's one place they went. The member from the Kootenays is here. I bet you he never heard about coalbed gas well-drilling at all. He's a person that lived in the Kootenays when the NDP went to the Kootenays and started drilling for coalbed gas.

J. Horgan: Before we went off to vote, we were talking about coalbed gas, coalbed methane. I'll just respond to the minister's comments about what did or didn't happen in the past.

All we can do, of course, as legislators in this place is worry about our future. What I and the member for Vancouver-Hastings are discovering is that areas that have not traditionally participated in this activity are leery of it. The minister knows that. We've talked about that. I don't think the commitment in the throne speech or the commitment in the energy plan will sufficiently encourage people who have not normally been involved in the oil and gas sector to get excited about it.

I met with CSUG when I was in Calgary last fall. They gave a very good presentation. I'm sure the minister knows this stuff backwards and forwards, coming from the sector and having to be involved with the folks there.

I look at my colleague from North Island, who has Quinsam Coal in her constituency. It certainly is providing employment to residents in the area. Very happy about that. It's been in the community for a long, long time, but the notion of going on to private land and starting to drill holes because you hold tenure is something that's anathema to many, many people who are not comfortable with the activity.

Certainly, my colleague from Hastings and I have been discovering, as we go around the province, that the areas that appear to be targeted for development would be the last ones that I would select.

I understand when the minister says: "Typical lower mainland, lower Island focus — just ship it all up to the northeast." Well, you know what? It's not a bad idea. It's working well in the northeast. It's an accepted industry, one that's served the community very well. The minister has certainly been served by that as an individual and as a politician. Why not focus your efforts there and prove conclusively to people in other parts of the province that the activity can be undertaken with little or no impact on the environment and without increasing infrastructure unnecessarily, and see where we proceed from there?

I think with that, I'll move off of coalbed methane. Apparently, we don't have as much time as I thought we did to discuss the issues before the ministry.

I'd like to briefly go back to alternative energy for a moment, if I could — we're a bit sparse on staff, but I know the minister can do this stuff in his sleep — and that's the notion of the hydrogen highway, or how it was referred to in the Vancouver Sun in January: "hydrogen hype."

I'm wondering if the minister could explain why his government is embarking upon what could only be described as a bottomless pit of public subsidy for a technology that's not yet proven and may well generate more greenhouse gases than they are reducing.

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'm disappointed that the critic talks about hydrogen as a bottomless pit and that it will never help us reach some of our greenhouse gas targets. I totally disagree.

Will it be something that will, as I've said to the member many times, be decided on a Friday afternoon and happen Monday? No. It will take a long time. B.C. Hydro has been working with hydrogen for quite a long time. I think the member knows full well, even through the ten years that the NDP were there…. If they thought it was a bottomless pit, they should have stopped then, but even back then the NDP were investing money through the Crown corporation in the development of hydrogen.

B.C. is known as a world leader in the development of hydrogen. I think that's great for the province of British Columbia. I think it's great that we're looking at having fuelling stations from Victoria — we've already got one in Vancouver; it's been there for a while — getting up to Whistler and having 20 buses that run on straight hydrogen in the province. I think that bodes well for us.

There are countries around the world that would love to see the investment that's happening in hydrogen in British Columbia actually happen in their country. In fact, I was just at the international hydrogen conference being held in Vancouver as we speak. There are people there from Denmark, Germany and all over. In fact, 30 countries are attending that convention here in Vancouver because we are economic leaders.

To say that it's not worthwhile for us and that it's a bottomless pit is a kind of a negative way to look at something that's actually very positive for us in the province. It provides…. I'm not exactly sure how many jobs, but I know the staff will bring it out. The investment that's made in British Columbia on a yearly basis has accumulated tens of millions of dollars that have been invested in R and D in hydrogen, mostly by the industry — some by government but mostly by the industry.

It's an awful lot of money. It creates an awful lot of jobs. Maybe there's no one here from downtown Vancouver. I'm sure the folks from downtown Vancouver would be a little reticent to hear the critic say that we don't want hydrogen in the province. It's a great thing. There are five Ford Focus cars right now driving around the lower mainland used by government that are used by industry in testing those cars.

I encourage the member to go to Vancouver and have a look at the conference that's going on there now. I mean, Denmark flew a car all the way over here to show what they are doing in Denmark with hydrogen. I think it's positive and something we should be looking at in a positive fashion for us in British Columbia. In fact, Canadian hydrogen and fuel cell companies have invested over $1 billion in the last five years, most of it in British Columbia.

That's pretty phenomenal. Talk about jobs, talk about activity in Vancouver, and that's where it's all happening. Here I am, from northeastern British Columbia, bragging about all the jobs we're creating in Vancouver, and we have somebody from Vancouver Island saying we shouldn't have those jobs. We should quit it. We should stop investing that money. I'm sure the member may be in a bit of a hurry; exercised him-

self to say we shouldn't be doing it. I'm sure, on second thought, he'd be going back and saying: "Wow, I wish I wouldn't have said that, because really that's not how I feel."

J. Horgan: Well, the minister did hit on something there. I would have gotten to it a lot more slowly and eloquently had we had more time. I am advised by the Opposition House Leader that we will get a scintilla of time tomorrow. That's helpful, because I did have much more to say, and I have two colleagues who wanted to go back to the CBM for a minute. Maybe I'll pick up my response to the hydrogen question tomorrow, so that we can get to the next House and adjourn debate for today.

S. Simpson: The minister, I believe — and I'll paraphrase, and he'll correct me if I'm wrong — talked about the new technology that the government is adopting around the reinjection of surface water down below aquifers as the technology that will be used if coalbed methane is to proceed. I wondered if the minister could tell us where that technology comes from, how proven is it, and what the analysis is that the minister has that this is actually going to work.

Hon. R. Neufeld: I'd be pleased to talk to the member a little bit about the reinjection of water from oil and gas fields.

I guess the member is not aware that this has been going on forever, as long as there has been oil and gas developed — in Alberta for well over 100 years and in northeastern British Columbia for 50 years. It's not new technology. It's technology we've had for a long time. Almost every gas well and every oilwell produces a certain amount of salt water that is reinjected. It's never produced to surface. It always is reinjected back into aquifers, way down deep under huge pressure that puts it back where it came from.

When I was referring to new technology, I was referring to things that will take us further in the future. I don't know what that technology will exactly be, because it's technology that continues to come at us in a whole host of different ways for all kinds of industry, or just in our normal everyday life with cell phones and all of those kind of things that we enjoy today that we didn't, the way we do today, ten years ago.

That's the technology I was referring to. But we've been disposing of produced water for as long as we've been producing oil and gas in British Columbia.

S. Simpson: One quick question. I'm interested in what reports the government has around that being done in other jurisdictions with coalbed methane. It's not been done here because clearly coalbed methane is not advanced to that level. I'd be interested in knowing in what other jurisdiction — specifically related to coalbed methane — those particular practices have been used successfully to deal with the question of surface water and in ways that clearly are getting below aquifers. It's just a matter of the analysis so that we kind of know the experience.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Well, reading the energy plan, and I'm sure the member has read it from cover to cover, he will understand that we're about the first jurisdiction that I know of in North America that's going to….

Hon. R. Neufeld: Making your point exactly. You produce the water and you put it deep down in the aquifer. It's exactly the same as drilling for conventional natural gas, where you produce the water and you put it down in the aquifer. I don't know how much simpler you can get than that explanation to that kind of a question.

I'm not sure. Maybe the member is not aware of how you get coalbed gas and how you get conventional natural gas, but there is produced water from both of them. Not always from coalbed gas and not always from conventional gas, but generally there is saline water from both, and both can get reinjected deep in the aquifers in wells that can be drilled — into those aquifers that can accept that type of saline salt water.

I know it's maybe new to some people that have never experienced it. I know that when I was young and people were talking about hauling salt water in northeastern British Columbia, I was thinking: "What in the world are they talking about?" But it's actually produced water out of gas wells and oilwells. It's salt water; it's saline. It's almost like a brine, and it goes back, deep into aquifers. We're talking 6,000 to 7,000 feet back down into the earth — maybe 5,000 feet. That's how deep it goes back in. In fact, there's all kinds of geology between that and freshwater aquifers that protect it.

That's a process that's actually new. I'm not aware of anybody else in North America that does it for coalbed gas, but it's the same. I know that the member is still looking at me, confused. I don't know how else I can explain to the member that whether you're producing salt water out of a coalbed gas well or out of a conventional gas well should make any difference.

S. Simpson: I want to just quickly say that I appreciate the minister's comments. The minister made the point that concerns me. This has not been done around coalbed methane before. He may suggest it's all the same, but what we know….

As we know, the minister certainly is no scientist, as I'm not, and he's demonstrated that with his answer, and I agree. The problem is: where is the analysis that says it works with coalbed methane? It apparently doesn't exist yet. That was my point.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Actually, I'll answer that. Again, please, Member, I know you dislike coalbed gas. I

know you've probably been going around the province telling everybody how terrible it is. Get some understanding about coalbed gas. Get a little bit of understanding about salt water and how you dispose of it before you make statements like that. My goodness, it's pretty simple. Most people can understand that. I expect that you ought to be able to understand it. You're the critic for Environment. You ought to do some study on it before….

S. Simpson: And you should learn something about water quality and the environment.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Through the Chair, I know quite a bit about what goes on in the oil and gas industry. In fact, I've got you maxed out. I know that.

Noting the time, I move that we rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.


	YEAS — 43

Falcon	Reid	Coell
Ilich	Chong	Christensen
Les	Richmond	Bell
Krueger	van Dongen	Roddick
Hayer	Lee	Jarvis
Nuraney	Whittred	Horning
Cantelon	Thorpe	Hagen
Oppal	de Jong	Taylor
Bond	Hansen	Abbott
Penner	Neufeld	Coleman
Hogg	Sultan	Hawkins
Bennett	Lekstrom	Mayencourt
Polak	Hawes	Yap
Bloy	MacKay	McIntyre
	Rustad

	NAYS — 30

Brar	S. Simpson	Fleming
Farnworth	James	Kwan
Ralston	B. Simpson	Cubberley
Hammell	Coons	Thorne
Simons	Puchmayr	Gentner
Fraser	Horgan	Lali
Dix	Trevena	Bains
Robertson	Karagianis	Evans
Krog	Austin	Chouhan
Wyse	Sather	Macdonald