Hansard — Thursday, February 14, 2008 a.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


Motions without Notice		9665
	Legislative sitting hours
	Hon. M. de Jong
	M. Farnworth
	Appointment of Deputy Speaker

Throne Speech Debate (continued)		9666
	Hon. M. Coell
	D. Routley
	D. Hayer
	S. Simpson
	D. Jarvis

Hon. M. de Jong: I move, with leave, the following sessional order, which I have provided to my friend the Opposition House Leader and which the Table has a copy of.

The sessional order relates to the hours of operation for the duration of the fourth session of the 38th parliament and deals with the schedule for daily sittings as follows. I could summarize as well. It is consistent with what took place in 2007 during the third session. Monday sittings would be 10 a.m. to 12 noon, 1:30 p.m. to 6:30; Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon, 1:30 to 6:30; Wednesday from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m.; and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon and 1:30 p.m. to 6:30.

Hon. M. de Jong: We have leave, so I'll continue quickly with the motion, Mr. Speaker.

As I indicated, they are the same hours that we operated under for the third session. Briefly put, its effect is to replace the night sittings that are contemplated in the standing orders with extended afternoon sittings.

I should say this. I don't intend to prolong my part in the discussion I've initiated here. I know there's no unanimity around this. I know that virtually every member in the chamber has their own view of what the perfect schedule would be.

I can also say this. When we tried this last year, I made it clear that we would give it a try and that I'd try to canvass, or get a sense at least, of what people's response was to it. I've had favourable responses. I've had people talk about how it hasn't worked as well for them. On balance, people seem to react positively to the replacement of the night sittings with the prolonged afternoon sittings.

There were two rationales at the time, and there are two rationales again today. One relates to the promotion of a healthier lifestyle for not just the members of the assembly but also the people that support us and work with us here in the precincts.

The former practices in this chamber weren't what anyone would characterize as being healthy. I've been here for almost 15 years now, and in the past — even though night sittings weren't actually contemplated in the standing orders, ironically, until 2001 — the standard practice at the beginning of the session or shortly thereafter was to sit until nine, and then later it got until ten and 11. As you got towards the end of the session, midnight and beyond was not uncommon. Not a satisfactory state of affairs.

We've come a long way in terms of having the legislative calendar. We do think that people, whether they're MLAs or support staff here, should have an opportunity to spend time with their families, to get some exercise, to do some things. I know that some members take advantage of that. Some don't, and fill up their evenings with meetings. I guess that's their choice. That wasn't the intention when we made the adjustment on a trial basis last year.

Some people arrive here — again, not just members but staff — at seven or 7:30 in the morning. Asking them to stay until nine or ten at night, again, doesn't coincide with what I think most of us would consider a healthy work regimen. The demographic in this chamber has changed, happily. It is more diverse. It's not quite to where we hope it will be, any of us, but we're getting there. Hopefully, changes of this sort will assist in that respect.

The second principle that guided the introduction of the change and remains very much at play today is the notion that there shouldn't be any reductions in the amount of time available for debate. Here's the math for the 2008 spring session. Night sittings would have begun on March 3, pursuant to the standing rules.

They would have added four and a half hours a week over nine weeks — so 40½ hours of debate time.

Adding the one hour per day starting on Monday — the motion, I should have said, is effective Monday next, February 18 — would generate an additional four hours per week or, over the course of 11 weeks, 44 hours. So there is a slight net gain in terms of the number of hours available for debate.

Mr. Speaker, we tried something different in 2007. On balance, I thought it was well received — again, I concede, not universally or unanimously. But it was, I think, positively received by sufficient numbers.

It's still a sessional order. Future parliaments will have an opportunity, if they so wish, to consider whether a permanent change should be made to the standing orders. This is proposed purely for the duration of the fourth session of this parliament. Future parliaments can take their stab at trying to craft the perfect schedule as the members of that parliament deem it to be.

In the meantime, I hope members will accept this for what it's intended to be, which is a reasonable attempt to ensure that there is equivalent or slightly more time available for debate, but that the promotion of a healthy lifestyle and the opportunity for people to carry on in some semblance of normalcy with their families and otherwise is there for them.

With that, I commend the sessional order to members of the chamber, and it is so moved.

M. Farnworth: Well, I rise to respond and to say that, you know, as the last time the sessional order was put in place, we on the opposition side do have some concerns — considerable concerns, in some cases — that, as the Government House Leader said, it's not been universally well received.

Many members are down here, and they're down here to do the people's business. Night sittings was a way in which that was extremely productive and allowed for not only members here to be doing work in the evening because they're down here and they're not going anywhere else, but also an opportunity for people outside or people at home who are interested in the work that we do here to see what we do and to see how we do it. That's also an important function of this particular chamber. So we're very concerned about that.

The other issue, from an opposition perspective, that the sessional order impacts on, is that it shifts everything forward. In terms of doing our job of holding government to account, in terms of us doing our work, in terms of preparing for question period and preparing for the sessions in the afternoon, it increases and compresses the time that we have available to us.

We were opposed to it last time. We felt it was arbitrary on the part of the government to bring it in. We understand that it was a sessional order and that we would evaluate it. We're still not happy with it, and so we will be voting against the motion and hope that at the end of this session we look at it again and that we recognize and take into account, I think, the feelings of members of both sides of the House as to how best we can schedule our work.

As it stands right now, we're not in favour of this sessional order. We will be voting against it. We believe that it's arbitrary in terms of the government's decision to put this in place, and the bottom line is that it makes it more difficult for the opposition. It takes away an educational component, as I said, from the public in terms of people who come home from work and are interested in the work we do.

Mr. Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, Government House Leader closes debate.

Hon. M. de Jong: As always, I thank the Opposition House Leader for his thoughtful comments and move the motion.

Hon. M. Coell: Last evening I was speaking to the throne and adjourned debate, so I'm pleased to have this opportunity to continue discussion of the throne speech.

I would first like to ask the House to welcome a good friend of mine, Margaret Vickers, who has joined me here today in the Legislature, and she's lent me some support, as well, for my speech. Would the House please make her welcome.

I wanted to talk about investing in first nations. We need to support first nations and to build our relationships and to continue to build those relationships. It is important for our society and important also for the post-secondary system.

We've committed to improving first nations students access to education, and since 2002 participation in post-secondary education by aboriginal students has increased by 22 percent. We've invested $65 million in the aboriginal post-secondary strategy that will stand behind that commitment.

The strategy includes $15 million to make our campuses more welcoming and relevant to first nations

learners and to ensure that they believe that the post-secondary institutions are a place of comfort to them, where unique cultures and respect are reflected. This government wants aboriginal students to see B.C.'s post-secondary institutions as places where they can pursue their dreams and learn skills to help their communities.

Since 2001 we've invested more than $1.46 billion in student financial aid to help British Columbians pursue their dreams and prepare their future. Last year the province forgave $77 million in student loans to over 24,000 students. That, of course, is equivalent to the size of a small city.

Government also pays 100 percent of the interest on student loans for up to ten years while they are enrolled in full-time studies. Last year the province paid $38 million in interest on behalf of students, while recovering only $26 million in interest payments. Taxpayers subsidized the other moneys.

Half of B.C.'s graduates graduate without debt, and 90 percent of those students who have borrowed are making payments on time. We thank them for that.

We contributed $38 million to three new scholarship programs in the province. These scholarships will be provided in perpetuity, a B.C. first: a $15 million scholarship endowment with 150 Irvine K. Barber scholarships, worth $5,000 each, awarded to students who are transferring from the public post-secondary system to complete a university degree; a $10 million aboriginal scholarship fund for first nations students; and the Premier's One World Scholarship, in which up to five B.C. undergraduate students will be awarded $20,000 each to study overseas and to gain international experience.

These are all in addition to other programs we've created to increase the number of students who will go on to graduate studies. We have allocated $10 million to the Pacific Century Graduate Scholarships over the next four years. A thousand scholarships worth $10,000 each will be awarded to graduate students in B.C.'s four large research universities.

We've also allocated $10 million to Accelerate B.C., a graduate-student internship program that will create 650 intern opportunities over the next four years at MITACS, a national research network that brings together university researchers and companies in a collaborative effort to solve some of the industry challenges.

Research and innovation are critically important to B.C.'s future. New technologies and solutions researchers develop will enable B.C. to remain at the forefront of the global marketplace.

Since 2001 we've allocated over $1.5 billion to research, higher than any previous administration in B.C. history. Our investment has also leveraged more than $900 million in additional research funding from other sources, including the federal government.

I believe our commitment to research is unmatched in any previous government in B.C. Under the B.C. knowledge development fund, we've also provided $329 million in research infrastructure since 2001.

Some of the major BCKDF projects include $38.5 million for project NEPTUNE, a cable-link seafloor laboratory that will let researchers study fish stocks, earthquakes, climate change and offshore petroleum extraction; $6.5 million towards the $49 million biodiverse research centre which will research agriculture, forestry, fisheries and environmental change; $12.9 million towards ICORD research centre at Vancouver General Hospital, where researchers hope to discover and develop new therapies for spinal cord injuries; $5 million towards UBC's laboratory for spectroscopy and image research; and $4 million towards the lattice project located in Geneva. This project will investigate the fundamental nature of matter and the basic forces that shape our universe.

We also created $56.25 million in the leading-edge endowment fund that established 20 research chairs and nine regional innovation chairs. So far, ten of the leadership and three of the regional chairs have been established.

Other related initiatives that we have been providing for are $75 million for Genome B.C. to support genome-related research in the province; $50 million to help create the natural resources and applied sciences endowment fund; $25 million at UBC's Centre for Drug Research and Development to advance new drug therapies and medicines and also to help with commercialization; $15 million for the Pacific Alzheimer Research Foundation to establish a research program aimed at eliminating the diseases related to dementia; $10 million towards the mental health research at UBC, including research chairs in child and adolescent psychology, geriatric psychology, depression and psychotherapy; $5 million for Wavefront, B.C.'s first wireless technology centre, which will help B.C.'s wireless businesses test new software and products and help bring them to market; and $4 million for the Canadian Cancer Society to establish a research chair in primary cancer prevention.

B.C.'s future is expanding our horizons, taking our place on the international stage. We are developing an education quality assurance designation that will let students around the world see which B.C. institutions, both public and private, are recognized and meeting the established standards — building partnerships with institutions of higher learning around the world.

From academic exchange to research coordination and exporting our expertise in designing and delivering training programs, I'm proud of our government's progress in post-secondary education. We're eager to build on our success. We need to focus on needs of today and tomorrow. We need to start looking at future needs of generations on a long-term basis.

It's important to think ahead, just as businesses and first nation elders must, because we're here to make a difference. We're here to make a positive difference in the best place on earth. That's British Columbia.

D. Routley: Madam Speaker, it's so nice to return to this House. Having been through, I guess, most of my

first term, I have to tell you that whenever I'm out of this place, I think that every minute I get to speak in here is a cherishable moment, and it's important to the people I represent. So you tend to want to cram a lot of ideas into a narrow space.

Maybe I should have a little more sympathy for this throne speech, because it's been described as the kitchen-sink throne speech. I think I would call it the new B.C. Liberal austerity, the austerity of no more than two sentences per idea and no more than four months' concentration on an epiphany of principle.

We've seen this cycle over and over and over again. It's quite amazing to imagine that so many announcements can be re-announced. I guess it's part of the new awareness in recycling and reusing and all of that new awareness. It's surprising that the throne speech isn't printed on green paper that will disappear after we read it. That would be more appropriate, I think.

I guess that's less than respectful of the Speaker, but I'm sure no more respect than is deserved of this throne speech because there's no theme. Perhaps the government arrived at the conclusion that the themes weren't quite working when the themes were never followed through on.

We've gone back from that hard-learned lesson to a throne speech of no leadership, which becomes a hard-worn reality for British Columbians. There was nothing in this throne speech for our number one industry, forestry — our number one industry that supports this entire province. There is nothing here, and yet we've seen the intentional mismanagement of that industry, an effort to break down the structures that had grown, an obvious attempt to de-unionize our industry, and a quite successful effort at decoupling our communities from the benefits to be gained from their own resources. That, Madam Speaker, is a crying shame.

There was nothing for our public education system. In my own constituency I'm struggling against the closure of several small schools. My neighbour, the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca, and I share the same school district in which I served as a school trustee. It's a school district that has been driven into a corner by B.C. Liberal funding policies — cutting programs, closing schools and cutting services to its small communities and small neighbourhoods, all in complete disregard to commitments made by this government to children, to environment and to community.

Our children. Tens of thousands of them are labouring in overstuffed classrooms overladen with special needs. Our environment. As we close neighbourhood schools and bus…. Well, no, the busing is about to be cut. We drive our kids into other neighbourhoods and other communities. It runs completely contrary to the notions of reconciliation.

In my neighbour for Malahat–Juan de Fuca's constituency there is a school called Koksilah Elementary, which has been targeted for closure. Most of the students come from my constituency, and 98 percent of the students are first nations.

This school, with its groundbreaking cultural and language programs, is a beautiful portal from a very bad past into a more hopeful future. It's a portal through which our aboriginal children can pass and enjoy the support of their elders. It's a place where elders, harmed, wounded, affected by residential school experiences, feel safe, accommodated and comfortable enough to go into the school in goodwill and help with those programs.

All of that is about to be cast aside because of the discriminatory funding formula of the B.C. Liberal government, which has penalized small communities in the worst way. This government knew demographically that there would be a pothole of enrolment, where enrolment numbers would decline, and it used that in order to carry out a vicious agenda of attack on small communities.

It is absolutely true. We see it all the way around this province — small communities affected by this funding formula. At the very moment when this government knew there would be a slight decline — was it 4 percent? — in student enrolment is when they chose to attach the funding to the student. This cynical choice has led to small communities not being able to offer up the economies of scale demanded by this government, and so they lose their schools. It's atrocious. This is policy being used against British Columbians.

When I was a student in Cowichan school district, we were moved all over the district. Grades were reconfigured; buildings were changed.

D. Routley: You know why, Member? You know why they did that? They did that in order to keep schools open.

I was born in 1961. This was also a depressed enrolment period, but the school districts used all the tools available to them to spread the population out and keep schools open in community interest. What does this member's government do? This member's government cynically applies policy in ways that force districts to close those schools in order not to cut programs.

Reconfiguration is now used as a tool to close schools. You can use a hammer to build a house, or you can use a hammer to tear it down. That's what this government has done with education policy and forest policy. They've used the tools available to them to tear the house of British Columbia down and dissolve the common wealth. That is the biggest atrocious crime that this government has committed repeatedly. It is repeatedly announced in this kitchen-sink throne speech that lacks theme.

Let's look at theme in some of the areas that I would have applied to this speech. Locally, forestry. Cowichan Valley — the birthplace of the international woodworkers union. The first wage parity movement ever in this province was in Cowichan Valley, when the workers imported from Asia were…. The IWA fought for equal rights and equal pay for those people. I'm very proud to represent that heritage in our valley. But we have seen that foundation of our community broken.

We have seen truckload after truckload of logs exported from our community without benefit to our

citizens. That is directly accountable to this government's forest policies that have driven away our jobs. One by one, now, our contractors are falling into bankruptcy, and job after job is lost.

Safety. Safety is another casualty of the B.C. Liberal forest policy. Safety in the woods. Safety for our truck drivers. That's a secondary consideration for this government and its corporatist agenda that puts those corporate benefits to their supporters ahead of community interests in communities like mine. I'm here to say how sad that is and to appeal to this government to take another look at what defines this province.

To me, what defines this province is maybe, perhaps, a naive notion that British Columbia would always work for British Columbians, that B.C. would work for us. All of its splendour — all of its wealth, its water, its forests, all of it — would be turned to our benefit. But that has not happened. That has changed under this government. Now other people are benefiting. Jobs are being created south of the border and Asia with our logs, and everyone is paying the price.

Worker safety. We see the records. We see the numbers killed. We see the deaths continuing in the woods. We had promises from this Premier. I want to refer back to some promises made by the Premier around forestry. "The industry of the future will be one where no one gets hurt, and no one gets killed. All workers will go home safely, all the time."

How's that going? Hey, folks, how's it going? Is it going pretty well? No, I don't think so. I knew a few of them. I sat through the inquests.

The inquest into the death of the faller Ted Gramlich in Duncan, B.C., and its results pointed directly to the forest policies of this B.C. Liberal government and the severing of the chain of responsibility for the safety of our workers. It pointed directly at your government. Do you wear it well? Not in this speech. There's no mention of those workers. There's no mention of that industry. It's our number one industry that's being managed into the gutter.

We just went through the biggest boom in housing in U.S. history. During that time dozens and dozens of mills were closed in this province, and we were laid to our back for the fight we now have to engage in for our industry. We were made vulnerable by B.C. Liberal policies to the dollar now and to the slowdown in the U.S. Now we'll see the result looking at the futures in terms of lumber prices. Hundreds and hundreds more operations won't be able to survive over the next two years.

This throne speech basically amounts to admissions of failure and exemptions of responsibility. But I will tell you that on page 11 there is an adequate description of Liberal policies and the history of their responsibility to this province, and it is that it's avoiding responsibility and being generally selfish. That is exactly what we've seen.

We've seen the interests of children put behind the interests of this government. We've seen the interests of small communities betrayed to the interests of their corporate donors and friends. That is a tragedy. There was zero for fishing and zero for forestry — our two main natural resource industries. A healthy B.C. depends on healthy natural resources, yet there's nothing.

Madam Speaker, I know that you share this with me. We often don't get a lot of time to be with our families. I don't get a lot of chances to do homework with my daughters, but I did have some time to do some homework with my daughter when she was in grade 12, two years ago when I was first elected. She was doing a report where she was asked to compare the fortunes, economy and general well-being of Newfoundland to British Columbia. We worked through this project. At the end of it, it really occurred to both of us, I think at the same time, that the loss of their natural resource in Newfoundland led to but one choice: the huge expansion of offshore exploration and drilling.

I say that the loss of our fishing industry — which this government is mismanaging through its refusal to live up to the recommendations of the aquaculture report, its refusal to protect our natural salmon, its refusal to acknowledge its responsibility to our forests — amounts to the same thing. We, like Newfoundland, will be like the person who's shopping when they're hungry. Not the best choices get made.

That government's responsibility is to British Columbia, to its people, to its forests, to its water, to its fish — all of which it has abandoned piece by piece. We hear about no-net-loss forestry. No net loss from when — today?

Go take a look at my constituency, Madam Speaker. I'll take you up there, and we'll take a look at some river valleys that have been denuded by the lack of oversight that this government allowed on private lands.

D. Routley: The Transportation Minister says: "Boo hoo." He says: "Yeah, boo hoo." Will the minister say "boo hoo" to my constituents? The minister says yes, he'll say "boo hoo" to my constituents, who have suffered the loss of their schools, their trees, their sawmills and their jobs under this government and that minister.

Let's take a look at their record. The Premier said that in ten years, there would be four to six new small-log mills on the coast. As well, a revitalized coastal industry will help secure the needs of the pulp and paper sector and leverage additional investment in these facilities — none of which has happened. The opposite has occurred. That is a failure of policy.

The people who supported them were their donors, who had donated over $1.2 million to their party. That was Interfor, TimberWest and Weyerhaeuser. In 2003 Interfor had 38 logging operations. Now they're all contracted out. They had six sawmills. Now they have two mills. They had TFLs and forest lands. They've sold most of that. TimberWest had six logging operations. They're all contracted out. They had one mill. Now they have one TFL. They had two TFLs. Now they have no sawmills.

This is an abandonment of trust, and it extends throughout our communities into our schools, into our hospitals and onto our streets.

Poverty issues. This province, four years running, leads the country as the province…. Well, it follows the country as the country's province with the most children living in poverty. Twenty-five percent of our children in British Columbia live in poverty, and that is a crying shame.

You know, the government seems to think that homeless shelter beds are housing spaces. They count them when they count their efforts in housing, in social housing. So we have more shelter beds. That amounts to a bigger mop and a bigger pail to mop up a bigger mess made by the failed social policies of this same government.

So many people cut off of assistance. We see the results in our aboriginal population throughout the province — devastating results that I'll refer to in a moment.

The environment. It's a "you choose, you save." Who pays? Ordinary people will pay. British Columbians will pay. In fact, on page 13 it says that all British Columbians will pay. Maybe that explains why Mr. David Hahn, the American controller of B.C. Ferries, has been exempted along with that huge corporation with its huge output of carbon. Perhaps that explains it, but it doesn't explain the devastation in my constituency due to the failure of this government to properly monitor the practices in our woods.

Relying on the companies to self-monitor is not fair to them and, above all, not fair to British Columbians. It's not fair to the companies, because basically we're saying: "You write your own speeding tickets." Be forthright, all of you as members. How many of us would write ourselves speeding tickets? Well, the speeding tickets that would be written in the forest industry would be to the tune of millions, so no speeding tickets were written by those companies for themselves.

There was no forest service, no environmental assessment, no control whatsoever, and now we see the results. We see the results in the flooding in Honeymoon Bay in my constituency, the flooding in Youbou, the devastation in our woods, the helicopters flying into our neighbourhoods to log down to the townsites, complaints from the constituents about the thunderous noise of logging operations basically in their back yard.

You know what? In fact, when I look at the throne speech, there is one hopeful moment here for me, and that is the Trees for Tomorrow, because they're going to plant all these trees in urban areas. Perhaps my constituency can look forward to a future where the export of raw logs comes from the city rather than our community. Perhaps the government is preparing for a time when they've denuded completely my constituency and others or when all of those forest lands have been converted to condos and sprawl, as is about to happen on Vancouver Island.

All of these things are interconnected. They should all have been mentioned in our throne speech, but they weren't.

What else wasn't mentioned in the throne speech, one might ask. Well, I'll answer: ferries. Ferry fares. Can you imagine a government that over four years could oversee more than 100 percent increases in ferry fares on our small runs? This is unbelievable.

D. Routley: Unbelievable. A Transportation Minister who does his boo hoo act again. Maybe the Transportation Minister could come to Kuper Island and say boo hoo to the elder on Kuper Island who collects pop bottles to get back on the ferry. You know, Mr. Transportation Minister, that elder cried when the ferry staff wouldn't let her on. She didn't have enough money. In fact, the RCMP were called to pull her from the ferry.

How does that measure up to the new relationship and reconciliation and mutual respect in the Transportation Minister's eyes, which obviously are clouded by the same Liberal fog that has allowed this province to be ruined?

D. Routley: No, I would prefer a ferry service that honoured its public purpose, that served its communities ahead of the corporate goals of this….

D. Routley: Maybe the Transportation Minister gets a little bit excited when the failings of his own ministry are exposed, especially through real stories.

Generally, I think British Columbians like to multiply rather than divide. When they find that there is an injustice to one and they multiply it by a larger number, the responsibility will be placed there with the government, where it's deserved. This government's advertisement of a surplus is sad in the face of all of these deficits in our communities.

Let's look at their history with reconciliation. Basic health indicators. Aboriginal people, on average, live seven years less than the rest of the population.

You know, Madam Speaker, the throne speech in its conclusion reminds us that two years from now the whole world will be watching us. The whole world watched Australia. They tried to reconcile in a mere two years before their Olympics, and the stories didn't go well for them, because the truth was that life on the ground didn't change. Life on the ground won't change here either in those two years.

This world will come to see that the facts of life for aboriginal people are that they live seven years less than the rest of us, that infant mortality rates run between two and four times the average for non-aboriginals.

D. Routley: Are you proud of that, Member from North Vancouver? Are you proud?

HIV and AIDS rates are twice as high as the general population, triple the rest of the population. Alcohol-related deaths are four to nine times higher. The rate of aboriginal teenage mothers is almost six times the rate amongst the rest of the population.

The poverty rate amongst aboriginal children is twice the rate of the non-aboriginal population. From '97 to 2005 the number of aboriginal children in care increased by more than 50 percent. Some 50 percent of the children in care are aboriginal. Only 16 percent of those children graduate.

Aboriginal youth are seven times more likely to be in prison. Only 47 percent of aboriginal students complete high school compared to 82 percent for the rest of the population. That is the truth the world will come to see two years from now unless this government reverses its course and puts communities ahead of its own goals and the goals of its corporate donors.

Health care. What did this throne speech offer? I'd like to talk about some of the people who've come through my doors — seniors who have been denied care, families of seniors, couples about to be separated — and their treatment. Yet all this slim document could offer those people is a George Bush–style savings plan which amounts to an admission of failure to serve the seniors of this province.

If you can't meet the bar now, wait until the demographic ball really hits you and us in British Columbia, because there are going to be a lot more seniors. We should be able to expect that this province will care for those people who built it, but they are failing to do that.

My constituent Bill Cross, who has since passed away…. When he came to my office or called my office, he told us that he had not had a bath in 108 days.

D. Routley: A nonsense story? He was placed in one of their assisted-living buildings inappropriately because that minister and his government made a promise to this province that they would build 5,000 long-term beds, and they broke that promise.

Now that's been changed. "Oh, we'll make 5,000 assisted-living beds." In fact, there are seniors all over this province warehoused in those buildings without adequate care.

D. Routley: The deficit you're leaving is in our communities. Your government….

This government, Madam Speaker, ran the two highest deficits in the history of this province, and even now they let the debt of this province grow at 5.2 percent, more than double the rate of inflation. That's the legacy of this government. That's the legacy, not the Olympic legacy. The Olympic legacy of this government will be debt, homelessness and deficit in the rest of B.C.

Rural B.C. has been cut out. We are the revenue pump of this province, and the pump needs to be maintained, but this government failed. Now we demand to be cut back in to the benefit from our resources.

We demand, from rural B.C., that this government recognize that those trees are for British Columbians, that that water is for British Columbians, that its purpose is to protect all of it — not to auction it off, not to fraction it, not to liquidate the common wealth of this province, as they have done. That's the legacy, and it's sad, I think. You know, we're not able to use names, but Ritchie Bros Auctioneers comes to mind.

I look at health care in my own riding and the emergency room in Cowichan District Hospital. There are generally three nurses in the ER. If one of those nurses is on a transport, that leaves two for 16 beds. If one of the other two gets assigned to a cardiac bed, that's a one-on-one, and it will leave one nurse in charge of 15 beds.

We have more emergency room visits and more acuity than Victoria General, yet they have two-thirds more staff. We have just slightly less than Nanaimo general hospital, and they have double the staff — another example of rural communities being left out.

There used to be a notion of equity in this province — that there would be an equitable service to citizens. We all knew that in Horsefly, or even in Youbou in my riding, it's always going to cost more to deliver public services. Our schools. We don't have as many children. Our hospitals — all of that.

But that has never stopped British Columbians in the past, including previous Socred governments and NDP governments. It has never encouraged them to abandon the notion of equitable service. I think that the ratepayers associations in my community are very effective, because they bring up the notion of value for their tax dollar. They want service, and they ain't getting it.

We've been cut out. Our schools are closed. Our hospitals are downgraded. That's the legacy. That's the way I sliced the bread, the way it looks. It's all about outcomes, yet what characterizes this document? "We will. We're going to. We will. We're going to." Promises, promises, promises by a government that has repeatedly broken its promises over and over and over again.

My critic area is training. They've devastated the training system. It's just now coming to the Red Seal completions that were at their height in '96-97 — just now. They pushed labour and workers from the table. There's no strategic vision.

We need child care for those programs to work. They cut that. The real immigration picture is one of discrimination, exploitation and unhappiness as we see workers return to their countries in numbers.

When they say things like, "It's the highest-ever amount," well, the population is going up and inflation is going up. It better be the most. They haven't kept pace. I've shown you the evidence. The surplus the government has alluded to is not real. The deficits are in our communities, and they belong with that government.

D. Hayer: Madam Speaker, Happy Valentine's Day to you and to the other members of the House who are not here, and to my wife.

Anyway, before I start, I just want to say that our member for Cowichan-Ladysmith has a different vision of our province and our throne speech. I remember living through the 1990s, and he was here too, when he saw the economy go from the best place to the worst place in Canada.

My colleague sitting beside him, from Lillooet — he was also here and the Minister of Transportation — used to say that we need more money for twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, and you know, nobody brought it. We see that we need to widen the Highway 1 from Langley to there, but money wasn't coming in.

Actually, in the last seven years, when I travel around the province and I take a look, our educational system, our health care system, our transportation system have received more funding than they have ever received because of a strong economy. I remember going to all of these towns in 2001, and they were saying: "There are no jobs here. We have to go to Alberta. We have to go to Ontario, and we have to go to United States to look for jobs for our kids. Can you do us a favour, if you know somebody who might hire somebody?"

Nowadays I go all over this province and all of the small towns, especially with the Finance Committee, and basically all of the employers are saying: "Do you know anybody who wants to work, because we have so many jobs but not enough people?" — even though our population is growing. We have more immigrants coming in, and there are more jobs than people in British Columbia. That is because of the change of policies of this government, which is much different than that of 1990s.

Each government has their own way of dealing with how they want to improve our economy, how they want to govern. They tried. I'm sure that they had good intentions. On the other hand, some of the results…. You can only talk about what happened, at the end of the day. We went from the best economy to the worst economy. I think that with some of the policies and everything else that we work with, we have gone from the worst economy to the best economy in the last seven years. I mean, that's very good news.

Some of these members from the opposition don't want to live in it. They don't want to live in there. Look at education. Basically, the funding has never been so much, even when the children's population has gone down. We still have more money per student provided. Transportation is the same way. Look at health care. It's the same way, and I think it's going to continue.

It is a very special day for me. It is my honour to speak to the throne speech. You know, when I come in here and I listen to the throne speech, when I look at the importance it has given to the long-term vision for British Columbia's constituencies and communities, I feel really excited about it, which is much different than the opposition.

The throne speech was very broad. It touched on every aspect of our life, and I think the government is looking not just at the short term; it's looking at the very long term.

One of the things that's important to my constituency is the environment. Environment is one of the first and foremost in this throne speech. The vision this shows and the plans the government has outlined that talk about the environment are far-reaching. It's going to help us. The plans are designed to not only create a livable world today but for long term into future for our children, our grandchildren and their children.

It is well known that residents of Fraser Valley and Surrey are constantly faced with environment issues and air quality issues, particularly in my constituency of Surrey-Tynehead, which suffers greatly from the vehicle emissions caused by traffic stuck idling in jams on Highway 1 leading up to the Port Mann Bridge.

D. Hayer: I know my colleagues from Surrey don't want to twin the Port Mann Bridge or widen Highway 1, because their leader doesn't support it. They have never once stood up in the House to say: "Let's go twin the Port Mann Bridge and widen the highway. Let's start to eliminate some of the pollution we have with vehicles stuck in there."

This throne speech looks long into the future, as far out as 2050. The detailed plan to control emissions on high-emitting vehicles is great news. It calls for a greening of British Columbia to clean the air that we all breathe and the air that the whole world breathes.

Another issue that holds great promise, for Surrey residents in particular and for British Columbia as a whole, is the review of court sentencing to determine why sentences in the province appear to be shorter than those handed down in the other parts of Canada.

Crime is one of the invasions of the sanctity of life. Anything to reduce crime, from violence to petty theft, is very good news. One of the concerns my constituents talk about is: "Can you talk about crime in here?" You know, I have brought those issues to our Solicitor General, our Attorney General, our Premier and our caucus, and they have really listened.

One of the concerns of my constituents is to have the sentences of the criminals reflect the crimes they commit and make sure criminals' rights should not supersede the rights of the victims. Sadly enough, over the last little while there seem to be more rights for the criminals than the victims or our society at large, and that has to change.

In order to reduce crime, in order to put deterrence, we have to make sure that we have stronger sentences. Deterrence is a good thing to have so that criminals who are constantly repeat offenders are not allowed to do that. We need to make sure long-term jail sentences are given to the repeat offenders and the violent criminals.

We also want to make sure that something needs to be done from both sides of the House. They should talk about supporting the rights of the society and the rights of victims and not just the rights of the criminals.

I am happy, and I know my constituents are happy, to see that our government recognizes these concerns, and our government is actually acting on it. This is particularly important as we march quickly towards our 2010, when the whole world's eyes will be upon us. We want to demonstrate to the world that British Columbia is "The best place on earth," the most welcoming place on earth, the most beautiful and the safest place on earth.

I know the excitement is building for the 2010 Olympics. So many people are enthusiastic and willing to work hard to focus the attention of the world. So many people are excited when the attention of the world is on us. They want to make sure our province gets the coverage it gets to make sure when the world…. Over one billion people will watch it. It's going to help our economy, even though some members of the opposition don't want to focus on that.

Even today, when I listened and heard on the news that the website for the volunteer sign-up for Surrey, the lower mainland, British Columbia and Canada are really excited about it…. The website is overwhelmed by the people who want to go out and help and volunteer for the Olympic Games. So many people want to help, want to ensure that British Columbia puts its best foot forward when every aspect of our province, our people and our success will be under the scrutiny of the world's media. It never fails to amaze me the way British Columbians are coming together in this great event. Why not showcase the great strength we have in this province?

I know my colleagues from the opposition want to make sure that we don't have a good economy, want to make sure we don't talk about all the great news, all the great stories we have changed in the last little while.

Anyway, I want to make sure when we talk about our economy, when we talk about the changes we have made in the last seven years, it is something that everybody understands. Even the opposition wants to forget about it. All they want to remind us about is their days when they brought this economy from the best one to the worst one.

Over the last 150 years this province was built on the backbone of our immigrants. It is pioneers who worked so hard to make sure that we have hope and prosperity and that we make sure we keep on enjoying the hope and prosperity our pioneers have built.

I want to make sure that our province continues to go the same way. We want to make sure that we keep on relying on the immigration that we need to fill all those jobs that are coming open today. Without having the full strength of our economy behind us, we will not able to make sure that our job creation situation is filled by the people from British Columbia.

When I talk to people, one of the things they say is that many, many decades ago there were not many immigrants here. These immigrants that came from all parts of Canada worked hard. They looked at it. They wanted to have a positive vision and a strong vision. They made sure that we had railroads coming in, connecting from east to west. They made sure that we had roads connecting from east to west.

If some of the opposition look at it today…. If they were to think negatively today, we would not have those roads. We would not have all of the hope and prosperity we have today.

We want to make sure our students are looked after. We want to make sure that our high school students who are going to school keep on getting the best education we're providing them today. Also they want to make sure that our economy….

If every high school student graduates from school now and over ten years, we will still have over 350,000 vacant jobs to fill. That is because of a strong economy, because of the policies of this government. That is why we are not only encouraging immigration, we are also counting on immigration, because we have to make sure to fill the jobs. We will not have enough people in British Columbia to fill them.

As the Parliamentary Secretary for Multiculturalism and Immigration, I am proud of the efforts this government is making to ease immigration, the plans and programs it has to make immigrants welcome and to make their entry into the workforce and business as seamless and simple as possible.

We have programs such as English as a second language to help them adjust to their new life, to make the transition easier from their native language to the language of work, commerce and life in British Columbia. This program that is so vital to making people feel comfortable, to feel at ease and to help them be safe at the worksite and workplace has been expanded by more than $20 million to provide adult-oriented settlement and support services.

We are committed to increase English language services so that those immigrants that we need so badly will continue the prosperity and workforce demand that will enable them to pursue employment opportunities more easily and more quickly. This program will assist not only the new immigrant job seekers but the employers who need them and the communities these newcomers will call home.

The throne speech also speaks of expansion of the provincial nominee program, which will help address the skill shortage created by our strong economy. Without such a program, we will see the skill shortage grow in the future. The provincial nominee program

now has the additional focus on entry-level and semi-skilled-level workers. It will help those workers and their families obtain permanent residency much more quickly.

Among the goals of this new pilot program is offsetting the serious labour shortages in the tourism and hospitality industry along with the trucking industry, both of which are expecting huge growth in labour demands over the next decades and more.

Both of these industries will play a critical role in our expert-oriented economy. Both will play a significant role during our 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Based on the growth patterns, the hospitality and tourism industry will need 84,000 more workers in the next decade — an average of one new job created every hour over the next ten years.

To service our rapidly expanding port system in B.C. and the increasing demand of Pacific Rim projects by consumers of North America, we need across Canada more than 37,000 new professional truck drivers each year. In B.C. alone, at least 4,500 new truck operators are needed each year.

Right now we are relying more and more on temporary foreign workers to meet the demands, but that does not create stability. It does not create the kind of lifestyle and economy that we value so highly in British Columbia. What we need is a permanent workforce and the families who will grow, who will contribute and who will become part of this amazing diverse culture that we have in British Columbia, which has existed here in our province since our province began more than 150 years ago.

Over that time, racism has occasionally reared its ugly head. To ensure that never happens again, to ensure that everyone here feels welcome, feels comfortable and feels at home in our diversity, we have — with the participation of the federal government — increased funding to combat racism and provide settlement and immigration services to our new residents.

Under our Premier's initiative WelcomeBC, this year and through 2009, funding from those programs has increased to $104 million, up from $75 million last year. These funds will be bringing the total spent over the next two years to support newcomers and immigrants to $246 million.

This is especially important because British Columbia must attract 30,000 skilled workers every year to meet the job demands. As early as 2011, the majority of our labour force growth will be from immigrants. While the variety and the skill level of all those jobs will be widely different, it is especially important that we attract foreign-trained professionals. Though there has been some concern that many of those professionals who come to British Columbia cannot find work in their chosen profession due to credentialing, our government has taken steps to fix it.

We have invested half a million dollars in funding to improve this dilemma. Under the Ministry of Economic Development, this government is providing those funds to 17 regulatory bodies to improve credentialing assessment and licensing practices to reduce the barriers that skilled professionals face when attempting to find positions suited to their professions, suited to the positions they held before they immigrated to Canada.

These changes will see more engineers available to build and create our infrastructure and more doctors and health care professionals to provide the services that our growing population will need. This funding is welcome news, not only to professional new immigrants but to the economic future and well-being of the entire province.

Through the Ministry of Attorney General we are providing about $1.5 million in bridging programs to help youth and the children of immigrants better adapt to our educational system, to our school system and to our communities so that they can feel welcome, find friendship and feel comfortable in their new homeland. This is especially important, since it is our children and youth and those of our new immigrants who will set the course of our province in the decades to come.

The ministry also has the Safe Harbour program, which encourages businesses in many of our communities to display signs offering sanctuary for people who experience discrimination or harassment and briefly need a place to go.

There are, through Welcome BC, so many venues and different programs available for encouragement of our current and future immigrants, who we depend on more and more to address our future and create the future for those new immigrants and new workers, and to ensure that British Columbia will always be the best place on earth.

The throne speech includes much more, Madam Speaker. There is much in this vision for the future of British Columbia, but time will not allow me to go into more detail.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the strong action planned for our educational system. The speech detailed a new program leading to certification in leadership for teachers. New powers will be given to the College of Teachers to eliminate incompetence in education in some of the teachers. New steps will expand our public university system, which will certainly interest my constituents in Surrey, and the provision of new clarity of purpose for our post-secondary institutions and new opportunities for higher learning.

Post-secondary students will be given new consumer protection as institutional accountability is strengthened under the new educational quality assurance program. Funding will be targeted for such things as added training for skilled workers to meet demand. Our successful Skills Connect for Immigrants program will be expanded.

For youth and children, another 316 StrongStart B.C. centres will be added over the next two years for a total of 400 in B.C. by 2010. This program gives young children, particularly those who are immigrants, an excellent basis on which to enter our regular school system.

Also included is a new early childhood learning agency to be established to assess the feasibility of a

full-school-day kindergarten for five-year-olds. It will look at expanding to include four-year-olds by 2010 and three-year-olds by 2012.

Madam Speaker, the vision this government has for our province is wonderful. When I talk about the throne speech, many of my constituents have said that this is excellent. I have received many calls on that. The throne speech encompasses everyone at every age level regardless of colour, creed, heritage or political leaning.

In closing, I want to repeat my steadfast support for this throne speech, for the path this government has chosen to take and for the vision of the future over both the short term and the long term, which our Premier has detailed so eloquently. I am proud of what we have accomplished so far since first being elected in 2001. I am excited about what we and our new immigrants to the province will accomplish over the decades to come.

I know that in the opposition, because their job is to oppose us, they always speak negatively about the throne speech, but I know in their hearts they see the great things this government has done in the last seven years. They can see in their hearts that many of their friends and constituents have jobs in British Columbia now. They also know that without our strong economy, we would not be able to have the lifestyles we have today.

Our economy is the best economy in Canada, and it will continue that way. We want to make sure the economy grows, so we can keep on putting more money into education, into our health care, into our social programs and looking after everybody who needs help, making sure that British Columbia remains the best place on earth.

S. Simpson: Hon. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to stand again and respond to the throne speech. At the time when we have this opportunity, probably more than at any other time in this place, it gets me reflecting back to the role that we have here and the role that I play for my constituents in Vancouver-Hastings. It's a great honour for me to have the opportunity to take my place in this chamber on their behalf, and I feel very privileged to do that.

My constituency is very diverse in many ways. It's a constituency with a very large and significant Asian population — about 40 percent. Also, what is probably the largest urban aboriginal population in British Columbia is in Vancouver-Hastings. A large number of our first nations people living there, particularly young people — with the challenges that they face living in Vancouver — are looking to have their aspirations met, and sometimes feel left out of the mix.

I meet with the organizations in my constituency that deal with aboriginal issues — the friendship centre, United Native Youth, Native Health and other groups like that. I hear from my constituents a lot that they feel frustrated and left out, and their desire is to have their aspirations met as well. Of course, that's not exclusive to the aboriginal people in the constituency.

Vancouver-Hastings is probably the second-poorest constituency in British Columbia. Of course, that means an awful lot of poor kids. We know, as has been pointed out here, that for four years in a row now British Columbia has had the highest levels of child poverty in the nation. Sadly, those levels are even higher in constituencies like mine.

As we all know, kids don't get poor by themselves. Poor kids are all about poor families, and those families don't feel that their issues are being addressed by this government. Certainly, there's nothing in this throne speech that will make them feel any more confident that the government is paying attention to their interests.

Also — and there's a little bit of discussion of this in the throne speech — I'm pleased that I have probably the largest single industrial sector in the city of Vancouver, having most of the working port located in my constituency. It's a very important job creator and economic generator for British Columbia and for Canada, and I'm pleased it's there. There are obviously always challenges when you abut a large industrial operation up against residential neighbourhoods, which is what we've done. But people are working hard on both sides to try to ensure that those relationships are successful.

The thing about my community is that it is a community that's active. There are lots and lots of community interests who are working in the best interests of the people who live in Vancouver-Hastings. It's a compassionate community where people do look after each other and look to take care of each other.

There are real concerns that we all have to be lifted up when the opportunities arise. There shouldn't be winners and losers. Unfortunately this government — probably more than anything else, except maybe its ideologically driven privatization schemes — thinks it's okay that there be winners and losers in British Columbia. What we need to do is find a way to raise everybody up.

There's a real consciousness about that in Vancouver-Hastings. That's a frustration they feel, and that would probably explain the reason why Vancouver-Hastings is one of those constituencies that has never chosen to elect a B.C. Liberal.

There are many issues in my community and certainly not exclusive to my community. I know they're across the city. I know they're across the province. Probably more than any other issue that comes into my constituency is the issue of housing and housing affordability. It's not exclusively an issue of the homeless.

This is really much more an issue of young families, families on modest or moderate incomes trying to be able to live in the city, mostly in the city where they grew up, and trying to make things work. Very often they are working poor, minimum-wage or close-to-minimum-wage workers, and they're finding it very, very challenging to find rental accommodation that they can afford and that is appropriate. They're seeing very little assistance from the government. There is the rent subsidies program, but many of those people, for a variety of reasons, are not able to avail themselves of that program. It doesn't work for them.

The government has chosen not to be innovative to look for ways to deal with those issues, to look for ways to increase affordable rental housing stock in our communities, whether it be market or non-market rental housing stock. We've seen little of anything from the minister that suggests that he's thinking about that or that he's looking to deal with those issues.

In my constituency there are significant issues around mental health. Many of my constituents, a large number, suffer from mental health issues. They come into my office every day looking for support, looking for opportunities to be able to improve their lives, and often just looking for help to cope. If they're not homeless, many of them are right on the bubble, and next month they could be. There's always that pressure and that strain.

For people who are already suffering from health issues to have that uncertainty about where you hang your hat at the end of the day and not knowing if it's going to continue is a very challenging situation. It makes it extremely difficult for these people to be able to cope and deal with the other issues that are in their lives.

Those issues include, in many instances, addictions. We know that — whether the addictions are to drugs, to alcohol, but addictions. Being able to try to deal with those addiction issues, the health issues, uncertainty about housing, and general poverty…. That's a pretty challenging mix. We put far too many of the people, certainly in my community and I know in communities around this province….

These people are in this situation where they have all of these pressures facing them. It's a very, very challenging situation, and we really have to ask ourselves whether we do enough here to help our most vulnerable citizens — many of our most vulnerable citizens — to meet those challenges. I'm afraid we don't.

The work doesn't get done here. The initiatives don't come forward to meet those challenges. Certainly, I haven't seen those initiatives in a substantive way in this throne speech. So there isn't the progress that needs to be made here, and the throne speech has failed us in that area.

I know that crime and safety is an issue. I'm sure it's an issue in many communities around the province. It certainly is an issue in my constituency and in Vancouver. Clearly, there's a growing concern around gang violence. I'm sure that every member in this House is very concerned about the ever-rising number of murders in the city that seem to have a direct relationship to gang violence and drugs.

While the police have put together some coordinated effort in an effort to deal with that, I don't see the confidence yet, in terms of the electorate, that those issues are being addressed or that people feel we're getting a handle on that. It is an issue that's very, very big for people in the community.

On the other side of that, an issue…. Certainly, property crime is always a concern — people's assets, the things they own. They get very concerned when those get stolen, and rightly so. But most people understand that a lot of the perpetrators of that crime fall into that category that I spoke about earlier — people with mental health issues, with addictions, who are living in poverty, who aren't sure about their housing status.

The people I talk to, many of the people in my constituency, absolutely want this addressed in a way that protects their property. But they also know that it has to be addressed in a way that recognizes the health implications for those people who are perpetrating many of those crimes and that makes sure they get the support they need.

This isn't just people wanting to be punitive. They're looking for real supports to be provided to people so that they can, in fact, move forward with their lives and don't feel the need to engage in those kinds of criminal activities.

A big issue and a growing issue in Vancouver and East Vancouver is around education. It's around school closures. We all know that the school population in Vancouver is reducing; it's going down. There are fewer students. There are a number of reasons for that. Some of it is the housing affordability issue, but there certainly are other reasons as well.

I know — having talked to people at the board of education and knowing what some of their thinking is as they review facilities — that there are a significant number of schools in my constituency that potentially are on the block. It's primarily annexes, but schools in my constituency are on the block and face possible closure. I have a great concern about that.

Not that it may not be necessary at some point to do some closures, but I have a concern that the ministry here and the minister are not getting past the rhetoric of some of her comments around issues in our schools.

I've heard the minister talk about schools being neighbourhood hubs. I think that's true, and I think that that's a good aspiration to have. But if you do that, then you need to be prepared to allow for space in schools to be used for things other than strict academics — whether it's parent spaces, child care spaces or other community uses.

The member across the way talks about StrongStart, and StrongStart is a fine program. It meets one need, but there is a whole array of other things that can happen in schools that legitimately enhance the opportunities for kids and their families, particularly in some of the inner-city schools. Unfortunately, to this point in time the minister is not willing to acknowledge and recognize those as legitimate activities and to allow that space to be factored out of the calculation on capacity so that we start to look at how we may best use those spaces.

Also — just one other reference that relates to education — I've had the opportunity to meet with an organization that is in my constituency, the Learning Disabilities Association. All members, I'm sure, have heard from members of the LDA who are concerned about the lack of support for children with learning disabilities, the lack of any additional funding for kids with learning disabilities.

I know that this organization is looking — and I certainly support the initiatives — to have much better

assessment of children at a younger age so that we can identify those disabilities, learning disabilities or learning challenges and be able to put individual education plans in place to meet those challenges.

What I'm told by people in the field, by parents and by educators who specialize in learning disabilities, is that if we capture them early, we have great opportunities for these kids to go on and be successful in school and have successful lives. If we allow this to fester for periods of time, we create a different situation where behaviour issues and other issues come to the fore.

I would hope that the government would invest the resources for the assessments and education plans, and additional resources to the schools and classrooms so that these kids can get their needs met, whether it's with education assistance or special training for teachers around how it affects class size.

We've talked here about poverty issues. We know poverty is a significant issue, and it's one of the issues that certainly creates the "us and them" in our society. We on this side, of course, have encouraged small measures — a small measure like the increase in the minimum wage from $8 to $10. The government, clearly, has rejected that.

If things are to be believed, this question about not being able to be successful at getting even a modest minimum wage increase at this point is one of the factors that has the current Minister of Labour announcing her intention not to seek another term. In fact she's been frustrated, I know, by her desire to increase the minimum wage and to get it up. She knows it should be raised, but the Premier and the cabinet have no interest in raising minimum wage, and it's unfortunate.

I want to talk a little bit about the environment area. Clearly, environment was a significant piece of the throne speech. The issue that concerns me the most around this is the question of climate justice — that this be fair and balanced, that our plans look to incorporate a scope that has everybody involved in trying to find solutions, and that it recognize those who are most vulnerable and protect them.

It's about engagement and beginning to engage British Columbians in this discussion. It's more than a year since the 2007 throne speech, when most of the things announced in this throne speech were announced for the first time. We've had most of them repeated again this time, but that's what happens. I guess it's particularly easy to do if you haven't actually done anything on them, and then it's almost like they're new.

It's around the contradictions. There's a whole series of public policy and programs that this government is advancing in one silo, and then there's the whole climate change initiative that's coming out of the Premier's office in another. In too many cases, there seems to be no correlation between those activities, and that's becoming increasingly evident to people who watch and observe this process.

I'm hearing more and more from people who are expressing their concern that the government isn't looking at this in a holistic way but is scrambling to put its shopping list together of things that will show it's taking action on this.

The other thing the government is doing, and we saw a lot of this in the throne speech, is this discussion of individual and personal responsibility. Very little, I think, other than a passing reference in relation to cap-and-trade…. There is no reference to large greenhouse gas emitters other than a passing reference there. That's of concern — that the government is going to download responsibility for dealing with this issue increasingly onto individuals and not look at a broader scope of where the responsibility lies.

We also see, and I think it's of no surprise to the people on this side of the House, that there's a big focus on local governments and the desire to download onto local governments, with no references in here that there will be resources that come along with that.

There is also a concern that the Premier has announced that the climate action plan will come sometime after the budget. Now, last year's throne speech…. We had the throne speech, and then we had the budget with no dollars in it, but we were told: "Don't worry about it. It will all be in the 2008 budget. That will be the green budget." So we were all expecting that those dollars would be in this budget, but now the Premier's giving us indications that actually the climate plan will come some time after that.

It begins to raise questions. Will there be dollars in the budget to deal with these climate change initiatives, or will we have to wait for 2009 for those dollars? Will we be waiting another year? This is all of interest. We'll get to see next week what it is the government does, whether it just puts it all off for another year or whether in fact we're going to be looking at things this year.

There is a concern growing that this speech, like previous speeches, is full of big dreams but no real plans. That concern is growing with British Columbians, and we see that. We have a Premier here who, on the issue of climate change — certainly one of the focuses of this plan — is not talking to the citizens of British Columbia. He's not talking to our communities, and he's not talking to business. We know now that that frustration is bubbling up across the way as well.

Reading comments yesterday in the media …. This is quite remarkable, because the one thing that people have always said about this government is that it's very disciplined. Things don't leak out. Those concerns don't get raised. Things get buried. However, we're now seeing something very different on this issue, and the issue is around engaging people and involving people in the conversations.

In this case, we have members like the member for East Kootenay, who was talking about business concerns in relation to climate change. He is quoted in the Globe and Mail as saying: "I acknowledge their concern. It comes from a lack of certainty about what the government is going to do. It's a year ago that we first laid out some broad themes, and business doesn't know a whole lot more now about how we intend to get there." He's right. The member is right.

The member for West Vancouver–Capilano was quoted as saying: "I ask what the cost of this is going to be" — talking about the climate change initiatives — "and I'm still waiting for an answer." Presumably, members of the Liberal caucus should be better connected to get some answers than the rest of us. Clearly, it's not working very well for them either.

The problem here…. I understand that these members, and other members from the Liberal caucus who have been referenced or quoted as well, are raising exactly those same kinds of frustrations. It's not just business. They've raised them in relation to business because they've got representations from business interests who are concerned. But we're hearing this from local communities, from individual citizens, from people in the environmental movement, from first nations, from many who are saying: "We are shut out of this discussion for all intents and purposes."

Why is it that this climate change discussion is going on without talking to British Columbians, without talking to the legitimate interests? As long as this continues to be the Premier's practice and the climate change cabinet committee's practice and the secretariat's practice, I'm very, very concerned that we're not going to make progress we need to make on this issue.

If we know anything, it's that the bottom line is that this is an issue so big and so complex in its ways that if we want to make real progress, citizens and communities have to take ownership of those solutions. It means they have to be part of that discussion and then take that ownership, as do business and others. Then we have a chance to make the progress we need to make. But I just don't believe, if it all comes on high and if it's pronouncements in a budget, in a throne speech or a press conference of the Premier saying, "This is what you shall do, British Columbia," that we're going to get there.

Those concerns are mine, and clearly, those concerns are shared by a growing number of members of the Liberal caucus. I'm glad they are starting to speak out, and, hopefully, they will speak out loudly that the Premier needs to begin talking to British Columbians — something he has chosen not to do on this issue.

What we need is a plan that is fair around the climate change initiative and that is fair for everybody in this province and for business in this province. We need a plan that has a broad scope to it and that incorporates large emitters, individual citizens and our communities. We need, if we're going to talk about emission pricing….

There's a lot of speculation about what will be in the budget next week around emission pricing — i.e., carbon taxes. We need for those taxes to prove out to be revenue-neutral. They need to be really revenue-neutral. Not the interpretation that the Minister of Finance has been spinning lately about what constitutes revenue-neutral, but really revenue-neutral so that it begins to give…. People who, in fact, take initiatives to reduce their emissions will see some benefit from doing that.

We need to link, as I said before, to other government action. The government needs to be able to show us where the linkages are between the climate initiatives and between the other programs that it has moving forward. I think that we need to get past the rhetoric here and be a whole lot more honest both about what the challenges are to accomplish effective climate change initiatives and about what those initiatives might look like.

As an example, we hear a lot about California tailpipe. It was in the throne speech here. But the reality is that we know that as long as the number of vehicles on the road continues to grow — in the numbers that they are now, based on ICBC 's projections — we're not talking about reducing emissions through California tailpipe. We're talking about putting some limits — which is not a bad thing — on the rate of growth, but we will continue to grow our emissions from vehicles simply because of the volumes of vehicles that are on the road.

I'd be the first one to say that if you don't do anything, it becomes a much more serious problem. So I don't want to disparage the need to take action like California tailpipe, but it's not being honest with people to suggest that it's going to dramatically cut our emissions. What it will do is slow the growth down because of the increase in number of vehicles. It doesn't begin to get us there.

We're having a very tough time seeing how we get to the Premier's number and what we do to get there. Again, it was a comment that was referenced to the member for East Kootenay, when he said he had echoed concerns that the government has created uncertainty by announcing carbon-cutting targets before the planning has taken place. There's certainly something to those comments by the member.

We need to engage citizens in developing solutions rather than telling them after the fact what we're going to do. That's one of the biggest failures of the Premier's plan, other than making announcements before there was a plan and then having to have the bureaucrats and others scramble to try to make up a plan that fits the targets announced by the Premier.

We now have a situation, though, where the Premier, the government, would be much better off to simply come clean and say: "We've been winging it for a year. We know we have to get at this. Let's actually sit down and start figuring out how to deal with this in a more thoughtful way that involves us all." I'm not going to hold my breath, but I think that would be a good thing.

It's particularly important, I think, because British Columbians are feeling increasingly disenfranchised by the government. We see that on the climate change file that I've just talked about. We see it and I hear it in terms of the makeup of the new TransLink, the privatized planning for TransLink, where we have this board that is put in place that meets in secret and that no longer has the accountability of having elected officials on it.

If you want to exacerbate that, in its first meeting it goes out and embraces what I understand was maybe a government directive. It's hard to say where the directive came from. We hear mixed messages. They give themselves a 500 percent pay raise at their first meeting. As somebody said, they probably deserve some more money,

but it might have been a good thing if they'd actually done something before they gave themselves a 500 percent pay raise.

Part of this as well — and it's a concern that I hear — is that the government announced recently, of course, its transit plan, the $14 billion wish list. We're not quite sure how it all gets paid for yet, but we'll see as that unfolds. The challenge that now comes is that I have people saying to me: "Well, if the government has told TransLink what, largely, will be most of that $14 billion coming of development if these projects all go ahead, falling under the auspices of TransLink…. What exactly are they supposed to plan and do around our transportation system when the government has given them a directive that they can't afford as it is?"

There becomes this question about what the real role of this board will be. Of course, the biggest concerns about what that role might be are around notions of property taxation and around other questions.

Then we have Bill 30 which, of course, has frustrated a whole number of people in our province who want to talk about land use planning in their communities and have been told they can't when it comes to private power. So this government, which seems to distrust British Columbians…. It's becoming an increasingly mutual distrust with our British Columbians.

While the Premier, I know, likes throne speeches better than budgets because they get to be flowery and they don't have to have a lot of substance and he gets to be rhetorical in them, it is the budget that we will wait for next week. We'll look for housing initiatives, for climate change, for dealing with species at risk, for education dollars, for money to fight poverty and for looking at the future of our forests and rural communities. We'll see next week if the Premier's words are worth any more than the paper they were written on in this throne speech.

I look forward to engaging in that debate, hon. Speaker, after next Tuesday, when we actually get to see if there's any meat on the bones of all of these soup-to-nuts commitments in the throne speech.

D. Jarvis: It's my honour to rise in what is now my 17th year in this great House. I rise to address the 17th or, someone said, possibly the 18th, as one year in the mid-'90s we had two throne speeches.

Nevertheless, certainly over the last 17 years I can say that every throne speech I have heard and have addressed has made me proud to stand with all my colleagues in support of the Speech from the Throne.

This year is no different, as we are a forward-thinking government and a world leader when it comes to issues such as environmental stewardship and literacy initiatives. When I was in the U.S.A. last December, I picked up a magazine published in San Francisco stating that Vancouver was the greenest city in all North America. So even the Americans realize what a great government we have.

The electorate needs to know that government is listening to them and that we hear what is important to the people of this province. This throne speech reflects what I hear my constituents say, what the people of North Vancouver–Seymour say, and it is important to them on a daily basis.

For example, they want to feel safe in their own communities. They want to review the review of sentencing guidelines for certain types of criminal offences, and this speech reflects that wish.

To the people in North Vancouver–Seymour, I want to say that I'm still very honoured to be your representative. The fact that they increased my vote in the last election is quite humbling.

Over the past 150 years that we have been a province, there have only been 884 MLAs in this House. So we should all, both sides of the House, be proud to be the representatives of B.C. It has been a privilege for me to do so.

There are many aspects in this throne speech that I want to…. There are so many that I can't possibly speak to all of them, so I've pulled off a few items that pertain to my riding.

This throne speech addresses the commitment of British Columbia to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat climate change. The North Shore schools are helping to achieve the climate change goals and have gone green to help address the implication of greenhouse gases.

In October '07 the province of British Columbia launched the B.C. green schools program, in which North Shore schools will take part. This program aims to educate students about the effects of global warming and will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent by 2020.

A lot of discussion is out there on the greenhouse gas aspect — the cost and how to achieve it, etc. But regardless of this, regardless of these discussions, it is imperative and only proper that we have clean air and clean water. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to do so. So let's get on with it, politics aside.

Madam Speaker, the building blocks of any society are education and literacy. Education is the medium that will allow our children to possess the appropriate tools to one day run this province. It is for reasons such as this that the province has invested so heavily in education.

It is evident that the literacy programs have always been strongly supported by this government, and the North Shore has certainly played its part. Last year I sat on the all-party Education Committee, and literacy was the main concern for both adults and youth. The North Shore has some of the highest literary usage in the country. In a recent competition British Columbia came fourth in the world for literacy. Both of these particular statistics are something for all North Shore residents to be proud of.

Institutions such as Capilano College have stepped in to help the adult literacy. Our provincial reading now, with StrongStart and North Vancouver school district's reading 44, go a long way towards making sure that we can continue to hold the bragging rights to being the most literate jurisdiction in Canada.

Furthermore, the new Lynn Valley Library opened its doors in November of '07. This facility supports this government's commitment to education and literacy by providing an expanded collection and updated resources. This is truly a marvellous building in the centre of Lynn Valley in my riding.

Mr. Speaker, this province has shown innovation in investing more on health care than ever before, than any other government. Issues with wait-lists and shortages of health care workers in our hospitals and health care facilities are being addressed through our recruitment campaign that brings experienced and qualified nurses into British Columbia. So 520 nurses from the United Kingdom have been hired over the last two years.

In 2007 the province of B.C. invested $28 million to help recruit and retain qualified nurses. B.C. has also increased the number of education spaces by 82 percent, which has led to the graduation of 7,500 nurses in the past five years. We said this was being done in previous throne speeches, and it now has happened. I acknowledge that this recruitment program is an excellent beginning to the continued plan for improvement.

However, I'd like to address that we also need a helicopter pad in North Vancouver for the air ambulance to have a greater access to the Lions Gate Hospital, which is our designated trauma centre. Presently it lands in the West Vancouver works yard, and we have to then re-ambulance them over to North Vancouver. We have the availability of land to build the pad, but financially we are looking to all governments for some support there.

Mr. Speaker, noting the time, I move adjournment of the debate and reserve the right to speak further when we continue.

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Monday:	Two distinct sittings:
	10 a.m. to 12 noon
	1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Tuesday:	Two distinct sittings:
	10 a.m. to 12 noon
	1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday:	1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Thursday:	Two distinct sittings:
	10 a.m. to 12 noon
	1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

On Monday	until 10 a.m. Tuesday
On Tuesday	until 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday
On Wednesday	until 10 a.m. on Thursday
On Thursday	until 10 a.m. on Monday