Hansard — Thursday, February 28, 2008 a.m.

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Introductions by Members		10057

Reports from Committees		10057
	Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations, report
	J. Rustad

Budget Debate (continued)		10057
	L. Krog
	D. Hayer
	G. Gentner
	R. Hawes

Hon. M. de Jong: Joining us in the gallery today is someone who is well known to members of this assembly on both sides of the House. Dave Haggard is a longtime labour leader, a forestry advocate. He is someone who is no stranger to intense negotiations, working with industry, labour, government and communities.

He is joined by his wife Eileen, who is a leader in her own right, working with the Nuu-chah-nulth education authority. K-to-12 is her specialty. She has dedicated her life to the advancement of education within aboriginal communities. She is of aboriginal ancestry, as is Mr. Haggard. They are very much a team, as I have learned through the years.

I am also pleased to advise the House that Mr. Haggard has accepted an invitation from the province to sit as the newest commissioner with the B.C. Treaty Commission. He has been appointed to a two-year term. He'll be replacing the outgoing commissioner Jack Weisgerber. Of course, I want to thank Mr. Weisgerber for his six years of excellent work with the commission.

Mr. Haggard will serve alongside Jerry Lampert and commissioners Robert Phillips and Jody Wilson. He'll be the newest commissioner. He brings a passion for community involvement. He brings a passion for advancing the cause of a new relationship with first nations.

Mr. Speaker, I am thrilled to death that Mr. Haggard has accepted this invitation and am thankful that Eileen has chosen to agree to lend him to us and to the work of the B.C. Treaty Commission. I ask all members to welcome him and thank both of them for their contribution to public service.

J. Rustad: It's my honour to present the report of the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations for the third session of the current parliament.

J. Rustad: I ask leave of the House to permit the moving of a motion to adopt the report.

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

During the third session, the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations met with senior officials of three British Columbia Crown corporations. Representatives from the Columbia Power Corporation, the Industry Training Authority and the First Peoples Heritage, Language and Culture Council appeared before the committee and presented their annual reports and service plans. I'd like to thank the senior officers of the various Crown corporations who appeared before the committee. In addition, I'd also like to thank all members of the committee for their important contributions to the committee's unanimous report.

L. Krog: Firstly, I want to recognize that the budget speech given by the Minister of Finance is probably her last, and I can say that most of us on this side of the House respect the fact that she's leaving the government benches and has announced her leaving the government benches.

She talked in her opening words and said: "This budget asks the question: what kind of legacy do we really want to leave for future generations?" I think the more important question is really: what kind of example is this generation setting by this kind of budget in these particular times?

The legacy we are leaving for future generations, I would argue, is indeed from a public perspective and the kind of perspective that was brought to the governance of this province by figures like W.A.C. Bennett or Dave Barrett. The legacy we are leaving, in the public eye, is a much diminished one. It is a legacy of a diminishing role of Crown corporations in the economy and in how people receive public services.

The budget doesn't talk about, for instance, increasing ferry fares. The budget doesn't say anything, really, about hydro per se, as we see independent power projects proliferate across the province, all at great expense to the taxpayer.

I submit that the better question is: what kind of example are we setting, and what does this budget really say? What does this budget say in terms of housing and homelessness? What does it say in terms of forestry? What does it say of the kinds of expenses that average British Columbians face day in, day out? How do they manage in an economy where they see increasing wealth at higher income levels, significant increases in the value of assets of those at higher income levels and a diminished society, if you will, in which they have to exist and struggle day in and day out?

As an example, one would have hoped that the budget speech would have perhaps mentioned an increase in the minimum wage for the lowest-income earners in the province. Everyone in this chamber has seen an increase. We know that wages across the province in the last two years, with significant increases in resource revenues, have all increased.

Some people are doing very well — very well indeed. Others are doing better. But quite clearly, facing rising costs, many British Columbians are indeed doing a great deal worse.

When I ask the question again of what kind of example we are setting through this budget, I would suggest that the example we are setting is not one that future generations will look back on and say: "This was a great budget. This was a transformative budget. This was a budget that people could be proud of."

I would have expected to see in this budget, with the numbers of homeless in my own community, a significant commitment by government to providing housing — and not shelter beds. It's all well and good to talk about shelter beds. That's a great place to go for a few days if you find yourself temporarily homeless for some reason. Those facilities are needed. No one suggests they aren't.

But in terms of what most of us think of as a home — a place where with some confidence we can go every night and find security, safety, comfort and a place to rest — there's nothing in this budget. There is a modest amount of money, which I suspect is really destined for shelter beds and not for permanent housing, not for the creation of homes and living conditions in which people who find themselves in difficulty will be able to find that security necessary to improve their lives — to secure a place in society, to move up the ladder, if you will, and to provide some peace and security.

In my constituency Harmac has just recently been bought. It's a major pulp mill. It has been — and probably is right now and continues to be — the most significant private sector payroll in my community. I didn't see anything in the budget, particularly for the Ministry of Forests, that is in any way going to guarantee that Harmac will get the secure supply of fibre that it needs in order to continue operations and continue to be a significant economic contributor to not only my community but to the province's revenues.

The workers there are living with a great deal of uncertainty — the suppliers to that mill, the people who work for them. All of those people are living with great insecurity right now. We've seen other mills close up and down the coast — sawmills, pulp mills. We've seen significant devastation in our forest industry.

Now the government will probably respond: "Oh, it's all due to the dark and dismal '90s." But it has been just about seven years since this government was elected — seven years in which to manage forest policy, seven years in which to make improvements. I saw nothing in this budget, nothing at all, that is going to save what historically has been the mainstay of British Columbia's economy.

You know, if the RCMP are the symbol of this country nationally, it's probably a tree or a salmon that is the symbol of this province. I didn't see any commitment in the budget around fisheries. We know that the wild salmon stocks are in great danger. We know, and I think the Premier reflected, that concept in the throne speech. We know that we're going to have to grow food closer to home. We know we have to look after our own environment. In other words, we've got to stop messing in our own nest. I didn't see anything in the budget about that either.

For the average constituent in Nanaimo, if they live on Gabriola Island, what have they seen in the last seven years? Huge increases in ferry rates. What are they promised? Further increases in ferry rates.

I attended a meeting the other week where, as one young fellow quite wisely pointed out…. I suspect he's probably more a supporter of the other side of the House than he is of my party.

He said quite simply: "We're the people that clean your gutters. We're the people that volunteer for your fire department. We're the people who do your gardening. As the price of the ferry rates continues to rise, it becomes less and less likely that people like me who have families and children and who want to live on Gabriola Island are going to continue to be able to live there." That is, quite simply, because they won't be able to afford to do so.

The policies of this government, which weren't changed by anything in the throne speech, are to let ferry rates continue to rise to make it more and more that the Gulf Islands of British Columbia will become enclaves only for the rich, only for the comfortable and, quite frankly, quite often only for those who are older. Yet those older people require services delivered by younger people. That's going to change the complexion of the Gulf Islands in a way that was never anticipated — nor, indeed, was it ever intended by Dave Barrett when he brought in the Islands Trust legislation.

Where in this throne speech did I see something to deal with what is the most pressing social problem in my community? That's homelessness. We've seen money poured into Victoria. We've seen money poured into Vancouver. We have seen commitments made to those major centres, but the city of Nanaimo, one of the three oldest cities in the province of British Columbia, where the mayor himself is head of the Premier's Task Force on Homelessness…. That city sees nothing in this budget.

It was this week that there was an article in the local paper. Indeed, I expect to be in communication with the mayor and council and some senior staff later this morning. There was a piece in the paper where the city of Nanaimo is going to have to crack down on rooming houses because they're unsafe.

Where are those people going to go if there isn't any money to provide decent public housing? They will further contribute to the growing problem of homelessness in my community, and it's outrageous.

It's particularly outrageous when I contrast it with what the budget says to British Columbians. It doesn't

say: "We're going to give you any significant or any increase in assistance rates." It doesn't say: "We're going to provide significant moneys for housing and homelessness." It doesn't say, "We're going to do something to protect you from the rising costs," over which government has some control, whether it's ICBC rates or hydro rates or ferry fares. For those people, there is nothing.

We know that hydro is going up by 15 percent. Government has brought in a carbon tax. By and large, I think most British Columbians support the concept of carbon taxes. British Columbians understand keenly the devastating effects of climate change, and they're all willing to do their share, but sharing is the concept that's missing from the budget.

They don't mind sharing the burden. They'll put their shoulders to the wheel. They've done it in other periods of our history, whether it was building this province, fighting in two world wars, fighting the Korean War, surviving the Great Depression or helping build this province in the great growth era of the '60s and the '70s. They did their share.

What they don't see in this budget is some reasonable sharing of the burden of addressing the most significant problem of our generation, which is climate change. What they see is a $327 million subsidy for the oil and gas industry. It is an unbelievable amount of money. If you took that figure and doubled it, I'm reasonably advised that we could pretty much build the number of housing units in this province needed to eliminate homelessness. Chronic homelessness would be gone.

Now, I don't deny that there'd be money in every budget hereafter to provide funding for operating costs. I accept that. But just imagine a British Columbia that, for a couple of years, cut off the government lolly, the oil and gas industry, but solved the problem of homelessness.

I come back to my question. What kind of example does this budget set? What kind of example? In a time of general prosperity they could be actually addressing these problems in a way that our generation could stand up and look at the generations that follow us and say: "We were proud of what we did. We did the right thing. We had opportunity given to us, and we used it wisely for the benefit of all."

No. Instead, it's $327 million this year for the oil and gas industry. What's even more repugnant is that the budget is going to give a $220 million tax break to the big banks. At a time when their profits are in numbers that most people can't even figure out how many zeroes you've got to put behind the first digit to calculate, we're going to give the big banks 220 million bucks.

The Coastal Credit Union's main office, Vancouver Island, is in my constituency. It's been a successful operation. They're doing well. They pay dividends. The customers are happy. They employ a lot of people. They're a union operation. With great respect, I don't think they were begging for a tax break.

Royal Bank seems to be doing very well. Bank of Nova Scotia is doing very well; CIBC is doing very well. They're all doing well, and we're going to give them a tax break. We're going to give them a tax break when you can walk out of my constituency office and see people who are homeless. We're going to give them a tax break when the people in Gabriola can't afford the ferry fares.

You're going to give them a tax break when the 58-year-old single woman on disability living in a mobile home park in my community is terrified that the very home she lives in is going to disappear out from under her because this government didn't announce anything in the throne speech or the budget to deal with the risks of mobile home parks being turned over for development. We have a Residential Tenancy Act and other statutes that simply don't protect those people and their houses.

I'll give you an example. A woman phoned me this week. She's upset about the gas tax. I'm not going to mention her name, but she lives in one of those mobile home parks. You can say that on one level she's fortunate. She inherited a 30-year-old mobile home from her mother. She lives on disability. She's getting about 900 bucks a month.

Her pad rent has gone up. She's looking at a 15 percent increase in her hydro rates. She drives a clunker, the kind of clunker this government and all of us would like to see off the road, but she's not going to be able to afford to buy a new hybrid. She won't be able to take advantage of any tax credits or benefits that this budget talked about. When she gets her hundred bucks, if she's lucky, because she owns that mobile home — or manufactured home, properly speaking, I guess — she's going to have to plunk it down on the taxes.

She doesn't see any relief in this budget for her. She's not old enough to collect CPP, and she's not well enough to work. She's on disability, and she's going to be on it permanently till some other form of government assistance kicks in as she gets older. There's nothing in this budget for her — nothing.

What do you say to the 15-year-old who I'm dealing with now, who's troublesome? He's a troublesome kid. The Ministry of Children and Families has almost written him off. There's nothing in this budget for him. The youth centre where he's been staying — longer than he should have, according to the rules, because there's no place else for him to go — is threatened with closure and may well have to shut its doors in the next few days. There's nothing in this budget for him.

What is in this budget? Well, we've got continued moneys for highway funding so that the wealthiest in Vancouver can drive up to the site of the Olympics and visit their multi-million-dollar ski condos or ski chalets, as the case may be. They're doing very well under this government.

Goodness, I think if I were one of those people, I'd be voting for this government too. I'd be thrilled with the throne speech. My shares through my RRSP in the Royal Bank, if I had them, would look really good after another $220 million tax break.

But for working families, for the majority of the people in this province and for the people who day in and day out have to struggle to get to work through

congested traffic because there isn't good transit…. They're looking at increases in transit fares. When we want everybody out of their cars, we're bumping up the cost of public transit instead of reducing it.

That is just the kind of example that I've been trying to talk about this morning and why I can't respond in a positive way to the budget speech from the Minister of Finance. It is because at a time when we could do so much more, we are in fact doing less.

I'm almost shocked that this government — here we are roughly 15 months from an election — has an opportunity to start dishing out the lollies, so to speak — doing what governments historically, in their own cynical way, always do. All governments are guilty of it. I'm not excepting anyone.

I would have thought they might have wanted to say to British Columbians: "We're going to do something for those of you who face more difficult times." I would have thought that after seven years of continuously rising tuition, with post-secondary tuition in this province literally doubling in the last seven years, they might have said: "We're going to institute a cap on tuition fees. We've got the money. We know that education is crucial to the future success of our economy." I thought they might have announced a cap on tuition fees.

We know now that the average student debt at the end of four years in British Columbia is $27,000. When I met with students the other day, they're going to pay 11 percent on that money when they have to start repaying that loan — 11 percent. That's a pretty shocking number.

Who are they going to pay it to? They're going to pay it to the very banks that this government has just given $220 million more to, and that is really something my constituents at Malaspina University College Nanaimo don't quite understand. They just don't understand the logic of that.

It's at a time, as I've said, when we could be doing the right thing, when we could be leaving the kind of legacy that the empty rhetoric of the budget speech talked about and that the empty rhetoric of the throne speech talked about, and at a time when we could be leaving a legacy with which this generation could stand up and say with great pride: "We did the best we could with the best times." Instead of that, it's just business as usual, and that's the problem.

When we look for not simply visionary words but a concrete vision created through legislation, through financial commitment, through a budget that would do something for British Columbians, we get fine language, elegant words. But the people who are the majority of British Columbians don't understand it. They like the words too. We all like fine words, but they don't see the reality of it.

They don't get the sense of that — as my friend the member for Saanich South said the other day — as they're struggling to rush their kids to day care and pay for exorbitant day care, as they're struggling to handle their kids' problems in schools, as their kids struggle in classrooms where there isn't sufficient support for teachers, as they see potential closures of the schools in their neighbourhood, as they struggle to pay their taxes, as they struggle to meet their mortgage or their rent payments, as they struggle with feeding themselves and doing the basics of life, as they fear the future for their children, knowing they won't be able to set aside money for their kids' tuition if their kids are able and capable of going. Those people don't see this budget as a big boost.

On the weekend The Vancouver Sun did a wonderful section called "Going Green." The carbon tax on gasoline — everyone understands it's the way the world has to go. Everyone understands that. To come back to what I said about sharing, British Columbians are ready to share in the burden, and they're ready to share in the benefit. But the burden is not being shared by this budget. According to the article in The Vancouver Sun, in terms of greenhouse gases, which are measured in CO₂ equivalents….

Just to give the members here some information they may not have, the total in Canada is some 273,156,839 equivalent tonnes of CO₂ emissions. The province of British Columbia is responsible for 12,316,337 tonnes. Do you know what? We're doing really well compared to the province of Alberta. They're at 115 million–plus.

But of those totals, the Duke Energy Corporation's natural gas plant at Fort Nelson contributes 1,250,387 tonnes. That's 10 percent right there. I could go through the list of the cement plants and the gas plants. If those figures are at all accurate, based on 2006 numbers, what they tell us is that major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia won't be touched by this carbon tax.

How can you talk about a green budget when the people who arguably are contributing the least are going to see increases in gas taxes? Yes, they say they're offset by income tax reductions. That's what they say. But the big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions are given a free pass — a completely free pass. British Columbians are not stupid. They understand what's happening here. Tough luck for the little guy; great times for the rich and the powerful and the big corporations.

I'm starting to sound like some old rhetorician of socialism from the '30s and '40s. But the fact is that when you look at this budget — when you look at the numbers, when you look at the facts — that's the truth. There's no other way to put it. We're giving breaks to the big guys and chump change for the little guys. It's pure and simple. Nothing has changed.

We had a housing budget a few years ago — that's what they called it — which was just another big series of tax breaks. Everyone wishes to pay lower taxes, but most of us understand that when you are dealing with the hard-to-house, the private sector is not going to fill that gap. They are not going to build housing, nor is the government prepared to pay social assistance in sufficient amounts so that people could afford it, even if the private sector would build it and manage it.

You know what, hon. Speaker? We had a choice in this budget. British Columbians had a choice. This government, instead of taking the right course and doing the

right thing, made the wrong choice. This government, instead of committing to building those housing units that are desperately needed, chose instead to give further tax breaks; to diminish the ability of government; to provide the services which are never, ever going to be provided by anyone other than government — maybe private charities.

It is a shameful indictment of this generation. If the minister wants to talk about a legacy, what kind of legacy is it that at the time of some of the greatest creation of wealth in the history of this province, we have done essentially nothing for the weakest, the poorest, the most vulnerable and marginalized amongst us? That is no legacy, but it is certainly an example of what you don't do.

If you have some moral centre, if you have some values, if you have some compassion or if you take a religious faith seriously, this budget fails on every test, on every level. There have been generations in this province that faced up to difficult times and met the challenge. We're proud of them.

For some of us who've got family that have lived here as long as mine have…. I can point back in my own family to some of those generations. But this generation, when it was given the opportunity with this prosperity to do something, has failed miserably. It has set a poor example.

The only comfort I can take is that when I talk to my grandchildren, I'll be able to say that at least I stood up and my party stood up and opposed this budget in 2008. We stood up and spoke on behalf of the people who need a voice, who don't have a voice and who obviously have not been heard by this government, no matter how loud we've shouted on this side of the House, no matter how often we've spoken about it, no matter how many delegations have come and spoken to them and met and begged and pleaded and tried to cajole.

The answer was that the doors to the vault of British Columbia, the doors to the collective wealth of this province, held by government, were slammed shut. It's as pitiful as that wonderful scene in A Christmas Carol when Scrooge asked: "Are there no workhouses? Do the poor laws not operate?" If it wasn't so serious, it would be ludicrously funny.

I would have hoped that the Minister of Finance, in what was going to be her final budget, would have tried to have left office with a real legacy. Even if they had done it for the most crassly political reasons, to try and win some votes to ensure re-election of 2009, I think I would have been satisfied. But there wasn't even so much as a single attempt.

When we faced the challenge of environment, we came up so short that it's hardly worth mentioning. The carbon tax is not going to solve the environmental problems facing British Columbia around greenhouse gases.

The budget does nothing to address the incredible poverty in which thousands and thousands of our fellow citizens live. It simply guarantees that the wealthy are going to continue to get wealthier, that the rest of you can struggle as best you can, that the kind of society which we could have built with this kind of revenue is not going to get started — certainly not in this budget and, I fear, if this government is re-elected in 2009, certainly not in this generation either.

We are the children of privilege in this province. We could do better, and we should do better. I would have liked to have thought that this government would have wanted to do better.

But that's the message of this budget. We don't care about our example, and legacy is just an empty bit of rhetoric. We don't care. We're not going to listen, we don't care, and we don't care what anyone says. To the majority of British Columbians: tough luck.

Well, in 2009, I hope the majority of British Columbians will stand up for once and demand from government what they're rightfully entitled to.

D. Hayer: Before I respond to the speech, I just wanted to say thank you to all my constituents in Surrey-Tynehead for their support, who regularly come to my coffee meetings or meet me in Surrey, always supporting us.

I want to say thank you very much to the community organizations of Surrey, their members, their volunteers and their directors, including the Tynehead Community Association; Port Kells Community Association; Fraser Heights Community Association; Guildford Community Partners association; Fleetwood Community Association; Tynehead Pioneers association; Tynehead Women's Auxiliary; Tynehead Historical Society; the Lions clubs of Surrey — there are three of them; the Rotary clubs of Surrey, Cloverdale and Newton; Surrey Board of Trade; and the Fleetwood Seniors Planning Committee Society.

I also want to say a special thanks to my wife, my children and my family, and to all of the volunteers and supporters and members of my riding association and directors, who are always helping us to make sure we do our job in the constituency.

I want to say a special thank-you to my staff in my constituency: Mark Rushton, Manuel Santos, Jean Anderson, Paul Keenleyside, Dharam Sidhu and all the other students, the volunteers who always come in to help my constituency office. Also, I want to say a special thanks to my constituency and my legislative assistant, Cayley Brown, and all other staff in Victoria.

It is with the help of all the British Columbians and all the policies of government that we have turned this economy around in seven short years from the worst place in Canada to one of the best places. That is thanks to all those British Columbians and all those businesses who are thinking so positively.

Sometimes when you come in this House, you think some members of this House live in a different world, but that's the way life is in politics. It's not about reality. Some people think that we're something that is not a reality, but this side of the House obviously thinks with reality.

Mr. Speaker, now I will carry on with my response to the budget speech. The need to preserve our atmosphere

knows no limits, no colour, no race, no religious boundaries. Newcomers, immigrants, senior citizens and our children must have clean air to survive. Our agriculture and ability to put food on our table needs an environment that is as clean and pure as possible.

We must clean up our atmosphere and make sure that generations to come will not only see the mountains and the beauty of this province, but they can breathe it in deeply and with purity.

That is what this budget is all about: preserving and improving our environment for today and for generations to come, for the future generations of our children and grandchildren. This budget not only speaks to the future of British Columbia but for the peoples throughout the world, because we are leaders in the world, in North America. We are setting the place and stage for a worldwide action against global warming, against greenhouse gases, against continuing degradation of the air we breathe and the air we need that feeds our planet.

Unless someone takes the bull by the horns, progress, quality of life and our existence will be in danger in just a few decades. In fact, without climate change action, we are already in danger. We must slow the amount of emissions we pump into the air and perhaps, in years to come, actually eliminate them completely.

As we march toward that goal, we need to ensure that British Columbia and the world takes its greening seriously. We need to see more trees planted to absorb carbon outputs. We need to see industries capture their emissions. We need to see vehicle traffic changing to the point that they will continue with little or no emissions, which otherwise will eventually poison our planet.

Over the past years our Premier has stepped up to the plate on this issue. He is seen as a leader in North America for environmental protection. This budget puts in place the first steps towards significant, important and life-saving actions to combat the poisons that are spewing into our atmosphere. That is why I support so strongly the move to place a carbon tax on fuel, a tax that I want to make very clear is revenue-neutral. For every penny a person contributes in income tax to this initiative, every penny, by law, will be returned to the taxpayer.

That is commendable. It makes clear that while we all share the fight against global warming, we can do it with innovation and thought. But the NDP who say they will vote against this budget will be voting against clean air, voting against the fight to stop global warming and voting against taking action against greenhouse gases, and that is shameful.

However, while this budget, which the NDP wants to vote against, focuses on environment and actions we must undertake to protect it, this visionary budget contains a great deal more. It contains a great range of benefits, programs and upgrades for health facilities in Surrey and in the Fraser Valley, and more money for education, social programs, seniors, low-income persons and homeless people. It includes initiatives to attract skilled workers and expand the provincial nominee program.

As a parliamentary secretary for multicultural immigration, I'm consistently reminded by the immigrants of the importance of these initiatives. Every time I look at our incredible, powerful economy that this government has created, with the help of British Columbians and our businesses, over the past seven years, I know the importance of immigration and the role it has to ensure that the prosperity and growth continue.

More than one million jobs are expected to be created in British Columbia in the next ten to 12 years. Yet if every high school student who graduates from our province enters the workforce and takes one job, there will still be 350 jobs vacant — 350 positions unfilled — and 350 things not getting done, unless we encourage and support immigration to fill those jobs, immigration to continue our prosperity, immigrants to create new homes and new lives in British Columbia and to develop a warm, welcoming and all-inclusive society.

This year we celebrate the 150-year birthday of British Columbia. That's 150 years of growth and development. With the help of our aboriginal communities, all that growth and development has been based on immigration. Sir James Douglas, in creating the colony of British Columbia at Fort Langley in 1858, understood clearly the role of immigration. In fact, he created the colony because of a concern that American gold seekers in the Fraser River and Cariboo gold rushes — in a sense, American immigrants — would call for the annexation of this great land by the United States.

Governor Douglas understood the need to create the colony to protect its integrity, but he also understood the need for immigration to take the new colony beyond a few scattered mining camps. He understood the value that immigrants, settlers, placed on new lands — on the work, effort and pride they put into working the land, creating new homes, establishing communities and building British Columbia.

Some of that heritage still exists in my constituency where some of those pioneers settled when they were creating communities and raising families. They did such things as building community gathering spots. One such place that still exists just celebrated its 100th anniversary. It's called Surrey-Tynehead, the community that gave rise to the name of the Surrey-Tynehead constituency.

While the worst place in B.C. was Fort Langley, it wasn't long before settlers, immigrants, began establishing homes, creating opportunities and founding communities adjacent to Fort Langley along the Fraser River. That's where Surrey was born.

Surrey has Surry-Guildford, Surrey-Newton, Surrey-Tynehead, Surrey–Port Kells, the Fraser Heights, as well as the Fleetwood area and other parts of Surrey.

That entrepreneurial spirit of British Columbians is what caused British Columbia to grow — the spirit and hard work of immigrants. British Columbia's growth today, as it was 150 years ago, will be dependent on immigration, on the new immigrant.

This budget provides support for those immigrants; $12 million over four years, to attract skilled and knowledgable workers, to expand the nominee program and

to attract more entrepreneurs. The Skills Connect program for immigrants, as well as enhancements and improvements to the accreditation process for foreign-trained professionals, is both welcome and important.

The NDP wants to vote against this budget. It will be shameful. We need trained professionals in all areas, particularly in health care and in the speeding-up of credentialing programs and in recognizing the skills of people, new immigrants.

We need to make sure we help immediately. We need the help to make sure that we're meeting the shortages that are created because of a strong economy. We want to make sure that areas that have concerns due to strong growth in the economy experience redress, and we're doing that.

Along with a large settlement of the population, we also have baby-boomers who are getting older and putting more stress on demands for our social programs. We have to make sure that we look after them. Also, we need to make sure that we bring in the new people to take those jobs that seniors are retiring from.

This budget also contains $40 million to strengthen economic and cultural links between British Columbia and Asia-Pacific nations. The NDP wants to vote against that too. These links include expanding trade missions, business networks and marketing opportunities for our products to be sent to those nations and also to make sure that the exporters are aware of the incredible advantages they can achieve by using our port facilities to ship their products to the huge consumer market in North America.

British Columbia's ports, both in the lower mainland and in the north at Prince Rupert, offer incredible advantages and save us days of transportation time between Asia-Pacific nations and the rest of North America.

Our geography is our advantage. We will be, through this budget, making those advantages clear to our trading partners in Asia. As those nations become economic engines, they will be purchasing our raw materials and our products, and North Americans will be buying their finished products. Hopefully, most of those international transactions will be flowing through our ports, boosting our economy and ensuring financial stability for all British Columbians.

To ensure that our agents now and in the future will always be able to call British Columbia "The best place on earth," this budget contains dramatic provision for our environmental health. Beginning July 1 of this year, B.C. will introduce a fully revenue-neutral carbon tax with built-in protection for our lower-income British Columbians.

That will provide $400 million for a one-time climate action dividend and more than $1 billion for a broad range of climate action programs and tax incentives. This climate action dividend will see each man, woman and child in British Columbia receive $100 before the carbon tax takes effect. They will be getting the money in June to help them reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and, in the process, reduce the amount they will be paying in carbon tax.

The NDP spoke against putting more money back into taxpayers' pockets, and I was surprised. That's shameful.

At this point I also want to remind the House and the NDP opposition that tax relief has always played a big role in our government. For example, let me remind the member for Surrey-Newton, who is either forgetful or confused, that one of the first actions our government took in 2001 was to cut personal income tax across the board by 25 percent, and we cut an additional 10 percent in 2007. I also want to remind him that individuals earning up to $111,000 a year will now pay the lowest income tax in Canada.

A family of four earning $70,000 a year now has more than $1,800 in annual savings, and more than 250,000 low-income British Columbians will pay no income tax at all in Canada. It is incredible that we will have an individual husband and wife who can earn up to $32,000 and who will pay zero provincial income tax. That means 250,000 low-income British Columbians will pay no provincial income tax at all in British Columbia.

We have housing support in this province. The budget is $360 million, the highest ever that any government has provided. That includes the funding for more than 60,000 units where most residents pay no more than 30 percent of their monthly income in rent, but the NDP wants to vote against this. That's shameful.

We created a rent supplement program which assists families with incomes of up to $28,000. We have raised the threshold for the new homeowner grant to $1.05 million, up from $525,000, to help protect those people, particularly our seniors who have built this province and who have seen the value of their homes skyrocket. The homeowner grant has also been increased to $570 a year, for the first time since 1993. We've also increased the homeowner grant to $845 for low-income seniors, veterans and disabled individuals.

People with disabilities in B.C. who are on income assistance now have the third-highest monthly income in Canada. The shelter rates have increased for the first time since 1992, and they are now the highest in Canada for a single person, couples and single parents. We have doubled the school startup supplement to help families on income assistance with the cost of purchasing school supplies.

In health care, we have changed the Medical Services Plan, resulting in lower premiums for 250,000 people, and protected or frozen rates for 85 percent of our British Columbians. We have lowered the deductible for 280,000 people through a Pharmacare premium change, and we have invested $19 million in the Healthy Kids program.

We've increased the Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters, benefiting more than 15,300 seniors, and we have created or committed to more than 4,000 assisted-living units, which provide subsidized housing options. We have renewed the seniors supplement, which is worth nearly $600 yearly, for 40,000 seniors in B.C.

Perhaps the NDP and the member for Surrey-Newton should think again about what this government has done consistently throughout their seven years in office. We have made life better for those most in need, unlike how it was in the 1990s, when the number of

people on income assistance and welfare skyrocketed, but the NDP just didn't get it.

A strong economy allows more money to flow into a social safety network, to improve lives, help cut poverty and protect the helpless, including our precious children. If the NDP are to vote against this budget — and the NDP says they're going to do it — they will say no to such things as providing $23 million over three years for a B.C. positive aging action plan, which will create a framework over the coming decades to build a system of support for our seniors. By voting against Budget 2008, the NDP will be voting against helping seniors. That is shameful.

Another large investment in our seniors is the inclusion of $370 million over the next four years to support and help develop the ambitious transit plan recently announced by our Premier and the Minister of Transportation. These funds will be directed to infrastructure investment, including $101 million to improve the RapidBus program. But the member for Surrey-Newton doesn't like this. He wants to vote against improving the transit.

That brings me back to Surrey-Tynehead and the transportation infrastructure and transit plan contained within the throne speech and in this budget — the plan that this province has for our future. It will be great for all British Columbians. Surrey-Tynehead is host — unwillingly, I might add — to one of the worst traffic snarls in the province — daily traffic jams that clog Highway 1 leading up to Port Mann Bridge. Those traffic tie-ups and the hours cars and trucks spend idling, spewing emissions, while they wait to cross the Port Mann Bridge is an environmental mess that our government is fixing.

We are going to twin the Port Mann Bridge. We are going to widen that freeway. We are going to build South and North Fraser perimeter roads. We are going to add more buses, and we're going to make sure we add more bus lanes to the Port Mann Bridge. We are going to build in that ability for rapid transit on the twinned Port Mann Bridge and, through this project, will get traffic, people and products moving quickly.

This will not only save the economy of British Columbia a billion and a half dollars a year in revenue, lost due to the time wasted in clogged and stopped traffic; it will clean up the air by removing tonnes of emissions now entering our atmosphere. This is a good-news project eagerly awaited by Surrey residents and by my constituents.

When the member from Lillooet was in power, he did not want to twin the Port Mann Bridge.

Will we please allow the member who has the floor to give his presentation. You'll all have an opportunity to reply to the speech.

D. Hayer: The member for Surrey-Newton wants none of that — no improvements to Port Mann Bridge, no widening of Highway 1 — because the leader doesn't support it. So they're not willing to stand up in the House to say that Surrey residents and his constituents will be first, before his leader.

I hope that he changes his mind, and that other members, at least from Surrey, will go and say: "Our constituents want the Port Mann Bridge and Highway 1 widened. Please support us." Hopefully, before the next election they will change their minds again to support twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and the widening of Highway 1.

The member for Surrey-Newton also doesn't want to expand the SkyTrain to Guildford, Tynehead, Fleetwood and Newton. Expansion of the SkyTrain is greatly needed for families, students, commuters and businesses. He is against the addition of 1,500 new, energy-efficient buses. He is against doubling the number of buses in Surrey. He is against this budget.

On health care, he complains about the government building a new ambulatory care facility in Surrey. He complained about Surrey Memorial Hospital. He's against all those hard workers who work at Surrey Memorial Hospital. When he was speaking here the other day, he seemed to be saying that a few of those workers were so bad.

I was surprised to hear that somebody from that constituency would be against the health care workers and his constituents. I hope he changes his mind and starts supporting the health care workers at Surrey Memorial Hospital and the emergency department. They are very hard-working people. Many of them, when you talk to them, always say: "In the House, in Victoria, why is it that the NDP is always against the health care workers?" I say that I don't understand that. I'm sorry to hear that.

When the NDP had the dark days in government, not a single hospital room was built in Surrey Memorial….

J. Brar: A point of order. I don't think it's appropriate to mention a member who is not present in the House. Address his speech to the member.

J. Brar: I'm talking to the Speaker. Members, you should listen to the Speaker, not to me.

It's not a point of order unless they mention that someone is not in the House. They're able to speak about members of the House without referring to them.

D. Hayer: On health care, the member for Surrey-Newton complained about this government building a new ambulatory care hospital in Surrey. He complained about tripling the size of the emergency department at Surrey Memorial Hospital. Yet during the dark days

the NDP was in government, not a single room was added to the Surrey Memorial Hospital or Surrey emergency. No expansions were done to Surrey emergency at all when it was needed.

Yet our Budget 2008 allocates $2.9 billion more in new funding for health care over the next years, and the NDP wants to vote against it. I know the people from the NDP don't want to hear all the great news in this budget. They are so upset about it….

Would the Member for Yale-Lillooet please refrain from making comments. The speaker has the floor. You will have your opportunity to speak. Thank you.

D. Hayer: The members from the NDP want to vote against this budget that provides additional funding than provided in the previous budgets. The total amount of new funding for health care over the next three years will be more than $5 billion dollars. I'm surprised to see these members want to vote against the budget that has so many great benefits for all British Columbians.

Budget 2008 also contains $555 million in new dollars for Pharmacare, Medical Services Plan and emergency services such as the B.C. Ambulance Service. On top of that the Ministry of Health will be spending $1.2 billion to construct and upgrade new health care facilities across the province over the next three years.

The NDP doesn't want to help people. They want to make sure health care is not improved. The NDP doesn't want us to help people expand and increase their health care protection. They want to vote against this budget, and that is shameful.

This budget, this plan for British Columbia, demonstrates vision. It takes action and leads the way to greater prosperity — more protection for health care, more protection for education, more protection for transportation, more protection for the social safety net, more protection for seniors, more protection for almost everything else that British Columbians want and greater encouragement for immigration. More importantly, it sets a course not for British Columbia but for the world.

Most importantly, it sets the course not just for British Columbia but for the world in climate action and protection. I hope all members of the House who are listening to the great speeches from the government side will change their mind and support the budget speech. I think it will be shameful if they vote against what's going to put so much more money for health care, for education and for social programs. It will be shameful that they don't want to support the money going for the Surrey Memorial Hospital and transportation.

G. Gentner: It is indeed a pleasure to be here today representing my community of Delta North.

I have to address the budget as the hollow budget. It's a budget that's empty. It's void, it's vacant, and it's very depressing to see. It's almost bipolar in its view that it is showing a division between the rich and the poor. I've never yet seen a budget that displays that type of plurality in this province. It's despicable.

What we are seeing here is the development and encouragement of the hollow province. The hollow province believes in piracy. It's piracy that believes in the selling off of our rivers, our water, our resources and our power. Our power is being ripped from underneath us and being sold.

We have become the hollow province with a hollow government after endless P3 initiatives — outsourcing. It is hollow because the Liberal government has privatized to the point that there is no tangible content left.

Our assets are being sold. The shell is indeed hollow. Big government has joined forces with big business to redistribute funds accordingly, and it's going upwards. It's not going downwards. It's not finding its way to the people who need the funds in this province. This government is looking after their big corporate friends, and you can certainly see it in this hollow, corporate budget.

Selling assets is like lopping off limbs, one by one. The privatizing initiatives of this government are cutting off our valuable assets. B.C. Hydro is more than a limb. It's being completely decapitated by this government with its initiative of what it calls independent power producers — that is, major corporations. One, of course, is Plutonic Power. Here's a corporation that will get windfall profits after this government has given away our rivers, our power resources.

What's happened — and we are seeing nothing else — is cronyism. What's happening is that B.C. Hydro has become an entry level where people will now find employment at B.C. Hydro. One by one, the independent power producers pick these people up with their expertise, and we pay for the training.

When Plutonic Power, this small private power producer, was granted its licence, within one week General Electric had a cheque for $1 million to invest. Now, that side's going to clap. They're going to say how wonderful that is. But I've spent some time on the east coast. I've been to New York, the state of New York, and I can tell you the labour standards of a corporation like General Electric.

This government in many ways has…. Look at the privatization of health care. In many ways, in a subtle way, disease and epidemics can be beneficial in that growth market. P3s are really becoming the fourth branch of government. It's being encouraged by this government. We are seeing creep. It's privatization mission creep. Incrementally, day after day, year after year, we are seeing our resources sold. We are drifting towards a class-based system like we have never yet seen in this province.

The hollow province is up and running. It is, indeed, a black hole for those in the east end of Vancouver, for those seniors who are having a hard time meeting their ends, day by day.

Now, the Liberals deregulate. The free market province is doing exactly what the Premier set out to do. But it's not a society with a harmonious economy. It's turning the already wealthy into the super-rich and the organized working class into the disposable poor.

That's what the hollow budget is all about. It's really called trickle-down economics, and it is a disaster. You can have the trickle-down economy thinking it's somehow going to find its way down through the hierarchy of the masses, but somehow that money is being taken by their friends before it gets to the people who need it most.

There's a veneer of respectability, but we have to strip away that veneer and varnish. We have to go underneath this budget, this hollow budget, and see what it really is. The hollow province is becoming the empty province. Our assets are being ripped from underneath us.

The government's heart is also hollow. It is void of any compassion for people. It is void of any compassion for seniors and for children who need assistance most. Again, just do a drive down the east side of Vancouver. We'll be there. And I'm sure the members opposite will be there during the Olympics, waving at Main and Hastings, greeting everybody from the world and saying: "Showcasing our province." That's the hollow province.

In my community, which is a bedroom community down in North Delta, where it's hitting us hardest are the pocketbook issues. The pocketbook issues are really deferred taxes. The government can say that it's holding the line on taxes. It can take money out of your pocket and give it to you in other ways.

Incrementally, we're paying more and more when it comes to the ferry increases, when it comes to transit user fees, when it comes to hydro rates going up — soaring up 25 percent in the next years. Why? In order to pay for private power.

We are looking at dental costs going up for seniors. We are looking at eye exams going up. We are being besieged by deferred taxes, whether it be taking your family…. You remember in the good old days, when you could take your family out camping and pull up your tent in any campground. Now you've got to pay user fee on top of user fee. You've got to make that reservation, because it's not going to be there. The good old days of going to see different campgrounds is gone. You'd better reserve it three to four months in advance.

There is another deferred tax. You've got to pay tax for the wood. You've got to pay tax for everything, just going to see the parks that you have already paid for.

The budget puts the burden on tackling climate change on working families, while big polluters get a free pass. The Premier's new gas tax is unfair and will accomplish little in the way of actually reducing emissions. The oil and gas sector is responsible for 21 percent of all emissions in British Columbia, and they're getting the largest subsidy ever.

I quote from page 13 of the budget. Emissions "from industrial processes such as production of oil, gas, aluminum and cement, as well as emissions from landfills and other sources, will not be subject to the carbon tax initially." Boy, what does initially mean? What does this mean? It means they're going to study it and study it and study it, while the poor working bloke every day will pay more and more for his gas taxes.

I see the member from up north is grinning, because he knows. He's in a rural community, and his people don't have transit. They don't have the luxuries of us here in suburbia. These will be covered under the cap-and-trade program being negotiated by the western climate action initiative.

G. Gentner: You know, according to the budget, these will be covered under the cap-and-trade program being negotiated under the western climate action initiative. But we look at the GVRD, which has been delegated the authority and mandated the authority to enforce air quality monitoring. However, we have an environmental review board that has completely skewered the authority of the GVRD and is allowing, for example, wood-burning waste in greenhouses. How's that? That's a real green budget. It's phony.

They're going to burn, burn, burn. If we're going to deal with that stack, you had better put monitoring controls on the stack rather than the cumulative effect. This government has decided not to invoke its environmental waste laws. The minister will say: "Well, we'll deal with it in two years from now." Two years from now we'll finally deal with it.

The Ministry of Transportation, that's an interesting one. Let's talk about real climate change with that one.

We can talk about taxing the poor bloke going to work every day, but it takes more than just taxing people to save the planet. Where are the rewards for a community to actually save farmland, have the green marshes, forests that sequester the carbon in the air? Where is the reward for those communities? Zippo.

This is the hollow budget. Zippo. There's nothing there. You know, we can see it with the Ministry of Transportation. They're so green that they're going to plow a freeway right through Burns Bog, the lungs of the lower mainland. Isn't that something? They're going to plow a road right through it.

What did Environment Canada say? They condemned this action of the government. But they're going to plow it through anyway, because this is the green budget.

Oh yes, the Gateway program for the next three years, $438 million. For what? Land purchasing for the South Fraser perimeter road. They're going to pave about 245 acres of farmland. That's a green budget. Oh boy.

It's not a green budget. It's empty. It's void. It's flat. It's hollow. It's about land-flipping. It's about developers making money, who have been in there first before the government can purchase. Oh yes, it's all documented. But you know, you buy the land and then all of a sudden Environment Canada condemns it.

Boy, talk about your poor friends. "Oops. We made a big mistake." Now, if they follow what Environment Canada is recommending, they're going to have to move the road somewhere else, and their friends who were up buying lands could be in trouble.

Let's look at B.C. Rail. There's a green budget. We've already seen 500 acres of the most valuable farmland in the province, if not North America, gone. There's a denial that there is going to be expansion of Deltaport, but do you know what? There's denial there's going to be a new rail yard. The largest rail yard west of Winnipeg is going to be built on the most valuable farmland in North America. The BCR Subdivision Ltd. has a budget. It's here in this budget, the hollow budget. The carbon footprint that this green project is going to bring us is unbelievable.

We're seeing port expansion by selling more assets. But wait; there is hope. This government is investing in a public asset. It's called B.C. Rail. This government are a bunch of socialists. They're actually putting more money in B.C. Rail. You know, for some reason they couldn't sell off all the assets of B.C. Rail on the tracks. I wonder why they couldn't do that. I wonder why that was, Madam Speaker.

We have now across from us a bunch of socialists who are putting money into a Crown corporation. That's a new one for me. Yet this public asset is going to be there to pollute. This green budget will purchase $44.7 million of land for port-related activities. They're going to buy farmland, and they're going to have to take it out of the agricultural land reserve, and they have the audacity to call this a green budget. The very best agriculture in British Columbia — the largest vegetable farm in British Columbia — is going to be paved.

Now, $45 million may not seem much for those buying a condo in False Creek, but that's a lot of farmland. Let's see, $45 million into 175 acres. No, by 2010 it's going to be $65 million to buy farmland. That's even larger. That's about $300,000 an acre. No, that's not right. Farmland doesn't go for $300,000. So I guess it's going to be more than 175 acres that they're going to buy.

What a rail yard this is going to be, the largest rail yard west of Winnipeg — diesel-spewing rail cars, engineers. Where is the gas tax on B.C. Rail? Oh, the little guy can pay at the pumps, but where is it when it comes down to the globalized spewing Deltaport?

You know, I think it was Johnny Cash who said: "I hear the train a comin'." And it's a comin', all right — $65 million this year, an additional $70 million next year for yard development. The sequestering process that farmland brings us is gone.

This isn't a green plan at all. They're spending, by 2010, close to $200 million for a publicly financed Crown corporation that they will now try and peddle as theirs. I hear that train a comin', Madam Speaker. If Johnny Cash was here today…. When I think of Johnny and the B.C. Rail, I think of him singing that same tune — I think it was Folsom Prison — "I hear the train a comin'." If he was here today in B.C., he'd sing it to the inmates, probably in Agassiz, and the Liberals would be clamouring to get through the gates to get a ticket to hear him.

The B.C. Rail corruption scandal. Oh that little railroad that could. Big expansion, big pollution. Some people like the smell of carbon. I hear that train a comin'. It's pulling into the station right now. We can see it comin'. All aboard. Who is the conductor? I don't know. Who is the engineer? It's the Premier. I even hear there are whistle-blowers, when it comes down to the B.C. Rail situation.

The budget continues, yet it continues to harm rural British Columbians as mills close down. It's interesting. You walk around Beacon Hill Park, and you look across the way over Juan de Fuca, and you do see little plumes of smoke. There are mills operating. They're probably cutting our board feet on that side of the border.

The Premier's budget didn't even mention B.C.'s shameful record of having the highest rate of child poverty in Canada. The budget includes a cut to funding for policing and community safety. That's a very big deal in my community. The budget includes another cut in student aid, even as the debt load of British Columbian students grows at alarming rates. I think we're up to $27,000 per student. Deplorable.

It's a hollow, fruitless, vain budget. It has no compassion for people. You know, it's interesting. In my area of North Delta–Surrey, we do have a new campus. We have a campus that needs operating funds to look after the demanding needs of students who are looking for opportunities. However, that funding…. There'll be a major shortfall there as well.

As the seniors health critic, I have to tell you that I got a phone call. I talked to a lady from back east who was headhunted by Retirement Concepts. She's a head nurse at a similar facility. She was looking for work here, and she thought she'd come from a poor province to this rich, affluent British Columbia. She took one look at what type of health care we have for our seniors, and she said she wasn't coming here. She would never come here, because she thought she was coming to a richer province, but she told me that it was like moving into the Dark Ages.

In this province you've got three nurses on the day shift, the morning shift; you've got two nurses on the afternoon shift; and you've got one nurse at night. Here you've got one nurse who's on call on a pager, and she's also probably the general manager. It's a deplorable situation we have in British Columbia, and it's all due to this hollow budget.

Seniors don't want to be coddled. They want self-respect and an ability to maintain their dignity and autonomy. We're got to move away from this patronizing but embrace their independence. We are dealing with

chronic cases that gain media impact but very little to explain how the senior got there in the first place.

Now the Minister of Health can talk about all the long-term care beds he wants. The big promise of this government was 5,000 beds. We're now hearing the language change. It's no longer beds; it's units. We're talking about units — whatever that means. That's how they're going to inflate the numbers. But the seniors of this province are still looking for what they truly deserve: some greater impetus on where we're all going to be heading soon. This government doesn't care.

We need more comprehensive housing, health facilities where seniors don't have to move, no senior warehousing, and complexes closer to communities. That's what we need. B.C. Housing appears to be geared towards income. Government wants to direct seniors housing through the SAFER program, which is really geared to the private operator and thereby to increase the larger profit margins.

We need, in this budget, stability in health care costs, and you do it through preventative health care for seniors. We need a universal system for senior housing and a universal home care system, not this Liberal hodgepodge. We've got community services dealing with seniors here. We have B.C. Housing looking over an aspect over there, and we've got maybe a health authority that picks up bits and pieces over there. We need a coordinated system that works for seniors.

The private sector looks at independent living because they can cream it. The biggest problem for the private sector is…. You know, we have a lot of problems there. When a senior has a problem…. One of the biggest problems seniors have — I talk to a lot of seniors in homes — is bladder control problems. As soon as you've got a bladder control problem, if you're in assisted living, many want you out.

We also need aging-in-place for seniors. We need support systems. Seniors want companionship. They want one hot meal a day. But let's bring in the carbon tax. What's the carbon tax doing to seniors? Let's give an example. It's not helping the poor volunteer who drives for the Meals on Wheels program. Those programs are falling apart. I've talked to people in Prince George. People can't afford it anymore. So where's the break for them, the volunteers who are driving around giving meals to seniors? They're not getting a break. The big corporate oil companies certainly are. We have to turn the practice right side up in this province, because this blank, artificial, hollow budget is not working for them.

We hear of many problems. There are no universal standards of care throughout the province. We're seeing that basic care provided is not the same anywhere. We have different standards. Performance standards are not in place. We need more elderly co-housing.

We need a denture system, a dental plan for seniors. We have a state that basically will pull your teeth — you can get your teeth pulled when you're a senior — but try and get some dentures. It's on you. Eye care is part of preventative medicine. We can find out what's wrong with people if they have equal access and good access.

I want to talk briefly about income. For example, seniors. There are three major aspects to the problems with the seniors health situation. One, of course, is health. One is income, and the other is housing. These are people on fixed incomes. We have northern development funds, interior development funds. That money should go and help out seniors in this province.

Pensions. You know, the government's going to introduce this private savings account, this type of elitist Reaganomics, where you'd better start saving money for your own health care when you get old. Forget about the fact that you have to pay for a mortgage and all your user fees. You have to pay, of course, for your RRSP. You might have a pension. Now the government wants you to put money into this savings account.

Well, people who are living on a fixed income can't afford that. There are expectations with a pension. Those pensions are being deteriorated. Fees are going up from this government, forcing pension trustees to cut plans, making working people vulnerable.

I really think we should seriously look at Ontario's pension act, where they're allowing mobility for people to move their pensions rather than being gouged.

Pensions. We need universal pension plans at work. The participatory rate in pensions is declining, and we have got to address that as a province. People have saved all their lives for a pension, and they're finding out with a fixed income that the pantry is bare. It's bare because of this hollow budget. We're going to see a court case coming forward where the pensions were guaranteed. Hopefully, that will give us the right outcomes.

Quickly, as time starts to wind down. We've got to look at this pharmaceutical business. Fair Pharmacare has been gouged by this government. They have incrementally been taking Fair Pharmacare away from seniors. Seniors who don't qualify for premium assistance are now charged $25 of the $275 a prescription. Those who still can pay, pay up to $200.

The budget shows a clear reduction from $1.1 billion to a decrease of $2 million. We have an increasing aging population, a need for Pharmacare, and this government is slashing the Pharmacare budget. It's right there in the budget. Now, some will say that this decrease is due to the attempt to manage costs down and through this has appointed a new task force on Pharmacare, the pharmaceutical task force set up by the minister in November 2007. Some of the recommendations to government will be to optimize the decision-making process for what drugs are covered under Pharmacare.

The nine people on the task force include Mr. David Hall, chief compliance officer, Angiotech Pharmaceuticals; Susan Paish, chief, Pharmasave Drugs National; Russell Williams, president of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies, Rx&D.

When the Health Minister announced the names of the nine people on this new pharmaceutical board task force, the government's press release described the panel's chair, Mr. Avison, as a lawyer with experience working with several ministries and noted that he was president of the University Presidents Council. They

did not include the fact that he also sits on the board of LifeSciences British Columbia, a lobby group formerly known as B.C. Biotech that includes dozens of drug companies. Now, was this a mere oversight? I don't think so.

It's a hollow budget because this task force that is dealing with Pharmacare didn't even ask the seniors. They didn't ask the working people what they thought about trying to reduce Pharmacare. Of course not — shameful. At least five of the nine members have ties to the drug industry. It's bizarre that the pharmaceutical representatives were put on this panel in this way. I think it is very shameful.

The list goes on and on. The interesting thing is all the donations that these same companies gave the Liberal Party of British Columbia. Unbelievable. Pharmaceuticals — Angiotech, a member which gave the Liberals $2,900. Many other drug companies are also donors: GlaxoSmithKline, Wyeth Canada and Pfizer Inc. — $6,200, $5,400 and close to $4,000, respectively. It goes on and on and on.

Let's talk about the privileged sect in this province. We talk about cronyism — almost $550 million giveaways to banks and big oil companies. That's what it's all about. At the same time, the budget gives a $222 million tax break to big banks and a $327 million subsidy to the oil and gas sector.

The Premier's budget gives huge tax breaks to big banks and oil companies while it hits ordinary citizens. Theodore Roosevelt said that his definition of privilege was unregulated financial power, with its panoply of speculation lobbying. His target was men of wealth who find that they can purchase politicians.

If that's what it's all about — I know we all are politicians, and we receive campaign contributions — there is a problem here. The problem is this. When the Premier of this province receives a stipend from the Liberal Party of British Columbia for his personal expenses on the financial disclosures…. When he receives money directly from that party, and that party receives money from oil companies and big, big banks, indirectly or directly, does that put him in a conflict of interest? I think it certainly does. Why wouldn't it put him in a conflict of interest?

Here it is. You've got money coming from oil and gas companies going to this holding type of political party. It takes the money and gives it to the Premier. What does the Premier do? He's here to give us a budget where he gives back to the oil companies and the big banks a benefit. That is a conflict of interest. It's a sellout to this province.

On this side of the House we really believe it's time to put that grey area in place and it's time to not only suggest that those actions are wrong but that they help breed greed in this province, and that is what this budget is all about. It's about greed.

R. Hawes: I thought I knew what I was going to talk about, but after listening to this last speaker…. That's just so outrageous — the things that are being said. You can't even comment on it. I think anyone who listened understands, including…. I'm sure the members opposite are embarrassed for what they just heard.

I just want to put one thing clear for that member. If he thinks there's a conflict of interest, there is a process, a true process. Don't stand up in the House and make wild accusations. Go see the conflict commissioner. That's the process.

R. Hawes: Yeah, the drive-by assassination. That member is quite famous for that kind of stuff. Let's move on.

I am very pleased to stand up and speak to what I consider to be one of the most innovative, creative, forward-thinking budgets this province has ever seen. In fact, it's been hailed as one of the best budgets seen in this country in decades and decades, and that's not by the B.C. Liberal government, although we all feel that way. Independent people from across the country hail this budget.

I've listened now for several days to the opposition speak about a lot of the things that are in this budget and, frankly, misstate what the budget is saying and is trying to do and what is in this budget. A lot of it I consider to be almost fearmongering when they talk about what's going to happen to people of low income and what effect carbon tax has on them. It's a complete misrepresentation, in my view, of what the budget actually is doing as far as the carbon tax.

I want to start by first laying out what I think the public should know, and that's the differentiation between where we are and what we believe and what the other side, the NDP, apparently believe, although we can never be too sure what they believe because it seems to change from day to day. Most of the time they can't make their minds up.

A good example of that is how, over a day's debate on supplementary estimates, supplementary budget, they speak against it, apparently, and then vote for it. It's very hard to understand what they're for or what they're against.

They've spent quite a bit of time speaking against this budget, speaking against a carbon tax, but they've also…. Every time we on this side of the House refer back to their record, they get very upset because they know that the 1990s were a horrible time and that this province was run into the ground. They keep saying: "Well, that was then. That's ancient history."

I just want to talk for a moment about how we would take a look at what they might do. What are the clues? In the 1990s the NDP government had a long history — and it's very easy to see — of creating new programs without any thought about how they would pay for that in subsequent years. There was no forward planning at all.

New programs would be created that just seemed to be a whim. Big, ongoing expenses would be created. Then the following year they would have to scramble to find a way to pay for it, and a lot of times it was

through deferring expenses to the following year. I'll give an example of that in a minute.

As these program deficits kept building, they were finally in such a huge deficit that they could no longer hide the deficit, although they certainly tried in what they called the fudge-it budget.

Let's look at what they're saying now. B.C. Ferries is going to sell a couple of ferries because we, for the first time in decades, have built new ferries to replace an aging ferry fleet. There are a couple of ferries that are going to get sold. When those ferries get sold, the aging ferries, the funds from that would go into a capital account, presumably — and they would — at B.C. Ferries.

But the opposition has said: "Well, no, that money should actually go to reducing ferry fees." So we should take capital assets and put them into an operating budget within B.C. Ferries, which is great. We would have a fare reduction until that capital money was spent. Maybe a year, and then what? We would probably — what? — raise fees again. Would we then just increase the subsidy that B.C. Ferries gets from the operating budgets of the provincial government?

That's exactly the thinking that got us into huge difficulty in the 1990s. There is a $450 million climate action dividend in this budget. It's $100 per man, woman and child in this province to help offset the implementation of the carbon tax until such time as the income tax reduction takes place.

R. Hawes: The member for Yale-Lillooet had his turn yesterday. I know the truth hurts.

However, the $450 million climate action dividend is in this year's budget because it has committed funds.

Yesterday in this House, or the day before, I know that the member for Surrey-Whalley was questioning the Finance Minister and wanted to know why this money wasn't in next year's budget. He couldn't understand that it is committed money and that under generally accepted accounting principles it has to be in this year's budget. He couldn't understand that.

Under the NDP math and way of doing business, you create expenses and defer them to the following year so that you can balance your budget this year, even though you've created an expense. You're now going to create big expenses in the following year, which is completely against generally accepted accounting principles. But that seems to be a concept that the NDP still doesn't quite understand.

The member for Nanaimo suggested that instead of giving tax rebates we should probably….

R. Hawes: Madam Speaker, generally speaking, I don't mind a little bit of heckling because it shows that they're at least listening. Perhaps they might learn something.

The member for Nanaimo suggested that we should spend over $700 million this year on a housing strategy rather than giving tax reductions, but then he very quickly said that he knows that that will create ongoing expenses in subsequent years going on and on and on. That's the big problem with what the NDP does. They embark on programs without any thought about how much it's going to cost tomorrow.

This province is full of tales of bankruptcies from businesses and individuals who did exactly that: "Let's live for today. Let's create huge debt and then worry about how we pay for it tomorrow, because tomorrow is a day away." That's how you embark on the road to financial ruin. That is the road that we were on throughout the 1990s, and listening to what these members say, it's very clear that if they ever, God forbid, got power in this province, that's the same road they would put us back on.

I want to talk for a moment about an issue that they keep raising over and over. In fact, there was a private member's motion put forward on Monday saying that the government should develop a comprehensive program to combat child poverty. I just want to talk about that. Let's start by suggesting this. I don't think of child poverty; I think of parent poverty. Children aren't in poverty; it's the parents. Children aren't living on their own….

R. Hawes: It's not that children are in poverty; it's parents that are in poverty. That's what creates what they call child poverty. The best program — the first and best program to combat child poverty — is creating employment.

If you look at the employment record that this government has tabled over the past seven years, it is number one in Canada — the most jobs created in this jurisdiction of any jurisdiction in this country. That's the first way that you should combat poverty.

We have put many other programs in place, such as rental subsidy programs…. We have increased rates for those on social assistance. We have created disability payment increases. We have a SAFER program for seniors. We have addressed this issue and have a comprehensive program, and I believe that program is working.

These members keep talking about an issue and keep hanging their hats on something that frankly is, I think, being addressed and being addressed well — far better than it was through the '90s. The key is that having a strong economy and understanding what builds an economy is what gives us the money to be able to build a strong economy.

R. Hawes: I like to think that in 1999 and 2000, in their dying years in government, every person in this province almost was in poverty, because we were receiving equalization payments for the first time in the history of this province. We were a welfare state created by these folks here, who put us as one of the have-not provinces.

Shame. Shame on them. That meant we were actually the poverty folks of Canada, along with Newfoundland. That is absolutely shameless.

One more thing about this budget that they keep talking about, and I want to make this point very clear. If you understand what builds an economy, you deal with how you create jobs and with where wealth originates. We have something in this province that originated in 1988. We were very fortunate in 1988 to be named one of the two places in Canada that have an international finance centre.

The potential for an international finance centre is incredible in terms of building wealth for this province, if you understand how to do it. It was largely ignored through the 1990s. It was ignored to the point that I know there was beginning to be some movement in Alberta to move the international finance centre from here to Calgary. Vancouver used to be the head office capital of western Canada. Through the '90s that slid over to Calgary. In the 1990s Calgary became the head office capital of western Canada.

I want to talk about an international finance centre and what an international finance centre does. Well, first I'll start by saying — and I'll look particularly at the United States — that there's a massive operating deficit in the United States. They have huge debt. But they have a very, very large capital surplus. Capital, if you know what capital is — wealth — really has no loyalty. It doesn't worry about social programs. It doesn't worry about…. Capital seeks safe haven and good return. That's what it looks for.

But having capital, having investment in your province or in your country, creates wealth for the citizens that live there. It's extremely important. So attracting foreign capital to our province is very, very important for us, for the jobs that it brings. The banking industry has 27,000 employees in British Columbia — well-paid, nice, clean, safe jobs. They're not a polluting industry. The banking industry actually is highly progressive and very desirable.

Foreign banks. We have attracted some foreign banks. However, there is a big impediment to drawing that foreign capital, and it's called the corporate capital tax. It was put in by these folks in the 1990s, because they didn't understand that wealth brings wealth with it for the citizens. So they instilled a corporate capital tax. That's a tax on your paid-up capital in a corporation. That's a tax on your assets, regardless of whether you're making money. It doesn't matter if you're making money. You could be losing money, but because you happen to have a large asset base, you're going to pay tax on that.

So banks were hit with a 3 percent corporate capital tax on their paid-up capital over a billion dollars. Now, what does that mean? Well, the big banks, if you were to go look at their financial statements, pay huge amounts of income tax. That's our tax system in this country. When you make money, you pay tax on it. And the banks do. They are some of our largest taxpayers.

These folks opposite don't seem to get it. The banks make a lot of money because they're big. They're huge. I'll tell you what. I'll use Vancity Credit Union. Vancity Credit Union — not as big as the major chartered banks — tabled a profit a couple years ago of $45 million.

R. Hawes: But Vancity Credit Union pays corporate capital tax because they have an asset base that was above the threshold, so they paid a corporate capital tax. In fact, the member for Surrey-Whalley, until 2006, was a director on the board of directors of Vancity Credit Union. In fact, he spent a couple of years as the chairman of the board of directors.

We were lobbied, as were, I'm sure, members on the opposite side, for years. Since the corporate capital tax was put in place, industry that was paying the corporate capital tax has come to government every year and asked that that tax be scrapped. They've explained what the impact of the tax is, in a negative way, on our economy and what the positive side is.

Included in that group that was coming to see us annually was Vancity Credit Union — the very board of directors that the member for Surrey-Whalley sat on. That member got up the other day and asked how dare we give a $220 million, as he called it, tax cut to banks, which would include Vancity Credit Union, where he sat on the board of directors, and who were lobbying for that very tax cut. I just wonder. If that isn't the height of hypocrisy, I don't really know what is.

But Madam Speaker, we did grant a change in the corporate capital tax, and we removed the corporate capital tax, replacing it with a 1 percent tax on paid-up capital for the largest banks, and that would be the largest bank.

These members are getting up day after day saying that we gave the banks $220 million. We did not do that. We did take out a regressive corporate capital tax that has nothing to do with their earnings. We took that out because…. We all probably remember when there was massive investment coming into this province from Hong Kong. There was a promise about taxation, from former Premier Mike Harcourt to the investors that were bringing money in, that they would never, never face a capital tax on the money they were bringing.

Glen Clark, as Finance Minister, shortly thereafter instilled this corporate capital tax, and there was a high degree of anger among Chinese investors. Basically, the

investment dried up. Why would they bring $1 billion-plus in capital here and then have it taxed before they earned one cent? There would be 3 percent taken every year as a tax just for having money. It's a wealth tax. That is so regressive that it has stopped our international finance centre from becoming what it ought to be. We have every opportunity in British Columbia to become the number one financial centre in North America, and we can do that quickly.

In fact, we are looked at now as one of the safest havens in the world in which to invest money, but the impediment to that is corporate capital tax. Without that corporate capital tax, we are going…. With the change that we've made, we are going to see a massive influx of investment dollars. We are going to see new companies come here, new brokerage firms. We're going to see international banking move here in an unprecedented fashion, bringing with it the wealth that banks bring. When they come, when they bring that capital, we will see jobs and income for all of the people of British Columbia.

The $220 million change in corporate capital tax — which, incidentally, is not a total $220,000 drop in revenue because of the 1 percent tax that will remain on paid-up capital, paid-up assets over a billion dollars — is going to repay itself over and over. I believe — and I know the Minister for Economic Development believes — that this is one of the most significant parts of the budget in years to come. A decade from now people will look back at that move and understand clearly how important it was, how much wealth it did bring to British Columbia.

But these guys don't understand any of that. They think in such small terms that it is absolutely unbelievable. They think about today; all they think about is today. "Let's invest a bunch of money today in operating spending for the government. Forget about building an economy, about building for tomorrow, about our grandchildren and about what's going to happen to our province in ten years. Let's go back to being a have-not province, number ten in the economy."

That's their move; that's where they want to take us. Everything that they say says that. They talk about forestry. I'm looking here at an article that is from ForestNet, written back in 1996. They created a superstumpage fee that was going to rebuild forestry in British Columbia, which was shrinking in the mid-1990s, and they were going to do all kinds of wonderful things. They were going to have money for "thinning and planting, stream bed repair, logging road cleanup and so on, to replace jobs lost as allowable harvests are reduced."

"The scheme," as it says here, "was trumpeted internationally as the way a modern forest industry should be run." It all would have been sweetness and light, except they only think about today. They don't think about tomorrow. They'd created all those programs.

"All of this occurred before the Clark people discovered that the arithmetic in their provincial budget was wildly skewed. Just weeks after touting its budget-balancing expertise while on the way to re-election, the government faced an embarrassing cash flow crisis."

What did they do? They began to rob the forest renewal fund. Money that was to go to rebuilding the forest suddenly went into covering the operating deficits which they'd created to pay for the programs that they'd put in place, without any forethought at all, without thinking about how they would pay for them tomorrow. They had to steal money from programs that would have and could have done some actual good in the forests in this province. That money went instead to programs to help their friends.

They talk about us. It's just the height of hypocrisy. The bad thing, and the thing that scares me for my kids and my grandkids, is that the thinking that they're trying to lay out here might be instilled somewhere in some kids that are growing up. They might happen to listen to the nonsense being spewed from that side. They might pick up an idea or two and think that there is something that has a touch of reality to it.

None of it does. It's shameful. This budget has been hailed across the environmental community from top to bottom. It has been hailed in other provinces. Mr. Speaker, I'll tell you what: the Conference Board of Canada recently called British Columbia a "job-creating machine."

Led by the construction and mining industries, B.C.'s economy is expected to grow by 3.1 percent in 2007 and 3.3 percent in 2008. It says that the domestic side of the economy will perform well due to strong job creation and the provincial government's decision to cut personal income taxes.

Gosh. What a concept. Leave the money in the people's pockets and let them make choices with their money — unlike the member for Delta North, who is down there saying we should be taxing, taxing, taxing, so that the government can spend your money and make all your choices and have probably 40 percent of what you pay in taxes fall off the table in administration costs.

We, on the other hand, leave the money in your pocket. You earned it; you decide how you want to spend it. According to the Conference Board of Canada, who I think are actually pretty reputable, that creates a strong economy.

I am not sure how much time I have left. I'm not quite finished. Noting the hour, I will move adjournment of the debate, reserving the balance of my time for when we return.

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