Hansard — Wednesday, April 2, 2008 p.m.

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Introductions by Members		10785

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		10785
	Coastal Health Care Committee
	S. Fraser
	Autism
	J. Rustad
	Kicking Horse Culture
	N. Macdonald
	Parkinson's disease
	J. Nuraney
	Kesha Neal
	C. Wyse
	Community market in Steveston
	J. Yap

Oral Questions		10787
	Investigation into ICBC vehicle sales
	C. James
	Hon. J. van Dongen
	H. Bains
	B. Ralston
	Hon. W. Oppal
	G. Gentner
	R. Fleming
	ICBC performance bonuses to Paul Taylor
	M. Farnworth
	Hon. J. van Dongen
	Protection of information in CORNET database
	L. Krog
	Hon. J. van Dongen
	Great Bear conservancy and Nascall River power project
	G. Coons
	Hon. B. Penner

Petitions		10792
	R. Fleming

Second Reading of Bills		10792
	Utilities Commission Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 15)
	Hon. R. Neufeld
	J. Horgan
	N. Macdonald
	R. Austin
	S. Simpson
	S. Hammell
	B. Ralston
	Hon. B. Penner
	C. Evans
	C. Puchmayr
	M. Sather
	C. Trevena

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		10825
	Estimates: Ministry of Transportation (continued)
	Hon. K. Falcon
	M. Karagianis
	M. Sather
	G. Robertson
	D. Routley

Point of Privilege (Reservation of Right)		10841
	N. Simons

Committee of Supply		10841
	Estimates: Ministry of Transportation (continued)
	D. Routley
	Hon. K. Falcon
	R. Fleming
	D. Cubberley
	G. Coons

Hon. G. Campbell: Hon. Speaker, I am pleased to say that in the precinct today we have Evalina Puddifoot, who is a grade 5 student from Queen Mary Elementary School. I'm sure you remember that yesterday we had the people from Queen Mary Elementary School. Evalina had so much fun that she decided to come back with her mother today. I think she may actually be one of our future Premiers, so I hope we'll all make her welcome.

M. Polak: Today in the gallery we're joined by my daughter Miriam Polak and her friend Dani Boon. I hope the House will make them welcome.

K. Whittred: Mr. Speaker, I have an introduction, in fact, on behalf of you.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome a group of public servants seated in the gallery. They are participating in a full-day parliamentary procedure workshop offered by the Legislative Assembly. The workshop provides a firsthand opportunity for the public service to gain a greater understanding of the relationship between the work of their ministries and how that work affects this Legislature. Would the House please make them welcome.

Hon. W. Oppal: In the House this afternoon is Judge Herb Weitzel, a well-known judge of the Provincial Court who has been on the court for many, many years. He's served the public of this province in a yeoman manner. I would ask that the House make him welcome.

S. Fraser: Community members and health care workers in the west health area have a strong desire to be involved in planning future health delivery in the region. The Coastal Health Care Committee was formed in 2006 in response to local concerns about the state of the health services, including shortages of physicians and nurses in the area served by Tofino General Hospital. This area includes not just residents of Tofino and Ucluelet but all of the Nuu-chah-nulth communities of Clayoquot Sound and, for many parts of the year, thousands and thousands of visitors also.

Since the dissolution of the hospital boards, concerns have been voiced that community involvement in health care planning on the west health area have dwindled. Physicians, nurses and other health care staff have been dealing with mounting demands and shrinking service support — a dangerous combination in a region that has a peak seasonal population that exceeds 25,000 and that is geographically challenged and isolated.

So the west coast health committee took the bull by the horns and, in partnership with the Tofino Hospital Foundation, hired a facilitator to solicit and summarize local community and health care providers' input regarding local health services. These are the people that really know.

The recommendations are thoughtful and essential, and they need to be implemented. They include replacing the hospital. It has served the community well for many years. It includes addressing urgent medical and nursing staff recruitment issues, providing housing for locums, encouraging nursing programs to train nurses in rural health care, building a residential care facility, increasing support services to help seniors, and helping communities develop assisted-living options. And there are many more.

I applaud the work and the dedication of all involved with planning for sustainable rural health care delivery on the west coast. The Coastal Health Care Committee sets an example that should be considered and supported by health authorities across the province, where community members and local health care deliverers work together to solve local challenges. Please join me in applauding their work.

J. Rustad: I rise today to speak in recognition of the first annual World Autism Awareness Day. The pins many of us are wearing today represent the missing piece of a puzzle that is autism. Autism may be just a word to you or me, but to millions of children and youth throughout the world and their families it can mean many things including daily therapy sessions, social impairment and, for some parents, never being able to hear their child say the words "I love you."

It's also associated with rigid routines and repetitive behaviours such as obsessively arranging objects, flapping hands, walking on tippytoes or endlessly repeating lines from a movie or book. It can mean never wavering from a very specific routine such as taking the same street to school, putting on the same shoes or eating the same meal over and over again. Symptoms of children on the autism spectrum can range from mild to severe.

Today one in 150 children is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Autism doesn't discriminate. It knows no geographical or socioeconomic boundaries. It occurs in all racial, ethnic and social groups and is four times more likely to strike boys than girls.

Here in B.C. we currently serve over 5,000 children and youth with autism spectrum disorder. I'm proud to say that since 2001 our budget for treatment and funding for programs has increased to $43 million annually. We're also playing a strong role in supporting autism

research through ongoing studies at UBC and the recent announcement of a $1 million investment to create an autism research chair at SFU, which was also matched by the federal government.

It's only through understanding and compassion that we will all learn to appreciate the unique abilities of children and adults with autism and gain a better understanding of how they view the world around us.

N. Macdonald: Kicking Horse Culture is one of a great many arts councils around this province. Each arts council is unique to their particular community. The last time I talked about arts councils, I talked about funding. Funding is really important to allow what is fundamentally a volunteer effort.

The opportunities that arts councils provide to people to express themselves creatively, to enjoy high-quality performances and exhibitions and to have communities come together are critically important.

The Community Arts Advisory Committee, which is a provincial body, recently commended Kicking Horse Culture for its range of arts practices and for its culturally diverse offerings. To give members here an idea of that range, you had our winter festival this year in Golden. It was the Snow King Goes Bollywood, which showcased the great Indian cinema music tradition. There was a production of a book of salvaged photos from Golden's past, called Adventurers and Settlers. That was put together from an exhibition in Golden's new art gallery, which Kicking Horse Culture also runs.

The community was able to see choirs from Nelson, Irish musicians, Ballet Kelowna as well as winning movies from the Banff Mountain Film Festival, called the Best from the Fest. Kicking Horse Culture also brings together local talent. Poet Caleb Moss with his students, singer Jane Fearing, musician Carl Trinkwon, local sculptors, painters and many other exceptional talents are given a venue to share their skills and inspire others to give it a try.

I have to mention Bill Usher, who is the executive director. His wife was a music teacher at my elementary school. Bill would come and drum with the students. I was telling the students about the famous musicians that Bill had played with and the musicians he had produced back in Toronto. The only thing that impressed them was that he had sung a song with Big Bird on Sesame Street, which impressed me as well.

Within all of our communities, there are special talents. Kicking Horse Culture and arts councils across the province let us share people's talents. I ask the Legislature to join me in showing that we appreciate and salute their efforts.

J. Nuraney: The month of April is Parkinson's Awareness Month. Parkinson's disease belongs to a group of conditions called motor system disorders. Four primary symptoms are tremor or trembling of hands, arms, legs, jaw and face; rigidity or stiffness of limbs and trunk; slowness of movement; and impaired balance and coordination.

It usually affects people over 50. There are approximately 100,000 people in Canada and 7,000 in British Columbia who suffer from this disease. At present there is no cure for this disease.

A very famous Burnaby resident, Michael J. Fox, was affected by this disease some years ago. I have been witnessing the gradual deterioration of his condition over the years. I have the opportunity to see him every year. Even though his mental faculties are intact, his physical motor systems are evidently getting worse.

Our government has invested $25 million, as announced in our throne speech, in building a centre for brain health at UBC. Diseases involving the brain affect a growing number of the British Columbia population. Close to 50 percent of British Columbians are affected by a brain disease like stroke, multiple sclerosis or neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. This centre will help identify the causes and hopefully treatment for this debilitating disease.

I would like to ask the members of our Legislature to bring this message of awareness of Parkinson's disease to their constituents.

C. Wyse: Every day brings a challenge to every person on this planet. These challenges vary from person to person or from day to day for individuals.

In my constituency, a young woman meets her challenges in a way that makes many of our problems insignificant. Kesha Neal is a young woman who has faced challenges her entire life. She has cerebral palsy, a condition that limits her physical abilities while leaving her cognitive abilities intact.

Miss Neal lived at home with the support of her family while growing up. Since her graduation from high school in Williams Lake, Miss Neal has worked as a volunteer and as a paid employee with the Central Interior Community Service Cooperative.

When she lived at home, she had home support twice a week. Her mother provided care at night and on weekends. Like all young people, however, Miss Neal looked forward to the independence that comes from living on her own. As a young person in her early 20s, she longed for a place to live separate from but near her family.

In Williams Lake that independence was partially realized when she moved into the seniors village, the only facility that could provide the care she requires. While Miss Neal appreciates the physical care she receives, she longs to have the intellectual stimulation of interacting with other people her own age. She would like to live with peers who, like her, may be physically limited but function well intellectually.

Miss Neal would like to live in a facility that allows her to be independent, allows her to continue to work

and allows her to realize her potential as a contributing member of society. Miss Neal is a role model for other young, able and disabled citizens. Please join me in acknowledging Miss Neal's efforts to make her world and ours a better place.

J. Yap: I rise today to talk about something new coming soon to Richmond-Steveston. The Steveston Community Society and the city of Richmond will be hosting a weekly farmers' and artisans' market in Steveston.

This market will showcase some of the community's finest local flavours. Local produce, fresh seafood, arts, crafts and entertainment will fill the compound of the Gulf of Georgia Cannery every Sunday starting May 4 to September 28.

This market will give Richmond farmers and others from across British Columbia an opportunity to showcase their best for locals and tourists alike. The market will serve as a focal point where people can come to shop and socialize in their own community. Visitors to the market will experience all the amenities and activities that the area has to offer in an open, safe and scenic location in the heart of historic Steveston village. Visitors will also be able to experience fresh seafood sold from fishermen's boats at the nearby docks.

After many years of trying to organize a farmers' market, small domestic farmers will now be able to sell their products locally. The market will bring about agricultural awareness and reflect the importance of supporting local businesses and farming. Vendors will benefit from the supportive marketing team, wider exposure and the opportunity to serve a growing residential community as well as tourists who come to Steveston.

Our community is fortunate to have this market to enjoy for the coming summer months. I'd like to thank all those involved in planning this market — in particular Leisa Yee, Loren Slye and Jim Kojima — and recognize their efforts towards promoting a greener community. Thanks to them and support from the city of Richmond, Steveston will join the growing number of communities in B.C. with farmers' markets.

I invite one and all to check out this new market when it starts May 4 and on any given Sunday until September 28 when the last market will happen, coincidentally, on the day that we celebrate the conclusion of BC150's Rivermania celebration in — where else? — Steveston.

C. James: Yesterday, just before question period, the Premier appointed a new Solicitor General. He's now had 24 hours to be briefed and to take action.

Will the Solicitor General today release ICBC's internal investigation so that British Columbians really can see how deep this scandal goes?

Hon. J. van Dongen: I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the question. I want to begin by confirming that the issues that have arisen at the research facility in Burnaby, operated by ICBC, are unacceptable. They're unacceptable to our government. They're unacceptable to me as the minister responsible. They're unacceptable to the board and management of ICBC.

As minister responsible, on behalf of the government, on behalf of the board and management of ICBC, and on behalf of all of the employees of ICBC who were not involved in this activity, I want to apologize, first of all, to the purchasers of vehicles that may have been deficient or where there was improper disclosure. I want to apologize to all the people of British Columbia, who have a right to expect integrity within the operations of their Crown corporations.

C. James: Now we've heard the head of ICBC say he's sorry. Now we've heard the Solicitor General say he's sorry. What's missing is the government coming clean and telling the public what really went on. That's what's needed.

Quite frankly, British Columbians don't trust ICBC to come clean. It was ICBC management that actually ran the scam, and now it's ICBC management that's saying to British Columbians: "Don't worry; everything has been cleaned up." Well, this scandal isn't going to go away. It can't be pushed under the rug. There are too many unanswered questions.

So my question again to the Solicitor General: will he finally come clean? Will he tell us who was involved in the scam, will he tell us who's been fired, and will he tell us…?

C. James: Will the Solicitor General tell us who's been let go, who was fired and who got a pay package as they walked out the door?

Hon. J. van Dongen: All of the information I have received in the last 24 hours confirms that the board of directors and senior management of ICBC acted immediately when they became aware that there were improprieties at the research centre in Burnaby.

They immediately launched an internal investigation and, concurrent with that, engaged the services of PricewaterhouseCoopers, an independent external firm that will review all of the issues and all of the actions by ICBC. That report will be made public when it is complete.

The findings of the internal review confirm that since 1998, there were 98 vehicles that had been sold

from that centre without proper disclosure, without proper designation, and that 22 of those were purchased by employees. As a result, ICBC has attempted to contact all of the purchasers of those vehicles and ensure that the necessary repairs or inspections were done.

C. James: Without that internal report being made public, the public in fact doesn't know whether what the minister is telling us is accurate. We have no idea whether ICBC acted immediately, because we haven't seen that internal report. So the question remains about whether that report is going to be made public.

Quite frankly, this scam has continued to grow. The information has continued to trickle out. The information wasn't disclosed fully.

C. James: This scam continues to grow. Mr. Speaker, you'll remember that this scandal started off with write-offs being sold to the unsuspecting public. Now we know that ICBC management actually used an auction scam to be able to get those cars. They knew what the bids would be. They were able to outbid, and they were able to get those vehicles. So this is anything but clean. This is anything but full disclosure.

Again to the Solicitor General: will he tell this House today who set up the scam and who is going to be held accountable? Will he release that internal investigation, because the public has a right to know?

Hon. J. van Dongen: I repeat. The Insurance Corporation immediately launched an internal investigation. They immediately turned over relevant information to the RCMP and have committed to the RCMP their full cooperation. I agree with the Leader of the Opposition that the issues are serious, and all of the due diligence that is required from the board of directors and the senior management of ICBC will be expected of them.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers report is an external independent review of all of the issues and will be made public in due course. That commitment was made by ICBC. I should also advise the member that on March 19 the CEO of ICBC disclosed all of the information to the public in terms of the investigation that was done.

H. Bains: What is at the core of this issue is the integrity and the public trust in that Crown corporation. Obviously, this government and this minister have no understanding of that concept, coming from those answers, which are the only things you can judge from.

ICBC spokesman Doug McClelland has told the media that more write-offs than initially thought were bought in rigged auctions, but he refused to disclose how many. ICBC deals with 42,000 write-offs per year, but we don't know how many of those were later bought by ICBC officials as part of their own auction scam.

To the Solicitor General: how many officials were involved, how many cars were bought in this scam, and when will he make this internal report open?

Hon. J. van Dongen: It is a fact that the reputation and the integrity of the organization are at stake, and that's why the situation and the conduct at the research facility are unacceptable. That's why our government has confirmed that it is unacceptable.

As minister responsible, I expect the board of directors and the senior management of ICBC to conduct the full degree of internal investigation as the responsible managers of the organization. I expect PricewaterhouseCoopers to report fully on the full extent of the relevant issues with respect to this matter. So if there are more details that need to come out, then I expect the board and the management of ICBC to identify those issues and deal with them.

H. Bains: If the minister was serious about what he's saying, then he would stand up today and say that that internal report will be made public today. In the view that it is clear that upper management at ICBC knew what the auction scam was, because they set it up, they participated in it.

British Columbians have the right, especially the consumers of ICBC, to know how far this fraud reached into ICBC. Will the Solicitor General name the managers and the vice-presidents involved in this scam? And how much severance pay are they going to receive as they walk out the door?

Hon. J. van Dongen: I want to begin my response to that question by reminding the member that the employer is ICBC. As the employer, they have certain legal requirements, legal obligations and legal duties that they have to meet in the conduct of the business of ICBC. They are bound by the law; they are bound by personal privacy responsibilities.

Within the context of those obligations, I expect the board of ICBC and the senior management to deal appropriately with any identified misconduct of employees.

Beyond that, I reiterate that if there is any possible criminal activity, it is up to the RCMP. The information is available to them. ICBC has committed to ongoing cooperation with them on matters that may be of interest to the RCMP.

B. Ralston: On Saturday, March 29, the Premier said, in connection with the resignation of the previous Solicitor General, the following: "The appointment of a special prosecutor is a very low threshold to make sure people don't say and can't say there's any political interference."

Given the potentially politically sensitive nature of these matters, is the Attorney General able to advise whether or not Mr. Gillen has appointed a special prosecutor to assist any investigation that may be ongoing?

Hon. W. Oppal: That member is a member of the bar. I'm sure he knows the law. The matter of whether or not a special prosecutor is appointed is a matter entirely for the jurisdiction and the authority of the criminal justice branch. The assistant deputy minister would make that decision.

B. Ralston: Perhaps the Attorney General misunderstood my question. I'm well aware that it's Mr. Gillen who would make the decision, but apparently only by way of asking a public question does the Attorney General then announce it to the public.

My question to the Attorney General is this. Has Mr. Gillen appointed a special prosecutor to assist the investigation in this matter?

Hon. W. Oppal: The decision as to whether a special prosecutor will or will not be appointed is entirely within the jurisdiction of the criminal justice branch and the assistant deputy minister. They will decide, in their wisdom, in their authority, whether or not to make that announcement of the appointment public.

G. Gentner: To the Solicitor General, a quick question: will the terms of reference of the Pricewaterhouse report be released to the public, and when?

Hon. J. van Dongen: All of the relevant issues to this event — the conduct of activities at the research centre — will be reviewed by Pricewaterhouse and will be disclosed to the public, including the terms of reference. I have not at this time had the opportunity to review the terms of reference.

G. Gentner: You know, the opposite side has had lots of experience in investigations. We saw a lot of it, of course, done with the B.C. Lottery Corporation. We're seeing things happening with B.C. Rail, etc. Why will the minister not release it today — those terms of reference?

Hon. J. van Dongen: Once the complete investigation by PricewaterhouseCoopers is complete, then the terms of reference will be released as part of the report.

Hon. J. van Dongen: …that my expectation of the board of directors and then management of ICBC will be to do all of the due diligence necessary in terms of their management responsibilities and to ensure that all of the appropriate issues that need to be dealt with, including some of the questions raised by the members, will be covered by the Pricewaterhouse report which, as I said, will be independent and outside the organization.

R. Fleming: I appreciate that the Solicitor General is confident that the terms of reference of this internal investigation are adequate, although he just admitted he hasn't read them yet. Pending receipt of the report, the issue of public confidence here is such that they want to know that the internal investigation goes far enough, goes deep enough and will restore confidence in this Crown corporation. We don't need to receive the entire report before the public is allowed to know whether the scope of that audit investigation is thorough enough.

My question to the Solicitor General is…. Get briefed now on what those terms of reference are. When you do, will you come back and will you table in this House what those terms of reference are?

Hon. J. van Dongen: I want to caution the members that there are thousands of employees at the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia who are ethical. They're doing their jobs every day on behalf of the people of British Columbia.

I want to reiterate that the board and management have acted immediately. They have disclosed the results of their own investigation. They have fully shared that information with the RCMP. They have committed to full cooperation with the RCMP. Within the constraints of the law and the privacy legislation, all of the investigation and recommendations of PricewaterhouseCoopers will be released to the public.

R. Fleming: The importance to the thousands of employees at ICBC who do their jobs well every day for the public…. They have the same interests as the public in this matter. They want to see corruption

rooted out, thoroughly investigated and consequences to follow, where appropriate. What the public needs right now is to know that this government, because their record on this is pretty bad in other instances, is thoroughly investigating this matter.

So I ask the Solicitor General again: will he release the terms of reference of the PricewaterhouseCoopers internal investigation?

Hon. J. van Dongen: The terms of reference of the report will form part of the report which will be released to the public, as I said, subject to legal restraints and particularly freedom-of-information requirements.

M. Farnworth: The answer, then, to this scandal, the latest scandal, is that the public will find out once the report is done what the terms of references are. So there's no opportunity to see whether the terms of references are indeed adequate or cover the full scope that needs to be investigated.

Perhaps there's a question, then, that the minister can answer. We know that the vast majority of the employees of ICBC are doing a terrific job, but ICBC has felt confident enough that they can name and make statements that vice-presidents have gone and that managers have been fired.

We've got a new minister in place who is supposed to be accountable here in this House. We've got a chair who's also supposed to be accountable and a president who is supposed to be accountable. Can he tell us whether Mr. Paul Taylor will be paying back some of his considerable performance bonuses in light of this terrific lacklustre performance by ICBC?

Hon. J. van Dongen: The outcome of the investigation conducted by ICBC senior management, in cooperation with PricewaterhouseCoopers, confirmed that these sales of these 98 vehicles go back to 1998. I think that is an important finding. ICBC, through senior management, continues to confirm….

Hon. J. van Dongen: In the review that I have done to this point, I continue to have confidence in the board of directors of ICBC. They are directors that have been identified for their skills and experience in board governance. The CEO of ICBC that reports to that board of directors, who is hired by them and whose performance is appraised by them, is a longstanding public servant in our province as a deputy minister of Treasury Board and a Deputy Minister of Finance, and has a long career in the public service in Alberta.

I confirm that based on the information to date, I have confidence in the board and management of ICBC, and I think we need to continue to support employees that do a good job every day on behalf of the public in British Columbia.

M. Farnworth: Well, at some point the buck has got to stop somewhere on that side of the House — if not on the minister's desk, then on the Premier's desk. My question to the minister responsible today is: will he recommend to his cabinet colleagues that the performance bonuses for Mr. Taylor at ICBC be paid back?

Hon. J. van Dongen: It is my expectation, as minister responsible, that all of the relevant issues be identified and investigated by PricewaterhouseCoopers and that all of the findings in terms of the issues, all of the actions by ICBC and the findings of PricewaterhouseCoopers, be part of the report that is provided to the public. It has been committed by ICBC, and that is subject to legal requirements — all of the legal constraints that they operate in.

L. Krog: The Auditor General's recent audit made it clear that the government did not take steps to protect its CORNET database, which contains highly sensitive data on both adult and youth offenders. It wasn't until a damning audit by the Auditor General that the government took steps to protect this highly sensitive information.

Can the Solicitor General explain to this House how that database was made so vulnerable?

Hon. J. van Dongen: Given my level of activity on the major issue of the day in the last 24 hours, I appreciate the member's question. I will take it on notice.

G. Coons: The Nascall private power project in the Great Bear rain forest will destroy one of the most spectacular lake systems on our coast. Two years ago the Premier said he would protect this area, but the legislation to do so has stalled.

The proponents of the project say that the representatives for the Ministry of Environment "have indicated the conservancy designation will not be going ahead until there is an agreement with first nations and independent power producers in the area."

My question to the Minister of Environment: is the minister delaying legislation on the Great Bear rain

forest conservancy until first nations bow to the pressure and accept private power projects?

Hon. B. Penner: I'm pleased to finally get a question. It's the first question I've had in this session, and I think it's….

Hon. B. Penner: It appears that their lack of interest in the environment continues, because the question is not even posed by the Environment critic. Nevertheless, our government is proud of our record. In fact, we've already established in law 65 conservancies on the north coast.

As a result of the historic land use agreement that was reached in discussions with all sorts of different parties including first nations, environmental groups, local governments and the province of British Columbia, we will be bringing forward legislation later in this session to establish even more conservancies on the north coast of British Columbia.

G. Coons: I can see the minister…. With all the scandals on that side of the House, it's hard to get questions over there.

G. Coons: Both the Heiltsuk and the Nuxalk, whose traditional territory the private power project crosses, oppose this project. First nations are concerned that the government is stalling on protecting the Great Bear due to their desire to see the Nascall River project proceed. So much for the new relationship.

Will the minister confirm that the Great Bear conservancy is on hold until the first nations agree to let the Nascall private power project go ahead?

Hon. B. Penner: Just before I give my more fulsome answer, I'll note that the Environment critic has seen fit to get on his feet and ask ten questions this session, but I'm still waiting for my first question from him.

Hon. B. Penner: I'm pleased that the member for North Coast has seen fit to ask me a question.

Hon. B. Penner: There are a number of first nations in British Columbia who are partnering with independent power producers in developing clean and green renewable energy for British Columbia, and the NDP has been opposed to every single first nation that's doing that and to those projects.

We are committed to creating new sources of electricity. They left us with an electricity deficit, making us reliant on imported power. We're serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but that does not mean that every single power proposal will get approved. We demonstrated that last week with the Upper Pitt proposal, and we'll continue to follow through with our environmental commitments, unlike that side of the House.

R. Fleming: With us in the gallery today are a number of students and faculty representatives. From the University of British Columbia we have Kate Skinner and Aman Bains. From the University of Victoria, Edward Pullman is here, as well as Caitlin Meggs and Tracy Ho. From the University of British Columbia, Stephanie Ratchin. From the Simon Fraser Student Society their chairperson, Mr. Derek Harder, is with us, as well as Kaitlin Burnett and Robin Stidell.

I'd also like to introduce, from the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia, the president, Mr. Chris Petter, who joins us today, and the executive director, Mr. Robert Clift. Will the House please make them feel welcome.

R. Fleming: I have to hand in to the House nearly 2,000 names on a petition of Coalition Against Funding Cuts at Campuses gathered by students at Simon Fraser, UBC and the University of Victoria. The 2,000 names were gathered in the last 48 hours. They ask the government to reverse its year 2 funding cuts that were brought down on March 12.

Hon. M. de Jong: I call in this chamber second reading of Bill 15, Utilities Commission Amendment Act, 2008, and in Committee A, Committee of Supply — for the information of members, ongoing estimates for the Ministry of Transportation.

Hon. R. Neufeld: I move that the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, 2008, be now introduced and read a second time.

I am pleased to present the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, 2008. The purpose of these amendments is to ensure that the Utilities Commission Act is consistent with the B.C. energy plan and that our energy security and conservation goals are met.

On February 27, '07, the government's new energy plan was released. The B.C. energy plan places the province at the forefront of environmental and economic leadership. Our government's vision is for a thriving province with a globally competitive economy built on strong environmental management and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

The amendments that we are proposing today align the act with the B.C. energy plan objectives and will encourage public utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pursue energy conservation and efficiency, produce and obtain electricity from clean or renewable sources, develop energy transmission infrastructure and capacity to meet customers' needs, and leverage innovative energy technologies.

These goals will be considered as part of the British Columbia Utilities Commission's public interest test when it makes decisions about utility plans, projects and supply contracts. They will help B.C. Hydro and other utilities reach their conservation targets and combat climate change.

The amendments will also include new provisions for electricity self-sufficiency, generation of electricity from clean and renewable resources, installation of smart meters, B.C. Hydro's standing offer for clean energy projects of ten megawatts or less, and a new process for the BCUC to ensure that the province remains consistent with North American reliability standards and ensures that standards are in British Columbia's interests.

Additional amendments create a new process for provincewide transmission planning and development to support economic growth and future electricity needs.

We are also enhancing the utilities long-term planning process to increase emphasis on conservation and energy efficiency. We are also taking action to reduce the rate increase burden on B.C. Hydro's residential customers by ensuring that the commission's 2007 rate-rebalancing decisions will not be implemented on top of other rate increases. As well, there are provisions to ensure the competitiveness of rates.

It is the commission's role to regulate on a cost basis. Government utilities, or the B.C. Utilities Commission, can take action to ensure that our rates remain among the lowest in North America. These amendments also include provisions that the commission can use to help streamline its processes.

As stewards of this province, we have the responsibility to manage our natural resources and develop innovative and sustainable energy solutions. Our goal is to ensure a secure, reliable, clean and affordable energy supply for all British Columbians for generations to come.

J. Horgan: I want to commend the Minister of Energy for his B.C. Hydro commercial there. In all seriousness, I want to thank him for offering me a full briefing on this bill tomorrow. I know that it wasn't his intention. I do want to give the minister credit for offering me that, and I know that he was genuine.

Unfortunately, the House Leader isn't able to manage this place with the same level of cooperation that the minister and I have on these matters. So thank you again to the minister for providing the opportunity to get briefed tomorrow, and shame on the House Leader for not being able to manage this place in the interests of good public policy.

I have a number of remarks to make. I'm delighted that the minister from the debt collector is here to keep me on my toes for an hour or two.

I hope everyone settles in for a good long chat about the lunacy of self-sufficiency in an integrated electricity market. That's what I would like to….

J. Horgan: I'll speak directly to you, hon. Speaker, in the hope that the braying hounds on the other side will stifle long enough for me to put forward some remarks, albeit restricted because of the lack of debate or — pardon me — the lack of briefing from the officials in the minister's department.

I call it the lunacy of self-sufficiency because this is a classic example of what George Lakoff, the great linguist from the University of California, has characterized as the right wing taking language that used to mean something and twisting it to their own purposes and their own devices.

The notion of self-sufficiency is an important one for families. It's an important one for communities. It's an important one for the province, but not when it comes to a commodity which we have an abundance of and which we trade with our trading partners to our advantage — not just to our economic advantage but, I would argue, to our social and our environmental advantage.

The notion of the energy plan, which states that by policy we must be self-sufficient by a certain date into the future, makes no economic sense at all. It's quite surprising to me and to those on this side of the House and to those I talk to in the business community that a government that professes to be a free market government is dictating to one sector of the economy what they must do by a certain date.

I know that the member from West Vancouver, in his days at Harvard, would have just been shocked and appalled by that. I talked in this place last year about regulating the gasoline sector so that consumers could be protected from gouging by large multinational oil and gas companies. The member from West Vancouver got up and shook and thundered at me that this was absolute lunacy and that the free market should be able to take care of itself. Why in goodness' name wouldn't we want to do that in an area where we have a comparative advantage with respect to our trading partners? Why wouldn't we want to take the advantage we have with our regulated utility, B.C. Hydro, and trade on the market to our advantage?

The minister and his acolytes take great delight in saying that we were net importers in three of the past seven years. I have the data here from Stats Canada, and the minister is correct. When it was advantageous for us to do so, we imported power. We imported fish-flush power from Bonneville Power Administration in the United States, the minister will know.

Those who have taken the time to educate themselves on these issues — maybe one or two on that side — will know that in the United States, under federal law, the Bonneville Power Administration is required to flush, at certain times of the year, water through turbines to protect fish stocks. That's good public policy. It means, however, that power — clean, green hydroelectric power — is on the marketplace at a bargain basement price.

What do we do here in British Columbia? What have we done historically here in British Columbia? We've purchased that power. We've imported that fish-flush power — not dirty coal, as the independent power producers would have you believe, but clean, green fish-flush power from the United States.

It's advantageous to do so. Our trading partners are grateful. They're not just spilling the water. They're not just wasting this resource. They're generating electricity, but because of the glut of electricity on the west coast of the United States and here in British Columbia and in Alberta, because the cost of a megawatt hour on the spot market is about, when I checked this morning, $45, it's advantageous for us to purchase that power.

That's what we've done in the past. That's what we should be doing in the future. What this legislation does is it takes a misguided B.C. Liberal policy and goes to the Utilities Commission with the mother of all special directions.

I was a staff person in this place of public servants, and I remember my colleague opposite, the member for Peace River North, the now Energy Minister, railing against previous Energy Ministers for using special directions when there was a public policy initiative that the government of the day felt was important. Whether it was a social policy, an economic policy or an environmental policy, a special direction was created, and it was submitted to the Utilities Commission.

Interveners would howl, as they should. Others would howl, as they should. The opposition howled at that time. The minister himself was on his feet claiming that we were deregulating the sector and providing direction from the Premier's office.

What this bill does, Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, is…. It's the mother of all special directions. It says to the commission: "Thou shalt approve all projects in the interests of meeting self-sufficiency by 2016." Anybody who comes to the commission with a half-baked idea, with the standing offer proposal of ten megawatts or less — no regulation at all. You got nine megawatts? You want to sell it? Done deal. Let's have it, because we have to meet our target of self-sufficiency.

I will go into some detail in debate at third reading on just what this self-sufficiency means in terms of total power consumed in one fiscal year, one calendar year. But the important thing for the public to remember, those who are watching at home, is that we use power at different times of the day. We have an abundance of power at different times of the year.

Now, the independent power producers will argue that they are the only ones in the universe that provide clean, green power in the province of British Columbia. We all know that our reservoir system, our two-river policy, the Peace and the Columbia River policies of the '60s and '70s, have put us in a positive position with respect to our clean, green generation.

What the minister fails to recognize, and what his allies in the Independent Power Producers Association fail to recognize, is that there's only one place in Canada west of Saskatchewan where you can buy wind-generated electricity. Any guesses from the other side? Alberta. Alberta has wind farms. They're generating electricity using wind.

But when the independent power producers came to the Finance Committee — my colleague from Cariboo North and I were on the committee — the independent power producers came and said: "If only we had run-of-the-river projects all over British Columbia, we wouldn't have to buy that dirty power from Alberta or that dirty power from Washington

State." Wind power. Wind power from Alberta. We can buy it. We do buy it. It's advantageous for us to do so, and we do.

The notion that the only power that's available on the spot market is either coal- or gas-fired generation is patently false. The minister knows that. The government should know that. I think it would be incumbent upon the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Energy to put their heads together on this issue and be honest with the public of British Columbia. Be forthright. Tell us the truth for a change. Tell us exactly what the notion of….

J. Horgan: I'll withdraw that, hon. Speaker. My concern, however, was that our interpretation of reality and the interpretation of the other side is at odds. We have a difference of opinion on the facts. I don't mean to malign my colleague at all, but we do have a difference of opinion on the facts.

The minister and his colleagues are of the view that we need to be self-sufficient, not just self-sufficient in terms of total megawatts consumed annually, but the minister is proposing that we have an insurance policy. Is it 5,000 or 6,000 gigawatt hours of insurance policy? That makes the policy even more absurd.

Not only are we going to go about signing contracts, long-term power purchase agreements with micro-hydro companies that are head-officed in New York or Vancouver or who knows where…. Independent private power companies selling power to B.C. Hydro, not necessarily when we want it, not necessarily when we need it, but when they have the product.

When do you think most of these small micro-hydro projects are generating electricity? Well, they're generating electricity at the very time that we don't need it — when the snowcap is melting and our reservoirs are rising, and the price of the product is dropping like a stone. What this government is doing, by policy and now by law, by amending the Utilities Commission Act, is they're saying to B.C. Hydro: "You must buy power from one source and one source only, regardless of what the price is, regardless of the common economic sense of the idea, of the initiative, go forth and buy power from our friends." That's what they're advocating, not just by policy, but now by law.

The challenge we have on this side of the House, and all British Columbians in fact…. When we listen to the minister, whether it be the Minister of Energy or the Premier, talk about the importance of addressing our climate change challenges here and internationally, we are uniformly in favour of that. There's not a soul that I know in this place…. Well, there may be one or two on the government side that sit on this side of the House that might feel differently, but by and large, most of the people that reside in this Legislature are uniformly supportive of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

That's done. We voted on that. We had a bill come through this place last fall. We all stood in our places, and we supported it.

It's not a question of "You don't like green power," as the Minister of Environment will often say. This is the man who today, in question period, thought it was okay to put 35 kilometres of transmission line through Tweedsmuir Park. That's okay, because it's not near the Lower Mainland. It's not near his constituency like the Upper Pitt is. Tweedsmuir Park — who cares about that? We'll put 35 kilometres of transmission line through there. I don't know what's green about that.

I don't know what's green about putting a small micro-hydro project in a place where there's no demand, putting in a transmission line so you can bring it to the Lower Mainland and use it when you don't need it. Buying it at $88 a megawatt hour, $90 a megawatt hour…. Projections are that the next call, the call in 2008, will see upwards to $110 a megawatt hour for independent power — $110 a megawatt hour. We can buy it on the spot market for 45 bucks.

That's a windfall profit. For who? Is that money coming back to the Crown in form of a dividend from B.C. Hydro? Absolutely not. In fact, we had a debate in this place yesterday on Bill 2, the Budget Measures Implementation Act, where the debt cap for B.C. Hydro has been eliminated. Now they're just going to keep going through the roof in terms of their capital costs, whether it be to build transmission lines to small, isolated IPPs up and down the coast, to send 10, 20, 15, 25 megawatts of power to the Lower Mainland at a time when we don't need it, at a cost that we shouldn't be paying. That's B.C. Liberal policy.

It's bad enough that it's B.C. Liberal policy. With Bill 15, it becomes B.C. Liberal law. I know we'll get into greater detail after I've had the benefit of the briefing from the minister's very capable staff. We'll have a better understanding of part 3, the "Energy Security and the Environment" section, but as I look at it now, it says that by 2016 calendar year we must achieve electricity self-sufficiency according to a prescribed criteria. Well, I'm very anxious to hear what that prescribed criteria is.

If it means economic common sense, I might support that. If it means that there is no other way, no other mechanism, for us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by electricity generation, by all means, I will support that. But today 90 percent of the electricity we use in British Columbia is generated from hydroelectric power — 90 percent. They're prescribing that in law now.

It's been policy. It's been covenant. It's been convention in B.C. since the 1960s, but we have it now in law. That may well be a good thing, because future governments, like this government, may well sign power purchase agreements with coal companies.

That's what this government did. They directed B.C. Hydro, through a call for proposals, to listen to the private sector, to hear from the private sector on how best to generate electricity in the 21st century. Two projects came back, were signed and approved to burn

coal in British Columbia — one in Princeton and another one up in the Peace, in the member for Peace River South's constituency. Not so clean, not so green.

So we've amended the B.C. energy policy. We've amended it now so those projects are not likely to proceed, but in estimates I'll have a delightful time, I'm sure, talking to legal counsel at B.C. Hydro about just what that's going to cost the ratepayers. How much is it going to cost us to get out of the coal contracts that were signed by this government, not one year ago but two years ago?

What's that going to cost us? Any ideas, hon. Member? I have no clue, but I'm sure that there will be capable staff from B.C. Hydro there to explain it to me.

The other issue that troubles me about this mother of all special directions is the smart meter section. Now, for those at home and those in this Legislature that aren't aware of what a smart meter is, this is a gimmick or a theory that is a time-of-use meter so that residents, users of electricity, will be able to look at a meter on their wall, as you would a thermostat in anyone's home, and measure, at a particular time of the day, how much electricity you're using. In principle that sounds like a pretty good idea.

J. Horgan: For grow ops. Yeah, well if you're using a lot of electricity, you're going to want to know at what time of day you're using it most. That could well be true, hon. Member.

In principle, in theory, as we talk about this over a cup of coffee or at a bar or wherever we might gather to talk about important issues of the economy and the environment, it makes a little bit of sense. It makes sense to talk about smart meters.

But let's probe down a little bit. Let's go a little bit deeper on the notion of testing how much electricity we use at any given point during the day. Smart meters, by B.C. Hydro's reckoning, will cost $900 million to install in residences across British Columbia where B.C. Hydro is providing electricity — a $900 million expenditure by the Crown corporation, with no regulatory oversight.

The B.C. Utilities Commission requested that a business plan be put before that body so they could determine, through rigorous debate, interveners coming and presenting their case for and against smart meters — a business case, which this government often lauded as the most important part of their agenda as government…. "We'll have a business case for everything we do." Well, here we go — $900 million, a little tiny thing on your wall at home telling you how much electricity you're using.

Think about that: four million people in British Columbia, all those households having little smart meters, $900 million to put those into everybody's house. Is that a prudent investment in a time when we're trying to constrain our carbon dioxide emissions, when we're trying to constrain greenhouse gas emissions? Is it prudent to spend $900 million so that we know we're using electricity?

I don't know about you, hon. Speaker — I'm the Energy critic. I've been doing this job for a couple years. I used to be involved in the power sector in the past. I know a little bit about it, but I go and look at my meter outside my house, and I can't tell you what's going on there. I haven't got a clue. There's a thing spinning around really, really fast when I'm doing my laundry, not so fast when I'm not doing my laundry.

Most people like to think of their electricity coming out of the wall when they need it and going off when they flick the switch. I don't think it's appropriate for us to say to most British Columbians that they need to have a PhD in thermal mechanics to deal with their electricity use. We haven't done that in the past; I don't think we should do it now. So the notion of smart meters…. Although it sounds like a good idea, is that the best way to spend $900 million? It might be. It might be.

The beauty of the Utilities Commission, unfettered by the firm hand of a government that has an ideological bent…. The advantage of the Utilities Commission is that we could have that debate. Reasonable, thoughtful, articulate people debate this — people understanding thermodynamics, economics and regulatory processes. We have hearings. Briefs are submitted, and thoughtful people look over those briefs. Informed individuals rule and deliberate on evidence, and they pass judgment.

That has served us very well. It certainly served the people of Kitimat very well last year when the Utilities Commission rejected a power purchase agreement — a power sales deal, a gimmick, a scam — between Alcan, the government of British Columbia and B.C. Hydro. Nobody complained about that. Certainly, there was rejoicing in Kitimat. There was an independent body charged with deliberating on the facts, charged with listening to both sides of an argument and telling the public what was in the best interest of ratepayers — those who are dependent on electricity for heat, for light and so on.

This bill removes that oversight and imposes — in fact, hands over to the minister — extraordinary powers of regulation unseen in our history. This government is always happy to say it never happened in the history of B.C. Well, it's happening again today, but it's the wrong kind of history we're making today. This bill gives the Minister of Energy more power than he should have. If he thought about it, he'd probably reject it. If he were sitting on this side of the House, he certainly would.

If our positions were changed…. When I'm doing my due diligence as a critic, I like to think: "What would I do if I were sitting in the minister's chair?" I think that's a reasonable thing for us on this side of the House to do. Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition has a responsibility to look at every issue with an eye to what's wrong with it. In this case, nothing could be simpler. With respect to this bill, there's no easier job than to say: "Minister, you're on the wrong track." I'm quite happy to stand here in this place to do it, and I

Smart meters, 900 million bucks. No oversight. No business plan. That's going to hit the bottom line for all of us in this place, for everyone in our constituency who depends on electricity, and I don't think there are too many who don't. There are certain parts of the province that aren't serviced by B.C. Hydro, but by and large, those that are dependent on our public utility will be paying more as a result of this legislation, and I think that's wrong.

The notion that we have theories that we want to test in the public domain — I think that's reasonable. I think that a corporation the size of B.C. Hydro that's providing such an important service to all of us here, whether we be in industry, whether we have a commercial venture, whether we have a residence that requires heat through electricity or, certainly, for light…. We need to test our theories. What's the best way to go?

J. Horgan: Guinea pigs. Well, should we be deciding those issues in this place? Should we be deciding what's in the best interest of ratepayers here? I don't know about that.

I think certainly I have — and I'm going to probably be chastised for this — some confidence in the Minister of Energy. He has been doing the job for seven years. You've got to pick something up over that period of time. I think he's doing the best that he can, but I think he has forgotten, with the trappings of office, the importance of testing your theories.

The value of the Utilities Commission to all British Columbians is that thoughtful interveners bring forward arguments against positions that are wrong-headed, or they bring forward positions in support of initiatives that will preserve and protect this natural resource. A body of impartial individuals deliberate on that, render their judgment, and we proceed.

It served us very well, and I don't know why in the world we'd want to change it now, unless we were driven by politics and ideology — and no one better than the Minister of Environment to be driven by politics and ideology on these matters. He talks about clean, green energy. He talks about dirty power exported from other locations. Dirty power — bad thing. Net importers, net exporters.

I want to put that myth to bed, because what the government has done is create a myth that we're starving for energy. If we're not careful, at six o'clock tonight we're not going to have enough power to turn on the lights. Heaven help us in British Columbia. The envy of North America, with our hydroelectric abundance, is somehow on the precipice of falling into a dark grotto, never to return again unless we have independent power producers generating little tiny chunks of power at a time when we don't want it, at a price that we shouldn't pay. But that's the ideology that drives these people.

They've created a myth that we have a problem, and then they fabricated the least attractive option to solve that problem. If we are short of energy, why wouldn't we be coming up with more creative ways than just saying to a bunch of speculators from Howe Street: "Hey, have you bought up your water licences yet? Because we need a couple of megawatts here and a couple of megawatts there"?

Run-of-the-river in and of itself in certain locations is not a bad thing. I know the Minister of Environment will quote that back to me, I'm hopeful, because I think that's true. The notion that we create small pockets of energy where we don't currently create it to provide a market that's close to that source makes a lot of sense.

People talk often about the northwest. I know my colleague from Skeena will have some comments on that, and my colleague from North Coast. People talk about displacing diesel generation in the northwest, and that's a laudable goal. There are some opportunities for run-of-the-river in the northwest that make sense because you're not building a lot of infrastructure to get that power to where the demand is. So run-of-the-river can be a useful tool in the arsenal of opportunities available to B.C. Hydro to provide electricity to ratepayers in British Columbia. I certainly will support that initiative, and many of my colleagues will support it as well.

Where we run off the rails is the mantra and the mythology that this is the only solution. By saying that a project of 150 megawatts halfway up the coast with massive transmission infrastructure to bring it down to the load centre is somehow good electricity policy is just false. It's just false, and the minister knows that.

There are opportunities for micro-hydro that make good economic sense, good environmental sense, but every single initiative that comes forward is not always a good initiative. That's why the commission's there, and that's why we need it to be independent, at arm's length and unobstructed by policy directions such as are outlined in this piece of legislation.

The other challenge that I think the minister will have in selling this to the public…. Again, as I commented on his introductory remarks for second reading, it was right out of a B.C. Hydro commercial. I think that the one thing that can be said for the B.C. Liberals is that they've got the messaging down to a science. I guess if you can hire some of your friends in the best advertising firms in North America to come and sell your product, it's not a surprise.

They stick with the message. They're iron on the message. No matter what the facts are, no matter what the arguments might be, the message is the message. "Independent power is the way to go. Run-of-the-river is clean and green. Not a millimole of greenhouse gases will be emitted by any of these projects" — which is also patently false.

J. Horgan: A millimole is a very small amount. You'll recall that the Premier said that a molecule of

greenhouse gas was too much, in the throne speech. Actually, it was the Hon. Steven Point who said it at the behest of the Premier. But if we're worrying about molecules, I think we should worry about millimoles as well.

The notion that somehow these so-called clean, green, independent power producers up and down the coast and in the Interior are not generating environmental havoc is also patently false.

Road construction. Road construction requires you to cut down trees, requires you to use the large equipment which is usually run, at least where I always worked, by machinery that's driven by gasoline, by diesel, by carbon-based fuels that are emitting GHGs into the environment. You're making a road. You're creating a footprint. You're emitting greenhouse gases.

Transmission lines. What do you need to do that? Well, you've got to cut down some more trees. You're reducing your carbon sink. You're not able to sequester the carbon in your forest base because you're cutting it down to put a transmission corridor, and you're going to require greenhouse gases to be emitted from the equipment that's needed to string the wires, to fabricate the metal, to put in the giants that will storm down the coastline to provide electricity to small hamlets up and down the coast.

If it were only for the small hamlets, it would make some sense, but to generate electricity so far away from the load centre and then transmit it at a time when you don't need it, at a price that you shouldn't be paying, is folly. I wish that the minister and his government would admit to that now so that we could have a vigorous and constructive debate on the energy future of British Columbia.

We've talked in this place about a number of options available to us. We've heard about biomass, and I certainly am excited about exploring that opportunity. Again, my colleague from Cariboo North knows a good deal about that in the forest sector and how that's going to help stabilize our energy needs now and into the future. We've talked about micro-hydro.

We've talked about wind power generated in Alberta but not generated here in British Columbia. Again, an opportunity that I think we should explore. Should there be private sector involvement in that? Absolutely. Who should control the power at the end of the day? The people of British Columbia. Where should the dividend from generating electricity and selling it on the open market, whether it's transmitting it to the south…? Where should that benefit come? Back to the people of British Columbia.

If the government wants to walk its walk instead of just talking the talk, it should today recall the downstream benefits. They should do that today. Some 1,100 to 1,400 megawatts of clean, green electricity being generated in turbines on rivers in Washington State that belong to the people of British Columbia as a result of the Columbia River Treaty — 1,400 megawatts, just like that. Bring it back.

If we have a problem, if we're in deficit now and we need the power, what could be better than that premium product that we get sweet dollars…. Not B.C. Hydro but the province of B.C. gets very, very good money. I think that in the budget documents it said $350 million. Let's forego that revenue and bring back that green power. That's a solution right here, right now.

J. Horgan: Well, you've got to make choices, Minister. You think smart meters could go to health care? What about the $900 million to impose those? Can't have it both ways.

If our net import situation is troubling to the minister, if the Premier feels that we can no longer countenance this, stop selling electricity to the United States. Don't let a gigawatt leave the place. Put the walls up around the border. Nothing comes in; nothing comes out.

Integrated economy. Integrated marketplace. We are the top dog when it comes to electricity generation on the west coast of North America. Why would we encumber ourselves? Why would we say to B.C. Hydro: "Don't do it this way. Do it that way because we know better"?

J. Horgan: It's a sellout. That's exactly what it is. What they couldn't privatize in the front door, they're doing by stealth.

As we restrict the ability of B.C. Hydro to generate their own sources of new energy supply and rely exclusively on small projects that are inefficient, uneconomic and not generating electricity when we need it, we're crippling a Crown corporation that should be driving our economy, should be driving our quest for greenhouse gas reductions. The minister and I agree on that. B.C. Hydro should be at the vanguard of our initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia.

So why wouldn't you let the managers manage? Why wouldn't you let the experts do their jobs once they've tested their theories at the Utilities Commission? Why wouldn't you say to them: "Go to the commission, as you've done in the past, and make your case"? If it's a sound economic case, if it's a sound case for a generation of electricity at the lowest cost and in the best interest of ratepayers, it will fly through.

Why do we have to put, in policy and then in law, a requirement that they must only buy from one source by a date certain in the future? It makes no sense at all. If the people on that side of House shook their heads just for one minute, they'd come to that conclusion as well. Isn't that right?

J. Horgan: I think millimoles might be unparliamentary. We might have to get that checked by the Clerks' table. I don't know if the Clerk wants to look into that or not. Millimole.

J. Horgan: A crock of millimoles, yeah. That's a lot of millimoles. You can fit a lot of millimoles in a crock.

We're not prepared to stop exporting electricity to the United States, but we are saying to B.C. Hydro: "Don't buy it from the United States. We want you to keep selling it at a premium profit, but we certainly don't want you to be buying any of that stuff." None of that fish-flush power. None of that wind power from Alberta.

I'm making an extreme argument here, and that's the nature of this place. I do fully appreciate — and both ministers will tell me — that we do buy power that's generated from coal-fired plants. We do buy power that's generated from natural gas plants on the west coast of the United States.

However, if that's such a big problem, will the minister stand here today and say that we're not going to sell them any more natural gas? Where are they getting the gas that they're burning in these combined cycle plants? They're buying it from us. We're pumping it out of the Peace country as fast as we can drill the holes, and the minister knows that. I support that, because that's paying for health care and education in British Columbia.

So we're saying that it's okay to drill a hole in the ground, bring it up and pipe it to United States, but woe betide if you're going to buy any electricity that might generate from the source. I don't know. I don't know what David Suzuki would say about that. He doesn't talk to me, and that's actually quite all right with me. I don't know if he's on the mailing list of the Minister of Energy. I don't think he is either.

If we're going to sell the stuff, if we're going to drill it up, put it in pipes and sell it to the Americans, why wouldn't we want to buy the end product? We dig up coal in the northeast. We dig it up in the southeast. We send it over to Asia — to Korea, Japan and China. They use it to fabricate steel that comes back and drives our economy in the Lower Mainland. That's a good thing. It's all good.

But there are greenhouse gas effects from that — a huge responsibility there. If we're going to be serious about climate change, maybe we might want to contemplate — perish the thought — restricting our exports of natural products that generate greenhouse gases. I don't see that in the plan. Maybe it shouldn't be.

The minister and I will probably have a discussion about that off line, but that's certainly not what we're advocating on this side of the House. But if we're taking arguments to the extreme, which we are doing with respect to self-sufficiency in electricity, then maybe we ought to contemplate these other issues as well.

I would argue that the net effect of our exports of natural gas and our exports of coal has a far greater impact on climate change than any of the power that we might produce in off-peak times from the United States or from Alberta.

If we're going to take a firm stand on these issues, let's be honest about it. Let's be upfront with the public. I think they expect nothing less from us. I certainly think that I was sent here to be honest with the people in my community, and I call a spade a spade. I'm okay with that. My colleagues seem to be okay with that. My constituents, so far, seem to be okay with that.

So if we're going to be real about these issues, let's be real about it. Let's not pretend that amending the Utilities Commission Act to ensure that our friends in the independent power-producer sector will get a free ride. The standing offer provisions, for example…. The minister will maybe have an answer to that at committee stage. We'll have to see.

But as I read this act, without the benefit of a briefing from his staff, the standing offer provisions mean that any power producer under ten megawatts can just approach B.C. Hydro and say: "I've got some power to sell. Do you want to buy it?" And they say: "What's the price?" "This is the price." "Deal." No regulatory oversight; no assessment of the impact of the environment.

Independent power projects today, if they're under 49 megawatts, don't have to go through the environmental assessment office. Why are we not changing the Environmental Assessment Act to capture micro-hydro projects under 49 megawatts? If you're going to walk the walk, walk the walk. Don't say: "We're the greenest people on the planet." Premier Green Jeans stands up and says: "I've got all the solutions right here. I'm going to be self-sufficient. I'm going to buy from my friends. I'm not going to buy dirty power. I'm just going to export it all to my trading partners in the Far East, in the American southwest."

Hypocrisy. Call it what it is. If you're going to do the deal, if you're serious, if you're really committed to greening up, green up. Don't pretend you're doing it. Don't impose restraints on the Utilities Commission so that they can't adequately regulate an industry that has been, by and large, regulated in the interest of ratepayers — in the interests of British Columbia.

A $900 million expenditure for smart meters — no oversight; no business plan. It's the minister's pet project, perhaps. It's the CEO at B.C. Hydro's pet project, perhaps. Now it's just going to go running through, because it's in legislation — codified for all time right here in Bill 15.

J. Horgan: Are they digital? I don't know. I assume they are digital. At that price, you'd like to think that you're getting the best technology possible. They may work.

I don't want to belittle the technology, although my colleague from Delta North makes a good point. I don't want to belittle the technology, but let's test it. I'm not an expert. I know the member from Penticton over there is not an expert.

But I know where experts reside. They reside at the Utilities Commission. The interveners that go time after time, hearing after hearing, defending the public interest know what they're talking about. They have access to professionals and individuals who know this stuff.

Why wouldn't we want to avail ourselves of that in the interest of good public policy?

J. Horgan: It's a Blu-ray. We're going to get a Blu-ray smart meter instead of a DVD smart meter. That's going to be the solution.

I'm nearing the end. I know that will sadden members on the other side. I just wish.…

J. Horgan: I've just been encouraged. I'll carry on. With respect to the standing offer provisions….

It's been so long since I've seen the member for Yale-Lillooet that I'm surprised he doesn't want me to talk a little bit longer.

When the minister talks about being a net importer, he fails to do the math. Again, I won't trouble the House with the matrices here. But when we talk about megawatts in and megawatts out, that's an apples and apples comparison. We're buying apples when they're really, really cheap, and we're selling apples when they're really, really expensive.

We're not at a net export deficiency when it comes to dollars and cents, and that's something that I know all constituents of mine understand, because those on that side of the House keep taking dollars out of their pockets, whether for ferry rate increases, B.C. Hydro increases, ICBC increases, MSP premium increases. You can't go camping without paying more money now. Our friend Randy Ranger from Chilliwack there has just bumped up the cost of renting a tent pad in parks across British Columbia.

People understand dollars and cents. We're selling electricity, making lots of money. We're buying it and not spending it too much. What could be wrong with that? Free enterprisers on the other side, unite. Join with me. Capitalism rules here. We're doing pretty well by this game. The private sector is serving our energy component very, very well, and the beauty of it is, it's a publicly owned utility — has been for 40 years. Social Credit preserved that right. The NDP preserved….

My friend from Nelson-Creston pines for the old days when Social Credit — and Reform, I guess, to a certain extent; the minister may correct me on that — would protect these public assets because they were beneficial to all of us. The commons — it was beneficial to all of us.

The B.C. Liberal approach — the more corporate approach, the Howe Street approach — doesn't see it that way. It's all about stock options. It's all about bonuses for CEOs. Quarterly profits rule the day. How did we do last quarter? That's what's important to B.C. Liberals.

People in my constituency want to know what they're going to do tomorrow. What are they going to do tomorrow?

Quarterly profits do not make good public policy. What makes good public policy is planning to ensure that we have what we need now and into the future. The premise, the theory of self sufficiency, as put forward by the minister and in the glossy ads from B.C. Hydro, resonates with people, and it should. It should resonate with people. It's important.

I know that my mom brought me up to take care of myself. Make sure you can take care of yourself and your family. Everyone in this place understands that. My constituents understand that, but what's happened is that we've co-opted that language, that value that drives most people in British Columbia, and we've said that we have to be self-sufficient in electricity. It's the most asinine thing I can possibly imagine.

Sell the apples when they're really expensive; buy them when they're really cheap. That's farmer logic. My colleague from Prince George North will understand that. That makes good sense. The farm gate is doing well if you're selling high and buying low. Life is good. What could possibly be wrong with that?

My friend from Columbia River–Revelstoke is going to join us in this debate. He feels exactly the same way.

I think that as much as I've enjoyed myself…. I'd like to keep on talking just so those on the other side would have a better understanding of what a free market economy should look like. Intervention by the state, the heavy hand of the minister imposing regulation on the free market — it's an outrage.

My friend from West Vancouver can't contain himself. He's on my side. He's with me on this.

Let B.C. Hydro be B.C. Hydro. Let them go forth and do what they've done for generations — provide clean, green, cost-effective power to our economy, to our citizens and to the province of British Columbia.

N. Macdonald: I rise to speak about Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. Essentially, what this does is it gives a regulatory framework to the B.C. energy plans that we've seen. The position I would put forward is that those B.C. energy plans are some of the most disastrous ideas that have been put forward in the history of this province. It's not only me who says that. Many, as they come to look at this issue, would recognize that that is the case.

This government came into power with a promise by the Premier that he would not undermine B.C. Hydro, and it made sense to British Columbians that you would not do that. B.C. Hydro has provided British Columbians with a consistent, cheap source of power for a long, long time, and British Columbians have come to appreciate that service.

When this B.C. energy plan was put forward, it was framed very carefully by the minister and by the proponents of these ideas. The language that was chosen was chosen very carefully. The language does not

match the reality and tends to push people to a false perception of what the government is actually doing.

What people need to do is take the time for any issues that have come before this House. This is one that people should take the time to fully understand because it will impact them in a very fundamental way. It will cost them more. It will jeopardize our energy security.

The government, when they put they put this forward, talked about things that I believe in, things that I think are important. They talked about clean green power. That's appealing. That's something that New Democrats would find appealing and, if it was the case, would support. They talked about sustainability. They talked about self-sufficiency.

When this first came forward…. Coming as a former mayor of Golden, there are — the minister and I have talked about it — transmission issues. We're at the end of a line. Even though we come from an area that has produced a tremendous amount of power, we have breaks in power.

For my daughter's graduation they went up to the ski hill, got the music started. The power was off. We had the 50th anniversary and had all sorts of people in town. The power was off. It happens on occasion. B.C. Hydro does the best that it can, but we're at the end of a transmission line. Despite the fact that we have repeatedly talked to B.C. Hydro about changing that, it's not likely to change. That's a discussion that has gone on not only with this government but with previous governments, and on and on.

When the idea of having some small private power facilities was going around, it was not as unappealing as the reality has turned out to be. When I first heard about it, I thought that there were elements of that that could be good. Part of why this whole policy frustrates me so much is because it has so deliberately been put forward in a way that contrasts with the reality we actually have when we look at the policy.

The B.C. energy plan is intended, in my view and in the view of many British Columbians, to serve private interests. Many of those private interests are very, very close to the B.C. Liberals. It does not serve the public interest. In fact, it compromises the public interest. That is the fundamental problem with this policy and with this bill that will provide a regulatory framework for the B.C. energy plans. Consistently this government looks after the corporate interest, and they put that first. For ordinary people, we pay the price. In this policy that is absolutely the case.

I would invite people to read Liquid Gold; it's by Dr. John Calvert. It is a book that takes some time to get through. Mark Hume from the Globe and Mail read the book, reviewed it. His conclusion was that this policy is the worst piece of public policy in the history of British Columbia. That was his conclusion.

At no time has the minister attempted to go and challenge any of the assertions that Dr. Calvert makes. He has not because he cannot. Those assertions are either fact, or else the minister can contest them. But he has not contested them. The conclusion not only of me but of others…. Anyone who reads the book, who takes the time to fully understand what's going on, would agree with Mark Hume that it is the worst piece of public policy in the history of this province.

You can look at Dr. Shaffer. He writes Lost in Transmission. Again, it's an excellent document. It's informative. If there was ever a time that people would take to go through and understand energy policy, this is the time. That document is there. It's on line. People should read it. There's other information on the Internet that you can search through. You can see movies. You can understand what exactly is going on here.

What has the government done? Step 1, they created a sense of crisis. I think the member that spoke before me, the critic, explained very well just how false that sense of crisis was. There are and always will be energy pressures. There are things that we need to think through and move through in an informed way.

To be informed, we have to get information that is accurate and that properly lays the decisions in front of the public. What has consciously been done is that the public has been pushed in a direction so that it cannot make informed choices. The government has done that, the government-controlled board of B.C. Hydro has done that, and the Independent Power Producers of B.C. has consciously done that.

We've heard a lot about scandal, but that is one of the biggest scandals that is in front of this House right now. The public has not been given accurate information so that they can fully understand what is going on.

You create this crisis atmosphere. You talk about a power shortage. You talk about the need to be self-sufficient. In my area we have some of the biggest dams. We provide power for two million British Columbians from the region that I represent each and every day. It is a significant series of projects. We've lived with the implications of those projects, and we have benefited, like all British Columbians, from the wealth that those projects created.

The advantage that we have in British Columbia is that we have dams which can hold water and that we can produce electricity when we need it. In Alberta they have many forms of power production, but almost all of them are going to be dependent on certain conditions. They have wind power; it's true. But they depend a great deal on power produced by fossil fuels, and that's true.

Now, these plants have to produce to meet the peaks. In Alberta they have to provide the energy that's needed for the course of the day. As you know, there are times during the day when there is a lot of energy used. In the mornings and when people are having dinner, lots of power is used. Alberta has capacity for that time, but they cannot really ratchet it down in any way. So in the middle of the night they will have all sorts of power that they're producing that they have no need for and that they want to sell. And they will sell it very, very cheap.

What happens is B.C. Hydro will store their water, and they will buy cheap Alberta power, or they will

buy cheap power from other jurisdictions that have to produce it in that way. It makes complete sense to do it that way. Then when there is high demand in western North America, they open up the gates, and they produce lots of power. B.C. Hydro sells that for top dollar. That is not about necessity; that is just about doing something that is smart. It provides money for the province of British Columbia. It's just good common sense to do it that way.

When I'm in Revelstoke, at five o'clock the river is flowing beneath the Revelstoke dam, and they're producing power. In the middle of the night they cut it right back, and they save up that power.

That's the advantage that we have with the dam system that was produced with, in retrospect, a tremendous amount of vision by people going back to W.A.C. Bennett. Throughout time we have worked with that system. It is a great system, and it gives us a great advantage.

So you create, using numbers, this impression that we have an energy problem. We have challenges that need to be thought through, but it is not a crisis. Yet the government creates the idea that there is a crisis.

Step 2 is that you prevent B.C. Hydro from building new facilities. Now, they are able to improve existing ones. They are putting a generator in, in Revelstoke — good idea. But they cannot participate in the run-of-the-river projects. They cannot participate in building wind power.

To do that makes no sense at all. This is a company that is a Crown corporation and that has proven itself very effective at managing projects, has made tremendous amounts of money for the province and has served ratepayers very, very well. But the government steps in and dictates that that is what is going to happen, and you say: "Well, that does not make sense."

It only does not make sense if you think that it's being done for the public interest. It does serve certain private interests very, very well. That's a problem with this policy, and it's why people need to understand what's going on here.

Step 3. You take sites that B.C. Hydro ratepayers identified, and they identified sites on rivers all over British Columbia. We paid for that as ratepayers. We identified the sites. Then those sites were given to people for between $5,000 and $10,000. There wasn't a bidding system. I think most British Columbians didn't know they were up for bid. There were a group of people that were able to go in there and grab them, and they're gone.

Then you take those sites that ratepayers identified and go to step 4. B.C. Hydro is forced to go into energy purchase agreements with individuals that want to build private power plants on our rivers on sites that we identified. They are given such a lucrative contract that, in essence, we pay for the construction of those sites.

So we pay. We pay to find them. We pay because it is our land, our river, and we give such good rates from B.C. Hydro that essentially we have paid to build these sites. They get a contract between 15 and 40 years.

Step 6 is that when the 15 to 40 years are up, these producers are able to sell onto the North American grid, the western North American grid. So when the minister says that this is about sustainable supply, he is absolutely and completely wrong in saying that.

We will have to bid for that power against California, against other jurisdictions. So we have no control over that power in the long term. I mean, you just have to review what is going on here. We identify the sites; we pay to build something. We have no control when the contract period is over. We essentially give away the power, the right to that power.

Does any of this make sense? It does not. It does not make sense at any level if this is about the public interest. My argument is that the private interest of certain powerful individuals has trumped the public good in this case.

The other impact will not only be on the pocketbook, and we're feeling the pocketbook impacts almost right away. The other impact will be environmental. The environmental impacts need to be considered cumulatively. This is not just one project. These are projects littering the province.

There is no consideration for the cumulative impact not only of the projects themselves but also of the roads that will go to these sites and the transmission lines that will go from the sites. These are isolated sites. Let's remember who's paying for the transmission lines. We are — $600 million in the next short period of time. We are paying to connect to these private sites.

Do people in rural areas have a say about whether these should go ahead? Is there any consideration for locals in rural areas as to whether this is something that makes sense? It doesn't.

The minister signed an agreement with the Union of British Columbia Municipalities saying they would keep local government involved, but after that ceremony was over, he chose to come in here with Bill 30, section 56 — tore it up.

Now we have a case where local government is completely removed from zoning decisions on whether these projects should go ahead or not. So that is taken out.

What I put to you is that it's a disastrous piece of legislation. If people want to understand it, they should take the time to read Dr. Calvert's book Liquid Gold. It should be a must-read for people. Read from Dr. Shaffer. All of the assertions that are made in those books have not been challenged by the government — the core assertions.

When I wrote in my MLA report, I wrote a number of things that the minister, in fact, responded to. These are the assertions I made.

I said that the Liberal government was consistently working to undermine B.C. Hydro. The minister wrote back. With all the resources that his ministry has, he did not challenge that assertion. He called me a socialist, but he didn't challenge that assertion. He had the opportunity to, and when he speaks, he can say that again.

The Liberal government does not care about the cost to either British Columbians or the environment.

He didn't contest that. Public funds were used to identify sites. The minister didn't contest that fact.

B.C. Hydro is prohibited from developing new sites for generation. He didn't contest that fact. He did say that they're looking at Site C. Okay, they're considering it. He did say that there was a new generator going in, in an existing dam. That's true.

B.C. sites were purchased for as little as $5,000. That's true. The minister did say about that: "Well, independent power producers had to apply for water licences." So what is the process? What was the process for that? You had to really know what was going on. There wasn't bidding to get these sites. They just ended up in certain people's hands.

I asserted that there were certain costs that we're paying right now — $5.98 per megawatt hour. I realize that a lot of that is because of work that was done in the past, but that we would now be paying as much as possibly 110 megawatts per hour is needlessly expensive. I made that assertion. The minister didn't contest it.

I made the assertion that the Liberal government is manipulating a situation that will ensure massive profits for certain individuals, and the minister did not contest that fact. I said that public money was being used to pay for transmission lines to these sites. The minister did not choose to contest that. I said that at the end of these contracts, there was no obligation to provide power to B.C., and the minister did not contest that fact.

I said that we're giving away our rivers. The minister did contest that. He said that's not true, and that we still own the rivers. But you can't kayak in them. You are limited in your access. The value from those rivers is truly, in my view, given away.

If that's the case — and the minister does not contest that — then I would say with confidence that this is the worst piece of public policy in the history of this province. It is disastrous. People will be paying more. We will be dealing with environmental issues in a way that is not thought through.

I'll give you an example of what should be taking place. If we do decide that we want to go ahead with projects, then we should truly inform the public. We should put all the facts on the table, and we should make sure that those facts are uncontestable. That has not happened. It needs to happen, because there will be tough decisions.

If you're going to go ahead with any project, there are trade-offs. The suggestion that is made, and it's a good suggestion, is that if you're going to move ahead with a project on a river or a wind project, that you need to consider a number of things. Certainly, I would say that there are three things that should be considered. These aren't my ideas. They're ideas that I've heard others speak about, but I think they're reasonable.

You would make sure that the projects, as a whole, in a region are environmentally responsible. I think that that needs to take place.

If you're going to move with these projects and have them, you need to make sure that the region that they are going to be placed in has a say, that there is a mechanism. Now, this government removed the mechanism that local government already had in place to make zoning decisions. But there has to be a regional planning component to what's going on and some regional input into decisions that are being made that impact people.

There has to be public ownership. There has to be a public good. That can take many different forms. It could be B.C. Hydro, in my view. The Columbia Basin Trust — that might make sense. It might also make sense that you have first nations that would control a particular project.

So the projects on their own are not necessarily bad, but each one of them needs to be considered and fully understood.

In my area, the project that will most immediately become contentious will be the Glacier-Howser project. Glacier-Howser is a wilderness area. It sits in the West Kootenay. It will have 80 percent of its water flow removed and put through a tunnel. That water will never return to those river systems. It will end up in the Duncan reservoir. That river will be changed in a dramatic way.

Now, as a sidebar to that, if they were to take 90 percent of the water…. The province seems to have nothing in place for checking on that. We simply don't have environmental people to go and check, and we don't have any penalties in place if they do. So there's further weakness with it.

Secondly, we're going to give them the land for the roads. Then we're going to have a transmission line that will move over the Purcells and connect in Invermere, all at our cost. So very little of that project seems to take place.

One of the heartening things is that the Minister of Environment seems to have put a roadblock in front of one of these projects. It certainly doesn't seem to have public support, and I think that for many, many people in the Kootenays there is the opportunity to have the same success with projects that don't make sense.

The standard that seems to have been set by the government is that if you have strong enough opposition, there is the possibility of changing these plans. But the real weakness is not to be dealt with one plan, one project at a time. The overall weakness with the B.C. energy plan and with this legislation that's intended to enable it is with the plan itself. It is fundamentally flawed.

It is going to cost each and every British Columbian ratepayer far, far more. It is an energy plan that removes rural people, local people, from any of the planning process. It fails to take into consideration the cumulative effect of these projects, and it is designed to lessen our energy security rather than enhance it. At every level the public interest is served poorly. All that is served is the private interests of certain individuals, and that is what is scandalous about this policy.

In the weeks and months ahead we will see efforts — and certainly in my area there will be efforts — to

make sure that the people have the information they need to understand this policy.

What you will see in the Kootenays, I am sure, is that as people come to fully understand that what is going on — what this minister is proposing, what this minister has been working on for his time here in government — is as deeply flawed as Dr. Calvert says it is, as deeply flawed as Dr. Shaffer says it is, as deeply flawed as columnists who read the book and understand the issue conclude it is — and that it is being put forward for all of the wrong reasons and that proper energy policy is critical to their self-interest.

It's critically important to the interest of this province. It is important economically. It is important environmentally, and it's important socially. We depend a great deal on the funds that B.C. Hydro has raised and has given to the people of British Columbia. They've been very helpful in funding programs. They've been very helpful in moving the province forward.

I'm going to give my colleague an opportunity to speak. I certainly look forward to the minister's response to some of the things I've said here. I did give him an opportunity to respond in writing publicly. As I say, the assertions that I put forward were not challenged. If those assertions are the case, then the conclusion is absolutely clear that this is the worst piece of public policy in the history of this province — to add a Liberal phrase — bar none.

R. Austin: I rise today to make some remarks in second reading of Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, 2008. This bill is simply another step in the B.C. Liberals' plan to enforce their energy plan that they brought out a couple of years ago, to essentially take away the advantage that so many British Columbians have had from having cheap energy in this province for decades.

When I moved to this country 28 years ago, one of the things that struck me as incredible was the difference in price in electricity here in British Columbia as opposed to where I had lived in Europe. It was just unbelievable — several times cheaper here than in England.

Of course, I soon found out that the reason for that was that this province is blessed and has been blessed by people who had vision years and years ago — 40 years ago, 50 years ago — to create the system of dams that were publicly owned and nationalized at the time to create this common good for all British Columbians.

It's not just on the residential level, for people at home who could take advantage of having cheap electricity, but perhaps more importantly for the fact that this province was able to use that electricity — that cheap power — to generate all kinds of industrial activities that gave this province a huge competitive advantage over almost every other jurisdiction in North America.

What we are seeing here with the Liberal energy plan and now with this Bill 15 is the government moving to force the B.C. Utilities Commission to look at every new energy supply contract in a light that allows them to choose from only one source of power. The only choice given is to buy power from private power producers.

You might wonder why that policy would change when the previous policy for 40 years, of having a public utility that generated power, had worked so well for British Columbians. I have to conclude, in examining this whole issue, that what we are seeing here is simply a transfer of wealth from the public good to the private sector.

The rivers and the waterways that run through these turbines are all public resources, and for 40 years they have generated cheap electricity for all British Columbians. What we are seeing with this Liberal energy plan is a directive to say: "Listen, B.C. Hydro, I realize this has worked really well for the last 40 years, and you've been able to generate electricity at an incredibly competitive price. But now we would like only private power producers to be able to use that public resource to generate new electricity."

If the new electricity was coming on stream at market prices, that wouldn't be so bad. But oh no. They're coming on stream and being bought by B.C. Hydro at prices that are substantially higher than the current market price — much, much higher. And who's paying for that? British Columbian citizens are paying for that, and so are British Columbian industrial users paying for that.

What we have seen in the last few years, as a result of this move to independent power producers or private power, is a huge number of companies and individuals glom on to the idea of grabbing or tendering for a piece of a river. They know that once they have a piece of a river and once they can go to the bank with a contract from B.C. Hydro to buy that power for 20 or 30 years at a price substantially higher than today's market value, they literally have got a licence to print money. That's what they have.

So when the government turns around and says: "This is all green power. That's the reason why we're doing this. It is all green power…." It is green. It's the same colour as the millions of $20 bills that are going to go into that bank account. That's the only thing that's really green about this.

Let's examine some of the things that have happened as a result of this move to private power. I live in a part of the province that has one of the largest privately owned generating dams in the province — namely, the Nechako or perhaps better known as the Alcan power plant in Kemano. For approximately 50 years that power — generated at $5 a megawatt and currently with a $5-a-megawatt water rental, for the total cost of $10 a megawatt — was used to generate jobs and create an industrial economy in the northwest, one that we need very desperately now that we have seen our forestry sector go so far down.

As soon as the B.C. Liberal energy plan came up, Alcan, of course, looked at that and said: "Well, why would we want to be using this power now, which for 50 years we used to generate jobs and industrial activity, to make aluminum when the margins selling

electricity back to B.C. Hydro could make it much more profitable?" And that's what has happened.

We have seen the industrialization act of B.C. essentially stripped and changed by this government. We have seen a big corporation look after its own interests, naturally — its shareholders' interests. They are mandated by law to maximize their profit. What they have done is simply gone ahead and said, "Okay, we will now submit ourselves as an independent or private power producer. We will look to see how much money we can make from selling power to B.C. Hydro rather than generating aluminum and thus generating jobs" — in my part of British Columbia.

They have been successful in this, I think, in large part because they were probably one of the people lobbying hardest and strongest behind the scenes with this Liberal government…

My colleague asks: "Who lobbied?" I don't know. I don't know who lobbied. One can only suggest that there may have been some interest from Alcan — you know, the Pat Kinsellas of this world. I don't know, but certainly there was lobbying that went on behind the scenes. Alcan, or Rio Tinto Alcan as it is today and may be BHP Rio Tinto tomorrow…. We don't know yet. But companies like that are the ones who are profiting from this new B.C. energy plan.

It's really, really sad to think that British Columbians, who for 45 years have taken advantage of cheap electricity, are now losing that benefit. They'll only see price increases incrementally to begin with. Okay. It will still look fairly good relative to other jurisdictions.

My point is this. If B.C. Hydro was able to actually be involved in generating new electricity through small hydro projects as well as through big projects, we would continue to have that competitive advantage for the next 50 to 100 years. Under this B.C. Liberal energy plan, we are going to gradually lose that competitive advantage.

Who's going to benefit? Who's going to be taking these public resources and turning them into gold or into green — into green $20 bills? The people who are going to be benefiting from that are, of course, all the friends of the B.C. Liberal Party who have lobbied so hard and given so many dollars to this government to make sure that their interests are taken care of.

What we are seeing with Bill 15 is a B.C. Utilities Commission that will no longer be allowed to do its jobs in the interest of ratepayers and ordinary British Columbians. This bill is essentially tying the hands of the B.C. Utilities Commission and forcing them to work in the interests of the private power producers rather than in the interests of ordinary ratepayers.

That is the tragedy because up until recently, most British Columbians have not really been aware of what is going on with the B.C. Liberal energy plan. They've listened to all the talk, as some of my colleagues have mentioned. Beautifully messaged, it's all about green power. It's all around sustainability. It's all around getting over the crisis of there being a shortage of electricity.

There is no shortage of electricity in British Columbia. We import electricity every single day through B.C. Hydro. We should do that because we make money selling it at other times of the day when the prices are much higher. That brings another huge benefit to British Columbians, and it's one of the great advantages of having our system of dams that was created by the Socreds many, many years ago.

That is all going to be taken away, gradually removed. But fortunately, we are finally now having these debates — not only here, but more importantly, we are having these debates out in the public. We saw a thousand people a week ago pack a hall to comment on what they thought about the Upper Pitt River private power project.

I have to say that in listening to most of the arguments there, they were mostly environmental. And why not? That was an area of extreme importance for wild salmon habitat and for grizzly bears, in my understanding. People there said they didn't want it.

But even though it was a great victory, lost in that debate was the fundamental economic argument about private power, which is simply this. If the government can borrow money cheaper than anybody else and can hire a private contractor to come and build a new electricity project, whether it be a small micro-hydro project or a large-scale dam, once that loan is repaid and once that capital has been paid for, British Columbians then benefit on an ongoing basis — long term, for generations, forever and ever, because this water runs forever — with cheap electricity.

If a private power producer does that…. They go and borrow the money with no risk. Let's remember here. There is no risk to them, because they got the river. They got a contract from B.C. Hydro to buy the power at some exorbitant price. Where's the risk? There is none. They get to benefit from this huge windfall of profit, and once it's paid for, they then derive the benefit of continuing to send huge bills to B.C. Hydro.

All in all, as my colleagues have alluded to, this is a dreadful piece of legislation — the energy plan. Bill 15 is just an important part of bringing in that dreadful piece of legislation or policy, and I look forward in the next stage of debate to asking further questions, once we have a more fulsome discussion of this bill.

S. Simpson: I'm pleased to have the opportunity to stand and speak to Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. Regardless of comments from the minister and others, I think the first thing we need to understand about this particular piece of legislation is that it really has nothing to do with enhancing or improving the sustainability of energy in British Columbia. It has nothing to do with that at all.

It clearly has absolutely nothing to do with advancing the public interest in British Columbia. That's more than evident when you look at this particular piece of

legislation and link it to the energy plans that it advances and to the government's assault on B.C. Hydro.

What it has is everything to do with advancing the private interests of the friends of the B.C. Liberal Party and of this government. It has everything to do with creating circumstances and a situation where they in fact get to benefit even more from our public resources, without having to pay for them, than they do today.

That's the problem with this piece of legislation. One of the problems with this piece of legislation is that it in fact challenges our energy strategy in British Columbia, which has been long held — back since the days of W.A.C. Bennett when he first put the strategy and the plan in place, which has been largely and in great part followed by subsequent governments after W.A.C. Bennett.

That was a strategy that looked at the value of B.C. Hydro. It put B.C. Hydro in place and looked at what B.C. Hydro does for British Columbians. What we know that B.C. Hydro has done for British Columbians over the past many years and decades is that it has provided very cost-efficient power for us — some of the cheapest energy and electricity in the world, as people are often saying on both sides of the House.

It did that by being able to be strategic; by being able to lay out and plan for energy in British Columbia; by being able to use its ability to reservoir energy and to save energy; by being able to advance a strategy where it would buy energy when prices are low, sell energy when prices are high, and out of that, create a significant dividend for British Columbians — a dividend that, in fact, pays for health care, pays for education, pays for many of the programs that we have in our province and that we value.

B.C. Hydro very much was a key player in that. B.C. Hydro also has been a very key player in dealing with supporting economic development strategies in the province. It has a long history of supporting economic development, which has been important and essential for many of our communities around this province.

Now what we have is a government and a minister who has decided that it's more important to fill the bank accounts of his friends than it is to protect the public interest. So what do they do?

What they do is they develop an energy plan that says: "We will tether B.C. Hydro. B.C. Hydro will no longer be the utility that it has been for all these decades. It will simply be a tool to buy at inflated prices the energy that our friends in the private sector will produce. With a couple of minor exceptions, we won't allow it to look at the question of developing energy for itself. Instead, we'll fill the pockets of our friends, and I'm sure we'll get good campaign donations for that at the end of the day, come next year." That's what the government is saying.

So what they've done is they've essentially pulled back and removed the ability of B.C. Hydro to do the job that it was always intended to do, to do the job that made it arguably the most important Crown corporation in this province in terms of benefit to British Columbians. They have removed that now through the proposals and the plans that they adopted in 2003.

What we have now, of course, is that they've advanced that plan even further. They've done that by bringing forward and promoting this scheme around private power and by advancing a scheme around private power. For those who may be paying attention to this debate, it's important that they understand how this works.

Essentially, B.C. Hydro is directed and goes out and does an assessment of the rivers in this province — determines their energy value in terms of energy they can produce, in the case of run of the river — and posts that up so that these companies don't have to do their own analysis of that. Just make it available on their website so that these companies can just come along and check off the ones that they want to apply for water licences on, and they do that.

Then they get these water licences that they buy for $5,000, maybe $10,000, depending on the capacity of the river. They essentially own a river. That's the reality. The government will tell us that they don't, but they essentially have bought themselves a river.

What they've done then is said to B.C. Hydro: "You have to buy this power." They haven't given them real options. They've said: "You've got to buy this power from these companies, and you've got to buy it and pay for it, even if you don't need it."

So the companies then come forward and get a power purchase agreement from B.C. Hydro, paying in the $90 range a megawatt hour for energy for which, I would note, the benefit that we get for that is something in the $5 range. But we're going to pay $90 for it. So that's what happens first.

Then, of course, those companies take that power purchase agreement to the bank. They don't have to have any money because this is like money. They're able to go in with that power purchase agreement and borrow all the money that they need in order to develop their projects.

Of course, we have agreed to use public dollars to pay for much of that development, as well, around transmission and other areas. So we're paying lots of those costs for the private power companies, and they're producing this power that we are paying almost twice the market rate for.

We have this situation where we create enormous wealth for those people who create private power, paid for by the taxpayers, and the argument for this is pretty much twofold. The first argument is the one around energy self-sufficiency and that we need to be self-sufficient as our demand for power grows. As much as the government would like to tell people that we have a problem with self-sufficiency today, that's simply not true. We don't have a problem with self-sufficiency today. Anybody who is being reasonable in this discussion will acknowledge that.

But what we do know is that, as we do have increasing demands for energy, we should be doing something to address those. But what the government has done, instead of allowing B.C. Hydro to do that job

and to actually go out and meet these future challenges around self-sufficiency questions by being able to develop strategies that will work into the future and that will take into consideration both economic and environmental concerns, is they've legislated a situation where they force B.C. Hydro, without regard to their costs or to benefits for British Columbians and without any independent scrutiny at all….

By doing this, by this piece of legislation, they've removed the B.C. Utilities Commission's ability to scrutinize this question. What they've said is: "You need to meet this standard by 2016, whether it makes sense, whether it's legitimate, or not." So they forced the hand of the Utilities Commission with this to force Hydro's hand.

So we have a situation now where B.C. Hydro is going to be forced to make decisions — and the Utilities Commission to make decisions and provide directives — that are not necessarily economic and certainly are not environmentally supportable but will go ahead. Part of that is to drive this agenda around private power. What the agenda around private power is, is to drive the agenda that looks to privatize B.C. Hydro, and that's what this is about. This is about the dismantling of B.C. Hydro. That's what underlies this bill. That's what underlies the energy plan. That's what we know.

The government, though, doesn't have the courage to just stand up and say that, to stand up and say: "We are opposed to B.C. Hydro. We are opposed to the public utility. We're going to shut it down, and we're going to hand it over to our friends in the private sector." They don't have the courage to just stand up and defend the position that they take in the back room. Instead we have this privatization-by-stealth model that has been adopted by the B.C. Liberals and this government.

The challenge we have here is: how do we deal with this? Now, what's starting to happen and what we're seeing more and more of…. The situation in the Pitt River was an excellent example of this. The government came out, oh, a couple of years ago and started the mantra around green power.

Obviously, somebody in the public affairs bureau did a good job, because they said: "How do we sell the privatization of B.C. Hydro? Well, what we'll do is we'll talk about green power, and we'll talk about run of the river as green power, and we'll use that. We'll greenwash this whole issue with that in the hopes that we can slide these projects through, and people will think that it's a positive thing for the environment."

But that's not what's happening. We just have to look back to what happened in the project in the Pitt River. Now, let's be clear here. While the Minister of Environment has said, after pressure from thousands of people, that he's not going to do the park boundary amendment — which was a good thing; hopefully, that will stop that project — this government has never said that it is opposed to the project on the Pitt River.

What we have, though, is a project here where organization after organization — whether it be environmental groups, anglers, business interests, the tourism sector, local governments, first nations — said that this project is a bad idea. They laid that out in some detail.

We heard from people like Mark Angelo, who stood up at that meeting and said that this is a bad idea for the environment. This is a bad idea for salmon. We had first nations from the Squamish Nation stand up and say that this is a bad idea, and it has to be stopped.

Voice after voice, people who I'm sure stood in that meeting…. I was in the meeting in Pitt Meadows with over 1,200 people in the room and hundreds more outside, who couldn't get in. I looked around at those faces and those people in that room, and I'm sure there's no shortage of those people who probably voted for this government. But I'm pretty sure they won't vote for this government again.

They won't vote for this government because they know that while their voices may have been strong enough to stop the Pitt River private power project, there are potentially 500 projects like this around the province. The gold rush is on with these projects, and this government is prepared to give those rivers and streams away for a song to their friends. They're prepared to do that, to fill those coffers of their friends, knowing that they will get the support come election time from those companies.

What we have here is a bill that was supposed to deal with some of the issues around environmental or social concerns. Well, hon. Speaker, I'm reminded back to 2005. That was at the time when this government refused to oppose the Terasen sale to Kinder Morgan at that point. Of course what happened there was that that went to the Utilities Commission, and there were great concerns raised around that sale to Kinder Morgan about their environmental record.

I wrote to the Attorney General and to the Minister of Environment at that time and asked them to provide a directive to the Utilities Commission, which would require the Utilities Commission to look at the social and environmental aspects of that sale. Of course, the Attorney General and the Minister of Environment rejected that and refused to make the environment or social issues a concern in the sale of Terasen Gas. As a consequence, the Utilities Commission didn't do that.

When we talked about that, we talked about the need for the Utilities Commission to have a broad mandate around social and environmental concerns to be able to make those a key factor in decision-making. This bill does nothing to help do that. This bill does nothing to support the Utilities Commission or provide directive to the Utilities Commission that, in fact, environmental concerns, broad environmental concerns — whether it be around emissions or around the protection of biodiversity — are not a consideration here.

Certainly, the social implications of the costs of buying overpriced power from private operators are not a consideration here. In fact, the argument can be made that what this piece of legislation does is exactly the opposite.

What it does is drive the Utilities Commission to make decisions that will advance the interests of

private power projects regardless of whether they are in fact meeting the high environmental standards or the socio-economic standards that we should expect from projects that are developed in British Columbia. But there is no requirement and no obligation for that to happen at all. In fact, this piece of legislation, I believe, will take us in exactly the opposite direction.

When we get to discussing this in committee, I'm sure that we'll have lots of opportunity to talk about why the bill was crafted in the way it was, why the bill should probably be called the private power enabling act rather than the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. But we'll get to that in due course when this bill comes to the next phase.

What we truly need is legislation that, in fact, does what we called on the government to direct the Utilities Commission to do in 2005. We need a piece of legislation that does make the environment the priority that it should be. We need a piece of legislation that does look at the interests of our communities, the interests of local communities and the interests of business, and makes that a priority in terms of decisions that the commission makes. Unfortunately, this bill doesn't do that.

What we need to do at this point is…. I would hope that the minister, when we get to committee stage and get to discuss this, will pay attention to the comments of this side of the House, will pay attention to the concerns that are raised not just by this side of the House but by thousands of British Columbians across the province, who are increasingly seeing what's happening with the private run of the river, and pull back on those.

It would be good if this government would see that British Columbians…. If we're going to move in the directions that this government is advancing, there needs to be a much fuller debate on this than this government's allowing to happen.

We know, and I would remind the hon. Speaker, that one of the vehicles for having that debate around run of the river, of course, is at the local level. Local governments — I can think of the Squamish-Lillooet regional district as one — were starting to have that discussion.

I'll remind the Speaker that on the Ashlu, which was the first prominent private power project that received a significant amount of exposure, the Squamish-Lillooet regional district had engaged the people in their region, had those discussions with the company involved and had discussions with the government, but had made the decision that the Ashlu was the wrong river to be developed for private power.

They had made that decision. It's important to know that this wasn't the regional district that said no to all those projects. They had said yes to a number of smaller projects, but in their assessment of rivers in their area, they had assessed the Ashlu as a river that had more diverse and important uses, and that it shouldn't be used for private power.

Now the government…. We all saw the documentation and the letters back and forth to the leadership of the regional district trying to pressure them into reversing their position, trying to browbeat them into reversing their position. But the regional district, to their credit, held firm and reflected the views of the majority of people in their community.

Now what we know, of course, is that at that point the government chose to use the heavy hand of legislation. They brought in Bill 30. Again, this is a question of political courage, I believe. The government didn't have the courage to bring in a stand-alone piece of legislation, where everybody would see what they were trying to do, explain it, put it on the table and debate it. No. They brought it in, in Bill 30, which was a miscellaneous statutes amendment.

Somewhere down there with 20 or 30 more amendments, they slip in a small amendment around the Utilities Commission that, in fact, takes away the power of local governments to be able to plan in their own communities around these matters. That's what the government did. They took that power away for local governments to be able to plan and to represent the interests of British Columbians at the local level.

Now, this was a matter that obviously wasn't just outrageous to the Squamish-Lillooet regional district and to the official opposition. This was a matter that was condemned by the Union of B.C. Municipalities for the intrusion into local authority. It's a matter that has essentially been condemned by everybody who's looked at this government's conduct on this matter and has said Bill 30 was wrong.

Local governments have a role to play. Local governments have a role to play in representing their constituents. They are the closest level of government to the people. They do consult. They do have those discussions, something this government certainly doesn't do. They do talk to British Columbians about their considerations for policy matters. They do consult with them, and at the end of the day, they actually pay some attention to what they're told, something that is quite foreign to the current government in British Columbia.

If the government wanted to bring forward a piece of effective legislation, they would probably bring forward something that might repeal Bill 30 and put back that local control and local input. That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen this year anyway.

We have a situation where the government has brought forward a piece of legislation here, the Utilities Commission Act, that is meant to enable private power and to advance the interests of private power with total disregard for the public interest. They have brought forward a piece of legislation that is meant to further the demise of B.C. Hydro as the effective tool it's been for British Columbians as a public utility.

They brought forward a piece of legislation that makes no economic or environmental sense by putting unrealistic conditions on the Utilities Commission and, in fact, driving and narrowing their scope to be able to make decisions they should make.

So I do look forward, in the coming debate on this around committee stage, to be able to talk in more

detail with the minister and get some answers to some questions around some of these matters in this bill.

At this point it's pretty clear. It's pretty clear to the members on this side of the House and it's pretty clear to thoughtful British Columbians who review this piece of legislation that, in fact, the legislation is bad for British Columbia. It's bad for B.C. Hydro. It's bad for the environment. It's bad for the public interest. Any thoughtful member in this House should feel very confident in standing up and voting no to Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act.

S. Hammell: This legislation, Bill 15, Utilities Commission Amendment Act, enshrines in law components of the current government's energy plan. This is part of a process that delivers a fundamentally flawed product. B.C.'s energy plan is fundamentally flawed because it requires Bill 15, amendments to the BCUC act, which is simply a neutering of B.C.'s utilities watchdog, forcing BCUC to approve certain projects under the guise of being self-sufficient. It is the government's latest move to force a bad plan on British Columbians.

The energy plan has skated past public debate and not been presented as a green paper or a white paper or a trial balloon. This is a government by "Father knows best," especially as it is involved in some of the people of this province benefiting economically.

But all of us are ratepayers who benefit from the efficient operation of an energy plan that is in the public interest. This energy plan is not based on sound economic business planning. It is not nimble, and it is not flexible. It is, in fact, being tied in a rigid way into supporting preconceived ideas. The tragedy is that we in this province inherited an energy plan that was thought through by our forefathers and that has benefited each one of us.

Some people on the other side would, in derision, call the actions of those forefathers socialist, blinded by their contempt for any ideology other than their own. But that vision and the creation of the two-river policy has served every single one of us well for decades, and by a right-wing government that would borrow any idea from anyone providing it was good for the province.

This energy plan does not stand up to environmental scrutiny. Run-of-the-river projects are not benign on the environment. They do not walk on the land without leaving a footprint. They impact the land and the water in the river. They can engage in building huge penstocks in the mountain and can divert as much as 80 percent of the river's water.

The run-of-the-river projects need to be carefully and cautiously examined before approval. This energy plan is skewing B.C.'s regulatory system and watchdog to force through a policy that, I believe, is not in the best interest of British Columbians.

If B.C.'s energy plan is so good for B.C., then let's have a full public debate. Prove the business case, and do not hide behind the green veneer. Thin economic arguments are now behind a regulatory watchdog.

Last year the government, in secret, behind closed doors, thrust through a special directive and policy upon BCUC that placed a blanket of bad policy upon the independent watchdog. These directives, special directive 10 and the self-sufficiency policy, in essence restricted BCUC from being independent. They now have little choice but to approve the influx of private power projects, whether B.C. needs the power or not and whether it is economic to do so.

Having environmental oversight is a good thing, as the amendments purport to achieve, but the changes do not accomplish that. The changes in the legislation, in fact, enshrine previous moves by the government to force the BCUC to work under restrictions in making their decisions. Again, self-sufficiency policy and special directives.

The fundamental problem with the legislation is the same as the problems with the energy plan. Objectives are forced on B.C. Hydro without regard to their cost and benefits and now without any independent scrutiny of their full consequences by the commission or interveners.

Requiring self-sufficiency by 2016, as defined by the minister, completely ignores the economic and environmental consequence of developing more B.C. resources than required in most years and more than needed to ensure a reliable supply. This energy plan, the plan of the current government, and this legislation need a sober second thought.

B. Ralston: It is indeed an irony that the present member for Peace River North, the Minister of Energy and Mines, entered the Legislature, as I understand it, as a Social Credit member. As a Social Credit member, he was doubtlessly very proud of the political heritage that Social Credit had in regard to the development of B.C. Hydro.

In 1962 then-Premier W.A.C. Bennett set out to take B.C. Electric into the public sector. It was expropriated by law, and then a series of very bold policies were developed, the two-river policy, which has served this province very well and led to the creation of B.C. Hydro. So it is, I suppose, a sad irony of this debate that someone who came into the Legislature with that political heritage has so utterly and completely abandoned it by bringing this piece of legislation forward.

It's significant, when we see what the purpose of this legislation is and when we examine it and discuss it here, because what the government doesn't have the jam to do is to say: "We're going to sell B.C. Hydro to the private sector. Unlike the previous Social Credit government, we no longer support public ownership and public power. We want the private sector to take all of the public resources that B.C. Hydro owns and operates and run them privately for the benefit of a few in the province rather than for the benefit of all the citizens of the province."

They don't have the jam to do that, so what they are doing, by a process of stealth and incrementalism, is slowly and surely sapping away the strength and vitality of B.C. Hydro and is leading to long-term economic consequences for this province that are very dire indeed.

I think it's important to at least review briefly and to think of the economic and social achievement that is B.C. Hydro. It has provided very low-cost energy to

both residential and commercial users over the years. It has provided the enormous competitive advantage to business in the province of low-cost energy, particularly for major industrial concerns. It has provided an annual dividend to the province regularly and consistently, which is used as part of government revenue for all the social programs that are so often debated here in the Legislature.

It pays water rentals for the use of the public water resource. It pays taxes, or grants in lieu of taxes, to many communities around the province, in particular the school tax. It has engaged in and assisted regional economic development.

It has also created, and this is sometimes overlooked, a corps of expertise in engineering and energy development. That has been created over the years and has created a very powerful…. Economists like Michael Porter, who is a renowned economist at Harvard University…. It's sometimes talked about as a cluster of excellence. This Crown corporation has been the centre of a cluster of excellence in all those kinds of activities related to energy development and engineering, and has given British Columbia a toehold in an international arena and international markets.

Indeed, there are engineering firms in British Columbia that got their start by the training and expertise gained working for B.C. Hydro as a nucleus for creating an international engineering firm with long-term benefits to business here in British Columbia.

The return to the province, economic benefits — those are slightly more intangible and perhaps difficult to calculate. But the hard cash, in terms of direct return to the Crown by dividends, water rentals and taxes from 1994 to 2006, is $8.8 billion returned to the public treasury, and all while providing energy at among the lowest rates to ratepayers, both residential and industrial, in North America.

So it's a considerable public achievement. This is the economic giant in British Columbia that this government seeks to slowly and surely throttle and destroy to the benefit of the private power producers, who they are more closely aligned with politically, unlike their political ancestors, the Social Credit Party, which the minister was originally and first elected to this House as a member of.

In addition to that, there are the indirect benefits of the Columbia River treaty. That's not money that B.C. Hydro generates, but it's money as a result of the B.C. Hydro reservoirs and the two-river policy and as a consequence of public ownership of those reservoirs, which the province receives an income from the Columbia River treaty of $250 million a year.

Those are the real economic benefits that the province receives. The overall success of the corporation…. B.C. Hydro is widely regarded across Canada and across North America.

I spoke a little bit about the corps of professional and human resources expertise. There's a corps of engineers, technicians and energy policy analysts who shared with the public. Unlike the proprietary concerns of private companies, B.C. Hydro has been more able to share that expertise with the public. That expertise, as I stated earlier, helped grow that kind of corps of skilled people into a cluster of excellence, which has led to further growth of those kinds of industries here in British Columbia.

Not only that. The corporation has furnished and developed a provincial energy infrastructure with contracts with B.C.-based energy consultants, engineers and construction firms and a strong, locally based corps of expertise with expertise in energy development issues.

So that is the reality of B.C. Hydro, which this government has set out systematically…. This is just another attempt to weaken B.C. Hydro to the benefit of their private power producer friends. The mechanism here…. The member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca has described this bill as basically one long special directive to the B.C. Utilities Commission.

What this does in legislation…. It could have been done by a simple directive, as has been previously done, which the government in opposition used to regularly criticize the then government for doing. It's enshrined in legislation, this special directive, and will limit the jurisdiction of the B.C. Utilities Commission and limit the kinds of decisions they could make very artificially without regard to the wisdom — or not — of any individual project.

It will force the B.C. Utilities Commission to, in proposed section 64.01(2), consider the government's goal in (a) the construction or extension of generation facilities, and (b) energy purchases must consider the government's goal that British Columbia be energy self-sufficient by the 2016 calendar year and maintain self-sufficiency after that year.

This notion of self-sufficiency sounds good if you're involved in the personal development business, I guess, or the coaching business or something like that, but it's a rather archaic notion of what they used to call economic autarchy. From a government that heralds all kinds of international trade treaties such as NAFTA, the World Trade Organization treaties, open borders, open trading, this is a throwback to 19th-century mercantilist economic theory, which has no basis….

The minister knows this. This is a completely artificial device simply to assist and force on the Utilities Commission the approval of private power interests. There's no other reason for this.

It's hardly economic when B.C. Hydro is able to sell power to the United States and, at other than peak periods, buy energy from the United States. That practice has been going on for some time. It serves the ratepayers here well. It's part of the continental energy grid.

For the government to put forward this artificial notion of self-sufficiency in the way that they have really lacks any credibility whatsoever. It's simply a screen for what is really intended here, which is to force the B.C. Utilities Commission to approve private power projects at uneconomic rates as high as $90 a megawatt hour.

The companies take those signed contracts to financial agencies, banks, GE Finance. Given that they have

a signed, firm long-term contract, financing follows as a matter of course. It's no difficulty getting financing at that rate, so there's no real economic risk involved, despite all the rhetoric of risk and private sector entrepreneurs and all that.

B. Ralston: Mom-and-pop power, says my colleague the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca.

That approach necessitates no risk whatsoever. All the risk is borne by the utility because they've underwritten the contract and are obliged, short of government legislation, to cancel the contract — which would be very controversial and highly unlikely — and to follow the terms of that contract. They're often long-term contracts over many years.

So the result of this legislation on the long-term economic future of the province…. I think this is what really has to be considered. Aside from the short-term interests of private power producers — which this government seems very anxious to serve — as a public policy for the long-term economic development of the province, it's completely and totally wrong. Destroying B.C. Hydro in the way that the government seeks to do in the long term will not serve the economic future of this province well at all.

B. Ralston: I hear the cattle braying on the other side, Madam Speaker. Perhaps their feeder will take them out to the feedlot shortly.

What this legislation doesn't do is consider the impact of affordability for ordinary ratepayers. Numerous public utilities have what are called lifeline programs, where enshrined as one of the objectives is for consumers of modest incomes to have the opportunity to buy a package of power to run their daily lives at a fixed, modest rate. It doesn't consider that as one of the objectives of the utility.

It also, in its detail, proposes the building of what are called smart meters. I suppose the adjective "smart" probably is superfluous. I'm not quite sure why that's added there — just a public relations spin. It's an expedited billion-dollar program for a very limited public utility, as far as I can see. Most people don't follow the month-to-month fluctuation of their power meter — certainly not in my experience, not in my neighbourhood and not among people that I know. There is no business case advanced for this public expenditure of a billion dollars.

B.C. Hydro has had very effective conservation programs. That's totally another matter. But this is simply a device that is a billion dollars in expenditure — at least, estimated. Given the way things tend to increase in cost over time, doubtlessly it will be more. I would predict that by the time it's implemented, at least $1.2 billion, given the ordinary escalation of these kinds of costs on these kinds of projects.

So that cost, without a business plan and very uncertain objectives in terms of an ability to pay back any conservation dividends, is in my view an unnecessary and wasteful expenditure.

We certainly need an energy policy that considers the interests of the environment, the long-term economic interests of business in our economy and that of communities. When we think of the economic future of British Columbia in a small, subnational jurisdiction in a global economy, we need every economic advantage that we can muster. To take away the long-term, low-cost supply of energy as an economic advantage to future generations of British Columbia business and to ratepayers is economic folly of the highest order, and that's what this bill seeks to entrench.

I speak against this bill at second reading, and my colleagues and I will be following this bill in committee stage and offering further comments to the public about the government's misplaced priorities in this bill.

Hon. B. Penner: I rise to support Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, 2008. I hope to provide at least a little bit of a factual basis to counter some of the absolutely off-base, ridiculous and bordering-on-the-irrelevant comments from the members of the opposition, who clearly haven't taken the time to read the legislation.

Hon. B. Penner: I'm glad that the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca is piping up, because it's his remarks that actually helped me make my decision to speak in support of this bill. I was going to support it anyway, because it is good legislation. It's going to be helpful for our environment, and that's why I support it. But it's this comment that really attracted my attention, from the opposition Energy critic, the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca: "I don't know why in the world we would want to make this change now."

I understand that change can be difficult for people, but the world is changing. In fact, one of the biggest topics of our time is called climate change. The members of the opposition seem to have a very hard time coming to grips with what to do about climate change.

There's a member sitting opposite who I think wants to speak in a few moments, who has been often quoted as saying the NDP has no idea what to do about climate change. Their comments about this bill today make it very obvious that that position continues to be true — that they still don't know what to do about climate change.

The reason I make those comments is that all the members opposite have to do is take a look at section 1, and they'll find out why this bill is important in terms of our environmental objectives and in terms of responding to the global challenge that we face in terms of climate change.

I refer the members opposite and anybody paying attention to this debate to section 1, in the definition sections of Bill 15, under "government's energy objectives," where, in law, our energy objectives will be defined for the purposes of this bill.

It means the following objectives of the government: "(a) to encourage public utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; (b) to encourage public utilities to take demand-side measures" — that means to reduce energy consumption; "(c) to encourage public utilities to produce, generate and acquire electricity from clean or renewable sources; (d) to encourage public utilities to develop adequate energy transmission infrastructure and capacity" — so we can actually bring this new, green electricity to market for us here in the Lower Mainland where we use the electricity, in this chamber.

Have you ever noticed how much electricity we use right in this Legislature itself? Everything we do relies on electricity, in this province and in our economy, and we're taking action to meet that need. But we're also encouraging demand-side management, as indicated right in Bill 15, to reduce energy consumption.

I'll carry on. The government's energy objectives in Bill 15 are defined to include, in addition to what I've already said, innovative energy technologies that will facilitate electricity self-sufficiency — something our side of the House supports and that side opposes. That's something I'll look forward to taking to the hustings just over a year from now.

Innovative energy technologies are also included, which support energy conservation or efficiency…

Now members opposite seem to be winding themselves up in a fervour to speak…. Well, they've been speaking against this; maybe they'll vote against it. I look forward to that. It will be a shame, because it's the wrong thing for them to do.

But I look forward to having them try to explain to environmental groups why they're against technology for energy conservation and efficiency, why they're against putting in legislation the requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, why they're against energy conservation initiatives, and why they're against efforts to acquire and generate electricity from clean and renewable sources.

You don't have to go any further than reading section 1 of the bill to understand what this bill is about. If the members opposite aren't able to read that far, well, that speaks volumes about why they have a hard time coming to grips with climate change.

I've made it pretty clear that I support those kinds of initiatives from an environmental perspective. But it's not just me who has said that they think that's a good idea. In fact, some people who used to be associated with the NDP themselves support this legislation that the members opposite are bending over backwards to find some reason to oppose and to hurt the environment in the process.

I'll refer to The Vancouver Sun. It seems to be one of the sources of information that the opposition research department relies upon.

Hon. B. Penner: In The Vancouver Sun today in the business section, there's a report on this legislation. They quote Simon Fraser University energy economist Mark Jaccard, who was appointed by the NDP in the 1990s to chair the B.C. Utilities Commission.

Hon. B. Penner: You can see how and why he may have parted company with that previous government under the circumstances in which he did in the 1990s. Their comments today are directly at odds with what an energy and electricity expert, well regarded across not just British Columbia and Canada but worldwide…. He's in demand in terms of consulting on the electricity sector.

Here's what he has to say about these changes contained in Bill 15 that we're debating right this moment. Here's what he has to say today, quoted in The Vancouver Sun: "'The Utilities Commission Act has needed updating for some time, and I see these as welcome amendments that improve the ability of our regulated electric and natural gas companies to contribute to the province's greenhouse gas reduction goals. Once again, B.C. is proving to be a leader in North America and even globally,' Jaccard said in an e-mail."

So this is the NDP now saying they're going to be opposed to something that will help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Is it any wonder that other environmental groups like the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association have said that, frankly, the NDP is nowhere when it comes to climate change? Their own NDP MLAs have said that the NDP is nowhere when it comes to climate change. It's because they are nowhere when it comes to addressing the challenge of climate change.

I said at the outset of my comments that change can be difficult. Clearly, the opposition is having difficulty with adapting to climate change. But we have to address climate change. It's a moral imperative. It's a global imperative, and we're taking action. But from the opposition, what we see from them…

Hon. B. Penner: …is that they're frozen by fear. The opposition has been frozen by fear.

Now, I understand that climate change is a daunting challenge, but on our side of the House and with the leadership of our Premier…

Members, this debate has been going on for two hours, and people have been respectful. We need to be able to listen to the person and hear the argument.

Hon. K. Krueger: I heard a member opposite refer to the government side as neanderthals. I think he should withdraw that comment, and I know you heard it too.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I didn't hear it, but if somebody did say that, would they please withdraw it.

J. Horgan: If I offended the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, I certainly withdraw those remarks. If it was my support for evolution that's offended him, I'm certainly withdrawing that too.

Hon. B. Penner: As I was saying, it's the members opposite who seem to be frozen in fear as to what to do about climate change. In their fear, they cling to the past. They wish that things just could not have to change, but we've seen climate change affect British Columbia.

We've seen what's happened with the pine beetle infestation. We know what's happened to our weather patterns. We know what's happened with windstorms. We know what's happened with changes in snowpacks at river runoff levels. So it's a concern to us in British Columbia, and it's a concern to me that members of the opposition are having a hard time understanding that just doing the same old, same old isn't going to accomplish what we need to do.

In fact, I don't think I've met a more conservative group of politicians in my life than what I see across the way. They're extremely conservative in the sense that they simply resist change of any kind. Some days I think they resist change simply for the sake of resisting change — even change that we're proposing here in Bill 15 that will direct the Utilities Commission to consider the environment, the health of our environment, and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

They're resisting that change. Why? Because they're frozen in time. They are conservative. They don't want to see anything change. But as I've already mentioned, change is upon us.

So what are we going to do? Well, it's interesting that they talk about the legacy of the B.C. Hydro assets, and then they question why we should be worried about self-sufficiency. Well, who do you think made us self-sufficient in electricity? They seem to praise W.A.C. Bennett and his previous government for doing that. Well, that resulted in us being pretty self-sufficient. Yet they seem to be opposed to that.

There's another myth they keep propagating, supported by a couple of groups outside the House, that somehow this amounts to a weakening of B.C. Hydro. I heard the member for Surrey-Whalley say "weaken B.C. Hydro."

Well, if any party in this House is responsible for weakening B.C. Hydro, it's the members opposite. When they were in government during the 1990s…. Despite the number of homes in British Columbia increasing by 316,000 during the time that they were in office — 316,000 additional households — they allowed B.C. Hydro to generate only enough extra electricity to meet the needs for 36,800 homes.

That left us with a huge deficit. It wasn't just a financial deficit they left us. As I mentioned today during question period, they left us with an electricity deficit. We think it's time to get on with doing something about it.

They say that we're weakening B.C. Hydro. While they were in office, they didn't do enough to allow B.C. Hydro to generate additional capacity. In contrast, we're spending billions with B.C. Hydro to improve their own assets, their own facilities. Right now, underway or approved and planned are capacity additions for another 227,000 homes' worth of power.

I'll just repeat the contrast. Under the NDP, B.C. Hydro was producing enough extra power for 36,800 homes. Under the B.C. Liberals, Crown corporations — including Columbia Power Corporation, the other Crown corporation that develops electricity for British Columbians — plus B.C. Hydro are on track to produce an extra 227,000 homes' worth of electricity. A dramatic increase.

It's a balanced approach. We're doing more on the public side. We're doing more on the private side. The NDP today actually sounds more anti-business than they were under Glen Clark, when our economy went from first to worst in Canada.

It seems like it might not be possible, but in the 1990s they spoke favourably about IPPs. In fact, their former Environment Minister was quoted in a news release in the year 2000, saying: "We're lowering water rental rates to encourage small hydro independent power producers because it's good for the environment." That's what the NDP's Environment Minister said in the year 2000. "We're lowering water rental rates to encourage independent power producers to build and develop run-of-river projects because it's good for the environment."

What's changed? If anything, their current Leader of the Opposition is more hostile to the private sector than Glen Clark was during the 1990s. We saw what that resulted in for British Columbia. We sure did. We saw a net out-migration of people from British Columbia as the economy tanked. We saw us become in an electricity deficit. We had to import power. Young people in British Columbia lost hope.

We've been reversing that on a number of fronts. We've got more work to do. My colleague the Minister of Energy has been leading that effort to put into place the proper framework so that we can get our economy to continue to fire on all cylinders. This piece of legislation will continue that work to encourage private sector as well as public sector investment in British Columbia.

What's changing is there's a greater focus on the environment. The Utilities Commission is being required to take that into account, which I think is appropriate. Yet even this morning in The Vancouver Sun, the lame-duck leader of the NDP is quoted as saying: "I'm not sure that's appropriate. I'm not sure, really, we should be making this change, that the Utilities Commission should have to worry about the environment and greenhouse gas emissions."

Well, I disagree. Our government disagrees. Climate change is too important to just say: "You know what? We don't want to have to deal with it. We want to put our heads back in the sand and let greenhouse gas emissions continue to go up like they did in the 1990s" — by 24 percent, I might add.

You know where we had one of the biggest increases in greenhouse gases during the 1990s in British Columbia? It was in the electricity sector. A 300 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. Why? Because the largest IPP ever developed in British Columbia was developed under the NDP, and it burns fossil fuels right here on Vancouver Island. That resulted in a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Without any offsets or any requirements to do that, things that we've talked now about requiring.

This opposition simply still doesn't get it. The members opposite talk about: "Why do you want smart meters? Nobody looks at their power meters today." That's exactly the point. If the meter is outside your house, it's pretty hard to monitor. If you paid any attention to what smart meters are, if you've ever seen one in someone's home as I have, they're up front. They're in your living space so you can track your energy usage, so that we don't take electricity for granted like we have for far too long in this province and so that we can curb…

At every turn I hear members of the opposition questioning why we should have to do something different, even if it's good for the environment. Why should we have to worry about monitoring our energy usage or curbing our energy usage or maybe reducing our reliance on imports of electricity?"

The Energy critic makes an appropriate point that there's some wind power developed in Alberta — several hundred megawatts of wind power in Alberta — and 8,000 megawatts of installed fossil fuel generation in Alberta. If you do the percentages, about 5 percent in Alberta comes from wind power if it's operating at maximum capacity.

The members opposite seem to think it's okay for us to continue to import power from Alberta — which happen to be IPPs, by the way, whether it's wind or the fossil fuel side — or from the United States. Who do you think those people are? American IPPS, in many cases burning fossil fuels and creating greenhouse gases along that.

So in their haste to now condemn B.C. IPPs, when in the past they lowered water rental rates to encourage them…. Today they're saying we'd rather continue to ship B.C. dollars, potential tax revenue and jobs out of the province to Alberta IPPs and American IPPs so that we don't do it here in B.C. in a clean, renewable way.

There couldn't be a more dramatic difference in opinion on this matter than this particular issue. We want to support the environment. We want to support the economy. We want to support jobs and investment and production here in British Columbia. Bill 15 will help us do that.

C. Evans: I rise to oppose Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. For the benefit of people at home, I'm sure this appears to be a rancorous and little bit esoteric debate. What people upstairs might say is much ado about nothing or sound and fury signifying nothing.

So I would like to try to simplify it. It's often true that in this room we talk about stuff that sounds incomprehensible, like the Utilities Commission. What could that possibly be, and how could it be relevant to the folks watching at home?

Actually, folks, what we're debating is the future of your patrimony, your wealth — the wealth that you were born into and that you hope to pass on to your

grandchildren. It's called Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, but it's your farm.

There is probably nothing more important today, right now at five o'clock, to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren and seven generations hence than this esoteric debate on Bill 15, Utilities Commission Amendment Act. What we're debating here, folks, is whether or not to carry on British Columbia in its historical method where you — not these guys; you, the people out there — own the dams and the rivers and the water and the power lines and the distribution system that makes your lights go on, that brings your family warmth and light, that actually lifts us up out of the stone age and makes us the civilization — whether you own it or somebody else owns it.

It may not even matter so much to our generation, but to folks at home, this is a debate about whether your great-grandchildren will have what we had — our generation. We benefited from the wisdom of people that worked in this room all the way back to the beginning.

Unlike all over North America and Europe where they sold the land, they sold the trees, they sold the rivers…. If you want to go fishing in England, you've got to pay some rich guy to hold a pole out there. Here the wisdom of the people that sat in the Speaker's chair and were the governments — Social Credit, Liberal, Conservative, New Democrat, even CCF…. The wisdom in this room said you would own it.

At one time we had a private electric system. I think it was called B.C. Electric. Then we had a Premier — it wasn't my party — who said: "This isn't right. The farm should belong to the farmers." He nationalized the hydro system.

Then folks at home, you guys watching from the Columbia system, will remember the pain delivered to your families when we in this room and in another room just like this in Ottawa decided, in order to turn on the lights on the farm, to force you off the land, burn the farmhouse, declare the first nations extinct, bury the roads, sometimes log the trees and then flood the land, and in the case of the Duncan valley, just flood it — pain in order to build the farm that you inherit.

In this room, right now, here are all these folks. They're standing up. They're talking about Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. Never mind that the words say that the intent is to slowly, slowly, slowly dismantle what you own. It was built with the pain delivered to the people that used to live there by the decisions in this room, which I now call wise decisions because they resulted in public electricity, public water, public power — not owned by some multinational, some other country.

You get on the ferry. You ride from here to the mainland. You look to the right. The lights down there go on just like the lights on the left. There are lights in the United States, and there are lights in Canada. The difference is that the lights in Canada…. The Canadians own them. You own them.

We're discussing a bill here which will say: "Let's privatize the production of power not for you but for your children and your grandchildren." No pain off our nose. Everybody in here is getting good wages to decide whether or not your children will have what you have.

The easiest way to think about this is with the parable of the prodigal son. You know how the parable goes. Once upon a time there was a family. They had a farm, and they had some kids. One of them didn't want to farm. He was young. He wanted to go to town and sow his wild oats. Everybody else is working real hard, and off goes one of the kids to town. He leads a dissipated life and blows his money and probably does a bunch of stuff he's embarrassed by.

He works through his youth, and then he comes to his senses, as we all do when we grow up. He figures out that maybe he'd like to go back to the farm. Maybe that whole thing he rejected because it was such hard work…. Maybe he'd like to go back. The parable says that when the prodigal son came back, a surprising thing happened. Led by the patriarch, the family, instead of rejecting him, said: "Yeah, now that you're a grownup, now that you've figured out what really has value in life, we'll take you back."

There's forgiveness. There's love. There's the capacity, the strength of the family to absorb its own errant behaviour and to make everybody welcome and not to reject them — to send him out to live on the street, under bridges. The prodigal son was received.

Well, it isn't just that the parents had love. What else is going on in the parable of the prodigal son? I would suggest it's that the family had the strength to absorb its own, to say: "Okay, you left, and you went and did all that. You want to come back. We'll kill the fatted calf. We still own a fatted calf, and we can kill this one, because we've got some grass and we'll grow another one. We have the strength to receive our own."

There are places in the world — and I submit that they are the norm…. The well-being that we experience in 2008 in British Columbia, dressed in these…. This is not the norm. The norm in the world is that people haven't got the strength, the land, the power to absorb their own and take care of their own, in the metaphor of the prodigal son.

This moment, folks, we're debating Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, but what it really means for you is that our generation, right now in this room, is talking about selling the farm. Future prodigals — your children, your grandchildren — when they come back, when they're through sowing their wild oats, when they decide to get serious and pay attention…. There may not be the farm to come back to. Imagine that.

It's not an esoteric discussion — is it, folks? It's the question of: do the people in this room have the wisdom of the generations before us? Those generations of leaders built the public power and — unlike Europe, unlike the United States, unlike New Brunswick and unlike eastern Canada — said we would own the land

and the rivers and the power system. Because we need the strength of the farm in order to absorb our own, to take care of our own and to say to our children: "You don't have to sleep under the bridge. Come back."

Moving from the general to the specific, it says in Bill 15 here we're going to do this…. Folks, the rationale for doing this to your kids is that we want to be self-sufficient. Well, self-sufficient is cool. Every farmer knows that self…. That's what you try to do. You aim for self-sufficiency. But there's a…. We're not allowed to say "lie" in here. Folks at home, we cannot say "lie" or "mistruth," so I would say there's a mythology being sold to you about self-sufficiency which you need to understand.

We buy some electricity, and we sell some electricity. Gee, is there a cattleman out there that doesn't sell and buy? Buy some fertilizer, sell some cattle. Everybody buys and sells. Electricity — it isn't a straight line that you produce the same amount every day, and it turns on the lights.

Here in British Columbia on your farm, folks, we built dams. That means we produce the cleanest electricity in the world. Not like China, India, even Alberta, burning coal. Not like France, running on nuclear power. We produce renewable hydroelectric power. The lights go on with water — clean, melted snow.

When the snow melts in the spring, power's cheap. Everybody's got power. It's a glut. So we use the dam like a bank account, and it holds back all those cubic yards of water, and we leave them there. We wait until August, when everybody in Los Angeles and everybody in Vancouver and everybody, in fact, in this room, if you're here, is running their air conditioners, needing to get warm. Then electricity consumption goes up, and the value of electricity, which was low at break-up when the snow melts…. Who cares about water? Water's a problem at break-up. Everything's mud. But in August, when there's not very much, it's worth a great deal. So the dam that held it back, we open a bit in August, and we produce electricity that has its highest value.

Then in the fall it's not too hot, and it's not too cold. Nobody needs too much…. We use the dam like a bank. We hold it back because it's not worth anything. Electricity is a dog on the market again in the fall, and we wait till January, when we're cold. It's cold here. This is Canada. We open the dam again, and electricity has its highest value.

Would you sell your cherries or your pigs or your labour when it's worth nothing? Or would you hang on to it to a season where it had some value? So we open the dam again in January, when electricity is high. The net result is that the farm makes money. I don't know what — half a billion dollars, $600 million a year? The electricity that we're selling in January and August and holding back in the spring makes half a billion bucks.

We bring it in here, we divvy it up, and we use it for social services. Why do we have social services? So the prodigal can come back, so the streets aren't lined with our errant children. We use the money we held in the bank to pay for education and housing and health care and civilization, folks. We use it to pay for civilization. You own the power company, so we use the money we make by carefully husbanding its value to buy services for you and your kids.

Why are we here talking about this myth of self-sufficiency? There are people saying to you: "Oh gee, you folks, you don't make enough power. You're having to buy some." They aren't telling you the whole story, which is that you sell some, you buy some, and you're making half a billion bucks a year in the difference to send your kids to school, to look after the prodigal, to take care of our seniors.

They're saying self-sufficiency is never buying a thing. Well, sure. I'm sure that's true. But if the cattleman doesn't occasionally sell some cows and the cherry grower sell some cherries, it's hard to figure out where they would get the stuff of life. When did self-sufficiency mean, "I don't interact with the world," hon. Speaker? "I don't have any trade with the world."

All you folks need to know…. What you need to know is you're self-sufficient. The opposition is right when they say you've got to plan for the future. You've got to plan for the future.

Let me take where I live, for example. It's good to have a little bit of growth, a little bit of economic growth, a little bit of population growth. If you want to have a little bit of growth, you've got to plan to expand your ability to produce power. That's true in everybody's family, in everybody's business, in every government.

So about 20 years ago in the Kootenays, they said: "Hey, you know what? We were kind of dumb when we did that Columbia River deal. We built drone dams." You know what a drone is? That's a male bee that does nothing except once in their lifetime mate with a queen and go away and die. That's the equivalent of the dams we built in Castlegar, the Keenleyside dam.

To make the American Army Corps of Engineers happy, we had to have 5,000 acre-feet of stored water, so we built a dam that produced nothing. So the people of the Kootenays said: "You know what? We need to have a little bit of growth. Why don't we put some turbines next to there? Instead of just having a drone that stops water to make another country happy, why don't we make some electricity to accommodate growth?"

That's a good idea. Then they said: "That made some money. We got this other dam over here built in the 1930s, which belongs to Cominco. The technology of the 1930s was wonderful. It was like state-of-the-art, but it was a hundred years ago or 80. Maybe we should buy that and bring the technology up to date so it's not 1930. It's 2008."

So they bought another dam — didn't flood an acre. You folks at home didn't flood one acre, changed the technology from the last century to the one we're actually living in and increased the power to allow for growth. That's the way to run the farm.

They're not done yet. They bought one from Cominco — didn't actually buy the dam, just the excess rights that they never used. They're going to put in turbines and raise the power level. That's wisdom, and

it's owned by you folks: half of it by the Crown, the people in this room — it goes into the public treasury, and it comes back as education — and half of it by the people who live there. It goes into their treasury, and it's spent to build your community hall and support your large projects and recreation commission and what have you.

It's owned by you. I think that in law, it's actually called an independent power project, but I think it's great because it's owned by you. You own your farm.

What is being discussed here isn't the example that W.A.C. Bennett created with B.C. Hydro, and it's not the example that people here created with Columbia Power to upgrade stupid or old technology.

What's being discussed here is a very weird notion which goes by the groovy name of run of the river. I think we all know that just because something has a groovy name, it doesn't mean it's benign. What's going on here…. I know because I live….

It's not very complicated. You make more power where the mountains are steep than where the land is flat. Makes sense, eh? You make power by trapping water higher, rushing it down and putting it through a turbine when it's gained lots of speed and gone lots of distance. You can't do that in Alberta. You can't do that in Saskatchewan. You can't even do it in Vancouver.

C. Evans: Yeah, they could do it in Vancouver if they were willing to do that with North Vancouver, which is another discussion I'm not going into here right now today because I do not wish to fight with the people of Vancouver. I need you, people of Vancouver, on our side.

The people in the mountains are being told, "You guys have snow, and you've got creeks. So in the name of self-sufficiency with this groovy moniker of run of the river, we want to build roads to the top, capture the whole creek" — a million years running free, melting snow running free, full of frogs and fish and critters…. Capture the river in a big pipe, half as big as this room. I am not talking about a garden hose but a pipe half as big as from here to the other side of this room. That's called a penstock. So rush it down the mountain for one mile, build a power plant at the bottom and put it through the power plant.

Who owns it? Is it those folks? Is it your patrimony? Is it your farm? Nope. That era ended right here today, 2008. What you built and owned isn't being built by you, folks. It's going to some corporation somewhere that's got enough money to build a road to the top of a mountain, build a pipe half as big as this room, run it a mile down the mountain, capture the wild and publicly owned water, put it through a turbine at the bottom and sell it back to you at — what? — 500, 600 times its value.

This is the moment, folks. In the prodigal son parable, where the family sells the farm and then later on, the kid comes home and says, "I've changed my ways. I want to live here," you say: "Sorry. We decided to sell it to some corporation, and we divvied up the money with those that were here, and there isn't any. Bye."

Do not believe, folks, that this is Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. What this is, is the reversal of the history of British Columbia public power act.

C. Evans: I abhor…. There's a document called the B.C. Energy Plan. It is as much of an energy plan, folks, as this is about run of the river or self-sufficiency. The B.C. Energy Plan is the document which I'm sure you don't know anything about, folks. It's written in your name, but what it says is that your power company, B.C. Hydro — sometimes love 'em, sometimes hate 'em, send 'em a cheque every month or whatever you feel — the company you own is ordered to not build power.

Can you imagine if you woke up one morning, and you said to Canfor: "It's against the law for you to make boards." What if you said to Chevrolet: "Cars are not okay anymore"?

You folks own a power company, and in something called the energy plan, the government of British Columbia said that you can't build power. Lay off the engineers, the people who built the system — those power lines that take power to Vancouver, make the lights go on, essentially fund civilization. Lay them off, because from this moment forward, in the name of self-sufficiency and being groovy and green, we will buy power.

If you're watching TV inside your house, and you don't live where you see the mountains, and that's most of us…. I don't live where I could actually see the penstocks. If you're living inside your house and watching TV, the TV will still go on. It will be immaterial to you that the electricity that comes to the television is no longer produced by you.

The only way you'll notice is two ways. One is when you start paying the corporate price of power, and the second is when the farm that you own ceases to make money, which we bring in here to run hospitals and schools and keep your prodigal off the street. You'll only notice that we decided to lay off the very people that make power, ordered them to stop making power and ordered them to take your money and buy it from corporations, who now control your water and who put it in a big pipe and take it somewhere else.

We're doing that under the guise of being groovy and under something called Bill 15, Utilities Commission Amendment Act. Remember the guy who wrote the book 1984? In the book he said that one of the things that might happen to citizens is that some day they would lose control of language, and peace would mean war.

To call what's happening here — the sale of their farm — a piece of legislation in defence of self-sufficiency…. If that's not a criminal use of language, it is, at minimum, inane. I'm not sure misleading is an acceptable word in here. I think it is not acceptable. It is….

C. Evans: I think it's specious. What's happening here is the ending of the people's patrimony — in favour of corporations taking over public water, public land, public power — and calling it environmentally benign. I would ask everybody here, everybody here who honours history, honours those who worked here before, those who, often with tremendous pain, built the farm that the people own….

Understand: for sure, we get to pass laws, but we're really only caretakers. We don't hold title to British Columbia. If you come to work here, what do you get to do? You get to manage what was before you got here. You're not supposed to come here, and say: "Whoopee! I got the groovy office. We'll sell what our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had the wisdom to build."

We are not here as the salespeople of the people's farm. We are here simply as the honoured managers. We are supposed to sustain and pass on what we are lucky enough to inherit. What we're doing here in Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, folks, is debating on your behalf the selling for cash of the farm that your prodigal may very well return to some day. Think about it, and help us make that decision with wisdom, because if we make it badly, we will be the last generation in this room managing the people's resources.

C. Puchmayr: I rise in opposition to Bill 15. It's entitled the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. I think, if you want to be very forthright about what it should be called, it should be called the Utilities Commission dismantling act, because once this bill passes, the Utilities Commission will be a utilities commission by name only. It will take out the public consultation. It will take out the abilities of the public to play an active role in looking at the sciences and looking at the disclosures with respect to production of public power in British Columbia.

Something that has been the envy of the world is how we have an unlimited source of clean power, and we have a very creative way of receiving that power and redistributing that power out to our industries and homes and to have it available for our future. The stability in power in British Columbia is truly the envy of the world. We see many industries that are dependent on it.

We have had some of the lowest, if not the lowest, power rates in an industrialized setting of anywhere in the world, which has made us competitive over the years, and you've seen the competition and the competitiveness. You've certainly seen the industries that used to exist and the many sawmills that existed throughout this province and that were using that electricity. We produced power from our hydroelectric projects and turned those uses of electricity into very, very meaningful employment and sustainable employment for the communities.

Now this legislation — in view of the fact that we're seeing so many logs being exported to the United States and this basically is going to put us on the same global playing field as the United States with respect to the cost of power and no abilities to provide that power at a cheap rate — is going to cost jobs in British Columbia severely.

Now, it's not just the fact that this legislation is going to short-circuit our ability to have control over our power in British Columbia. We will also lose some of the most pristine vistas in the known world. We have areas of British Columbia that are absolutely pristine and remote. They are areas that we encourage tourism to go into. We have ecotourism as well that goes into those areas.

I myself, being a bit of a sports fisherman in the past, and I certainly would enjoy doing that again…. Some of my favourite areas that I've ventured into…. I just try to imagine what those areas will be like after somebody purchases a very cheap water licence and turns that area into a for-profit power venture where they can actually curtail up to 80 percent of the water flow in those rivers that are going to be affected. That is certainly extremely shocking to me. We are heading into a direction where we are going to lose some of the very beautiful sights that we see in publications like the Canadian Geographic or the Beautiful British Columbia magazine.

You can imagine going into the Chilliwack River Valley. You go up into Slesse canyon, where the history goes way back to the first nations for thousands of years, in the canyon where they used to have the spirit dances. The first nations would go there and do their spirit dance. Even after the atrocious legislation criminalizing their activities back in the '30s and '40s and outlawing their ability to exercise their heritage, they were still going into those areas in secret and engaging in their traditional ceremonial dances in those areas.

I enter into those areas, especially during the times of the spring runoff, which is starting to happen now. I only imagine that during the times of what is now the peak steelhead season, for someone to be able to go in there and set up a piping system running down from that river and running down from that canyon to a generator that is going to be droning and humming away 24 hours a day and producing electricity…. That certainly is alarming to me, and it's alarming in not just one sense — not just the fact that it can happen — but it's the fact that it can now happen with virtually no public consultation.

With an open house, people will go and they'll be able to go there and look at the project. They'll be able to voice their concerns and their opposition, but the final say will not be the public anymore. That is extremely alarming.

We go back to the UBCM convention and look at the resounding, overwhelming opposition to this type of legislation that would take the municipal sovereign rights to have control over those types of developments away from them and put them in the hands of a commission that is really defined in scope as to where they can rule on any types of these projects. It is extremely alarming that we're heading in that direction.

We go back to Bill 30, and I recall…. I believe it was the last day of a session where Bill 30 came in, which

was numerous miscellaneous amendments in a bill. The ability for independent power producers to register a claim on the rivers was part of that obscure bill. I can just imagine…. We certainly saw the activity. Within hours after the legislation received royal assent, people had already logged on and purchased the rights to many of the waterways in British Columbia in some of these pristine areas that I speak about. There are some 500 now that are basically in the hopper to be able to create what is being classed as green power.

When you think about it, it's not really green power, because you're leaving a scar in the landscape and the environment and the future of our tourism. You're handing that over to a company, possibly a multinational. I've been instructed that some of these initial water rights claims that were purchased have already been sold on more than one occasion. So somebody actually was able to get in early, profit from that, and resell it to someone else that is now going to engage in the generation of power.

We look at the legislation that came forward prior to this. This is just another removal of a major cog in our industry and our sovereignty — with our power. We look at some of the history that got us to where we are today. What really struck me as odd was that we would be purchasing power from a multinational or from an independent power producer, and we would be doing so at rates that are around…. Just under a hundred dollars per megawatt hour is what the rate is. On the spot market today, I believe it's trading at about $44 an hour.

If the minister wishes to confirm that, that's fine too. I hope more of the members on the other side actually do get up and make a case for why they believe that this is such a good deal for British Columbia, because it's not.

We look at that, and we say: "Okay, well, somebody's going to be producing that for us, and we're going to guarantee them $80 per megawatt hour. We're going to purchase it, and we'll have all this power." But if you read on, you see that at the end of the contract, they're able to sell the commodity anywhere they want.

They can sell it on the open market. They can sell it into our grid any way they want. So whatever happens to power 20, 30, 40 years from now…. We could be in a crisis of not having adequate affordable hydroelectric power in British Columbia in the next two, three and four decades from now.

Again, we'll be even further behind, because now B.C. Hydro is really being dismantled, in my opinion. This legislation actually prevents the ability of B.C. Hydro to be engaged in these types of activities. Our children and their grandchildren will be in a position where they will be desperate for power, and they will be now at the mercy of what is potentially a market that is entirely a private for-profit market, and no ability for us to even engage in subsidies for trying to get industries into British Columbia.

As our wood is going south of the border, and we're trying to liberalize that market with the power south of the border, who's going to pay the effects of that? It's going to be British Columbians that pay the effects of it.

If you look at economies of scale with respect to transmission system and the transmission grid…. You look at the economies of scale. We have a very remote province. We have more than half of the population in that little tiny delta of the Lower Mainland, what's now called Metro Vancouver, and then you have a significant area of real estate, of land, all over the rest of the province that is very difficult to access. When you provide power to those communities, farms and remote areas, there's a huge cost to it compared to what the costs are on the Pacific coast electric grid in the United States.

I'm sure we can learn some lessons from what happened with Enron. We see how the Enron experience has treated, where you have a multinational that is actually dealing with many components of the power grid, buying and selling power, and they do so with the only motivation being profit. Whereas when B.C. Hydro buys power….

We've been buying power for years. We buy power in the middle of the night, when power is cheap. Some of the sources in the United States aren't able to produce power, so we buy cheap power.

C. Puchmayr: The minister wants to know what the motivation is. I would have thought that before he received that portfolio, he would understand that the motivation is that our dams fill up at night. Maybe the minister doesn't understand that. I'm pleased he's listening, because maybe he will learn the motivation.

The motivation is that when power is cheap, we buy power and fill up our reservoirs. We fill up our dams. We fill up the reservoirs, and then when power is expensive we turn the turbines up. That's when we sell the power — when we get a prime value for that power. That's good economics.

I'm a little bit puzzled that the minister wouldn't understand that — in such a high-profile portfolio, bringing forward legislation that is going to change the way we deliver and own power in British Columbia, bringing in legislation that will actually short-circuit everything that we have done in the past to give us sustainable, guaranteed and assured power at reasonable rates. This minister doesn't even understand why we buy cheap power at night while we fill up the reservoir.

This is the same minister — isn't it? — that talked about burning coal. There are contracts that this government, under this minister, signed with producers that were going to generate coal, dirty, black-burning coal. I'm not talking about metallurgical coal that's in the Elk Valley, some of the best in the world, that goes to Japan, that goes to steel mills all over the world. I'm

not talking about that coal. I'm talking about coal that is dirty coal, that is going to pollute the environment.

This is the minister that was involved in that deal. Now the province of British Columbia is going to have to pay to get him out of those agreements that were signed. I'm seeing more flip-flops from this minister than at a Shriners pancake breakfast. First, he talks about burning coal, and then he talks about not burning coal. Now he doesn't even understand why we fill the reservoirs at night — because we buy cheap power.

Maybe the Premier needs to put someone in charge of this portfolio before these atrocious pieces of legislation become law that our children will never be able to reverse and our grandchildren will never be able to reverse. You know why? Because now we're bound by the courts of the world.

Once you let them in, it's like an estoppel. Once you let them out that branch, you can't cut the tree down. There are trade laws that state that. But to prevent it, you don't let them in. You don't let them out that branch. You keep control of your power in British Columbia.

You have a utilities commission that actually listens to the science, that you can approach, that you can make arguments to, pro and con. You have good people on that commission who can say at the end of the day: "No, this is not a good idea. It's going to take power away from our children in the future. We don't support that. Go back to the drawing board before you come back with this legislation." This legislation basically takes away the ability of the Utilities Commission to even engage in that discussion. It takes it right away.

What did we learn from Enron? We learned that if the motivation is purely profit, they can control the market. Enron was closing down power producers, ensuring that two or three power producers in the United States shut down for repair at the same time during a day, causing brownouts in California.

This has come out in transcripts. It has come out in trials. It's public information. They manipulated the power grid in order to drive up the price. That's pretty creative stuff. This is in court documents. This is a fact. The minister can go and research that, and then he needs to come back and say: "Wow, that's some scary stuff." People went to jail. As a matter of fact, three weeks ago, I think, two more people went to jail for their role in the Enron crisis.

What he's doing is turning this into a potential for someone from another country, a multinational that's driven by profit, to merely say: "Let's fluctuate the grid. Let's change the grid. Let's bring the power up. Let's bring the prices up so that we can profit from it." Who suffers? Our children suffer. Our grandchildren suffer. Our industries suffer. Our ski hills suffer.

And now you've got the Minister of Small Business. There's another one that needs a lesson on business.

C. Puchmayr: It's small business, so you've got a lot of noise from a Minister of Small Business, who's always ready to engage in this type of a debate.

But you know what? Why doesn't he tell the wine industry in his community why they can no longer afford to run their presses? It's because the price of power has gone so high. Maybe we should make it all in the United States. Why don't we just produce it all down there? We'll just ship the raw grapes down to the United States, down with the raw logs, down with the raw malt.

We're taking away all the profitable, high-paying industries, and we are risking industries by inflating the rates of power in British Columbia. That is unprecedented. We are going to see a rise in power in British Columbia, where seniors will have to make a decision between turning on the power and going cold and on whether they're going to eat something out of a can or whether they're going to cook it.

The other side doesn't see it. The other side absolutely doesn't see it. They don't understand it. I'm very pleased that they're listening, because this is such an important debate. If they only went out and spoke to some of the seniors that are already suffering from the high gas prices that continue to go up, from the high electric prices that continue to go up…. They're already suffering now.

So I'm glad the other side is listening. I hope the people at home communicate with those ministers and those members and those backbenchers and the Premier, communicate with them and tell them how they're affected by the cost of power rising constantly, the cost of fuel rising constantly. Who's benefiting from it? It's our power, and it's our water, and we can no longer produce it because it all has to go to a private producer.

It's like the 3Ps. It's not a public-private partnership. It's pilfering the public purse. That's what it is. 3Ps are pilfering the public purse, because somebody has to profit from it.

So now you have these independent power producers. They buy a water contract. They're guaranteed $88 per unit for power. They go to the bank, and they say: "Look what I've got." The bank goes: "Hey, we'll lend you whatever you want. How long is this good for, 30 or 40 years? We'll lend you what you want. Build a little project there, and at the end of that time it goes to the open grid."

It goes to what the price is on the global market. Who's going to suffer from that? Our industry, our children and our economy will suffer from that. And they can sit there and absolutely without a blush believe that this is good for British Columbia. It's not good for British Columbia. It is not good for British Columbia at all.

Destroying our pristine areas, putting in electric power projects, costing us twice what the going rate is for that power so that somebody in another country can profit from that — that's not a positive direction.

The positive direction was there under W.A.C. Bennett when he built dams. I think some on the other side probably still have a card in their wallet that says

Social Credit. I'm sure some of them would long for those days back. But there was vision there. The hydroelectric projects created industry growth in British Columbia, and they created some of the lowest utility electricity rates in the Pacific Northwest, if not in the entire continent. And that's gone.

With this legislation, that will be gone — like that. A stroke of the pen by the Lieutenant-Governor — gone. What are we doing about it? Well I know what we're doing about it on this side. We're opposing it, and we are opposing it with extreme prejudice.

M. Sather: It's my pleasure to get up and speak against Bill 15, the Utilities Commission Amendment Act, 2008. The Minister of Environment was up in this House an hour ago or so, and he said that he couldn't understand why members on this side of the House are concerned or would even imply that this bill had anything to do with diminishing the role of B.C. Hydro.

I think the minister must have had his tongue in his cheek at the moment he spoke that, because it's pretty clear what the bill is about. If you look under section 44.1, subsection (2), it says: "a public utility must file with the commission…a long-term resource plan…."

M. Sather: Sounds good, so far. The minister loves it — the Minister of Energy. It's his creation here. He's taking full responsibility.

Subsection (8) says: "In determining…whether to accept a long-term resource plan, the commission" — that's the B.C. Utilities Commission — "must consider…the government's energy objectives…." If you go back to section 1, under the definition of the government's energy objectives, it says: "to encourage public utilities to…acquire electricity from clean or renewable sources." We hear continually from this government about what constitutes, in their view, clean and renewable resources. Green power.

Part 3.1, section 64.01 says: "The authority" — that's the B.C. Hydro and Power Authority….

M. Sather: Ah, but this one is the one that I'm sure we're referring to. The minister would agree.

"The authority must…by the 2016 calendar year, achieve electricity self-sufficiency…." It's actually quite hilarious to hear this government talk about self-sufficiency and decry the fact that B.C. Hydro exports some power to the United States and to Alberta. You would think that this government wasn't in favour of free trade, wasn't in favour of the open market. In fact, it's quite the opposite, as we know.

We hear the Premier talking about the TEUs that are coming in through the port and all this stuff that's coming from China. Isn't that wonderful? Free trade is the stock and trade of this government, and yet suddenly this government is concerned that we might be importing some power from the United States and Alberta.

It's simply not believable that the new-found religion that this government has on self-sufficiency and sustainability is because they're concerned about us getting power from another jurisdiction. That's not the case at all.

That's why members on this side of the House have been decrying the government's energy plan — most recent reincarnation, 2007 — and have argued strenuously against the government's solution to obtain what they call self-sufficiency. As we know, of course, the government's solution is independent power. That's why we on this side of the House are opposing this bill — because we are in support of public power, and they are in support of private power. We simply think — for good reason, I believe — that that's the wrong way to go.

Many speakers before me have talked about the value of our public utility, B.C. Hydro, and how it supports a wealth of social programs in this province. The billions of dollars that B.C. Hydro brings in have been very beneficial. I don't know where the government suggests we would make up that shortfall, but I guess it's going to be rolled out down the road if this all goes through.

We depend on those kinds of huge financial benefits. So it's something that the government, at the very least, needs to explain in the self-sufficiency mantra that the government is always talking about. You know, they list that we're net importers of power. Actually, in the ten years up to 2005…. We were only net importers in three of those ten years. Nonetheless, that brings us to another issue, though.

If the government is hitching its wagon, as they certainly appear to be doing, on the so-called run-of-the-river projects, I wonder whether the long-term return on investment is going to be positive. The Environment Minister was talking about our climate change and how we on this side of the House apparently have no concern for climate change.

But if we look at the future of run of the river and if we look at climate change in that regard, a lot of the streams they're depending upon for this power — notwithstanding the environmentally damaging effects of some, at least, of those projects — are dependent on snow melt and glacier melt. If we are going to be facing increasing drought under climate change, one wonders how much we can depend on those run-of-the-river projects for power in the future.

So we're going to be paying big-time. We're paying through the nose for these projects, up to $100 a megawatt hour, and we don't know if even in a few years that source is going to be dependable. It's something that I think British Columbians also have a reason to be concerned about — with the government's mad rush to private power and selling it in the name of self-sufficiency, selling it in the name of green power.

Of course, it's oftentimes not green power, and that was aptly demonstrated by the public recently in the Upper Pitt and by the highly environmentally damag-

ing project that was going to be. It still may be; it's not cancelled. The minister has said that he will not permit the park boundary adjustment that would allow the transmission line from that project to go through Pinecone Burke Provincial Park.

That was the right thing to do, but I think the whole process that led to that was the wrong way of going about it. I think it's also going to lead to some long-term pain for the government. If we had a proper regional planning process where instead of going valley by valley, creek by creek to evaluate these projects, we had an overall regional planning process….

Say we looked at southwestern British Columbia, where a lot of these projects are…. But they're expanding outward from there. If we had proper environmental oversight and proper public input into that process — and governmental input as well, of course — then we could evaluate, hopefully, early on which of these projects might be appropriate for run of the river and which aren't.

What happened instead, if you just look at the Upper Pitt, is that…. There are a lot of people who are familiar with that area and know that it's outstanding in terms of the lower Fraser Valley particularly and the fishery having all of the species of Pacific salmon there and having strong wildlife values as well.

So they rose up and expressed their view, and the government, I think, had little alternative — they think. I believe they assessed it the same way — that they had little alternative, certainly politically to…. I don't know if they've pulled the plug on it. Certainly, they've made it more difficult for the proponent to proceed, as the proponent has said that they have to go through Pinecone Burke to make it…. It's not economically feasible if they don't.

Now we're about to find out, I think, whether or not that was exactly accurate — it's not a threat, perhaps — and whether they're going to come forward with another suggestion on how to produce that project.

There was a pretty spirited debate on CKNW last Friday, I think it was, between some of our scribes who frequent this place and who do a very good job — Vaughn Palmer, Keith Baldrey and Mike Smyth. It was kind of Mike Smyth on one side and Mr. Baldrey and Mr. Palmer on the other side. Mike Smyth was making the point that the government really blew it with the Upper Pitt project by allowing it to go to the extent that it did.

If they had taken care of business earlier…. There was no process, unfortunately, in place for the public to be involved — but if there had been a process, if the government had made a process, then we never would have had 1,200 people show up at the Pitt Meadows Secondary School auditorium.

Now, if that's the way the government wants to go about it, so be it. Certainly, it's going to be a difficult process for them. I hope that they're having second thoughts about these projects and don't want to go through that process from now until the election — and beyond, perhaps. It's not a sound planning process. The government needs to reconsider what they're doing there with these independent power projects.

The other thing that I find interesting…. This government always talks about how they don't want to interfere. They're not into political interference and various processes. What they do instead is legislate their way. We saw it with Bill 30, when they wanted to…. I think the government thought that the IPPs were going to go through without much of a whisper from the public.

To be honest, for some considerable time they were flying beneath the radar, and the government has got a pretty powerful propaganda machine. They were able to put out quite strongly that: "Hey, this is clean, green power. How could you possibly object? You know, minimal effect." Of course, everybody at the start thought a run of the river was a turbine in the river, and the water just flowed through it. And that's not the case, of course.

There are some like that, actually. I understand that in the minister's constituency — or maybe it's the minister from Peace River North — they're considering looking at an actual run-of-the-river project in the Peace River Canyon. I don't know whether that's going to…. I've heard about that. There are actually those kinds of facilities, but none of the ones that we're looking at here as the IPPs — the run-of-the-river projects in British Columbia, for the most part — are those.

So the process is getting increasingly painful for the government. Let's hope that that gives them cause to reflect.

Now, this bill, Bill 15, however, is the marching orders for the B.C. Utilities Commission, which regulates the B.C. Hydro and Power Authority. Rather than the government having to direct them to do this or do that, they just say: "Here, this is the legislation. You can only act within the constraints of this legislation, and hey, we should have a lot less problems."

But the fact of the matter is that these problems, these projects — the way they're being foisted on the population, on the people of British Columbia — are not going to go away. They're not going to go away because people are on to them. People understand now that a lot of them — and I'm certainly not saying all of them, but a lot of them — are not green power. They're not green power.

M. Sather: Well, you know, this whole debate that the government has talked of, the import-export debate, is a valid debate. It's a valid debate to say whether or not we should export power, whether we should import power.

What I'd have a hard time sort of coming to grips with, with the government, as I said earlier, is really concern about self-sufficiency. It seems really clear to me that what they're concerned about is that…. They have this belief, it seems to me, that the private sector can always do it better. Infallibly, the private sector can do it better than the public sector.

M. Sather: And the member behind me agrees with that, and I think many of his colleagues agree with him. That speaks very loudly to why this government has so little faith in B.C. Hydro — because it's a public institution. So we have a whole plethora of private power companies that are springing up like daisies in the spring all over British Columbia — 500 rivers in the hopper now, 500 streams, and more to come.

M. Sather: Dandelions — invasive species. Thank you, Member. That's a much more accurate description of what we're looking at here. I've heard proponents of private power say: "Well, you know, B.C. Hydro doesn't have the expertise to do these kinds of projects. They don't have the flexibility to do these projects. You have to have the entrepreneurial finesse of the private sector to run these."

Well, I would submit that nothing could be further from the truth. Let's take the Upper Pitt again. ROR Power Inc. is the parent company for Northwest Cascade Power, which wants to do that project. They've never built a run-of-the-river project. They bought one in Brandywine Creek from Ledcor. So where is their expertise at building power projects?

B.C. Hydro has been in the business of producing power for decades. They've got engineers. They had more, apparently, than they have now — thanks to this government — but they have the expertise in developing power. They did a lot of the background research on the streams that would be potentially viable for a run-of-the-river project. I don't like to call them run-of-the-river. The way we've got it right now, anyway, they're private river diversion projects. But that's all out the window, and somehow the private sector is supposed to be able to do it better.

I think, you know, they've got some stock promoters that get together. They go to New York. They pump this on the New York market to finance the penny stock that they have. Hey, if they get that stock from 40 cents to two bucks, the major shareholders are going to reap a windfall. Does it really matter whether the project proceeds or not? Not necessarily to them, but I think it should matter to us. We're the ones, you know, that end up paying for their mistakes too, and the power keeps getting more and more expensive.

The B.C. energy plan that B.C. Hydro is mandated to follow says that B.C. Hydro will outsource the delivery of services where costs can be reduced. Costs can be reduced. So I'm not sure how these very expensive IPPs…. And ROR Inc. was promoting theirs at $88 a megawatt hour when all the utility regulators, the people in the know, both here and in the United States, said that in 2018 the price at the border would be about $50 a megawatt hour. So where are the savings going to be? Where are the cost savings?

The 2006 tender that B.C. Hydro put out for power alone will raise the rates by 8 percent, costing ratepayers over $15 billion. So we're talking big dollars. People have called this a gold rush, and it certainly is. B.C. Hydro puts out a tender, and then they have to double and triple it. I don't know who's telling them to do it, but that's what's happening. You can see why these people are so hot to get the contracts, the energy purchase agreements.

This is not, as we know, the only alternative the government has for power. The Columbia River downstream benefits could be reclaimed rather than exporting that power — somewhere in the order of 5,000 gigawatt hours a year, a substantial amount of power. There are, thankfully, as I understand, some retrofits and improvements happening to some of our existing facilities, which is all part of, I would call, true energy self-sufficiency — if that, in fact, is our goal.

But how does it stand to be energy self-sufficient when, as has been mentioned many times here, these energy purchase agreements of 20 to 40 years expire and then the owners of that power can sell on the open market?

It's really interesting, some of the rhetoric of these private power producers. When ROR. Inc. came to Pitt Meadows and had their open house about a year ago last fall, I believe it was, I talked to the proponent, and I said: "Well, are you going to be exporting this power? Is that the purpose of this?" "Oh, no, no," he said. "Our intention is to sell the power locally."

If someone didn't know better, you'd go away believing that. Oh wow, so they're going to produce, I think they said, energy up there for 55,000 homes, and it's all going to be sold locally, so we won't be importing any more power from the United States.

Well, that's not going to be the case. Of course it's not. Certainly not when the contract expires, because then they will be selling it on the open market, and who's to say it'll be in British Columbia? It could just as easily be in the United States.

The problem with also selling to the United States is that they're big players — right? They've got a huge population. They've got a lot of demand, and they have a lot of rules. Their Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rules about how things are going to be done. They say that anybody…. Their intention — and whenever the United States has an intention, we are well served to pay attention…. Anybody that's exporting to the United States has to play by their rules.

My concern is they're the ones that are going to be determining what happens to our power, how much we can sell and who we can sell it to. We'll be paying the price that they will find fair, that their market will demand. They have a large and hungry market, a mar-

ket that really is in need of power all the time. It also becomes an issue, then, of the sovereignty that's associated with this whole thing.

The large American companies like General Electric, of course, are seeing that this is a gold rush also and are starting to finance some of these projects, the ones that appear to be on track. The Toba Inlet project — Plutonic Power…. They've put, I think, something like $400 million or so into that for starters.

What happens when they gain control? We're talking energy self-sufficiency. We don't want to sell to the United States. We want to be able to produce our power ourselves. But where is the government saying anything about American companies owning the power in British Columbia? I don't hear anything about that.

We already export about two-thirds of our energy from British Columbia. We have the natural gas fields in the northeast that are producing like crazy. It's certainly bringing in cash to the coffers. We know that the Energy Minister loves it. It's in his area.

I don't think the Energy Minister is the least bit concerned about exporting that energy, but it's not owned by a public facility. It's owned by private companies, and therefore, de facto, it makes it fine by this government to export it. So when they talk about energy self-sufficiency, the public really is well served to look with a jaundiced eye on what the real agenda is.

M. Sather: "We have to have enough to keep our lights on," the minister says. That's right. But the question is: do we have to pay the rate that B.C. Hydro would charge, or do we have to pay the humongous rate through the private producers? It looks like the latter, according to this government.

One of the things that the government has talked about too, and it was bandied around a bit here today, was the issue of the smart meters. I think the Environment Minister talked about the smart meters. Now, I'm not an expert on smart meters. The minister asked if we had seen one. I haven't seen one. But apparently we're going to all have one in our living room, and it's going to make us much better conservers of electricity, apparently.

But is there going to be any kind of business case made? Is there going to be any kind of financial analysis of smart meters to say that they're the best way to go? The B.C. Utilities Commission, acting more independently prior to what's going to be the passage of Bill 15, might have some hard questions to ask the government about the smart meter project. Is it the best way to spend nearly a billion dollars? Not chump change. Or are there better conservation measures? I don't know.

Personally, I think it would be much more effective in terms of fighting climate change if the government put that money towards retrofits for homes. If you actually were able to double-pane your window and insulate your home — that's really a tool to fight global warming. I'm not so sure that we're going to get the same bang for our nearly billion dollars on the smart meters.

The government has to explain this — how it's the best possible project. And the B.C. Utilities Commission, I fear, is not going to have the same teeth that it previously had to be able to ask the hard questions, to be able to chastise the government.

The government's probably a little bit miffed, I understand, with the Utilities Commission after the Alcan thing. They made the government go two rounds on that one, and I'm sure that was pretty annoying to them. I think the Premier himself expressed quite a bit of annoyance about that little unfortunate occurrence. When a utility gets out of hand, you put the screws on them, you kick them around a little bit, make them smarten up. That's what the government is doing here.

What we're looking at, in short, is a process — the privatization of B.C. Hydro — and that's clearly what it is. The giveaway of power to the private sector is out of control. It's unregulated and out of control.

This government and the Ministry of Environment and the Energy Minister have a duty to go back to the drawing board, to say: "You know what? It's a good idea in some respects, but we've gone about it a little bit wrong. We've just kind of thrown it out there and said: 'Guys, go get them.' We'll eat up every one of those projects."

If it hadn't been for 1,200 people in the Pitt Meadows Secondary School, they would all be going through. The Minister of Environment certainly wasn't…. I know he's saying, "Wait for the process," and all that, but I'll tell you one thing. That project would have gone through. It still may go through, but the park boundary adjustment is not going to go through. That would have gone through too.

C. Trevena: I'm standing here to oppose Bill 15, Utilities Commission Amendment Act.

It's interesting. The Minister of Environment said he was inspired to speak because he had been listening to my colleague the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca, the critic for the area, talk about the issue. That inspired the Minister of Environment to stand up and speak in favour of the bill. It was the Minister of Environment's statements that actually inspired me to stand up and speak against the bill.

I think that what is very worrying about this and the way the government is going about this is the effective greening of it — making everything look as though it's being done to save the planet, when in fact what is being done is to make profits for people.

This bill is very worrying. It is not a green bill. It is not going to help the environment particularly. It's not

going to help B.C. in the ways that the government says it's going to help B.C. The minister, in his greenwashing approach, really is greening the issue in a way which is specious, to say the least.

This is a serious issue — ways of having alternative energy and the ways we can produce energy. We have independent power projects in B.C. which are undermining our public power system. Our public power company can no longer produce power. We have to go and buy it from independent power producers.

The focus for independent power has been on run of the river, but you've got to admit that there is also…. I know that in my constituency we've got people who want to do tidal projects, wind projects, biomass projects. There is a range of independent power producers who are wanting to produce power, which they argue is going to be great because it's going to be green.

It's going to be clean, which we all want. I thought we had it. I thought that B.C. Hydro was green and clean. I lived for a while in Ontario and was very distressed to find that Ontario Hydro was actually largely nuclear and was not hydro. In B.C. it was great that we had actual real B.C. hydro.

We have these green, clean alternatives — companies that want to make money producing power. Nothing wrong with people wanting to make money, but I think that we have to be very cautious when we're looking at our power production, particularly when you talk to the companies. I represent the north Island, and I'll talk to companies that will tell me very clearly how many thousands of homes their green power will produce power for.

The assumption is that we will be producing power for Vancouver Island. We'll be producing power for the north Island even, which is fantastic.

C. Trevena: The member asks if I'm opposed to Green Island. I think burning…. Use of garbage to create power is fabulous. I don't like the fact that we are looking at producing power through private producers. That is my objection.

C. Trevena: The minister says I'm opposed to Green Island. I have stood up very publicly on many occasions to say that I think that the Green Island energy, the burning of garbage to produce power, is both a way of dealing with the garbage and a way of creating power. I have never said that I'm opposed to Green Island, as I am concerned about independent power production.

What does concern me is this argument that what is going to be created is power for our homes on Vancouver Island and our homes in B.C. We first have the Minister of Environment talking about how green this is, how wonderful this is, how this is really going to be the salvation. "This bill will help solve the problem of climate change for B.C.," which I think anybody who can read the bill will quite clearly see it doesn't.

The other issue is this outrageous concept — I've got to say it's an outrageous concept — of energy self-sufficiency. It is pure scare tactics. We have the independent power producers saying: "We are going to be producing power for X thousand homes in your community, and we have to produce power because we have to be self-sufficient.

I wonder if the members opposite, the government, realize that actually our exports of power were up last year. B.C. exported a lot more power last year. We are a net exporter of power, and the idea of legislation saying that we are having energy security is very, very frightening for people. We have a system where we can, as says my colleague for Malahat–Juan de Fuca, the critic, have the opportunity to sell in good times and to buy in poorer times. That's what it's about.

I would have thought the members opposite, who base their philosophy on neoliberalism, would understand the basics of economics, but it's quite clear that the members opposite don't understand the basics of economics. If you want to actually make money, invest in your future.

Do as my colleague from Nelson-Creston said. You make sure that your utilities are making money for you, and that's what we're doing. We are not in a situation where we have to scare people about energy self-sufficiency. B.C. Hydro was once really the jewel in the crown for energy production in this country. It was the jewel in the crown.

C. Trevena: It is more than tarnished. It is being lost. It's being torn apart. This is not just selling off the family silver. It's melting it down and getting rid of it. Let's just get into pewter instead.

We should have a commitment to our power, to public power production, not scaring people with the concept of energy security and nor should we be dealing with it as an issue for the environment and saying that this is going to green up everything.

I also am very concerned…. I mentioned about the IPPs. One of the things is that the application system is going to be streamlined. We're going to be losing some of the regulatory safeguards that are there. These are important.

If we have to go down this road, which the government is forcing us down, of the privatization of our power production — it is a completely wrong move to be privatizing our power production — we should be making sure that we have a good, strong regulatory system.

Finally, I know that I have colleagues who want to speak on this because I find the arguments that this government is having for independent power production are really very, very worrying. They are not green arguments. This is not going to be the saviour of our….

C. Trevena: Noting the hour, Madam Speaker, I move adjournment of the debate.

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

Hon. K. Falcon: For the benefit of the members opposite, I will again just very quickly introduce the staff that are joining me here today. For the viewing public, I'm joined by my deputy minister, John Dyble; my assistant deputy minister of finance, Sheila Taylor; Kathie Miller, assistant deputy minister; Mike Proudfoot, assistant deputy minister; Peter Milburn, chief operating officer; and Frank Blasetti, the assistant deputy minister of finance.

M. Karagianis: I have a few questions here with regard to the Gateway project. I'd like to start off asking the minister to give us a status report as to where this project stands today. At what level of progress is the government on this project?

Hon. K. Falcon: For the benefit of the viewing public, because I know the member will know some of this, I'll just provide a very brief overview of what we mean when we talk about the Gateway transportation project.

As I've had the pleasure of discussing with the critic and member opposite, the Lower Mainland has suffered from a complete lack of infrastructure investment over the last many, many years. In fact, you have to go back as far as 1986 and the construction of the Alex Fraser Bridge to identify the last major piece of infrastructure that was built by the Social Credit government of the day.

This is indeed a challenge because since that time, the population of the Lower Mainland has grown by three-quarters of a million people. We know that over the next 25 years we've got a million more people that will be moving into the Lower Mainland, and that, of course, is something that creates some incredible challenges.

The government in taking a look at not only what the population growth is going to be but also what is happening around the world. There is a global shift taking place. The manufacturing hub of the world is increasingly moving to Asia. That has significant ramifications in terms of trade flows. It's less of a European–North American trade flow now and more of an Asia-Pacific-North-American trade flow.

British Columbia happens to be blessed by geography. We are the closest piece of real estate to Asia, and as a result of that, it affords us some tremendous opportunities in terms of being a true gateway to North America, not only for goods coming from Asia but for goods coming from North America that we want to export to our markets around the world, particularly in Asia. Because of that, we are taking a hard look at our current infrastructure network, and we are making strategic investments. The Gateway program is really the centrepiece of a whole range of investments we're making.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to talk to the member about the $283 million worth of investments being made in the border infrastructure program. Again, that's to improve border access on Highway 11, Highway 15 and Highway 10. All of those are being improved and widened to four lanes to be able to handle the commercial goods and movement of traffic as we try to get our goods — in many cases, goods from British Columbia — effectively to their marketplaces, wherever that may be — either to eastern parts of the province, to the rest of the country or south into the United States.

In addition to those investments, however, the Gateway transportation plan is also something that is a very important piece of this. The Gateway transportation plan has three elements. On the north side of the Fraser River the centrepiece of the work is the Pitt River bridge.

That Pitt River bridge is under construction today. It is proceeding very well. It is a new seven-lane $200 million bridge replacing two existing bridges: one built in 1958, the other in 1973. They are swing bridges, meaning that anytime vessels come along, they have to stop all traffic and swing the bridges open to allow vessels to get through.

This will be a new high-level bridge that will no longer have that requirement. It will make a significant difference for the folks in that area of the Lower Mainland, which has seen very strong growth rates over the last ten or 15 years.

It will also be a bridge that will have designed into it capability for future rapid transit or light rail or whatever kind of transit opportunities may be looked at in the future. It will have cycling capabilities that provide a safe cycling and pedestrian access across the corridor.

It will have a lane that will be used primarily by the trucking community, which will allow the truckers to get across over to the CP intermodal yard, where an enormous amount of the container traffic is moved in and out of the rail yard by truck. So that project is proceeding very well.

The centre of the project — so you now move across to the Fraser River — is the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and the widening of Highway 1 from Vancouver all the way out to 216th Street in Langley. That's affectionately known as the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge.

This portion of the project is now in the procurement stage. There are three bidding groups that are involved in bidding on this particular project. I'd be happy to get the information about who is in those groups. I don't know off the top of my head, but we can get those for the member, if she wishes.

They are going through a competitive procurement process. That process should be wrapped up sometime in the fall, at which point we will have an identified concessionaire to operate the new twin Port Mann Bridge and oversee the construction maintenance operation of that project over the next many, many years.

On the south side of the Fraser River is the third and final piece of the Gateway transportation project, and that is the South Fraser perimeter road. The South Fraser perimeter road has been a road that's been called for by the region for over 20 years. It is part of the livable region strategic plan.

It is something that is in the OCPs of both Delta and Surrey. It is something that has been called for by chambers of commerce and stakeholder groups throughout the Lower Mainland for many, many years. It's been something that was supported by all previous governments, who have been pushing for this. What was lacking, again, was the political will to actually get it done.

I'm pleased to say that that process is proceeding along extraordinarily well. Like the Port Mann Bridge, it is in the environmental assessment process right now. We expect that both of those projects will come out of the environmental assessment process sometime this year. I don't have any predictions in terms of time frame, but the moment the South Fraser perimeter road comes out of the environmental assessment process, construction work will begin almost immediately on that project.

The final thing that I will say just in closing, now that I've provided a summary, is that I want to take a moment to congratulate our staff and thank for their efforts. I think it is a very significant project for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is very large. It is a $3 billion project. This is one of the largest projects ever undertaken in the history of the province of British Columbia.

It is a project that has involved an enormous amount of public consultation. In fact, there have been over 10,000 individuals that have attended over 45 open houses, not to mention dozens of smaller stakeholder groups that have been brought together to discuss this project.

I can tell you that everywhere I go, I hear positive comments from those that have had to deal with the folks in the Gateway office that have been responsible for pulling this project together, overseeing the public consultative process and the consultative process with all of the various municipalities and associated groups, whether it's TransLink or the GVRD — now known as Metro Vancouver. I think they have done an exceptional job, and I wanted to take this moment on the record to recognize the work that they've done.

With that, and again thanking the critic for her forbearance in allowing me to explain to the viewing public what it is we'll probably be talking about for the next period of time, I now defer to the critic.

M. Karagianis: The minister has outlined…. I didn't hear exactly when the completion was expected on the Pitt River project, so perhaps the minister could allude to that in his next answers. But I do know that this plan has been, up to this point, contrary to the LRS plan, the livable region strategy plan for the Lower Mainland, and that's still technically required by the government as part of the regional growth strategy.

Can the minister explain how he has rationalized this project against that strategy, which is very contrary to the current plan?

Hon. K. Falcon: To answer the first question that the member posed, on the Pitt River bridge, the Pitt River bridge scheduled completion is the fall of '09.

In terms of the plan with respect to the livable region strategic plan…. For the benefit of the public, the livable region strategic plan was adopted by the GVRD in 1996. It sets out the vision of what growth should look like throughout the member municipalities of the GVRD. It is a plan that is supposed to be updated every five years to reflect the changes in population growth, etc.

As I mentioned, the South Fraser perimeter road has always been part of the planning in the region for over 20 years. It is consistent and called for as part of the livable region strategic plan. The Pitt River bridge, which is currently under construction, was supported by the GVRD and is something that was appreciated.

The livable region strategic plan is silent, actually, in terms of the Port Mann Bridge. Some have jumped to the conclusion that it is somehow contrary to the livable region strategic plan. I would disagree with that interpretation.

The reason I would disagree with that interpretation is because our plan took great pains to ensure that the Port Mann Bridge portion of the Gateway proposal incorporated many of the elements that are called for as part of the LRSP — for example, the extension of HOV lanes all the way out to Langley; transit priority lanes, queue-jumper lanes that provide a leg up for transit to ensure that they have the ability to get where they need to go past any queued traffic that may be there; and, of course, tolling. Tolling is something that is also consistent with the LRSP.

One of the challenges, of course, with the continued reference to the LRSP, as I mentioned earlier, is that it is supposed to be updated every five years. It has not been updated since 1996. There has been a dramatic change in the traffic patterns in the Lower Mainland since 1986. By way of example, back then in 1996, the commonly held belief — and still held by some people, in Vancouver primarily — was that all of the traffic is coming from the suburbs into Vancouver and then coming back out in the evening.

What the most extensive trip-traffic survey report that has ever been undertaken in the Lower Mainland — a joint effort by both TransLink and the Ministry of Transportation — demonstrated is that that is not the case anymore and that in fact traffic patterns are very diffuse. Essentially, you have people going all over the place now.

It's no longer the old model, where everyone is driving into Vancouver. In fact, the level of growth for cars that are actually leaving Vancouver out towards the suburbs is considerably more in terms of growth percentage than you have for cars that are coming into Vancouver. In fact, over 50 percent of the cars that actually go over the Port Mann Bridge now exit off that bridge and never make it into Vancouver. They exit off into the northeast sector. So it's a considerable shift in traffic demand.

Our hopes are that the GVRD board, which is now referring to itself as Metro Vancouver, is working on attempting to update the livable region strategic plan. We think that is a positive thing. My hopes are that after 12 years they will have that plan updated for the benefit not only of the GVRD but of the surrounding region.

M. Karagianis: I appreciate that the minister has categorized his interpretation of the livable regional strategy as being, perhaps, different than the communities who worked to develop that plan and who still believe that that plan should be put in place. I'm curious as to why the minister didn't wait for the reworking of that, in order to work more conducively with communities on this Gateway plan.

Hon. K. Falcon: Certainly. The reason I didn't is because had we chosen to wait until that process was completed, we might be waiting 20 years from now for that process to be completed. The reason, I believe, that the LRSP has not been updated, even though it was supposed to be every five years, is that it requires consensus, meaning that they have to get every single municipality — over 20 of them — as part of the GVRD to agree on what the updated livable region strategic plan should be.

Obviously, we have a responsibility in the province that we cannot wait an indeterminate period of time until they go through this process. We're already, as I say, seven years past the date in which it was supposed to have been updated. We just haven't got the luxury of waiting around for a time that actually could be forever.

I am not at all convinced, based on the discussions I've seen thus far, that there is a strong likelihood that the LRSP is in fact going to be updated successfully, certainly in the term of this government and perhaps even future governments. That doesn't mean that I'm not an optimistic person. I am. I'm hopeful that that would be the case.

What we did was recognize that the vast majority of the Gateway program is entirely consistent, if not called for, in the old LRSP that is currently the one governing the GVRD and that the elements we've put into place on the Port Mann portion, which is silent in the LRSP…. It is not opposed. There is nothing in the LRSP that says you can not build infrastructure or build a bridge.

What we have done is to make sure, in the design and construction of the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, that we do it with all of the elements that are called for under the LRSP — tolling, HOV lanes, cycling and pedestrian facilities. All of those elements will form part of the plan. I believe that we have gone a long way to make sure that the Gateway transportation plan is very much consistent, if not with the letter of the LRSP, then certainly with the spirit of the LRSP.

M. Karagianis: I'm surprised, actually, that the minister admits to not letting the municipalities lead the way on this. The livable region strategy is about municipalities determining their own future and their own plan. Yet the minister has said that we couldn't wait for that. The government couldn't wait for municipalities to do that. Is it not conceivable that municipalities could have been empowered to do this quicker had the government not chosen to impose this Gateway plan on them?

Frankly, the lesson that the previous TransLink board learned over the Canada line was that the government came in and demanded that this be a priority. It was the government's priority and therefore would be TransLink's priority. Now the communities have heard that despite their livable region strategies and the work they've done and their right and autonomy to determine their future, government has come in and said: "This is what we want to do, and we're imposing that."

I appreciate that the minister has interpreted the lack of reference in the LRSP to the Port Mann Bridge as somehow to entitle the government to come in and say: "We're going to impose this plan on them." I'd like to know from the minister why communities were not empowered to carry on with their livable region strategy and do it quicker and why the government has

seen fit to override municipal autonomy and impose this plan on them with no respect for that livable region strategy.

Hon. K. Falcon: The member is much too pessimistic. The fact of the matter is that there is lots of support among the member municipalities for the Gateway project. Some municipalities might say, "Well, we support that part and that part, not that part," or they might say, "We wholeheartedly welcome all of it," or in rare cases, you have certain mayors that are well known to oppose virtually everything, and that's to be expected.

I can tell you that the livable region strategic plan is a plan that requires consensus to be updated. I would remind the member again that the plan was introduced and adopted in 1996. It is now 2008. The plan has not been updated.

Yes, they are talking about updating the plan, but it requires consensus. The member opposite might be a lot more optimistic than I am about the likelihood of consensus emerging amongst 21 different municipalities as they work this thing through.

What I can tell the member, though, is that the key elements of this Gateway transportation plan are entirely consistent with and, in fact, called for as part of the livable region strategic plan — both the Pitt River bridge and the South Fraser perimeter road. It is silent on the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge.

I would remind the member that the Port Mann Bridge is a corridor which directly serves the provincial interests of British Columbia. This is not a municipal issue to the extent that this is a provincial corridor of the Trans-Canada highway, which serves the interests of the entire province of British Columbia. In fact, it is the most important commercial-goods-movement corridor in the province, bar none.

I would go further than that. It's not only important for British Columbia; it's actually important for western Canada, which is one of the reasons why there is such strong support from the other western provinces — including the New Democratic province in support of this. They recognize that they ship a lot of their goods out of the ports of Vancouver, and they ship those goods, in many cases, by truck down through the Lower Mainland. When they get caught up in that horrific 14 hours a day of rush hour congestion, it impacts their abilities to be competitive and to service their markets around the world. That certainly undermines Canada's, and British Columbia's, role as a gateway.

In spite of all that, we have still gone to great lengths to make sure that we are supportive of this project, that we try and do it in a manner that very much reflects all of the elements of the livable region strategic plan with respect to things like tolling HOV lanes, etc.

I would remind the member opposite that that member's party, while in government, was also very supportive of twinning the Port Mann Bridge. Virtually every member was on record as calling for it. I might add that they were not calling for tolls. There wasn't mention of HOV lanes, and there wasn't mention of many of the elements that we've actually put into this to ensure that it is at least philosophically consistent with the livable region strategic plan.

M. Karagianis: My remarks were really about the autonomy of municipalities. This current government promised in the Community Charter that municipalities would have that autonomy, and yet the minister seems quite comfortable to ignore what he doesn't want to see in the livable regional strategy or to ignore what's not there and impose the provincial plan over that.

Throughout the estimates here I know that the minister has popped it in and out of his and the province's involvement in major projects, whether it's TransLink's or now this one.

But let's talk, then, a little bit more about this project — specifically about the bidding process that's ongoing — and yes, I'd be very interested to see who the three bidders are currently up for the twinning project and the procurement contracts. What's the time line, then, for this? If we've got the contracts — the procurement bidding process closes in the fall — what's the actual time line now for the next stage of this, beyond the Pitt River project?

Hon. K. Falcon: For the benefit of the member, all this information is available on the Gateway website. The member, in future reference, may just wish to check that out. I'm not in any way diminishing her request. I'm just reminding the member that all this is available.

We tried through this whole process to make sure that everything is available on the website — as much as we can put out there within the constraints of whatever legal obligations we may have to folks that are involved in different aspects of this project. We put everything. That's a policy of this minister and this ministry on projects like this — to just put everything on the Web so it's available to the public at large. I always think we're always best served by that.

In that regard, in August of last year we short-listed three firms to participate in the request for proposals. The three firms are Connect B.C. Development Group, Gateway Mobility Partners and Highway 1 Transportation Group. They were all selected through a request for qualifications process. That RFQ closed in June of last year, and six replies were received. RFP submissions are due, so we've got those in the spring of this year. Construction, well…. I've been on the record as saying that construction will be completed by 2013.

M. Karagianis: My questions were very specifically around the time line, to see whether or not there had been any amendments to that time line. I do know that within the service plan…. The ministry itself says here that the progress on these projects — and certainly, I think the minister touched on this — is subject to the environmental assessment process. So can the minister

inform me where we're at with the environmental process on both the twinning project and on the south perimeter road?

Hon. K. Falcon: Both the Port Mann Bridge project and the South Fraser perimeter road project are in the final stages of the environmental assessment approval process.

M. Karagianis: Certainly, we've had some comment made by Environment Canada around their concerns about this, about the environmental assessment process and whether or not, in fact, it is adequate at this point.

The greenhouse gas emissions projected to increase due to Gateway…. The province is claiming about 2.3 percent. Metro Vancouver says it's 2 percent. Environment Canada says it could be much higher than that. So how has the provincial government determined that, in fact, it's only 0.3 percent, and how will this affect the environmental assessment on this?

Hon. K. Falcon: So the air quality studies are based on terms of reference, and the terms of reference are approved by the environmental assessment office and the regulatory agencies, which include Environment Canada. So they all sign off on what the terms of reference will be with regard to air quality studies. The studies are conducted by recognized experts and professionals in the field, in accordance with the terms of reference set up.

The review process, once those studies come in…. The member should know that it's a very normal and, in fact, welcome part of the review process when questions get asked. That is the whole point of the review process — that the respective agencies have the ability to raise questions. Then it is the responsibility of the ministry and the Gateway staff to work with those respective regulatory agencies to make sure that they address or respond to the questions and address any of the issues that may be raised, to the satisfaction of those regulatory agencies. That's exactly what has taken place in this process, and that's exactly how the process is designed to work.

I say that only because I've been through lots of these major projects, and I think that there sometimes is confusion amongst, you know, certain groups out there or individuals that don't understand that the whole point of going through an environmental assessment process is that you want to make sure you do these major projects right. The kinds of questions that get raised are helpful in the process of ensuring that we actually do these projects in a manner that is ensuring that we minimize the impact as much as we humanly can when undertaking major projects like these.

M. Karagianis: Well, you know, Environment Canada has been highly critical of this entire process. Environment Canada has also called into question the government's expectation around increased traffic. The traffic models that the province has presented do not include increased traffic generated by the freeway expansion. We're building a major new freeway here and twinning a bridge, and yet the government has not included the automobile traffic models in that for increased traffic. Environment Canada has been highly critical of both that and the fact that the new capacity of this freeway will encourage more traffic, perhaps as much as a 30 percent increase over the next ten years.

Can the minister answer me: how is that affecting the environmental assessment, and where are those details?

Hon. K. Falcon: Environment Canada did as they are required to do and raised the question of whether the growth plans of the municipalities had anticipated this construction. I think it's important to recognize, for the benefit of the member, that the growth plans that underlie what we're talking about in terms of traffic impacts for the Gateway program are based on the growth plans, the official community plans, of the respective municipalities. They are endorsed by the GVRD and, again, are approved by Environment Canada as part of the approach that should be taken when setting up the terms of reference, in terms of how to get to a result.

The question they raised, which was answered by the staff, was: would this have an impact on traffic growth? The answer was that to suggest that it would, would also be to suggest that municipalities aren't going to stick to their own growth plans.

I think the evidence is very clear that the municipalities in question are in fact doing a very good job in sticking to the growth plans. I think Surrey, in particular, deserves a lot of credit. You will see an enormous amount of density growth taking place in their major town centre, which is Surrey centre. A lot of highrise activity is taking place, and we have nothing to suggest that the municipalities have any intention of abandoning their own official community plans.

M. Karagianis: Let me just go back over some of the things that the minister has informed us of here this afternoon. At the very opening remarks the minister commented that a million people would be moving to the Lower Mainland in the future — a million people. We can expect that some of those people will drive a car.

The minister has then gone on to say that, in fact, the regional planning process here is so outdated that the minister has dismissed it. The last time the regional growth strategy, through the LRS plan, was updated was 1996. Therefore, the minister has had to impose this plan on it, because first of all, it didn't talk about a bridge. It did talk about increased capacity, and therefore, the minister has now had to go in and impose a bridge over this.

A million people will be coming, but there will be no appreciable change in any of the future numbers of vehicles on the road due to the expansion of a freeway.

That is just illogical to me — that a million people are coming, and somehow they're not going to be driving cars. The minister is going to build a huge freeway and twin a bridge, and there is going to be no increased traffic on it.

Yet the reason Environment Canada is critical of this is because every kind of traffic modelling will tell you that there is going to be an increase — even at 2 percent a year, which is pretty modest growth for the amount of traffic in the lower mainland, with a million people coming — and that there will be 30 percent more cars on the road when this project is completed in 2013, or just a few years after that, than there are right now.

You cannot bring a million people in and not expect that it's going to impact this, especially given the fact that the transit projects won't provide ridership capacity until 2014 to 2020. So those people are going to have to drive. The bridge is going to open in 2013, and people will have to drive.

I am very concerned here that the minister is kind of dismissive of Environment Canada's concerns. How is this impacting the environmental assessment? Is the environmental assessment appropriately going to take into consideration all of these concerns, or are they not relevant?

Hon. K. Falcon: First of all, just to correct…. The member keeps making an emphasis that, somehow, something is being imposed on somebody.

In fact, the member should check, and she will find out that there are many, many of the municipalities that are just thrilled that a government — unlike her government, which made promises to twin the Port Mann Bridge and, by the way, did it without the traffic demand management measures that we are putting in place — is actually doing what they said they were going to do. So I quite disagree.

It doesn't mean there won't be disagreement. My goodness, if your criterion for moving forward on a project is that there can't be anyone who disagrees with you, you'll have a decade like the NDP had, where nothing happens. That's not the way we do things. We listen to all the critics, we make sure that we try to inform ourselves of their concerns, and we try to build that into the projects that we ultimately come forward with.

That's why it was our government that actually introduced traffic demand measures on the Port Mann, like tolling. It's not that that's an easy thing to do politically, but it was the right thing to do. It's consistent with the spirit of the LRSP. It's a way that you can pay for the infrastructure, and it's also a way that you get people to think about the real cost of the driving option.

It's one of the reasons why we also included $180 million of public transit through a rapid bus that is going to go across the Port Mann Bridge, restoring bus service for the first time in 20 years. I would remind the member that the reason you can't put bus service on there today is that you've got 14 hours a day of rush hour congestion.

The reason why buses haven't been running for 20 years is because there's no value in running buses where nobody is going to get on the bus because the buses won't go anywhere. Nobody likes sitting in traffic on a bus and waiting almost an hour just to get down 152 to have the joy of actually getting onto the Trans-Canada and then sitting on the Trans-Canada for another 45 minutes, waiting to get over the bridge.

The member talks about me saying: "There are a million more people, and oh my goodness, how are the communities going to handle this?" It seems so outrageous that I would suggest this. Well, the member might want to look at the OCPs. I mean, the official community plans aren't static. They anticipate that growth. Surrey obviously knows that people are moving to Surrey. I mean, this isn't a surprise. Maybe it's a surprise to the member, because I don't imagine she gets to Surrey often.

But as someone that lives in Surrey, I can tell you that we're well aware of having the largest school district in the province and having to deal with the challenges of trying to keep up by opening so many more schools to keep up with all the kids that keep pouring into our K-to-12 system. That's a big challenge; there's no doubt. It's also an early indicator that there is going to be big population growth.

Surrey is going to overtake Vancouver in population in the next ten years. That will come as a surprise to certain folks in Vancouver who think that the entire world revolves around Vancouver. Actually, it doesn't. The OCPs of both Delta and Surrey are very aware of that. They are informed by that. They are planning for that. That is why you will see some of the largest highrise construction projects in western Canada taking place in Surrey today, either planned or under construction — because the OCP is anticipating that growth.

The member should know that's all planned for. That's exactly what we said when Environment Canada quite rightly raised the questions. I mean, this is what these agencies are supposed to do. This may come as a surprise to the member, but when you bring forward these studies, the agencies aren't all supposed to salute and say: "That's just wonderful. Thank you. The deal is done, and let's just get on with this program."

No, they're actually supposed to look at them and raise questions. One of the questions they raised is: what is the basis for ensuring that traffic growth — as the member said — isn't going to grow beyond what is stated in the plans, in the modelling that is put together by the top experts in the world?

The answer is: because they're entirely consistent with the terms of reference that were set out and were approved and agreed upon by the GVRD and by Environment Canada, which said that they must be consistent with the official community plans of the respective municipalities, and they are. Those official community plans do in fact contain provisions that allow for the million people that are going to be moving into the lower mainland over the next 25 years. That's the answer.

M. Karagianis: Well, I certainly have no doubt whatsoever that the communities have accepted the

plan. What other alternative do they have but to accept the plan? I think the minister has acknowledged that there will be a lot more cars in the future. That's going to have a huge impact, especially on a government that has come up with a greenhouse gas target that will be seriously challenged by the amount of traffic that is now going to be encouraged across the new freeway and the new bridge, based on the fact that there will be no transit options until after that bridge is open.

The minister and I have had some good conversations here about the public-private partnerships and other government transportation projects. So let's talk about the one that will be building the bridge. Will this operate very much the same as the other public-private partnerships in the province, where the private partner will come to the table with a considerable amount of investment, both the federal and the provincial governments will put some money in, possibly the municipalities will, and the private partner — the concessionaire, as I'm sure the minister will entitle them — will then have the option of all tolls, all operations and all management for the next 30 years on that bridge?

Hon. K. Falcon: On the last point the member made, she should know that traffic management always maintains within this ministry. The Ministry of Transportation will always be in control of traffic management on any projects, whether they're P3 or not, in the province of British Columbia.

Just to clarify that for the member. She should know that with respect to the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge, there will be no federal or provincial dollars involved in the construction of that project. It will be self-financed by tolls. The concession agreement will stipulate what the level of those tolls will be.

The other thing I would just say to the preamble to the member's question when she talked about how we could think about doing this and our greenhouse gas initiative…. The member has to remember that when we did this, we did it very much with the environment and greenhouse gas emissions in mind. That is why there is tolling on this particular project. We were the government that said that that was the right thing to do. It's not the politically easiest thing to do, but it's the right thing to do, and that's why it will have tolls.

We're the government that actually said that we are going to, in partnership with TransLink, commit $150 million in provincial dollars and $13 million in TransLink dollars for a $180 million rapid bus across the new Port Mann Bridge, which will have, in some cases, dedicated lanes — queue-jumper lanes — that will restore public transit, an efficient and effective public transit, across that corridor for the first time in 20 years.

I hope the member hasn't conveniently forgotten, but we had a discussion yesterday about a $14 billion transit plan that we have in the province of British Columbia. A significant portion of that transit plan is to ensure that we entice people out of their cars and into a transit system, an expansion of which is contemplated under the provincial transit plan that is the largest ever, by a long shot, in the history of the province of British Columbia. It is massive.

We do that because we recognize that we are trying to achieve a number of objectives here. Making sure that we deal with environmental issues is very much top of mind for this government. It has informed every decision we've made about this project and others that we do. That's why we introduced the transit plan. That's why we introduced the $180 million rapid bus. That's why we have tolling, that's why we have HOV lanes, and that's why we have cycling on every aspect of this project. It is absolutely integral to the entire project.

I think it's important that when we talk about these kinds of projects, we recognize that it's one piece of the puzzle. The final thing I will say about that is that we also recognize that this is very important for our economy. It's very important for the movement of goods, and the movement of goods is something that we need to deal with.

The fact of the matter is that we have a growing economy in British Columbia, and the fact of the matter is that much of that economy by its very nature needs to be moved by truck. You know, we don't have train tracks going to all the small businesses throughout the Lower Mainland and throughout the province. They have to be delivered by truck. A lot of people forget that.

We want to make sure that on the most important commercial corridor in the province of British Columbia we address that by ensuring they've got the ability to get through the most important commercial corridor and not be jammed up with 14 hours a day of idling vehicles moving very, very slowly to the severe detriment of both the environment and the economy.

M. Karagianis: The minister said that the bridge would be paid for entirely by tolls from the project, under the private partner. Let's be honest. The transit across the bridge won't occur until at least one to seven years after the bridge is opened. I canvassed the minister very closely on when these transit projects would be up and running, and I have all of those details there. So the bridge will open before many of those transit projects have actually reached the point of providing ridership.

I would like to talk with the minister here about this issue of tolling on the bridge and the public-private partnership. We've canvassed this quite a bit. I know that the minister talked about looking around the world at 3Ps and how successful they are, but I want to talk about New South Wales in Australia, which attempted to solve a massive congestion problem in Sydney with the very same kind of solutions that we're hearing here: a 30-year public-private partnership contract with a private consortium to build and operate an underground cross-city tunnel — very similar to the bridge.

The tunnel opened to much fanfare in August of last year but has been a complete fiasco. First and foremost, it fell short of the projected 90,000 users per day. Because motorists found the tolling too expensive,

they used alternate routes. As a result, the city of Sydney began closing other roads in the area in order to funnel traffic into the tunnel.

Why would they have done that? Well, the public was quite outraged, but they found out that the state was obligated to close roads due to a non-competition clause in their contract that was negotiated and signed in secret with the private partner, the 3P. The contract also said that the operator would be compensated for any damages due to the lack of users through that tunnel every day. The state is currently in litigation with that company, and they're still suffering gridlock because the tunnel is not working the way they proposed.

Interestingly enough, here in Toronto the Conservative government signed a 99-year lease with similar non-competition clauses with a private consortium to run their 407 express toll route as Canada's first private toll road. Well, that's also turned out to be not very successful. The tolls began to rise on this. They are still a huge problem in Toronto, because the private company began to raise the tolls. The Ontario government went to court and found out that they actually have no recourse. They have not been successful at all in fighting off the private toll company there.

It's interesting to me, as we've talked about all of this, that we're now reaching sort of the culmination, which is the Port Mann Bridge. Now, interestingly enough, the company involved in both the Sydney case and the Ontario case is the same company, Macquarie Infrastructure Group. They are the company currently in litigation with the city of Sydney, and they are the ones who successfully fought the province of Ontario around their issues with tolls.

The tolls are still very high, and they're currently trying to negotiate some kind of different tolling system, but the non-competition clauses are very detrimental in both cases. Interestingly enough, the same Macquarie Infrastructure Group is involved here in the Sea to Sky project and the Golden Ears project and is possibly one of the potential bidders in the twinned Port Mann.

The minister and I have an understanding here that we both disagree on our perspectives on public-private partnerships. I would ask if the minister is concerned about these events that are unfolding elsewhere in the country with regard to 3Ps; whether that in any way will affect the kind of contractual agreement that is struck here in the fall with one of the concessionaires that takes over this project; and what the long-term ramifications will be here in the Lower Mainland if we experience similar events to what they've had in Sydney, Australia, and in Ontario.

Hon. K. Falcon: The first part of the member's question about RapidBus…. According to the member's belief, it won't being operational on the Port Mann Bridge for one to seven years. That is flatly wrong. It will be operational on day one, when the bridge opens. I'll tell you that it will be a great relief to the folks south of the Fraser and in the northeast sector who are frustrated with not having basic bus service over a very important corridor. So I'll emphasize that again to just make sure that the member doesn't inadvertently mislead people in the future. RapidBus will be operational on day one.

I would encourage the member, if she gets a chance, to drive over the Port Mann Bridge. Come visit the Lower Mainland and enjoy the wonderful drive over the Port Mann Bridge. She'll have lots of time to look at it because she'll proceed very slowly, but as she proceeds slowly over the bridge, when she gets to the Surrey side she will notice major construction activity taking place. That major construction activity has to do with an underpass — the 156 underpass — which will connect the communities of Guildford and Fraser Heights and also provide the very critical on-ramps for the RapidBus onto the Port Mann Bridge and Highway 1.

We're very excited about that construction project, which is being delivered very efficiently and, again, just as a testament to the fact that RapidBus will be operational on day one.

Now, the member has, through her great research, searched the world and come up with two instances where she believes that there have been some failures in a couple of P3 projects, and the member is right. I'm actually aware of both of them.

The first in New South Wales…. They're right, and I will tell you right here that the government signed one heck of a stupid deal. I'll tell you that right now. One of the things that I can tell the member opposite is that we won't be signing a deal like that, which says that if you haven't got the traffic volume we're going to close off roads and start driving traffic to the bridge. That risk will be with the concessionaire. The traffic volume risk is with the concessionaire. We're not going to sign an agreement like New South Wales.

I'm not at all surprised that once they realized, frankly, the stupidity of the deal they signed and tried to change it…. When you enter into a contractual arrangement, the other party to the contract might not look very happily at the idea that you now don't like the deal you signed and want to try to change it on them, so naturally, there is litigation. All I'll say further about that is that you will not see those kinds of provisions in a project in the province of British Columbia.

The member also mentions the project back east. All I'll say about the project back east is that in terms of usage it has been a rip-roaring success. There are lots of people that are paying whatever the latest toll is on Highway 407 there, apparently quite happily. Having said that, I also think that the government made a mistake by not spelling out what the ability to toll on that route should be. Again, we've been very clear that our concession agreement will not allow any concessionaire to raise the tolls whenever they wish. The tolls themselves and the ability to raise or make any increases will all be written as part of the concession agreement.

I thank the member for bringing up those two examples, and I'm pleased to advise the member that none of those provisions will be found in the conces-

sion agreement that the province of British Columbia intends to enter into with respect to the Port Mann Bridge.

M. Karagianis: I'm happy to hear that. My concern was not necessarily even with those two instances, because I would certainly hope that the government would see that as a signal of the things to look for in our contracts.

You know, the company involved here has a similar thread through other contracts within the province, so I sincerely hope that we will not discover at some time in the future that we're locked into some contractual agreements that end up with a similar kind of situation happening here in British Columbia.

I am mindful of the fact that many members would like to ask other questions here, so I only have a couple more questions to ask of the minister. One is on the south perimeter road. We talked a little bit about the environmental assessment. It's no secret that there's an enormous amount of controversy around the route for the south perimeter road.

Can the minister apprise us today if there have been any changes at all in the proposed route of the south perimeter road other than the one that is currently available on the website and is part of the Gateway plan?

Hon. K. Falcon: Just before answering that question, I do want to take a moment to just comment on the member opposite's reference to Macquarie. The member should know that Macquarie is a very highly respected company that has assets under its management in the tens of billions of dollars and has a reputation that is sterling in terms of their record of building infrastructure around the world.

It doesn't mean that there may not be occasions in which they find themselves involved in litigation. Companies that large and with that many projects sometimes do. But I am glad that the member referenced their involvement in the Sea to Sky Highway, because the Sea to Sky Highway is a project which is proceeding extraordinarily well — as the Chair would well know, as the MLA for the area.

We receive enormous plaudits for the work that is done there, so we're very pleased — I wanted to state that for the record — about having their involvement in that project. I think they're doing a very, very good job in their part of the concessionaire.

The member is asking specifically about South Fraser perimeter road. There is ongoing…. In fact, from the very beginning we have worked very hard with the various regulatory agencies, the Delta Farmers Institute and stakeholders, Burns Bog preservation society, etc., to make sure that as we design the proposed route for the South Fraser perimeter road, we do it in a manner that will not impede on the bog.

As we're going through our discussions with regulatory agencies, Environment Canada has raised concerns about a two-kilometre section north of Highway 99. They would like it moved a very small distance away from its current alignment. We are in the middle of discussions with them to try and deal with the issues that they have raised. My understanding is that those discussions are going well, but they have not concluded. At the conclusion of those discussions we will happily inform the member of how they turned out.

What I will say to the member is that the goal of the government and the Ministry of Transportation from the very beginning on the South Fraser perimeter road is to make sure that we build this particular section of expressway to the highest possible environmental standards. In order to do that, we have been painstaking in the efforts we have made with all of the various stakeholders involved in this process, to attempt to do this in a manner that minimizes the impact as much as humanly possible.

There is an enormous range of scientific issues that are brought to bear on a situation like this. I have become familiar with issues that I never even knew existed a few short years ago. It has, frankly, impressed me with the level of detail and the effort that is undertaken by staff and the regulatory agencies, including Environment Canada, that try to work very hard to make sure that they can come to an agreement that, in fact, minimizes the impact as much as possible. That's exactly what's happening on this section.

M. Karagianis: Certainly we will be watching to see how the south perimeter road unfolds in the local community. Unfortunately, I know that I've got members here that would like to ask some questions, so I'm going to cede the floor to them.

I know that the minister has frequently categorized our concerns on this side of the House as being non-supportive and disputing the need for a bridge. In fact, we don't dispute the need; we dispute the methods.

I am concerned because none of the answers I've received here in the last two days have given me any comfort with our perception — mine and the Leader of the Opposition's — of the methodology here.

The transit plan that has come after the fact…. I mean, the Gateway project was announced with great fanfare by the government. It wasn't until only a scant few months ago that a transit plan was put together. And frankly, the minister has even admitted that that is a compilation of planning that had already existed at TransLink.

I am very concerned about the 3P aspect of this, the public-private partnership. Elsewhere in the world, as I've mentioned to the minister, companies are disengaging from 30-year public-private partnerships, and probably partly because of the experience in the communities like Sydney, Australia, and certainly in Ontario, where the 99-year lease is going to be very hard to escape from.

I'm concerned that the tolls here will go into the private hands of the builder as payment for the bridge

and will not be reinvested in future transit. I dispute very strongly the government's claims around their ability to meet greenhouse gas targets in the future, given the amount of traffic expansion that's going to go on with this project — the government's self-admission that a million new people moving there could certainly result in more traffic.

I'm concerned about the concerns that Environment Canada has expressed around the environmental assessment, so I'll be watching with great interest the outcome of our environmental assessment process and see whether or not it actually meets the benchmarks of Environment Canada and Health Canada. We will certainly continue to watch and see, in fact, what the government discloses on the aspects of the environmental assessment and greenhouse gas targets and initiatives that the government has set, and whether or not they are in any way going to be meeting those.

I know that the minister has pooh-poohed some of the academics that have commented on public-private partnerships and other aspects of that. I don't pooh-pooh them at all. I actually think that third-party oversight is really necessary.

I'm going to cede the floor to the member for Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows, if I may, but we'll continue to be concerned on this side, and we'll continue to be in disagreement with the methods that the government is using for building this project.

Hon. K. Falcon: I should say I don't have any problem at all with the member having concerns and raising concerns. I think that the proper job of the opposition is to do exactly that. I don't have any problem with that. As long as the concerns are predicated on a foundation that, at least in the opposition's mind, is based on facts — at least, as they believe them — that's totally appropriate. I support the member doing that.

I think the one thing that I did hear from the member that gave me some encouragement is that at least this member sounded like she was at least somewhat supportive of the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge. I want to thank the member for that. I am not doing this to play around or be facetious about this issue, but I have been genuinely confused about what the position of the opposition is on that. I think I have the right to say that, given the mixed messages that I've been hearing.

I have a quote here from the Leader of the Opposition from the Voice of B.C. on October 11, 2007. I just want to read it into the record because it would at least give the viewing public an understanding of why I, as the Minister of Transportation, am somewhat puzzled by what the position is.

It says: "When I spoke at UBCM, I said that I was against the Premier's Gateway program. I was against it. It was the wrong plan. In fact, it's old thinking. No to Gordon Campbell's plan. No. Yes, that's right — it's the wrong bridge."

Now, at least in the world in which I inhabit, when I hear words like that, it kind of sounds to me like you're not supporting something, but…. Anyhow, I don't want to belabour the point, but I did think that was a point that I at least wanted to read into the record for the benefit of the member.

M. Sather: I want to ask the minister some questions about the RapidBus, which is part of the new transit plan announced this winter. I understand that the RapidBus would be coming across the Pitt River bridge and then through Pitt Meadows and on over the new Golden Ears bridge.

The mayor of Pitt Meadows has expressed some concern that the RapidBus wouldn't be stopping in Pitt Meadows. Can the minister spread any light on whether the bus would be stopping in Pitt Meadows?

Hon. K. Falcon: I don't believe that TransLink has designed the final route. My staff certainly concur that they would be highly surprised if there wasn't a stop in Pitt Meadows.

M. Sather: I want to clarify, too, with the minister. My understanding of the RapidBus is that in order for them to really be highly functional they would have priority lanes. Is that right?

Hon. K. Falcon: Yes, in some cases. It really depends. They usually have a combination of things. There may be queue-jumper lanes that would be specific lanes in areas where you tend to have queued traffic that would allow the RapidBus to get by. You may have dedicated lanes and, perhaps, dedicated overpasses or underpasses that would allow the RapidBus to get by any congested intersections. That's always a possibility.

They often, in many cases, will have technology that will allow them to have access to change the lights as they are approaching them so that they are not held up by the lights themselves. So it could be any one of those things or any combination of those things.

Of course, that would depend on the planning that goes into it. As they start to identify the routes, they would start to look at each of the potential areas where there might be queuing traffic and potential roadblocks to the efficient movement of the RapidBus and try and gauge what the best response would be for that particular area.

But the goal of RapidBus really is to say that in those areas where you haven't yet got the kind of population densities that would justify a massive investment, like a rapid transit investment, by putting in place a RapidBus system, which is built around the idea that you get a rapid transit experience…. In fact, they're often as efficient as rapid transit itself.

What you do is build a culture of ridership in those areas, and you, hopefully, will start to see a change in urban form that builds around the areas where you have RapidBus. Then ultimately, at some point in the future, you're able to convert the RapidBus into a rapid transit extension of a line or something even above and beyond the current RapidBus.

M. Sather: The Pitt River bridge is scheduled to be opened next year. Can the minister advise me: what is

the planning that Gateway is considering now with regard to the RapidBus and the Pitt River bridge? Would the bus have some priority there to be able to get over the bridge?

Hon. K. Falcon: We're thinking about those issues right now — in fact, exactly how we can make sure that we create a future RapidBus that's going to work well for the folks it's going to serve. We're working with TransLink as part of the construction of the Pitt River bridge. We are constructing queue-jumper lanes at the end of the bridge to allow a future RapidBus to get by whatever queued traffic there may be so that they can get over the bridge quickly. That is already part of the construction plans.

But there will be future discussions and planning going on with TransLink as they start to get their heads around what the RapidBus route will look like, the beginning, the terminus and how it will work throughout the system.

M. Sather: I'm trying to get my head around the RapidBus system just sort of proposed for our area this winter. Right now the Pitt River Bridge is four lanes, two each way. The new bridge will be seven lanes, four lanes on the south side, one of which, of course, is dedicated entirely to trucks to go into the CP intermodal yard.

I'm trying to visualize. If the RapidBus has a priority on the bridge…. How could it have a priority on the bridge, in fact? Then it would be taking two of the new five lanes. It seems to me that would put us back, in terms of traffic flow, to about where we are now. So if the RapidBus can't have priority lanes on the bridge because it would then reduce traffic flow for cars, is it really going to be able to function?

I realize this is in the planning stages somewhat, but the bridge is opening next year. I'm just wondering what the minister has to say about that.

Hon. K. Falcon: We're very aware of the time frames. Actually, we want to make sure that we work as expeditiously with TransLink as we possibly can. The member should know that in many cases you don't necessarily need the dedicated lane on the actual bridge. That's why we build the queue-jumper lanes with control of the lights at the end of the bridge. When the bus is approaching any queue that is there, it's got a dedicated lane to get around any of the queues, and it's got the ability to change the lights and move it up and over the bridge very quickly.

We are not anticipating that the bridge itself, particularly the new seven-lane bridge, will be the same kind of bottleneck that you've currently got there with bridges, some of which go back to the '50s in terms of their design and construction.

Again, we're still working on that with TransLink. We've still got some work to do, but as I say, we have designed into the construction the queue-jumper lanes that I referred to. They will have the technology available to bypass whatever queued traffic may be there and leapfrog the RapidBus past that traffic and right onto the bridge itself.

M. Sather: Switching, then, to the flow of traffic and looking at the new Golden Ears bridge, I don't know the traffic flow as well on the south side of the river there, but I'm assuming that it's going to be very helpful for the people in Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows to get to the other side. I understand I'm doing a tour with the minister on Saturday, so I'll probably have a better idea of that, which I appreciate.

On the Pitt River bridge, particularly, I'm thinking of the traffic heading west in the morning. Right now, for us to commute…. There's a bottleneck when you get over that bridge, anywhere you go after that, whether it's the Mary Hill, the Lougheed into Coquitlam or trying to rat-run down River Road.

Has the ministry done any projections on traffic flow on the west side of the bridge? Will people, in effect, just be rushing…? They'll get across the river faster on the new bridge, but will they get to, let's say, the No. 1 any faster from there?

Hon. K. Falcon: There are a couple of complementary things that are taking place along with the construction of the bridge. Obviously, there's the construction and the opening of the Golden Ears bridge, which will coincide with the opening of the Pitt River bridge. That is going to be very significant.

As the member will well know, in the morning under the existing bridges, you have a counterflow, where three lanes are being utilized going west and only one lane going east. That creates a huge traffic queue and real problems in terms of the poor people that are trying to head in that direction. That will change, of course, very dramatically, as they will now have additional lanes in which to get across there and to go over to the Golden Ears bridge, which will continue to also draw its own share of traffic from traffic that may be utilizing the existing bridge.

The other thing that happens is that we are making complementary improvements, as the member knows, as part of the work that's being done on Highway 1 access and the Mary Hill bypass. That work is also being designed to complement the work that is being done on the bridge. Together we believe that those will go a long way towards addressing the very real problem that the member identifies that folks face on the current bridge today.

M. Sather: I would love to ask some more questions on that, but I have to move on. There are a couple of other things that I wanted to touch on.

One is the North Lougheed connector, which the minister is aware of. It's proposed by the city of Pitt Meadows. I have written to the minister about this and my concerns that it would go through agricultural land and alienate agricultural land. The minister has written back to me. The involvement of Gateway on this is that they're providing the traffic numbers that supposedly

I wanted to ask the minister a question on the letter that he wrote back to me on January 2 with respect to possible improvements to the intersection at Harris and Lougheed. He says, "Concepts are being developed, and discussions with key stakeholders are being conducted to address the short- and long-term needs for this important corridor through Pitt Meadows" — so from the bridge to the new interchange, however many years that would be.

Can the minister tell me a little bit about what concepts are being developed and what discussions are being held with regard to that?

Hon. K. Falcon: Yes, the member is right. To confirm, when the member wrote to me about what I believe the city of Pitt Meadows calls their North Lougheed connector project or whatever it was, that's entirely a municipal initiative, so I'm unable, obviously, to comment or interfere or involve myself with whatever the municipality is doing. That's something they'll work on.

The reference to concepts being developed in discussions with key stakeholders with respect to the Harris Road and Lougheed Highway interchange. Really, that's just a case of…. The council, apparently, has some development plans for that area. Because they have development plans, that could impact in terms of issues along the Lougheed Highway.

We want to make sure that we engage in discussions to determine what impacts that will have. There may be, at least in the short term, some benefits that could be realized in terms of managing traffic in that very busy area of the community as a result of some development. That won't be known until we have further discussions with the municipality.

M. Sather: I just wanted to ask the minister finally…. The last issue surrounds something around a letter that was given to us and a concern that an individual had. His name is Norm Ryder, and he was working on the Golden Ears bridge project but also on the interchange with the Lougheed Highway there.

He claims that a permanent fix has not been done. He said he's informed senior staff members of the Golden Ears joint venture:

I know that Mr. Proudfoot is very familiar with the Lougheed Highway section. I am just wondering if the minister has any information on that particular incident and how it's been addressed.

Hon. K. Falcon: First of all, you can pass along to Mr. Ryder that we appreciate his raising this concern that he has. I'm not aware of the specifics or the nature of the concern, but I will have staff look into what the individual is talking about. If anything is identified that in any way corresponds to the concerns he raised, I can assure the member that it will be dealt with immediately.

M. Sather: I was hoping that the minister would consult with staff today on that, but having said that, thank you very much to the minister for his responses. I'll pass the chair over to my colleague.

G. Robertson: I have a number of questions specific to the Canada line construction in my riding of Vancouver-Fairview, for the minister. First of all, has the minister had recent contact with the new TransLink board regarding compensation for the small business owners along the Canada line corridor?

G. Robertson: Did the minister have any communications through the process by which this government appointed the new TransLink board? Were there any communications specific to compensation for the businesses along the Canada line affected by construction?

Hon. K. Falcon: Member, look, this issue has been canvassed pretty extensively in the House. I recognize that the member is seeking to become the mayor of the city of Vancouver, and I recognize that he may view it in his interest to try to make an issue out of this.

My position is in the public record on this issue. This is a project of TransLink. TransLink is responsible for dealing with issues affecting any merchants who believe that they have been adversely impacted by the project. TransLink worked closely, I'm led to understand, with the Cambie merchants association.

They put together a fund somewhere north of $1 million dollars to try to deal with the issues. My understanding is that that was accepted at the time by the merchants. I also understand that some time later they were less than impressed with the amount and the results of that fund. The Minister of Finance has publicly asked TransLink to look at that. I understand that they took a second look at that situation, and I think that TransLink has made the decision that they've done everything they need to do to try and deal with this.

I remind the member that the new professional board was not appointed by the province. It was put together by a panel chaired by a former Premier. A

very highly esteemed Premier of the province of British Columbia made those appointments. That board will currently work with the council of mayors, and any future decisions they wish to make with respect to Cambie merchants or issues around compensation will be theirs and theirs alone.

Our position is that we are one of multiple funding partners, including the federal government, the airport authority, and TransLink, of course, which is responsible for building this project and is therefore responsible for dealing with issues that arise from this project. While I respect the member's eagerness to continue to talk about a subject that has been canvassed very thoroughly and I recognize his own personal ambitions to become the mayor of Vancouver, I've said everything I can say on this subject, and I can't say any more.

G. Robertson: Will the minister just clarify whether or not the government of British Columbia appointed the panel that appointed the new TransLink board?

Hon. K. Falcon: The panel that selected the individuals that currently serve on the board was charged with seeking out the very best and brightest individuals with the kind of backgrounds in finance, law and overseeing large, complex organizations…. The province of British Columbia appointed one of the five panellists that would be responsible for identifying those individuals. The chair of the selection panel was appointed by the council of mayors. The chair was former NDP Premier Mike Harcourt.

I believe that the panel did a very thorough and very good job of canvassing out and seeking the best and the brightest. That new board is now in place and operating to the benefit of the residents of the Lower Mainland.

G. Robertson: The minister continues to contend that TransLink is ultimately responsible for the construction of the project and for any impact on the merchants that has been created by the construction and its methods and operations.

I'm curious, though, if the province was involved in the appointment. Ultimately, if this TransLink board bears that responsibility, is there a stated indemnity for the province of B.C. with respect to all the contracts and obligations for TransLink regarding the construction of these projects?

Hon. K. Falcon: None of us are particularly clear on what the member means by that. What I can tell the member is that as one of at least three funding partners to this project, our contribution of $435 million is a capped contribution. There is not going to be one penny more contributed by the province of British Columbia, and that has not changed.

G. Robertson: Does the minister feel that it is appropriate for taxpayers to fund lawyers that may fight a class action lawsuit against the small business owners along the Canada line corridor on behalf of the province of British Columbia?

Hon. K. Falcon: As I've tried to say to the member before, I recognize that the member is trying to run for mayor of Vancouver, and I realize that he wants to do everything he can to raise his very low profile, but the fact of the matter is that he should address that question to TransLink. In fact, the previous board of TransLink included colleagues of that member who made the decision about whether to fund or not fund compensation. I would encourage him to go speak to the colleagues of his that can perhaps give him their rationale for doing so.

This is a project of TransLink. We are here to discuss the estimates of the Ministry of Transportation. This member wants to talk to me about a decision that TransLink is making with respect to whether or not they compensated merchants impacted by a project they're building.

We are a funding partner. We're one of many funding partners to that project. The federal government is a funding partner. The airport authority is a funding partner. The province of British Columbia is a funding partner, and it is a project being delivered by TransLink, which is also a funding partner. If the member has questions about that or what the rationale was, I encourage the member to speak to TransLink.

The province of British Columbia, through both the Minister of Finance and myself, have said very clearly that there are impacts taking place and that they ought to take another hard look at that. They have done so, and they are satisfied with the decision they made. The member, if he is questioning the decision that the TransLink board made — by the way, it was the previous board that made that decision — he ought to go and talk to his colleagues who sat on that board.

G. Robertson: The minister, a few minutes ago, referred to the province's capped contribution to the project. Does that mean this minister will not support any spending on lawyers to fight against the merchants on Cambie Street who are seeking compensation? Does that mean any legal costs that are related to the construction of this line will not be covered by this government? Therefore, their contribution is truly capped. Or is there an extension being permitted here in order to fight the merchants along the Canada line?

Hon. K. Falcon: I'll be clear about this for the member. Our contributions are made for construction milestones that are achieved in the construction of the project and for performance payments after the project is up and running and as long as it meets the performance requirements. That is the end of our payments to TransLink or its subsidiary for the construction of this project. Any other dollars that are being spent by TransLink…. The member ought to go ask TransLink if he has an interest in that.

G. Robertson: Well, I'm curious. The minister maybe doesn't want to accept that there may be ongoing costs related to the legal mess that has been created by the project. The minister may not want to think there will be more expenses. But clearly, with a class action lawsuit looming from hundreds of small businesses and the province potentially named in this class action lawsuit, the province will, I can only imagine, be forced to start paying legal costs in order to address the mess along the Canada line corridor.

Therefore, there's more money going to be shelled out here. It won't be going to mitigate the impact on those businesses. It'll be going to fight those very businesses that are seeking compensation for the devastating impact of the construction.

Clearly, this government was part of the decision-making process as a lead funding partner for this project. Clearly, there is some culpability and obligation for this government to be involved in rectifying what is a catastrophic situation for small businesses in Vancouver. Is the minister continuing to contend that there will be no more funding put forward for the project, regardless of the province being named in a lawsuit?

Hon. K. Falcon: Again I'll say to the member, as I've said so many times before, that I recognize that the member is desperately campaigning to raise his profile to run as the left-wing candidate for the city of Vancouver. I know that the member is in for the fight of his life, and I recognize why he would want to abandon the opposition benches and try and seek some other waters to ply his trade.

The fact of the matter is that it's not my job to be here and help the member raise his low profile on an issue that has been thoroughly canvassed. If he has questions about how TransLink is spending its money based upon a decision that the previous board — a board, by the way, which those members opposite were very insistent on ensuring must never change….

They have defended to the very depths of their souls the fact that we must stay with that old structure they put in place, a structure that did not enjoy the confidence of almost anyone, including the members that sat on the board. Nevertheless, the member needs to talk to TransLink if he has concerns about it.

The other thing I will say about this, and I've said it before, is that while I recognize that the member is campaigning to be the mayor of Vancouver and has latched on to an issue, and I recognize that there are legitimate concerns that are faced by some of those Cambie merchants as a result of the construction on the TransLink project, I do remind the member that when his party was in power they were also constructing a project called the Millennium line, and the Millennium line also impacted small business.

If the member wants, I can read into the record letters from individuals that were impacted by the project that was being constructed by the NDP at the time and how the NDP refused the calls then to provide financial compensation for business losses. I just find it passing strange that what they did while they were in government suddenly changes now that the member is sitting in opposition, running for mayor and trying to make an issue out of this.

Recognizing that the province is only a funding partner and that the member has concerns about how TransLink is spending its money with lawyers on an issue in which they have been sued by certain of the Cambie merchants, then the member ought to talk to TransLink about that and have them answer the questions to the member's satisfaction.

G. Robertson: I think it's important that the minister understand the scale of impact. It's completely different from the Millennium line construction to the Canada line construction. If the minister wants to come and visit the Cambie corridor and Yaletown, if the minister wants to speak with the more than 60 business owners who have either closed or moved their businesses along that corridor, if the minister wants to meet with the families — the hundreds of families who have been impacted with loss of business and loss of livelihood — he's welcome to join me in my riding, and I'll show him around.

He can hear what the real impact is. It doesn't seem like he's conscious of the significance of the impact. He may refer back to a handful of businesses that were impacted by the construction of the Millennium line. We're talking about a hundredfold impact created by Canada line construction.

I'm curious here. I'm curious if the minister has learned anything from this debacle and whether this could have been done better. What would the minister change about the way that the Canada line has been constructed to prevent devastating impact on small businesses? What will he change as time marches on and more rapid transit projects are constructed? What will be done differently?

Hon. K. Falcon: First of all, the member needs to know that I can only be responsible for projects that I am delivering and that our ministry is delivering as the Ministry of Transportation. I'll tell the member that we deliver projects all across British Columbia, in every part of this province. I guarantee you that there are projects that impact people. There's no question about it.

We impact small businesses in projects that we do, and governments over the decades have impacted businesses as they have built and added to infrastructure and improved infrastructure. But there are benefits that also flow from the investments that are made. There are often significant benefits, and sometimes we lose sight of that.

The member says: "What lessons have we learned?" Well, one of the lessons is that this is a TransLink project. The member talked about how this is very different from the Millennium line project that the NDP government was responsible for building. It was not a TransLink project. It was the NDP government of the day building the Millennium line, facing the exact same calls for financial compensation that we are hear-

ing today. The difference is that they were in a position where it was their project, and they had the ability to deal with them.

Listening to what the member has been saying for the last number of months on this issue, you would think that their response would have been very straightforward. They would have stepped up to the plate, and they would have paid it. But something different happened. They didn't do it. I'm going to read into the record. The member tried to say that it was a very different project, that it didn't really have any impacts.

Let me quote from The Vancouver Sun, April 20, 2001. "It has cost me my business, my marriage, everything. We've had no car access on Nanaimo since June last year. Don't they understand that people can't take these kinds of things for very long? I haven't been able to pay all my bills, and I've had to take money out of my personal accounts just to keep this place open." That was Ana Costa, owner of Portugal Bistro, located on the Millennium line.

How about this? "This is the worst thing we've ever had since I opened. Look at this place. It's usually busy, but it isn't right now. It hasn't been for a long time. Everyone in the area is hurting." That was Hue Loi, owner of Loi's Hairdressing School, located along the Millennium line, in The Vancouver Sun, April 20, 2001.

The difference is that that was your government's project. You were responsible for delivering it. You heard the same cries from those businesses, and the government didn't respond. Here we have a situation where it's not our project. We are one of the funding partners in this project, along with TransLink, along with an airport authority, along with the federal government.

TransLink set up — presumably, in part, by some of the lessons learned under the NDP's Millennium line, when people were talking about impacts — a fund, if my memory serves me correctly, of $1.3 million, in cooperation with the Cambie merchants, to try and deal with the impacts. Apparently, they decided that fund wasn't good enough, and they're unhappy. I have no doubt that this has been an impact. I think we should be alive to the fact that some of those merchants were impacted.

The challenge the NDP government of the day faced in the 1990s was the same that TransLink faces today, and that is: who do you decide are the ones that get compensation? It is a big challenge. It sounds very easy, but it's a challenge.

The member talks about businesses that have closed, but the member knows that businesses open and close and have been on the Cambie corridor for a long time. The member also knows that there are businesses that are opening. Is he going to get into compensating the banks, Starbucks, the new Best Buy? I mean, that is a challenge.

I'm just surmising, but it may be that when the NDP government was doing their own project, the Millennium line — causing the same kinds of impacts to small business, who were asking the same kinds of questions — they refused to do that.

What has changed? Well, first of all, it is a TransLink project. The Minister of Finance and the Minister of Transportation have said publicly that this is having a big impact on the Cambie area. We actually agree with the member opposite on that, and we said that TransLink, as the responsible operator and builder of this project, ought to take a look at it, and they have.

In fact, the previous board did that. The board, which was made up of representatives and left-wing supporters of that individual, made the decision to stick with the decision they made in terms of compensation. I can't read into the reasons why they would have done that, because it's not my project. We are one of the funding partners to that project.

As I said, it is a little hard to listen to the lecturing from those members, and I just read into the record the impact that the NDP project, the Millennium line they were delivering, was having on small businesses at the time, and they did nothing.

If that member…. I recognize that the member wants to be mayor of Vancouver, and good luck to the member. He's got a long fight and a battle ahead of him.

Oh, it's not an endorsement, I can assure you. You know, he's fighting with all the other extreme-left candidates that are running. I can only imagine the economic turmoil that would result from any of them, God forbid, becoming mayor of Vancouver. Nevertheless, good luck to the member.

I recognize that he's trying very hard to get a platform, but the bottom line is that it's a little hard to take the hypocritical attitude of the NDP on this issue, when they behaved very, very differently when they were in power and building their own project called the Millennium line.

Maybe I don't understand. The minister seemed to forget what the question was, which was: "What has he learned from the debacle?" Clearly, based on his answer, he hasn't learned anything from what has happened on Cambie Street. I want to return to where we go from here. There will be blood still spilled on the Canada line issue. The minister, I think, knows well that this story is not over. There are hundreds of families, business owners, who are not giving up on this.

It's important, I think, to understand where the minister and this government are going on future projects and specifically the project that they announced, to great fanfare, of a rapid transit line out to UBC through the Broadway corridor. Again, this created an enormous outpouring of concern and consternation from Broadway merchants, who have seen their broth-

ers and sisters along the Cambie corridor go down in flames, in a lot of cases, and be put through extremely challenging circumstances.

In terms of the Broadway corridor and this government's commitment to drive that project, it's almost identical to the beginnings of the Canada line project. Somehow now this government takes no responsibility or leadership related to the Canada line, has walked away from it and blames it all on TransLink. Now we see this government initiating and driving leadership on the Broadway corridor and the construction of a rapid transit line there, so it's déjà vu all over again.

The Broadway merchants are frightened, concerned. They know that their businesses are going to be at risk unless there's a significant commitment from this minister up front as the one leading the charge on the Broadway line construction, whenever that does take place.

Will this minister commit to ensuring that a fund is in place to mitigate business losses caused by the construction of the Broadway line, to ensure that these merchants have peace of mind and understand that the same thing won't happen?

Hon. K. Falcon: Look, I've said publicly, with respect to the Broadway line, that that corridor is a very different corridor than the Cambie corridor. It's much narrower. There's much more congestion. It's much more built out. In fact, I've stated publicly that there's no doubt in my mind that you couldn't even contemplate a cut-and-cover as one of the solutions for the Broadway corridor.

I've also said publicly, Member, and you should know this, that if there's one thing I can't stand, it's politicians that always feel they have to pretend that everything is going to be perfect and that there are not going to be impacts, because it's dishonest. Like, it's dishonest to actually go and say that. So for this member to pretend that you can undertake multi-billion-dollar projects and not impact people is actually just not true.

I can tell you that in my riding in Surrey we are undertaking over a quarter of a billion dollars' worth of highway improvements on Highway 15, on Highway 10 and, outside of my community, on 91A. These all have impacts. There is no question about it. The issue is: how well do you try and deal with those impacts?

I can only speak to our projects, but I will tell you this. On the Sea to Sky Highway, we said that we were going to be investing $600 million in improving that highway. By the way, it was very different than the empty promises that were made by the NDP about how they would improve it, but they were always broke and never had any money, so they never did.

When we said we were going to do that, the communities along that corridor were actually terrified at the prospect. They were terrified at the prospect because they remembered the last time work was being done in the '60s and the '70s there and the impact that it had on them, where literally for hours at a time the highway would be shut down while work was being done on that project.

What do we do? We make sure, as part of the concession agreement with our private-public partnership concessionaire, that they have a traffic management plan that will deal with the impacts that we know are going to be there. We deal with them in a manner…. In fact, we ensure, as part of the payment stream performance payments, that they are paid on how well they continue to move traffic during construction. You know what's happened today? You don't hear virtually any complaints along that corridor. It doesn't mean that there are not impacts but that the traffic management tools being utilized are absolutely exceptional.

You do everything you can to minimize the impact. The commitment I will make on any projects that the Ministry of Transportation is responsible for delivering is that we will do everything to minimize the impact as much as we humanly can. But I will also be honest with the public and not try and pretend that there won't be impacts, because there will.

I have to remind the public that there are also enormous benefits that result from these investments. There are collective benefits that are realized when you make these kinds of investments that are enormous, and we don't ever want to lose sight of those. That is the commitment that I will make to the member opposite, and that's the commitment we will make to the public of British Columbia.

In every part of this province we have billions of dollars' worth of projects underway across British Columbia today. All of them, in some way or another, are impacting folks, and we do everything we can to try and minimize those impacts. We will continue to do so in the future.

G. Robertson: I cannot agree with the minister that they have done everything they can to minimize the impact on the merchants along the Canada line corridor, and that's why, again, I'll ask this question, specific to the Broadway line, on which this minister has announced his government will lead the charge, initiating this project.

For the peace of mind and for the security of those Broadway merchants, will the minister commit to ensuring that a fund is in place, to mitigate business losses directly resulting from construction of that line, before he commits dollars from this government into that project? Will he ensure that this government only proceeds with that project if the small businesses are protected by a mitigation fund?

Hon. K. Falcon: I was surprised that I didn't hear the member start out by thanking the government for actually moving forward with the $14 billion public transit plan that will actually bring a rapid transit line out to UBC. Even, you know, the candidate running for mayor ought to be standing up and applauding that initiative of the provincial government. As part of our provincial transit plan, the member probably knows that — unlike previous decades, where at best one line per decade was built — we will be having the construc-

tion of four lines, including the existing Canada line and three additional lines, in the span of a decade. That is something that I would have expected the member to stand up and applaud.

What I'll say to the member is what I said the day we announced the public transit plan. Should the line go along the Broadway corridor, it is a corridor very different from the Cambie corridor. It would have to be tunnelled; common sense would tell you that. Because of the nature of the narrowness of the corridor and the built-out nature of the corridor, it is not a candidate. Just a superficial review of the corridor would tell you that. It would obviously employ different techniques, but I will give the same commitment we always give.

If we are going to be the developer and builder of a project, the province of British Columbia will do everything we always do, as we do today in the billions of dollars' worth of projects that we have underway in every single part of this province. We will do everything we can to minimize the impact and continue to move traffic and manage it as best we can, given the circumstances that are involved with major projects.

D. Routley: Since the minister is disappointed that the previous member didn't start by thanking the government, I will thank the Minister of Transportation for having created an absolute disaster in my constituency around chip sealing. Then to come to my constituency and tell them that all is going to be solved when we finally pave it, at millions and millions of dollars of extra cost, and that what we'll do with the extra waste chip seals is just put it on the Circle Route…. That was another great promise from the previous Transportation Minister of this government — that all would be good. I guess I should thank him for that.

I should thank him, too, that he didn't provide enough funding for the proper maintenance of the highways in my constituency so that the culverts are all jammed with logging debris and homes are being flooded in Youbou because there isn't adequate maintenance of our highways. I should also thank him for the fact that there isn't adequate snow-clearing on the Malahat so that, in fact….

I have to ask that all comments be directed through the Chair and not directly to any member, and I would ask the member to withdraw that comment.

D. Routley: So I will thank the minister for all of those great achievements in Cowichan-Ladysmith. The minister also said that it is dishonest….

I've asked that all comments be directed towards the Chair. We're going to allow the person who has the floor to control it. I've asked for order, and we will continue.

D. Routley: The minister also said that it is dishonest for any politician to stand up and say, "All is good," with any project. I would say that he's right.

I would like to ask him: is this triple-P project that has been referred to by the previous member, the RAV line…? Is it a bulkhead against criticism or a barrier to accountability?

Is that what the Finance Minister meant when she admitted that the triple-P model is failing in this case? Is this what she meant when she said that the funder cannot impact the project's outcomes because they lack the control? Is that what she meant when she made those comments about this public-private partnership that the minister says is not his project?

Did she mean that the minister or someone else might point to the next window and say, "It's their problem," and that they might be pointing back to the minister and saying: "No. It's the minister's problem"? Is that what she meant?

Hon. K. Falcon: The member will have his opportunity to ask the Minister of Finance what she meant. I'm not going to speak on behalf of the Minister of Finance.

As usual, the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith gets up and makes absurd statements. I'm glad the member thanked us for the Circle Route, because we were the ones who put the Circle Route in place. We were the ones that made improvements to the Circle Route. That's something his community has called for, for a long time and something that, of course, never happened while the NDP was ever in power — the most incompetent administration in the history of the province of British Columbia.

The fact that the member applauds that, even in his usual cynical, negative way, is still in itself a good thing. If the member has questions for the Minister of Finance about P3s, the member can go ask the Minister of Finance.

What I can tell the member — it should be instructive for the member — is that there is actually a whole trail of evidence that even this member can, I'm sure,

figure out if he looks at it. It will show 24 different P3s in this province, Member, with a value of over $8 billion.

Every single one of them that this member can look at is characterized by two things. They have all been built on schedule, and they have all been built on budget — on or under budget or on or ahead of schedule.

Now, I recognize that the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith, in spite of the overwhelming volume of evidence that will be put before him, will never change from the script that's written for him by his backers. I know that he will always go on about just the terrible thing it is that we are building major projects in this province in a time of labour shortages, in a time of increasing costs on concrete and steel.

Those are situations that the NDP government never had to face. They never had to face them because they wrecked the economy. As the worst-performing economy in the country, there was a surplus of labour. There were workers desperately looking for jobs.

Today we have a different situation, where jobs are out looking for workers. People are trying to find workers, desperate to get workers to work on their major projects.

Major projects — over $8 billion worth. Twenty-four different projects — all of them ahead of schedule or on schedule or on budget or under budget. Yet that will still not be enough evidence, I know, for the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith, who will continue to parrot the lines that are written for him about how terrible it must be that we build projects in a manner that ensures they're delivered on schedule and on budget.

But in spite of the negative connotations that that member will try to associate with successful projects, the scale and scope of which we haven't seen in this province for a long time, the fact of the matter is that we will continue to look at major complex projects being delivered in that manner because of the very success of those projects. It would be nice if just for once the members could learn a lesson and maybe stand up and thank government for the fact that they've delivered $8 billion worth of capital projects, representing over 24 different projects, on schedule and on budget.

I don't imagine we'll ever hear that thanks, but it sure would be nice if just once the opposition could recognize accomplishment when they see it. But of course, they aren't really familiar with accomplishment, because their own record in government was the absolute opposite of accomplishment. In fact, so disastrous was their record that it's written up in business journals and taught at universities in how not to manage projects.

That was the record of the NDP. So I imagine that it's a good thing, in some ways, that the NDP have made a valuable contribution to the academic world in that they have presented a business case that is taught in universities.

Member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast, I've asked for order, and I would appreciate it if we respect the speaker and the Chair. Thank you, Member.

Hon. K. Falcon: I know that the information seems a little hurtful for the members opposite, and I can understand that. But I think, you know, that we shouldn't lose sight of the contribution the NDP made. I mean, the very fact that there is a business school in Ontario that uses them as an example of how not to manage a major project, I think, is actually a positive contribution.

So the member won't be surprised that I am not likely to take their advice on issues like this and listen to their usual natterings about P3s. We are very happy with the record of P3s — 24 projects representing over $8 billion — and we'll continue to support projects as P3 models where the analysis demonstrates that that makes the most sense on how to deliver major, complex projects.

D. Routley: It's nice to get up again. I did get a bit of rest there. I really appreciate that, and I did thank the minister and the ministry when I stood up, and I'll thank him again for the Circle Route which was sold to the public as being an offering to tourism. And yet it's so rough that they've had to retrench from that and admit that a non-four-by-four vehicle is not recommended. They've had to admit, in fact, that it's not suitable for the motorhomes and the tourists that the government advertised would be using that road.

It's a disaster. Millions were spent to buy that land from a lumber company, and we already had public use of that road. Nothing was gained except by the lumber company, and perhaps by the failed Liberal candidate who used it as a stump item during the election. The promises that were made were never realized.

But in any case, the minister, in his last performance, talked about a very low…. He's very concerned about profile. Profile. I think he's the member of this House who's most concerned with profile and how to address profile. But you know what? In Cowichan-Ladysmith his profile is plenty big enough — with the chip-seal disaster, with the Circle Route failure, and with the potholes and eroded shoulders and general lack of maintenance that's been provided by his ministry to our constituency, to our community.

I'd like to know what he's going to do to come and address some of those potholes, which now are big enough and longstanding enough that they're worthy of naming. Perhaps he could tell me and my constituents what he's going to do to improve the maintenance standards of highways on Vancouver Island.

Hon. K. Falcon: Well, I've spent many years doing estimates, and I've heard silly questions over the years, but this member never ceases to amaze me. Apparently potholes are new to this member. Apparently the member is surprised to occasionally see potholes. He should join his former critic and go for a drive, maybe even count them. They seem to be proficient at doing that.

But you know, it is actually remarkable to hear how negative the member was about the Circle Route — something for which we've received very, very strong support from the tourism sector. The member talks about what horrible shape it's in. Actually, we've heard from people that drove it just last summer who said it's in great condition.

So this member continues to snicker and be negative. I can't wait, actually, until I'm in Cowichan the next time, because I'm going to point out just how negative the member — their own member, who supposedly is representing their interests — is towards something that is so strongly supported by the tourism sector.

I'll guarantee…. I'll be sure to remind them of this member and his consistent negativity to something that was strongly called for by the tourism sector and that continues to this day, by the way, to be very strongly supported by almost everyone except, of course, the NDP member. Not surprisingly, NDP often is thought of as negative, destructive, pessimistic.

But what I will say with reference to potholes is that although the member opposite may be surprised that there are potholes, what happens, for the member's benefit, in the winter is that when you have freezing, thawing conditions, it creates potholes. Maintenance contractors, as part of their routine duties, are responsible for identifying potholes when they happen and for doing temporary patchwork on the potholes until such time as the cold weather conditions go away and they've got the kind of conditions that are available and they are capable of doing more longer-term fixes.

Now, I'm sorry that the member is so distressed by the fact that he sees potholes. I wish we could live in a world where there are no potholes. It appears to be an obsession of the members opposite — about potholes. I can assure the member that they're nothing new. They are relatively new, I should say, on the Island, because the Island typically doesn't get the kind of cold snaps that we see in other parts of the province where they're very used to potholes appearing.

For the benefit of the member, I will tell the member that you can patch a pothole, and the maintenance contractor can drive away, and a new pothole can open up literally minutes after they leave the area. That's the nature of freezing and thawing. I can assure the member that if he is criticizing the response of the maintenance contractor, the maintenance contractors have performance standards that they are required to follow in terms of the time frame in which they are required to fix any potholes that they identify, that become identified or that are brought to their attention.

I think they've done a very good job in doing that, as maintenance contractors across the province have done. I doubt that this member will ever be satisfied with anything, but I continue to applaud the great work that maintenance contractors and their hard-working staff do each and every day to deal with issues like potholes across the province of British Columbia.

The Chair: Could I remind all members to please direct their comments towards Vote 43.

D. Routley: The minister also said, to one of the previous speakers, that people are going all over the place. I thought he was talking about Hill 60 on Highway 18, where the rest stop was removed. All the seniors who travel from Lake Cowichan to Duncan for medical appointments, back and forth, used to use that. It used to be a rest stop that they very much depended upon.

Now we have some very undignified situations where some of those seniors are having to go all over the place, where the rest stop used to be maintained. Is the minister able to promise to my constituents that he will restore the rest-stop services on Highway 18?

Hon. K. Falcon: I haven't got all the details of the Hill 60 rest stop. I won't be committing to putting it back into place.

What I can tell the member is that we actually have made significant investments in rest stops throughout the province of British Columbia. In fact, we started a student program called the rest-area rangers which complemented the work that our maintenance contractors do to ensure and provide work for these young students and to ensure that our rest stops — during the summer months, when they receive the highest usage — are maintained in a manner that would make the public proud. I think they do a good job, along with the maintenance contractors.

We've also tried over the years to identify rest-stop areas and invest in those rest stops where we know, based on the traffic volumes and the work that's been done over the years, that the usage is likely to be the most utilized to ensure that those are the areas where we have operational rest stops. We continue to invest in our rest areas.

I can tell you that when I travel the province as I do every year — I try to get to virtually every part of the province at some point each and every year — I have been very pleased with the improvements that I've seen with respect to those areas.

On the related issue that the member and I were talking about with respect to the Circle Route. I thought it might be interesting for the member to know that on page 3, on October 24 of last year, the Cowichan News Leader — that's a newspaper that I would hope the member is familiar with, because it's actually from his riding — had an article about the Circle Route. The

headline was "The Bumpy Road is Over for the Circle Route." I highly encourage the member to take a look at that, because I think the member might learn a thing or two. It says:

I know that it will not come as welcome news to the member that his own local paper is talking about his own residents, who grew up in the area, talking about the enjoyable journey that they've had on the Pacific Marine Circle Route.

The member complains about the fact that the province made a multi-million-dollar investment to ensure that the Circle Route could become a reality. I guess the member is upset that we purchased land off TimberWest for, if my memory serves me correct — $2½ million to make sure that the Circle Route would become a reality. It's something that is prominently promoted in tourist magazines and really something that is certainly very good.

Even later in the column, the president of the chamber of commerce is noted as saying that the improved surface has just been great for the bottom line. It has helped businesses throughout the region. Again, you know, as usual, you always have the member seeing things in the most negative possible fashion, but unfortunately, belied by the newspaper articles in his own jurisdiction.

D. Routley: I would ask the minister to come and take a look and realize that the chip seal that was put on the road is now flying into people's windshields again on the Circle Route. So we'll have to ask the member to come and talk to the chamber again about that. I think he's made a promise to come to Cowichan and talk to us about it.

Finally, my last question that I would ask is whether the minister is willing to consider renaming the formerly named Ginger Goodwin highway and returning it back to the name Ginger Goodwin Way. That highway paid tribute to a history on Vancouver Island that was very difficult for people and a difficult time for communities, when the coalminers of Vancouver Island were striking for better conditions against coal baron Dunsmuir, who had the E&N land grant and control over resources.

There were riots. The police were brought in to control those riots, and Ginger Goodwin was essentially executed. The naming of that highway was in order to pay respect to something that should never have happened and to remind us that it's important that we respect each other, that we respect workers and that the conditions that these people fought for should never be relaxed.

Now, with the stroke of a pen, the minister has changed that. I would offer that if he was willing to change the name of the highway to Ginger Goodwin Way, I'm sure that many of my constituents would have potholes that they would be willing to name Falcon or Kevin.

The Chair: Can I remind all members that there's no reference to first names or personal names in the House.

I wonder if I can just change topics and areas of the Island and ask the minister some questions about the B.C. Transit service plan as well as one of the projects that was announced in January in the province's transit plan, the RapidBus Douglas Street corridor project, on which I think the details are very scant in the service plan. The object this afternoon is to try and get some background that the minister has been privy to, to support, presumably, this project and to see if the discussion can be broadened by having some of that information on the table here today.

I wanted to ask the minister, first of all, just to start with the RapidBus project on the Douglas Street corridor, whether there is a business plan that has been conducted through his ministry or through the Crown entity that outlines details around ridership and the staging of the project and also the benefits in terms of modal shift. Presumably, that's the main reason why, at this point in time, an investment is potentially to be made in this project — to move people from single-occupant vehicles and make a contribution to the now-legislated greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Hon. K. Falcon: I should remind the member up front that we don't have any B.C. Transit staff with us here today. We were not advised that B.C. Transit was going to be one of the issues. So I hope the member will understand that I may be somewhat limited in the answers I can give. We were told that today we would be discussing Gateway and B.C. Ferries.

Having said that, what I do know is that B.C. Transit has been doing planning work around that corridor and is in the process right now of public consultation and consulting with the community about the proposed corridor and the utilization of RapidBus service along there. They are still in the midst of that consultation.

That is really a planning work process. It is not something that requires a business case. This is a case of B.C. Transit initiating some initial planning work and having discussions with the communities with respect to proposed plans on the Douglas corridor.

R. Fleming: Following on the minister's comment about what information he might have available to him through the staff resources that are here today…. I wonder if he could, maybe, just tell me, before I get

into too many questions, whether he's going to be able to answer any questions around how many trips are potentially diverted in single-occupant vehicles; whether there are any ridership studies available; what the project cost is projected to be today, as opposed to when it was first formulated and announced; and any of the technical details around the spec'ing for the median and width and compatibility with LRT, and those kinds of things.

Hon. K. Falcon: The member opposite would be correct in that we don't have that kind of information available with us. In fact, I'm not even sure that information would be in place yet. We're still working with B.C. Transit on a plan as part of our effort to move forward in our $14 billion transit plan, which the member opposite would well know was only introduced just over two months ago. It's still very early on, and I should just make that member aware of that.

There is a project manager that I understand B.C. Transit has assigned in terms of leading the consultative process around the Douglas corridor, but I suspect that the information the member is looking for is probably of a fairly detailed nature that would come further along in the planning and discussion process.

D. Cubberley: Thanks to the minister for that response. We regret the fact that there wasn't notice around it so that staff could be there. It just gets a little difficult at times to coordinate things.

Perhaps we might be better asking the questions about the busway project tomorrow sometime, when staff might be able to be here. There are a number of questions that we would like to ask that have to do with the process at a higher level as it relates to the minister's interest in these projects. It would probably be best to do that with staff here.

I would, however, like to ask a couple of questions about cycling as a mode of transportation, which would be another shift. I'm not looking for a technical response on these, so whether staff are here or not is probably less germane.

What I want to explore briefly with the minister is that we've had a situation in British Columbia for quite a long period of time, since the mid '90s, where we have had a very modest fund available for investing in retrofitting of urban streets with bike lanes and other dedicated bicycle infrastructure, a cost-sharing program with municipalities. Because I was present around the creation of it, I'm aware of the original intent of the program.

It was essentially a kind of pilot project that was introduced to see whether (a) there would be take-up at the municipal level and (b) whether there would be an impact from actually investing in dedicated bicycle infrastructures. It was a recognition of the fact that roads are not bicycle-friendly and that in order to grow cycling as a mode of transportation you needed to become involved in changing those roads, retrofitting them in particular ways in order to actually attract people into that mode of transportation.

With the exception of a period of time in the first term when that program was put on hold, it has run continuously in the province. While it has a different name now, my understanding is that it's still essentially at or below the initial level of funding that was allocated for it, which was very modest. I think at its height it was $2.1 million per year for 50-50 cost-sharing for municipalities.

My question is in light of both the success of the program on the ground and the fact that we have heard from the staff in the ministry who manage the program that it has been oversubscribed for many years and that every year there are turnaways from it. Why has the government not looked at seriously expanding that in order to tap the latent demand for that kind of cycling infrastructure?

Hon. K. Falcon: Just to the first part of the member's question on B.C. Transit. My deputy advises me that although we can bring B.C. Transit staff over, it's so early on in the process that he's not too sure it would be able to answer the kind of level of detail that the members are asking, only because we only announced the transit plan two months ago.

While it does build on some work that has already been done by B.C. Transit, particularly in that corridor, it is very, very early in the planning process. I just thought I would put that on the record for the member.

I don't know how the member really wants me to move on that. I mean, I'm happy to drag someone in from B.C. Transit, but according to my deputy, he's not sure that it would elucidate any of these issues anymore than I can probably tell the member.

With respect to cycling, I appreciate what the member says; I agree with him, actually. I thank the member for stating what he has stated, because I happen to feel very strongly about this issue. I think that cycling is a very important component of what we as a government want to do to encourage people to utilize their bikes or walking as opposed to the automobile. The Greater Victoria area is actually a leader in this regard. They are recognized across Canada as being one of the leaders in this regard. Vancouver is also a community that I think has done a very good job in terms of creating infrastructure that encourages cycling.

It is a little tougher, candidly, Member…. Like, we get a lot of applications from Vancouver and Victoria. It's a little tougher to get some of the other communities to engage, even my own community. I'm constantly having to remind them that this is something that I wish they would put more priority on.

One of the things we do want to do is make sure that the gospel of cycling, so to speak, is something that can be embraced around the province. As we do that and as we're out there talking to communities and saying, "Please think about this," we're starting to see more things happen in places like Fort St. John, for example, where I was up seeing some of the new cycle paths that they've put into place.

I echo the member's comment. I think it is something that we will continue to support and that we will continue to support with additional resources, directly responding to what the member is talking about. The member has my commitment on that, because I do think it is important that we do everything we can to try and encourage people to utilize cycling options.

I want to explore a little bit further, and stress to the minister and to staff, the notion, the importance of what currently is a minuscule amount of funding, which — and I want to reiterate this — has been oversubscribed, probably in every year since very early on. In 1998-99 already the program was oversubscribed. There are communities across B.C. applying for grants to retrofit roads with bike lanes, small projects that over time build continuous corridors that allow people the security of knowing they've got a connected route from their origin to their destination and that allow them to make the choice to cycle to work, school or university.

The importance of that kind of infrastructure…. There's difficulty, because it's not something that we have habitually done in this province or anywhere in Canada, in getting municipalities oriented towards making those small-scale investments on an annual basis to try and retrofit arterial roads, particularly with an infrastructure that allows people to use them with confidence.

Trails are a wonderful thing. I've been involved my entire political lifetime as an advocate of trails. I've been involved in building many of them and have got some considerable experience with that. They're a wonderful asset, and in some situations they're indeed needed to offset the lack of road infrastructure. But in most urban situations, whether it's in Kelowna, Penticton, Nanaimo, Victoria or further north in Prince George, you need to put infrastructure in place on arterial roads to get people to a place where they can cycle with confidence and where they know that cycling is supported as an option.

The challenge that I see today is that if you compare the scale of investment that's required to get an outcome…. If there were $10 million, $15 million, $20 million a year available in a dedicated fund for urban cycling environments, you could instigate change relatively quickly. Especially with the kind of promotional program that the prior NDP government and the current Liberal government have both supported, which is to promote the idea of cycling to work, you could dramatically expand the engagement in cycling.

It would, of course, have the obvious benefit of producing health benefits for the population, and it would have the congestion-relief benefit that we see demonstrated in the numbers here in Victoria over the last five-year snapshot of the change in behaviour. Growth in commuter cycling more than doubled the growth in transit use in the same period of time, so you've got a significant modal shift towards greater cycling to work with a very, very modest investment.

The point that I want to make…. I'm not insisting on it because I think that the minister is resisting the point but because I want him to take the point that if we allocated more resources to this, we could dramatically increase the uptake of people who would cycle to work. We would get tremendous emission reduction benefits as a result of that.

I think if you do a cost-benefit analysis on it, walking and cycling are your single most beneficial investments. You would get the biggest bang for the buck. I want to draw the minister out a little bit more on that, obviously. I'm very encouraged by what I heard before, and I want to be encouraged even further.

Hon. K. Falcon: I appreciate that. I know that the member is sincere. I think it is worth recognizing and applauding the efforts that the NDP government made in terms of their commitment to cycling. It was genuine, it was real, and it made a difference. I acknowledge that, and as I say, I applaud it, because it's something that I strongly support. I think that I can, hopefully, make the member feel better by a number of comments.

One is that it's not just our cycling partnerships program that we are going to be moving forward with, but as part of the Gateway program we are committing $50 million to cycling expansion. That will be the largest expansion of cycling ever in the history of the province of British Columbia.

It is not just across the newly twinned Port Mann Bridge. Every single interchange all the way down along the corridor into Vancouver will also be upgraded with safe cycling and pedestrian lanes for folks. These will hook up with the local area cycling network. The goal is to have a completely unified cycling network from the Fraser Valley right to downtown Vancouver so that one can cycle that entire route safely on dedicated cycling lanes. That, as I say, will be a huge addition to the cycling network.

We have also made contributions over the years not only, obviously, to the cycling network and improving the network here in Greater Victoria but also to the work that's being done throughout Greater Vancouver in the central valley greenway. We have committed huge dollars — millions of dollars, in fact — towards moving that project forward as it moves through the respective communities of Vancouver, New Westminster, and on.

The other thing that we did and that the Premier announced is a $40 million, four-year, LocalMotion program. The LocalMotion program is about exactly what the member talked about — to provide opportunities for municipalities to apply for things that would get the public and their communities more active. That includes cycling lanes as one component of eligibility for the LocalMotion program. To date we're in year 2 of that program, and I believe that about half of the

program dollars have been expended. I do think that that is also a step in the right direction.

The final point I will make is that on any new or rehab road projects we do in the province we now ensure, as part of those projects, that we have a wide shoulder available for safe cycling — safe-as-you-can-be cycling, of course, on a highway. A wider shoulder will allow people to cycle along our highway network in a manner that will be safer than it was on many of the previous highways that were built and constructed in this province, which didn't contemplate that form of modal transportation.

Let me just cap off my comments by sincerely thanking the member, because I know that the member opposite has been a champion of projects like this. He joins the minister not only, I believe, in personally being an active cyclist and understanding how important this is but also in being a strong advocate for encouraging, as he should, the government to do more. My hope is that the combination of all of the programs that I talked about will make a pretty significant dent as we move forward to try to achieve what the member is looking for.

D. Cubberley: A brief comment, and then I will cede to the member for Victoria-Hillside. I thank the minister for all of those comments. I appreciate the sincerity around the cycling investments, and I think that all of the things that he's mentioned are good things.

The one thing that I want to come back to, and I can't reinforce this strongly enough, is that the LocalMotion program is a very good program. It enables communities to go to it for a variety of things, but it's not the first place they're going for bike lanes. You really need to conceptualize these things as very different. They're a great place for trails to go and a tremendous way to stoke trail infrastructure, and in outlying areas it may be the magical solution that offsets the fact that those communities are not going to come for bike lane money.

The bike lane stuff…. You need what used to be the CNP program and is now the community cycling infrastructure partnership program, or something. It's complicated, that one. That needs to have more money in it. If you put more money in it, you will get a different result in urban areas than you can get with the LocalMotion type of fund.

That's where I would urge the minister to look. I may ask him to indulge me, and I will come and see him or his staff about that and try and reinforce that. I thank the minister for his comments.

Hon. K. Falcon: The only thing I want to say is that I appreciate the member's comments, and I look forward to meeting with the member. I can assure the member that I will be responding very positively to the direction that the member wishes to go, because it's entirely consistent with my own set of priorities and where I think we need to go.

R. Fleming: I wanted to just respond to the minister, because he sort of answered a previous question in two parts and he was getting back to me on the RapidBus project. I wonder if he can work out a time, perhaps with the critic, tomorrow or tomorrow afternoon just to ask some questions, because we do have some questions on the feasibility, some of the underlying assumptions, perhaps some of the risk management work that has been presumably done on the proposed project.

I note that in the service plan for B.C. Transit it suggests that ground will break on this project within 12 months. I certainly would expect that considerable work has been done in preparation for that, and I note the project actually — well, some variant of it, anyway — predates the provincial transit plan. I want to ask all about that and particularly around ridership projections and traffic-speed impacts and some of those kinds of questions for which engineering studies, I would assume, have been done.

Hon. K. Falcon: Why don't we bring over the B.C. Transit person in the morning, early, if that works for the member, and then we can…? Does it work for the member if we brought them over early?

Hon. K. Falcon: It would probably be better in the morning, to be honest. But would that work for you, or do you want us to do it in the afternoon?

Hon. K. Falcon: Okay, we'll make a commitment to have an individual here in the morning so that the member can ask the questions. I don't think it'll take a real long time. Just for the benefit of the ferries critic, I don't think that it will take a long time because, like I say, I think it's fairly high level. I think we can probably whiz through those questions pretty quickly.

G. Coons: Obviously, I'm fairly flexible, so we can continue our conversation on this.

For the next hour, I guess, Chair, I'd like to get into some B.C. Ferries stuff and then perhaps tomorrow continue that, and maybe, if time allots, we can get into some port issues.

Again, as the minister knows, I've got my materials here. I've got the service plan, I've got the fiscal plan, and I've got the estimates. I was pretty interested in the service plan, because one of the recommendations from the Auditor General was a comprehensive summary report on the coastal ferry system service and the annual service plan. There wasn't much there at all in the service plan. I realize that basically all there is for coastal ferries is just the amounts that are going to B.C. Ferry Services, and I can see that the amounts are about $145 million, close to $150 million.

I appreciate that the minister over the last couple of years in estimates has had that public policy debate as we look at issues. Again, I hope to get into such things

as the Auditor General report, looking at fares — the concern with fares and the service contract — and a few issues that I think are vital to ensuring that we have the best ferry service not only in the country but in the world.

As the minister knows, I have been on tour. I've been to over 30 ferry-dependent communities. Thousands of names have come in on petitions and hundreds, if not thousands, of letters. I'm sure the minister has gotten these. I've listened and heard the stories. The fare is doubling and, in some cases, increasing by close to 130 percent by 2011.

Communities feel abandoned, and the quote is: "If this government doesn't care…." The residents feel like prisoners, and seniors on fixed incomes can't get off the islands. Businesses — whether it's B and Bs or the artisans on some of the islands — are feeling the impact. As fares go up, ridership goes down.

Restaurants. Their business has been dropping drastically, and a lot of them are feeling that they have to close. Tourism is down. I have met with many truckers who feel the impact, and they realize they have to pass it on to the communities and the people in those communities.

You know, some comments have come out there that the islands are feeling like a gated community and too expensive, with fares up. Fuel surcharges are coming, and again the gas tax. When you look at communities, whether it's the Queen Charlotte Islands or on the coast, the cost is just extreme, especially when this is an essential service, as the Auditor General said, and part of our marine highway.

People are wondering at what point the minister is going to intercede and finally look at ferries as an essential service and at the impact of what's happening on — and to maintain the viability in the communities. There are petitions going out asking whether the minister will freeze fares and take the opportunity to review the Coastal Ferry Act so that someone is looking after the social and economic viability of the communities.

I'm wondering if the minister, with his staff and the people working on it, has pondered whether or not they would freeze fares and look at the Coastal Ferry Act to see what needs revamping.

Hon. K. Falcon: Look, I recognize that ferries serve a very important role in the province of British Columbia. I also recognize, and I think that we should be upfront about the fact — and I'm extraordinarily apologetic about the fact — that we are in a world today where in the last five years oil prices have gone from $35 a barrel to over $100 a barrel. That has impacted not just the operational costs around our ferries but virtually every sector of the economy, whether it's airlines or taxis or passenger transportation, whatever the case may be. They have been very, very strongly impacted.

I don't for a second want to take away from the fact that those increases the member makes reference to, mostly driven by fuel price increases, are something that we would much prefer didn't take place. But the fact of the matter is that they have. I am sorry about that. I genuinely am sorry about that, because I think that had there not been a world right now where, as I say, in the last five years oil went up in such a dramatic and accelerated way, we would have had virtually just an outstanding example of a model that is really working well for delivering a very important service to coastal communities in the province of British Columbia.

I think the member should know that we brought about a change in B.C. Ferries in 2003, and we brought it about for a reason. We brought about that change, in large part, based on three independent reports that were done as a result of a very unfortunate chapter in the life of B.C. Ferries, where during the decade of the 1990s…. I'm not trying to be political about this thing; I'm just stating facts. If the member disagrees with any of these facts, he can say so. But these facts are all on the record.

What happened during that decade of the '90s was that the debt of B.C. Ferries ballooned by 1,800 percent, and the corporation was rendered virtually bankrupt. They produced, as we know, three ferries that were incapable of being used, that went wildly over budget. So when we as the government were elected in 2001, we inherited a ferry system where the average age of the fleet was 42 years. There had been virtually no investment made in the fleet or the terminals, and we had a very dispirited workforce.

We had a long history of labour disruptions that wreaked huge havoc on coastal communities and that undermined public confidence in the operation of the ferry system. We were determined that we were going to try and do something different to try and put in place a system that would serve the public more reliably, more responsibly, in a financial way, and hopefully, produce better results.

I hasten to add that having said that, I don't want to pretend for a second that just because we make a change, we have somehow struck gold and reached political nirvana and have made things as perfect as they can be, because we never have and never will. But what I think I can say with some comfort — backed up, I might say, by independent reports — is that we have a system that is not perfect but that is much better than the system we had in place prior to us taking government.

The member quite correctly pointed out that the Auditor General conducted a review of the structure of B.C. Ferries that we as a government put in place. The reason why the Auditor General conducted a review is that the Auditor General wanted to determine whether or not the new structure, which was put in place to operate independently from political interference….

I happen to believe, and I believe to this day, that that is the most important, fundamental underpinning of this new structure — that it is independent of political interference and involvement, because we know that it was that very political interference and involvement that resulted in the disastrous legacy that was left us as a government and that we are now responsible for trying to clean up and put something into place which would serve the interest of the public.

So the Auditor General said, "Well, it's time to look at this structure and to report out on whether it is meeting the key policy approaches and results" — which we as a government wanted to make sure were in place when we had set up B.C. Ferries as an independent authority. So the December 2006 report made a number of recommendations.

All of those recommendations are being worked on by staff in cooperation with the independent ferry corporation to make sure they are all implemented. But I think that the key parts of what the Auditor General discovered are worth reading into the record, because I think that they're very important.

I'll just cover the top three that I think are germane and go to the very heart of the argument that I'm making as to why we have a structure now that I think is serving the needs of the public much more effectively than the prior structure that we had. The first thing that the Auditor General's report showed was that the structure of B.C. Ferries was achieving its objective as an independent, regulated, self-financing company, free from the political interference of the past.

That was a very important confirmation by the Auditor General. That was a major policy objective of our government, to ensure that that would be the case. That was confirmed by the Auditor General. The Auditor General further confirmed that B.C. Ferries is held accountable through the Coastal Ferry Act and through the coastal ferry services contract.

In other words, the Auditor General is saying that there is accountability and the accountability is being served through the coastal ferry services contract and that the new model ensures that B.C. Ferries provides detailed reporting on performance measures, which, I hasten to add, did not exist in the past. Those performance measures did not exist.

Today they do exist. They are publicly reported, and those are largely service-related accountability and performance measures, which I think are very important for the public to know and for government, frankly, to measure how well the independent authority is doing in performing their duties.

In October of last year the ministry prepared our response to the Auditor General's report at the Public Accounts Committee of the Legislature. The committee adopted both the audit report findings and the ministry's response. As I say, the ministry's response was that we would move forward with the helpful recommendations that the Auditor General made on how we can improve the structure.

The key reason I read that into the record is because…. The important point here is that the Auditor General reinforced the fact that the structure we have in place is a structure that is achieving the policy objectives that were laid out when it was set up.

Today we have a situation where we have a massive fleet renewal underway. The member will well know that even in the member's riding on the North Coast, we are providing as a government an additional $35 million annually for the northern routes to make sure that the Northern Adventure — which is now plying the waters with much acclaim, I might say, from the northern communities — and the Northern Expedition, which will enter into service too. I hope I've got those in the right order. I'm kind of going by memory on that.

Two outstanding vessels. The critic will know, because he was at the launching of the Adventure, the excitement that he saw in the crowd. The tourism sector and the folks from the business sector in his community were absolutely thrilled with the fact that it's essentially a cruise ship experience that you get on that very important route.

The investment in the ferry fleet has been very important, and it continues. The new super C–class vessels that are being brought into British Columbia — one that is now plying the waters between the island and the mainland, another that will come into service soon, and a third that is on its way in terms of construction and delivery — are all very important, and they're just the beginning. I could go on about all the other vessel retrofits and new vessels under construction being built and put into service, but the point is that I think that's very important.

The other thing that's very important is that there has also been investment in the hundreds of millions of dollars in terminal upgrades. That is also something that we just never saw in the decades previous. Not just in the '90s, in fairness to the member, but even in the '80s — very little investment in terminal upgrades.

Now and as recently as on the weekend, when I took the ferry over here and went through the Tsawwassen terminal, I saw the outstanding commercial opportunities that are now available for folks who are taking the ferry across to the Island that were not available in the past, and how busy they were — just incredibly successful. I think that speaks to the independent nature of the operation and the investments that are being made for the benefit — we end up getting some benefit, obviously, for putting the structure in place — of the 20 million passengers a year that go back and forth using that service.

I thank the member for reminding me about the Auditor General review, because I do think it was important. We do appreciate the recommendations made by the Auditor General, and we will fully implement the very helpful suggestions that were made flowing out of that report.

G. Coons: So many issues that the minister touched on, and I was going to be touching on them in a certain format.

I think when the minister talked about the Wright report…. We mentioned that before. I believe last year the minister put it on record and read one of the recommendations from the Wright report. Basically, part of this recommendation says: "Under this model, B.C. Ferries would receive a clear mandate and understanding of the province's expectations and would annually present its business plan" — and this is the key part that the minister left out last year — "through the Min-

ister of Transportation to the Legislature and would report quarterly on the results of its operations."

I found it a real opportunity last year for the minister to leave that part out. I do want to say that the Wright report said that it should be presented through the minister to the Legislature. That's exactly what the Auditor General said in his second recommendation, where he basically said that it's part of the annual service plan, a comprehensive summary report on the coastal ferry system.

So he had the Wright report saying to report to the Legislature for the scrutiny, for the accountability, so that people can ask questions and so that we can be assured that we have an affordable, safe ferry system that meets the needs of communities. Again, that hasn't been done, and the Auditor General requested that.

I began my comments by saying that I didn't see it in the annual report this year, or the service plan.

The minister also talked about fast ferries, and he said: "We don't want to get political on that." I find it very interesting that when the whole transformation from the Crown corporation to the model that we have now, which was described as a hybrid, never-tested governance model by the Auditor General…. In the core review back in 2002, throughout the core review, the fast ferries are excluded from the sale.

So every single asset of the corporation, whether it was vessels, whether it was life boats, whether it was vests…. Everything was transferred over to B.C. Ferries, except for some reason, "fast ferries are excluded from the sale." That's mentioned throughout the core review. Especially since the fast ferries…. In June 2001 the Kvaerner Masa Marine proposal indicated that the fast cats could be modified. They could use them, one full-time and one in the summer, between the Horseshoe Bay and Langdale routes and the Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo routes.

Basically, for a sum of money, a key component of this report, which the minister knows about, was the ability to delay the purchase of a major vessel from 2005 to beyond 2010. So there's a real interesting component of what happened.

I know that the president and CEO of B.C. Ferries…. If he had those Pacific Cats, they'd be in use right now, and we wouldn't be in the shambles that this government has, with the fares skyrocketing and the concerns about an affordable and safe ferry system.

Now, I'd like to get into the Auditor General's report, since the minister started to talk about that, and there are three basic recommendations. I think that it's important that we follow up and see where the minister has gone on this.

The first recommendation from the Auditor General was that the government establish criteria for evaluating how well the coastal ferry system is achieving objectives and, at least once in every performance term, conduct evaluations of that performance to determine when and if changes to the Coastal Ferry Act are to be made.

Considering that taxpayers have invested over half a billion dollars into B.C. Ferries over the last four to five years, has the minister or his staff established specific criteria, which the Auditor General recommended, so that we can determine when and if changes to the Coastal Ferry Act need to be done?

Hon. K. Falcon: First of all, the member should know that, in the terms of a review, we're not going to do a review at this time. We're just getting through the first term of the contract. The Auditor General's report shows that it's working exactly as we had set out when we set the structure up.

Obviously, we will do a review in the future, when enough time has gone by to have a look at them all, but the Auditor General has confirmed that it's performing exactly as it was set up to perform. So that answers that question.

The other issue. The member refers to information and to making sure that people have access to reporting information, etc. I think what I should do for the benefit of the member is read from Hansard and Public Accounts. It's the response of the employee of the Auditor General to a member opposite — not the critic, but one of his colleagues — who was asking the Auditor then.

I'll read into the record the question — R. Fleming, the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee: "Maybe I could ask the Auditor, then. What, under the contract, in terms of obligations for reporting, is not being fulfilled as the most current part of this report would suggest?"

I read that into the record for a reason. It's directly germane to the question the member asked me. Here's the answer from the Auditor General's office and the employee of the Auditor General's office, J. Orr: "I don't believe there are any clauses in the contract or the act that aren't actually being complied with. There is a lot of reporting. There is a lot of information being provided. Our feeling was that perhaps it's too much information to be easily absorbed."

Now, I'm going to pause there for a moment, because so often we will hear from the members opposite that that they haven't gotten enough information and that somehow people are trying to hide information. That's never been the case. The information is almost always out there. It usually just requires some keystrokes on the Internet to actually find it. I realize that's an effort.

Nevertheless, I will continue with the comment of the employee, and I'll quote directly. "We'd like to see a single source that a citizen could go to and find out how the ferry service is performing. That was the recommendation for a summary report that would pull together the significant events and actions of the year. Again, I don't think there's any case where there's no…. I don't believe there is any non-compliance with either the act or the contract."

As I say, I mentioned that earlier on. That was one of the helpful recommendations that the Auditor General made, and as a result of that, the ministry has created links that will allow the public to more easily access that information. We believe that that fulfils exactly the intent of what the Auditor General was saying with respect to that recommendation.

G. Coons: Yes, and that was the concern. One of the other concerns in the Auditor General report was the third recommendation, where the Auditor General recommended that the ministry and B.C. Ferries develop performance measures related to the quality of service, as required by the coastal ferry services contract. In the report he says: "…because that's not being done at this point in time."

Again, I don't believe that there have been any new measures added at all, as far as B.C. Ferries. There was some discussion, I believe, between the minister and B.C. Ferries about safety and operational reliability, but I don't believe there have been any performance measures added in the 2006-2007 report, or perhaps the minister could comment on that.

Hon. K. Falcon: I must apologize, Member. I did forget to reference the member's comment earlier, on the fast ferries, because the member was wondering why they wouldn't have been included in the sale. It should come as no surprise to the member. It's a fairly straightforward reason: they were utterly useless and couldn't be employed in any responsible way by the ferry corporation. That's why they weren't utilized.

If the member doubts that, I would encourage the member, the next time the member has the opportunity to land in the Vancouver port on helijet, to look across the water and see the three ferries shrink-wrapped and sitting over on the opposite side of the inlet. The private sector owner, who bought those $463 million ferries for about $19 million, as I recall — a massive loss to taxpayers — has spent several years trying to figure out what to do with them and has been unable to find any use anywhere around the world for those.

According to the chatter I hear occasionally, at this point it's looking like the scrap yard is likely where that disastrous NDP investment will ultimately end up, at great, great, horrible cost to the taxpayer.

Having said that, directly to…. The member is asking about quality measures. The quality measures that the member references have been done. They've been added to the annual report that B.C. Ferries is required to produce.

I might read into the record for the benefit of the member…. As a result of Public Accounts, the response to this very question that my assistant deputy minister who, in part, has responsibility for overseeing the coastal ferry services contract…. I'll quote directly from that for the benefit of the member, because this, again, already was canvassed in Public Accounts.

I'm happy to read it into the record again, in fairness to the member opposite. The member may not sit on Public Accounts, so it would be normal for the member to ask this question. I'm not in any way trying to be critical about that.

G. Coons: Yes, and I've got that information here in front of me, so I did get that passed on to me, Minister. Thank you. And it does say that. The ministry action to date — it was in the 2006-2007 annual report.

I did get the 2006-2007 annual report, and I compared it to the other annual reports from B.C. Ferries in 2005 and 2006. Nothing has changed in every one of those annual reports, right up to the current one. Exactly the same, and all it was, was under "Satisfaction Survey" — no performance measures whatsoever.

Every single report the last three years, including this year, had exactly the same preamble under service quality, customer satisfaction tracking. Each one had the results for the following in the satisfaction survey that went to, I guess, passengers. For each of the more than 60 attributes…. I'll go down to this one. For each of the 69 service attributes, for each of the 28 terminal-related attributes, and every year for the last three years it was 60, 69, 28; then 60, 69 and 28; and in 2005, 60, 69 and 28.

So as far as anything being in the annual report, I could not find that, and I would hope that that could be presented to me somewhere along the line. But I believe that as far as that recommendation and those performance measures for employee safety and passenger safety, which is key…. For each one of those past three years, nothing has changed in those performance measures. Either the minister was misinformed or not guided down the right path for this.

So will he follow the contract and develop performance…? Will he ensure B.C. Ferries and the ministry develop performance measures for employee and passenger safety, for reliability, for the cost of passenger service and for measures dealing with operational safety and training?

Hon. K. Falcon: I owe the member opposite an apology. I read into the record '06-07 annual report, and according to my staff she had inadvertently misspoken when she said that. She meant to say the '07-08 annual report. Obviously, it couldn't be in the '06-07. The Auditor General report only came out in October of '06, I believe it was.

I apologize to the member for that. That was reading into the record something that was an inadvertent mistake by the staffer at the time.

So to the assurance of my staff it would be the '07-08 annual report that would have the measures that the member refers to. I apologize for inadvertently misleading the member.

G. Coons: Thank you, Minister. No problems there. So we can expect the performance measures being done there…. Because also with the accounts committee — there was a request about whether performance measures were used prior to the transformation. Jamie Orr, the audit director, indicated: "We found that performance measures were indeed used prior to the transformation." There are quite a few, and they gave a sample of the performance measures that were used in 2000-2001 and prior to that. Perhaps that would be a model that, hopefully, B.C. Ferries and the minister can use for future performance measures, as recommended by the Auditor General.

The second…. I hate to hang on to this, but when we look at the comprehensive summary report on the coastal ferry system — and my disappointment, along with many other followers of our ferry system and the importance of it, that it wasn't in the annual service plan…. I notice that the ministry response to the Auditor's recommendation was: "Independent entities…are best positioned to report on their activities on a timely basis."

The Auditor General indicated that there is so much information out there that it should come through the minister and come through the Legislature so that it's understandable, and we can understand it. I just don't understand why the minister wouldn't do that, especially if B.C. Ferries actually did report on their activities in a timely basis.

I'm sure they would be indicating that: "Currently we have eight lawsuits against us. The TSB investigation into one of our ships sinking just happened, where we, by the way, destroyed all ship-specific documents from the Queen of the North just five days after it sank. And our logbooks went missing. Oh, and we decided to challenge our regulator, the TSB, and we ended up suing them.

"We ignored their TSB advisory, warning that all members on the bridge were not trained and that 'It's part and parcel of management's responsibility to ensure the training of crew on vessels.' We also alleged that the TSB has an agenda. We released two incomplete internal divisional inquiries prior to the TSB report. We ignored the concerns of our safety director, Darin Bowland, who said that he believed that B.C. Ferries' 'faulty or insufficient bridge…management training of the crew may have been the cause, or one of the causes, of the sinking.' And in a sworn document he called the company's approach to safety an 'accident waiting to happen.'

"Oh, we also failed to follow up on the Morfitt safety recommendations. We're still working on them. We lobbied our regulators to relax their policies on safety.

"These don't even get to what's in the TSB report. The TSB report indicated that those on the bridge were not trained or qualified; there should have been three on the bridge, not two; the alarms that warned about navigational concerns were not set up or had been disabled in a refit. Oh, and we left the water-tight doors open.

"There's no completed evacuation plan or procedure. There's inadequate passenger safety training in drills. Oh, and also, we found out through the TSB report that our external-internal safety audits failed to be effective in ID'ing safety deficiencies at B.C. Ferries." Eight times in the findings of the final TSB report, it said in one way or another that B.C. Ferry Services' actions placed the vessel, its passengers and crew at risk.

So I would at this point in time question the minister that he should follow the Auditor General's recommendation and do a comprehensive summary plan that includes operational safety and management practices at B.C. Ferries. I'm asking the question to the minister: will he ensure that there's a comprehensive summary report for the next service plan?

The Chair: Members, at the request of the minister, we'll take a ten-minute recess break.

Hon. K. Falcon: I thank the critic opposite for the forbearance of providing a break for us all. It's much appreciated.

Look, the member opposite talked about the sinking of the Queen of the North, and I have to, in all honesty, tell the member how disappointed I was with the remarks that the member made. The fact of the matter, at the end of the day, is that this was a very serious issue where two individuals unfortunately died, where 99 people's lives were put at risk as a result of some, at best, very unexplainable behaviour by people that ought to have been paying attention. It's very serious.

For the member to try and latch on to every excuse that was proffered as a result of these multiple investigations by the federal government through the federal Transportation Safety Board and try and excuse completely the responsibilities of individuals who, according to the report of the Transportation Safety Board, may have been very key to this horrific incident that took place is very unfortunate, I think.

I know that the member doesn't like it. I've been on the public record as saying that we expect the federal

government to fully investigate this, as the Transportation Safety Board did. I think it was a very thorough report. I've expressed publicly how disappointed I was that unfortunately there is still missing information — 14 minutes of information. Unfortunately, key individuals refused to testify about what they were doing during those critical 14 minutes where they ignored some very important warning signals about the direction of the ferry.

The critic is on the record as being all over the map on this particular issue. When he was interviewed by CKNW over this very issue, the reporter asked did he not find that outrageous that these individuals would not comment or testify about those missing 14 minutes. I'll quote directly; this is from CKNW, March 26, '07, for the benefit of the member. The ferry critic said: "I would think, at this point in time, that they have committed to the three other investigations. I'm not going to speculate on what they're doing with their legal advice."

I'll tell you what I've said publicly. I've said that there's a moral imperative to tell the truth and to step forward, to testify and to provide information on a missing gap that is absolutely germane to the fact that a couple of people lost their lives and that 99 other people were put through an absolutely terrifying experience.

I think that for that member to be afraid to take a position on such a critical aspect of that incident is unfortunate. I would encourage the member to be careful and responsible about what the member says about this incident, because it is very serious, what happened.

I think that the issue that the member ought to be focusing on is what the Transportation Safety Board report concluded and what have been the actions of B.C. Ferries. The member will know that B.C. Ferries engaged a highly respected former Auditor General, George Morfitt, subsequent to the sinking of the Queen of the North, to do an independent operational safety audit of B.C. Ferries. B.C. Ferries CEO David Hahn and the president of the union, Jackie Miller, both of whom I've met with on several occasions about this issue, endorsed entirely the 41 recommendations in the report.

I think that it's important, contrary to what the member was saying, in trying to find every single read to suggest that the system was unsafe…. In fact, I'll go further. In the immediate aftermath of the sinking I had to warn the member to stop speculating, because he was running around saying that the ferries were not safe, when I pointed out to him how irresponsible it was to make that kind of speculation without having all the facts together.

Of course, his speculation turned out to be wrong. His own community members had to pull him aside and tell him to stop running around and scaring away tourists by suggesting that the system is unsafe. The Morfitt report that came out, which examined the safety issues, concluded two things — two major conclusions: that overall the company is operating a safe coastal ferry transportation system. In fact, it is important to point out that B.C. Ferries has one of the safest records in the world and operates one of the largest ferry systems in the world, by the way.

Secondly, Morfitt concluded that the company directors, management and staff are highly committed to operational safety, both for the travelling public and for B.C. Ferries personnel. I think that's an important point. Former Auditor General George Morfitt did not say that they were somewhat committed, that they were a tiny bit committed, that they were tangentially committed. He said that they were highly committed — all the personnel and all the management — to operational safety.

I give David Hahn and Jackie Miller credit for immediately endorsing the report and pledging to work together to make ferries safer. That's exactly the kind of responsible approach that I would expect and that we were pleased to see from both those leaders. So all I would say to the member is that in the rush to try and criticize B.C. Ferries….

I get that you have political reasons that you want to do that, but I would caution the member to choose his words carefully. I would caution the member to recognize that there were families that were impacted in a very significant way. I would caution the member to recognize that there are legal suits in play. I would hope, as I've said to the member from the very beginning, that the member would be responsible in his choice of words and in his comments with respect to the sinking.

But again, when we start looking at a year ago…. I think my response was to the divisional inquiry of B.C. Ferries, where I said I'd wait for the TSB report. Again, when the TSB report came out, I said that I accepted the report and that changes need to be done and that there should be a public inquiry into management practices, operational safety and training.

The minister came back and flatly, on the record, didn't believe that there should be a public inquiry, contrary to the Attorney General at the time — oh, he's still the Attorney General — who said: "Yes, there is a possibility."

My question to the minister is: does he accept the analysis and conclusions of the TSB report, and does he support a public inquiry to ensure that we find out what happened and what has happened over the last three or four years under this transformation to this profit-over-service, quasi-privatized model?

Hon. K. Falcon: The member should know — I hope the member knows — that there is an ongoing apparent RCMP investigation into the actions of certain members that were involved with the B.C. Ferries. The

member should know that until that investigation is concluded — and no one would conclusively state what is going to happen to the individuals involved….

But as I have said to the member, there have been three reports thus far: the divisional inquiry, the Morfitt safety report and the TSB report. What I have said publicly is that there's no need for a public inquiry if the individuals involved would step forward and tell the truth — there's a moral imperative to do so — and fill in the 14-minute gap.

That doesn't require a public inquiry, Member. What that requires is for individuals to step forward and do the right thing. Even though it may be difficult to do and even though they may have all these reasons they feel they don't want to do it, I believe that there's a moral imperative and that they ought to do it because it's the right thing to do, because two people died and because 99 people's lives were put at risk.

I don't change the position I took, and the position the Attorney General took is not in any way inconsistent with what we've been saying, except he added the point that there is still an ongoing RCMP investigation which, hopefully, will answer those questions. We will obviously have to wait until the conclusion of that investigation. But a lot of this could be short-circuited, I still believe, by people stepping forward and telling the truth and filling in the gap and, I think, putting the minds at ease of some families that have been terribly affected.

On that note, Chair, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

The Chair: I would like to thank the viewers on the live Web broadcast and remind them that this is replayed nightly at 7:30 p.m. on the parliamentary channel.

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