Hansard — Thursday, October 25, 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


Tributes		8829
	Tom Kozar
	C. Puchmayr

Introductions by Members		8829

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		8829
	B.C. soccer champions at Special Olympics World Summer Games
	R. Hawes
	Salish sucker
	G. Gentner
	Nechako white sturgeon
	J. Rustad
	Shipbuilding industry in Esquimalt
	M. Karagianis
	Nanaimo Seniors Games
	R. Cantelon
	Social inclusion in schools
	R. Austin

Oral Questions		8831
	Vancouver Convention Centre expansion costs
	C. James
	Hon. C. Taylor
	N. Macdonald
	H. Bains
	Investigation into activities of Ken Dobell
	L. Krog
	Hon. W. Oppal
	M. Karagianis
	Liquefied natural gas plant proposal for Texada Island
	G. Robertson
	Hon. R. Neufeld
	Tree farm licence land removals
	B. Simpson
	Hon. R. Coleman
	Terrace mill closing
	R. Austin
	Hon. R. Coleman
	Distribution of booster seats to low-income families
	C. Trevena
	Hon. L. Reid
	J. Kwan

Petitions		8836
	C. Puchmayr

Second Reading of Bills		8836
	Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Amendment Act, 2007 (Bill 43) (continued)
	C. Puchmayr
	J. Horgan
	B. Ralston
	S. Simpson
	N. Macdonald
	C. Wyse
	G. Robertson
	D. Thorne
	R. Fleming
	G. Gentner

C. Puchmayr: I rise here with a sad note that Tom Kozar, former BCGEU vice-president, retired BCIT college instructor and lifelong justice advocate, has passed away. There will be a service of celebration of his life on Monday, October 29, at 1 p.m. at the Operating Engineers Hall at 4333 Ledger Avenue in Burnaby.

Letters of condolence can be sent to Tom's family in care of the BCGEU at 4911 Canada Way, Burnaby B.C., V5G 3W3.

R. Hawes: Today in the gallery we have an extremely special group of people. They are special athletes that recently competed for Canada in the special summer games in Shanghai. I'd like to read to the members the athletes that are here: Mandy Manzardo, Ben Felling, Steven Dew, Jay Laitar, Marc Theriault, Rick Bussey, Derek Tomm, Bryce Schaufelberger and Hank Vielvoye.

They are also joined by two of their coaches, Bill Johnston and Jerzy Kusmierek. Some parents and other people accompanying them would be Alan Felling, Brenda Felling, Kim Mazer, June Laitar and Joe Laitar.

These are very, very special people. I'll have some more to say in private member's statements. Could the House please make them all very, very welcome.

Hon. C. Hansen: It's a pleasure to introduce a group of 30 grade 11 students that are in the Legislature today from the Prince of Wales Mini School, along with their teacher Mr. Andrew Humphries. Would the House please make them welcome.

B. Ralston: I wanted to add to the introduction made by the member for Maple Ridge–Mission. I want to particularly single out Steven Dew, who is a constituent of mine in Surrey-Whalley, which only adds to his lustre.

R. Hawes: I want to talk today about four simple words: "I know I can." Those words covered billboards, buildings and windows all over Shanghai during the recently concluded Special Olympics World Summer Games. What could be a more fitting homage to the hundreds of Special Olympians that took part in those games than "I know I can"?

Earlier this year B.C.'s soccer team won a tight battle to earn the right to represent Canada in the Shanghai games. In China the team played hard to work their way into a final game against Peru for the gold medal. After holding the seemingly invincible Peru team to a tie after regulation play, the Canadian team was able to withstand a fierce onslaught to keep the score to a tie after two overtime halves. With "I know I can" on the minds of every one of our players, the B.C. team won the gold medal in sudden-death overtime on penalty kicks.

The team was ably coached by Bill Johnston, Stuart Coates and Jerzy Kusmierek. Athletes on the team were Rick Bussey, Steven Dew, Benjamin Felling, Jay Laitar, Mandy Manzardo, Glen McIntyre, Marc Theriault, Derek Tomm, Hank Vielvoye and Bryce Shaufelberger.

Bryce is my constituent and has been a tireless worker for the self-advocates in Mission for many years. He fulfilled a valuable role on the transition board of Community Living and has been a special games athlete for 15 years. I believe there's nothing that Bryce cannot accomplish when he puts his mind to it, and that goes for all the other athletes on the soccer team.

Each and every one of these special athletes who are here in the gallery today can now change the "I know I can" to "I knew I could." You've made every one of us proud. Bryce, you've especially made me proud because I knew you could.

G. Gentner: I was somewhat invigorated by the member for West Vancouver-Capilano's discussion about steelhead. Many February days have been spent on the Chehalis catching and, of course, releasing this remarkable fish. Any fly fishermen can tell you that it's a remarkable fish.

But I want to talk about a fish that's sort of disenfranchised. Some 12,000 years ago, as B.C. lay beneath a sheet of ice more than a kilometre thick, for thousands of years the ice isolated the Chehalis River from the rest of the continent. Unable to interbreed with other populations of their own species, the Chehalis River fish began to evolve. The result was a community of fish species found nowhere else. When the ice sheet retreated, this unique community began to disperse.

There is one species of fish that was probably the first to recolonize the newly ice-free rivers of what is now known as the Fraser Valley. The Salish sucker is listed as endangered and is protected under the Species at Risk Act. The fish is also protected under the Fisheries Act.

Today it exists within only a few streams, sloughs and ditches in the lower Fraser. Out of 34 streams in the lower Fraser, the Salish sucker is now located in only five. Properly managed streams and ditches running through farmland can save the Salish sucker.

Destroying farmland affects these important ecosystems — ecosystems that were here well before the arrival of any people. Streams, sloughs and even

ditches in our farmlands are ribbons of aquatic and riparian habitat. They provide a diversity of life.

The member opposite ended his remarks and said that steelhead wins. But there is a new predator — asphalt on our floodplains. It's not what wins that we should be caring about. It's what we are losing.

J. Rustad: I rise today to speak about a noble fish, an ancient fish whose existence predates all of the current upstart species in B.C. waters today, including the steelhead. The genetically unique Nechako white sturgeon traces its history back more than 100 million years. It's a magnificent fish that's become endangered, likely due to human causes.

But there is some good news for this fish. A dedicated group of individuals and organizations are working towards saving the species and making remarkable progress.

Last year this group released more than 4,000 juvenile fish, and this year they continued their work by releasing another 4,000 juvenile fish. More than a thousand students have taken part in these releases, individually naming fish and helping to build awareness for the plight of the sturgeon. Even Canada Post recognized these efforts by coordinating the release of the juvenile fish with the release of a white sturgeon stamp.

This is just the start. In order to assure the species' survival, we need to do more. Efforts are being made to build a permanent rearing facility in Vanderhoof that would be the focal point of both research and recovery. I applaud the efforts made by coordinator Carla Wainwright, technical working group members Brian Toth, Steve McAdam, Cory Williamson and everyone involved.

I also applaud Freshwater Fisheries B.C., Lheidli T'enneh, the Tsawwassen fisheries program, the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council, as well as too many other groups to mention.

The plight of the Nechako white sturgeon is dire, with only an estimated 600 adult species left in the river. Without continued intervention, this fish will become extinct along with part of our history and heritage.

Please join me in thanking everyone involved for their efforts in saving the Nechako white sturgeon.

M. Karagianis: I rise today to talk about a long and proud tradition in my community of Esquimalt.

More than 100 years ago pioneer shipbuilders turned out the first seagoing ships from the shipyard in Esquimalt. Today the Victoria shipyard is hard at work building Orca-class training and patrol vessels for the Canadian navy. Four of the eight vessels are now in service.

Thousands of men and women have worked at the shipyards in Esquimalt over the last century, bringing much-needed employment, drawing and training a skilled labour force and injecting millions of dollars into the local economy. It's said that every dollar earned in wages is circulated in the community ten to 12 times. By that measure, the shipyards have long propelled Esquimalt, the south Island and far beyond.

This is a local homegrown industry delivering world-class results. Ships built in Esquimalt include many of the ferries now in the B.C. Ferries fleet. The Spirit-class vessels, the Spirit of British Columbia and the Spirit of Vancouver Island are the largest in the B.C. Ferries fleet. Built in 1993 and 1994, the 167-metre-long ferries can carry nearly 500 vehicles. They are powered by 16,000 horsepower engines, the most powerful in the fleet.

I think B.C. Ferries made a huge mistake two years ago when it decided to build its super C–class ferries in Germany. As history has shown, Esquimalt shipbuilders have the expertise and the experience to do the job.

We cannot buy cars built in B.C. or most manufactured goods, but we can buy B.C. when it comes to ferries. I call on the province to show its commitment to shipbuilding in my community by investing in a proud tradition in Esquimalt, our glorious local shipbuilding industry.

R. Cantelon: In September of this year some 3,500 athletes — their campers, their vans and their entourage — descended on Nanaimo for the 2007 Nanaimo Seniors Games, from September 13 to 15. Believe me, Mr. Speaker, they were looking for a good time.

Now, it's been said that the seniors generation of this era are fitter than the younger people of this generation, and I'm here to testify that my experience tells me that's true. I was standing on the track when Norm Lesage blitzed by me in the 100-metre dash in a time of 15.02 seconds. Pretty impressive.

If that doesn't impress you, Ann Fleming from Coquitlam in the 85-to-89 age bracket went by in 19.5 seconds. These people are fit. It was intimidating, I have to tell you.

I had the privilege to hand out the medals, and as I hung the medals around these winners' necks, I was very impressed. There was joy in their faces, and determination. I want to say that there was a spark there that told me: "I ain't done yet. Not by a long shot." It was an inspiration for all of us.

Vancouver Island north happened to win the most medals — 356 medals of the total. It's a tribute to Diana Johnstone, the host society president, her very competent board and over 1,200 volunteers that made it a terrific event. Right from the opening ceremony, which involved a pageant pitting the young against the old in a musical rendition, from the meals at Malaspina University that were served — they were tremendous — to the closing ceremony, I want to tell you that everybody had a good time.

Next year Prince George, 2008, I'm sure. Get ready, Prince George, because they're coming your way.

R. Austin: I would like to talk today about social inclusion as an important value here in British Colum-

bia. I do this as a result of a recent school district meeting that took place earlier this month in Terrace.

A motion was put forward by a school trustee suggesting that they use a newly built but unopened school as a special school for all the special needs kids in Terrace. The notion that we would segregate children with differing abilities or challenges than the average child caused anger and consternation in the community. So much so that parents, self-advocates, teachers, an elementary student, the president of the chamber of commerce, social workers and others all descended upon the school district office to voice their opposition to this motion.

The trustee, upon realizing the stern controversy of his motion, immediately removed his motion after trying to give justification for the original motion. This left the audience, nearly 80 people all crammed into the board room of school district 82, with no motion to speak to. It was decided that there would be a conversation on this topic without a motion.

The motion was then re-tabled. Passionate speeches were made, and in the end, all trustees voted against the motion, including the trustee who voted against his own motion. Now, I happen to know this trustee. He is a well-meaning and hard-working individual who cares deeply about kids and their success in the school system, and I mean all kids.

We need to recognize the value of social inclusion and understand that public schools are just one way — maybe the best way — in which we teach children to value one another and learn how to interact with kids from all walks of life, from many different religious or ethnic backgrounds as well as from a variety of social circumstances. It is where we all learn to cherish the great diversity that is just one of our strengths here in British Columbia.

While I am sure that all school trustees have to make difficult choices that balance the need to provide the best public education possible for all children within the constraints of many fiscal challenges that face us, we cannot and must not go backwards to a world where we lose sight of the importance of social inclusion.

I am sure that all members of this House applaud the decision in Terrace to value all children equally rather than to segregate a segment of the school population who just happen to have special needs.

N. Simons: It gives me pleasure to welcome in the House today the executive director of the Powell River Association for Community Living, Lilla Tipton. Joining her in the gallery is the executive director of the Sunshine Coast Association for Community Living, Glen McLughan, as well as Xerez Haffenden from SCACL and Randy Younghusband, also from SCACL.

I would like to also welcome Sue Perry from the Sechelt Indian band and three members from the Texada action network: Chuck Childress, Richard Fletcher and Rob McWilliams.

Oh, and I can't forget two people accompanying them, as well with the TAN group, David McWilliams and Sarah Fletcher.

C. James: When the Premier announced the Vancouver Convention Centre in 2003, the cost was set at $495 million. Early in 2004 the price jumped to $535 million. A few months later the overrun surged to $565 million. The Premier said: "That's it. Kaputski. It's done."

By 2005 the price was pegged at $650 million. The minister in charge said that would be it. That would be the final cost. Well, in 2006 a new minister, more overruns…. This time we heard it'll be in the range of $800 million.

In 2007, then the Liberals said: "Well, we'll come clean. It's $883 million." That's four years and $400 million. That's how much Liberal mismanagement and waste has cost the taxpayers on this project.

C. James: Now the Auditor General is casting serious doubt on that final number.

My question to the Minister of Finance: when is this government going to hold someone — anyone — accountable for this entire mess?

Hon. C. Taylor: Last spring the minister responsible invited Mr. David Podmore to come into this project — Mr. Podmore is someone with tremendous experience in building very large projects — and asked him to go over the budget as it had been presented to Treasury Board and to look at ways in which we could ensure what the final number would be.

He spent a lot of time, pulled in other experts to help him as well, managed to tie down many fixed costs and came forward to Treasury Board with the $883 million number. As Mr. Podmore has said, as the minister has said and as I will say, we are confident that number is the number that will result in the convention centre being built.

C. James: Well, you would think good government might have been bringing in the experts at the start of the project instead of four years later, when you're a little late on the project.

C. James: Four years, $400 million overrun. This government — $400 million in four years.

I'd like to read another quote. "There's no one in the private sector who could possibly maintain their job when one of their projects has doubled in price and is two years overdue." That was the Premier when he was Leader of the Opposition.

This project has been mismanaged by minister after minister after minister. It's $400 million over budget, and this government still refuses to hold anyone accountable. Make no mistake, Mr. Speaker. The Auditor General pointed the blame directly at the Premier and at their ministers.

To the Minister of Finance: why should we believe her now when she says they're going to manage a project that has been so mismanaged on behalf of the taxpayers for the last six years?

Hon. C. Taylor: The minister responsible brought in Mr. Podmore because of his expertise in this area. Mr. Podmore brought in two other experts to help as well. We must remember that at this point in the convention centre build, much had been done, and it was possible to tie down much of the remaining in a fixed-cost contract.

Mr. Podmore was also able to look at what was left to be done, work with experts in the field and build in contingencies to that budget to the extent that when it came to Treasury Board, we were satisfied that this budget will be the final budget.

C. James: Well, it's impossible for us to believe anyone from this government when they stand up and tell us anything to do with this project. The Premier and every minister on that side have lost any credibility on this entire project on behalf of the taxpayers of British Columbia.

C. James: It's been four years and $400 million in overruns. It's time to end the mismanagement. It's time to end the cost overruns on behalf of the taxpayers.

My question to the Minister of Finance…. She tells us that everything is just fine now. Never mind all those other ministers. Never mind that $400 million overrun. Everything is going to be okay now.

My question to the Minister of Finance is, again: why should we believe her now?

Hon. C. Taylor: Hon. Speaker, I don't actually recall the Leader of the Opposition ever having asked me before, so maybe that's one reason why she could believe me now.

N. Macdonald: The minister is speaking for the government. The government can switch speakers as many times as they want, but the government is ultimately responsible. The Premier won't stand here and answer questions. If the Minister of Finance is going to do it, then she needs to speak for all of government.

What the Auditor General said is really clear, and here are a few of the highlights.

N. Macdonald: The Liberal government wasted time and money trying to make the project a P3 — a mistake. The Auditor General says there was not enough expertise on the board. That is clear, and it's been admitted here today. That's a mistake, a government mistake. They broke ground before there was even a completed design — another government mistake. No one even knew who was going to manage the convention centre when construction began. The Auditor General says that.

The Premier is responsible for this mess. That is clear. The government has repeatedly had ministers stand in this House, and what they have said has been repeatedly wrong.

The question is: why should anything the government says on this issue here today be believed? The people of British Columbia want to know that.

Hon. C. Taylor: I am very glad that the member opposite actually mentioned P3s, because it gives me a chance to talk about what we've learned.

Hon. C. Taylor: Government now has more than 20 major projects that are P3s. All of those projects are currently on time and on budget. One of the big lessons we've learned from P3s is that it is a way to transfer risk away from the taxpayers of the province onto the private partner.

In this case, when we built the convention centre, P3s were very new in Canada. There wasn't a lot of expertise. There wasn't a lot of familiarity with the banks in Canada as to this model, so they didn't proceed. But if you're asking me today whether I would promote a P3 for the convention centre…. Yes, I would.

N. Macdonald: Whatever red herring you throw out, it does not matter. The fact of the matter is that the Auditor General has come out today and been very clear that there are a series of mistakes this government has made. Those mistakes sit with the Premier's office. They sit entirely with this government, and they have been monumental. This will be the biggest botched project in the history of this province. Let's be clear on that.

N. Macdonald: Let me quote from the Auditor General's report, page 49. It says this….

N. Macdonald: Listen carefully. This is what the Auditor General says, and I'm sure you'll have a chance to read it carefully. The Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project "must rely more on the letter of expectations it signed with the responsible minister" — responsible minister; let's remember that concept — "as well as direction from government, both for the guidance on this project's scope" — mistake — "budget" — huge mistake — "and schedule" — mistake — "and in developing its service plan."

So there's no room to weasel out of this. The government and the ministers are responsible. The question for today is: who is going to be held accountable for this botched project?

Hon. C. Taylor: We should remember who actually asked the Auditor General to do this report. That was the board of VCCEP, and the notion was that we should learn as we go along. This report actually points out some of the things that government has been saying all along.

Hon. C. Taylor: The government has been pointing out all along that this is a very complicated project; that in fact the inflation in construction prices was way beyond any expert's possible guess at what would happen. In fact, there were scope changes, and that came in part from the city of Vancouver who, before they would approve the project, demanded improvements.

So there were complications to this project, but we can learn as well. What I learned from this, more than anything else, is that we have to use P3s going forward.

H. Bains: Lame excuse after lame excuse. That's all we hear from this minister, from this government. But the Auditor General is very clear. The ultimate responsibility lies with this government and with the minister.

The Minister of Tourism deputy was on that board, and here is what the Auditor General had to say in the report: "An outcome of this arrangement, however, is that the minister responsible can have direct and timely access — through the reporting partnership of the deputy minister — to board discussions and decisions and to all governance and project-related material."

The government can't plead ignorance. They knew it all along. So the question is to the Minister of Finance. When will she stop making excuses and fire those who are responsible for this boondoggle?

Hon. C. Taylor: When the reports would come up to government, it was very interesting to be in my seat. It's not really reflected in the material here, but every time there was pressure put back on VCCEP and the management and the board to show us how, in fact, they were dealing with these mounting pressures. I didn't attend one meeting where there wasn't a question put back to VCCEP as to how they would manage this.

We asked for mitigation measures. We asked if there were any possible changes in scope because of the city of Vancouver's requirements. Every step of the way there were attempts made to keep this as closely as possible within budget.

There is no question that it is a very high number for a convention centre, but at the end of the day, what we will have is a remarkable facility in this province. When someone referred to it as being the biggest whatever ever — boondoggle — I would say that this one isn't wrapped in plastic.

H. Bains: You know, the Auditor General is very clear. He made it clear that it was the minister's responsibility. It was the government's decisions that pushed the cost upward. They tried to force the project onto the Olympic time lines — clearly mentioned in there. They gave direction to the board. They knew all along that they were hiding the true cost from the taxpayers.

Again, to the Minister of Finance. This government has no more credibility left with the public. The people in charge are still in place. When will this government get rid of those responsible for their incompetency?

Hon. C. Taylor: Well, in fact, the minister responsible called in David Podmore, who was new to the project. Mr. Podmore has a reputation of handling…. I

believe I saw a number of over $3 billion in major projects. He knows how to do big projects.

Changes were made. In fact, one of the first things that Mr. Podmore recommended was a restructuring of the board and putting it together with PavCo, which has been accomplished, so changes have been made as we move forward. Also, as you get to a different time line on the project, you need different expertise, so now it's a time that we're also thinking about the marketing side. So changes have been made, and at the end of the day, this will be a project that we're all proud of.

L. Krog: Ken Dobell was the chair of the convention centre board. He still sits on that board. In no less than three consecutive service plans he stated, "I am accountable" — repeat — "I am accountable for ensuring the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project achieves its specific objectives."

He's failed, and this government won't do anything about it. He sits on the board of the Law Society of British Columbia, he sits on the board of Legacies Now, he is a provincial representative on VANOC, and he is still a special adviser to the Premier. Now he's under investigation by a special prosecutor just appointed.

My question to the Deputy Premier: when will she or the Premier ask Mr. Dobell to step aside?

Hon. W. Oppal: The criminal justice branch this morning made a decision to appoint a special prosecutor, that being Terry Robertson, a well-known Vancouver lawyer. As the member of the opposition knows, the branch is completely independent from my office. The appointment was made under section 7 of the Crown Counsel Act. I assume that Mr. Robertson, after he's examined all of the evidence, will make an appropriate decision.

M. Karagianis: Mr. Dobell has many, many responsibilities, as we have just heard the list of — among them the convention centre, and it's a mess. Now we've heard the Attorney General explain to us how the justice branch works.

The question is very clear. Will the Deputy Premier or the Premier ask Mr. Dobell to step aside while the special prosecutor is doing his investigation?

Hon. W. Oppal: Mr. Speaker, you know, the last time I looked, we had due process and fairness in this country. Under our system, the Crown Counsel Act mandates the appointment of special prosecutors where it would be in the public interest to do so.

In this case, the Assistant Deputy Attorney General concluded that it would be in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor — that being Mr. Robertson. Mr. Robertson will report back in due course, and a decision will be made at that time with respect to whether or not charges will proceed.

G. Robertson: The government is entertaining a proposal for a liquefied natural gas plant on Texada Island, which is just about 70 miles from Vancouver. Picture this: a supertanker a week, a massive LNG terminal and gas-fired power plant pumping out up to about four million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, just upwind of the two million people in the lower mainland.

This project is so outrageous and egregious that any government that is serious about climate change and a healthy environment would not even consider allowing this proposal to go forward. Will the Minister of Environment intervene to stop this proposal and prevent an environmental catastrophe?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Listen, I had the pleasure of meeting with three gentlemen who came to see me this morning. I know they entertained the NDP caucus with some of their concerns — Chuck, Richard and Rob. I assured them, unlike what the member says — and it's not untypical for the NDP to try and say something that's not exactly true — that the government is not entertaining a proposal from WestPac for an LNG port. There is a company out there that's actually talking about a proposal. No proposal has come to government.

But it's not untypical of a socialist to actually want to stop anybody from having any idea other than their own, especially that member across the way.

G. Robertson: That was a question to the Minister of Environment — not anti-environment. So I'll start again.

We're talking about a highly explosive supertanker the size of an aircraft carrier cruising through the Gulf Islands, right by Vancouver, halfway up the Inside Passage every week. People around Georgia Strait, people in the lower mainland are against this proposal. A recent Ipsos-Reid poll showed that 84 percent of coastal residents are opposed to tankers on our coast.

So who is this government listening to? Is this government listening to the people of the south coast?

G. Robertson: My question is simple. To the Minister of Environment: is the government listening to the people of the south coast or listening to corporate lobbyists, ex-ministers like WestPac board of directors member Geoff Plant? Does this government and its Minister of Environment support the notion of an LNG plant on Texada?

Hon. R. Neufeld: It's funny how the tune changes when they hear the truth. But I'll tell you. I'd take advice from Geoff Plant any day compared to that member across the way — any day.

As I said before, there is no proposal to government — none whatsoever. But the interesting part here is that I didn't hear a question from the member for North Coast about an LNG plant that actually is planned for Kitimat, that actually went through an environmental assessment process and that's in the process of maybe being built.

I didn't hear from those members across the way when there was one planned — the same company — for Prince Rupert and they changed their plans and came down to Texada Island. I didn't hear anything from them then. But it's getting a little closer to their homeland, I guess you could say. Now they want to start asking questions and actually inferring things that aren't correct. As I said, there's no proposal.

This is the type of thing that had us through the dismal '90s. Every time somebody came up with an idea, the group of socialists would say, "No, that doesn't fit with us. You can't have it," and booted them out of the province. No wonder they doubled the debt.

B. Simpson: It has become clear that the Minister of Forests failed to protect the public interest when he approved the release of Western Forest Products private lands.

I have a straightforward question to the minister. Aside from cash donations to the Liberal Party, what payments did the people of British Columbia receive when he allowed Western Forest Products to buy out of their social contract?

Hon. R. Coleman: The member knows that under the Forest Act, companies can ask for their lands to be removed from a TFL. The member knows that each one of these requests is examined on merit and is done so by staff — my staff making a recommendation to me.

I looked at that recommendation, which was to allow this exclusion to take place. I stand by that decision.

R. Austin: This government's failed forest policy has created chaos in the industry, and the minister continues to refuse to help communities facing mill closures. Terrace has just found out that the last mill in town will be closing indefinitely, another devastating blow to my home community.

Will the minister commit today to finally start doing his job, come up to Terrace and work with my community to explore all possible options to address the closure of this mill?

Hon. R. Coleman: We have $1.03 exchange. We have the lowest housing starts in a couple of generations in the United States. We had the subprime mortgage crash in the United States. The price is way down for our products going through to the largest market that we have. The company has actually advised me that they'd never seen in 30 years…

Hon. R. Coleman: …all these features coming through with regard to a commodity that they actually produce.

For the member to actually say that anybody's policy affects the dollar and the housing starts in the United States just shows an abject misunderstanding of commodity markets in the world.

C. Trevena: Two days ago the Minister of State for Childcare released a list of groups that she claimed made requests to get booster seats, and we know that some of those groups didn't actually get booster seats or the number of seats that they requested.

Yesterday the minister did say that she still had dozens of seats in her office, so I'd like to ask the Minister of State for Childcare if she can tell the House how many booster seats there are sitting in her office.

Hon. L. Reid: I'm more than happy to say that clearly, it wasn't the best way to proceed. Certainly, in terms of the distribution, it's ongoing. We are in a work-in-progress with our partners — with the British Columbia Automobile Association…

Hon. L. Reid: …and, indeed, with the B.C. Association of Family Resource Programs.

I regret very much the negative attention that has been brought to bear on our partners in this exercise, because I think they continue to do glorious work on behalf of the province.

The seats available across British Columbia — we're continuing to deliver them. And we're continuing to deliver more seats as we go forward.

We, indeed, will ensure that we increase the usage of booster seats in the province, because it's vitally important. This is the only age group — five to nine — where the level of injury has not gone down.

J. Kwan: We know that there are booster seats in the minister's office. We know that there are booster seats in other Liberal MLAs' offices as well.

Let me just recap. The minister uses taxpayers' money to buy booster seats and taints the whole process with sleazy partisan politics, and now she's hoarding these seats in her office.

J. Kwan: She's refusing to tell British Columbians how many seats are left, sitting in Liberal offices. Surely someone, anyone from the government bench over there, would stand up and tell the minister to do the right thing. Release those booster seats to the community.

J. Kwan: Surely anyone — the Deputy Premier — will stand up and tell the minister to do the right thing and actually ensure that this process is followed without any more partisanship.

Hon. L. Reid: I'm happy to assure the House that any undistributed seats will go to the B.C. Automobile Association for distribution.

B. Simpson: Yesterday I asked the Minister of Finance if she would ask the comptroller general to audit the release of private lands from tree farm licences — a simple question that was taken on notice by the House Leader for the Minister of Forests.

The minister has not risen today to provide an answer. I respectfully ask that the minister inform this House when I may expect an answer.

Hon. M. de Jong: With greatest respect to the member, he has not raised an appropriate point of order.

C. Puchmayr: I'd like to introduce a petition. The undersigned agree that the minimum-wage earners deserve a raise after six years. They call on the Premier to follow the leadership of the NDP and allow the minimum wage to be raised to $10 an hour.

Hon. M. de Jong: Continued second reading debate on Bill 43, Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Amendment Act, 2007.

C. Puchmayr: I believe I still have a bit of time left on the debate. I'm going to back up to where I left off before the lunch break.

I spoke about the air quality in the Fraser Valley and my concerns with the structure of this board. That is a board that is going to be governed by accountants, by the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce — now called the Vancouver Board of Trade — and appointments by the government. In taking away the democratically elected component that exists currently in the TransLink board….

One of the concerns that I express with this is the fact that when you're making calculations on economics…. For instance, if someone were to calculate the advantages of a toll bridge, and this bill allows for tolling to take place on any crossing over, I believe, 50 metres….

Tolling can now be implemented by an unelected board of directors in many different places in our communities. So an accountant making those calculations could make the calculations purely on what is the best return for…. For instance, if those tolls were put in

a position of a P3 or a private company that needed to maximize profits for those tolls, what is the impact of that on the airshed? Are we now creating a form of governance that may very well take the argument of economy, the argument of environment…?

C. Puchmayr: It will take some very important arguments away from local government, away from the communities and away from people that live in those affected areas, and it will turn those over to accountants, to people that may have totally different vested interests in the configuration of transportation in the lower mainland. That is certainly concerning.

I know we talk about the old governance model, and the old governance model was democratic. Some will say that it wasn't democratic because you didn't actually elect a TransLink board of directors. You elected councillors and mayors, and the councillors and mayors ended up being in those positions. That's still certainly a lot more democratic than the system that is proposed in this legislation.

This legislation absolutely strips democracy. I think there's an old saying: democracy is the worst political system in the world besides all others. Sometimes it's difficult to work on a consensus because different communities have different vested interests, and that was one of the beauties of the former governance of the TransLink board. People could sit down with New Westminster and say: "We are concerned about traffic in the north sector of your border. We're putting a road in. What is the impact?"

We could sit down and say: "Okay, we would like some restrictions to truck traffic after certain hours of the evening." There was a compromise that was made prior to the development of South Point, for instance. There was a compromise made, and there was some mitigation made with respect to sound barriers when New Westminster went to Burnaby and said: "Look, we want a better sound attenuation if you're going to put this project through on the borders of our community."

That's the beauty of being able to have input from the grass roots, the people from the residents' associations up into the councils, and then that would go to a joint group which was the governance — which was the transit authority, who were really democratically elected and then appointed to those authorities. Taking that away is wrong. Taking that away is absolutely going in the wrong direction.

I want to read a quote from the Transportation Minister talking about one of his trips to China. He makes a very interesting quote here. He probably did it a bit tongue-in-cheek, but sometimes when people jest, they do have some heartfelt comments they make through that. He says: "No one there ever questions the need to build infrastructure like this. Now, granted, China has a bit of a different governance structure, but in many ways it is the ideal governance structure."

He goes on to say: "China really has the ultimate…." He then uses his real name. He then notes that the Chinese don't have the labour and environmental restrictions that we do. "It's not like they have to do community consultations," he goes on to say. "They just say, 'We're building a bridge,' and they move everyone out of there and get going within two weeks. Could you imagine if we could build like that here?"

But sometimes, when I look at the minister across, I think this would be utopic for him to have this type of ability. I really, truly believe that he feels this would be a great way to build.

If this is so much in jest, then why does he bring forward a form of governance that will actually trample on the democratic rights of a municipality? If this was in jest, why is he introducing this type of legislation which, in fact, does exactly that? It gives the ability to move quickly, to railroad, to put systems in place with virtually no consultation.

Let's talk about the 30-year plan. This board of governance has a need to go to the public after their initial 30-year plan. Wow. I'll be 83 when they finally have to come to the community. Actually, even in some of the legislation it goes on to state that…. It isn't cut and dried. They have to make the best effort to go to the community — the best effort. It doesn't even say: "they shall."

They're going to make the first plan now. They don't have to factor in the growth strategies. They don't have to factor in 2021. They don't have to factor in the GVRD plan that the United Nations awarded the GVRD $30,000 for, a plan that facilitated growth in a very constructive way. They don't have to do that. They can merely make a 30-year plan, not go to the public whatsoever, and that will be the guiding principle of the new governance structure on transportation.

As someone that lives in a community that endures 300,000 vehicles a day, Monday to Friday, cutting through, I shudder to think of the impacts that this will have.

New Westminster was very positive when it came to the needs of goods movement in the area. We looked at it, and we actually took a share of the goods movement in our community. We did a responsible thing, but we did so with consultation; we did so with mitigation.

We sat down with the government, we sat down with TransLink, and we said: "This is what our needs are in order to facilitate this policy. Here's where we need to go. We will buy in, but there are certain things that we need to do in order to get an end result." That's gone. That doesn't even exist anymore.

What happens, Madam Speaker, is that now this board writes their 30-year plan and they say: "You know, we think we need to shove another 200,000 cars a day through New Westminster. Well, New Westminster owns the road network. Jeez, maybe there's a way to get around that. Let's just run it through."

They have the blessing of government, they have the blessing of the Vancouver Board of Trade, they have the blessing of their accountants, but they don't have the blessing of the people. The people in the community are losing their say.

Look at some of the people that were elected and sat on TransLink boards or boards of transportation. Some of them paid their political price for that. Some of them are no longer there. For some of them, their political careers ended over that. Some people will say rightly so, and some people will say it was a bum rap. But you know what? It was democracy.

If they were sitting on the board or chairing the board of TransLink and they came up for re-election as a city councillor or mayor and the end result was that they lost their job because of that, that's democracy. You live by it, and you die by it, but at least you have the ability to do it. At least you have the ability to have a democratic process.

We're losing a lot of that in this province. We're losing the rights of the community to have a say. We've lost it in most of the independent power projects. We're losing it with regards to B.C. Ferries. We look at the increases in the fares since this new sort of quasi-private board has taken over. We're losing it on transportation.

I shudder to think that we're continuing to lose the ability of communities to get up and say: "I don't believe in this. I want to see something different." Sometimes it's just a matter of having some open consultation, and we're not seeing open consultation here.

We're not seeing people overwhelmingly saying: "Get rid of any form of democracy on TransLink and replace it with an unelected, undemocratic board that has abilities to implement taxes, to amass and develop lands, to hold lands, to impose taxes on homeowners and not on businesses."

That has to be a concern, and we only need to look to some other jurisdictions for what happens when you open Pandora's box with respect to taxation for transit on property taxes. It just balloons. It just absolutely balloons.

So I need to vigorously oppose this bill. We certainly have some extreme concerns, and at the very least, the concerns are with respect to the fact that it becomes undemocratic.

Why does the new board not have cycling interests or environmental interests or transit user interests? Wouldn't that be a quality board — to have people who actually use transit to sit as part of this governance? Well, they do now. There's an open process where people can go to TransLink and they can voice their opinions.

I believe it was the mayor of Langley a few years ago…. I remember there was a bus that was chartered by Langley to go out there and oppose a position that the board was taking. I think it was on the vehicle tax.

You know, there was an ability for a grass-roots movement to go out there and say to a board, "You can't do this," and say: "If you do this, next time I go to the polls, each and every one of you, I'm going to make sure you're not re-elected."

That's gone. With a stroke of a pen from the Lieutenant-Governor, that will be gone. Again, that concerns us on this side immensely. Every time you take somebody's democratic rights away, people need to be concerned. People need to speak out. Communities will be speaking out.

Look at just recently with the Auditor General — the report on the massive overrun of the convention centre. The Auditor General said: not enough expertise on the ground on the convention overrun.

Well, you know, Bill 36 actually had a provision in there where the board had to have a certain amount of expertise in that field. That's gone — boom. Now they don't have to have any expertise. We're just seeing a $400 million cost overrun on the convention centre because of a lack of expertise. We're bringing in legislation that could impose a massive tax on every homeowner in the region because something is bungled — because of poor representation, not expert representation. That concerns me greatly, Madam Speaker.

It even allows for a screening panel, and it recommends they set their own remuneration. I don't even know what it is now. I don't know what the parameters are. It just says they get to sit down and decide how much they get paid. Are they going to be governed by a conflict commissioner? Is there going to be…? You know, we have to fill out a document, and it has to go to the conflict commissioner. We have to make sure that we're not holding shares in a company while voting on a certain position that we're taking.

Well, how many people in chambers of commerce and boards of trade sell cars? I think almost all car lots are members of chambers of commerce. I think most of them. I've gone to chambers of commerce meetings and listened to people who are in the business of selling cars. There's nothing wrong with being in the business of selling cars.

But when you're deciding as a director…. "Jeez, do I build a bridge that for every transit lane takes about ten lanes of cars off the road? Gee, am I going to want to build a bridge with the taxpayers' money that's going to take cars off the road, and I'm not going to sell as many cars? Or will I build a bridge that's going to maximize single-occupancy-use vehicles because it's to my advantage as someone that sells cars?"

It's bizarre that we would actually set up a structure where there is the ability for that to happen. I'm not saying it's happening. It may never happen, but the ability is there. The ability is there for someone to manipulate the direction of transportation for purely selfish reasons.

The first reason I'm seeing that is most at risk is the environment. I remember often turning on the radio and hearing about air inversions and health warnings as far east as Hope. They were telling people with respiratory problems not to leave their homes —

Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Hope. Can you imagine if somebody has a vested interest in putting more cars and more single-family homes out there and not having a good planned growth? Could you imagine what that will do to the children in that area, to the lungs of the people that live in that area?

In closing, I would like to stress that we are strongly opposed to this legislation. It is wrong. It takes away people's democratic rights, and we will continue to vigorously oppose it.

J. Horgan: I'm pleased to take my place to speak on Bill 43, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Amendment Act, 2007, sponsored here by the Minister of Transportation.

It's always a great day for me to stand in this place and talk about transportation. I'm a member, as you know, hon. Speaker, from the lower Island, not the lower mainland. We have significant transportation issues and challenges in my community, and I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak about those in the context of this piece of legislation, which creates and amends the existing TransLink and GTVA relationships for my colleagues and those on both sides of the House that live and reside in the lower mainland.

When I glance at the bill, I see an attempt by the Liberal government…. This is the same Liberal government that spent the latter years of the 1990s talking about the importance of putting democracy back to local governments, putting powers back to local governments. They trumpeted their Community Charter, hon. Speaker. You may well remember that. It was a centrepiece in the election campaign in 2001. The B.C. Liberals were going to be on the side of communities. They were going to listen to people. They were going to have a ground-up approach.

Well, how far we've fallen from that lofty goal that was set so many years ago. I know my friend from the southern part of the Peace, Peace River South, is probably aghast at how far he and his colleagues have gone from their initial intent of empowering communities, empowering local government to make the changes and to make the decisions that will build stronger and more effective communities from the top of the province to the bottom, to the coast and to the border of Alberta. How far we've fallen.

Unaccountable, undemocratic and contemptuous of local government — these are the comments that I've been listening to as this debate has proceeded. It strikes me that that's inconsistent with what the government said they were going to do when they were elected. In fact, it's a polar opposite. The Community Charter, if I recall, was supposed to empower individuals within communities to build the community that they would like to see.

Transportation policy is at the root of the climate change debate, hon. Speaker. You're well aware of that. People talk about energy here in British Columbia and across the world. The burning of coal, which was an initiative sponsored by those on that side of the House until very recently, and those sorts of activities are contributing to an increase in greenhouse gases, but nowhere more so than with the automobile.

I'm struck by a government that says on one day that they want to solve problems and on another day they create them. I'm thinking that if I was a private company that was given the opportunity to build a bridge and make people give me money to cross it, I would be encouraging people to use that bridge. I wouldn't be encouraging public transit. I wouldn't be encouraging smart growth or compact communities. I'd be saying: "Come use my bridge — only $1.50 today. Come between two and four in the afternoon, and you can cross my bridge for a buck."

That's what I would do if I was an entrepreneur, if I wanted to increase my revenue. I'd want to get people in their cars on my bridge. How does that square with the green team on the other side or the epiphany-riddled Premier? He says one day that he wants to solve these problems, and the next day he creates more problems. Tabling this legislation, Bill 43, is a classic example of that.

We've had a number of contradictions recently. Just in the past two weeks, while the House has been in session for the fall sitting, we've had a number of contradictions for the epiphany-riddled Premier. He said that he wanted to reduce sprawl. He said he wanted to have transportation initiatives on the lower mainland that would increase densities and provide livable region strategies with the sorts of policies that would make them work.

One thinks you would empower local governments to do that. This bill does the exact opposite. It rips control away from local governments and puts it in the hands of what they call business expertise.

Now, I've got nothing against business. I encourage entrepreneurship. I see it around my community every day, across the province. It's what makes things work. But if you're going to say to a contractor, "Build a bridge; charge people for using it; charge whatever you need, just make a profit, and let's get that traffic going back and forth," I'm going to say: "Give me eight lanes. Let me fill them up."

It's like selling hamburgers. It's pretty basic stuff. If you get paid for every car that crosses the bridge, you're going to want more cars to cross that bridge. You're not going to want expanded transit. You're not going to want the Evergreen line out to the northeast. You're not going to want SkyTrain to Tynehead. You're going to want cars on a bridge.

That's the plan on that side of the House, and they want to reduce the ability of local politicians, local governments, to affect those policies, so they pass it on to their Liberal-appointed friends. Let's get Ken Dobell on that. Once the special prosecutor is finished, I'm sure he'll be able to serve his time and then come back and do good work for the B.C. Liberal team. I'm sure he'll be able to do that.

The challenge we have with this legislation is that if you're going to have regional transportation authorities, they should be regional. They should be represen-

tative of the people in that community — not business expertise, but communities.

Here on the south Island I've been raising issues with the Minister of Transportation since I was elected. I've looked at the Sea to Sky Highway. I've looked at $600 million, $700 million, $800 million to get people to the ski hills faster. I've seen $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion, $1.4 billion for a transit line from the airport so that we can get them from the airport to the ski hills faster.

What have we seen in my community? What have we seen on the Malahat? I know the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head is interested in this. How about $1.95? That's what the government has spent on Vancouver Island since 2005. Maybe $2.50 — that's about it.

We talk about dealing with climate change. We've got ministers on that side of the House that turned a blind eye to a removal of 12,000 hectares of forest land in my community so that there could be more urban sprawl. How does that reconcile with the green team over there?

The epiphany-riddled Premier, you would think, would have thought ahead and said: "That doesn't make any sense." He would have turned to his cabinet colleagues in the south Island, the two lone members of the cabinet from Vancouver Island, and said to them: "Member for Saanich North and the Islands and Member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, what do you think? What do you think about that? Do we need a transportation authority on the south Island to deal with the congestion?"

Maybe we should invest in commuter rail. There's a dandy idea. Why wouldn't we, as a Legislature and as a government on that side of the House, look at the challenges on the south Island and say: "If we're going to manage growth, if we're going to have smart growth and we're going to have compact communities, why don't we see density across the rail line?"

I know my friend from Nanaimo-Parksville would understand that. Why would we encourage regional sprawl and growth on the wild, rugged west coast of Vancouver Island, where there is no transportation infrastructure, when we've got opportunities on the east side of the island with the E&N corridor, with the Vancouver Island Highway project that was built in the 1990s to move people around? Why wouldn't we encourage that?

J. Horgan: Who did build that? I think it was the New Democrat government. Those on this side of the House had the foresight to say, "If we're going to have growth, let's do it in a planned and manageable way to benefit communities, not to benefit big business" — not the corporate interest, but the public interest.

It was a slow, slow road to "unaccountable, undemocratic and contemptuous of local government." It started with the lofty goals of the Community Charter. Then we had: "Oh, wait a minute. That's not working so well. We'll have the Significant Projects Streamlining Act."

Isn't that something? The Significant Projects Streamlining Act. In other words, if local people, if those that are elected in local communities don't want something to happen, we're going to have to do something about it. What better way to do it, with respect to transportation, than through Bill 43, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Amendment Act?

What better way indeed. Let's say to local representatives: "We'll have a council of mayors. You guys can get together and review the good thinking and the rocket science that comes out of the business expertise–riddled panel." We can look at their work and say to you, council of mayors: "What do you think?"

You don't have any authority. You don't have any veto. You don't have any say, but you can wave your hand over top of this, and we'll call it regional governance. We're going to expand the capacity of this board. We're going to increase the gas tax out in the valley. We're going to take more money out of people's pockets and encourage them to drive on the bridge because they won't be having any public transit until 2013.

Why not invest today in the Evergreen line? That's what we're saying on this side of the House. Why not see more buses right now — today? That's what we're saying on this side of the House. Why would you allow an entrepreneur to say: "Come and bring your car to my bridge. It's only $2.50 today. Cross while the going's good"? It makes no sense at all. That's not demand management. That's insanity, led by those on that side of the House.

Here on southern Vancouver Island — my community of Malahat–Juan de Fuca — I have two ribbons of highway. I have the West Coast Road coming from Port Renfrew through the now recently privatized forest lands of Jordan River, Shirley, Otter Point and into Sooke. And I have Highway 1, the Malahat, coming into the Victoria approaches. Two ribbons of road. Between those two ribbons of road is a perfectly practical and perfectly usable rail line.

People in my community, local governments, the municipality of Langford, the municipality of View Royal, the municipality of Esquimalt and the city of Victoria have come together with local developers, community representatives, biking enthusiasts and other transportation advocates, and they've said: "Let's invest in commuter rail." They've come to the government of British Columbia. They've come to the Minister of Community Services, and they've said: "Why wouldn't you invest in transportation alternatives in our community?" The response has been silence — absolute silence.

I suppose those communities should be grateful because when we look at what this government plans for the lower mainland, we'd rather not have that visited upon us here on southern Vancouver Island. But the fact remains that the disparity between the investments that we're seeing in transportation on the lower mainland versus the investments we're seeing in the south Island are stark, graphic and disappointing — profoundly disappointing.

It's billions of dollars to get to the ski hills for my friend from West Vancouver–Garibaldi — billions of dollars to get from the airport to the ski hills. Now, that's all well and good for your corporate friends who are flying in to see if they'll invest in bridges and other road-based, car-based modes of transportation, but what about people in other parts of the province?

What about those who can't get through Highway 16? My friend from Skeena, those in the northwest, cut off by natural disasters over the winter. What was the help from the government? "Well, we'll get to you in a minute. We're burrowing a hole down Cambie right now, putting people out of business. That's what we're doing. We're investing all of our time and energy in putting small businesses out of work as we end Small Business Month."

J. Horgan: They're anti–small business. The public interest is never on the top of their priority list. The corporate interest always is and, of course, getting to the ski hills.

Now, I've got nothing against skiing at all. I'm not as agile as I once was, but I've been known to go down the bunny hill now and again with my family. I enjoy it very much. But I don't think I need to cut 20 minutes off my trip to Whistler for 800 million bucks.

If we could have a quarter of the cost overruns on the convention centre for Vancouver Island to implement commuter rail, the greenhouse gas savings alone would help meet the challenges that the epiphany-riddled Premier has brought before us with his climate change agenda, which I think we're going to be seeing in the next number of weeks. When that comes forward, I'll look forward to the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head standing in her place and saying: "We're going to invest in commuter rail because the member for Malahat has been right all along. The members from Esquimalt, Juan de Fuca, have been right all along."

The B.C. Liberals are going to actually earn some respect, rather than waiting for election day and saying: "Vote for me, and I might give you something." That's the sort of "vote for me" attitude. "I've got a community charter. I'm going to give power back to the people." That's what the Premier said. That's what the member for Vancouver–Point Grey said in the 1990s.

Boy, oh boy. We've come a long way — unaccountable, undemocratic, contemptuous of local government.

The biggest contradiction of all has to be Bill 30, which we passed in this place in 2006, I believe it was. That was a piece of legislation that overrode decision-making on land use in electoral areas of municipalities when it came to independent power projects. I've had other members talk about this in other debates. I think it's germane to Bill 43 inasmuch as it symbolizes the underlying ethic of the government across the way, the corporate ethic.

Business expertise trumps common sense in local communities time and time again. Why not allow your corporate supporters to build projects that reap windfall profits to them at the expense of local communities? That's what it's all about, isn't it, at the end of the day? We weren't elected to come in here and speak for the people in our community. Well, we on this side of the House were. Those on that side of the House were elected to get larger campaign contributions from larger corporations. That's the focus, and we see it in spades with Bill 43.

Public-private partnerships for transportation initiatives will not reduce demand. What we need is a project and a plan that consists of community input. I heard my friend from Vancouver-Kensington talk about that, and I know my friend from Whalley will do the same thing. Community input will lead to transportation initiatives that will move people around effectively in a climate-friendly way, in a way that will help build and shape smart growth, not sprawl.

Again, I have to go back to my colleagues from the south Island that sit on the government benches. I ask myself as I go home every night, hon. Speaker: what would compel you to allow 12,000 hectares of land to come out of a forest reserve, to come out of a tree farm licence for one purpose only, and that's to lead to urban sprawl, which will lead to more congestion, more transportation challenges on the south Island? Why would you do that?

What compelling reason could there possibly be to allow a forest giant — a profitable forest giant — to take those lands that were part of a social contract, a covenant between community and company in the 1950s? Why would you allow that land to come out? Again, a former Forests Minister from bygone days…. Why would they allow that to happen?

The challenge with transportation is that if you're going to be building communities, you need to have an infrastructure in place. I know that with Bill 43, the intent of the government, as they say…. I heard the minister clearly in his rant this morning, when he was heckling and ridiculing our critic while she was putting forward our perspective. His view was that business knows best. That's the way you build a transportation infrastructure.

I would suggest to you, hon. Speaker, and others will suggest to you throughout the course of this debate, that communities are better placed to do that, and individuals within those communities — cyclists, those who are looking for better pedestrian walkways and compact communities, complete communities where you can live, work and recreate. It's just a slogan for the people on the other side of the House — B.C., "The best place on earth."

Well, it's certainly a very nice place. It's a super, natural place. I thought that was a pretty good slogan. Beautiful British Columbia — that's undeniable. Best place on earth is a bit boastful for my taste. My mother taught me not to be boastful — to acknowledge the splendour that surrounds us. To put a logo on things and say we're the best place on earth is a bit boastful for me.

J. Horgan: I see my friend from Mount Pleasant agrees with me, so I'll continue.

Although I know that the member for Kamloops wants me to stick to the point and from Quilchena, he wants me to stick to the point, I have to go back to this sprawl on the west coast of the Island, because it is germane. If you're planning for transportation, surely to goodness you've got to plan communities. If you're going to be planning communities, you'd think that at the top of your list would be local representatives and local government.

When we pass this bill — and I'm sure that the government majority will ram it through, and we'll be ripping away the accountability of local government and making the undemocratic board that the minister is so anxious to see with its expertise and business acumen — I'm hopeful the minister will then set his sights on trying to improve things here on the south Island. Maybe, perhaps, the representatives at the cabinet table from the south Island will speak up for a change and say: "What we need here is infrastructure so that we can get people out of their cars, onto bicycles, into public transit to move people around in an efficient way, in a climate-friendly way, to save lives, to do something about the Malahat."

The minister knows full well, after a two and a half year study and $2.50 worth of expenditure, that there are significant challenges on the south Island. They're not addressed by releasing private forest lands for sprawl on the west coast of the Island. They would be addressed by using the infrastructure that is in place smartly and listening to communities, listening to local representatives.

It's the antithesis of this bill, however. But I'm hopeful, after they've made the mistake in the lower mainland, that when we get to the south Island, we might actually have some creative thinking, some positive thinking, inviting communities back to the table rather than booting them away from the table, as this bill does.

The Community Charter — that's where we started. That was the promise. That was the dream from Vancouver–Point Grey. We're going to put power back to the people. That's what they said.

They were elected, and what have they done? The Significant Projects Streamlining Act; Bill 30, with respect to IPPs; and now Bill 43. Unaccountable, undemocratic, contemptuous of local government. It's pretty simple.

If I were the mayor of Vancouver, I would be thinking: boy, oh boy. Here I am. I'm about to host the Olympics. I thought this was a partnership. I thought we were working together, putting in place infrastructure to make these things happen. I look across from Cambie Street, and I see this great, cavernous hole. I see small business people wondering what the heck they bought into. What was visited upon them by — what I would call the government of British Columbia, but I think I heard the minister and the Minister of Finance say — the funding partner? What has the funding partner done to us?

The funding partner. That's a little bit of a downgrade — isn't it? — from the province of British Columbia. But that's how they refer to themselves over there with respect to the Canada line.

I heard the minister say today with respect to P3s that they're the greatest things since sliced bread. Yet with respect to the Cambie line and the devastation of small businesses here in Small Business Month….

No, no, no, we can't have that. Maybe it wasn't the right way to go. "Maybe it was a mistake," she said. Well, it's only a mistake if it affects you. All politics is local. That's absolutely right.

As I look at the clock, hon. Speaker, I see I have more time on my hands. I know the minister is anxious to hear my views on these issues, so I'll continue on. He often talks about how humourless I am. I'm sure he's not really referring directly to me. It's more my species than anything else.

The Greater Victoria transportation commission came to the minister a year and a half ago — might have been two years ago now — and asked for a one-cent-a-litre increase in the gas tax. I believe, at the time, gas was selling for about 86 or 87 cents a litre, and the minister said that consumers would not stand for it. Consumers would not stand for a one-cent-a-litre increase.

That one-cent-a-litre increase would have gone to public transportation on south Vancouver Island. It would have gone to improving the bus system and towards implementing commuter rail, light rapid transit down Douglas Street. It would have been for the betterment of the community, the public interest. Again, I refer back to the public interest.

Since that time, gas prices went as high as $1.22 a litre. Not a scintilla of that increase, from 86 or 87 cents to $1.22, went toward public transportation. Every penny of it went to Exxon, Shell and other large multinational oil companies. That was an outrage.

We on this side of the House mounted a campaign against those increases. I didn't hear one peep from the other side about consumers not standing for it. We asked for a one-cent-a-litre increase for transportation issues on the south Island. The minister said consumers wouldn't stand for it.

As I read this legislation, the government fully intends to increase the gas tax not just in the GVRD but extending all the way out to Abbotsford and Chilliwack. I'm wondering how those consumers are going to stand for it. What's the difference? What's happened?

There are more epiphanies on the other side. Epiphany-riddled — I think I've coined that phrase. I should trademark that, because it seems every other week something shiny goes by, and the government says: "Ooh, let's follow that for a bit." What's going to happen then? That's what we say on this side of the House.

J. Horgan: We're developing a consensus position on this. That's right — absolutely. It's evolving.

This bill will make TransLink less accountable. There will be less political oversight, more environmental costs, fewer transportation choices. It reduces the ability of communities to affect what goes on within their borders. Local governments have been neutered. Their powers have been taken away. It's contemptuous, it's undemocratic, and it makes for an unaccountable board.

I know my time has almost run out, hon. Speaker, and I can sense that you're disappointed by that. I will take my seat, but before I do that, I'd like to leave a message with the members from the cabinet that reside in the south Island. Give a thought to us this Christmas, give a thought to commuter rail, and give a thought to increasing transportation funding in the south Island.

J. Horgan: Don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

To the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, the member for Saanich North and the Islands: spare a thought for those of us who live in the gridlock here in south Vancouver Island. Spare a thought for my constituents who have to use the Malahat to get back and forth to work every day, putting their lives at risk when the rains come and the fog comes and the snow comes in the winter months.

Maybe contemplate just for a moment in your hearts, if you have the opportunity, investing in public transportation on south Vancouver Island, investing in improving the quality of life here in British Columbia, the part of British Columbia that you represent — the local governments, the local residents that sent you to this place to stand up for their interests, not the corporate interest but the public interest. That's our mandate. That's what we should be doing.

Thank you very much for the time, hon. Speaker. I've had a delightful afternoon.

B. Ralston: I rise to take my place in this debate, and I want to make a couple of comments about the proposed governance structure that this bill recommends to govern transportation in the south coast or the lower mainland. Secondly, I want to talk a little bit about these assumptions that are made as to how the new entity will be financed.

It is striking, the degree to which this governance structure shows contempt for the democratic structures of British Columbia. It's very striking. It's often been said that the British parliamentary system is a system of amateurs advised by professionals, and I think that is meant very seriously.

I remember a famous American political commentator who said he would rather be governed by 15 people picked at random from the Boston phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard. There's a presumption in democracy that elected people will make the best decisions, and if they don't, the people they represent will correct them either through their representations or at election time.

But here the presumption is very clearly different. It's striking in its contempt for elected officials. I refer, to give an example, to the mayors council, which will have some very minor role in the governance structure — nominally there in the structure, but a very minor influence.

What the prospective member of the mayors council on regional transportation must do, in section 209, is swear an oath. I'm reading from the section: "I will, when exercising my powers and duties under the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act as a member of the mayors council on regional transportation, consider the interests of the transportation service region as a whole."

Now, it's a striking proposition in the sense that it expresses a complete lack of confidence, an arrogant contempt for those elected mayors who have much experience in running a transportation system and certainly in interpreting the land use patterns and the property tax financial decisions that would be required in running such an enterprise.

To subject them, before they can take their place in this organization, to this process of taking an oath to consider the system — the transportation service region as a whole — strikes me as arrogant in the extreme and says everything that needs to be said about this minister's lack of respect for local government.

The mayors council has a role in the screening panel in selecting directors for the new entity. Again, it's striking that in section 170 of the proposed act, an eligible individual as a director "does not hold elected public office of any type…."

So it's not simply that you're not a member of a council that might be…. That you can't be a member of a school board, can't be an elected official of any type, again expresses a contempt, an arrogance, for those people who choose to serve their community in whatever capacity. I suppose you can't be a diking commissioner. You can't be on the harbour authority. Any position in which you hold elected public office, you're disentitled to be a director of this agency.

The screening panel is set out, and these are the people who will select the directors. Another wise political scientist said that the greater the degree of remove from direct representation and the more levels you have to work through in order to get to the ultimate decision-maker, the less democratic it is. This board is constructed like a Russian doll. There's an entity inside an entity inside an entity inside an entity before you get to the real decision-makers.

I would like to review what's in the screening panel. The mayors council is entitled to appoint someone. But they can't appoint one of their own, because that would be an elected official. So the mayors council has to select someone other than an elected official. They certainly can't select one of their own to do that.

The Minister of Transportation can select someone, and it's directly, in this particular case. Presumably,

that will be someone who's very supportive of the minister's position. One would assume that.

Next, the Institute of Chartered Accountants is entitled to appoint someone. The Institute of Chartered Accountants does appear before the Finance Committee. Their CEO, Mr. Rees, made a presentation to the Finance Committee earlier this year. I believe he appeared before us in Mission. But there's nothing in what the Institute of Chartered Accountants does that suggests, inherently, an interest in transportation per se.

I looked at what they called their checkup document, which is their annual review of the economy in British Columbia. Their recommendations are conventional business recommendations that one hears from chambers of commerce from time to time, but nothing terribly striking.

In their review of the mainland southwest development region, what they do talk about is air quality. It's striking that they do talk about that. They have some observations about ozone data, but they don't tie that in any way to transportation. I don't think it's any great revelation that air quality, particularly in the Fraser Valley, is tied to emissions, but they don't really talk about that in any way whatsoever. So they record the levels of ozone. They mark that as an indicator of public health, but they don't appear to connect that in any way to transportation.

I don't want to express any distaste for the accountants. Obviously, they perform a valuable societal function. No person who does their taxes that have any complexity would want to be without the advice of an accountant from time to time. Certainly, they perform a valuable function in industry, business, non-profits, universities — whatever. But there's nothing inherent, I would say, in this particular Institute of Chartered Accountants that qualifies them to appear on the screening panel.

Next, members of the Vancouver Board of Trade. Now, it's striking that for an organization that purports to govern the region, it's the Vancouver Board of Trade. It's not the Surrey Board of Trade. One of the members of this chamber is a former president of the Surrey Board of Trade, and I expect he'll probably vote against this legislation because of that. It's the Vancouver Board of Trade — not the Abbotsford Board of Trade, not the Tri-Cities Chamber of Commerce, not any other business organization in the lower mainland.

Why is the Vancouver Board of Trade given such primacy? Why is it selected instead of any of these other business organizations? Surely one would have thought that the Surrey Board of Trade, being the leading business organization south of the Fraser River, might have been considered for that. But no. It's the Vancouver Board of Trade.

I really wonder about the choice of the Vancouver Board of Trade — again, a very respectable organization. I was recently reading a piece in B.C. Business where the then president, Dan Muzyka, attempted to put together a group to look at the future of the region. I agree with what he was setting out to do. He was saying that it's very clear that after 2010 there's really not very much of a business vision for this province. He was supported in that by someone who's on the city council in Vancouver.

Councillor Peter Ladner said: "But all booms end, and when you look beyond real estate speculations and one-time Olympic construction, our productivity is declining; our research-driven, high-growth new industries are lagging behind their competitors; and head-office employment is declining." He warns: "The foundations of all this growing wealth…. They're shaky at best." That's not a New Democrat. That's Peter Ladner, who is a representative on the city council in Vancouver.

In order to address this problem, this lack of vision, Mr. Muzyka, very much in the manner of the regional scope of this entity that's proposed, tried to put together an organization to develop an economic vision, to engage in regional economic development within the very same region that this entity is proposed for. One can't think of an activity that's more integrally related and tied to the economic development of the region than the transportation system. Certainly, that's a very important aspect of economic development.

Land development, the future growth of communities, the business development that would follow — all those things are integrally tied up in that vision of the region. But what Mr. Muzyka found when he tried at the Vancouver Board of Trade to put this group together to do it was that despite his very considerable qualifications…. I certainly in no way want to suggest that there's anything wrong with Mr. Muzyka's approach. I support it totally. He expresses his frustration in this article.

The Vancouver Board of Trade and its members didn't support him in creating this organization to create a vision for the economic future of the lower mainland region, the very region that this transportation entity will cover. So I'm a little troubled by the fact that the Vancouver Board of Trade, given this history of inability to develop an economic vision he proposed to 2025, is going to be placed in a very influential position to select the leadership who are going to drive this transportation entity forward, develop a ten-year plan and a 30-year plan.

They've failed as a group, not through any lack of effort on Mr. Muzyka's part, to develop an economic vision for the region. Why would they be any more successful in promoting a transportation vision for the region than the economic vision that they failed at doing?

I'm troubled by that, and I expect the minister will have an answer for that. Perhaps we can debate that when we get to committee stage of the bill.

The other entity that's included as one of the members of the screening panel is the Greater Vancouver Gateway Society. That is, I gather, not an organization that was set up by the minister to promote the Gateway project. It's a separate Gateway council, which was founded in 1994. I have a list of the executive members. Again, they will be no challenge to the vision that the minister is advocating — the exclusively business vision, I would say, and one aspect of business, not all of business.

I'm not sure that their website was up to date. There were people such as the president and CEO of

the Vancouver Port Authority, the president of the B.C. Wharf Operators Association, the president and CEO of the B.C. Trucking Association, the president and CEO of the Vancouver International Airport Authority. And in yet another interlocking directorship, I suppose, in some respects, the Vancouver Board of Trade is on the Gateway Council. There are representatives of railways, maritime employers, associations — things like that.

Really, the Gateway Council appears to be basically another aspect of the same thing, although it's styled as a separate entity. It seems very much like the kind of point of view that one would get from the Minister of Transportation or the Vancouver Board of Trade. So although the members of the screening panel appear to be appointed by different people, they all appear to come from the very same perspective.

That is a legitimate perspective, but in my view and in the view of the members opposite, it's certainly not the only view, nor is it desirable to create a board of directors populated exclusively by people who have that view. This board of directors is not accountable and has very little political scrutiny available to it. Really, it will treat the regional transportation services more as a utility than as a development mechanism, a community-building exercise with the environmental and social land use implications that, of course, any transportation system has.

The government has clearly said that as a result of the Premier's brainwave on the beach in Maui, they're embarking on a process of climate change. They're going to consider that.

It's significant that the governance review began before this change in the direction by the Premier. As a result, the governance review and the structure that is now before us in this legislation do not consider those goals at all.

It's not just me saying that, because I know the members opposite might be a little bit skeptical about me saying that. It's the David Suzuki Foundation. David Suzuki has said publicly that his climate change team is working very closely with the Premier's office. They're giving the Premier his advice on climate change, but none of that appears to have been listened to in putting together this legislation when you look at the financial implications and the sources of revenue that are proposed.

I know that TransLink is now a much-maligned and defunct organization. But back in April 2006 the TransLink chair Malcolm Brodie made a presentation to the Surrey and Langley chambers of commerce, which I was able to hear, and I kept a copy of his speaking notes. He spoke about the challenges in financing TransLink. This is a person who the minister praised earlier in his speech yesterday and is recognized as…. Mind you, he is an elected official, of course. He's the mayor of Richmond, so I suppose that diminishes him somewhat in the esteem of the minister.

Nonetheless, he did set out the challenges that TransLink faced, and I want to read a little bit from what he said about those because I don't want to be accused of misquoting him.

He goes on to talk about the difficulty of the parking site tax, which this bill would abolish, but he says:

He concludes with some comments about the importance of the transportation system and it being vital to the provincial and national economies.

Now, I thought that was a pretty good summary from the chair of TransLink about the sources of revenue and the difficulties with those sources of revenue. Just so I can review, there are three sources: fuel taxes, fares and property taxes.

What does this bill propose as the three sources of revenue for the new transportation entity? Why, fuel taxes, fares and property taxes — the same three areas that Mr. Brodie pointed out have some inherent difficulties as a form of stable funding for the operation.

The tax on transportation fuel — or the gas tax, as it's sometimes called. There are some assumptions built into this plan about gas tax revenue. If I could turn to this document now, in the TransLink governance review at page 43, where they looked at projected TransLink expenditures and revenues — because they did a business model for the proposed new entity….

What they assumed on the revenue side: "On the revenue side, it is assumed that property tax revenues would increase by 3 percent, that fuel tax revenues would increase by 1 percent a year and that fares would increase by the rate of inflation. No new taxes or levies are assumed."

Keep in mind that assumption about the increase in fuel tax revenue, because what the Premier's very close climate change advisers from the David Suzuki Foundation say is that that doesn't accord at all. It's completely in contradiction with the climate change

objectives of the very elementary climate change plan that's been thus far discussed, because it envisages reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector by a substantial amount.

If you're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector, you're going to encourage…. At least not a 1-percent growth per year over the life of the plan. You're going to increase or perhaps have it stable, but surely your long-term goal would be to have it decline.

That's a source of revenue. Mr. Brodie already points out that the gas tax revenue is inherently unstable because of fluctuations in price and vehicle usage. So the proposed financial plan for this entity doesn't make sense in terms of the other commitments that the government has made.

Maybe the Minister of Finance didn't know that. I find that hard to believe. Maybe the Premier didn't tell him. I find that hard to believe. Maybe the two ministries or the Premier's office and the Ministry of Finance are working in isolation. That's possible. Certainly, on such an important, major public endeavour, these considerations would be taken into account. But there's nothing in the plan to suggest that that's been taken into account.

Mr. Ian Bruce of the David Suzuki Foundation, the Premier's climate change adviser, says:

The Premier's climate change adviser from the Suzuki Foundation says that the other measures are good measures — the California vehicle tailpipe measures and the low-carbon fuel standards. He goes on to say: "These policies will be unlikely to halt, let alone reduce, overall greenhouse gas emissions from B.C.'s vehicle fleet." This is for a couple of reasons. It'll take quite a while to phase in those new vehicles, and secondly, without significant investment in transit service and other sustainable transportation, more vehicles and longer vehicle trips will negate the emission reductions by the California standards.

I want to read it, just so that it's clear that it's the advice of the Premier's climate change adviser at the Suzuki Foundation who's saying this. It's not something fanciful that I have extracted from any document.

There you have it. The financial assumptions that are in this document on one of the three sources of revenue — which Mr. Brodie says raised, in the old entity, 30 percent of the budget — are completely flawed. This projection was prepared before the Premier's climate change direction and has assumptions that, if the Premier is to be believed or these targets are to be seriously tackled, will not come to pass. So the revenue structure on which this entity is founded has had one of the three legs of the stool kicked out from under it at the beginning.

I really wonder whether this is good policy, and I'm not sure that all the professional experts that the minister would pack onto this board of directors wouldn't tell him the same thing. I don't see why this problem can't be addressed now.

Apparently, this document, this bill, these financial assumptions and these revenue projections are prepared in the absence of any consideration of what the David Suzuki Foundation's climate change specialist says about the targets that have been set for reductions in the transportation sector.

I have very serious concerns about the financial viability of this entity, if that advice from the David Suzuki Foundation — Mr. Bruce — is taken seriously. Maybe it won't be.

There are some skeptics who deride the Premier's conversion to climate change and say that the targets are not really serious, that this will not come to pass, that it's simply being concocted for political purposes. I seriously hope I'm wrong on that, but what this bill posits, holds out as its projections for revenue and what the David Suzuki Foundation says are a complete contradiction.

At the committee stage I hope the minister, if he chooses to listen to me, will provide some answers.

S. Simpson: I'm pleased to take my place today to debate Bill 43, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Amendment Act, 2007.

While I'm always happy to stand in my place and speak about issues that are important to British Columbia, I must say, on this particular piece of legis-

lation, that it is a bit melancholy. It is a bit of a sad day, because it's a piece of legislation that is regressive. I think that it was introduced, in terms of what it accomplishes, in a pretty spiteful way, and it certainly does not address the real issues we face around transportation and transportation planning in the lower mainland.

One thing that the legislation does do is it fairly, in some ways, reflects the minister's personality. I think the legislation does that. I think the legislation bullies in the ways that it deals with things. It's not accountable. It creates structures that are not accountable.

I think that in some ways it is more ideological than practical in some of what it accomplishes. Part of the challenge with that is that the bill doesn't actually get at the problem. There are significant problems with the transportation planning and the transportation system in the Greater Vancouver area, and there are issues, certainly, that this minister and this government could have addressed, but they haven't addressed them with this piece of legislation.

Rather they've accomplished a number of other things. I want to talk through those things over my time to be able to participate in this debate.

I would make an observation. I've been watching with interest the debate that's gone on around Bill 43 to this point, and I was reflecting back on a comment that I've heard referenced by the government side a couple of times. They've talked about muzzling and those kinds of things. Yet I find it very interesting that so far, to this point in debate on this bill, it's been members of the opposition — with the exception, of course, of the minister — who have spoken to this bill.

Not a single member from the government side has spoken. Not a single member from the lower mainland who represents a constituency on the government side has spoken. It makes me wonder if maybe they are a little bit concerned about this bill. Maybe they're a little bit shamed by what this bill does and doesn't do.

Maybe it's because they know that this bill is undemocratic, and maybe it's because they know that what this bill looks to do, when we talk about muzzling, is muzzle every mayor and every city councillor in the lower mainland and stop them from talking about these critical issues.

What is this bill, and what does it actually do? What the bill does is it restructures, essentially, the governance of transportation planning in the lower mainland. The way it does that is it takes authority away from elected officials. It takes the board of TransLink…. It is made up of mayors and councillors who are elected in their communities and then come to the TransLink board, make decisions at that board, are accountable at that board and, ultimately, can be held accountable in their constituencies, back in their communities.

We certainly know that happens. All you'd have to do is ask George Puil whether the chair of TransLink can be held accountable. It probably cost him his seat on Vancouver city council, because the people of Vancouver objected to the way that he dealt with his role as chair of that board.

So people are held accountable, and that is increasingly so as transportation — the notion of transportation planning, the relationship of transportation planning to land use planning, to climate change and to the environment — becomes more inextricably linked for people in their minds, and increasingly as people in the lower mainland and across the province, for that matter, look at the connection between those issues and how important they are and why we need to be working together on those issues.

Hon. Speaker, what you have is a situation where this board of elected officials now has been dismissed by the minister. The minister has decided that. This is a board that certainly thinks more about transportation in the lower mainland than the minister, that has a balanced view of transportation and sees transportation as more than pavement, that has a concern about the environment and a concern about air quality, that thinks about the social condition and people who need to take buses and use transportation — all things that the minister is oblivious to and certainly doesn't comprehend.

What they did is they began to challenge this minister in his approaches, and they also — and we'll talk about this a little bit more as we go along — began to ask the government when it was going to step up and actually invest some resources in making transportation work.

Of course, this government has abandoned transit, abandoned buses. They've walked away from that. They put multi-billions of dollars into pavement. Those commitments are all there and solid, but the commitments are a pittance when it comes to buses and transit. The rhetoric is high; the commitment is a pittance.

Mayors and councillors have asked those questions, and the response of the minister with Bill 43 is essentially to dismiss local government. They've dismissed local government, and in its place there will be an unaccountable board — a professional board, an expert board.

We have no idea who this board will be made up of, but what we do know is who is going to make those choices. What do we know? We know that five people are essentially going to make those choices. What we know about those five people is that four of those folks come to that table with a perspective. It's not a bad perspective, but it is a narrow perspective in terms of the interest of transportation and transportation planning.

They come to that table from the board of trade, which obviously represents business interests in the Vancouver area. They come to that table from the chartered accountants, who represent, certainly, the economic and the business interest. They come to that table from the Gateway Council, which represents large goods movement and business, and a representa-

tive, of course, who will be named by the Minister of Transportation. Then the mayors got to name one, and that's all good.

But I have a suspicion, and my suspicion is that when this expert board gets appointed, it's going to kind of look like the committee that selected it. What you'll have is nine people on this board, and seven of them or so will reflect the view that those four groups reflect — the board of trade, the Gateway Council, the chartered accountants and the minister. Then there might be one or two others on that board who reflect something else, because you've got to at least put a face on it of some kind to show that it's not too crass.

The reality of it will be that when those votes come, all of those votes will be determined by the folks who represent a single perspective.

What we know is that transportation, increasingly, is not about a single perspective. It really is about this issue that we talk about here and people talk about around the province and around the world. People talk about sustainability, and they talk about what sustainability actually means.

When we talk about sustainability, we are not talking just about the three legs of the stool, as it's often called — about the economic, the environmental and the social. Those are what we're talking about. But there's also a fourth leg, which I like to talk about, which is engagement. We'll talk about that a little bit in a minute.

What we do know is that those other three pieces need to be dealt with in a coherent and holistic way. The concern I have is that we are putting in place a board that is not accountable, is not elected and cannot be held to account by the people of British Columbia with the tool that they have to hold all of us to account: come election time they decide whether to keep us around or throw us out on our ear. That's all good, but this board isn't going to be held to account at all — not in that way at all.

As a consequence, when decisions are made around issues related to sustainability, if those decisions are weighted in an inappropriate way towards one of those three legs of the stool — towards the economic leg of the stool — it will create significant problems in the region. It will create environmental problems. It will certainly create challenges for the Premier's pursuit of climate change, to get the six million to nine million tonnes he wants out of transportation. It will create problems there.

Also, as my colleague pointed out, one of the three funding sources here is fares. If it doesn't deal with the social implications of the fare structure, it will then hurt those people who are most vulnerable and who most need to use the service. If it doesn't look at those things and weigh them in balance, it certainly will impact the Premier's desired intention, which he talked about at the UBCM, to double the amount of people that use transit.

If you don't make it easier and more affordable and more accessible for people to get on that transit, that's not going to happen. To date, of course, we have had very, very few commitments around transit from this government — 20 buses in six or seven year, something like that. That's the commitment so far.

What we have is a real challenge around whether we can meet climate change, whether we can meet those sustainability challenges. One of the things that has to happen, I believe, for that to occur is that you have to have a board that is able to deal with those things and that is held accountable by the people of the province and the region.

We don't have that. This expert board that's going to get put in place won't be accountable to anybody.

The other thing that this particular piece of legislation does — which was pointed out and referenced by my colleague from Surrey-Whalley, who went into this in some depth and I think outlined the situation quite well — is it doesn't deal with the biggest challenge that transportation has in the lower mainland, which is that it's starved for resources.

It doesn't have resources because this government has failed to commit the resources necessary to make transit work in this region. They have failed to commit it. I suspect it's because they have no commitment to transit, so why would they bother?

What do we know? Let's talk about who responds to this. It's interesting. I have a response to this, but I'm not the only person, as others here aren't. Metro Vancouver, the GVRD at that time…. Some of their senior officials looked at this proposed legislation, the last incarnation of it, and it hasn't changed very much. They looked at this legislation.

Now these are people who understand the region. These are people who understand planning. Unlike the minister, they actually have some concept of sustainability in planning, something the minister has never understood.

These are people in the community who actually are thoughtful people who have a vision, unlike the minister, whose vision is pavement.

What did they say? What did these senior officials report to the GVRD board? What they said is that this new board of directors under the new structure will be much less accountable and have less political oversight. That's what they said. They said that this board won't be accountable, unlike a political board. They said that there isn't political oversight.

This becomes a real challenge, because the transportation authority needs to be seen primarily as a planning tool. That's a key part of its role, to look at planning and the future of transportation. What's being created here, as the staff from the GVRD, now Metro Vancouver, said, is that it looks like it will be managed much more like a utility — I find that interesting — that serves transportation demand, instead of a tool to begin to get us to sustainable transportation.

Another thing that these senior officials from GVRD, now Metro Vancouver, said is that this private sector, the privatization of the authority — which is what we're talking about here, the privatization of TransLink — would probably be more expedient in some ways in terms of how it would deal with stuff, and I suspect that's true. They don't have to worry about things like being accountable and transparent and all those things, so I imagine they'll get things done quite a bit quicker.

I would expect that the minister would think that's okay, because accountability has never been something the minister has seen as very important. Accountability and the minister are hardly ever in the same phrase.

Part of the problem here is, as it says: "There is no obvious motivation…to seriously consider external effects such as the environmental costs of transportation choices" — that's the problem here; there is no place where that gets looked at — "their impacts on transportation demand beyond revenue production and how transportation investments can influence land use."

Part of the problem here, these senior officials are saying — and I think that they're right — is that there's no reason to believe this new board is going to deal, in the context, with the breadth of issues they need to deal with. They're not going to deal in a holistic fashion. They're not going to consider those significant issues.

Another thing they said is that part of the problem that the new structure creates is a lack of coordination between regional transportation and regional land use. This is a good point. The connection of the current board, the board until this legislation passes, obviously…. There is a real connection there. You have the GVRD, Metro Vancouver, which has responsibility, along with its member municipalities, for dealing with land use issues.

Many of those same officials are sitting on the board of TransLink. That discussion is happening with many of the same people. That's going to stop. What you're going to have now is a situation where the private board, the board of experts, is going to be operating on their own accord. The GVRD is going to be doing that land use planning work.

Hopefully, they're still going to continue to advance that, as are local governments, as they look to build more smart-growth communities, as they look to deal with the development of compact communities, as they look to balance transportation needs with land use planning and housing and density planning. Yet you're not going to have the same degree of coordination there that we saw before.

Another thing that this group of experts said, and it was pretty important, is that to make business expertise the central focus of what will be the effective governing body for transportation is to take a dangerously narrow view of transportation, and I think that's true.

Of course you want business expertise there, but that cannot be the paramount concern. The paramount concern has to be the future of our communities, how people live, how we deal with our environment, how we deal with our social infrastructure and how we advance our futures. That's what has got to be paramount.

While business is a component of that, it is just a component. If this board, as many of us are concerned, is narrow in its perspective — no matter how skilled these people may be at that perspective — if it doesn't have the broader perspective, the broader interests and the ability to engage significant debate around this, then it's going to create real problems for finding solutions that work.

The last point this group at the GVRD, or Metro Vancouver, pointed out to their board is, I think a big part of the problem. It's the problem that will not be resolved by this piece of legislation, because it's still going to be starved for money. The new authority will still be starved for money to accomplish what it needs to. It says: "The lack of funding and limitations in funding sources is what is responsible for the degree to which Greater Vancouver's transportation system has not expanded as originally envisioned."

I think that's true. For us to have met the requirements around transportation — to have built the northeast line that should have been built, to have the 500 buses that we should be talking about south of the Fraser and Surrey, to be building out and making the commitments and looking at the future of rapid transit south of the Fraser, to be having serious discussions about what happens down the Broadway corridor — to begin to have those discussions, you can't do it without having some notion that there will be a commitment of the resources there.

As my colleague the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca said, and said quite rightly, there are many other communities around this province that have equally important and imperative demands for transportation, and those aren't being met either.

There is a serious lack of commitment of resources, certainly, for the lower mainland. As others in this House have said, and said quite rightly, there is a serious lack of commitment around resources in many other communities in the province, as well, to meet their transportation demands. Until that problem gets solved, we're not going to fix the shortfalls around transportation and around transit planning. Unfortunately, the government to this point has chosen not to make those investments. They have chosen not to commit those resources.

When we talk about whether this is, in fact, the idea that people advised the minister to put forward…. My colleague earlier today in debate, the member for Vancouver-Kensington, observed that when the panel on governance was doing its work it reported out to the minister that the government, that panel, had received something like 120-odd submissions to the panel. They were submissions from interested parties around the region, I assume around the province — people who brought different perspectives to the table, talked about those different issues, talked about what they thought should occur.

Numerous times I heard the minister commit to the member for Vancouver-Kensington when he was the

Transportation critic on our side that all of those 120 submissions would be released so that we could see what people actually told the panel. Well, it's been an awfully long time since that panel did its work, and we're still waiting for those submissions.

The minister chose not to release them. I suspect the minister didn't release them because there is nothing. None of those submissions support what the minister has done in this bill. This is a spiteful move by the minister because he doesn't like local politicians. He probably doesn't like most politicians. It's a spiteful move, because he didn't get advice telling him to do this. I don't believe that for a minute.

If those documents were released, if those submissions were released, the ones that the minister promised to release…. It's a promise he hasn't kept. If the minister had released those, I believe that we would see today that the vast majority, if not all, made suggestions on how to improve TransLink, on how to improve the transportation authority. But they did not make recommendations that said throw away democracy, throw away the elected politicians, put your friends in place and let them run it the way you tell them to. They didn't say that.

We don't know what that panel got told because the minister hasn't fulfilled the commitment that he made to the member for Vancouver-Kensington to release those. The minister could pull those out from wherever they are over the weekend and get them to us, and we'd be happy to look at them on Monday.

S. Simpson: Behind the booster seats. They're behind the booster seats in his office.

The other problem with this legislation is that it continues what have been two very disturbing trends with this government — two disturbing trends that I want to make a comment about.

The first one is how this government deals with local governments and local elected officials when those officials don't agree with the government, when those officials and those local councils or boards decide that they have a different view…. They consult with their constituents, and they decide that they have a different view. What happens is that the government doesn't try to engage to find a solution to that. The government just steamrolls them.

We can look at Bill 30. Bill 30 was a fine example of that, around private power. When the Squamish-Lillooet regional district raised serious questions about the Ashlu, the government here didn't try to find a solution for that. They adopted a piece of legislation that just tore up their authority. They just tore up their authority.

We've seen it with Bill 75 as well — significant projects. There, again, the government is happy to just ignore local governments, ignore communities and drive ahead with their agenda, whatever that agenda might be. So that raises concerns.

This legislation, Bill 43, is very much in that same vein. It's very much about dealing with local governments that raise serious issues, serious questions about whether, in fact, the government was meeting the challenge around transportation, whether the government was fulfilling commitments around transportation, whether the government was supporting transportation in the lower mainland, whether they were consistent in helping to meet the needs of transportation in the lower mainland.

When they raised those issues, the government didn't respond by actually trying to find a solution. The government responds with Bill 43, which essentially says: "If you don't agree with us, you're out the door." That's the government response. Very concerning. Very concerning for sure.

We have a situation where we have significant issues around democracy, unelected boards — and not only just unelected boards but unelected boards that have a degree of taxation authority, capacity around taxation. I think that would be that old taxation without representation. Taxation without representation. That's what we have here. We have the ability for them to manipulate and deal with those matters around taxation.

We have the ability of an unelected board to essentially be able to take property, to be able to do the things that governments do, to do the things as an unelected body that governments and elected officials do. I'm hopeful, and I fully expect that when this comes to a vote and we on this side will all vote in opposition to this…. I might talk to him later. I know that my friend from Bulkley Valley–Stikine always has concerns about other orders of government being put in place, and I might suggest to him that the Minister of Transportation is creating another order of unelected government here. Maybe he'll want to join us and vote against it too. Maybe he'll want to do that.

But the interesting thing with this, too, is that when I look around the lower mainland and I talk to local elected officials in the lower mainland, it's not New Democrats who are raising these concerns with me. It's people like Suzanne Anton from the NPA, a councillor who's very concerned about this. Peter Ladner, an NPA councillor — very concerned about this.

These are the local elected officials in my community who are talking to me. It's NPA members who are saying: "Why is the government tearing up this democratic process? Why aren't they helping us to make it better instead of just tearing it up?"

It's a very concerning situation when the government decides to tear up democratic structures and walk away from them. We have a government that has said, "Democracy's not important," and turned its back on that. We have a government that said, "Accountability's not important," and they're turning their back on that. We have a government that said, "Balance is not important in terms of getting all the voices and people to the table," so they've turned their back on balance. They've said that only the interests who are their friends count here.

The other interests to this, whether it be bus riders, environmentalists…. They're not at that table deciding who's going to be on that board. They're not there. No,

they're not there at all. Instead, it's the business interests. It's the board of trade. It's the Gateway Council.

So we'll oppose this. We'll have a good discussion in committee stage, I'm sure, around this and around the details of it. We will vote against it.

The government will ram it through as it rams through many things in this House. At the end of the day, we will all be poorer for it, because democracy will be lessened in this province. It's a sad day for that, but it's something that this government embraces day in and day out, and it's really no surprise to British Columbians.

N. Macdonald: I'm going to be speaking against Bill 43 and, in particular, the governance structure laid out in Bill 43. As members know, I represent an area that is far removed from the lower mainland, and I have interests that are different from many that would speak here. My interest, in particular, is around how government makes decisions.

Part of the reason for that is the background that I have in local government. I was proud to serve on the town council for Golden, and I served as the mayor for Golden. I also had the privilege of being the critic for local government.

As the critic for local government, I attended a number of local government meetings around the province the year that I was critic. One of them that I attended was at Harrison Hot Springs. That was about 18 months ago. It's been referred to here a number of times, and I think that is the place where the minister made one of his more famous speeches — or one that's constantly being referred to here.

I know the minister has a good sense of humour and that it was intended tongue-in-cheek, but there's no question that he talked about how great it was how the Chinese do their transportation policy. He was absolutely clear in it, and presumably what he was talking about is being able to do these projects without the irritation of having to consult with anyone — having to consult with the public. He wanted to just go ahead and do projects like one would imagine a commissar would do them — arbitrary, incontestable.

There's no question that there were elements of it that were a joke, but part of the reason people laughed is because we know the Minister of Transportation has that sort of attitude towards things. He wants to move ahead quickly.

The difficulty for me, though, is this. You have to be very careful in decision-making, with governance in particular, to make sure that you do have that open, democratic process. I think we witness every day in this Legislature that it's a bit of a messy process. You have contesting views. It takes a bit of time. But there is also no question that it is a process that works better than any other. That is the main thrust of what I want to say here today.

I distrust and fundamentally disagree with anything that removes that democratic process, because it puts things into a place where secrecy and unaccountability can take place, and it does not lead to good decision-making. It also breeds a sense of entitlement. It can lead to arrogance and, ultimately, to poor decision-making.

Part of the experience that I've had — and each of us brings experience to this House — was to live for over six years in African countries where the systems of accountability and openness are not as what we should have here in Canada.

Consistently you get decision-making that is poorer than the country deserves. So we really have to be mindful of governance, mindful of the systems that we put in place and of making sure that accountability is there and that secrecy is removed from the system.

I also live in a rural area. Consistently — or often enough to cause problems — we have decisions made in the Premier's office. Very often they are made with what appears to be a lack of understanding or consideration for our interests. What I see as possible with this legislation, Bill 43, is that you would have direction coming directly from government through a system, through a board that's set up that would really not reflect local government but would instead reflect the interests of the province.

The governance model is not that dissimilar to what you have with Interior Health, and what I would say is that the problems with Interior Health, certainly in the past, were profound. You had decisions made that locals did not really have the ability to change. They lacked common sense, they were very arbitrary, and they made people very, very upset.

It was particularly true during the election. As I went around, I felt that, regardless of all the other things that were going on in the riding, people focused on that one aspect of what was going on. They did not like changes to the health system — something that impacted their lives — and that they had no ability to hold accountable. They had no ability to change it. They didn't feel they had any say with it.

Let's face it. Transportation is something, as well, that touches every person's life. Transportation policies, done properly, keep people safe. They move people around. We know that of all the issues we deal with, there are two or three…. Not far down that list would be transportation. Again, people want decisions made in an accountable way, and they want to participate in those decisions at a local level.

I think there's no question that what we've seen in the government is an inclination to remove decision-making and to keep information from the public view, and the only defence that I would hear is that all governments try to do that. What I would say is that that's something we have to constantly fight against. We have to make sure we put in place governance systems that are going to be clearly accountable and that are going to be making decisions that are open and clear.

The criticism I've heard — and I heard it just a few minutes ago — was around the parochialism of the existing board. Parochialism exists with all politicians. I understand that. But we need to make sure that what we don't do is think that by removing that parochialism or by removing the….

Well, we have to make sure that we understand that people come to decision-making with a variety of interests. Putting that into a place where it's hidden does no good at all. These sorts of debates — where we see the parochialism, where we see all of the various interests — should be done in the open, and the people that make that decision should be people that are going to be held accountable.

The governance model, then, that I see coming with this legislation will lead, I believe, to a board that will be essentially a B.C. Liberal board. If the argument is that that is somehow going to make it an efficient or effective board, I think what we have seen with the other boards that have been chosen by the B.C. Liberals is that there are tremendous weaknesses in that argument.

There is no question that the Vancouver Convention Centre Expansion Project board was a board that has been a huge failure — like the TransLink board or like the board that Bill 43 proposes is likely going to be. It has made mistakes consistently, and it has led to a series of poor decisions. We do not want to repeat that mistake. I think Bill 43 certainly puts out the possibility that we would.

People should be chosen by the public. They should be accountable to the public. They should be making decisions based on open discussion. Anything that removes that or changes that should be something that all members should be concerned about and should be voting against.

Just to be clear. I would stand against structures such as Interior Health, where there is not direct responsibility, where the public does not have a say in what is going on. In the same way, I would stand against the structure that's laid out here in Bill 43. It is not accountable. It is not transparent. It will not lead to the sorts of decisions that need to be made.

When you're talking about transportation, you're talking not only about people's lives, the standard of life for people, but you're also talking about things that carry great monetary value. Transportation policy impacts on the value of land. It impacts on the viability of different developments. All of those things need to be looked at in the most open and accountable way.

With that, I sit down and turn it over to my colleague. And I thank, as always, Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak.

C. Wyse: It is my pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill 43. As someone might look around and wonder why someone from the interior may be up speaking on an item such as this, it is important for me to explain, to start off, that I also happen to be the opposition critic for local government.

Just so not only the gallery but those tens of thousands of people that have waited until Thursday afternoon at this time to hear these words of wisdom…. It is my intention to speak, through this Legislature, to all British Columbians on a bill that has significant importance for all British Columbians, because in actual fact, Bill 43 is a continuation of this government's eroding of locally elected authority.

It is within that theme that I will be developing where Bill 43 fits in. I will show clearly how this is a continuation of a pattern that has continued since 2003, when the government signed an accord with local government called the Community Charter. In that Community Charter they assured all local governments that they would be respected. They assured all local governments that before any major decisions were made, they would be provided with an opportunity to sit down and discuss those issues. Then should there be — and I point out, if then there should be — a continued disagreement, the process would continue.

Bill 43 fits into the continued litany that takes the statement promised to British Columbians of an open, transparent and accountable government to be a sham. Bill 43 fits into that.

Before I get to Bill 43, there are some other numbers that I would like to talk to the people of British Columbia about, to lay the groundwork for showing a government that has said one thing to local government, has signed a document saying that that's what they would do, and before the document was implemented, before the ink was dry on the paper, they passed Bill 75.

What Bill 75 did was take a process that said government retained the authority and ability to change local legislation that was deemed to be contrary to the needs of the province…. A fine, important principle. Nobody questions that. But what Bill 75 did, to all of you out in the province of B.C., was take that ability and put it behind closed doors. Turned it over to the cabinet. Gave it to the minister.

The former process allowed for a reasoned approach, open and transparent, where the explanation would be given, and the province would then proceed with what they deemed to be in the best interests of the province. Bill 75. The ink wasn't dry on the Community Charter before that bill was passed.

Bill 30. Independent power producers. It removed land usage decision and put that into the hands of the cabinet. Local interests now brushed aside. Remember, those of you out there in British Columbia: open, transparent and accountable.

Cabinet meetings are closed. They are not available. They are not open, and they're not transparent for reasons that are important. But when you have a government with a track record, as I will get to with Bill 43, that constantly and consistently removes the authority of local government, which is the government closest to the people, and puts it in the hands of cabinet ministers, there is the removal of open and transparency. That's Bill 30.

I have to be careful, Madam Speaker. I made note of my time, but what I have to be careful of…. There are so many of these bills that I want to hold enough time to tie Bill 43 into this theme.

So moving along. Bill 11. Mountain resort municipalities. Once more, they removed the authority of local government through land usage and put it into the hands of cabinet. Once more, behind closed doors — not open, not transparent, not accountable.

Bill 48. Fish farms. Anyone would be asking about fish farms and how they got to that. The accountability removes local government, as Bill 43 does. Fish farms — remove the local government accountability. The same theme runs through.

TILMA — the trade, investment and labour mobility agreement. Once more, signed in secret at the UBCM this fall. The UBCM clearly, overwhelmingly, on advice of their lawyer said that without major changes to TILMA, local government cannot govern because it has turned over its responsibility to govern to a three-person panel. Appointed by whom? Once more, the cabinet. Always in secret. Those of us that are not in cabinet still recognize that those decisions are not available.

The organizing of local government. Done without consultation. Short turnaround times — again, another major issue to local government.

Bill 43 continues that assault on the authority of local government. Bill 43 will take the democratic control and accountability for transit planning and services away from the elected representatives in the region and put it with an unelected professional board.

The professional board is not accountable to the taxpayers and should not be the final decision-making body for the regional transit system, in my opinion. Decision-making needs to stem from local representatives who are elected and responsible to their constituents. The professional board is not responsible to anyone. There's the pattern.

With this legislation, virtually every key decision will be made by an unelected, unaccountable, professional board. The mayors council holds little power, and ratification from the elected council of mayors is not required in all circumstances. Particularly have a look at the 30-year transit planning document. It does not need ratification by the mayors council — a key item in this particular document.

The members of this board will be nominated by a screening committee made up of one representative of the minister — again a representative of cabinet; one representative of the mayors; one representative of the Vancouver Board of Trade; one representative of the Institute of Chartered Accountants; and one representative from the Gateway Council, which is a business group at least partly funded by the government.

When you look at the panel that brings forward the recommendations to set up this professional group, it raises some questions. Given the limit of my time for those of you out in B.C. who are listening, riveted to the significance of this important piece of legislation, there is no explanation as to why it's the Vancouver Board of Trade, for example. This is supposed to be a regional transit board covering a vast area — more than just Vancouver. As an example, the group is deemed to bring forward the 15 representatives. The mayors council are then to make their decisions upon the nine representatives who will make all the decisions that are of significance and importance.

The other notable piece to this legislation that must be reviewed is the fiscal element. This legislation will guarantee dramatic increases in property taxes and transit fares. Such a move only serves to undermine public transit as an accessible option, the exact opposite to what the lower mainland knows is necessary.

Now, staying with Bill 43 and where this fits in. The changes made by this bill remove the effective democratic control from the hands of the local politicians and put it into the hands of the unelected experts. There is some vestigial democratic oversight in the form of the mayors council. The real power in the new TransLink, as I have explained, will rest with the board of directors, and I've outlined for you where that board is constituted from.

The board of directors run TransLink and do all the planning, and the mayors council will only vote on options proposed by the directors. What's more, the directors will write the initial policy of the transportation authority without requiring ratification by the mayors.

I had mentioned earlier that I would tie together how this legislation, Bill 43, guts local government and their ability to have an effective say upon an item that is crucial to their lifestyle and to their electorate and puts it in the hands of the cabinet, through this particular hand puppet.

The long-term 30-year strategic plan and the first ten-year base plan will become the status quo of transportation planning. They will define the levels of service, the capital projects, revenue sources such as fares, taxes and tolls, and expenditures.

The board of directors is required to engage in public consultation and to consider regional land use objectives, provincial and regional environmental objectives, anticipated population growth and economic development. But they are not required to actually abide by any of these consultations or considerations, and no democratically elected body, not even the mayors council, needs to approve the strategic plan or base unit.

This means that the board of directors can set the initial policy of the authority completely on their own. The mayors council approval is required for supplements — that is, changes to the base plan in services, capital projects, expenditures and revenue. The board of directors alone sets the status quo, and the mayors council is only necessary to deviate from this.

Again, Madam Speaker and those of you that are listening to this description, you can see how Bill 43 is cleverly crafted to remove local government's ability to have a say over an item that everyone here in the lower mainland knows is significant: transportation. It's a form of transportation that is different from where I'm from, but transportation, wherever you are in British Columbia, is important, and it's significant. To take, with Bill 43, that important item and put it into a governance structure with limited to no accountability has major concerns.

Within the governance aspect of it, in comparing the previous TransLink, where there have been criticisms made, this new board of directors is less accountable, has less political oversight and would see regional transportation managed like a utility that serves transportation demand. But there is no obvious motivation to seriously consider external effects such as the environmental costs of transportation choices, their impacts on transportation, demand beyond revenue production and how transportation investment can influence land use — the items that are significant to local government.

I'm getting quite into this, Madam Speaker. That's how important and how significant this particular topic is.

When we have a look at presentations made recently by the Premier, for example, pointing out the importance of improving the environment…. To now put in place a governance structure that in actual fact does not have any requirement to consider the effect upon those noble and important goals, and to move past it, questions once more the compatibility of a government that has an overall broader view of how all the pieces that are required to run this province fit together and are interconnected.

For a government that says they are managers and are able to bring the pieces together, Bill 43 demonstrates not that particular ability…. What it does demonstrate, in actual fact, is a government that has a disjointed, unconnected, no-overview, secretive methodology of governing British Columbia. Bill 43 has significant implications for all British Columbians.

Carrying on, the new structure creates a lack of coordination between regional transportation and regional land use, a coordination that is required. But underneath this particular model, the elected officials meet infrequently. The coordination of dovetailing those two items together is less likely to happen underneath this governance model.

In general, the mayors council has replaced the former board of the GVRD, Metro Vancouver, as the arm's-length body that must approve of the options put forward by the board of directors — those unelected ones. That replaced the old TransLink board of directors, which was composed of elected councillors and mayors from the service area municipalities.

That nine-member board of directors is chosen by the screening panel. Once more, as a reminder, remember that those five members that bring forward those 15, to be chosen to give us nine, are appointed from a very narrow cross-section of people here representing the greater Metro Vancouver area.

The mayors council consists of all mayors of the municipalities in the service area. The mayors are also required to swear an oath to the effect that they will consider the interests of the transportation service region as a whole.

A question that does pop to mind. Those same mayors have also been required to take an oath of office for their local governments. Madam Speaker, I ask you rhetorically. When we talk about this aspect of parochialism and the clash that comes into play of looking after self-interests versus those broader regional or provincial interests, we are now putting elected officials in a situation of taking an oath that potentially puts them on a collision course. That's an interesting piece of legislation — to put locally elected people in a potential conflict.

Basically, those people have stepped forward simply with the desire to serve their local community. I know that in my 20-odd years of being in local government, way far and beyond any other reason for people to have run for local office was to serve their local community and do better by them. That is by definition the number one reason why people run for local government.

We have a bill that has an innocuous statement in it that brings together the secretiveness of a cabinet working at arm's length versus the challenge of coming up with a consensus of what is an overall regional plan. That is a continued theme that runs through Bill 43. That's where Bill 43 fits in with the other bills and numbers I have made reference to earlier.

Madam Speaker, I am noting the time, and for those of you that are sitting out there in B.C. riveted to their seats with this great wisdom that I'm sharing with you….

Madam Speaker, watching that, I will move on with points to be made, because I still have some significant points to make — how Bill 43 brings the other foot down upon local government.

The other foot that comes down, underneath Bill 43, is that of taxation. Local government, as everyone anywhere in B.C. knows, raises most of their revenue for looking after their local needs from one item only: property tax.

What does Bill 43 do? Bill 43 says: "Local government, through cabinet we are going to put our hand into your pocket, where you get your resources to look after all the services that your people want, all the services that the province downloads onto you to provide. We, through Bill 43, are going to sneak our hand into the one source of revenue that local government has to provide for those services — property tax." Doing such puts additional pressure upon local government to provide for those services that the local people are expecting them to deliver.

Using my analogy of the hand of secrecy, through the cabinet, and moving that around, the local government elected official is set up to take it on the chin. That is what I'm talking about. That is where I began. That is why there was this long litany of bills, secret deals and decisions made in the minister's office that have those effects upon local government.

Now we have a situation in which, in Bill 43, the hand has reached into that pocket. They are going to leave local government, when they are finished, to put their hand into that same pocket, and they are going to

find the lint, because that's all that will be left to look after providing those services.

Section 196. For those of you that are home and are going to rush over to see what part of Bill 43 I'm referring to, it's 196. It says that the property tax revenue in the 2008 plan must be no greater than 3 percent more than in 2007, plus $18 million. Each year's property tax revenue thereafter may be only 3 percent plus $18 million more than the previous year's. It may only be raised above what is set out in the base plan — remember that base plan set by the non-elected people — by submitting a supplement to the mayors council and having it approved.

Metro Vancouver board need not approve the increase if, and this is under section 16, the board of directors deems the increase necessary and unavoidable and passes a two-thirds majority resolution to that effect.

Carrying on with Bill 43. I do appreciate your patience waiting for me to get there, and I hope I've been able to tie all these items together coherently. Underneath this is a new addition to the proposed Bill 36, when this was introduced last spring. In Bill 43, which is the same bill, the government intends to put their hands a little deeper into the local property tax.

Bill 43 allows property taxes raised by TransLink to be levied on residential property — property class 1, for those of you out there who want to look it up under the Assessment Authority — where this previously was not allowed. This also allows the provincial cabinet — here we are back to that secretive body again — to set the limits on the tax rates that can be levied on particular property classes as per the Hospital District Act, section 27.

Translated, for those of you back at home, that means that the residential property tax portion now becomes taxable. That is how this is achieved. That is how the cabinet, in Bill 43, reaches in and effectively addresses those issues of your services back at home.

This part, section 17, has the effect of limiting tax increases on non-residential property. Any increase in non-residential property tax must not result in a ratio of class 1 to non-residential property taxes greater than that set under section 27 of the Hospital District Act. Under that act, the cabinet sets the ratio.

Madam Speaker, you can see my trepidation, when I started off, on whether I was going to be able to have the ability to tie all of these items together — not being a lawyer, not being a great study, simply sitting down and looking through the documentation. There are the points contained in Bill 43 that lead to this effect. That is how the province is able to control what property classes TransLink property tax increases will fall on. It allows the authority to raise up to that additional $18 million in property taxes per year by bylaw. That allows the cabinet to direct where those property taxes are collected.

The issue that is the major source of revenue for local government, the issue that provides the revenue for providing local services is now going to be in the hands and the control of cabinet — out of sight, out of mind, and leaving it up to the local people, the elected ones, to take the hit for when these tax increases come through, and at the same time, there isn't the money left in the bank to provide those services that you expect the locally elected people to provide.

It is within those lights that I had the privilege to rise here, as the critic for local government, from the interior of the province, and attempt to explain the significance of this bill, how important it is and how it interrupts local government's ability to govern, tax and provide services. Thank you for that opportunity, Madam Speaker.

G. Robertson: I rise today to express my strong opposition and huge concerns with Bill 43, which has been put forward by this government in efforts to manipulate and undermine local governments in the region that I live, Metro Vancouver.

Changes in this bill effectively remove democratic control over transportation in the lower mainland. Although many in the region would agree that we've had our challenges over the years with TransLink and that there were some tune-ups necessary, what is happening here is radical and is unprecedented in terms of the override of an important regional planning and implementation body. It is certainly consistent with many of the actions taken to undermine local government, to undermine local control, to take that away from the people on a local basis and pull it in here to centralize government undemocratically and unaccountably.

This is a draconian measure that I think people in the lower mainland see through. Certainly, there have been huge concerns raised around the lower mainland through the process of so-called consultation on the TransLink governance review. Certainly, there have been concerns raised about the real agenda of this government with regards to transportation — the projects that this government has put forward over the last six years and has effectively foisted upon TransLink, for starters, but around the province — overruling local governments, the priorities they have set and the means by which they have to operate.

This government has continued and ramped up this strategy of concentrating power in the Premier's office here in Victoria, working directly and unaccountably with small teams of people that he so desires to make decisions on behalf of special interests. I have great concerns about the undemocratic nature of this bill as well as the unsustainable elements that this bill triggers.

I want to talk about the concerns that the Metro Vancouver board, the former GVRD board, has voiced. They were very vocal in terms of their concerns regarding this legislation — the new board of directors being significantly less accountable and having less political oversight — and concerns that regional transportation would be managed more like a utility without any significant accountability or mechanisms for the public to have their say in how things are done.

This corporate-style management structure of public transportation — these are the observations of

Metro Vancouver's board — could seriously create problems. It could provide no obvious motivation to seriously consider the external effects such as environmental costs and impacts on the ground, in communities, affecting people that rely totally on the transit system for their way of life.

These are critical public policy issues. They do not belong in closed-door boardrooms. They do not belong within agencies of government that have no accountability and no access to the public, who have not had adequate consultation.

I want to address the issue of the consultation, because I think there's a theme here, starting with the consultation that took place at the governance review. There was and still has been no release of all the results from that public consultation despite the fact that the Minister of Transportation himself back on March 26, 2007, in an estimates debate, committed to releasing the results of the TransLink governance public consultation.

He made those remarks that "they will get out just as soon as we can get them out." This is back on March 26, 2007, and I'll quote the hon. Minister of Transportation: "My staff are advising me that it's just an issue of getting them. They're also going to be putting them on the website so that they're publicly available." Makes sense. The public had their input. Unfortunately, they haven't been made publicly available.

The minister goes on to say: "The moment they've completed that work" — he's referring to his staff — "you've got my word that they'll go out. There is going to be absolutely no effort on my part to slow it down or in some way impede it. It will get out there just as soon as the staff is ready to get that out there."

Well, that has not gotten out there, and we're seven months later since the promise to release the results of the public consultation.

What did the public say? We keep trying, on the opposition side, through freedom of information, through letters to the minister's office…. There's a well-tracked record of requests for this public consultation information. It has yet to be released.

Big question about the process here, and again, here is the indicator of what is to come with regards to TransLink governance as envisioned in Bill 43.

If the public consultation process to actually look at governance review becomes a secret unless you happen to go to every single meeting with your tape recorder, what kind of public consultation is this? How does this serve the public? Is this how this government respects the input of the public? I can't believe that there wouldn't be an earnest effort to have those results from public consultation posted immediately, posted as we do in this House with the affairs of this House. The public record is made available immediately.

Well, that's the direction we're headed here. There have been some public consultation documents released by a number of the bodies that did put forward their perspective on TransLink governance for the review process. There have been a number of submissions. I think it's important to look at what these submissions stated — those that were made public and were posted by business, by labour, by municipalities and by local government. I think it's important to see, just to get a sample.

Maybe there's an indicator in what we do have publicly available, despite the fact that the government refuses to release the full public record from these consultations. Let's check out what was in these consultations and the business associations that have made their consultations public. There were four: the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of B.C., the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. All four of these business associations, in their submissions, were critical of TransLink and had significant issues — issues regarding the parking tax and regarding the accountability of locally elected officials on the TransLink board that weren't elected specifically to the TransLink board.

I know the Minister of Transportation has made a big to-do about this. I don't believe the member for Surrey-Cloverdale was directly elected the Minister of Transportation. In that case, he's not democratically elected to be a minister.

If the democratically elected local politicians who are on the TransLink board are in some way, shape or form — according to the minister — not democratically elected and the board is not a democratic board, I guess that means the minister himself, by the same token, is not a democratically elected minister.

Surely it's possible to make the changes to effect TransLink's objectives and functionality — not doing a radical remake of a democratically elected board to an appointed council. Half of these business associations that made their submissions public called for an overhaul and reconstitution of the existing authority model.

Okay, so we're 50-50 with the business associations. Half of them think that we do need something more radical, and those submissions obviously had significant weight with the Minister of Transportation and his government. The other half of the business community that made their submissions public thought the existing authority model was fine and needed to have some changes made to it. So we've got 50-50 on the business side.

How about the local government aspect on the governance review? Thirteen local governments made their submissions public from the Metro Vancouver area. All of the municipalities' submissions are oriented around central themes of democratic representation — as in, "it must be there" — around accountability and the need for the province to facilitate stable, long-term funding for the transportation authority — very clear demands from all 13 of the municipalities in their submissions.

There is no support whatsoever among the municipalities for an appointed authority–style board that's modelled in this case on the Vancouver Airport Authority or the port authority board of directors — the direction that this government has gone. Of those 13 submissions that were made by the municipalities, ten of them directly stated opposition to an authority-style model.

The municipalities that did not directly state this opposition nonetheless clearly stated that the responsibility for the region's transportation system must remain at the regional level, with a majority of elected officials serving as directors. So we're 13 for 13 among local government submissions for maintaining control at the regional level, for maintaining the model that currently exists rather than an authority-style board model that is being proposed in Bill 43.

There is only minimal support for the hybrid board of some elected and some appointed, where the province or GVRD would be able to appoint a small number of transportation industry directors, for example, to sit on a board. There were municipalities that suggested that would be an option. It's some middle ground. Obviously, the 13 municipalities and local governments that made these submissions were completely ignored.

We'll look at the labour community. There were five labour organizations that made public submissions to the process, and all five of these organizations indicated that the need here is for significant change in terms of sustainable funding and increased participation from the senior levels of government. There is no call for moving the governance structure to an appointed, authoritarian board and away from a democratically elected board. So we're five for five against what has come to pass in Bill 43.

The fact that we don't know what the rest of the submissions…. All the public submissions that took place — we don't know what the mix is there. If we use this as a litmus test coming from business, from labour and from local governments, it is overwhelming — almost unanimously opposed to moving to the authoritarian-style, undemocratic, appointed board that this government has chosen to force onto the regional governments to manage transportation through this bill.

If we look at the sustainability of this piece of legislation in terms of its social, environmental and economic elements…. We should be looking at everything that comes through this House through those three filters and putting all of our efforts into ensuring that all three are in balance, that none is overly upsetting the making of public policy and decisions that come forth through this House at the expense of the others. This flawed process around public consultation and undermining local government certainly speaks to the great shortfalls on the social side of sustainability.

We look at building a sustainable structure to manage transportation in the region. We have to factor in what's going to work for the communities, what's going to work for the people on the ground. We start that with a process and public consultation. We start that with democracy and accountability. Clearly, these are massive failings so far in what's being proposed in Bill 43. On the social side of sustainability, there are no efforts to address these critical elements.

We look at the history again, and it doesn't surprise us. We look at the manipulation of TransLink over the last six years, which has been out of control — putting undue stress on the TransLink board itself, putting undue stress on the region. That manipulation has come from this government, from the Minister of Transportation, in a number of forms.

It has come through the budget constraints that have been placed upon TransLink as it currently exists and has operated over the last half dozen years. It comes in terms of the priorities that get foisted upon the regional transit authority.

If we look at those two separately, in terms of the budget constraints…. TransLink draws its funding from three sources.

Property tax. As my colleague from Cariboo South mentioned, the property tax that is drawn puts considerable pressure on municipalities indirectly, which are already strapped for resources. Property tax makes up about a third of the budget.

The ridership, the fares that are paid through to TransLink, makes up about a third of their budget. And of course, gas tax, as provided through the provincial government's mechanism, is the final third.

The problem with this in the lower mainland is that given the amount of population growth, given the staggering challenges our infrastructure in the lower mainland faces under this population growth pressure, there are huge demands for new transit into areas in the lower mainland that are dealing with extremely high growth.

We have had far more growth and far more demands on resources in those areas around the lower mainland than the TransLink budget itself, obviously, can capitalize. So it falls upon senior levels of government, primarily the provincial government, to provide the capital to make it possible to grow with the population, to grow with the needs, to grow with the shift in modes into transit use.

As climate change becomes an overarching priority for every single person in this province, the demands on transit are intense. The funding has not come from the provincial government to address that. Funding that has flowed from the provincial government into transit in the lower mainland has gone into projects such as the Canada line, with very marginal increased capacity that will take place years and years down the road.

We're not looking at immediate mode share. We're not looking at addressing immediate demands that the people in the lower mainland require, particularly south of the Fraser River — particularly in the Fraser Valley where they don't have access to transit, where the growth is off the charts and where the need to service and to get people out of cars is most critical. There's no money to do that. There's no money in the TransLink budget.

The budget constraints created by the provincial government not funding the demand for new transit, for new buses, for a much more robust transit system regionally…. The revenues aren't there. Zip for new transit, effectively, which creates chaos, congestion, unbelievable traffic in the Fraser Valley that won't be addressed by building a bridge that's ready seven years from now, that won't be addressed by not buying 500 buses tomorrow, that won't be addressed by investing billions of dollars in the Canada line.

These are problems that are creating immense challenges for our economy, immense pressure on families and quality of life, and they're not being addressed by the provincial government. They're unable to be addressed by TransLink because of the funding that is not available from senior levels of government.

You look at that same starvation of funding and how it has created the mess that we had with the parking tax, which put undue burden on small businesses in the lower mainland. Unbelievable problems were created by that and the pressure that was on the small business community — created, again, by a lack of revenue, created by the inability of this government to address the revenue requirements of TransLink.

TransLink gets worked into a box. They chose a formula through the parking tax that was somewhat regressive and caused immense challenges for small businesses. It didn't need to happen. TransLink was forced to go down that path by mistakes made and by funding not coming from senior levels of government, starting here in this Legislature and with this government.

We look at the revenue that is squeezed out of the pockets of people in the lower mainland through the fare system. The highest fares, the largest share of revenue of any city in North America, comes from the fare box. One has to wonder if we're trying to encourage mode shift. We're trying to encourage people to get out of cars, and then we're going to say: "Well, we're going to make you pay more than anyone else in North America for a transit system every time you step on the bus."

That's not fair. That's not going to encourage people to take a bus, to take transit, to use the SkyTrain. All that's going to do is discourage people and force them to go through the crawl from 200th Street right downtown, right down to 1st Avenue in Vancouver and the choked corridor that we have there.

Unless there is an appropriate mix of funding tools made available and there's capital provided to address the growth needs, we're not going to have a transit system that is going to be able to service our needs and service the goals that we have for greenhouse gas emission reductions. We're not going to be able to take all that on.

Clearly, all of this is illuminating massive budget constraints for TransLink that have caused innumerable problems throughout the region with the lack of new transit, with the parking tax, with high fares. These problems are created here. They are not being addressed in a significant way by an undemocratic, appointed board and a new structure in terms of revenue. I'll come back to that. The revenue is a concern, going forward, in terms of the economic sustainability of this bill, Bill 43.

The second piece of the manipulation I was referring to earlier is all about the priorities that have been chosen by this government — priorities that have been overriding the priorities chosen by TransLink, chosen by Metro Vancouver, over the last number of years. There have been very clear demands and priorities set by TransLink, and these have been ignored by this government.

In terms of the sustainability of anything going forward, when these priorities are manipulated by this government, the mistrust and the mistakes that end up being made — cascading into all kinds of chaos throughout the region around transportation — are absolutely unnecessary. It's deplorable in terms of how a government manages the affairs in the province regarding transportation.

Priorities that have created absolute chaos in the lower mainland start in my riding in Vancouver-Fairview with the RAV line, the Canada line, which went from several pegs down up to the top of the list to be completed by the 2010 games.

The history is a tragic one with the RAV line. It was a project that was forced on TransLink at every stage. This government coerced and cajoled TransLink into putting this as the top priority ahead of the northeast line, ahead of the Evergreen line, which was at the top of the list. If things hadn't changed over these last six years, we'd have the Evergreen line running right now out to the northeast part of the lower mainland.

Instead, the RAV line jumped the queue. It went right to the top. Since then we have had, after the TransLink board resisted twice…. Many people speculate that that resistance by local politicians, who couldn't see the sense in making the RAV line the number one priority for several billion dollars in transit spending — for what, on paper only, looks like about a 10-percent increase in ridership over the decades to come…. It's a very expensive way to get 10 percent more people moving north and south.

Well, the manipulation that took place there is legendary. There were two votes held at which the TransLink board resisted the pressure significantly. The third vote, with the special adviser to the Premier working as hard as he could to swing the vote, ended up getting…. With the promise that the northeast line would be delivered, the TransLink board approved the RAV line.

We've had a debacle since then, as this line has been constructed under cut-and-cover, in a bait and switch, when all expected it to be a bored tunnel. We have a complete meltdown in my community, in Yaletown, downtown, in the member for Vancouver-Langara's riding, at Marine Drive. We have businesses failing. We have families losing their livelihoods. We have tens of millions of dollars of revenue being lost and costs of this project being borne by small business, which is absolutely unacceptable.

The fact that this government has denied it for several years — only recently acknowledging the problem and now blaming the problem on TransLink again, who was manipulated into taking on the project in the first place by this government — is abominable.

Taking no responsibility for foisting a P3, pushing this project to the top of the pile as a P3, running it down Cambie Street, the switch in constructions methods, the subway technology instead of light rail: it's a litany of manipulation and deceit coming from the government opposite to make sure that this project went through.

Again, no commitment has been made to the northeast line, the Evergreen line; no commitment has been made to the Broadway line — two projects that were

ahead of the RAV line several years ago. No commitments being made for more cars on SkyTrain or to hundreds and hundreds of buses that we need in the region.

The priorities that have been set by this government for TransLink, forced on TransLink, have been a critical failing. To pin that on the TransLink board, as it is today, and to shuffle them out of the way and force an unelected board into place, an authority to run the transportation in the region, is an absolute travesty.

If we look beyond the social elements of this unsustainable approach to transportation in the region, we'll look at environment. We need to really look at the importance of connecting transportation decisions in the region to land use decisions.

There was a visionary step taken that many in the world have come to look at. People come from all over the world to study TransLink and the GVRD model. Though it hasn't been perfect, it is a model which has had coordination between transportation, development and land use, which is critical in terms of reducing the tendency to sprawl and develop into areas that can't be serviced effectively and efficiently by transit and that impact, obviously, the land base. The direction that we're headed here — of severing that link, of pulling away the connection to the GVRD from TransLink — is another huge failing.

I'll just move on beyond that severing of the link and the environmental challenges that that no doubt will create. On the economic side, the revenue flaws that are built into Bill 43 here…. One of my colleagues, the member for Surrey-Whalley, laid out an excellent case and concerns about where the revenue's going to come from.

When the gas tax is only predicted to go up marginally every year, and we know we're going to be supposedly burning significant tens-of-percents less gas a year to achieve our climate change emissions targets, where's the money going to come from on the gas tax?

TransLink, I'm sure, is absolutely astonished at the formula here. There's no provision for adequate funding to do what needs to be done, and there's no provision for the capital to be delivered to address the needs of the region in terms of transportation.

Just in closing, I want to highlight how humiliating this must be for local government, for mayors and councillors who have opposed this government's megaprojects in efforts to represent their communities. There's a lot of room for improvement in TransLink, but disconnecting this body from the Metro Vancouver body on land use is a huge mistake.

The region has been ignored by government on urgent transit needs. That doesn't look like it's going to go away here. It could get worse. We need a structure that empowers the region and that connects, at an even deeper level, transportation needs and policy decisions on transportation with land use. We need to be moving further into that and supporting it robustly with financing that's appropriate for the growth of the region.

With that, I'll just say that I look forward to third reading debate and to asking the hard questions about how on earth this bill will work.

D. Thorne: I rise today to speak against this bill, Bill 43, because I believe it's a direct slam against municipal autonomy and all democracy. All municipalities that have responded to this bill have disagreed — not that the Minister of Transportation has taken any notice of this.

The Minister of Transportation has accused TransLink over the years of being parochial, of favouring local interests over broader regional interests, but I can say from personal experience that this is highly exaggerated. Any decisions that caused any problems for the Ministry of Transport are more a consequence of inadequate funding and priority shifts by senior governments, including this very government.

A good example of this is what happened with the RAV line, as my colleague was just referring to, and what has happened — or rather, I should say, not happened — on rapid transit to the city of Coquitlam. I was a city of Coquitlam councillor for nine years and was on the board of directors of the GVRD during the time that we debated and finally passed the RAV line.

It was not, as the Minister of Transport calls it, a circus. It was, indeed, a fulsome debate. But it was a travesty in the end, because the RAV line has caused so much grief for so many people, including the city of Coquitlam and my own riding. But not only that — the city of Vancouver and the merchants, as my colleague was just referring to them….

The RAV line was manipulated and pushed to the top of the transportation list over rapid transit to Coquitlam Centre, which had been there for many years — waiting. This was not hearsay. This was what really happened.

The RAV debate at the GVRD level was debated at TransLink, and then it came to the board of the GVRD, which in the past is how legislation had been passed at the GVRD, the Greater Vancouver regional district.

It was very close. We had many votes over several weeks. In fact, in the end, false promises were made, saying that they would concurrently build rapid transit to Coquitlam Centre along with the RAV line if the representatives from the northeast sector who were vehemently opposed would vote in favour.

Even with this we had to hold what they call a weighted vote at the GVRD. I remember that day. The meeting went on until four o'clock in the afternoon. Each municipality, based on population, gets a certain number of weighted votes.

Madam Speaker, I want it read into the record. I have not heard all of the debate today, and I'm not sure that this has been said before, but the RAV line passed by one weighted vote. That would be a municipality the size of Lions Bay, Anmore, Belcarra. We're talking 300 to 600 people. That's the size of the vote that passed the RAV line in the end.

In my opinion, that's a squeaker. I don't know what could be used as a better example of true democracy

than the fact that that one weighted vote, those few bodies, made the decision to build the RAV line.

Now we are talking about getting rid of that democracy, no longer having that democracy. I think that is the reason we are looking at having a new governance model today. I believe that that squeaker was too close for comfort for the Transportation Minister. He and this government realized that they really didn't have a lot of control over the GVRD and TransLink, not nearly as much as they thought they had. They nearly lost that one — 500 people, possibly 300 people. They nearly lost that vote, and it freaked them out.

True governance review began the following week. You can look back at the records. I was there. I know it began that week. There were several different committees studying governance review over the years. They took forever to come up with a model.

One might think, reading through this bill, that it was done overnight. But believe me, it took a lot of thought, and a lot of work went into it. It's quite stunning how badly it erodes democracy and how it just walks all over the municipalities again, but a search for control often leads to that kind of thing.

I believe that TransLink and the GVRD…. TransLink really was only made up of representatives of the GVRD — elected, accountable representatives from the municipalities across the lower mainland. I maintain that this was true democracy and that they are, in fact — or were, I guess I'll soon be saying — elected and accountable representatives. But as with all democracies, they often had the nerve to disagree with senior governments, to have a different point of view, something this Minister of Transportation cannot abide.

I have several people who want to speak after me. I could go on about those days of voting at the GVRD until 6:30.

D. Thorne: I'm probably the only person on both sides of this House who was really there. I'm the only one who really knows what happened and what a squeaker it was.

D. Thorne: If anybody can hear me, I would like to say that shivers went up the spine of this government that Friday afternoon when they realized that they did not control the lower mainland transportation system at all anymore. It really was a democracy.

You know, Madam Speaker, earlier today several of my colleagues said: "Why, why are we doing this? Why is this happening?" Well, I say that is why, because that Friday afternoon in that hot, sweaty GVRD boardroom, this government realized that they had no control — that, in fact, the GVRD municipalities were a true democracy and were willing to go against this government.

D. Thorne: I'm getting just a little confused here by the accolades from my colleagues, but it's exciting to have somebody who was really there, and it isn't hearsay.

Then the governance reviews began, and this is the end result. Nobody likes it — do they? — except the people on the other side of the House. The GVRD certainly doesn't like it. Their staff have written many reports to the board with all of the different ramifications of this, some of which I'm going to go through in a minute.

People on this side of the House don't like it. We kind of like democracy, and we sort of like that nasty talking and bickering that goes on, on the other side of the water in the GVRD. It's a very interesting boardroom if you ever have time on a Friday morning to go to one of the meetings. They debate a lot, and they don't all agree. They don't always agree with senior government, and I hope that this continues.

They are, I guess, going to lose control of transit. I guess now the livable region plan that we all worked so very hard to fulfil the mandate of…. In my city alone, in Coquitlam, and in Port Moody…. Well, Port Moody is a perfect example. We have the mayor of Port Moody who now says, "That's it. The floodgates are down" — or up, whatever it is they do with them — "and no more" — because transit is not coming through.

He has done the building. We have done the building in Coquitlam. We have done our share. We have done our part, and what happened? We get the RAV line to Richmond. Richmond, which is not even a growth centre in the livable region plan, which is built on a floodplain and was not one of the five growth centres in the lower mainland.

If we start — and obviously we're going to now — moving away from land use planning and transit being done together so that we have a sustainable community that meets economic, social and environmental purposes…. If we start moving away from that, who knows where we're going to end up?

It's already difficult on the other side. People who live in Victoria don't quite understand how bad it can get on the other side. The thought that the livable region plan will no longer be part of the equation…. I think it was thrown out the window by this government when the RAV line was okayed on that sweaty Friday afternoon two years ago.

I guess it's obvious by now that I'm not happy with this bill, and I'm troubled by the direction this government is taking.

So there we were, setting up governance reviews by a minister who realized how little control he really had and who really doesn't care to be disagreed with. Several of my colleagues have talked about his quotes on his trip to China, so I won't belabour that. It was quite amusing when he agreed that he had said those things and wasn't it great to have a process where you don't have to get into all that pesky talking with taxpayers, municipal councillors and mayors.

Lots of people are starting to think that way. "The public hearing process just slows everything down.

Let's get rid of the public hearing process." I think this government is moving down that road very, very nicely. Their intent is clear. Several of the bills that have been introduced in this session are moving down that road where there's less and less public back-and-forth.

I think that this minister wants to have more control behind the scenes of the decision-making process. He knows that mayors and councillors can run TransLink. He knows that the real issue is not mismanagement. It was never mismanagement.

He knows that mayors and councillors who oversee cities…. Cities are corporations, huge corporations with huge budgets. Those of us in this chamber who have served on municipal councils in one form or another know that running a city is running a corporation. Believe me, these are people who, along with the good staff that we've hired at TransLink and the GVRD, can do a good job if there isn't meddling from senior governments and lack of funding for things that have been promised and then the funding pulled back.

The minister knows that. He knows that the people at TransLink could run the show, that they were running the show and doing a good job, considering the meddling. But he really could not afford any more near misses like that RAV line vote. Oh, I do remember the shock that day.

I just wanted to say a little bit about meddling and the false promise to build the line to Coquitlam Centre. It's now 2007, and there still isn't rapid transit in Coquitlam. It's very, very interesting that we can talk about all the projects we're going to do and we can't even talk about the most rudimentary transit line, a straight line from Lougheed Mall out to Coquitlam Centre.

It should have been built, you know, five years ago. It should have certainly been built three years ago, way before the RAV line was built and was sucking up practically all the money in Canada for transit. So people in Coquitlam, in Port Moody and in Port Coquitlam are very, very discouraged. Believe me, when they realize what is happening with Bill 43, when this bill is passed by the government of the day, all hell is going to break loose, because now only the councils know.

The general public doesn't really know that they are losing all control, that they're going to have an unelected, appointed board of mainly — probably — business people who never get on rapid transit or buses, who know nothing about that system. They will have the right to raise property taxes, business taxes and transit fares, and people will basically have no say.

When people realize this, we're going to have an outcry, and I hope we have an outcry, because that will prove that democracy is still alive.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the bill. I just wanted to give my personal experiences first, to put into context how troubling this bill is to me. Having gone through all of that for ten years and now to be standing here and having to vote on a bill that's going to take away all of that good work….

The changes made by this bill will remove effective democratic control from the hands of local politicians and put it into the hands of unelected experts with minimal oversight, in the form of a mayors council. The real power in the new TransLink will rest with the board of directors, which will be selected by mainly government and business interests.

Here's a point that I'd like to make on this, while I'm talking about this choosing of the board of directors. Even though the majority of people on the board, the committee — I guess the hiring committee, you might say — are business people and representatives of business interests, I certainly hope they're looking at balancing this board of directors.

The truth is that this is the board of directors that will do all of the planning. The mayors council is only going to vote on options or changes, supplementary changes, that are proposed by the directors. The directors are going to do all the initial policy work.

The 30-year plan — I mean, 30 years; you know, that's not 30 days or 30 months — is going to basically see the buildout of the GVRD in the Fraser Valley. In 30 years' time this will all be almost a moot point. We'll just be running a system, like major European cities are.

The next 30 years, and particularly the first ten years, are crucial. They're really what we're talking about here today. It's the 30-year and the ten-year period, and the board of directors is going to be doing that plan. It belies belief that this is the case. How can we stand here and say: "Oh, but it'll be fine. It'll be okay because the mayors are going to have a council. Isn't that wonderful?"

Well, I think that's a joke. I feel like it's a joke. I feel like the joke is on all of the people in British Columbia, but especially all of the people in the GVRD — and even, to some extent, the Fraser Valley, because they'll be the next area that we're talking about. That's where they're developing now.

The board of directors will be required to engage in public consultation and consider regional land use objectives. Let me tell you that that word "consider" causes me great grief as well. I mean, there are many things in here, and I do not have time to go into all of them.

Not only do the 30-year plan and ten-year plan being done by the board of directors chosen by these five people cause me great concern, but the fact that they have to consider regional land aspects and objectives is not good enough. It's not good enough that they have to consider.

I have watched boards and governments consider all kinds of things, particularly around environmental issues. In my own area right now, we've got the high, high potential of seeing eight of our most wonderful fish-bearing streams up at the top of Pitt Lake…. The whole lower mainland is going to be affected by this.

Transmission lines across a provincial park. I know that the Minister of Environment probably would say, "Oh, that hasn't been okayed yet," and that would be the truth, but it's looking very, very good. It's looking like most of these IPPs, these run-of-the-river projects, do finally get an okay unless there's some huge issue, which I don't see coming at the top of Pitt Lake.

They're considering environmental issues. They're considering the public use. They're considering sus-

tainability and all of those things. But will it make a difference in the end? "Consider" doesn't work as a word. It doesn't work. It needs to go.

If this bill is going to be passed, they have to be required to follow the livable region plan. They have to have public consultation. But they are not required to actually abide by any of these. Why bother?

Why would they bother? Probably because it will be written in the act that they have to do it, so they'll have it. They won't have town hall meetings, because they're too messy. Again, they're too democratic. People get all riled up and yell at the people up front, and we can't do that anymore.

Nowadays, when government does public consultation, they have little stands with a staff person standing at each board calmly explaining to all of the people who are furious and angry and emotionally distressed, so it never becomes…. The next day a report is written, and everything is fine. They say: "Oh yes, there were a few hotheads there. You know, we calmed them down."

I hear this all the time in my constituency office when I'm talking to government offices or whatever. "We calmed them down." So I'm sure that if anybody is upset about any of these transit decisions, they'll be able to calm them down at these consultations. In the end, really, it wouldn't matter anyway, because they're not required to abide by them.

I can't stress too many times or too clearly how distressing it is that the board of directors will be setting the initial policy and that they do not have to do any more than consider the livable region plan, the plan that 21 GVRD municipalities have bought into and followed year after year. They don't have to do more than consider, and then, if they have a public consultation, which they will be required to do, they don't have to pay any attention to what people say to them anyway.

What more would anybody who is considering whether to vote yes or no on this bill need to read in this bill? What more would you need to know than just those very few points that I have raised in the last five or ten minutes? I just can't imagine anybody being able to stand up….

Another thing that distresses me is that I'm not hearing any debate from the other side. Not hearing any debate. Nobody is standing up and telling me why these things are not dangerous, why they shouldn't distress me.

I really would like to hear debate that would explain to me why I should not be distressed, why every single person who lives in the lower mainland of British Columbia should not be distressed. I would love to hear some debate.

One more — okay? Well, the last thing that I was going to talk about, because I did refer to it earlier, was the report that was written originally. Actually, this is a compilation of several reports that were written by staff at the GVRD and given to the GVRD board and to TransLink.

This staff group at the GVRD and TransLink is not your normal group of people who really don't see or know the big picture. This is a group of people who would put all of us to shame. That's why we hire them. That's why we pay them the big bucks. And they do a heck of a good job.

But we don't listen to them, I guess. We just have them there to write these reports. And even though the people they wrote the report for — the municipalities — all agree with the report…. They all say to the provincial government: "For heaven's sake, listen to this stuff. This is important stuff, written by experts."

This government loves experts: "We're going to have a board of directors made up of experts." But we have experts who understand sustainability. They understand that you have to be socially, economically and environmentally strong to have sustainability. But we're not listening to those experts. We're going to get some other experts, according to the government, according to this bill.

One of the things that the GVRD staff experts have said is that the new board of directors is less accountable. I've said it. I assume it's true, but now these experts are telling me that, in fact, it is true. They have less political oversight, and regional transportation will be managed like a utility in the future.

I guess this government sees transportation as a utility. I see it more as working in concert with land use planning and environmentalism — and climate change in particular, which I thought was the prime interest right now of this government. It doesn't appear to be.

It's a private sector management. It may prove to be more expedient, but there's no obvious motivation to seriously consider external effects such as environmental costs of transportation choices, the impacts on transportation demand and how transportation investments can influence land use.

Madam Speaker, there is another interesting thing. I haven't touched on that. It's land use, in terms of buying and selling land and development around centres and the private sector being involved in all of that. All of those things are little loose strings that we could pull in and discuss all day, all week — all next week. Perhaps we will discuss it all next week.

I may get a hundred phone calls over the weekend, and when we get to committee stage, I'll get up and speak for another half an hour with many concerns from the public. As my colleague from the Cariboo said, we fully expect that many people are watching, because this is a growing concern in the lower mainland.

Decisions that we make now are very important for the future of everybody in British Columbia, not just in the lower mainland. The land use decisions that we make now will focus all of the growth in the GVRD and Fraser Valley. They are very, very important decisions, if we truly are concerned about climate change. We have to remember that the municipalities know what's going on. The regional government knows what's going on. They have experts there already.

Why are we moving away from a workable arrangement that with the cooperation of senior government and proper funding, could be the answer to the transportation problems on the lower mainland? Let the people who know what they're doing do what they know how to do best.

R. Fleming: I rise to speak against Bill 43 this afternoon. I want to speak to it from a perspective of a Victoria MLA because….

R. Fleming: The member across the way wonders how it might relate to my constituents. Well, it relates very directly, Madam Speaker.

I can say that almost every metro region in the province that has an interest in moving forwards in terms of the public transit planning they do, in terms of improvements to their overall transportation system….

Any of those regions that have aspired to greater levels of autonomy, planning, resources, access to taxes and revenue-sharing, and control to build a better transportation system — to build a transit system that will embrace a more sustainable vision of the province — are interested in Bill 43.

Bill 43 is sending out a message to all those mayors and councillors and regional districts that aspire to have a greater level of control — to control their own destiny, to create their own priorities, to plan accordingly.

It's sending out a message that that's not permitted in British Columbia anymore. We are rolling back those initiatives which Metro Vancouver has enjoyed. The experiment is over for regional control and a different way of doing business. We're taking it back. It's the old school. It's provincial centralization. It's apparently inspired by the model used in China, I understand. The minister who submitted this bill is very fond of that.

I can tell you that a very clear message is being sent out to residents in Victoria. Metro Vancouver residents may pay the price in terms of the system improvements — which they have come to enjoy — disappearing, in terms of a loss of accountability, but it really affects every British Columbian.

Victoria has actually been interested in having its own regional transportation for several years. We have 13 municipalities. All of them have different ideas of what truck routes should be, and they all have different community plans. The degree to which there is a common plan was introduced in the 1990s to create a regional growth strategy.

We've just created a regional transportation plan here called Travel Choices, which was coordinated through our regional district. We have the templates in place. We have the capacity and experience to run a public transit system, which we have done for many decades, excluded from the municipal systems that B.C. Transit operates — with a higher degree of autonomy, but still only a transit system, not an intermodal transportation authority.

Just as we're on the verge of wanting to go forward and create our own regional transportation authority, we encounter Bill 43, and I think the interest is over. Mayors, regardless of what their political stripe is or where they come from in this region, are hoping they go unnoticed now. They want to be under the radar screen.

They don't want to be coming to this provincial government, negotiating with them and sharing their thoughts and aspirations to have regional control. What they'll get is downloading of all the taxes and responsibilities for funding a system and zero input, zero control, zero ability to plan for themselves and to implement their own priorities on the system.

Of course, we have our own priorities here in the capital region. It's a process of compromise and give and take. It's a process of different municipal voices at the table talking about what improvements need to be made, and almost universally we have come to a consensus that the first place to start is in our bus system.

We'd like to be embarking on a light rapid transit system by the next decade. We'd like to make some improvements to our roadways, and we'd like to have that coordinated. We'd like to fund and be able to take on debt to do this.

We'd like to do it not only to make the quality of life of our residents better but to attract investors, to defend what the capital region has come to enjoy, to make improvements to be a more sustainable jurisdiction, to move people from automobiles to other modes of transportation, and to build on our reputation as the cycling capital of Canada and one of the most pedestrian-friendly cities.

Those are the kinds of things that a transportation authority should have and that Vancouver's TransLink model did have. It had local government voices making all those decisions, sharing those ideas and hammering out plans that were guided by the livable region strategy. I'll get into it a little later, but Bill 43 sets all of that aside.

All of the work that has been done up until now is thrown away. By August of 2008, apparently — not very long from when the minister hopes to have royal assent given to this bill — a brand-new 30-year plan comes into being. You know what? None of the mayors and none of the elected officials in the region have a say in what is in the content of that 30-year plan. It's unbelievable — the breach of process that has occurred and the disrespect shown for local government. That is exactly what Bill 43 is all about.

What we want here is an intermodal regional transportation authority. We want a governance model. We want the revenue tools.

There's quite an active interest in developing light rapid transit. We actually own the rights-of-way down Douglas Street out into the Western Communities. That would obviously be the first line that we would hope to develop.

We'd like to work in partnership with the province on that. Partnership — that's the key word. We don't want to pay for it locally through our property taxes, through fares, through gas taxes and send it to the province to tell us how it's going to be done. We want a say in how it's done. We want to manage it. We want to operate it. We want to link it up to other parts of the system that have been built up over several decades.

Were we to go forward and negotiate our own regional transportation authority, we'd want some other things that Metro Vancouver has had as well. We'd like to get out of the business of building hospitals.

The previous government, as part of the trade-offs in negotiating the experiment with regional autonomy in transportation planning and land use planning that is TransLink, said: "You know what? One of the trade-offs the province will give you is that you won't have to pay 40-percent capital infusions for your hospital systems anymore. You're out of that business. We'll take it on." That's the province. That's the Ministry of Health.

We'd like to get the nine cents of provincial gas tax, which would be about 50 million bucks a year in Victoria, to be able to debt-service transit expansion, to be able to address the cuts that have occurred in the last six years in our bus system.

We have something like 30,000 fewer operating hours this year than we did in 2001. There's actually less service in the capital regional district in our public transit system today than there was in 1998. It's a decade of standing still and going backwards since this government came into power. That's the situation today.

Ridership has gone up; service has gone down. You get the picture. That's what has happened in Greater Victoria under this government, because it's been starved of resources to put new service on the road.

The provincial government has declined, I think on five occasions, requests by local government officials to raise the gas tax. They've raised fares, and they've raised property taxes, and that's exactly what's going to happen to Metro Vancouver residents in the post–Bill 43 era after this legislation is proclaimed. Time and again, they'll go to fares, and they will go to property taxes, because there is a clause in there that limits the ability of the mayors council and the new board to access gas taxes.

I don't know how that's going to reconcile with the so-called green budget under development that will be released to the province in February 2008. "We're going to encourage people to change their commuting behaviour by making it more expensive to ride public transit. We're going to keep gas taxes at a fixed price. And by the way, just because this government is completely regressive in its taxation approach, regardless of your income, we're going to raise your property taxes on your homes to pay for the transit service."

That's exactly what Bill 43 does. It limits the restriction of the new authority and the mayors' input, limited though it is, into that authority to access gas taxes. It artificially puts pressure on fares to make up revenue shortfalls.

That's been the big story in TransLink these past six years. It hasn't had access to the kind of money that it needs to fund service improvements. Bill 43 doesn't listen to any of the points that have been made in that region about its ability to get the kind of capital and operating dollars to grow their transit system in accordance with the wishes of its residents. Bill 43 is going to ensure that that situation continues.

Again, my point…. It's not my point. It's the point being made by mayors and councillors in this region. In the post–Bill 43 period, why would any region, let alone this one, want to negotiate with this government? Who wants to have downloaded all the taxes and none of the decision-making on our regional transportation priorities? I don't want that.

I don't want a situation where our regional growth strategy is completely ignored, where it would be scrapped for a 30-year plan that would be cobbled together in six months by a group of people appointed directly by the province that have no relation and no accountability to the residents in my region. I don't want it.

I think it's not in the interests of provincial residents, either, that that bold experiment…. It's a sad day that the bold experiment in having regional, autonomous transportation authorities in TransLink is coming to an end. That's exactly where you'll find American cities that have the best transit systems. They're the ones that have a strong link to land use planning and to local government. The best practices in European cities are ones where the resources, the decision-making and the accountability are related to the metropolitan cities themselves.

We're going in exactly the opposite direction. We're going to the old centralized model where all of the power and all of the authority rest with a remote entity — a provincial entity — all of the resources that fund that system come from local residents, and there's an absolute disconnect between people having a say and an ability to get those priorities funded that they've identified regionally and the decision-makers, who are so far removed that they don't care.

You know, the context for this debate…. It's incredible that the government seeks to pass legislation

that is in no way connected to an interest in providing a new model that would drastically increase ridership in public transit.

I think we all know that Metro Vancouver cannot be complacent, having only 12 percent of its residents commute on a daily basis using public transit. We know that we have far too many single-occupant vehicles there. We know that transit infrastructure has been underinvested in for, really, decades. It's a sad part of the history of Vancouver that opportunities were missed many, many decades ago that were pursued in cities like Toronto and Montreal.

But we are where we are, and we need to get from a 12-percent mode share in public transit to something dramatically higher. Let's say we were to target what Toronto and Montreal have, which is something like a 22- or 24-percent transit ride share. Coincidentally, I think the Premier has suggested that by 2020 Metro Vancouver needs to double its transit ridership.

How are we going to get there — with a new, remote authority that is totally disconnected from the land use plans and the transportation planning that has gone on patiently, consultatively among all the municipalities in Metro Vancouver over the last ten years — and substitute a new road-based transportation agenda? It's not going to happen.

Look at the fare structure, Madam Speaker. I've already talked about how the pressure is going to be loaded on this new appointed authority to get its money from fare payers. It'll discourage growth of more fare payers. It will absolutely act against a growing ridership.

Fares are already $2.50 for a one-zone trip. It's $5 for a three-zone trip. All of the new revenue…. The cash shortages that TransLink has experienced under the current situation are going to be inherited by the new authority. Now they're constrained, so they have to go to fare users; they have to go to the ridership first to get their new money. It's a disaster. It's going to work actively against the interests of Metro Vancouver to grow that ridership, to achieve not just by 2020 but to achieve on a more medium-term basis a significant increase in ridership.

Already in Metro Vancouver every single student at a community college there is prohibited from joining the U-pass program that SFU and UBC students enjoy — a tremendously successful program, I might add, that has grown ridership on those major commuting areas, each at one end of the city. There are major transportation hubs at both of those universities.

There are over 100,000 students at community colleges and university colleges who would like to have access, and the reason we haven't been able to is because the province hasn't provided the revenue tools for TransLink to be able to grow, to expand the service that would be needed to accommodate growth in ridership. That's going to be passed on to the new authority, and the new authority will have no ability to move that initiative forward.

There are real problems, Madam Speaker, in Canadian cities. When we talk about an urban agenda and an infrastructure crisis in Canada, it's real, and it's no better illustrated than by focusing in on public transportation infrastructure. The Canadian Urban Transit Association, in their last annual survey of Canadian transit systems, reported a $21 billion need for public transit capital infrastructure for the period 2006 to 2010. Do you know what Bill 43 does to address that — because we own a significant share of that $21 billion? It actually caps the amount of debt that TransLink can carry at $1.05 billion.

I don't even know exactly what that will mean for the system. I hope debate will illustrate that further. I think it means that the new TransLink is going to be in some serious trouble if Canada line goes sideways, if the ridership numbers have been inflated, as critics have suggested, and local government is left holding the bag, as is outlined in the contracts.

If that does occur…. I mean, we were talking about an entity that…. The Premier is going around saying: "Oh yeah, don't worry. Help is on the way for the Evergreen line in the ever-distant future. Come see us in seven or eight years." We've got the Millennium line. It stopped artificially at King Edward campus. That should carry on out to UBC.

Now we've got an entity that caps its debt at $1.05 billion. Do you know what? They're not going to be able to even get remotely close to making any commitments on the major projects that have been the priorities of that region for years.

This bill removes effective democratic control from the hands of local politicians, and it puts it in the hands of unelected so-called experts. The real power in the new TransLink is going to rest with the board of directors. Who will select them? Government and business interests. The Minister of Transportation himself will be involved in naming the new board. But not the electorate that votes for their local governments in Metro Vancouver. They won't have a say at all as to who the representative is. They won't have a chance to throw them out of office if they think they've done a bad job either.

Who gets a voice? Well, the chartered accountants. They're great people, but their organization now has more say than — what? — two million residents. Or break it up — 600,000 in Burnaby, 900,000 in Vancouver — to have some say over who represents them at that table. Unbelievable. I have nothing against accountants. My brother's one; my dad's one. They're really fun.

The point is that local government is in a subservient position in this new model, but local taxpayers retain the responsibility to fund this entity. We've got centralized authority, centralized power back to the province. The funding and the resources for this new entity — that responsibility remains with the region's residents. It is the ultimate in downloading. It's textbook downloading.

The other concern about this model that some members have highlighted already is around consultation as it's defined in the new model. The board of

directors is required to consider — only consider — regional land use objectives as they've been identified by democratic local government, and it's only required to consider regional environmental objectives. It's only required to consider the anticipated population growth.

There is absolutely no democratic check and balance in this system. Not even the mayors council is even required to approve in any way the first strategic plan or the base plan that is going to create the vision for this new entity. It's unbelievable.

This means that the board of directors can set the initial policy of the authority completely of their own accord. The mayors council's approval is required for supplements. That's true. So any changes that might be advanced to the base plan in services or in capital projects or in expenditures and revenues — they'll have some say in that years down the road. But the board of directors, this appointed entity from the province, holds the power because it gets to decide what the status quo is, looking 30 years out.

They get to make that first plan. They have to deliver it by August. Something tells me it might already be written. Maybe that's a question for the Minister of Transportation later on — whether he's already got this thing in the can. I don't know. The bottom line is that the new board of directors is far less accountable, it has no political oversight, and it would see regional transportation managed like a utility that serves transportation demand.

I know the minister used to accuse the old TransLink board of being parochial. To an outside observer of TransLink's accomplishments and their major actions and in reviewing their annual reports over the last several years, any deficiencies in decision-making on a timely basis don't come down primarily to the structure. It comes down to the consequence that local self-interests on the board were part of this province's deliberate provision of inadequate funding to TransLink and the repeated interference in TransLink's authority to set its own priorities.

The province came in time and time again and said: "Your priorities don't matter. Ours do, and those are the only ones that are going to get capital dollars." That's what created the type of decision-making that has been criticized as parochialism.

In reality, it was directors who were doing their fiduciary responsibility. You can criticize them if you want. It took a while to finally commit to the Canada line, which was never in the order of priority that the region wished to proceed. But they took a hard look at the financial implications of that deal, and nobody should ever criticize an elected official for doing their due diligence and reviewing the numbers on a project. You know what? They have the responsibility to pay for it in the end.

I think a criticism that others are making that is very valid is that this new structure creates a real disconnect and in fact a complete lack of coordination between regional transportation planning and regional land use. And again, here is where British Columbia is completely running upstream against the direction of the most progressive jurisdictions in the world that are absolutely linking anticipated land use — growth plans, how their cities will proceed and develop, what kind of densities are needed, what kind of corridors are to be built. All of those things where development, residential, commercial, business and transportation are interlinked: we're now splitting them apart.

We're divorcing land use from transportation planning and implementation. It's unbelievable that we're going down this path.

You know, the structure is really interesting too. You have a screening panel that has tremendous power, and they decide who is going to be on the board. There are five members of the screening panel. One is chosen by the Minister of Transportation, one is chosen by the mayors council, one is chosen by the chartered accountants, one is chosen by the Vancouver Board of Trade, and one is chosen by the Vancouver Gateway Council. They screen….

R. Fleming: That's a tremendous amount of power that has no relation, no accountability to voters every three years. They will not have the right to throw those people out should they do a bad job every three years. That's a fundamental check and balance that the people of Metro Vancouver are giving up in the post–Bill 43 environment that this government is putting into place.

There will be no link to elected officials. It's unbelievable. You can't even call it governance, really — can you? — when there's no feedback loop and no accountability that the electorate can exercise should people do a bad job.

So why is the province taking this approach? I mean, I don't think it can be completely…. I certainly hope that it's not completely motivated by various spats that occurred on the Canada line planning route. I would hope that the province is bigger than just settling scores because it didn't like the way a couple of votes went when that project was up for debate and discussion. I don't know why they're taking this approach.

I think they're pursuing a road-based transportation agenda. I think that they're looking to increase in whatever way they can the use of public-private partnerships in every instance and that they want to remove any potential debate and discussion about whether they're appropriate in every instance.

I know the Minister of Finance has suggested that it has been a huge loss of control in her area, that it has caused a lot of duress, and with that loss of control it has, in her experience, been difficult to satisfy legitimate complaints that people have. It has been an arrogant entity to deal with. I think a number of people have been saying that.

Probably one of the real reasons, though, is…. It's sad, but I think that the province is seeking to eliminate any opposition voices it can. The TransLink board of directors has been not an oppositional voice, but it has said different things. It has disagreed with the province respectfully. Fair enough. You know, a partnership isn't really a partnership unless it's freely agreed to by everyone involved.

Local government is left to operate, manage and fund the Canada line and other major projects in their region, and surely they should be allowed to have a great deal of determination in how those projects proceed. So I think it is the case that the real motivation for Bill 43 is to shut down any voices that have a differing opinion, and that has really been TransLink's crime, so to speak, over the last few years.

It hasn't been parochialism; it has been that it has dared to disagree on occasion with the province. It has dared to offer a vision that actually would prioritize greater levels of investment in public transit. It has dared to aspire to make Metro Vancouver a world leader in public transit. It has dared to offer plans and ask for the resources from the province to be able to increase ridership levels, to put more buses on the road, to put additional LRT lines in different regions of Metro Vancouver.

This Minister of Transportation hasn't liked hearing that, and that's what this bill is all about. It will make sure that that can't happen again. It will centralize, in an arrogant fashion, power with the province, and it will maintain responsibility for funding with the local residents. It will breach any feedback and accountability loop between residents of this region and those that make the appointments and hold the power in this new system.

For that reason, I cannot support Bill 43. I will oppose it in second reading, I will oppose it in third reading, and I will take my place this afternoon.

G. Gentner: I'm opposed to Bill 43. I have to say this right when I get started. I served on municipal councils for a number of years. I'm not here to profess that I know everything about transit, but I spent 20 years in the system. I think what's important, and why I'm opposed to Bill 43, is that it loses the human face. This will just be very much a preface of what I'm talking about.

The poorest postal code area in Canada is right at Hastings and Carroll. I don't think there's a member here who has driven a bus, pulled up at Carroll and Hastings and opened the door to find a passenger lying on the ground with a knife stuck in his stomach. Passengers were hopping over the body to get into the bus to try and go home.

I bring that to your attention because that's the human face of transit. It is more than just a business. It's more than just a bottom line. You're literally cleaning up streets at night. You're the custodians, and in many ways you are the social workers of the urban infrastructure.

My concern is…. Well, I can tell you I'm going to work very hard to get re-elected because of what this government's going to do to TransLink. It's going to be one heck of a poor workplace to go back to work at. It's going to deteriorate because the culture's going to shift.

The changes made to this bill remove effective democratic control from the hands of local politicians and put it into the hands of unelected so-called experts. The real power in the new TransLink will rest with a board of directors which is selected by government and business interests, such as the Minister of Transportation, the chartered accountants, the Vancouver Board of Trade and the Gateway Council.

The board of directors runs TransLink and does all the planning, and the mayors council will only vote on options proposed by the directors. The directors will write the initial policy of the transportation authority without requiring ratification by the mayors.

The long-term, 30-year strategic plan and the first ten-year base plan will become the status quo of transportation planning. They will define levels of service; capital projects; revenue sources such as fares, taxes and tolls; and expenditures.

The board of directors is required to engage in public consultations and to consider regional land use objectives, provincial and regional government objectives, anticipated population growth and economic development.

I want to bring to the attention of this body some quick little notes relative to what the purposes of municipal government are. The purpose of government is to recognize that local government is "an independent, responsible and accountable order of government within its jurisdiction."

Its jurisdictions are being stripped away. There's no purpose or confidence or delegation of authority to the front-line delivery of services, in the regional local government sense.

According to the act, the purposes of local government include "providing good government for its community" and "providing for stewardship of the public assets of its community." What type of input, what type of say will municipal government have if, on one hand, when this government — I think it was in 2003 or 2004 — promised a new charter for local government…? Of course, it was stripped away. It was pared away, and all this wonderful optimism is no longer there. It has been gutted with the powers as provided in Bill 43.

The principles for a relationship between local government and the provincial government is in section 4(c). Provincial government should give notice and consult. It is needed "for Provincial government actions that directly affect local government interests."

There is the crux of part of the problem we have here today. Frankly, the Minister of Transportation went on a mission but a mission that did not include full-blown consultation with all members of the region, and here we are today.

Noting the hour, hon. Speaker, I move that we adjourn, and I reserve my right to continue with this debate.

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