Hansard — Thursday, February 14, 2008 p.m.

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Introductions by Members		9681

Tabling Documents		9681
	British Columbia Electoral Boundaries Commission, preliminary report amendments

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		9681
	Spirit of B.C. in Richmond
	J. Yap
	Scotties Tournament of Hearts
	K. Conroy
	Multiculturalism Week
	D. Hayer
	Community event in Gold River
	C. Trevena
	Electronic devices and youth
	J. Nuraney
	Women's Memorial March
	J. Kwan

Oral Questions		9683
	Government action on mental health beds
	D. Chudnovsky
	Hon. G. Abbott
	Report on decommissioning of Riverview Hospital
	D. Chudnovsky
	Hon. G. Abbott
	Proposed TransLink routes in Coquitlam
	D. Thorne
	Hon. K. Falcon
	M. Farnworth
	TransLink board remuneration
	M. Karagianis
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Availability of beds at Royal Columbian Hospital
	C. Puchmayr
	Hon. G. Abbott
	Government action on forest worker safety
	C. Trevena
	Hon. O. Ilich
	Safety of Bamfield road
	S. Fraser
	Hon. K. Falcon

Throne Speech Debate (continued)		9688
	D. Jarvis
	G. Gentner
	J. Nuraney
	C. Puchmayr
	Hon. J. van Dongen
	N. Macdonald
	Hon. R. Thorpe

Hon. G. Abbott: It's a pleasure to rise and introduce some guests here today, who hosted a wonderfully informative breakfast this morning. These are people from across the province who do just wonderful work in relation to the palliative care sector in the province. They are the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association. I'd like to introduce to the House today Jody Smiling, who is the executive director; Nancy Kilpatrick, who is the president-elect; Wendy Pratt, who is president; and Terry Odeneal, who is a board member for the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association.

While I'm on my feet, Mr. Speaker, I see in the gallery up here an old friend of mine. I use "old" in the kindest sense of that word. He's an old friend and former political science professor of mine — well, it's a few years ago now — at the University of Victoria, Dr. Patty Smith. Patty is now at Simon Fraser University. Patty has also been doing a remarkable job for a few years now of leading that wonderful program that is such a benefit to both sides of the Legislature every year, the legislative internship program.

Given that he is surrounded by young people, I suspect that we can at this moment celebrate the moment, thank Patty and welcome the class-of-2008 legislative interns to the Legislature here in British Columbia.

R. Fleming: With us in the gallery today is a wonderful group of school children who are at the Legislature for their first time. They're from Cloverdale Traditional School, grade 5 students with their teacher, Ms. Marijka Westbroek. This group of school children…. Last year around this time, their school was faced with closure.

Students worked with parents, trustees and their teachers and learned a valuable lesson in local democracy, which is to make your case and to make it forcefully. The good news is that a year later, that school is not only open, but enrolment has grown by 15 percent, and it has a bright future ahead of it. They're now here to see democracy at the provincial level at work. Will the House please make these students from Cloverdale Traditional School welcome.

Mr. Speaker: Just to remind members, two-minute statements start in a while.

I'd like to recognize a benefit event being held at eight o'clock tonight at the lecture theatre in the Victoria Convention Centre, and this is an introduction also. Appropriate for Valentine's Day, a one-act play entitled The Return of Sex — the Return of Love, produced and directed by our own Mur Meadows from the legislative dining room downstairs. If I may, hon. Speaker, the proceeds go to the Vancouver Island Sexual Health Society and Options for Sexual Health of B.C.

Mur is joining us in the gallery today. I ask you to join me again in applause. These are very worthwhile causes. I thank Mur for his work and his creativity in bringing this forward.

C. Puchmayr: Another success story. From the dining room to sociology student, Toni Steele is in the gallery. Please make her welcome.

D. Routley: I would like the House to help me welcome Wade MacGregor. Wade is here representing TimberWest's 16 dependent trucker owner-operators and pursuing the cause of operating profitably and safely at the same time. May the House help me welcome Wade McGregor.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I have the honour to present the British Columbia Electoral Boundaries Commission's amendments to the preliminary report.

J. Yap: An exciting provincewide celebration is underway. February 8 to 16 is Spirit of B.C. Week. Held each February, Spirit of B.C. Week showcases the various communities that make up our great province. It's an opportunity for British Columbians to highlight the local initiatives and successes in the arts, culture, volunteerism and sports in their diverse communities. An initiative of 2010 Legacies Now, Spirit of B.C. Week was initially created to involve all communities at a grass-roots level in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Games.

This celebration has grown significantly. This year more than 100 B.C. communities are participating in the Spirit of B.C. Week, hosting over 350 events provincewide ranging from arts exhibitions to sporting activities, with the creativity, energy and spirit of the people of our province.

My own community, Richmond, had the honour of hosting one of this year's Spirit of B.C. signature events, the Spirit of B.C. Richmond Rocks celebration, which I was happy to attend this past weekend. Community leaders, athletes, volunteers and local citizens attended an afternoon of curling demonstrations, both able-bodied and wheelchair. We were also treated to a fine musical performance by the band Bitterly Divine, a rock-and-roll band comprised of first nations musicians led by Tewanee Joseph, who also happens to be the executive director of the Four Host First Nations Secretariat.

All present were invited to write a few personal words on whiteboards on what "spirit" means to them, the idea being to create a community spirit wall with hundreds, if not thousands, of individual spirit

thoughts. This builds on the "I've got the spirit" car stickers initiative, which was launched recently to promote the Spirit of B.C. in the Richmond community.

I invite all members of this House to join me in congratulating the Richmond Spirit of B.C. Committee and chair Ed Gavsie for organizing a great celebration and demonstrating that Richmond has got the spirit.

K. Conroy: From January 22 to 27 the Trail Curling Club hosted the B.C. Women's Curling Championship in Trail. Known as the provincial Scotties Tournament of Hearts, this event determined who represents B.C. at this year's national Scotties Tournament of Hearts to be held in Regina starting this Saturday. Eight teams vied for that honour, including three teams from the Royal City Curling Club in New Westminster, one each from Richmond, Williams Lake, Vernon, Kamloops and Nelson — all representing their various geographical regions across B.C. The MacInnis rink from Kamloops won the right to be Team B.C., representing our province this weekend in Regina.

An event of this magnitude is a daunting task to pull off. The people from Trail once again rose to the occasion. Over 150 volunteers were required. I want to give special recognition to the hard-working group of volunteers who formed the host committee. These include Sandra Stajduhar, Dana Haas, Eleanor and Frank Jorgensen, Eileen Gallamore, Marilyn Wiens, Janet Cameron, Jack Irvin, Dave Hogg, Shelley and Barry Frew, Brenda Moncrief, Rhonda Vilene, Lori Bagshaw, Maureen Klit, Lorna Perri, Flo Woodhouse, Donna Butler, Jacquie Swanson, Daphne and Cecil Hookey, Penny and Pat Fennell, and Georgina Jamieson.

I'd also like to point out that whenever these major events come to our area, they are televised for the country to see. What many of you don't realize is that we don't really have many main television big players in our region. It is the hard-working crew at Shaw Cable who do the fantastic job of bringing these important sports events to your living rooms. Kudos to all of them, but especially to our own local Shaw camera experts Kristina Krichowski, Jen Waldie and Bob Sutherland, who all worked the Trail bonspiel and continued to provide excellent service to our area.

Kudos to the city of Trail for once again hosting a first-class sporting event and to everyone who played, watched or worked and participated through volunteering. Congratulations on being part of an exciting week of good curling.

D. Hayer: Each year in February our province and residents take the opportunity to celebrate and share our heritage and culture. We call this celebration Multicultural Week, which the Attorney General and I declared officially in Vancouver on Monday.

It is time to acknowledge the vast diversity of our cultural heritage — a legacy that springs from the beginning of this province 150 years ago. The welcome we extend to newcomers is made possible through the commitment of non-profit organizations, community groups and volunteers. That is why this year, in partnership with the multicultural advisory council, we have started the first annual Nesika Awards.

These awards will recognize excellence by people, organizations and communities whose leadership is bringing B.C.'s diverse cultures together. The Nesika Awards mean "we, us, ours" in the In-SHUCK-ch language, and it is a fitting description of the welcoming attitude that we value so highly in our province.

Diversity is one of British Columbia's greatest strengths, and it ensures we enjoy the dynamic cultural life that is the envy of many nations. It strengthens our economy through financial investment, trade opportunity and the immigration of many new immigrants. In any one week we might be exposed to first nations culture through art and history, join in a Chinese new year celebration, participate in Vaisakhi and a celebration of Oktoberfest, and attend Robbie Burns night.

Multicultural Week is an opportunity to celebrate our own traditions and cultures and to explore the tradition and cultures of other British Columbians. I encourage every member of this House to take a moment to think about the importance of multiculturalism and to honour the culture of diversity that makes this province the best place on earth to live and work and play in.

C. Trevena: I'd like to tell the House about an event in Gold River this weekend. It's a community celebration aimed at bridging divides. The celebration, which is also part of Spirit of B.C. Week, will be tinged with sadness as many mourn the loss of a stalwart in the community, Frank Sinclair, a faller killed in the bush earlier this week.

Organizers did want to make sure that the event went on. A lot of planning has gone into it, and it's a mark of both the village of Gold River and the first nations, the Mowachaht-Muchalaht. The relationship between those communities has at times been strained. The Mowachaht-Muchalaht, whose traditional territory covers Nootka Sound and whose ancestors greeted Capt. James Cook at Yoquot, no longer live on the ocean but on a reserve on the edge of town.

The village of Gold River itself recently marked its 40th birthday. It's had its good times, a prosperous mill, and its bad times when that mill closed. It's now looking at a renaissance with a new power plant.

Perhaps a sign for the future of the village and for the other communities was brought by the Lieutenant-Governor. He recently visited Gold River Secondary School and had a tour of and lunch at Tsaxana. His message was clearly celebrating diversity, working towards reconciliation and building bridges.

Over the last several months a group including the mayor, school board representatives, people from the reserve and young people has been working through the Centre for Innovative and Entrepreneurial Leadership to find ways for their communities to improve their relationships. The results have been described as invaluable, and everyone wants to build on what they've learned.

The first step, though, was to celebrate what they had — hence Saturday's bridging communities day, where food, music, dance and sport will bring together people from both sides of the river. I'm happy to be going to that event and invite others to join me and to work in their own way to bridge communities.

J. Nuraney: I rise today to express concern about the relationship between our children and electronic devices. At a recent B.C. parent congress held by our hon. Minister of Education, we learned of very disturbing statistics. By graduation, an average teen would have spent more time watching screens — be it television or computer — than in the classroom, playing sports or talking to their parents.

Forty-eight percent of Canadian kids between the ages of eight and 15 have their own televisions, and 26 percent of them have their own computers hooked up to Internet. The average time spent daily using media by eight-to-18-year-olds is six hours and 21 minutes. Sixty percent of Canadian boys in grades 3 to 6 play video games almost every day.

It may be of interest to this House to know that one of the top video games for boys in grades 3 to 6 is Grand Theft Auto. While it is admirable that our children of today adapt very quickly to this technology, it is also alarming that without proper guidance and supervision, they can fall victims to the unscrupulous predators. As passive users, children utilize tools with no understanding of the concepts represented on the screen. It is, therefore, important that they be taught to utilize this very effective tool to help them understand the relationship between real ideas and what is being represented on the screen.

I cannot emphasize enough the responsibility of the parents and caregivers to supervise and direct the use of electronics in the lives of our children, not by penalizing but by nurturing. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and Solicitor General, has developed three guides about safety and the Internet for parents. I strongly advise parents to avail themselves of this very important information.

J. Kwan: At noon today at the corner of Main and Hastings, outside the Carnegie library, the Women's Memorial March was held. Every year for 17 years people from our community have gathered together in support of each other as we honour the lives of women who suffer or die from violence.

As aboriginal leaders lead the march, they often sing the women's warrior song. As they march, they lay single red roses for each woman that has gone missing in the downtown east side. It is no coincidence that this march is held on February 14, Valentine's Day, for each of these women is loved by someone somewhere in our community.

The solemn march is organized and led by women because many women, especially aboriginal women, face physical, mental, emotional and spiritual violence every day. We know that this has a long history. The first official recording of a woman missing from the downtown east side was made in 1978. Today we know that there have been at least 64 women who have gone missing, and all were probably murdered. This is an overwhelming sense of loss and grief in our community. It is felt by families, friends and everyone in the community.

No matter what charges are laid or what the courts decide, there is a continuing need for communities to come together to express the feeling of loss and grief and to remember all those who still are unaccounted for, whether in our cities or towns or on the highway of tears. Each year we gather to amplify the voices at the margins of life in order to renew our commitment to end violence against women. We as public officials have an obligation to acknowledge the trauma that has been inflicted upon those women, their families, friends and our community.

I stand here today to thank the organizers for creating this tradition, all the participants for joining together in this public expression of sorrow. I invite all members of this House to join me in reflecting on the issues which the women in our community face and which the Women's Memorial March raises, and to support these women to seek closure in these tragedies.

D. Chudnovsky: When Riverview was decommissioned, this government promised to build between 400 and 500 replacement mental health beds for Metro Vancouver. Here's what they have built: nine beds in Vancouver Coastal, 115 beds in Fraser Health. Since 2002, $41 million has sat in the bank rather than going towards the new mental health facility it was intended for — $41 million untouched, when people are suffering across the region. How can the Minister of Health justify these six years of inaction?

Hon. G. Abbott: It's richly ironic to hear from this member, who was certainly a supporter and, I'm sure, a member of the New Democratic Party — the New Democratic Party government that in the 1990s continued the process of deinstitutionalization without supports at Riverview.

It was that former government in the 1990s that concluded that the mentally ill could live without sup-

ports on the streets of the downtown east side. It was that former government that announced a $125 million mental health plan, and moments later the Health Minister of the day, Penny Priddy, announced there wasn't one penny to support that $125 million health plan.

Our government has taken action since 2001. Not only did we fund the $125 million mental health plan; we have put forward $138 million towards community mental health facilities in regions all across this province.

D. Chudnovsky: I invite the minister to make that speech and to tell that to Debbie, whose son now, today, can't get the mental health services he needs in Terrace. He's been in and out of the courts and jail instead. I invite him to tell Elizabeth, who had to leave a hospital at the end of January to go live in her van. I invite him to tell that to the Vancouver police department, who have chronicled the mess that this government's mental health services are in, in this province today.

The government is going ahead with extensive plans to redevelop Riverview, even though a consultant's report on Riverview decommissioning has been kept secret. Will the Minister of Health release the secret report on Riverview decommissioning?

Hon. G. Abbott: This member doesn't know what he's talking about. The beds that he references at Riverview for Vancouver Coastal Health Authority continue to be funded. They've been funded through the period. They continue to be funded.

Vancouver Coastal Health has had a heck of a time trying to find locations. They've looked at a hundred properties in Vancouver Coastal for replacement facilities for the Riverview beds. They have struggled with that.

But I can tell you it's been a great success across the province, whether we're talking about Prince George or Terrace, as the member mentioned, or Kamloops or Kelowna or Victoria or other locations. The mentally ill now have community mental health beds and supports closer to home, unlike what that government did not do in the 1990s.

D. Chudnovsky: The people of the province see the results of this government's policies. The people of the province know there's a crisis in mental health services in this province, and no amount of excuses from this minister can change the evidence that people see on the streets every day.

By the way, hon. Speaker, the minister seems to have ignored the question, so I'll ask it again. Will the Minister of Health release the secret report on Riverview decommissioning?

Hon. G. Abbott: If I was going to ask advice on how to deal with mental health issues in this province, that group over there is the last group that I would contact.

Hon. G. Abbott: This group across the way, this group that deinstitutionalized without support, this group that had a $125 million mental health plan without a single penny appended to it…. They did very little.

I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that we have increased the number of mental health beds in this province by 44 percent since 2001. We now have well over 7,000 mental health beds, and we've more than doubled the number of addiction treatment beds in this province — again, unlike the sorry record of the group across the way.

D. Thorne: We'll try that again. Yesterday we learned that according to TransLink, the ridership numbers in the Evergreen line business case include future residents of the proposed massive market-condo development on the Riverview site. But TransLink's information is being disputed by a spokesperson from the Ministry of Transportation.

My question is for the Minister of Transportation. Who's wrong — his ministry spokesperson or his TransLink?

Hon. K. Falcon: I'm not exactly sure what the point of the question was, to be perfectly honest with you. The fact of the matter is that TransLink…

Hon. K. Falcon: …has been working with the communities of the Tri-Cities to bring an Evergreen line up to the Tri-Cities. They've selected a route that the member should know all about. We've met with the community leaders. We've said to the community leaders: "You've got 45 days to take a look at what the technology means for your communities and to come back with any recommendations, if you want any changes to the route."

My understanding is they don't. They've been pretty clear about that, at least thus far. But I'm not going to prejudge any of the consultations they have with their communities. We will do something that is very different from what that group did when they

were in power, and that is when we say we're going to build something, we will get it built.

D. Thorne: Perhaps I'll rephrase my question so that the Minister of Transportation can understand it better. There are two proposed routes being recommended by the Minister of Transportation. City councils in the Tri-Cities have been asked to do a 45-day consultation to decide which route would be the preference of the communities.

The communities, including the city councils, were not told that the numbers of riders projected for the southern route, which has now been added back into the mix, included projected residents of a developed Riverview site. They were not told. The mayor of Coquitlam did not know. I did not know. City councils across the region did not know.

TransLink says yes, those numbers are included in the projected ridership for that proposed southern route. The Ministry of Transportation spokesperson says this is not true. Those projected residents are not included.

All I want to know, all the residents of Coquitlam and the political people on councils want to know from the Minister of Transportation is: who is telling the truth — the Ministry of Transportation or TransLink, both of which the minister controls?

Hon. K. Falcon: Well, I'll tell you what this Minister of Transportation would like to know. This Minister of Transportation would like to know: do they support actually getting this Evergreen line built, or do they not? Because I can tell you….

Hon. K. Falcon: The member can fiddle around with what she thinks population growth numbers on a proposed southeast corridor may or may not be. I was very clear when I met with the leaders of those communities. TransLink has actually spent a lot of time in consultation, working on the northern route. I have said to them that….

We're going to listen to the question. We're going to listen to the answer. Please.

Hon. K. Falcon: We have met with the leaders of those communities. We had a very good meeting, and I explained to them that TransLink has done an enormous amount of public consultation and, in fact, environmental work on the route that they are actually proposing. We have no intention of shifting that route, but we asked the community for their feedback within 45 days.

Whether they're proposed numbers that the member talks about…. Those are projections. You can project whatever kinds of numbers you want, but you'll never know what they are until you know what kind of zoning a community wants to undertake.

What would be nice…. My ultimate dream, as it always has been in this House, is that just once — maybe just once — we will finally get the opposition taking a position on a major project underway in the province of British Columbia.

M. Farnworth: What's clear, hon. Member, is that you are genetically incapable of answering a question.

Let's be clear. We want the Evergreen line. We want SkyTrain. But what we want…

M. Farnworth: …is communities to be able to do what the minister asked, which was to come back in 45 days with an informed answer and informed recommendations. Crucial to that is knowing what the ridership numbers for the two routes are based on, because the numbers that are put out there are put out there by TransLink, which the minister controls, and the other by his own ministry, which he controls.

The question we have is: whose figures are right? Is it TransLink's figures that are right, or are the Ministry of Transportation's figures right when they say that they're not included? The reason this is important is because the projections from his own government, in terms of the numbers being built that they would like to see on this massive development, have increased from 7,000 now to 25,000. That's faster than the increase in the overrun of the convention centre.

My question is really clear. Minister, whose figures are right? Is it TransLink saying the right thing, or is it the Ministry of Transportation saying the right thing?

Hon. K. Falcon: I know how difficult this could be for members of the opposition, because one thing they're not used to seeing is any kind of population growth. When they were in power, they just saw people moving the heck out of British Columbia. They're not used to rapid growth in communities, and I understand that.

All those members have to do is actually look at what the business case does. The business case talks about potential population growth on both the lines. It does not include numbers on Riverview. They are actually TransLink numbers that were provided as part of the business case.

I will say this. I am really pleased to hear that they are actually, apparently…. Now, this is today. This could change. They were against the Port Mann Bridge, and then all their MLAs, as soon as the leader said they were against it, were on the radio saying: "No. Actually, she didn't mean that. We really actually support it."

But today, at least, we've heard in this House that they support the Evergreen line — apparently, provisionally — but that's a good start for a group that never takes a stand on anything.

M. Farnworth: What we get from the minister is that these are TransLink's numbers, and he didn't dispute those numbers. In other words, the TransLink numbers are right. In other words, the southern route numbers take into account a massive development proposal on the Riverview site.

M. Farnworth: From the heckling we get, he wants to say: "No, they're not." Well, he's got an opportunity to stand up here right now and once again tell this House. Who is right? Is it the TransLink figures that are right, or is it the Minister of Transportation's denial of those figures that is right? One of them is right, and one of them is wrong, and we want to know which one it is.

The other thing we want to know is that whatever happens on the Riverview site — whether they want a 7,000-unit development or whether they want a 25,000-unit development — when the city of Coquitlam makes a decision…. If they vote and say, "We reject this proposal," will this government respect the decision made by the city of Coquitlam and the people of Coquitlam?

The minister can answer two questions. Is it the TransLink figures that are right or his own ministry's figures that are right? Will he respect the decision by the city of Coquitlam?

Hon. K. Falcon: This is a most fascinating discussion for me. Am I actually hearing the members of the opposition now calling for the line to be moved to the southern route? Is that what they're calling for? They're saying that they're now pushing for…. In spite of this fascinating discussion on what potential growth figures may be on the southern line, we're actually talking about a northern route.

Member, if you are calling for a southern route, stand up and say that in this House. I think that would be helpful to this discussion.

As I've said before, we use the figures that were put forward in the business case through TransLink. Riverview was not a specific consideration when they did their modelling.

M. Karagianis: The minister seems unable to answer that question about TransLink, but I've got one that maybe he can answer. Will the minister confirm for us that TransLink last week gave themselves a 500 percent increase in salary at the taxpayers' expense?

Hon. K. Falcon: What I can confirm is that a screening panel led by former New Democratic Premier Mike Harcourt made recommendations to the board. The board had no options to vary those recommendations. The recommendations were that they were to be paid….

Hon. K. Falcon: Well, Members, I would think that you would show the former Premier the respect that I think he deserves.

Hon. K. Falcon: The recommendation was that the board be compensated in an amount that's equivalent to other authorities, like the Vancouver Fraser port authority and the Vancouver Airport Authority. The issue really is: is it appropriate compensation for the task we're asking them to do?

Let's remind ourselves what we're asking this board to do: to oversee and execute the implementation of a $14 billion transportation plan, the largest transportation plan in the history of the province of British Columbia. When we asked for the screening panel to go out and seek the best and the brightest, they did a very able job in doing that under Mike Harcourt, and they have made recommendations to make sure they are compensated appropriately.

M. Karagianis: I just want to be very clear here. We've just had transit fares go up in the Greater Vancouver area to being the highest transit fares anywhere in this country. Meanwhile, the Minister of Transportation's handpicked board and handpicked screening panel, except for one member, have now voted for — a group of board members who all hold very high-paying jobs elsewhere — a fee of $1,200 every single time they meet. Every single time this board meets….

M. Karagianis: Every time this board meets, they can bill the taxpayers $1,200. And you know what, hon. Speaker? They can actually do that every single day, and they don't even have to appear in person. They can phone in to the meeting, and they still get to bill the taxpayers $1,200 each, every single time they meet.

I would like to ask the minister: is this prudent use of transit fares and taxpayers' dollars?

Hon. K. Falcon: One quick point before I answer the question, and that is that the member is totally wrong and factually incorrect to suggest they're the highest fares in Canada. That is demonstrably a false statement, and I would hope that the member would stop repeating that information, because it's false.

What I would like to point out is that I find it a little rich to get this lecture from the members opposite. One thing I do have is a recollection that there was a time….

Hon. K. Falcon: I'm thinking fondly back to a time when there was, in fact, a current NDP mayor named Derek Corrigan who, when they were in government, they appointed as a part-time — now, a part-time, I give you — chair of B.C. Transit and paid him $120,000 a year. Yup. It gets worse, I'm sorry to say. What does he do? He also, as he's telling everyone to go green, leases himself a Saab 900 Turbo automobile.

The NDP — even the NDP — had to get rid of this individual. But they, unfortunately, then paid $56,000 in severance to the same individual. That's not the kind of leadership we're going to put on a board that's responsible for billions of taxpayer dollars.

C. Puchmayr: The crisis at Royal Columbian Hospital has reached such a proportion that the fire marshal has had to intervene due to overcrowding in the hallways. Cots and patients lined the hallways and were blocking the emergency exit. It is a deplorable situation.

What will the minister do to ensure that this deplorable situation is resolved immediately?

Hon. G. Abbott: The member's question…. I should begin by saying this. Royal Columbian Hospital has a very, very busy emergency department — in fact, the second busiest in the entire province of British Columbia. There are a lot of people who make their way through there.

I do want to say to the nurses, the doctors, the residential care aides — all of those who are working tirelessly in Royal Columbian Hospital — thank you for what you've been doing. I want to thank them and salute them.

Hon. G. Abbott: During the past few days the very dedicated staff at Royal Columbian has not only been dealing with the regular flow of emergency patients. They have also been dealing with the outbreak of Norwalk virus in the Queen's Park Care Centre, which is adjacent to the emergency department and is often a referral agency for the department. They've been dealing with Norwalk at Ridge Meadows Hospital, and they've been dealing with Norwalk at residential care facilities around Royal Columbian Hospital.

This is an unfortunate situation, and I hope the member can recognize that the incidence of Norwalk virus has had a profound effect upon the ability to refer patients out of Royal Columbian emergency department.

C. Puchmayr: The minister needs to get out to New Westminster and see that the Queen's Park Care facility isn't near Royal Columbian Hospital. It's a separate facility that is situated a few kilometres away. The situation at Royal Columbian Hospital is a situation that began after 2005 when this government tore down St. Mary's Hospital, which used to be the overflow for this type of crisis.

It's not only the firefighters that are sounding the alarm. It's the paramedics as well. Ambulances are parked in the parking lot taking up the space. Patients

are waiting inside the ambulance. The ambulances are not able to be redispatched into the field because of it.

Will the Minister of Health take leadership and resolve this crisis now, before more lives are put at risk?

Hon. G. Abbott: Well, I'll begin by advising the members that St. Mary's never had an emergency department. They were doing no emergency work at St. Mary's at the time of closure or before the closure.

I should also note for the member's benefit that the Fraser Health Authority has been working tirelessly to ensure that they have the resources to deal with a growing population in the Fraser Health Authority. In fact, after the decade of the 1990s when we saw over 3,300 hospital beds cut in the province of British Columbia, today we have 8 percent more acute care beds in Fraser Health Authority than we did in 2001 when we took office. We have a thousand more residential care and assisted-living beds today in Fraser Health than we did in 2001, and we have hundreds more mental health and addiction beds in Fraser Health than we had when we took office.

C. Trevena: Mr. Speaker, the village of Gold River is in mourning because another forest worker lost his life on the job. On Tuesday Frank Sinclair, who was an experienced faller, went to work in the bush and didn't return home.

The Auditor General and the Premier's own forest safety ombudsman have both called on the government to invest in safety for our forest workers. But the Minister of Forests says it's too expensive.

My question is to the Minister of Labour and Citizens' Services. Since the Minister of Forests has refused to show any leadership, will she commit to have her ministry take the lead role in addressing forest worker safety?

Hon. O. Ilich: First of all, I would like to express my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Sinclair. We are always concerned with the death of any worker.

What I can tell the House is that WorkSafe is on site. They have sent an investigator to Gold River, and we're working with local authorities to determine the cause of this tragic accident. WorkSafe will continue to do what it can to make sure that any reports and help are given to the family.

S. Fraser: My question is about accidents that may be about to happen. I've raised the issue of the safety of the Bamfield road a number of times with the Minister of Transportation, and recently the B.C. safety ombudsman report affirms what I have been demanding. Fix the road. Make it safe.

The Minister of Forests rejected the ombudsman's report. Does the Minister of Transportation agree with the Minister of Forests that it is unnecessary for us to address road safety issues in the forest?

Hon. K. Falcon: I can certainly speak with some knowledge on the Bamfield road, which is the core of the member opposite's question.

The member knows that this is a logging road and that we have an agreement with the forest companies. In fact, we provide $200,000 a year as a contribution towards the upkeep of the road, to provide some level of maintenance for the small amount of public that utilizes the road. I think there was an issue of the deterioration of the road during the strike. There wasn't the usual work that was going on. My understanding is that they're finalizing some plans now to get that road back into condition and back into shape for the folks that use it.

D. Jarvis: When I left off this morning, I was discussing how this government was listening to my constituents and their concerns with regards to…. We had discussed community safety, greenhouse gases, the greening of North Vancouver in the schools and literacy in schools and in Cap College.

With respect to seniors, this throne speech addresses several innovative programs that benefit our seniors. In the past year this government has definitely shown its commitment to senior citizens and to their future. As of January 1, 2008, changes to the human rights legislation will allow employees to choose when they want to retire. This will not only have huge implications for senior citizens who wish to continuing their working careers, but it will also contribute to B.C.'s growing economy.

Last year we celebrated the opening of phase 1 of the remodelled Lynn Valley Care Centre, which is a campus of care for the seniors on the North Shore. In the first phase a total of 14 units — being four one-bedroom couples units, eight single one-bedroom units and two studios — were built. Once the second phase is completed this year, we'll have a total of 29 subsidized assisted-living units and 139 complex care beds.

These kinds of initiatives will keep our seniors that are aging within our own community, with the kind of

support that they require to lead the most productive and healthy lives possible. Lynn Valley Care is an example of the kind of success that we can achieve when government, the private sector and different governments and agencies partner together to solve our collective problems.

With respect to children and youth in North Vancouver and the shores, we marked yet another success earlier in January with the North Shore safe house, which was reopened. This government made a commitment for two long-term transition beds for the homeless youth. This was also made possible with the help of the federal government, who originally closed the unit and who originally funded the project, plus a large donation by a West Vancouver family.

The North Shore Youth Safe House was able to reopen after its closure in 2006, as I said, partially due to the $125,000 commitment of this provincial government. The home will provide a four-bed emergency shelter and two transitional beds, a supportive housing unit for youth that will greatly benefit homeless youth in the district of North Vancouver and North Vancouver–Seymour and more — in fact, all the way up the Sunshine Coast and up the Sea to Sky corridor to Whistler. I thank the Minister of Children and Families and his staff for the support and help.

It's imperative that I also address the issue of childhood obesity. A current study revealed that childhood obesity is rising at an alarming rate, turning the problem into almost a crisis, as was noted in the throne speech. I believe that through continued encouragement of healthy living, we can come together and solve this problem.

Initiatives such as encouraging children to walk to school rather than riding the bus, more exercise and team sports in the schools — which is really needed, other than the way they've had it in previous years — and increased access to gym time will move us in the right direction.

I also sat on the Health Committee for child obesity, and the walking train mentioned in the throne speech was certainly paramount in the committee's findings. This government has listened to us again.

I live near an elementary school, and it's actually quite amazing to watch the parents drive their children to school nowadays. The school is at an end of a cul-de-sac in my area, and this cul-de-sac is approximately 120 feet long. The parents will sit in their cars and wait five to ten minutes so that they can inch their way up through the cul-de-sac, and there's such a traffic jam. It just blows my mind, the fact that they just don't let their children get out and walk when it's safe. The walking trains and the bicycle routes situation will probably solve that purpose. At least they should be giving it a try.

With respect to transportation, on January 14 the province of B.C. unveiled a 12-year, $14 million public transit plan to be completed by 2020. I'm pleased to say that this much-needed investment in transportation will address many of the transportation issues. There are always issues out there that would bring that to my specific attention. Transportation for the entire North Shore is always way up there on my radar. You can ask any Minister of Transportation who has heard my speeches and requests for this matter.

I continue to ask the government to help us with our complex transportation needs. We are a hilly community divided by ravines. Any of you who have had the pleasure of visiting North Vancouver–Seymour can attest that we are also at the mercy of two extremely busy provincial bridges.

Ask any North Shore resident what happens when there's an accident on either bridge or their approaches, as it happens more often than not. Residents will be very happy to tell you how long they sat going nowhere. It has almost become a rite of passage to say: "That was nothing. Let me tell you how long I was stuck and missed my flight or missed my meeting or missed my next birthday." They may be humour-filled stories in retrospect, but no one wants to hear such stories during 2010. No one wants to hear "I missed the downhill" or "I missed the closing ceremonies."

Anyway, we are also happy to hear and see that we will be getting some new buses over on the North Shore. It's tough on buses, because they're going up and down hills. You people that live in the flatlands don't appreciate how much wear and tear the buses go through. I hope we can look forward to more, and we certainly deserve schedules that will be of assistance to my constituency, which is spread out across the riding from Lonsdale right up into Deep Cove and up Indian Arm.

One other transportation issue is our aging SeaBus fleet. We need to know that if one breaks down, we are not going to be in commuter gridlock. Currently two exist that were built in 1975, but they're getting old and very dicey. They've had a few breakdowns in the last little while. The minister has suggested that one will be ready by 2009, so I would encourage him to push that up even further, if possible.

An offshoot of suffering from gridlock on a regular basis is that the Seymour area of my community can be isolated for emergency services. I hope to have this problem solved, possibly with the help of some of our private sectors, which have come forward and offered land to help the issue. The private sector businesses also understand this issue. That's why they're there and hope to resolve the problem.

In conclusion, I want to say that I am honoured to have been presented with the opportunity to respond to this throne speech today, in the 38th parliamentary session. I know that this government hears and understands the needs of people in North Vancouver–Seymour, and I look forward to another year of working in partnership with them.

To paraphrase the Rolling Stones: "You can't always get what you want. Sometimes you find out you get what you need." I will be supporting this throne speech of 2008.

G. Gentner: I rise on this important day relative to addressing the throne speech. Above all, because it's St.

Valentine's Day, I wish everybody all the love in the world. Hopefully, it can permeate these walls, throughout the hallways today. Make sure you say, "All the best," to your loved ones.

In my community of North Delta…. What is of major concern to me relative to the Speech from the Throne is that there doesn't seem to be any direction relative to the economy. I have to relate to you what my community is about. My community is working people. Basically, we are known as the most average community in British Columbia — the average salary that's brought in and the average amount of time that stays in a community, 19 years.

The issues I hear on my doorstep are pocketbook issues. People come in talking about hydro rates; increases to utility fees, doctor fees, dentist fees; higher ferry fees. We're hearing about TransLink and the increased fees there to go to work every day. For me, these are the issues that I don't see any major address on in the Speech from the Throne.

Maybe we'll hear more about it in the budget, but it seems to me that when it comes down to working people every day, they seem to be getting gouged day by day. They're getting hit by more and more user fees. For me and my community, this is probably the most important issue that the government, I feel, has failed to address.

I also have to talk briefly about the most important issue. That's the transportation issue that's hitting my community. That is the South Fraser perimeter road. It has been talked about many times in previous throne speeches, and it's alluded to in this one.

We hear about what the government is planning to do with transit, perhaps adding a SkyTrain expansion — for example, the UBC line. The minister admitted that there would be an attempt, not to do a cut-and-cover, as we saw along the Cambie line…. In fact, there will be a use of tunnelling — the use of the machine, the great mole.

Yet in my community the South Fraser perimeter road is being proposed. My community, my neighbourhood, that of the Sunbury residents association, has made it very clear. Why couldn't we do the same in my neighbourhood, in my community? Because this $2 billion road is going to have a major impact — not only on the environment, the riparian habitat along the rivers, Burns Bog and the farmland but on the neighbourhood itself. Reading the throne speech, I don't see that commitment, and I have to get it on the record that it's a major concern within my community.

This throne speech has been referred to by many as the kitchen sink. It's a catch-all basin of everything, regurgitated, I think, either from previous throne speeches or unfulfilled or old borrowed ideas from neoconservative platforms from elsewhere. Two aspects of the throne speech that I take issue with are the government's two major issues, here called "Smart Starts with the Environment" and "Smart Means…Sustainable Health Delivery."

Early in the speech…. "This session all members will be asked to build on the record of stewardship with new conservancies and parks envisioned in approved land use plans." Oh, to build on the record of stewardship, of conservancies and land use plans. So much hope has been captured before, and the word is "sustainability."

We are waiting for a plan regarding greenhouse gas emissions, air quality improvements, reduction of carbon intensity caused by motor vehicles. But what about sustainable growth, the mechanism that can deter sprawling growth? What about the retention of ecosystems that sequester carbon, a fundamental part of the climate change plan equation itself? That has not been elaborated in detail in the throne speech.

When you look at the transportation policy, it is clear what this government's real agenda is. There's no better place to study it than right in my own community of North Delta itself — the imposed growth created by this government on our farmland, on our ecosystems and on our economy.

All the rhetoric regarding curbing carbon really, to this government, is a hill of coal if the government has a policy of building freeways that expand the carbon footprint. The Liberal government's South Fraser perimeter road comes to mind. It will destroy farmland. It will destroy 240 acres of some of the prime, best farmland this province has to offer — a gateway project that will not reduce carbon but will increase it.

Air emission controls will hit the little guy, going to work every day, with more taxes. But what will the government do about all the ships out in the harbours, all the bunker fuel that's being spewed, all the industrial pollution? I guess we're going to have to wait for the Minister of Environment's bill to fully understand how serious they are regarding curbing carbon.

The South Fraser perimeter road is so green that Environment Canada condemned it. Clearly, the Liberal government's climate change bill is a farce. The Transportation Minister's insistence on plowing the South Fraser perimeter road right through Burns Bog flies in the face of reducing the lower mainland's carbon footprint. Burns Bog sequesters carbon, and this government doesn't really care.

I remember well the day four levels of government converged in order to sign a memorandum of agreement on the purchase of Burns Bog and a conservation covenant that would commit all partners to the maintenance of the ecosystem's viability. We were all buoyed. The community had worked so hard, and finally, Burns Bog was protected. I remember it well because I was part of the negotiating team, but today is a black day for the bog and the trust of a provincial government that has lost its way. It seems that the carbon-spewing zealots will stop at nothing on that side of the Legislature.

In a recent publicly released letter from Environment Canada, the federal government environment agency came down hard on the Transportation Minister's plan for pushing South Fraser perimeter road through Burns Bog. The letter stated that the province should consider scrapping its proposal and find an alternate route. What is of great concern is that, regardless of these warnings of environment degradation, the

provincial Ministry of Transportation, assisted by the Ministry of Environment, plans to go ahead.

There's no stopping this government and its design to destroy the Fraser Estuary. Last month the Minister of Transportation requested an extension to review, in order that it can rationalize its further destruction of the bog. The Environment Canada letter is clear, and the technical review is overwhelming, but the Liberal government has already committed to acquiring land for its fixed route before the science has been concluded. Smog is a Liberal touch in this case.

In the early years of its first mandate the Liberal government compromised the provincial environmental assessment office, but that compromise should not taint a partnership that includes environmental stewardship shared by Canada, B.C., Metro Vancouver and the community of Delta. Thank heavens the federal environment regulator still has some sense and integrity.

Environment Canada did not mince words. "If the highway is built…there are very serious risks of negative impacts on bog hydrology." The message is clear. South Fraser perimeter road will compromise hydrology and will adversely affect natural unique bog amenities such as plants, wildlife and habitat.

We all know that bogs are a huge contributor as a scrubber of carbon. It has been referred to by the experts as the lungs of the lower mainland. In its technical review Environment Canada stated that Burns Bog can only exist with a sustainable, non-compromised transition zone, often referred to as the lagg. It is in this area where the province is proposing the freeway.

In its technical appendix, "Environmental Assessment of South Fraser Perimeter Road," Environment Canada stated, "In summary, Environment Canada believes that the value of the bog is seriously compromised…. There is presently no evidence that the multiple functions…of a natural lagg, including its unique ecological characteristics, can be replaced by an engineered structure" such as South Fraser perimeter road — page 7.

The province's proposal is deficient, and clearly, Environment Canada does not accept the Liberal carbon-enhancing project. Long-term viability of Burns Bog is put at considerable risk by the project. Environment Canada went on to say that should the South Fraser perimeter road proceed as currently proposed, it is concerned that the project will "compromise the ability" of Metro Vancouver and its partners to meet their commitments under that covenant, which his government signed, "including restoring the bog in accordance with the recently approved Burns Bog ecological conservancy area management plan."

The B.C. Liberals have a tradition of disregarding contractual obligations and actions on this project. It will show not only its contempt for the environment but disdain for local and regional governments who have bought into the plan for protection of the bog. Gateway's executive director, Mike Proudfoot, has been assigned as Assistant Deputy Minister of Transportation, a clear indication that the Minister of Transportation will continue with his concerns and his bully-like tactics in destroying Burns Bog.

Deputy Speaker: Members, please allow the speaker to respond to the throne speech. All members will have an opportunity to respond and express their own opinions. Thank you.

G. Gentner: The Liberals' currently designed South Fraser perimeter road will not only result in the release of more carbon but will destroy hundreds of acres of farmland, compromise valuable ecosystems, impact residential areas and destroy valuable riparian habitats along the world's most productive salmon-bearing river, the Fraser River itself.

The Liberal climate change agenda is clearly smoke and mirrors — mirrors and smoke. We on this side are going to pick the Liberal climate change promise apart bit by bit. The carbon promise will burn, fume, and it will smoulder.

I want to turn my attention to health, specifically those aspects within the throne speech that deal with seniors' health. Older British Columbians are not a burden. They have worked hard to build this province into a modern and compassionate society. They've survived the Depression. Many more wore our country's uniform during war, while many more worked in factories and industry for the war effort, scraping by so that today we can have a decent, caring world in British Columbia. They paid their fair share of taxes, and they continue to do so today. They are a continuing source of wisdom, experience and talent.

In British Columbia we cherish our universal public health care system. In repeated surveys and opinion polls, support for medicare is reaffirmed as a fundamental value. Our system, for the most part, provides universal access to quality care for all regardless of wealth, social status or other barriers. Sadly, this universality and equality of acute care beds ends for seniors at the doors of long-term care facilities. Too often long-term care is not available for seniors who need it most. Unfortunately, long-term care is not included in the Canada Health Act.

The Premier boasts about his relationship with the federal government. The Premier brags about his relationship with the Prime Minister. He brags about his new program for seniors, but where has he been during Premiers' conferences? Where has he been when it comes to demanding from the federal government the insurance of universal health care for all seniors? Where has he been with the need for facilities and

places for seniors that will, in the end, bring down the costs of hospital care?

I raise this because it's not in the throne speech. Ironically, if a frail and elderly person receives medically necessary services in a hospital, those are provided from the public purse. Yet the same person receiving essentially the same service in a long-term care facility must pay for it out of pocket. Our system is failing to provide thousands of older British Columbians with the affordable care they deserve.

The government brags about the so-called increase in for-profit long-term care facilities. We also have a growing elderly immigrant population. Many suffer from language and culture barriers. Providing appropriate care for these seniors sometimes is a challenge. Many worked in low-wage industries and are now doubly disadvantaged by a long-term care system that favours the wealthy.

I have to commend the progressive intercultural community which works in my community and demonstrated what it can do for the elderly. It's located on Scott Road. I have to commend Mr. Charan Gill and Inderjit Gill for the wonderful work they have done to be able to provide long-term care service for their community.

G. Gentner: It's our money — our money, Mr. Speaker. It's the province of British Columbia's money, and we need more money in this province to deal with the burgeoning problem of provision of long-term health care for the seniors that need it most.

In Canada 19 percent of unattached female seniors fall below the low-income cut-off level, now known as the poverty line. When you consider the higher standards of living in British Columbia, low-income senior women are extremely vulnerable. About another 20 percent of seniors are hovering just below the poverty line. Close to 40 percent of seniors in the province are trying to get by with as little means as possible, and we have a government that doesn't care.

There was promise when this government was elected in 2001. The Liberals promised 5,000 new long-term care beds. But boy, four years later how that definition of beds has changed. In the 2005 throne speech the government was committed to the goal of 5,000 new beds for seniors across the spectrum of assisted living, residential care and independent housing. That's a new shot, a new change.

The Liberal government originally pledged to build 5,000 long-term beds by 2006, but they came short. Suddenly the government says it will be accomplished by the end of 2008, five months before the election. Oh, but they are a sneaky bunch — a conniving group who are fabricating numbers in order to cover themselves.

The throne speech has abandoned that promise. Lo and behold, the Liberals are not talking about long-term beds anymore. They're talking about units. The new head count, in order to make its posturing, is the meshing of long-term beds with units. It's tricky stuff, this mathematics.

The addition table would turn Stephen Hawking's quantum gravity upside down. Let's see. How does this arithmetic work? One plus one equals ten? No, that's not enough by 2009. Let's say ten plus ten equals 300. Yes, we'll put a new door handle over here and call it a new unit. We'll paint an old suite for the homeless and call it seniors supportive housing.

You know how it works, Mr. Speaker — the melding of the minds. We have a debate, perhaps in cabinet with the Minister of Health and the Minister Responsible for Housing. They'll get together and try and figure out a way to deal with this problem. They'll say such things as, "We'll count the suites," though they are intended for the homeless, but there's a chance that that occupant can be a senior. So they'll call that a senior long-term care bed.

You see, it all comes down to the word "potential." Perhaps the Minister of Health will reason that because a unit might be occupied by a senior in ten years, it therefore should count, as well, as one of those magical 5,000 beds the government has promised.

Perhaps the Minister for Housing on the other side…. He's a shrewd bookkeeper indeed. He's a little smarter. After all, he has a calculator, something that the minister responsible for the Vancouver convention centre wished he'd had. Well, this clever fellow has figured it out. He knows his Liberal algebra. He reasons that it's not a question of whether every unit or bed, old or new, might be occupied by a senior, but that most occupants have the potential of reaching 65 years.

His clipboard colleague from Health concedes that this is clever math, but he suggests one additional addendum. He not only knows his math, but he knows his Health portfolio and says: "The way our health care is going, let's make the age for eligibility for seniors 55, and then we can pretty much say that all occupants are potential senior units." They agree, and now we know how the Liberals got their 1,500 long-term beds to 5,000 units.

Now, I'm not making this up. Clearly, the goal was 5,000 long-term beds. But the government, in its previous throne speech, has changed its political language and has committed to create 5,000 beds and units. It's funny what happens when you change the language. Assisted-living units are now part of the Liberal formula to build 5,000 long-term care beds. And what's more, when you read the government advertisement, it counts both upgraded units and seniors independently living in their own houses as part of the total of more than 3,600 new units. In a recent eight-page insert in The Vancouver Sun this is what the government is peddling.

So new units are living in your own home. You live in your own home and Meals on Wheels delivers once a week. That, in the government's mind, with its own math, counts most likely as a long-term bed/unit. I'm sorry to say that it's all a bunch of bunk. But we'll wait for the figures before we get to the election. I'm sure it will be beefed up.

Part of the government's 5,000-bed commitment includes language that surrounds revitalization of facilities. So-called revitalized facilities or units are counted as new. The government, in its devious means,

is counting old as new. An upgrade with a little upkeep or paint — something that years ago was marked on the ledger as general maintenance — now, surprisingly, under Liberal bookkeeping means any improvement is counted as a new capital project. A long-term bed now is not just a bed in a care facility. It's counted with the independent unit as well.

It's so dreamlike that you can see how the Liberal cabinet members came up with the numbers. Maybe they turn off the lights, and they sit around with a candle flickering, maybe a Ouija board. On one side you've got a celestial struggle erupting between the chief clairvoyant…. He's probably the member from Point Grey. Then you've got the member for Shuswap. He's maybe the genie and just came out of the bottle. They create something called political numerology, a divine relationship between numbers and objects. In this case, the number 5,000 and beds. This is what was in the previous throne speech. But why from the promise years ago of 5,000 beds to today's units?

This throne speech has a message. It's truly telepathic, or perhaps, maybe, it's just pathetic. It's pathetic because the government has abandoned its commitment. Only a Liberal government would twist the facts that beds, units and even homes are lumped together as 5,000 long-term care bed commitments.

Let's look at the record. The government promised to privatize B.C. Rail. They tried hard, but they couldn't. They couldn't sell the land out by Delta. I think there's a little problem with that one. Something got in the way.

The 2007 throne speech took up 14 pages on climate change. "The science is real," it said. "It leaves no room for procrastination. Global warming is real." Did we get a budget to assist it? Nada. Nothing.

Speaking of vows, after all, isn't that what this throne speech is supposed to be — a set of goals? But where is the commitment? Where is the execution? Where are the results? The Premier four years ago vowed to make B.C. the most literate place on the continent, but according to the Auditor General, the Premier has failed the province. Originally, the Premier committed to making B.C. the most literate location in North America by 2010. But they couldn't make that number, so they're now changing it to 2015. It's similar to that shaman science practice, similar to that of putting numbers together with long-term beds.

It's the same thing with the promise of reducing injury and death in the forestry sector. It hasn't happened. Same thing with the tree-planting, the promise to fight climate change by replanting forested landscapes. Grossly under budget. Gross lack of reforestation in a planting structure.

No mention of the government's commitment of 5,000 long-term beds in the throne speech. Why is that? The high price inserts still peddle the notion, but not in this throne speech.

But there is something in the throne speech regarding seniors, so let's look at that. What's suddenly changing here? Could it be that the spin doctors, the mathematicians realize the numbers don't add up after all, and they could get caught? No. What they've done, knowing they can't fulfil the bed count…. It's no longer a health issue or a housing issue. It's a Minister of Finance issue, who's going to now give us some hope — not more public financing but a scheme for personal saving accounts.

That's right. You pay taxes all your life, but what the Liberals are proposing is that that's not enough. We'll give tax breaks to the corporations, but you're now going to be forced…. If you want any type of long-term care home or care at all, you are now going to have to invest in what the government's calling an independent living savings account program — a tax shelter for the rich.

The Liberal government's personal health savings account scheme plays on the fears that all British Columbians face when they age: retaining your independence for as long as you can. Independence is the key to self-esteem. They want self-respect and the ability to maintain their dignity and autonomy. Crafting a health savings account under the guise of independent living implies dignity for the elderly can only be obtained if you are rich enough to pay into a tax-sheltered account.

Personal health saving accounts are not for the poor, and it's unlikely they're affordable for the working people. With this escalating cost of living expenses from user fees, utility fees, hydro fees, etc., there is less and less that British Columbians have in the ability to save to address their day-to-day needs.

For most middle-class British Columbians, the largest and most prosperous investment is in their own homes, although mortgage payments account for close to 40 percent of many British Columbians' monthly costs. Many homeowners envision a luxury of mortgage-free senior years and bank on a high real estate return as insurance to defray higher care costs due to aging.

For many mortgage holders, funding additional plans such as RRSPs and mutual funds is already difficult to manage. For the non-indebted homeowner or renter, RRSPs can offer savings and opportunities for senior years. However, to expect an additional burden…. British Columbians must now find the additional money for personal health savings accounts. That will be a tenuous undertaking for most people.

Now, the details surrounding this wealthy Liberal tax shelter are sketchy, and we will have to wait and see what the act will look like. We know what the personal health accounts look like in the United States. They're set up because there is no public medical system. These accounts are a precursor to higher deductible premiums. That is the history of medical tax shelters.

The introduction of health savings accounts will challenge the belief that health care costs are a shared responsibility rather than a burden to be borne by an unwell individual. You know, it's really going to be too bad if you're ill when you get old, because if you haven't had the fortune to invest in this tax shelter, you're going to be left out in the cold.

Withdrawals from the personal health savings accounts will be tax-free if used to pay for qualified medical expenses. Will those who can afford to pay

into the accounts have better access to drugs than those who cannot afford to pay into them? Will account funds cover expenses related to most forms of medicare, disability, dental care, vision care, long-term care? Will non-account participants be afforded the same vision care or long-term care as those who paid and received a tax receipt under the personal savings account?

This is a major change for our medical system. Like an RRSP, will the government guarantee it from bad investments? If the middle class became reliant on personal health accounts as the catch basin for senior health care, there is a risk that an account holder may find that their medical expenses outstripped the contributions they could afford to make, and what then?

The throne speech talks about individual choice. Individual choice means private medicine, and heaven help us what it will mean when we reach our twilight years.

In closing, let's talk very briefly about what the experts say about medical savings accounts. I have a report here from the prestigious Canadian Medical Association, a report put forward by the department of community health sciences, faculty of medicine, University of Manitoba; and, of course, the department of health policy, management and evaluation of the faculty of medicine, University of Toronto.

The example of the United States has made it very clear why we should not be moving in this direction, and I know that it's a major election plank there. The Conservatives in Alberta are going to privatize medicine, and how they're going to do it is to force seniors to pay through their pocketbooks.

J. Nuraney: I have, once again, the honour to respond to the throne speech, as I have done in the past several years. Before I start with my remarks, I would like to address some of the things that the member for Delta North was talking about.

He took quite a bit of time talking about Burns Bog but forgot to mention that when his government was in power, they wanted to pave that place and put the PNE on top of it. Isn't it strange that today that member has the audacity to stand in this House and talk about Burns Bog and how we, this government, protected Burns Bog in the interests of the environment?

The member also spoke about how Canadians survived the Depression. Canadians are very resilient. They also survived the doom and gloom of the '90s, when that government was in power.

He also talked about and took a lot of time talking about the long-term care facilities. Let me remind the member that when we became government in 2001, I visited quite a lot of those long-term care homes, which were in a totally deplorable condition. The seniors who were living in those homes had no access by wheelchair. Their bathrooms were of an old style. They could not use the tubs. The conditions that we found the seniors living in, in those homes were absolutely deplorable.

The member from North Delta has forgotten all of that. However, since we got elected in 2001, we have continuously shown vision and leadership in our commitments in the throne speeches. What we have seen in this speech is a continuous process, a consistency, a flow of commitments that are built one over the other.

In 2001, when we formed government, there was an air of despondency, and people were leaving our province to seek opportunities outside. Families were broken up, unemployment was very high, and one out of ten British Columbians was on welfare.

Today I'm proud to say that we, this government, have turned this province around. Today we enjoy the highest level of investments. Today we enjoy the lowest rate of unemployment. Today we see increased immigration into the province. Today we see our children get more and better opportunities in education. Today we see British Columbia becoming a hub of the high-tech industries, and today we see hope and renewed aspirations among our citizens.

All this has not happened by chance. Our government set the course and constructed a plan to bring about this change. We have been consistent in our approach and commitment. This resulted in bringing back the confidence needed to develop economic growth.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that we can only spend what we have. As our economy improved, so did our revenues. We now have the ability to invest in matters we consider important. We have now invested the most dollars ever in health care. We have also invested the most dollars ever in education. We have now also invested more in transportation than ever before. Our investments in social programs have never been better.

This throne speech builds further as we move forward. We will be hosting the Winter Olympics in 2010, and this has created enormous excitement in my community in Burnaby. Young athletes are now dreaming about participating in events. For the first time, our government came up with the idea of leaving legacies for the benefit of the communities, a concept that is becoming a model to emulate for other nations and by other nations who will be holding Olympic events in the future.

The economic benefits this event will bring to our province are enormous. Many of my Burnaby business

people and entrepreneurs are actively working to be part of this great opportunity.

The celebration of the 150th anniversary will also mark a milestone. It will be an occasion to celebrate the accomplishments of our province and showcase the diversity of our citizens, including the first nations people. Our history, unfortunately, is studded with injustices meted out to aboriginal people in the past.

This government has taken the courageous step of trying to remedy that situation. The building of the new relationship with first nations has been very successful and has resulted in concluding half a dozen treaties. This exercise will continue to allow the people of first nations to take charge of their own destiny.

Creative and innovative methods are being found to address some pressing problems with the children and families of this community. A healing and wellness village will be established as a place of healing for those suffering from trauma, addiction and mental illness. It is time that we look at these problems through the lenses of the aboriginal people.

As the world moves to the age of technology and globalization, we must also adapt ourselves to a lifestyle in keeping with the changes. Climate change has become the top of mind issue among one and all. Our government has taken leadership and has taken decisive action. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act now requires us to reduce greenhouse emissions by 33 percent from the 2007 levels by 2020 and by 80 percent by the year 2050.

Whilst the government is putting legislation in place and encouraging business and industry to come to the table in finding solutions, we as individual citizens must also play our role. Individual and community engagement in this process is essential. To encourage individuals to become smarter in conservation, government will offer tools to monitor consumption by installing things like Power Smart meters.

We are also in the process of developing building codes which will establish and construct very efficient buildings. The innovative clean energy fund will help create 100,000 solar roofs in British Columbia and build on the expertise in solar technology. BCIT, an institute of great pride in my riding, is well ahead in the development of this technology.

Changing temperatures and precipitation patterns are already affecting our weather, water, water cycle and ecology. This impacts our forests, ecosystems, water levels, infrastructure, agriculture industry and recreational opportunities. Our government is moving forward to plan for such impending disasters.

The government in the past never had any foresight to develop any plan in anticipation of future needs. The classic example we have is in our health care. The previous government had ten years and were warned about the upcoming aging population that will be there with us after the year 2000, but the previous government never, ever exercised any caution or implemented any plan to meet the crisis that we are now burdened with.

Our government is thinking well beyond the coming decade and will be launching the Forests for Tomorrow program, which will help plant 60 million seedlings over the next four years.

Sustainability of health care continues to offer challenges. Our government will implement new initiatives which will allow citizens to gain access to their health records and medical information so that they can play an informed role in making both preventative and therapeutic care choices.

More investments will be made in research on diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and strokes. Our universities are world leaders in such research centres. In British Columbia we have attracted more scientists in the past five years in different fields of research, as government invests more dollars in this sector.

Hip replacements have become a major need in our aging population, and new investments in the centre for hip health research will be undertaken. The Fall Prevention Society of Burnaby is doing an excellent job in this regard in educating our seniors to avoid falls and to protect themselves against such incidents. The establishment of seniors community parks will be of great help in making our seniors active.

The health of our children is a major concern. In this regard ActNow has undertaken various initiatives to encourage our youth to be active. Schools have undertaken many programs in this regard, and the elimination of junk food and the changing of eating habits have contributed greatly towards achieving our goal of a healthy society.

Accreditation of foreign-trained doctors has been an issue plaguing our new immigrants. This government will now seek authority to ensure that health professionals also are certified to practise in this province. If they're already approved and certified in other Canadian jurisdictions, they will automatically be able to practise their profession in British Columbia. A new restricted licence will also allow internationally trained physicians to practise in their specific area of qualification.

A shorter period for bachelor of nursing science degrees will greatly enhance the number of medical professionals who will enter the work force sooner, as we need more and more of these health care workers to join forces.

The United Kingdom, a couple of years ago, implemented the practice of allowing qualified nurses to triage patients, and this helped considerably to reduce wait times at emergencies. The expanded scope of practice for nurses will be very beneficial.

The other aspect that our government is very keen on and has been addressing for the past few years is our challenges in dealing with homelessness and people with mental illness. This has continued as a priority with this government, which has developed a very comprehensive strategy.

We have increased housing stock for lower income, and I'm happy to say that a housing complex has been acquired in Burnaby for this purpose. A large number of people living on the streets are those suffering from

mental illness. This has been the direct result of the policy adopted by the previous NDP government when they closed the Riverview facility, letting out about 4,000 patients into communities without proper support.

Money was promised to help with the rehabilitation. That money never came. Many were left without any support and found themselves on the streets. The re-opening of the facility on Willingdon and at Riverview is welcome news. Burnaby will now be able to deal with this problem in a more humane way.

On the education front I can say with confidence that our government has made very positive changes. Funding levels are highest ever, class sizes are more manageable, and support services for children of refugees and new immigrants have been enhanced.

I am proud to mention that in Burnaby we have a large population of refugee immigrants. Concerns were raised to me by the families that their children, who have had no educational background, were feeling frustrated and leaving schools to end up on the streets. This problem will now be addressed as more funding has been made available to our school districts by the Minister of Education and by the minister of immigration.

StrongStart centres have been a great success in my area of Burnaby. Some of the schools that have adopted this program are continually telling me how good these programs are and how much they are benefiting the community around. I had the opportunity to visit some of these centres. What I witnessed was not only the excitement on the faces of the children but how involved the parents and grandparents were in the program. It is not only helping the children learn early, but it is also helping the parents and the grandparents, many of them immigrants, to learn English at the same time and interact with their children.

A new centre for autism education and research that the throne speech mentions will also be of great help. There is a growing preponderance of this condition, and this centre will no doubt be very welcome.

The access for students to our institutes of higher learning with a grade B average is also good news that was announced in the throne speech. This will offer more opportunities for our children to be a part of our institutes of excellence in learning that we are now so very proud to have around the province.

The throne speech continues to build upon the vision that this government has got. It continues to build upon what this government considers to be essential to make British Columbia the best place on earth, and it will continue to work hard to make sure that every British Columbian has the opportunity to look to the future with confidence.

Mr. Speaker, I'm very proud to say that I will be supporting this throne speech when it comes to the vote.

C. Puchmayr: Mr. Speaker, I guess my lecture when you were in my community the other day helped you to pronounce the name properly, and thank you very much for that.

Deputy Speaker: Member, you refer to the Chair and the Speaker. Please proceed with your comments to the throne.

C. Puchmayr: I just wanted to say that in New Westminster that's how we find out who comes into New Westminster that really doesn't live there. It's usually how they pronounce the name. It's a historic name. It comes from Westminster. It was named by Queen Victoria when there was a dispute over the name.

I'm very proud of New Westminster. It is a community that also has its challenges, as many communities have today. And certainly as many communities have, it has come to deal with some of the issues that have been brought forward by the policies of the government that is in power today.

I will be speaking against the throne speech, as I have the previous throne speeches. I'll tell you that the first throne speech that I heard in this House sounded very…. It had some promising ideas in it, but again, it failed to deliver on those ideas. The second throne speech, again, made a lot of announcements. At first blush, you would think that the government was prepared to head in a positive direction, yet the end results…. After the budget speech was introduced, we saw that they were nothing but hollow and broken promises once again.

This throne speech was a very long throne speech. I believe it was around 50 minutes. I know we had the sympathy of the Lieutenant-Governor when he asked us to please bear with him as he went through the speech.

Some of the things that came out in the throne speech are issues that I'm going to wait to see what the budget brings forward, to see how the budget addresses them. Certainly, this side is going to look at ensuring that this government commits to some of the initiatives they are saying they will commit to. We will certainly make some proposals, if not, to make sure that we go forward in a direction that all British Columbians can benefit from and not just a select few.

We talk about the prosperity. The other side always talks about, you know, the greatest place on earth to live. When I walk around in my community or when I walk around in the downtown east side and I look at the people that are living in the streets, I know very clearly that to them, this is not "The best place on earth" to live. It may be warmer than other parts of the country, but again, we have seen the horrors of homeless people that pass away in the streets trying to keep warm and those that are mugged or victims of violence while living in the streets after they've been turned away from shelters. To me, it's absolutely unacceptable in this day and age.

As we talk and we hear the other side boast about how great this province is now and how poorly this province was in the past, we have to remember that there was a real global crisis going on in the '90s, and it brought stock markets down all over the world. Even if you read some of the pundits in some of the journals

and the financial journals, you see that what happened in the crash in those days was significant and that a lot of countries and a lot of cities were brought into poverty.

This province here, seeing what was happening globally around the world, actually did quite well. There were way fewer people that were homeless in the streets. We had better services in place. Our children could go to university full-time, and they had some of the lowest tuitions, if not the lowest tuition rates, in Canada. We were graduating people at Red Seals with trade certificates that were coming out of those trade industries. They were coming out, and they were able to work and get jobs in their new fields.

We had forest companies that, understanding the cyclical nature of that industry, under the old forest practices would…. This goes back, and you can do the research on it, a hundred years. Forestry and lumber has always been a cyclical industry. Natural resources has always been a cyclical industry. What prudent companies did in those days…. Government regulation ensured that they stayed behind, ensured that they invested in here, ensured that if they wanted to cut trees in British Columbia, they also had to manufacture in British Columbia. That's now gone.

Now we have an industry that is totally market-driven. It's market-driven to such a degree that companies look at their balance sheet and say, "Well, you know, we can mill this wood cheaper across the border in the United States, or we can send it to China. We're going to shut down the mills and just continue to export the logs" — and at record volumes, I might add.

In 1996, I think, there was an export of 275,000 cubic metres. A cubic metre is about the equivalent of a telephone pole. Now we're at five million cubic metres of logs, with absolutely thousands of British Columbia workers losing their jobs.

The throne speech does talk about retraining forest workers that are losing their jobs. It talks about that, but think about this. Think about living in a community that is a forest-dependent community, that has an ample supply of trees, that has a mill — a pulp mill or a sawmill — in that region, and suddenly the mill decides: "I would rather be a real estate developer than a wood manufacturer. I can still cut down trees, and I can export them and have my mill in another country manufacture that."

What do you do with that worker now in a community that has one industry? What is retraining of that worker going to produce for that community? Absolutely nothing. Businesses are hurting in those communities. Businesses are suffering. People are losing their jobs. Businesses are leaving. Jobs are leaving British Columbia and going south of the border at record rates, and going to China — manufacturing jobs.

We're talking about the higher-scale-of-pay jobs that are leaving British Columbia under the watch of this government. That's shameful because — you know what? — those are our resources. Those are our trees. That's our oil. That's our natural gas. That's our coal. We should benefit from it. Our children should benefit from it, and their children should benefit from it. Instead, we're not benefiting from it. Very few people are benefiting from it.

We talk about how great this province is. Well, I'll tell you that back in the '90s there was a gap between the rich and the poor. The biggest gap between the rich and the poor was in Newfoundland. That was the biggest gap, and the narrowest gap was here in British Columbia. The most balance was here in British Columbia, and now it's completely the opposite.

The other statistic that is really alarming, when you look about how great it is to live in the greatest place on earth…. And I believe this can be the greatest place on earth, but when you have child poverty, when one in four children are living in poverty, that's shameful. That is absolutely shameful.

At one time, back in this terrible era of the '90s, back at that time we were the best here. The best place in the country to raise children was in British Columbia, and now it's the worst. Now it's the costliest to raise children in British Columbia.

That's where we're headed. I mean, we need to start to look at things in a balanced way. We need to ensure that we have viability, that we have sustainable industries and that we have sustainable communities so that we can continue on.

One of the things that sort of struck me in this throne speech was the Walking School Bus idea. I spoke to a woman who told me that they travel for an hour a day to drive their children to the bus stop so that their child can take a bus to school, and travel another three hours a day to and from school.

What kind of a Walking School Bus is going to deal with that issue? What? Instead of going to bed Sunday night, you start walking to school? The Walking School Bus is another one of those nice-sounding, fluffy things. That's another nice-sounding thing — the Walking School Bus. But you know what…?

C. Puchmayr: Even the Transportation Minister doesn't understand that there are children in this province spending hours and hours a day on buses because they are closing schools constantly and forcing children to bus.

I would like to tell you that many children are now forced into buses. When you do that, when you close a school, you rip the heart out of that community. If you want to reinvest in that community, and the school is gone, what do you do?

The school is now out of the community. Someone wants to reinvest in the community. They're going to look at attracting workers. We're saying there's a shortage of skilled workers. Why would somebody want to relocate in a community that has no school? Why? They wouldn't.

So again, that little component of taking that school out of the community is also taking the ability for that community to grow. If it's a resource community and if

we are in a low cycle and you take the school out while the cycle is low, you're not going to have the same community when the cycle increases, because families aren't going to want to move to somewhere where the children have to ride on a bus for three hours a day to go to and from school. That is a fact.

We need to have complete communities. We need to live with the upturns and the downturns, and we need to build a British Columbia that benefits all, not just the investment community.

The throne speech talks about the climate change issue. We heard it in the last throne speech — which we thought was the green throne speech — but really nothing came out of that, which is more evidence that the throne speech may sound good to some people, may sound good to some pundits, but once it's all over with…. Once the budget has been introduced, once we've completed this session, I guarantee you that you're going to look back and say: "Wow, there was a lot of hot air in that throne speech. There was really not a lot that was accomplished."

There are also many, many things that were announced in 2006 and 2005 in the throne speech — never happened. It was announced here. That's where it started, and that's where it ended.

This blue-ribbon panel on climate change. We're now talking about capping emissions and then being able to buy somebody else's non-emissions, cap-and-trade. Right now we already have sort of a system where companies have left here because of our environmental laws. Some companies think we're too strict already, so they're going to go to China and have their commodities produced in China.

Now, capping and trading is going to do the same thing. Capping and trading could have that same effect. Why is there not somebody that represents blue-collar workers sitting on this blue-ribbon panel? Why aren't blue-collar workers represented?

Why aren't people, whose very jobs could leave this country because of cap-and-trade…? Why aren't they part of the equation? Why aren't they sitting there with the employer, with these blue-ribbon panellists? One of them, I believe, happens to be the president of Exxon or one of the major oil companies. I don't think it is Exxon, but it is one of the major oil companies.

So this is the blue-ribbon panel. The oil company has more access to the climate change initiative than the workers that could be affected. It makes no sense.

All of British Columbians should play a role in this — all British Columbians. I know the other side has some concern when workers sit down at a table, probably because they make a lot of sense. Working people understand their industries. Working people understand what they go through. Working people understand what they need to do to survive and what they need to do to bring up their families. So why aren't they there? Why aren't they at the table? It would be a great initiative to have them at the table.

Foreign workers. It's something that we're certainly hearing more and more of all the time — that there's a need for bringing in more workers from other countries. It used to be skilled workers, and now we talk about doctors. There certainly needs to be an avenue for somebody who learns medicine in India or China and who wants to come and practise medicine here. There is no greater crime to humanity, I think, than when you take a doctor out of a country, allow him to come to British Columbia and then not allow that doctor to practise. Actually, you've eliminated a doctor from a country that really needs a doctor.

When you think about this initiative, a lot of this fast-tracking, certainly with doctors, is not an issue that the province does. It's an issue that the College of Physicians does. It's a national issue that deals with credentialing and ensuring that when you bring a doctor from a specific country and before they practise medicine in our country, they have the English skills — certainly, that's important — and the terminologies and the technologies. They have to write the exam to ensure that they meet the standards of Canada.

There's nothing wrong with that. That's the direction to go. But this makes it sound like the doctors are going to come right into this province, get a stamp, and they're going to be available for our health care system. That is absolutely not on. That is a national thing, and it's the College of Physicians that deals with it.

My concern with some of these programs and fast-tracking education of a health care specialist…. You have to be cautious about that. There is a lot of curriculum that trains professionals and that certainly trains professionals in the field of health care. There's a reason for that. It's the safety of the patient. It's to ensure that the patient has the best care possible. To fast-track that care could put the health and safety of patients at risk. It could even put other practitioners at risk as well. So just allowing a fast-tracking of the system isn't the way to go.

When we look at what's happening right now in the health care system…. I'll just talk about New Westminster for a minute and Royal Columbian Hospital. Ambulances parked outside during the day. Patients and gurneys blocking all the doorways. The fire marshal has had to come in and take action. The fire marshal has had to deal with it to ensure safety of people.

The fire marshal actually spoke to me this morning and said that he wanted to absolutely praise the health care workers in there — the doctors and the nurses — for what they were enduring and for what they were going through and asked if we could please help cast some light on what is going on in that hospital.

Here we've got a health care system that is actually creating a disincentive for people wanting to get into the health care field. People are being overworked in the health care field. People are being overworked, and the situations are absolutely horrific for them. I have spoken to doctors, and I have spoken to nurses. I have spoken to doctors who have had almost their entire elective surgeries cancelled because of emergencies that are bumping them.

Earlier, in an exchange with the Health Minister in question period, I mentioned to him about St. Mary's Hospital, which used to be the overflow. I'll just explain how that worked, because St. Mary's Hospital was fairly close — about a kilometre and a bit away from Royal Columbian Hospital.

If a situation like what is arising there right now happened at Royal Columbian Hospital, they would pick up the phone and open a surgical bed or a surgical arena and move a patient up to that hospital. They had the ability to actually move patients up and perform surgeries, as well, at St. Mary's Hospital. There was an ability to have extra emergency room arenas available for exactly that, and that's now gone from the system. It's absolutely gone.

Doctors tell me about patients being triaged and waiting, all with serious maladies. They may not immediately seem life-threatening. Suddenly somebody goes into cardiac arrest and is bumped up the scale. The doctor even said that patients are dying because they're waiting. They're waiting to be triaged. They're waiting to come in.

C. Puchmayr: One of the doctors is Dr. Matishak from Royal Columbian Hospital, who has clearly said that.

The Transportation Minister not only doesn't understand his file; he also doesn't understand the health care file. He denies that any of this is going on in British Columbia.

C. Puchmayr: He can sit there and heckle all he wants, but you know what? He needs to get out more often. He needs to look and see what's going on. Why doesn't he come into New Westminster and look at Royal Columbian Hospital and see what's going on? Why doesn't he talk to the doctors? Why doesn't he go in there and talk to the doctors if he doesn't believe it? He can very well do that. He has the ability to do that, but he would rather hide in Cloverdale and not address the issue and pretend that it doesn't exist.

Unfortunately, too many people on the other side like to just put their blinkers on and pretend that these things don't exist. They hate to admit that their policies are causing people to expire, to fall on the emergency room floor and die. Their policies, their closure of St. Mary's Hospital. It's a shame that they have their blinders on and refuse to acknowledge the crisis that they have created.

The foreign workers. Here's an interesting thing — another secret deal with the minister to get more foreign workers into British Columbia. I think the minister from the Philippines was here recently signing an agreement with our government on foreign workers. The foreign worker agreement does not….

Here is the government signing an agreement with another country, and we have to FOI the agreement. We have to go to freedom of information to get a copy of the agreement. Isn't that bizarre? We've asked the minister for it. We've asked his office for it. We've asked for the copy. We have to get a freedom-of-information, and we might have it by March 17.

Is that transparent and open government? Is that what we hear all the time from the other side, the most transparent and open government in the history of British Columbia? Shame, shame, shame — just another broken promise.

Let's talk about Manitoba. Manitoba has signed one as well. Manitoba has signed one that puts in protection for workers. It talks about expediting the immigration policy to try to reunite families. British Columbia's is more related to someone that is able to come over, who has that job already filled. So there's all the potential of having a labour contractor play an influence on it.

Labour contractors. We can't control labour contractors in the Philippines. We have no ability to.

It really concerns me that it isn't just a natural progression of immigration. We have many people waiting to come into this country that have filled out all the papers. They've done everything that is required of them to come in. They're waiting legitimately in line to come into this country, and yet we're looking at fast-tracking workers in.

At one time it was skilled workers. They were talking about skilled workers. Well, now it's unskilled workers. It's going to drive down the value of the work. It's going to drive down the wages for the work. It's a concern that workers are being brought into this country to fill a job, and they can be sent home.

You know, we have the employment standards branch, which used to be an actual…. It could actually be an advocacy branch for workers who feel that they're being mistreated or being abused on the jobsite. They could go and discreetly file a complaint. There could be an investigation.

Well, now the employment standards branch is a self-help branch, where you go in there or go on a computer because they closed so many offices. You pull off the paper, the form, if you can manoeuvre through the computer to get to it. You fill it out, and then you serve it to your employer.

Could you imagine a temporary worker coming over from the Philippines, who's being abused in a work environment, doing that and going to their employer and saying: "You're not treating me right. You never paid me again. This is the second week I've worked for nothing"? Can you imagine that? They're going to be sent back home again, and that's sad.

There's no protection for foreign workers coming into this country. We saw at a farm in Maple Ridge where Mexican workers went on strike to be sent back home because the working conditions and the living conditions were better in Mexico than they were here

— living in utility trailers, cooking outside. Fortunately, somebody found this out.

How many situations like that do we have in the 6,700 farms in British Columbia, or potential situations like that? They're there, and we have no protection for them. We just want to bring the workers in, and those workers basically have no rights. They basically have no rights. They certainly don't have the right to become citizens. They don't have the right to vote. So it's great. Just keep bringing in foreign workers. They can't vote.

Well, I see the minister is sitting here, so I'm hoping that maybe after I speak, he will send a copy of that memorandum over to my office so that we can actually have a look at what secret agreement he's signed with the minister from the Philippines. That's what disclosure should be all about.

The throne speech, again, doesn't address the difficulty that people are having living in British Columbia and working for minimum wage. There's no mention of raising the minimum wage. Many workers are now working numerous jobs. They're working two and three part-time jobs. I know a lot of young people that are. They're working very long hours.

The throne speech talks about family and quality-of-life stuff. But what quality of life is it when you're working three part-time jobs or even two part-time jobs, where each job…? If they don't work you 40 hours a week, they can work you 11 hours a day. They can work you over eight hours every day at straight time because they keep you less than 40 hours a week. So there is now a disincentive to hire full-time workers. This speech has nothing to deal with that issue, and that concerns me.

In closing, Madam Speaker, again, I certainly do not support this throne speech. Once bitten, twice shy — well, bitten three times now. I guarantee you that once we are back here next year with the next throne speech, we'll be talking about the failures of this throne speech. Those are my comments.

Hon. J. van Dongen: I'm very pleased today to join in this debate on the throne speech. Before I do that, I want to comment on the tulip in my lapel, which was given to me this morning by the B.C. Hospice Palliative Care Association. It's also the official flower for Parkinson's, which my mother died of two years ago. So it has a lot of meaning for me today, and I just wanted to pass that on to the members.

I'm very pleased to be here as the representative for the constituency of Abbotsford-Clayburn. The city of Abbotsford, which I share in representing with the member for Abbotsford–Mount Lehman and the member for Chilliwack-Sumas, is a fascinating place to be and is a unique, growing community. It is a great place to represent.

It is the fifth-largest city in British Columbia. It is also one of the fastest-growing cities and fastest-growing regions in Canada and in North America. Yet it is still the largest community in terms of farm-gate agricultural production. About 18 or 19 percent of B.C. farm-gate sales originate within the city of Abbotsford. As a parallel, the city is also the centre for agribusiness in British Columbia and for a lot of farm organizations.

Together with that agricultural base, we have a very exciting and up-and-coming regional airport in Abbotsford. We have some of the brightest and focused business entrepreneurs in the province. We also can state categorically that we have one of the most culturally diverse communities in the province. Our chamber of commerce has won awards and recognition for its high level of activity, and we have strong and committed social services agencies that I am very proud to work with and support.

Abbotsford today is not a small rural town where everyone knows their neighbour and where there are no traffic lights. We are also not Metro Vancouver. I think that very often people don't realize that even though we have citizens commuting into Vancouver, we are a separate and distinct community and a separate and distinct region in the Fraser Valley. We are a thriving, growing, distinct urban centre that is transitioning to a confident, individual and unique community.

Within my constituency, we have currently the old MSA Hospital, which is an aging facility and overdue for replacement. I'm very pleased to say that, again, within the boundaries of my constituency, there is being constructed and almost finished the new Abbotsford Regional Hospital and Cancer Centre. This facility, as I said, was talked about during the 1990s but is now almost completed — a decision that our government made very early on. It's an investment of some $330 million on the capital side and an investment of probably an additional $50 million on the operating side to fund the increased staffing in that hospital.

I'm very proud that the new, most modern facility that we've seen…. I think it's unique, in the sense that it's a greenfield facility that includes both a hospital and a cancer centre, giving some great synergies for the future.

I am pleased today to speak in support of the throne speech. This throne speech lays out new measures to strengthen the economy, and it's something that our government, I'm proud to say, has always focused on — a strong economy. That's what it takes to both create employment for people and provide the funds to provide social services.

This throne speech is designed to also help create safe, secure communities, to build excellence in education and to further strengthen the new relationship with first nations. It will help give British Columbians options to become personally involved in fighting climate change and in contributing to environmental sustainability.

Most importantly, it offers many new initiatives in health care. The health care initiatives in the throne speech build on the input from the Conversation on Health that which will improve care for the long term with new emphasis on patient choice, enhanced access, quality, professional opportunities, health, prevention measures and accountability.

The member for Abbotsford–Mount Lehman and I did have a conversation with our own constituents

some time ago. We had a variety of people who are both consumers of the health care service and providers of the health care service. We had doctors. We had nurses. We had maintenance workers in hospitals. As I said, we had a variety of consumers. We had some very insightful information offered to us in that conversation.

Our goal is to have an efficient, effective and integrated health care system that promotes the health of all citizens and provides high-quality patient care. We continue to maintain the commitment to one public payer for health care services that will continue to deliver services through both public and private providers.

We are adopting new strategies that will continue to improve our system. It's a program of continual improvement and one where we look to foster with our citizens their own initiatives, taking charge of their own health care, focusing on prevention and choice and protecting our health care system for the long term. These strategies will also include expanding the role of nurses, pharmacists, paramedics, midwives and naturopaths to help provide to our citizens the most complete service possible in the most efficient way.

I also want to speak to the commitment in the throne speech and the ongoing commitment of our government to the Canada Health Act. The principles of accessibility, universality, portability, comprehensiveness and public administration — these five principles remain as commitments by our Premier, by our government, and were reiterated in the throne speech. But in the legislation that we propose for the coming session, we will also be looking to enshrine a sixth principle. That is the principle of the sustainability of our health care system.

When I look at the increased investment from our provincial budget in the health care service, one only needs to look at the change in my time as an MLA. When I was first elected in 1995, the health care system consumed about $6 billion — actually a little bit less than $6 billion. It was about 33 percent of the provincial budget.

This year our government is investing $13.1 billion of taxpayers' money — a lot of zeros, a significant amount of money — in the health care service. Those dollars represent about 44 percent of the provincial budget. So you can see the significant trend that we are facing in our society, in particular because of the aging of our population, the growing demand for services, the growing costs of professional services and the growing costs of new technology.

We are in an area when the baby-boomer part of our population is aging and is in a period of their lives, as many of us are, where they're starting to use the health care service.

My constituency is in the area serviced by the Fraser Health Authority. Certainly, it is a large health authority with over 20,000 dedicated professionals and a management team that is really faced with not only the growing pressures of the aging population but the rapidly growing population that I spoke of earlier. They have a great deal of challenge to continue to meet the service requirements on an ongoing basis and to meet the standards, and they are very dedicated doing so. I compliment them on that.

I think fiscal sustainability is a very, very important principle that our government is committed to. We believe that we want to deliver not only the best health care service possible — one that meets standards of accountability that are comparable to any in the nation — but one that will not mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren, one that will continue to be sustainable and affordable into future generations.

I commented on the one public payer for services under the Canada Health Act being a very important principle that our government espouses and will continue to espouse, and we acknowledge that we are delivering the health care service through both public and private service providers. A healthy mix, depending on the various efficiencies we can achieve, is what we will continue to do to provide citizens with the best service possible.

Under the initiatives in the throne speech looking to ensure quality health care, there are two initiatives that I would like to highlight. The first is a new health profession review board, which will ensure that all qualified health workers can fully utilize their training and skills and not be denied the right by unnecessary credentialing and licence restrictions.

Over the years we have seen difficulties, inefficiencies, friction and sometimes turf wars at the edges of our various health care professions, and this review board will help to try and mitigate that. I think that in the past, sometimes through well-intentioned purposes and sometimes maybe strictly turf protection, we have seen friction between professions, and this is an important and helpful initiative for the future.

We no longer have the luxury of engaging in non-productive argument about who should do what. What this review board and this principle are intended to do is to ensure that people can practice to the full extent of the scope that they are trained for. I will look forward to the implementation of this initiative, because I think it will help move us in a direction that is very important for the maintenance of the quality of our service when we see the kinds of pressures that we're facing.

The second initiative that I'm very pleased was announced by our government in the throne speech is the patient care quality review boards that will be installed in every health region. I talked about the high standards of service that we seek to achieve in all of our health facilities and through all of the services offered. As the Minister of Health says very often, 98 percent of the time we meet those standards and deliver on expectations.

There are times when for various reasons — very often communication reasons between the various players in the system — those service levels are not achieved. These service quality review boards will, I think, provide opportunity for citizens in a formal way to have their concerns heard when they think that the standards were not met.

Secondly, I think that process will be very helpful as a way to provide information into the system that

will provide the impetus and the indications of how and where to make changes to improve service and the consistency of service.

I also want to comment now on improved access to health care, another principle covered in the throne speech. It includes elements such as the upgrading and expansion of B.C.'s Children's Hospital. Invariably when I talk to constituents that have had experience with B.C.'s Children's Hospital, they are happy and pleased with the service that they have received, and this will significantly improve the capability of that facility and those professionals.

Another very important aspect of the throne speech is the move to broaden the services, authority and training that nurses can provide — such as suturing, ultrasounds, allergy testing, cardiac stress testing and others. Nurses will be able to give medications for minor pain at triage, while patients are waiting to see a doctor, and to order lab work, blood tests and X-rays. This is an example of the kind of change we can make that is within the scope of nurses' training, that is supported by the nurses and that can improve the service to citizens both in ER, emergency, and in other parts of the hospital system.

The throne speech also includes a commitment that pharmacists will be permitted to authorize routine prescription renewals, making it easier for patients with chronic illnesses to manage their conditions. Again, we've heard many times from citizens about the inefficiency, the cost and the hassle for citizens themselves to go back to their family doctor to get a prescription renewed.

We know that pharmacists are well trained and very knowledgable and will be able to maintain patient safety. They have a comprehensive system of recordkeeping and data maintenance that will help them do this. So this will be something that will improve service. It's an example of improving efficiency and improving service to citizens at the same time.

Ambulance paramedics will be authorized to treat and release when appropriate, allowing that profession, those well-trained people, to practise to the scope of what they were trained to do and giving them the authority to treat citizens in an appropriate way based on training.

Naturopaths will be permitted to prescribe medicinal therapies as appropriate, and restrictions on their access to medical labs for prescribed tests for patients will be removed. Again, this is in direct response to comments that I've heard numerous times in my constituency and that the government has heard around the province. This will make the service provided by naturopaths that many of our citizens like to use…. It will help improve their service and contribute to the overall health of the population as a whole.

Midwives will be authorized to deliver a broader range of services without a physician present, again increasing their service — efficiency for the system.

Teams of health professionals working together for patients will be available 24 hours a day to provide clinically appropriate care that is now available in emergency rooms. I know that within my own health authority, the Fraser Health Authority, there has been significant work done to test different arrangements with doctors and other health care professionals to improve efficiency and service. This commitment in our throne speech is a way to examine the system and try some different options for formatting the delivery of health care.

Under initiatives to improve choice for patients, I'd like to highlight two comments. One is that the government is committing to provide new tools and support services to help home care givers and family members who are providing in-home care. Certainly, I think we've all experienced the benefits of in-home care, but sometimes a certain amount of support is needed for both the family and the patient, and our government is committing to doing that.

The second commitment under choice for patients is new access for citizens to their health records and medical information. I think this is a very important commitment by our government, because we've seen in our experience in dealing with constituents that sometimes patients don't know what's on their own medical health record. If we're asking patients to be engaged in their own health care, I think this will be a very useful tool for citizens. It will provide a check on what is in the records. Sometimes we see confusion because of different notes in files. This will help improve accountability in the system, and it will help citizens to better partner with the health care professionals to identify the issues and best find the solutions.

The throne speech lays out a number of initiatives to support prevention, ongoing research and sustainability in our health care system for future generations. One of the key programs that our government has embarked on is the ActNow program, which is really, I think, a great comprehensive program to foster people taking charge of their own health care, taking a preventative approach, taking a more proactive approach to healthy living and fitness.

I'm a very strong supporter of the Minister of State for ActNow and the programs that he is unfolding and the communication effort that he is making to connect with citizens. I think we all have a responsibility in this. We all have a responsibility as leaders in our society and in our communities both to promote healthier living and to model it ourselves.

One of the commitments in the throne speech is to establish ActNow seniors community parks throughout B.C. I know that this is an initiative that will be well received by citizens in my community. One of the things that I think is important is that seniors have appropriate facilities and programs to get them out of their homes and outside enjoying the scenery and the fresh air.

Other programs addressed in the throne speech are two programs to encourage and facilitate children walking or bicycling to school with adult supervision. I think it's a very unfortunate evolution in our society that we see all these vehicles going in and out of our schools every morning, creating significant traffic and environmental impacts when, in fact, if we could get

back to, as much as possible, having kids walk or bicycle to school accompanied by a parent, I think that will be a great thing. It may not work everywhere, but it will work in many situations. I'm very pleased that our government is embarking on these programs.

The throne speech speaks to new legislative authority being provided to ensure that health professionals certified to practise in other Canadian jurisdictions will be able to practise in British Columbia, including foreign-trained doctors. This is a specific example of the kind of issue that British Columbia and Alberta are trying to address through the trade, investment and labour mobility agreement. This will be a specific action under that partnership that British Columbia is taking to level out the ability to practise for doctors that are qualified in other Canadian jurisdictions.

I think this will be a great initiative to start the ball rolling on a whole range of fronts in the various professions. One of the things that I've learned in my intergovernmental relations responsibility is that a lot of the restrictions that we have between our provinces on professional licensing and certification don't exist between countries in the European Union, for example, yet we have these restrictions within Canada. So I'm pleased to be supporting legislation in this regard.

The throne speech speaks to the government creating a three-year bachelor of nursing science program that will allow nurses to gain their degree a year sooner, with on-the-job training. I had the occasion recently to speak to a young nurse who is in training at the University College of the Fraser Valley.

I should say that I think one of the mistakes that was made in the past was that we didn't have enough training spaces for nurses. It has taken some time to get the number of nurses we need coming through the system, to get them in place. A lot of our nurses who are part of the baby-boomer generation are also aging. It's great to see many young people taking up the nursing profession.

I had the occasion to speak to this young nurse or nurse-in-training, and I was very impressed and pleased with the amount of training and practicums that they were doing in the hospital system. Not only were they getting the classroom training but getting a lot of practical experience in the system, which I think is very helpful towards an ultimate education for the job.

Better coordination of patient services across the lower mainland will reduce administration costs, and these revenues will be directed to patient services. I talked about the Fraser Health Authority. Within that health authority we merged a number of smaller operations. If you look at the data, that merger did give a lot of economies in terms of purchasing and administration, but we believe that more is possible.

I think when you have a larger-scale organization, when you're looking at developing common technology platforms, the sharing of data…. I know that we have invested, even within our existing MSA Hospital, in a new technology that will help move patient records very easily and efficiently from one hospital to another and from both within the hospital to outside the hospital.

These are great initiatives that will all be small contributors to improving and maintaining the sustainability of the system. There is no silver bullet in health care in terms of being able to respond to all of the pressures, but all of these individual initiatives do contribute to our ability to do so.

Also related to that, we will be launching an innovation and integration fund within the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser health authorities to move beyond block funding toward a new, ultimately provincewide patient-centred funding model. Health care dollars will follow patients wherever they are treated.

This system will tie funding to the actual delivery of service, and delivery of service to the prescribed service standard. It will go into place in specific priority areas such as emergency care and surgical backlogs. I think this is a very important and, ultimately, a very significant initiative.

We have seen in our constituency the difficulties and frustration when people move from one health authority to another, or they have an aging parent in another health authority. They want to bring him into the Fraser Health Authority, and there are difficulties with funding the service. This will help overcome that. More importantly, this system where funding follows a patient and is connected to the service will, I think, incent the health care system to really focus on (a) providing the service and (b) doing it in a way that meets the needs of citizens.

We're also focusing more attention on integrated approaches to health human resources training and recruitment, data collection, procurement and services that will be implemented. I talked a little bit about data collection and data movement. Investment in technology is a very, very significant cost for the health care system but one that I think is very important and that we will continue to focus on.

N. Macdonald: First, I am very happy to be back here. I think we've had earlier speakers mention it, but it is always a privilege to stand up and represent Columbia River–Revelstoke and to speak in this building. So it's a pleasure to be back here.

Now, this is an opportunity for me to respond to the throne speech, and I have to admit that, despite the fact I've always been interested in politics, my experience with throne speeches is limited to my time here as an MLA. It's not something that I ever watched in any other format, so that's the limitations of my experience.

What I've seen is that the throne speech does provide hints of government direction. But for the most

part, there's a consistent pattern of overstated government intentions. There's a healthy dose of sloganeering, and the slogans are often followed by a fairly consistent degree of a lack of concrete action.

So it points to two things. Either the policies that follow are not fully thought through or the ideas that are put forward — there's no intention to follow through. Both of those are problematic.

The throne speech generally from my experience offers…. In this case, this throne speech really was a restatement of many earlier ideas. There is a lot of that, a lot that we've heard before. Then the other thing that is in there is language that really has to be looked at carefully, and it is often with the budget and with legislation that we get an idea of what is actually intended.

I think perhaps it's politics in general, but certainly with these throne speeches, you have to question every word. Very often you look in a throne speech and there are things like individual choice, accountability and personal responsibility that sound in every way positive. But after you've been through a few throne speeches, you hear those words and you sort of say: "Okay. Individual choice. What does that really mean? What is the legislation that's going to follow?" While it sounds positive, very often there is legislation that is quite worrying.

So with this, there is a lot that we still need to see. As I say, it comes very often in a more concrete form with the actual numbers in the budget and with the pieces of legislation that are put in front of us.

There is no question that there are big expectations about climate change. One of the things that I think is unfortunate is that so much of what is going to be put forward has been hinted at. But, unnecessarily I think, there's a lot of secrecy around the ideas that are going to be put forward.

There's work that's been done for a year. We really don't have a clear idea of what sort of things are going to be put forward. The expectation I had is that, despite that secretive approach, we would know in the budget what was going to be put forward. We're told now that it will be in three weeks, rather than a week, that we'll get more concrete plans around what's going to be done to deal with climate change.

We come off of a two-month period as MLAs where we are, for the most part, interacting directly with those that we represent. What I've done, and I think what most MLAs would have done, is you have your community meetings. We had that before Christmas. Around Christmas it becomes more difficult to meet with constituents as we focus on our families.

Then into January and early February, before the session starts, we again have community meetings. We meet directly face to face with individuals. We meet in rural areas especially. We go to all of the local governments, talk with the mayors, councils and regional directors so that you have a real good grounding in where people are in your constituency.

Coming into this session, as you sit here listening to the throne speech, the expectation that you would have is that within the throne speech the priorities that people are talking about in your riding are going to be reflected in what the government is saying. You expect that at least a small part of what people are talking about you are going to hear the government talking about as well and that they are going to try to deal with the issues and the problems that people in your area are telling you are important to them.

With this throne speech, I could say that there was very little evidence that the government was aware of the priorities for people in the Kootenays. That's problematic, because the way the system should work, when it works properly in my view — and I think that perhaps this is an ideological thing — is that you should have people fully informed. You should have a population that is active and watching public policy carefully, and representatives should be hearing clearly what those people are indicating to you are their priorities. That should flow up to government, and government that works properly is a government that is going to reflect what people on the ground say are the priorities and what needs to be done.

What I want to do in the time that's given to me is just talk about, first, some of the examples of where that worked to a certain extent, but an awful lot of examples where government simply needs to do better at understanding the priorities and the things that are important to people in Columbia River–Revelstoke and, I think, to people in large parts of rural B.C. — perhaps to all British Columbians.

When the system works, I think that we need to reinforce that fact — that this is something that should take place all of the time. Citizens should, through their representative or by themselves, be fully engaged in the political process.

Now, what I tell people who come, when I meet with them, is that they have an obligation to participate. They have an obligation to organize themselves. If they have an issue that they feel strongly about, they should write directly to the minister. They should contact our office and copy us on any letters that they send to a particular minister. They should contact me directly on things that I say or things that are important to them. They need to engage.

The people in my area are fully engaged. They attend meetings. We get good turnouts. We deal with, in our office, over 2,000 contacts. People are phoning in. They are writing. They are doing their part to fully inform their representative and fully inform the government on the things that will work in a practical way, in a way that fits with the priorities of people in the Kootenays.

When it works, you get better government. It should be happening every single time. Government should be a servant to people. Too often it is not, but there are cases that I want to talk about where it worked.

Golden had two conservation officers for…. Well, we've had a ranger or a conservation officer for over 100 years. About five years ago, when the government was cutting everything in the province, certainly everything in rural B.C., they also cut the two conservation officers in Golden.

It was an irresponsible thing to do. We are talking about a part of British Columbia where there are huge

tracts of public land. There was a clear need. The loss of the two conservation officers left Golden with no coverage. It was a mistake. Now, a promise has been made that one full-time conservation officer is going to be returned, and that's a very positive thing.

The system worked in the sense that the rod and gun club, Wildsight, local government and scores and scores of people in Golden — people in Invermere and Revelstoke as well — wrote in, consistently wrote to the minister and copied me. It's an issue that was raised in the House. In the end, there has been a promise of a full-time position. That's something where you can go back and tell people that they shouldn't be cynical about the political process. It's a process that can work, but it depends on those people to take the time to be active. I was very pleased with the efforts of so many people in Golden to get that position back.

Other examples of that are around Columbia Lake. Now, Columbia Lake is the headwaters of the Columbia River. It is an incredible lake. The east side of Columbia Lake is undeveloped largely. It is not only environmentally a very important area, but it is also an area of tremendous historical importance and spiritual importance to the Ktunaxa who live in that area.

That was possibly going to be developed into a golf resort. There was tremendous public pressure. Again, people in the area, the Kootenays, have a tradition of doing this, as perhaps many other parts of British Columbia do, but certainly it's a Kootenay tradition to organize.

You had the Ktunaxa, who were very clear in their objections to any changes to the east shore of Kootenay Lake. You had the B.C. Wildlife Federation. You had the rod and gun clubs in the area. You had Wildsight and many, many individuals signing petitions, getting involved and making it very clear that the government needed to find a solution that would keep the east side of Columbia Lake undeveloped and in a state that protects its environmental, historical and spiritual side. It has to keep that intact. So, another example of success.

Another example is around Jumbo Glacier Resort, and I think that is perhaps going to be another fine example of where public pressure and public organization are going to be successful.

The members on the other side will remember the government commitment made in October of 2004 to leave this as a local decision. There have certainly been lots of indications that there's been backroom work to try to get out of that government commitment. But in the end, the public pressure has remained very, very strong. So the logical thing for the government to do is to listen to what people are saying.

What I have said as their representative is that the government commitment to keep this in the regional district's hand — that being the final place where the decision is to be made; it's something that the government said very clearly should take place — does take place….

I also said very clearly that there was strong local opposition to the project, and in fact, there is. I know that from the contact I get at my office. A local newspaper did a polling of public opinion where it was very strongly against the project. In the environmental assessment project you had the same sort of numbers. Most recently Lillian Rose, who is an area director, had a referendum, and you had 79 percent of the people who are going to be impacted by the development saying that they did not want it to happen.

That active participation in politics can drive the decisions that government makes. It properly should. It doesn't happen often enough, but it is another example where it seems to have. I certainly would hope that the things the government said it would do, they're going to follow through on. That would be the proper thing. That would be good government, and that's something that we need to work for.

I want to give another example. There was a mill in Revelstoke, Kozek mill. I was just talking to the owner, Joe Kozek, earlier today. Fifteen people dealing with hemlock needed an extension on their burning permit. Mayor McKee, the mayor of Revelstoke, city staff and many, many people in Revelstoke participated in making sure that there were 90 days given as an extension to the company to find solutions.

That was given. That's something that needs to be applauded. It means people getting involved, getting organized, speaking in a clear voice and making sure that good solutions are found. These good solutions almost always will come from the bottom up.

In Revelstoke they understood the situation. They are meeting regularly to find solutions that I am confident will work. In 90 days you will have those 15 jobs, and you will have no further need for the burner. So that's another example. There are more.

It seems to me that we found a solution to the Revelstoke ambulance station. There was an incredible need for a new station there. I know the city has found property. I believe the ministry will put forward the funds that are necessary to get a new ambulance station that will service not only the community of Revelstoke but also one of the most dangerous sections of highway in Canada, along the Trans-Canada.

Those are examples, along with others — like the support for the Revelstoke Mountain Resort — where communities are organizing themselves, speaking clearly and telling government what needs to happen works.

I guess the point I would make is that that is the way it should be all the time — that the things people care about in an area should flow up to government. They should be reflected not only in small but important decisions but also in government policy.

I want to talk for a minute about other things that came across very clearly in the meetings I had where the government should have been aware of the issue and should have acted upon it. It should have been in the throne speech. It should be clear to them that action needs to be taken in these areas.

The first thing I want to talk about is seniors care. The Leader of the Opposition put forward two ideas in private members' bills about things that would help seniors. Those are ideas that I distributed to seniors in my area. We had meetings specifically on seniors issues in the last few weeks in each of the communities I represent.

To a person, the seniors that were there felt those two proposals were things that would benefit them. They are not politically partisan. They are people who are experiencing the challenges of trying to live with dignity and respect as they move into their later years.

The proposal for an independent seniors representative was greeted very positively. There are no shortages of examples of where it is needed. These are examples the government would be aware of. There are reports that they should be receiving. They know there are tremendous challenges in residential care, that there are many, many who are not happy with the level of service and that what stops them from coming forward is fear.

There's an element of fear for seniors, there's an element of fear for their families, and there's a reticence to bring issues forward. That reticence would be solved by an independent officer of this Legislature that would represent seniors. It is a commonsense idea, an idea the government should have included in this throne speech.

A second commonsense idea was the amendments to the residential care legislation we have that would bring in a residential care inspection regime, which would be at least once a year. It would be without notice so that the residential care facility would not know they were coming. Those inspections would be posted publicly.

What we know is that the government has known about situations that needed correction, and yet that information was not made public. When it does become public, then government is under tremendous pressure to fix it. It is in everyone's interest to have government under pressure when there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Those ideas were greeted very well by seniors, but it wasn't just seniors. Those ideas put to local government were supported as well. The city of Fernie passed a motion saying that it was a good idea, that government should be including it in throne speeches and getting on and doing it. You had that with Kimberley, with Golden — passed unanimously — and there are many others.

Those are ideas that need to be included in what the government is planning to do. There is no reason why it should not have been included. That is what people at the grass roots are saying, and that's what needs to be reflected in legislation and in actions from the government.

There is concern about residential care — about the quality of it. There is concern about the oversight of private facilities but not only of private facilities, so that is something that needs to be tightened up. It needs to be improved dramatically.

Another thing that people were talking about was child care. The NDP is committed to a child care plan that will be affordable and accessible. There again, it is not simply people who are involved with child care that are saying that.

There are motions from my chambers of commerce who recognize that the realities of life are such that you will very often have both parents working, or the parent that is the caregiver working, and there needs to be good-quality, affordable, accessible child care. That is what people are saying in each of the meetings that I go to. To have it not even mentioned in a throne speech tells me that it's a government that's out of touch with the Kootenays.

Other things that are talked about: forestry. Forestry has been the most important industry in British Columbia. It is certainly the most important industry in my part of the province. It provides good, high-paying jobs. Certainly, there is nobody who would tolerate the idea that the government sits as a spectator as that industry suffers. You need to remember, and I think that those that represent rural areas will know, that forestry is dependent upon public land and is heavily impacted by public policy.

There has been a series of governments. They have always struggled with external factors that they cannot control. I recognize that this is a difficult time. But the Social Credit and the NDP did not sit on the sidelines. They worked with communities, and they struggled to protect the industry. What you have now is a deindustrialization of the interior, and it is shortsighted.

Tourism has grown, but tourism needs the forestry jobs. The communities don't need just to shift from one industry to another. We need all of the industries, all of the opportunities that we can get to be there and to be strong.

What people in my area would have expected is an energetic plan for forestry. What too often seems to be happening is that the government is favouring corporate interests rather than the public interest, and that is a huge problem. It should have been addressed in this throne speech. It wasn't, and that's problematic.

There should have been something on housing and homelessness. Local government is doing something. It is a different issue where I am than it is on the lower mainland. We have people coming in and buying second homes. They make all of our housing very difficult to attain. So you have housing, you have homelessness, and you have people that are under tremendous pressure.

Revelstoke. The resort is a real boon, but it brings very predictable pressures. You have seen housing…. Property values have gone up in some cases almost a hundred percent. You have seen rents similarly rise very, very quickly. There are predictable pressures. Local governments in each of the communities that I represent are trying to do something.

You've got Revelstoke's Renters Voice. You've got a councillor that is there. You have the mayor that is always coming to the meetings, trying to help out. You have an organization in Kimberley. You have that in all of the communities that I represent — a real energy

In this throne speech there certainly should have been something that addressed housing and homelessness. The idea that the market is going to take care of this is a complete misunderstanding of the realities that take place in my part of British Columbia and of the difficulty and the suffering that it causes for individuals and for people trying to run businesses. How do you run a Tim Hortons or a golf course if you cannot get workers? You will not get workers if they do not have an affordable place to live.

Regardless of what is said here, there is a net out-migration from the Kootenays. People are challenged to live there. Those high-paying forestry and mining jobs are under threat. Instead, you have high living costs and jobs that tend to be lower-paying, and that's a problem.

Can the provincial government do something about it? Well, they should do something about it. There should have been something in the throne speech. There should be a plan in place to deal with housing and homeless issues in British Columbia, and there's not. It does not exist, and that is something that is very disappointing.

If this government truly listened to what people were saying, they would hear that message very, very clearly. It is something that has come up again and again in the community meetings that I hold, in what people write and say to me and in what is passed along to government. There is no question that the government can be ignorant of the fact that they need a housing policy.

There is the issue of independent power projects. The development of independent power projects is something that is becoming more clear to people, especially as these projects begin. The idea that the public is paying huge amounts of money for these projects to go away….

To many, they would say that this is the biggest giveaway in the history of the province. It is a massive giveaway to individuals, and it is a giveaway of a public resource. As people start to look more carefully at what is going on here, you are going to see a groundswell of resistance to these projects. There is absolutely no question.

I would invite people to read Liquid Gold, which is very good. It lays out very clearly what is going on and what is problematic about the gift of a public resource and public money to private individuals and companies. These independent power projects are a problem that will attract many people as they understand what is going on here.

I would invite people to read, as well, the Shaffer report, which is put together by a university professor. It explains many of the things that are thrown out by government to try to justify these projects. They are something that people at the grass-roots levels are starting to understand. They are starting to object to them, and that is something that the government should recognize.

I also want to say that what I hear in some of the communities that I represent, especially Kimberley, is the issue of worker safety, especially as it has to do with the Sullivan mine disaster and the four people who lost their lives there. There was a series of recommendations made. When I go into Kimberley — and it's not just Kimberley — I will consistently hear questions about what the government has done to address those concerns.

On the positive side, we have had some of the recommendations…. In particular, I would say that with the Ambulance Service, we've had far more luck having issues dealt with. It's not complete. There are still things to be worked through, but you have a feeling of some satisfaction with the families.

With the ministry responsible for mining, there is still really nothing tangible. With this session we're certainly going to be testing the Mining Minister and making sure that the recommendations that were clearly laid out are acted upon. We will not accept that those recommendations sit on a shelf somewhere. They are going to be acted upon. That's a commitment I've made to those families, and it's a commitment that is going to be followed through on. In the community of Kimberley — when you are there — to a person, they want that to be fixed.

I see that I'm very quickly running out of time. I want to talk about one other issue, and that is arts councils. In the throne speech there was mention of arts funding. B.C. arts councils need funding. That is the most efficient vehicle for getting money to the communities that I represent.

There are some wonderful things happening in the arts, but they need support. B.C. arts councils are the most efficient way of providing that. In a tour that I did through the East Kootenay visiting arts councils, I consistently heard that need for funding.

Well, I can see that my time is up. I would have thought a half-hour was a long time, but it's gone very, very quickly. I look forward to the session, and I thank the Speaker for the opportunity to speak here.

Hon. R. Thorpe: I am very, very pleased to rise in this House as the member for Okanagan-Westside representing the communities of Summerland; Peachland; one of the newest municipalities in British Columbia, the district of Westside; and all of the residents in the communities up Westside Road.

Let there be no doubt that my constituents want me to vote in favour of this throne speech, and I will be doing that. But let us take a second and reflect on what is happening and has happened in British Columbia.

British Columbia, a strong economy, is the foundation for the significant investments we are going to be making in the vital public services like health care, education, early learning, livable communities, public safety and climate action.

When our government came to office in 2001, we said that job one was to right the listing ship. British Columbia's dismal economic record of the '90s had taken us from first place in Canada to last place, thanks to those NDP members on the other side of the House.

A strong economy is what actually makes it available to make the investments in the public services and

to be truly the best place on earth. Working together, British Columbians have achieved that. Our commitment is that we can never waver from our road map to success — that being a strong economy.

A strong economy provides the resources for first-rate public services like education, health care and care for our children and grandchildren, those less fortunate and our seniors. This throne speech is big, bold and visionary. No member in this House should make the mistake. It is because of British Columbia's bedrock economy that we are able to have the big, bold and visionary throne speech that we have.

When our government came to office we inherited the mother of all economic indignities. We had become a have-not province. Despite our wealth of natural resources, despite the talented workforce that only wanted the opportunity to unleash its talents, despite our strategic Pacific location, despite our modern climate and breathtaking locations to attract the people — despite all of this — under the leadership of the folks on the other side, British Columbia was reduced to taking handouts from provinces not nearly as blessed as ours. Thank you to those members over there.

What have British Columbians accomplished in seven short years? Well, let me start with what our side believes is fundamental. It is fundamental that when hard-working individuals receive their paycheque, they should get to keep an increasing amount of that because they make better decisions than big government.

Hon. R. Thorpe: We are putting dollars in people's pockets while the NDP, as we just heard from the member over there, are committed to taking the dollars out of their pockets. There is a fundamental difference. We are for reduced taxation of citizens; they are for increased taxation of citizens.

In fact, our government in seven years has put over $11 billion back into the pockets of small businesses and British Columbians so that they can grow the economy. Employment rates have never been higher. In communities across British Columbia we are seeing record levels of employment. Since December 2001 over 411,000 new jobs were created in British Columbia. Most recently the unemployment rate is down to 4.1 percent, one of the lowest rates in the history of the province.

We often hear the rhetoric from the other side. We hear the rhetoric, and we're hearing some of it right now. They talk about youth and youth employment and youth unemployment. In 1998, under the NDP, youth unemployment in British Columbia was 17.4 percent. In January of 2008 in British Columbia youth unemployment was 7.5 percent. Of course, the NDP will vote against this, even though they'll stand in this House and say they're for the youth — unbelievable.

Let us look at women — such an important part of the economy of British Columbia. Over 176,000 new jobs for women in British Columbia since December 2001. Today over 1,073,000 women are working in the province, the highest level ever.

We look at first nations. Since 2005 our government has been working with first nations and Métis organizations and has focused on building capacity so that all first nations people in communities can benefit from the economic and employment opportunities that British Columbia is currently experiencing. So let us say: provided $100 million to the new relationship trust fund for first nation capacity-building; developed cooperative agreements with first nations in mining activities; negotiated agreements with first nations to share Crown land reserves from recent major resort proposals; launched the aboriginal youth internship, providing firsthand experience to aboriginal youth working in the public service. Aboriginal organizations are pleased with this.

In fact, I am pleased that in the Ministry of Small Business and Revenue we have such an intern. I'm also pleased that in my home of Penticton we have a fantastic young lady from the Penticton first nations working in Children and Family Development. She is so excited about her job, and she's doing such a great job.

We've also, with the first nations aboriginal peoples, supported and funded Aboriginal Tourism British Columbia to develop and implement an aboriginal cultural tourism blueprint strategy. So we are making progress.

As the Minister of Small Business and Revenue, let me just talk for a moment. In 2001 there were 930,000 people employed by small businesses, and there were just 337,400 small businesses operating in British Columbia.

One of the things that the throne speech talked about — and it was on page 39…. I'm sure all the members of the House recall this. Let me quote: "Small business remains the most confident in Canada. It is the jobs engine that continues to see British Columbia leading the nation in job creation."

Today in British Columbia our small business community is seeing unprecedented growth, unprecedented opportunity, unprecedented success. And 98 percent of all the businesses in British Columbia are small businesses, accounting for 57 percent of the private sector jobs. That is over 1,025,600 British Columbians working in small business today. Between 2001-2006 the number of small businesses in British Columbia increased at 11 percent, more than triple the national average.

People talk about leadership. People talk about results. No Premier in the history of the province has been more committed to the small business sector than our Premier of today. There are 370,700 small businesses in British Columbia today. For the 18th consecutive quarter, British Columbia's small businesses are more optimistic about future growth than anywhere across Canada. That's unbelievable.

Women in small business. Almost 36 percent of women are self-employed in small business in British Columbia. That's higher than the national average. Over 146,000 women are working for themselves or as a one-person operation running companies they founded and own right here in British Columbia, the land of opportunity.

It's clear that small business in British Columbia is booming. We have come so far since 2001. Since 2001, 33,300 new small businesses have been created, providing over 94,000 more jobs for British Columbians.

In 2005 the Premier challenged me, as a commitment that our government had made to the electorate of British Columbia, to form a small business round table. We have gone out and formed the Small Business Roundtable.

We have 23 members from every region of the province on our permanent Small Business Roundtable. Let me tell you that they are dedicated British Columbians — dedicated to working with small business, dedicated to giving candid information and recommendations to the government so that we can move forward. They operate under the banner of making British Columbia the most small business jurisdiction in Canada.

To date we have had 29 consultations in communities throughout British Columbia, with over 469 small business owners. I have visited hundreds of small businesses throughout British Columbia.

One of the great things that I like about the permanent Small Business Roundtable is that each October they issue their annual report to government. They make recommendations to the government — what they believe the government should be working on. They also make recommendations as to what small business should be doing to help itself. It's about a partnership.

From that, we've developed an action plan for small business. It's about supporting and growing small business. It's about cutting red tape. It's about building workforce capacity. It's about leveraging public and private partnerships. It's about supporting a competitive tax structure. This is a very useful tool. These consultations, this permanent roundtable, the members from every part of the province are a great asset, and small business in British Columbia appreciates their commitment.

During small business in October of this past year, I was presented with the round table's second annual report. A number of recommendations to the small business sector and to government were made in that report.

The recommendations to government included: continuing efforts to make British Columbia the most small business–friendly jurisdiction by building on the recommendations and the successes of the past; developing a small business report card with goals to measure achievements to 2012; focusing on saving time through continuous regulatory reform; and extending the zero net increase in regulations to the year 2012.

Small business recommended to government that it implement a climate action plan for small businesses, and we're in the process of doing that. We're working on all of these recommendations, and as in the past, we have fulfilled every commitment that the Small Business Roundtable has made to government. We will continue to work with small business.

Let me just tell you some of the accomplishments that we've achieved as a result of the advice and guidance of the Small Business Roundtable. Skills development. As you know, it wasn't that many years ago that British Columbians were chasing to find jobs. Now, jobs are chasing to find British Columbians, and we call that now managing success. What a turnaround. So we have, with respect to skills development, working very closely with the federal government….

We know that the members on that side of the House were always wanting to fight and have confrontation. Our side of the House believes in working together. We believe and we know that there's only one taxpayer. They pay local government. They pay provincial government. They pay federal government, and they want all levels of government to work together.

Well, you know what, Madam Speaker? My colleague the Minister of Economic Development, working with the federal minister, Monte Solberg, has made tremendous gains in allowing and permitting access to workers here in British Columbia.

On September 24 British Columbia announced with Canada the temporary work program to pilot ineligible workers in 12 specific locations with the modified labour market's opinions. In the past it took up to five months to get labour market opinions; now it takes five days. And now it has been extended to 33 eligible employee groups.

With respect to the provincial nominee program, our government has made substantial gains, again under the leadership of the Premier and the Minister of Economic Development. Last year alone we had 1,300 skilled workers and entrepreneurs enter British Columbia. We expect this year that there will be 2,000. We are seeing success.

As I travelled around and worked closely with the Minister of Education, we learned that people in schools, young students, weren't understanding…. It wasn't being made available to them what opportunities there were in trades and small business. A number of industry groups have come together. The British Columbia home builders come to mind, but there are others.

Everywhere we went…. It's interesting, and I'm sure the member from the Quesnel area would appreciate this. It all came to light in a suggestion by a lady from Quesnel. She said: "You know what we need in schools in British Columbia? We need a program called Junior Achievement."

Well, in May of 2007 our Premier committed $2 million to Junior Achievement to ensure that every school district in the province of British Columbia would have access to the tools of Junior Achievement. If they so choose, they can deliver that in every school district. That is good for our young students. That is good for British Columbians.

We also announced a million-dollar fund, working together with the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce, the Small Business Roundtable, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Retail B.C. and Okanagan College on developing skill sets and training materials that small business says it needs, not what government says small business needs. So we are moving forward.

Together with my colleague in the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance, we are also working

on the 10 by 10 Challenge, a fantastic opportunity. Also, we've introduced a training tax credit where individuals can get up to $9,000; employers can get up to $12,500. This program dovetails very nicely into the federal program — again provincial government and federal government working together to grow British Columbia, to grow Canada.

There are also enhanced training tax credits for apprentices for first nations and individuals and persons with disabilities. This is what it's about. It's about listening and then putting in place programs that are going to work for the entire province of British Columbia.

I am hopeful that the members on that other side of the House will be voting in favour of this throne speech, because I believe it addresses many of the things they talk about in this House. But I will not be surprised if they do not vote, because they're never for anything. They're always against things.

The Industry Training Authority has been moving forward. We heard some rhetoric earlier today. Some know that I'm not a particular fan of rhetoric. I actually like figures and facts. Do you know that in British Columbia in 2000 we had 15,794 apprentices in the province? As of December 31, 2007, we have 37,942. That is progress. That is success.

We've often heard the other side of the House criticize, because we know that they are for big government. We're not for big government. We are for regulatory reform. They're against regulatory reform. They always talk about bringing on more regulations. It was their government, when they were government, that strangled small business and strangled business in British Columbia. We committed, under the Premier, to reduce red tape by 33 percent in our first three years. What did we do? We achieved 37½ percent. That's what we did in three years.

Where do we stand today? British Columbians, working in partnership with their government, have reduced red tape by 42.61 percent — 163,000 regulations. Our government has made a commitment that there will be no increase in the regulatory count, and we have extended that commitment to 2012, again working with small business.

We often hear from that side how our regulatory reform programs put people at risk. We have always said that we will not put health, the environment or safety at risk through regulatory reforms.

Let me give you one of my favourite facts on red tape. It has to do with the child care subsidy. A few months ago we found out that there were 16 pages of red tape — 16 pages to get that. I talked with my staff and worked with the Minister of Children and Families. That is now down to one and a half pages. That's about providing services for those that need them so they can get the help they need.

We've also worked with the small business community, the chamber of commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Retail Canada, Retail B.C., the Chartered Accountants of British Columbia, the CGAs of British Columbia and the CMAs of British Columbia to develop Canada's leading taxpayer fairness and service code. We're at our fourth edition now, and our fifth edition will come out in another couple of months.

That's all about working to provide the services and the needs of hard-working British Columbians so that they know their rights. They know that when they get something in writing from our government, we will actually honour it. They know how to get in contact. We've established performance measures, and we are making great success in that.

I have to say thank you to the employees at the Ministry of Small Business and Revenue because they have been so dedicated to the continuous improvement of customer service. Without dedicated public servants, we cannot deliver the results that British Columbia is achieving today.

Let me just talk a little bit about taxes and putting money in people's pockets. The member for Vancouver-Fairview says you can't increase spending and not increase taxes. Well, we know that that side of the House stands for increasing taxes. That's what you're all about. Stand up and say that's what you're for. Everybody knows it.

So what happens? In 2001, when we announced a 25 percent reduction in personal taxes, we voted in favour. You voted against it. What happened when we announced a further 10 percent personal reduction to put more money in hard-working British Columbians' pockets in the year 2007? You, the NDP, voted against it. We voted for it.

Today in British Columbia over 250,000 British Columbians are not paying any income tax. We voted for it. The NDP voted against it. Shame on you guys.

When we said we're going to increase the threshold for small business tax from $200,000 to $300,000 and then to $400,000, you, the NDP, voted against it. We on this side voted for it because we're on the side of small business. You're against small business.

There has been tax after tax reduction, putting money in people's pockets, in small businesses' pockets. We now know the power of the free enterprise economy: 412,000 new jobs created.

Through all of this, all of the folks that work in the Ministry of Finance and, in fact, every ministry in government have been able to restore the credit rating of British Columbia back to its right place as number one in Canada.

When we took over the purses of the province, the taxpayer-supported debt stood at 21.7 percent. Today, estimated at the end of 2007-2008, at 14.8 percent. That is progress. British Columbians are now back in their rightful spot of leading in Canada thanks to this side, while you folks oppose every initiative to move British Columbia forward.

Let me just talk about a few items in this throne speech that are particularly a passion of mine. Our side will be voting for it, and I have this sneaking suspicion the NDP over there will be voting against it.

How can anybody vote against the commitment to upgrade the expansion of B.C.'s Children's Hospital? How can you do that?

How can anybody vote against training nurses to deliver a broader range of health services including suturing, ultrasounds, etc.? How can you do that?

How can they vote against an independent living savings account? I know because I heard the member earlier say that they're for government control. We're sort of on the side of people and choices and opportunity.

By their own rationale they'd be against RRSPs. They'd be against education savings plans. You know, I don't know what you stand for, but I sure know what you stand against.

You're going to vote against StrongStarts, one of the best programs in the history of British Columbia. Eighty-four today, and there will be 400 by the year 2010.

They're going to vote against a new centre for autism education and research. That is really unbelievable.

They're also going to vote against…. Maybe some of them can remember…. I think some of them are old enough to remember that they actually walked to school or rode bikes to school. Now they're against that.

They're also — I actually can't fathom this one — going to vote against banning smoking in vehicles to protect children, and they're going to tell us they're on the side of children? Give me a break.

Let's talk about education for a second. They are probably also going to vote against new powers to be given to the College of Teachers to remove teaching certificates of any member who is found to be incompetent. Let's get on the side of the students.

They're probably going to vote against safe, secure communities. I can't believe it. They're probably going to vote against the need to provide for patients with severe mental illness who require intensive, sustained and complex medical treatment. That would be provided in new existing facilities at Willingdon in Burnaby, which will be refitted and opened this year, and at Riverview in Coquitlam.

Come on. You can't have it both ways. You can't say that you're on the side of people and then vote against those people that are most at risk. Let's see them stand and vote for people.

And then we hear climate action. We hear so much rhetoric from that side on climate action. Our government establishes goals. We have a plan, and we have a team. We work with British Columbia. We achieve, and in most instances overachieve, our goals. That's exactly what our government under the leadership of our Premier is going to achieve.

I know it's hard for these folks to comprehend. This throne speech is big, it's bold, and it's visionary. That's why they're having a challenge understanding it and translating it into how British Columbia will succeed not only today but tomorrow and for the years to come. British Columbians have the power to succeed. They've shown it in the last seven years, and they will show it in the next seven years.

Let there be no doubt. On behalf of the constituents of Okanagan-Westside, I will be voting in favour of this throne speech.

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