Hansard — Tuesday, April 29, 2008 a.m.

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Introductions by Members		11673

Introduction and First Reading of Bills		11673
	Protected Areas of British Columbia (Conservancies and Parks) Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 38)
	Hon. B. Penner

Second Reading of Bills		11674
	Medicare Protection Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 21) (continued)
	A. Dix
	M. Polak
	N. Macdonald

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		11689
	Estimates: Ministry of Economic Development and Minister Responsible for the Asia-Pacific Initiative and the Olympics (continued)
	Hon. C. Hansen
	D. Routley
	R. Fleming

C. Trevena: In the gallery this morning are 25 grade 6 students from Georgia Park Elementary, and they're going to be joined by their teacher Mary Begg and parents. They're at the start of a month-long study of government systems, and they evolve through coming to see what we do down in the House and learning all about different sorts of governments. I hope the House will make these students from Campbell River very welcome.

PROTECTED AREAS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
(CONSERVANCIES AND PARKS)
AMENDMENT ACT, 2008

Hon. B. Penner presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Protected Areas of British Columbia (Conservancies and Parks) Amendment Act, 2008.

Hon. B. Penner: Mr. Speaker, I move that the bill be introduced and read a first time now.

Hon. B. Penner: It's with great pleasure that I introduce the Protected Areas of British Columbia (Conservancies and Parks) Amendment Act, 2008. This bill contains amendments to the Protected Areas of British Columbia Act to continue this government's expansion of British Columbia's parks and protected areas system, including the creation of conservancies on the central coast, north coast and Haida Gwaii as well as the Morice and Sea to Sky areas.

This bill continues the work of implementing land use decisions by protecting in legislation some of the most significant, spectacular and ecologically diverse landscapes and coastal areas in the entire world. The creation of these parks and conservancies is taking place in the broader context of land use agreements and plans that will also provide certainty for land use to support economic opportunities for communities.

This balancing of environmental stewardship with economic development is based on a historic collaboration that has taken place between first nations, industry, conservation organizations, local governments and many other stakeholders to arrive at the central coast and north coast land use decisions that were announced by the Premier two years ago.

In 2006, 24 new conservancies were established pursuant to those decisions, followed by 41 additional conservancies last year. The amendments in this bill will complete the implementation of the protected areas component of the north coast and central coast land use decisions.

Fifty new conservancies will be established by these amendments, and two existing areas under the Environment and Land Use Act will be converted to conservancies. Additions will also be made to two existing conservancies. The addition of these conservancies, along with others being established in other parts of the province that I will note in a moment, will bring the total number of conservancies in British Columbia to 135.

There are also amendments to the act that will make changes to the protected areas system in other parts of the province as well. Seven new conservancies in six new class A provincial parks will be established in the northwest part of the province pursuant to the Morice land and resource management plan.

Nine new conservancies and additions to two existing class A parks are being made in accordance with the Sea to Sky land and resource management plan for the area in and around Squamish to Pemberton — in that corridor. For example, Duffey Lake Provincial Park will increase in size by 93 percent to 4,048 hectares.

Two new conservancies will be established on Haida Gwaii, otherwise known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, to begin the implementation of the Haida Gwaii land use agreement. These two conservancies will cover 147,759 hectares in total. Four new class A parks are being established pursuant to the…

Hon. B. Penner: …Okanagan-Shuswap — one last sentence — resource management plan, along with the conversion of the Kalamalka Lake protected area to class A park status in addition to the existing Kalamalka Lake Park. The addition to the existing class A park plus the area of the four new parks in the Okanagan-Shuswap region totals 3,600 hectares.

Hon. B. Penner: I move this bill be placed on the orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 38, Protected Areas of British Columbia (Conservancies and Parks) Amendment Act, 2008, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. B. Penner: I call continued second reading debate on Bill 21, Medicare Protection Amendment Act, 2008.

Hon. B. Penner: For the information of members, continued debate of the Ministry of Economic Development budget estimates.

A. Dix: As we were leaving the debate yesterday, you will recall that the minister gave one of, I think, the most irrelevant second reading speeches we've ever heard in this Legislature. He chose not to defend his legislation, explain his legislation or explain the purpose or the need for the legislation at all.

Presumably, that invites a lengthy committee stage debate that will come, for him to explain the reasoning of the legislation. But you'll recall that this legislation really comes out of an idea from the Premier — an idea of the Premier's that he believes. He wanted to mitigate some of the principles of the Canada Health Act, principles that are supported by every political party in Canada, including the federal Conservative Party — except, apparently, the B.C. Liberal Party.

His intent in bringing forward this idea in 2006, in campaigning on the idea and spending $6 million in public funds to promote the idea, in asking people in the Conversation on Health to endorse the idea…. They declined. His idea was to put this forward to limit and to mitigate principles that are fundamental to our public health care system such as universality, accessibility, comprehensiveness and the others.

That's the purpose of the legislation. In a sense, what he's doing is changing the obligation. Instead of saying to government that we have a public health care system and it needs to be universal and comprehensive, he's giving government an argument in the debate that it should not be. That's the effect of the legislation. It could not be any other effect. The effect is, in fact, to defend the financial interests of the government against the sick. That's the purpose of this.

The five principles of medicare work together to define a health care system that is public, that is comprehensive, that is universal, and that is portable and accessible for all. This government has decided that its issue in health care is to attack those principles, to say those principles should be mitigated, that the problem with public health care is that it's universal.

The problem with public health care is that it's intended, at least until this government came to office, to be comprehensive. That's the problem. That's the mischief, if you will, that they want to resolve by this legislation. In fact, as you can see — and certainly as you can see from the health care record of the government — that's the direction we're going to.

Hon. Speaker, you'll recall that this is a slight change in their position — what they used to say. They used to talk about health care where and when you need it. That was a campaign pledge by the Premier in 2001. The minister talked about other pledges they made in 2001, which they broke with respect to long-term care, home care, acute care. Promises broken, promises broken, promises broken.

The minister bragged that we've dropped in per-capita funding from second place to seventh place in Canada. He bragged about that. He thinks that's a good thing — that he carves money out of the health care system and shifts costs from the health care system to the sick. They think that's a good thing. That's their approach, and that is the purpose of this legislation.

Now, it is surprising, as we noted yesterday, that the government really has no explanation and no defence for this legislation. Clearly, what happened is that this was the Premier's idea, and everyone else rejected it. You know, George Bush in the United States calls himself the Decider. The Premier in British Columbia is the Decider.

You'll recall, hon. Speaker…. My friend from Saanich South will recall this, because he asked questions about it in this Legislature. In 2003 another Minister of Health brought forward a medicare protection amendment act that would have strengthened public health care, which would have given the government the capacity to find out what was going on in the system. The Premier intervened in that debate and said he wasn't involved in the debate.

It apparently got through cabinet and the Legislature without the Premier knowing, but the Premier got some phone calls from his allies in for-profit health care. All the groups supported it. Everyone supported it. Everyone thought it was a good idea. It was intended to ensure that the Canada Health Act was respected in British Columbia.

The Decider — our George Bush, if you will — the Premier, said no, even though the effect of that politically, I might add, was to humiliate a senior cabinet minister, the former Minister of Health and current Minister of Economic Development.

That didn't matter to the Premier, because there were other interests at bay. He was against strengthening the Medicare Protection Act at the time to protect the principles of the Canada Health Act, and here he goes again. No one else supports this. The government can't explain what its purpose is, what the intent is, what the role of adding this principle in medicare is, what its effect will be in the debate. I'm sure we'll ask the minister at committee stage what legal opinions he has to support this, and I'm sure he'll say: "Oh, those legal opinions are confidential. We can't talk about that."

But he's also failed in this debate to provide any rationale for the impact this will have during his hour-long diatribe on the 1990s — any rationale for why this is needed now except that apparently the Premier wants it.

He's spoken about some of these issues before, but let's talk about what other people say. You remember that yesterday, hon. Speaker, during the debate the

Minister of Health went on at length. He suggested that this information came from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It talks about provincial health spending as a share of GDP. It's gone — 2002 to 2007 — from 7.4 percent to 6.9 percent.

The minister said…. What did he say about that? He said that was entirely without basis. It is utter nonsense. You'll recall that the source of that information, of course, was the government itself. So his conclusion may not have been that surprising, but who he was talking about when he said….

I'm quoting from him here, because one wouldn't want to misquote the Minister of Health. He called it specious. He said: "It's entirely without basis. It is utter nonsense."

Well, the source was, of course, the B.C. Financial and Economic Review, page 95. And who produces that document? Who's responsible for that document — what the Minister of Health calls utter nonsense, entirely specious and entirely without basis? Well, it happens to be the Ministry of Finance.

I want to say "the Ministry of Finance" here — and of course, responsible in the House, the Minister of Finance. That's who he was referring to.

Of course, the same information is available from the Canadian Institute for Health Information in every budget they ever produce, because it's an easy calculation to make. Once you add the GDP numbers and add the health spending numbers, you make the calculation. It's gone from 7.4 percent to 6.9 percent.

Apparently, the government is ignorant of the basic facts about health care in this province. That's what they're saying. I don't know if they are. I think that may have just been…. It's possible that it may have been an excuse for the Minister of Health to attack someone who disagrees with him. It may have been just an excuse.

But the fact of the matter is that the Minister of Health was wrong in this House. He discussed it at length in this House. He was wrong. The source of the information was his own government.

What it says, and what that information said was…. What it says, if you take it back 20 years, is that health care spending as a percentage of GDP in the province has gone roughly from 6.1 percent to 6.9 percent today. That's over 20 years.

Spending out of control? Sustainability out of control? I don't think so. I don't think by most measures, most evidence-based measures, that's spending out of control. Since this government came to office and started closing acute care beds and breaking its promise on long-term care and so on, we've gone from 7.4 percent to 6.9 percent.

Now, what do independent observers say about this debate? Here's another group that the minister when he wraps up may be able to cast aspersions on: the Canadian Health Services Foundation. They've produced a document that addresses the core of the government's argument in this bill.

What does this document say? It says: "Canada's system of health care financing is unsustainable." But you know what the document is? It's called Myth Busters. "Myth: Canada's system of health care financing is unsustainable." It refers to the fact, which is self-evident because this is the government's definition of sustainability, that fiscal sustainability — and we know this; this is a political issue — depends on taxation.

Many of those governments that talk about the sustainability of our health care system are the same governments that give away, for example, tax cuts to banks — like this government. You make a big tax cut to the bank that no one asked for and no one agrees with, and then you say: "Oh, the health care system is unsustainable because we cut tax to the banks." That's the intention, and that's the discussion of this legislation.

So what do they say? What we have is the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation…. They say it's a myth. They're not saying that the issue of health care costs, which every government since we brought in medicare and even before that…. Every government concerns itself with health care costs.

They're saying the idea of it, putting it in as a principle of medicare, mitigating the idea of universality, is wrong — that governments can reasonably be expected to provide, even though this government is failing to do it, universal, accessible health care in the public system. That's what they're saying. They're saying that the government's arguments, to use the turn of phrase of the Minister of Health, are specious.

The Minister of Health referred to Roy Romanow yesterday. He thought that maybe we thought that Mr. Romanow wasn't a distinguished Premier. Of course he's a distinguished Premier. He also produced a very highly considered, well-thought-out report on our health care system. What does he say? He says that the sustainability worry is a myth. This is someone who was brought to the table by the minister in defence of his position.

"The sustainability worry is a myth. We are spending less today than we did a decade ago. Our spending is in line with that of other wealthy countries, and there is a need for immediate targeted investment in priority areas." That is one of the people that minister brought to the table yesterday. He disagrees with this.

So what does the minister say? What is his defence? What is his explanation for all this, for changing the fundamental principles of medicare? It's a change, by the way, as my colleague from Saanich South knows, that the Minister of Health in Ottawa, Tony Clement, called a non-starter; a change that had no support from any other Premier; a change that had no support from any other Minister of Health — completely rejected, seen as completely unnecessary.

What does the Minister of Health say now? Well, he wrote a letter to Burnaby Now, and really what he's saying is that changing the law is just kind of an advisory thing. You know, we're just sending ourselves a note. We're saying to ourselves that we need to remind ourselves that the public health system should continue to exist for future generations. That's why we're changing the law.

He doesn't provide any evidence about the effect of it, which is real. He doesn't provide any evidence of the

effect of it, and he says platitudes like that. He says that it's about putting sustainability against universality and accessible and comprehensive in the Canada Health Act and the Medicare Protection Act. He says that it's about helping people with chronic disease. He says that it's about helping people to stop smoking.

To use the minister's phrase — what does the minister call this sort of thing? — it's entirely without basis. To use his phrase, it's utter nonsense. There is no evidence that adding sustainability to this bill has any impact on any of those issues.

What this is about — and the minister came close somewhere else…. Maybe he doesn't like to say the same kinds of things to the Burnaby Now that he says to the Globe and Mail. I don't know. He did note in the Globe and Mail that in enshrining this principle of sustainability into law, we acknowledge our responsibilities to manage the growing costs that threaten the future of our public health care system. He says that the definitions and this addition, presumably of sustainability, take on critical importance in issues that may be defined in courts of law.

So they are doing something. He acknowledges that they're doing something. He doesn't say what. But what he's really saying, what the Premier said…. You'll recall with the Premier, because I remember it. We and many members of the House were at SFU downtown. The member from Esquimalt was there. The Premier stood at the front of the room and said: "Our health care system is not sustainable."

What his belief is, is that universal, accessible health care — health care, if you will, where and when you need it; what the Premier promised — is not possible. He's a pessimist. We can't do it. They do it all over the world, but we can't do it in British Columbia. We need a mulligan in British Columbia. We need a way out of universal health care.

So that's what he said. Then he offered up in his opening remarks this canard, which they've since buried in the back yard — go figure. They've taken the canard and dug a hole in the back yard of the government, and they've put the canard in the hole. It's still there, but for this debate, we want to resurrect that a little bit.

So 71 percent, they said, of the health care budget. They don't say that anymore. It was nonsense then. The Premier — there he was up on the stage with Brian Day, his first speaker, the guy who's going to deliver the message, the sermon. At his first meeting on the Conversation on Health, there was the Premier. We were way at the back. I was at the back of the room. I was happy to be there to watch this presentation from the Premier.

As he said, 71 percent — an idea that has disappeared from the government's rhetoric and has disappeared from the debate…. It was an idea that was used to scare people, and people didn't buy it then. They don't say that anymore. They said 71 percent by 2017.

It's manifestly not true. And by the way, they're off only by maybe $5 billion or $6 billion, depending on how you count. Once you talk about those billions of dollars, you're starting to talk real money. That's how far off they were on this question.

There he was at the front of the room saying: "We need the sustainability change because universal, accessible, comprehensive health care — what I promised — is no longer possible in our province of British Columbia. It's no longer possible. We need this way out."

What did he do? The member from Esquimalt will know this. He invited onto the stage Brian Day, the first speaker to define this image. You'll recall this. I think the Minister of Health will recall. He put up on the screen a slide. It showed a picture. On one side was an image of George Orwell's 1984, and on the other side was the Canada Health Act.

The Canada Health Act, which apparently for the Premier…. The principles of universality, principles that need mitigation according to the Premier and according to Dr. Day…. That's their view. We can't deliver it here in British Columbia. We are not capable of that in British Columbia. It requires mitigation.

So they put up this slide. The Premier is there, and his first speaker…. He invites him up. He puts up this slide — the Canada Health Act on one side and George Orwell's 1984 on the other side — equating the principles of medicare, which I think most Canadians believe in profoundly and think are the right approach to public health care….

We're talking about public administration of our health care system. We're talking about universality of our health care system, its portability between provinces. We're talking about its accessibility. We're talking about its comprehensiveness. That idea of a public health care system — where getting care doesn't have anything to do with the amount of money you have in your pocket, and with the American example shining at us across the border — somehow equated to George Orwell's 1984.

You know, they said it. They didn't criticize him. I didn't see the Minister of Health get up and say: "I don't think that's right." I didn't hear the Premier get up and say: "I don't think that's right." That's what they did.

What we're doing in this legislation is putting a principle in place that clearly is intended to mitigate or change the value of the existing principles of medicare, because the government doesn't think they can do that anymore.

Sustainability. We said this yesterday, and it's important to note that it has a different quality than the other principles, which speak to who will benefit from medicare, what they will receive, their access to health care, their ability to receive care in their home province and other provinces, and who will ultimately run and be accountable for the system. Those principles of medicare are not contradictory.

The idea that they're introducing is their definition of the sustainability of the health care system, which is not supported in any international assessment. When international people do evidence-based reviews of the cost of health care, they don't use their method. But that's okay. The minister has dismissed all those as they dismiss everyone else who disagrees with them, whether it's Mr. Romanow, the Canadian Health Services Research

Foundation, the OECD or whoever it is. If they disagree with the Premier's decision…. Of course, presumably all those people are some form of socialist or something. I don't know.

Nonetheless, all those people who disagree with that position are dismissed as their views not having any validity. But the fact is that the introduction of this principle will have that effect, because it's giving direction. As the minister said, it gives direction to the courts.

What is the mischief that the government is intending to deal with? What are they trying to resolve? We talked about the case law yesterday, which says that if you're going to make this kind of change….

I'll just refer to one of the cases that I referred to yesterday. It's pretty basic stuff. It says that in construction of legislation, the court must consider the mischief the legislation has intended to remedy, the provisions of the legislation as a whole and the particular language of the section in question.

The intent of this provision is to mitigate the values of those principles of medicare. That's its intent, and the government refuses to explain, presumably because they're embarrassed, presumably because no serious policy person in the Ministry of Health would have come up with this idea if the Premier hadn't. No other Minister of Health in Canada, the federal Minister of Health, all the evidence-based research…. All of this stuff is sort of set aside, and we go ahead of that. But that's the purpose of the legislation.

It's for that reason that we oppose it, because we are not pessimists like the government. We believe that the principles in the Canada Health Act reflected in the Medicare Protection Act are principles that not only should be upheld and must be upheld but can be upheld. This pessimistic view put forward on the other side — that we can't have here in British Columbia what other people in the world have, that we can't sustain it — is wrong, and it's not supported by the evidence.

Does that mean there are not challenges in the public health care system, that there have not always been cost challenges and that there are not other mitigating factors out there — balanced budget legislation and so on? Of course there are. Of course those things exist.

That's not the question. The question isn't whether there aren't cost issues in health care. That's how the government tries to frame the issue, but that's not what they're doing here. They are changing the principles of medicare. When you go before the Medical Services Commission or the Minister of Health or the health authorities in deciding how to enact the legislation, the issue of universality is mitigated, is undermined, in the legislation. It has to be put up against this principle that the government defines in its own terms as sustainability.

That's the purpose of it. The government refuses to defend it, but that is what they're doing, and that is why we think it's not a good idea. Look, as I said, sustainability is conceptually an obvious modifier of the other principles. That's what it is. While it's conceivable that if you wanted to, you could engage in a process — and this is, a little bit, what the government is doing — of a universal, portable and publicly administered plan that rations services, it never intersects with the taxpayers' ability to pay. The principles of comprehensiveness and accessibility directly engage the idea of sustainability.

What you have is an idea of a set of principles for public health care, and you say to government: "Deliver health care policies based on this principle." This is a government that doesn't believe in those principles and thinks that it needs help. It thinks that it needs, in fact, to mitigate those principles — that they can't do it here. They can't do here what people do and must do and should do all around the world, which is deliver public health care to citizens in an effective way.

Hon. Speaker, this is, I know, a somewhat arcane debate. We have the government refusing to explain its position. It's putting forward a discredited idea by the Premier which has received no support since he launched it and which he seems to have lost interest in, although I'm looking forward to his speech in this debate.

I'm looking forward to his explanation of what he's doing in this debate. It'll be something to anticipate. I'll want to be here for that. I want to be here when he stands up and says what he was thinking when Brian Day put the Canada Health Act up against 1984. I'll be interested to hear what he was thinking when that happened — when he put that up as his first speaker.

I'll be interested to see what he was thinking when he went around and spent $6 million on this 71 percent number that was fallacious and which they've now buried in the government's backyard. I'll be interested to hear what he was thinking, what his approach is, because it will be important for people to understand, as we go forward in this debate about public health care, where the government stands and what they should expect and what's at stake.

By trying to pretend that this is about flowery platitudes when it is about nothing of the sort, the government is…. The effect of their actions is to mislead people, and I hope that the Premier comes here and says what his intentions were and what his explanation is. We have not had an adequate explanation so far, and the issues at stake for British Columbians, I think, are significant.

What can we say about the government's record in health care? The minister talked about Bill 29 yesterday. Clearly, he spoke with pride about the havoc the government wrought to public health care with Bill 29. Clearly, he thinks a model where at Nanaimo Seniors Village, a model created by the government…. It's the vision that they brought to that bill.

Our position is that that's not the right model. We're against Bill 29. We were against it then; we're against it now. We're even more against it after the Supreme Court of Canada, in spite of a big effort by the government, ruled three important sections of that bill to be illegal and forced the government to pay compensation.

The Minister of Health is proud of that. That's an example of his vision of health care. It is a message about his vision of health care — a vision, in that case, that deterred people from taking up health care as a profession. It said to care aides and LPNs and others,

people in the public health care system: "We don't value your work." That is, in fact, the approach the government took.

Yes, the minister wants specifics. Yeah, we have a disagreement. We don't think Bill 29 is the way to go. We are against Bill 29. We were against it then; we're against it now. We're going to change it when we get into government. You bet we are.

What else? They've gone from second place to seventh place in health care spending. The minister says: "It's $2 billion we cut out of the system." That's what his suggestion is.

We know that the number of hospitals — let me use the Canadian Institute for Health Information's numbers — has gone from 99 in '01-02 to 82 in '05-06. That is a reflection. That's what happens. Services get cut when you de-emphasize health care as a priority of government. That's what happens. The reality is that that is consistent with a government that no longer believes you can deliver health care where and when you need it and that is more interested in advancing the interests of private interests in our society than in maintaining a universal public health care system.

They shut down acute care beds — 1,270 beds between 2001 and 2004. They closed hospitals. A net 17 hospitals closed, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, between '01-02 and '05-06. They promised health care where and when you need it, and then they said: "Sorry, we can't deliver."

Now we introduce legislation that gives us the right to argue before the courts that we don't have to deliver, that the founding principles of public health care do not matter. This is the direction the government is taking health care. It is not, I would suggest to you, hon. Speaker — and we'll get into this in a moment — an evidence-based direction.

I would say this. I think that this debate we're going to be entering into over the next little while is an important debate, because it shows the contrast between a government that is ignoring the evidence in health care…. It doesn't follow what all the international evidence is but wants to, in fact, limit the scope of public health care and increase the costs for everybody.

Its idea of sustainability and efficiency is to transfer costs. Its only idea — its idée fixe — is to transfer costs from the government to the sick. We know what that means in jurisdictions where that happens. What that means is real health consequences and life consequences for real people. That's what it means when you do that. It's why we are against this legislation.

Another part of the bill that the minister didn't touch on in his remarks is the changes to the preamble. He has added new words to the preamble. I'll remind you again what the case law says about legislation. I'll read this again because I think it's important to remember that when you change the law, presumably the intent of what you're doing is to remedy some problem.

They've decided in the preamble, which doesn't have as much weight…. It guides the rest of the legislation. It surely doesn't have anything like the weight of a basic principle of health care, but it gives us an understanding of what they mean.

Two notions. You've got this idea that there's some problem. They've added notions — let's talk about two of them: individual choices of preamble and personal responsibility — without explanation. I suppose because….

We could have expected the Minister of Health, in a speech about the bill, to explain what the intent is and what he was attempting to remedy by changing the law here, but he failed to do so. He absolutely, fundamentally failed to do anything about these important issues but rant about the 1990s. He's the one changing the law. He's bringing this Premier's discredited idea into this Legislature, and he refuses to talk about it. He fails to talk about it. He provides no evidence to support it. He has no explanation as to what the actual effect of the law will be.

Instead, what he does — and it's not surprising — is spend a long speech haranguing us about what he thinks the NDP position is or isn't on some issue, because he has nothing to say about this bill, which is clearly not the work of anyone seriously concerned about our public health care system.

What's the remedy here? Look, if it's the case that the idea of personal responsibility is about, for example, eating more vegetables or going for a run or living a healthier life, that's interesting, and maybe the minister could state that for the record. That might actually be valuable, to explain their intent. If the question is…. Of course, we had smoking cessation laws, the best program in the 1990s. It was turned around by this government 2002, when they overruled the independent WCB. We all recall this on smoking. If there is something that needs to be remedied, what's the explanation for that?

Does personal responsibility in the act…? We'll have to, I suppose, get into this at committee stage. We might have expected the government to have addressed these issues earlier. If personal responsibility means taking on the burden of costs for the health care system linked to the sustainability of the government, then that's one thing. If it's simply, say, eating more asparagus, that's another thing. But the need for it in this legislation is, I think, highly questionable.

Equally, hon. Speaker, look at the issue of individual choice. They've decided to add this principle — this founding principle, this founding idea that they've put it in there — of individual choice. What does that mean? Does that, in fact, mean in the way it's been defined by other people, by Dr. Godley of False Creek Surgical Centre? Does it mean a choice between a public or a private system? Or does it mean what we've traditionally had, which was lots of choices within the public system — for example, your choice, if you can find one these days, of a family doctor? What does that mean? Why was it necessary? What was it that the government wanted to remedy?

We know in 2003 what they wanted to remedy — significant violations of the Canada Health Act and the Medicare Protection Act that were going on in this province. They wanted to give themselves the right to

find out what those were and to remedy those, and the Premier said no. It's "don't ask, don't tell" on for-profit health care. He didn't want to know the extent of the problem, the extent of the extra billing, and he took specific action to stop that from happening.

We knew what the purpose of the bill was then. We knew what the problem was then. They had got instructions, in a sense, from Ottawa that the Canada Health Act was being violated here in British Columbia. They needed to take these steps so that they could assess what the nature of the violation was, and the government decided not to do it. Well, the Premier did. The government, of course, all voted for it, but the Decider, our George Bush, decided, and it was bad news for British Columbians. It means more extra billing, more for-profit medicare, more two-tier health care, and we see in this province the chilling effect since that on our public health care system.

So what was it? What is it in this preamble that the government wants to deal with, hon. Speaker? What is it that they want to deal with? Why is it that these notions of individual choice, these notions of personal responsibility are included in the act? Is it, in fact, Dr. Godley's definition or Dr. Day's definition or Mr. Copeman's definition of choice, or is it an entirely public definition of choice? Is it, in fact, the intention of the government to provide a legislative basis for that or not? These are the questions we ask.

Certainly, it seems to me that we could have done without. There was no need for these amendments. That's the best position you could have. That's the best defence the government seems to have. What they say is: "Don't worry; trust us. We're doing this, but it's entirely irrelevant. Let's talk about the NDP in the 1990s."

If I may summarize in a short time what the minister said yesterday, that's it. "What we're doing here is irrelevant. Yes, it was an idea by the Premier. We gotta do it. God, I gotta do it. It's terrible stuff. I must do it, but I don't want to do it. The devil didn't make me do it. The Premier made me do it." That's their approach to these things.

So you believe that, and this whole initiative that they spent $6 million in advertising and everything else is just an irrelevancy. That's the best interpretation the government can put on this fatuous bill. That's the best interpretation. But they refuse to say; they refuse to discuss their intent. One day they're saying: "Well, really, what it's about is controlling cost. It's too expensive for us to be universal and accessible and comprehensive. It's too hard. It's going to be 71 percent of total government spending." That's what they said. They buried that idea in the backyard. It's no longer relevant. They acknowledge that it's not the case.

How is this? The scary line, "71 percent by 2017," became "50 percent by 2013" — big difference. The difference between those things is more, I think, than the cost of the entire school system. That's the difference between those estimates. It's a pretty significant attempt to distort the information and to fool people into supporting this measure.

So their best position is that, but what they're clearly intending to do, what the clear intent of the law as it's written, not as the minister explained it…. As the minister explained it, you might think it was actually more about the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives than it was about the founding principles of medicare. But the real purpose of this is to mitigate those principles of medicare, and we on this side of the House are not pessimists about that. We believe in public health care. We are the party that founded public health care in this country, and we are going to continue to fight for public health care every single day.

There we have the, sort of, provisions of this bill — the government's position. How has that expressed itself in reality? I think it's fair to say, and we've talked about this, that the government and its course over the last number of years have not contributed to the principles of the Canada Health Act. It's no wonder they want to mitigate them, because they have not, in any kind of sustained way, followed them.

At a time, as we've said, of economic growth, we've gone from second to seventh place in Canada in terms of health spending. They've broken key promises they made. Virtually every single promise they made on health care in the 2001 election was broken. Oh, you remember it, hon. Speaker — a personal commitment from the Premier to HEU workers: "We won't tear up your contract." It took the Supreme Court to call him into line on that canard. Five thousand long-term care beds — broken. Health care where and when you need it — cuts to acute care beds, cuts to home care. That's their record on health care.

Now, having done that, having taken those steps about our public health care system and, in addition to that, having failed to do what they needed to do in the previous amendment to the Medicare Protection Act — failed to take the steps to protect British Columbians from facility fees, failed to take the steps to protect British Columbians from extra user fees, failed to take the steps to protect British Columbians from two-tier health care….

You remember the case of Barbara Gosling from Williams Lake, who went to her doctor's office and was told — this was in 2006 — that she could have an appointment in the public system in 2008 or she could see the same doctor for $350 in two weeks.

What the government says, because they won't audit the system, won't do anything about the system, is that it's Barbara Gosling, who is dealing with serious issues in the health care system, who has to challenge her doctor and challenge for-profit health care in order to bring this issue forward. She did, and boy, was she courageous. But they're saying that they won't take any steps to defend the public health care system. It's up to Barbara Gosling.

You remember what was happening in St. Paul's Hospital. Using the MRI at St. Paul's Hospital, using that in the public health care system….

You remember what the minister said? He said: "Oh, that's not happening." He said, "It couldn't happen. It's not happening," and that I was wrong. This is a theme of the minister: I was wrong; he was right.

You know, I sadly have to reflect on the evidence, which subsequently showed, after the investigation by the Deputy Minister of Health, that, in fact…. And this is just the Deputy Minister of Health. I'm reluctant to even mention it to people who said that I was right, and the minister was wrong. That's what all….

A. Dix: The Minister of Health is inspired, hon. Speaker. He's inspired. He's back. I have awoken him. The memory of that moment when he said: "You're wrong. It couldn't happen. It's not happening here." And it was happening here.

That memory has awoken him. It's awoken him, and there he is. But that's the reality of what they've done. They believe that unless people come forward with a specific complaint — publicly come forward against maybe their own doctor or maybe health services — the government won't do anything. It's: "Don't ask, don't tell."

The Minister of Health was in the House. He was in the Legislature of British Columbia. He stood up, I believe, and voted for that bill, which they didn't proclaim — that the Premier put under the table and wouldn't proclaim.

There he was in the House, and there he is…. "Don't ask, don't tell" — that's his approach to public health care.

Hon. Speaker, you'll recall the Minister of Health, when he privatized, when he sent out in VIHA…. They asked him. The favouring of that system. They asked him, when he contracted out surgeries in VIHA: "Well, how much does it cost?"

You see what happens, hon. Speaker? You see what happens? You bring the evidence here, and the Minister of Health starts name-calling. That's all he has. For an hour and 15 minutes yesterday, all he had was name-calling.

A. Dix: That's all he has left now. He has a bill that he's clearly embarrassed about — he should be embarrassed about — that he refuses to defend, and all we have from him is an hour of name-calling and some more name-calling now. That's all he has to defend this shameful legislation. All he has to defend this shameful legislation is his longstanding contempt for the public in this province.

Anyone who stands up to that government's position, whether it's the Hospital Employees Union or women workers who were laid off and who took them to the Supreme Court, are cause for the minister's contempt.

Patients who challenge the minister, challenge his contempt. There are think tanks who challenge his view. They're cause for his contempt. Yesterday for an hour he refused to defend this bill that he brought into the House. We didn't bring this bill into the House. He refused to defend it. He refused to say what it meant. He refused to say anything about it.

He spent an hour name-calling. I guess he needs practice, you know? It's training for some future campaign, but the reality of it is that we have legislation. We are bringing forward a serious analysis of the bill, and the minister has nothing. He has nothing but contempt for the serious issues, the issues that we're debating in this Legislature, issues of the founding principles of our health care system that he wants to change and mitigate. Now all he has is name-calling. That's all he has left.

I remind members about the use of parliamentary language, and I would like decorum in the House.

A. Dix: Well, it'll be something new for the Minister of Health. But there you go, hon. Speaker.

What they did…. And let's remind people of their approach and what I think the right approach is. Their approach, for example, when they contracted out surgeries. They asked the Minister of Health: "What's the relative cost? Are there cost savings?"

He said: "Oh, I don't know." What did he say? I quote him. I never want to misquote the Minister of Health. What did he say? "I am not sure. I am not sure we have an authoritative version of that."

Do you know, hon. Speaker…? I understand why he's yelling now: because it's embarrassing. We're talking about millions of dollars in public funds, and he had no idea what he was doing. He couldn't defend what he was doing then.

This is an ideological approach which people do not support in British Columbia, and there he is. You know when he starts yelling that you're hitting close to home. That, in fact, is what's been going on.

You know, it's fascinating. It doesn't take long, does it? All they have left is personal invective. That's all they have left. It's shameful. It's shameful for a Minister

of Health, vitiating the founding principles of health care with legislation. He comes to this House and won't defend it. It's shameful.

Now all we get from him…. We got it yesterday, and now we get more of it today. This is what we can expect: yell and call people names. People who support public health care in this province — yell and call them names. That's what we have. That's what his speech was about yesterday. I'm sure there'll be more people added to that list.

We have a different view than the government, and that part of it is fair enough. What I'm calling on the government to do is to be straightforward about what their position is. It may be fair enough if they say, "We don't believe in the principles of universality anymore," if that's their view.

That appears to be their view, from their policies over the last few years. It appears to be their view, from the Premier's specific comments. It appears to be their view on the specific question of for-profit health care. That appears to be their view. Then they can state that view. We can have a debate about it, but they don't want to do that.

You know why they don't want to do that? Because the people of British Columbia don't agree with that view. They don't agree with that view. What we get from the Minister of Health instead is this kind of cutesy nonsense, where they bring forward a bill that they will not and cannot defend. They vitiate those founding principles of health care. They won't say what it means. The minister clearly has been made to do this in some fashion by the Premier, and so that's their position. That's what they want to do.

They want to change our health care system in the dark, and we want to shine a light on it. That is our role — to shine a light on it — in this debate. We intend to do that. From now, throughout this debate, members on the opposition side will be laying out how the main threat to the sustainability of health and to our public health care system in British Columbia is the members over there.

We will show it with the evidence. We are going to show that the main threat to public health care is a government that won't defend it, won't enforce the law and now, after the fact, wants a mulligan, where they change the law. That's what they want. They want to do it, and they want to make these changes under the cover of invectives. That is their plan.

I think the people of British Columbia are going to reject this approach. They are going to reject this approach. The people of British Columbia want us instead to have an approach to health care that focuses on improving services for people. They believe we can do that. They don't believe that the only innovative idea that a government can come up with is to off-load costs from the government to the sick. They don't believe that. They believe we can do better in public health care.

In Ontario, for example, with the results…. It's not an NDP government in Ontario. It started under an NDP government but has been carried out by governments of different stripes. The Ontario case costing initiative or the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council…. Proposals like that — unlike the government's proposals, unlike the government's efforts to get at issues such as chronic disease — involve people who are not in a conflict of interest but focus on the highest possible quality in a public health care system.

Let me just give you one example of what I mean. What does the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council do? It provides independent, evidence-based assessments of the effectiveness of the province's health care services, including patient outcomes.

Let me give you one example that has come out of that — the chronic disease management collaborative. It's an initiative to improve the health of people living with coronary artery disease and diabetes by focusing on the quality of care they receive. It also includes efforts to improve access to physician practices.

It uses, contrary to the government and its approach, a collaborative model that importantly does not include — and this is an important fact, and we're talking about sustainability here — the pharmaceutical industry or interests that may profit from the initiative. They say it's very important, and this is something that is not happening in British Columbia to the extent that it should be happening in British Columbia.

They say that the working definition of "collaborative" that they use is "an improvement method that relies on the spread and adaption of existing knowledge to multiple settings to accomplish a common aim." How different from the approach of this government, with its proposal for service-based funding to take away the collaboration between institutions, its market-based approach, its favouring of for-profit interests. What a different approach.

That's the kind of approach — an approach based on collaboration, on ensuring that British Columbians have the resources they need and that the doctors and nurses and health care workers have the resources they need to do the task…. That is the difference between their position and our position.

The central focus of quality, surely, is universal accessibility to a comprehensive range of services. Without that, quality of care declines. When you mitigate those services, as this government has done systematically, it has an effect on the quality of care.

That is what we have seen in British Columbia. We have brought the cases forward. We have brought the debate forward. There have been real consequences to this government's litany of broken promises on health care. This attempt to rewrite the law as a mulligan, to say that that's okay, that it's okay that we've affected the universality and accessibility and comprehensiveness of our health care system…. That's okay, and here's a principle to put up against those items. That's okay.

That's their approach, but it is not our approach. That's why I am hopeful. I am enthusiastic at the idea that the coming election will be fought on some of

these very health care issues. Because I think, and this was reflected in the Conversation on Health, it was reflected every time you asked British Columbians what they want…. They believe in the founding principles of public health care.

They disagree with the government when it attempts to say that it's not possible. They disagree with the Premier when he puts forward misleading data to try and convince them that it's impossible. They disagree with that.

They understand. The people of British Columbia understand what we've always known, which is that you have to provide service in the most cost-efficient way possible. You don't need to change the founding principles of medicare to know that. It has always been true.

But what we're seeing…. The minister talked about the 1990s. One of the elements that he conveniently left out was cuts made by the federal government of the 1990s, a Liberal government of the time.

One of the reasons, in fact, why we're second in Canada is that here in British Columbia we had a real commitment in a Medicare Protection Act that had substance and that the government believed in. We believed in universal services, in accessible services, in comprehensive services.

That's why we were second in Canada at a time when it was difficult to do that because the federal government was withdrawing from the field and cutting funding. In a different context since then, when there have been some — nothing like what they cut out — addition of federal supports into the argument, this government has gone in another direction.

I believe, and I think British Columbians believe, that the founding principles of medicare are possible, can be done and require a government prepared to fight for them, not a government that's prepared to mitigate and throw away those founding principles.

We, in this debate, are going to take on this government. Right through the next election we're going to take on this government. We are going to present our positions on health care.

You can't undo the damage they've done in one year, but you have to start to undo it. You cannot undo the damage they've done to health care in one year or even two years, but you have to start to do it, and you have to have a plan to do it. That is what we will be bringing forward, and it is a plan that will be based on the founding principles of the Canada Health Act, the founding principles that stand in the Medicare Protection Act. That's what our plan will be based on.

We won't be looking for a mulligan. We won't be promising what they promised — health care where and when you need it — and then not deliver. We won't be promising more acute care beds, and cutting acute care beds. We won't be promising 5,000 long-term care beds and breaking that promise. We will deliver, because health care is fundamental to what the opposition believes is important in British Columbia. That is the difference between us and them.

That's the reason why this, at best, unnecessary…. It's unusual for a minister to stand up and say: "I'm introducing this bill, but it's unnecessary. It doesn't mean anything." That's unusual. It's a new tactic, even from this government, but that's what they did.

But changes to the law have meaning. All of the evidence tells us they have meaning, shows us they have meaning, and this change has meaning too.

We believe in the founding principles of medicare. We will fight for them in this Legislature, and we will fight for them in the next election. That will be a difference between us and them, and I believe that British Columbians from every part of this province will be with us in that debate.

M. Polak: I apologize ahead of time to those listening to me. With great irony, I happen to be sick today when I'm talking about health care. Perhaps that will help us all to draw our minds to what we're really talking about today, and that is who in this House are the real defenders of public health care that will serve patients in British Columbia for today, for tomorrow, for coming generations. I am here to tell you that it is not the opposition side.

That's not something that I've come to as a conclusion quickly. It took some time to read through some of the comments that have been made by the opposition critic, by other members of the opposition, in the media and in this House. In reviewing those, I have to admit that I did have a certain amount of anticipation that I would begin to see a plan. I would begin to see an alternative laid out for British Columbians that said: "You know, if you don't like what government's doing, we've got a different plan for you." But I haven't seen it.

I've seen some interesting phrases. One of my favourites is "evidence-based decision-making." If you're going to move to evidence-based decision-making, I suppose that begs the question: what on earth did you make decisions with before? By its very nature, decision-making is based on evidence. I would ask British Columbians and others to consider the evidence that we've had presented in this House about who really believes in public health care.

Maybe we should start with who really believes in the Canada Health Act. I'm a Canadian. I've grown up in British Columbia for all of my 40 years. I've been raised to believe that the Canada Health Act is one of the differentials…. It's one of the things that makes us as a nation stronger and better than other countries around the world. We care for people. We look after them. We make sure they have the basics of medical care.

The Canada Health Act is, of course, something that New Democratic parties around this country have held not only in high regard but also held as a flag before them to say: "This is what we stand for. This is what we're behind. We did this, and it's an important thing." So I find it quite shocking that we are today presented with an opposition who don't even realize that their leader has come out expressing concern about the very words in the Canada Health Act. It's shocking.

We began this road to change and improving health care in an important throne speech — important because governments around this nation, around North America, probably around the world, are very frightened to talk about health care. They've been told that if you talk about health care, you're going to get voted out of office. Nobody wants to talk about it.

This government took it on and said that there are important questions to ask. We committed to a conversation that didn't just involve committees internal to government, didn't just involve cabinet, didn't just involve MLAs, but involved people around this province, engaged them for the first time.

We had elders in aboriginal communities who thanked us for travelling to their community to ask them for their input about health care. One of the elders even said at one of the meetings that they had been praying that government would come to talk to them, and that they felt this was an answer to their prayer.

This is meaningful to people around British Columbia. So meaningful that we had thousands upon thousands of submissions from British Columbia about how we can improve and strengthen our medical services, our health care services in British Columbia and, in fact, the health of all British Columbians.

What we see in the legislation today is a response to that. In fact, our throne speech laid it out very clearly. This is where the concern comes in, because in the throne speech…. I'll quote a piece from it. In part it says about this act:

What a laudable goal. You would think the opposition would be lining up to support that kind of a goal, to support a government that actually thinks it's important enough to put that in a throne speech, to put that in legislation. But oh no — that's not what we heard.

Surprisingly, we heard the Leader of the Opposition get up in this House and question the phrase "reasonable access." She said it concerned her. Here's what she said: "Now that promise has changed to a health system that provides 'reasonable access to medically necessary services.'" She says: "Reasonable access. What does that message say to patients? It says: 'get in line.'"

That's what she believes reasonable access means. In other words, one can only think from this quote that she believes the phrase "reasonable access" is wrong, that somehow we shouldn't be supporting reasonable access.

Well, that's where the concern really should lie for British Columbians about who really supports the Canada Health Act. I now want to share with you where that wording came from. Guess what? That wording comes from the Canada Health Act. Oh yes. The real defenders of the Canada Health Act are not on the opposition side of the House. They're on the government side. It's in the throne speech. It's in the commitment.

I'll read to you from the Canada Health Act. This is from section 3 on Canada health care policy, and here's what it says. "It is hereby declared that the primary objective of Canadian health care policy is to protect, promote and restore the physical and mental well-being of residents of Canada and" — listen up — "to facilitate reasonable access to health services…."

How is it possible that we could have a leader of an NDP opposition questioning the Canada Health Act? Yet that's what we see here. In fact, we've heard for a couple of hours the opposition Health critic questioning the very nature of sustainability of public health care.

How on earth could you promote reasonable access, which is what our throne speech calls for and what the Canada Health Act calls for, without making sure it's sustainable? The fact of the matter is, for all the opposition wants to say that they believe in the principles of the Canada Health Act, their very leader has come out opposed to the Canada Health Act and to the principles that underlie it.

This is a government that committed to enshrine the principles of the Canada Health Act in legislation, and that's what this legislation does. It recognizes the value of the input of British Columbians who took part by the thousands in the Conversation on Health. It talks about their values. What were they? Values of choice — that's in the preamble. The preamble says values of "individual choice, personal responsibility, innovation, transparency and accountability." Those are things that people around British Columbia talked to us about. They want to have choices.

British Columbians wanted to know why on earth our current health care system restricts them to receiving prescriptions only from their general practitioner when they're on medication that they've been on for years and a pharmacist could do the job just as well. We're going to change that. We listened to them.

British Columbians wanted to know why it is that they're restricted, when they're in an emergency room, to having a doctor come and refer them for medical diagnostic testing. We listened, and we're going to change that.

On and on we can list off, through the 11 pounds of input that we got in the Conversation on Health, example after example — not only in the throne speech, in legislation being tabled by the Health Minister — of listening to British Columbia and acting.

The opposition Health critic wants to claim that the main threat to public health care is this government. I beg to differ. If that's what he wants to say, then he would be supporting this bill because he would be tying government to the Canada Health Act. But he won't do it. Why? Because he doesn't support the Canada Health Act. His leader doesn't support the Canada Health Act. She said so in this House.

The fact of the matter is that reasonable access is what we are going to ensure by ensuring sustainability. Reasonable access is something that we count on as

British Columbians, as Canadians. It has to be weighed in the balance against all the services, the range of services that health care encompasses. We have to ensure that that access is there, not only for us now but for those who are coming after us.

Anyone who supports the Canada Health Act would be supporting this bill, because what's this bill made of? This bill is made of the principles of the Canada Health Act — things that we should as Canadians hold close to our hearts.

Public administration. This bill enshrines the definition of public administration in legislation. It ties government to that. If you support the Canada Health Act, if you think governments of any type would be a threat to it, you'd support this legislation.

Comprehensiveness. We have a huge range of services now available through our health care system that were never even dreamed of when the Canada Health Act first came into being, were never dreamed of when public health care first began in Canada. They're there. They're ever-expanding. They're ever putting pressure on a system that is bearing it relatively well, considering the changes and challenges that we're facing.

Universality. I don't know how you have universality without having sustainability. I don't know how you have it, really, without reasonable access. Universality here is defined as 100 percent of beneficiaries on uniform terms and conditions. It means everyone across British Columbia will have that reasonable access, but the opposition leader…. She's concerned about that. She's concerned about reasonable access. She thinks it means: "Get in line."

You would think that the great defenders, so-called, of the Canada Health Act would actually take the time to read it. Well, we've taken more than the time to read it. We've taken the time to put our commitment behind it and to follow through on what we promised British Columbians and what they asked us for in the Conversation on Health.

Portability — the idea that you can go anywhere and you take your services with you. They're there. They don't say: "Well, you're from Langley, so you should go back there."

Accessibility. How do you have accessibility without sustainability? How do you have it without reasonable access? Shouldn't it be reasonable? The Canada Health Act thinks it should; the opposition leader doesn't.

Then we come to sustainability. We've heard all sorts of talk about what sustainability might be. It would probably help if the opposition critic read the act. But then I guess he can be somewhat blinded by the fact that, clearly, on that side of the House there is a belief that governments should have unfettered access to the taxpayer's pocket. There is a belief somehow that government has some of its own money.

When we go around the province throughout the Conversation on Health and we talk about the ability of taxpayers to pay, yes, they recognize that there's a need to be paying taxes to support a public health care system. They realize that. They recognize that, but they also recognize that their taxpayers' money, their hard-earned money, is a resource that we ought to value.

They recognize something else. They recognize that sustainability goes beyond finances. Sustainability goes to the very resources we use in terms of technology and in terms of human resources. All those different facets of the system are a part of sustainability.

We've taken some action on that. We've looked at health prevention and promotion. That's another area in the Conversation on Health that the public asked us to take hold of and take a leadership role on, and we've been doing that. You can see the ActNow trailers outside on the front. That's an award-winning program to promote a sustainable health care system through prevention and promotion of good health. That's sustainability.

Sustainability is also about innovation. You have to have growth, change and research. You have to have innovation in a health care system, and you have to encourage it. We've done that. The UBC Centre for Surgical Innovation is something that even won praise from the opposition. Why? Because it's a good program. We have many, many more across this province.

When it comes to health professionals, I've mentioned already the changes that we're making with respect to what nurses are allowed to recommend for medical diagnostic testing. How many times have people been waiting in an emergency room, all because of a restriction that says that a nurse can't take them for their diagnostic testing? Imagine the change that that will make for everyday people — everyday lives being lived in an emergency room, waiting.

That's called action. It's a plan. It's tangible. It's not something that has empty words. It's something that has real change behind it.

What about the pharmacists? We know from the research that when you have pharmacists involved in prescribing medications for patients with chronic diseases, when they're involved in chronic disease care, those patients with chronic diseases do better. They're healthier.

That's another part of sustainability. It's looking at what British Columbians have told us, listening to what we've learned from other places around the world and taking action. Sustainability is all about that.

As a principle, I don't know how you don't support sustainability. I don't know how that's even possible. The opposite view, of course, is to say: "Well, I don't think we should make it sustainable. We should have a health care system that just keeps on going, sees the light at the end of the tunnel and doesn't realize it's a train. We shouldn't get off the track. We should just wait till it hits us."

I don't know that it's really worthwhile even to get into a debate about how fast the health care system is going to gobble up the rest of the money in the government coffers. The fact of the matter is that whether it's ten years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 50 years from now….

I'll tell you what British Columbians did acknowledge. I'll tell you what they acknowledged en masse in the

Conversation on Health: eventually it will happen. Eventually, if we don't change, it'll happen.

What will that mean? Sadly, that will mean that not only will health care services be compromised, but other services that are important to British Columbians will be compromised — services for children, for the homeless, for seniors. These are all things that are valuable. None of them can be sustained if health care is not sustainable.

We have to be thinking all the time about the future. If there is a threat to public health care in British Columbia, that threat is from those who would put their heads down, pay no attention to the challenges that are facing health care in British Columbia and say: "Everything's fine. It should stay the same."

Of course, that brings us back to the most common theme that we hear from the opposition. We hear it in transportation; we've heard it now in health. It really is a broken record. It is that while they decry the state of anything that's going on in British Columbia today, especially health care, they want it to stay the same. The biggest thing they rail against is change. "Don't change it."

They maintain two conflicting positions. They do that on the Port Mann Bridge. They do that on health care, and we hear it again today. "The system is broken. It's in crisis. There are all these terrible things going on. Ah, but it really is okay. You don't need to change it. There really aren't any problems." I'm not exactly sure how that kind of cognitive dissonance is maintained.

But I suppose the opposition has learned very well to live with ambiguity, or they wouldn't be able to listen to the speeches from their opposition Health critic. Then again, this is also an opposition who claims to believe in the Canada Health Act yet listens to their leader decry some of the very principles undergirding it. So living with ambiguity seems to be a common practice on the side of the opposition.

One of the realities that you face in health care in British Columbia, and our Health Minister knows it well, is that there is a constant change taking place. For a minister of Health and for someone who may wish to be a future minister of Health — without a plan, albeit — the reality is that one daren't take their finger off the pulse of what is happening. Yet we have in the opposition a group who are willing to castigate government for any kind of move to change without putting forward a plan of their own.

I really, really waited to hear more of a plan during the speech from the opposition critic. I really was hopeful that it would come. I waited and waited. It didn't happen. But maybe what did happen is that we saw the reality of the choice that British Columbians will be facing.

The choice that British Columbians will be facing — and it's true; they will — is a choice between a government that says that we recognize that health care is important to all of you, that public health care is important to all of you…. We recognize that you want the principles of the Canada Health Act, including reasonable access, to be a part of what we're committed to. That's the choice that we're laying out for them. Or you can vote for a group who don't have a plan. You can vote for a group who want to talk about everything being awful but who offer no solutions for changing it.

It's interesting to me that in spite of the fact that the opposition are fond of calling for inquiries and reviews and commissions and all-party committees on just about everything, when it came to the Conversation on Health, they opposed it. They opposed it. We went around to talk to British Columbians all around this province. They engaged. There were something like close to five million hits on the website, thousands of submissions. What did we hear from the opposition? "Don't go talk to British Columbians. You should have health professionals making those decisions."

Really? Is that a plan? It sounds to me like what they want to do is hold away in an all-party committee somewhere and decide that everything's still okay, because that's the only message we hear. On this side we've recognized that British Columbians want change, and we've taken some dramatic action.

You know, talk about what's happening in emergency rooms. The best thing you can do is ask patients. What happened when we asked them? Some 85 percent of emergency room patients rate their care as good to excellent. I can tell you that I grew up in Surrey, and it wasn't like that many years ago. There are big changes afoot, big changes taking place, like $12 million that was invested in an emergency room strategy that was launched in '03. We have a Health minister and a government who are responsive, who watch, who see what's going on, respond and change. That's what this bill is about.

When it comes to surgery wait times — that's one of the things the opposition are fond of bringing up — let's look at what has happened. There was no wait time for almost half of the record 459,388 surgeries performed in '05 and '06. In '06 and '07, 52 percent of hip replacements were completed within 26 weeks, and 49 percent of knee replacements were completed in 26 weeks. Wouldn't you want to improve that? Wouldn't you want to work harder on that? Isn't that part of sustainability?

Since 2001 the number of surgeries performed in B.C. has increased by record amounts. You're looking at a 7 percent increase in coronary bypasses, 33 percent in cataract surgeries, 47 percent in hip replacements, 62 percent in angioplasties and 84 percent in knee replacements. Evidence, if the opposition wants it, of a system that is improving, that's changing, that's innovating. We're here to support that. They're not.

They don't support the innovation. They don't support the changes. They vote against it. And I believe, sadly, that they're going to vote against this bill.

I'm not sure how you square that circle. I'm not sure how you say that you're voting against this bill and say you believe in the principles of the Canada Health Act. Perhaps one of them wishes to get up and explain that. Perhaps they will. I don't know if I'll understand it after their explanation any better. But I don't see how you square that circle.

We've seen improved access to diagnostic testing — 11 new CT scanners, 19 new MRI scanners and B.C.'s first PET scanner. Since 2001 we've seen more nurses. In fact, we've put $174 million into nurse education and recruitment, and we've added 3,300 nursing education spaces. There's a really good reason why nurses weren't being trained in the past. There wasn't any place to do it. There weren't any spaces. We've added those. We're training them.

Some $1.4 million to launch the first three-year accelerated nursing degree. There's another one. We'll see if the NDP wants to support that. BCNU does. We're bringing people on side that would have never been traditionally aligned with government in initiatives and innovation in health care, and they're there.

Perhaps that's what rankles the opposition. Everybody else realizes that health care needs to change. Everybody else realizes that that change needs to happen by incorporating the principles of the Canada Health Act in everything we do, and yet I think they're going to vote against it.

In the last five years we've graduated more than 7,500 new nurses. That breaks down across a pretty broad spectrum, actually. You've got 4,909 registered nurses; 2,286 licensed practical nurses; and 344 registered psychiatric nurses. In the last two years we've increased the number of internationally educated nurses in B.C. — 521 nurses from the U.K. and $500,000 per year to fast-track registration of internationally educated nurses.

For the first time B.C. is training nurse practitioners. In 2005 B.C. graduated its first class of nurse practitioners, and there are now more than 51 nurse practitioners working in B.C. We graduate 45 nurse practitioners a year.

Are they going to support that kind of change? Sustainability is about that. Sustainability is about making sure we have the health professionals with a broad range in what they're allowed to do in order to make sure that they're there.

We talk about a system. We say a health care system, and it sounds really vague and machine-like. But it's not a system. It's people. How do you support them? How do you make sure you have enough of them?

How do you make sure you have enough doctors? We've wrestled with that problem too. We've increased the funding for postgraduate medical education by 73 percent since 2003. It's now $75.1 million. Residency spaces for Canadian medical graduates are up by 75 percent since '03. Residency spaces for foreign-trained doctors have tripled. We actually have more doctors per capita than almost every other province, and for the first time, doctors are trained outside of the Vancouver area.

That's sustainability. Making sure you have enough doctors is certainly important. It wouldn't be sustainable without it. But then they're opposed to sustainability. Clearly, by voting against this bill, they're opposed to the Canada Health Act. This bill, and the test that voting on it will put before us, really is about the fight to maintain a public health care system for all British Columbians.

It might, in fact, be the beachhead. Successive governments, nationally and provincially, have avoided dealing with the complex issue of how you make sure that our health care system remains available for people, that reasonable access is maintained for people across this country. We're the first ones to take it on, to ask British Columbians what they want us to do, and to respond with aggressive legislation, to respond with thoughtful legislation and, significantly, to respond by renewing our commitment to the principles of the Canada Health Act and renewing our commitment to British Columbians by enshrining sustainability as one of those principles.

Sustainability is all about reasonable access. Sustainability is about making sure that the interests of all of us in receiving medical care, in receiving other services from government, are balanced against the needs of the taxpayer to be able to pay.

There's nothing sinful or evil about that. It's a principle that has been held out and held before us in times past by those who would never be — I don't think, anyway — someone who would frighten the opposition Health critic. But he does seem frightened by it.

It might be a comfort to the opposition Health critic and perhaps to the leader, who needs to go and re-read the Canada Health Act, to know that even a former well-known member of this Legislature, Minister Paul Ramsey, was supportive of the principle of sustainability.

In fact, they introduced a bill. What was it called? An Act to Protect Medicare. It has an interesting passage in it. It says: "WHEREAS the people and government of British Columbia recognize a responsibility for the judicious use of medical services…." So now we're even beyond reasonable access. They only want judicious use. To me, that sounds much more limiting: "…judicious use of medical services in order to maintain a fiscally sustainable health care system for future generations…." That was the NDP Health Minister.

I hope that gives some comfort to them, because certainly in debate he tried very hard to ensure that people understood that sustainability was not something to be frightened of — sustainability was integral to the future of our health care system. Here's what he had to say in committee stage debate. He said:

Well, I'm pleased that even back in the days when Paul Ramsey was the Health Minister they saw the need to incorporate fiscal sustainability in health care. I'm pleased with that. I do hope it's a comfort to the opposition Health critic.

As I close my part of the debate, I would put up that our language of reasonable access is much more closely aligned to the Canada Health Act than anything that was in a previous NDP act.

Bill 21 is the Medicare Protection Amendment Act. What the bill puts forward is six principles that will guide the deliberations of the Medical Services Commission. The five principles are familiar to us. They're the existing and familiar provisions that have been in place for Canadians for a long, long time and have served Canadians very well.

Those principles are, as I say, familiar to most. The ideas that we would have public administration, the ideas of universality, portability, accessibility — ideas like that that have served Canadians very, very well. What this bill intends to do is to add a sixth principle, which is sustainability.

Now, "sustainability" is a term that is, at worst, innocuous. It is a term that most would see as a reasonable term, but it depends very much on how the term is going to be defined by the government and the true impact that it will have on medical services in British Columbia.

What we would expect is that the minister, bringing the legislation forward, would come into this House and provide an explanation for British Columbians about what sustainability meant, because if you are bringing in legislation and you intend to make it the law of the land, it must have some meaning, and it must have some impact. Naturally, what you would expect is the government would come in and explain exactly the impact and exactly what it means.

Instead, we had an hour and a half with no explanation about what the bill means. Yet we can assume that the direction this will take us in is the direction that the Premier has consistently wanted to go — a direction that he would go if he was not so aware of the fact that Canadians, British Columbians, would be totally against the privatization that he wants to take the province. So he brings in the bill, and the minister brings in the bill, adding the term "sustainability," adding a term that is going to be interpreted and will have meaning and will work to take away from the five existing principles, and tries to undersell it and tries to tell the public that they shouldn't be concerned about something that is of fundamental importance.

We have government saying: "This is no big deal. It means nothing." But what British Columbians know with this government is that every single thing that is put forward needs to be looked at very carefully, because so often it is couched or packaged with particular words that try to draw people away from the true impact of what is being proposed. With this, we have an attempt to undermine those five important principles of medicare, principles that have served Canadians very, very well.

I mean, the fact is, certainly from my area, that this government and this Premier do not have credibility on health care. British Columbians do not feel that they are committed to looking after each and every person in this province and, quite rightly, feel that with this policy and with, frankly, every other policy of this government there is a narrow corporate interest that the government and this Premier would choose to serve rather than the public interest.

So we have bland assurances, and we have enough experience over these seven years to know that we should hear these bland assurances and be concerned. The sustainability principle was put forward by the Premier before the Conversation on Health. In the Conversation on Health the people did come forward, and they talked about a lot of things. But what they didn't talk about or didn't accept were many of the premises that the Premier put out at the beginning of the Conversation on Health, despite an incredible amount of the government's resources being put towards trying to convince people of a point of view.

You did not have ordinary British Columbians coming forward and talking about the need for a sixth principle in medicare. That did not happen. People did not come forward and say that. They did not come forward and accept the Premier's disaster scenario around the cost of health care. That did not happen.

When you read through the Conversation on Health, you have people talking about ideas around solutions. You do have people talking again and again about the importance of health care to their lives and the importance of doing health care properly. I think that there is a recognition, and there is a recognition from this government, that that attempt to scare people about the costs of health care just didn't work.

It was put forward. You had all the resources of government. You had the — what is it? — 200, 300 people in the public affairs bureau. You have all of those people. You have all of the advertising that went along with the kickoff for the Conversation on Health, and people did not buy that 71 percent of all government spending by 2017 being an accurate figure. It's part of the reason why it's no longer repeated here, because it was a preposterous figure. It was inaccurate. It was misleading — intentionally so.

You had many, many people pointing that out very, very quickly. I'll just go to one article out of many. It's by a journalist that I read and respect, and I enjoy his articles — Paul Willcocks. What he said in one article really clearly was that there's no crisis in health care. I think everybody recognizes that there are and always will be cost pressures and that we need to be aware of those. But with health care spending at $13 billion, that is a cost that Canadians and British Columbians are willing to accept.

He points out, as others have, that British Columbians spend $10 billion on slot machines and lottery tickets. Slot machines and lottery tickets could not be the first priority for most families — not compared to health care — yet we quite willingly will spend $10 billion on gambling in this province. Just as a sidebar, gambling was something this Premier came in promising to reduce or not expand, but that's another issue. But it does point to the fact that $13 billion, while a tremendous sum, needs to be looked at in that context, that British Columbians still have $10 billion in excess to spend on something that would list very far down their list of priorities.

Paul Willcocks goes on to say that this legislation, this Bill 21 that's in front of us "fuels fears the government

will use scare tactics to justify cutting care or offering patients the chance to pay extra for private treatment — a shift that would actually increase health care costs overall. User fees mean the total cost for a specific procedure rise. Health care will cost each British Columbian about $3.50 a week more this year than it did last year."

Well, that's hardly a crisis. That's a conclusion any reasonable person would reach. So why are we being fed this? What's the agenda? Why are we doing this? I think, before we move on to that, we need to talk about values, and we need to talk about what's important for people.

What is the core thing that is important? What I would say is that public health care and public education will be at the top of almost every person's list. At certain moments in our lives, and we all have been there, we've all experienced them, there is no question that more than anything else health care and a health care system that works are the most important things in the world.

While we disagree on many, many issues on both sides of the House, one thing that we do agree on is that, compared to pretty well anywhere else in the world, British Columbians are fortunate. We're fortunate with the professionals that we have in the field working for us. We are fortunate with the system that we have put in place.

On this side — the NDP — we feel passionately that we not only have to retain it; we have to strengthen it and make sure it is not only here now, but that it is here in the future. That is a question of political will. What this bill does is undermine a system that works well.

I'll give you an example just from the recent past. We had a baby born in Golden. It was a wonderful thing. A friend of mine was going to be a grandfather for the first time. Doctors were worried about that child and felt that the child needed to be taken immediately to a Lower Mainland hospital where a better service could be provided, just to be careful.

There is something fundamentally wonderful about a system where you have health professionals concentrating on the needs of the individual. There was no question about ability to pay. That did not come into it at all. A citizen, a new citizen of this province, needed care, and the collective resources of the people of British Columbia made sure that a jet flew out, took the child, brought them back to the Lower Mainland, that that child got care, and then that child was flown back.

Now, it didn't all work perfectly, but isn't it something wonderful that we, as a province, would make sure that every person that we could help, we would try? And that the individual cost or who was going to pay — none of that was part of the consideration. It was only the interests of that child.

For many of us and for many people in the province, we have been raised in a system with public health, where we take it for granted. But we also have many people that have gone to other parts of the world and have other experiences.

I can tell you that my experience in Africa was that within the region that I lived in, in northern Tanzania, we had access to Nairobi, and there were two good hospitals there. There were hospitals there that were up to a standard that Canadians would be comfortable with, but you had a vast majority of the population that would have no access to that care.

What it leaves with you is that understanding that it is a fundamentally different life that people have when there is that insecurity. There is the possibility that at any moment, through misfortune, you or somebody you love can be put in a place where they need medical attention. There is a medical solution that could easily be found, but for lack of money, it will not be found.

The experience that I had there was that somebody I worked closely with, his brother died of tetanus. His brother died because he couldn't pay to go and get a shot for tetanus. He knew about tetanus. He just didn't have the money to go and get the service, and the service was a dollar. So for lack of a dollar, you have people grieving and all of the emotion that goes with that and all the hardship because the person couldn't afford to get help.

It wasn't just for individuals. The thing about health care that people understood a long time ago is that if you are not dealing with people's health care concerns as a community and as a society, if you're instead leaving health care to those that can afford it, there are impacts even for the people who can afford health care.

Where we were, we would get malaria. We would get malaria often, regardless of how you tried to prevent it from happening. But until you deal with it as a whole population, you cannot get rid of malaria. You can't deal with it effectively, because, of course, it pools in people who do not get the treatment. Therefore, even if you have access to it, you share the health problems of the wider population. So there is a moral reason that we come together to look after health care as a collective, but there are also practical reasons why we do it.

Now, is Canada the best in the world? I suggest that, depending on political decisions, you can do better. The example I would use for that is the experience that I had in the United Kingdom. Now, the United Kingdom's system is not perfect, but it does point to what a society can do if they want to.

When my grandmother was aging in the United Kingdom — she was in a rural area of Scotland, up in the islands — she had a doctor come to her house once a week. She had a nurse that came to her house in the morning and came to her house in the evening and helped with meals. She was in her house until she was 98. She stayed at home until she was 98. Now, that is purely a political consideration. There are tax implications, but if you want to do it, you can.

Secondly, when my daughter was with us and we were visiting Scotland, she became sick. We went to the doctor, and we were told that because she's a child, she will not pay for the visit with the doctor. Is that something that in Canada we can do? Yes. Will it cost more? Yes. But it's a political decision. Do we have the capacity to do it? Yeah.

Now, all of those things you can do. She was not a British subject. She was a visitor to a country. She got her treatment for free. When she needed medication, we went to the pharmacist with the prescription. The pharmacist told us, as we went to pay for it: "There's no cost. She's a child." Any child that comes to Britain gets their medicine for free, because that's what the people in the United Kingdom believe. That is their collective decision about the decent way to treat people in the system. All of that is a political decision.

Now, this idea about we can't afford it…. At the same time, we're spending $13 billion, and at the same time, we spend $10 billion on lottery tickets. We put it into different gambling establishments that we have here in B.C. I cannot believe that that is a reasonable argument that somebody would put forward.

In the United States we went to a hospital. Again, my child was sick. It was $300 to have her looked after there. Now, for us we had the capacity to do it, so we were able to. That's no problem. But there are people who would not treat an ear infection, because of that barrier. There's no question it would be a barrier to some. I would be interested to hear how anyone could rationalize that as a reasonable way to approach public policy.

One of the best things about this province, one of the best things about Canada, is the fact that we collectively look after each other. That is the most decent, most civilized part of this country.

What I would put to people in British Columbia is that this bill is the beginning of undermining that…. It's not the beginning. We've seen it consistently, actually, with this government, as they try to undermine the quality of care that we have in this province and undermine the principles of equity — the principles that people in rural areas, the principles that people with less money have the same standard of care.

That is the most fundamental, civilized part of this province. It's part of the reason why the government cannot stand up and say that they want to move away from those ideas, away from those principles, because it's indefensible. The public will reject it.

Now I see the time — that we need to take a break. I would like to reserve my opportunity to come back and finish the time that's allotted to me. I move adjournment of debate, and I look forward to the opportunity to continue my comments.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT AND MINISTER
RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ASIA-PACIFIC
INITIATIVE AND THE OLYMPICS
(continued)

Hon. C. Hansen: Actually, I wasn't planning to make any lengthy introductory comments, because I know our time is quite limited. I thought I would just go straight into the questions that the member may have.

D. Routley: Thank you to the minister and to staff who have come a long way to attend these estimates. I appreciate their involvement and appearance here.

The ITA is said to be industry-driven. It's clear that industry has its stakeholder interests in all these outcomes, but one of those interests that the industry grapples with is the need to build things as quickly and cheaply as possible. So it might be argued that their interest is somewhat narrow, and the lack of involvement of other stakeholders in the governance structure of the ITA and ITOs might be viewed as a mistake given that there are varying interests at play here. It's clear that labour unions have had a very successful history in training and apprenticeship guidance and structuring programs.

So my question would be: does the minister think there's an opportunity in the coming year for greater involvement of other stakeholders in the governance framework of the ITA and the ITOs?

Hon. C. Hansen: I was remiss in not introducing Kevin Evans right off the top as the CEO of the Industry Training Authority. We're pleased that he's able to be over here today to assist in this process.

First of all, I would take issue with the premise that the member used to stage his question or to introduce his question. When he talks about the industry's primary interest being to build as cheaply and quickly as possible, I must say I have never met anybody in industry who doesn't put quality of product and quality of workmanship and safety of workers at the top of their priority list.

So I think the member doesn't give industry enough credit for ensuring that there is a quality product and safe workplaces as well.

But in terms of the role of the industry training authorities, this was really in response to feedback we got from employers around the province who felt that the apprenticeship training program wasn't always meeting their needs. When they had workers that came to work for them who had come through a training program, in many cases they found that the training being offered wasn't meeting the needs of the workplace. In many cases the employers would then have to retrain the individuals to ensure that they actually had the skills and the training necessary for the workplace.

So what we said to industry was: "We're going to give you a role in helping to design the training programs so that they're actually producing the trained workers that the industry is going to require." We have said to the industry that they can establish the ITOs. They can drive it, and they can design the ITO in a way that they feel best meets the needs of that particular industry.

We are certainly open to the idea of trade union representation on the ITOs — or other stakeholders, as the member put it — but we are leaving it up to the industry to determine what is the best mix of players in the ITOs that would be at the table. We fully expect there will be trade union representation in some of the ITOs, at least, as we go forward.

D. Routley: In fact, I would like to correct the minister. I did not indicate that building cheaply and quickly was the main priority or the only priority of contractors or employers, but it certainly is one of them. My stepfather was a carpenter and a contractor. My experience is different from the minister's. I've met many, many builders who will take a shortcut to make a dollar.

I think the incentive in the marketplace is to make the greatest profit possible. The role of government would be, in my mind, to regulate that playing field to ensure that public standards are met and public safety is protected and those kinds of issues. It would not be, I think, very prudent of any society to place that responsibility on the shoulders of the marketplace without adequate regulation.

That was my point. In fact, it is a factor in the consideration of what employers do — costs. Driving down costs is definitely the number one preoccupation of business people — not, perhaps, building things cheaply and quickly. Maybe that was an unfair characterization. Certainly, driving down costs is at least second behind building profit. The most important component of building profit is driving down costs.

Whenever new costs are added to the landscape that employers operate in, be it to protect public safety in the broader sense, environmental protections or worker protections, there has been a resistance from industry against the implementation of regulations that would add cost, in the interests of protecting those other interests.

That was my point. In fact, they're driven to the table with a restriction on their ability to openly and freely protect those interests themselves. I think that labour unions have done a great job in providing that to our society in the past.

Given their excellent completion rates in their labour schools where they are still guiding apprenticeships — those are reported to be 90 percent and over, and they are very effectively managed with minimal resources — it seems to me that guidance and that viewpoint would be critical to the success of addressing the labour shortage in British Columbia, which we know is so much demographically driven. We have a lot of skills, but a lot of them are retired with people.

I think it is imperative that we bring all viewpoints to the table. I would ask the minister to make a commitment today to ensure that labour is a stakeholder at all of the ITO tables, in the interest of the success of those organizations.

Hon. C. Hansen: I certainly agree with the member that some of the training programs — the apprenticeship training programs that are driven by some of the unions in the province — are first class, and they do a great job of providing that service.

We support that through the Industry Training Authority with funding. In fact, all of those union-driven programs this year received increases in funding. We want to encourage and support them in their continued efforts. We certainly recognize that the unions are a very important stakeholder in the apprenticeship programs and the training programs generally in the province. The ITA works closely with them, and we will continue to do that.

When it comes to the actual structure of the ITOs themselves, it is not something that we as a government or I as a minister are going to interfere with — how they are structured.

We have said to the industry that they need to structure the ITO with the players that they think are important to have at the table, and we will leave that decision to them. I think that if you started to try to structure the ITOs with all the various stakeholders that would be interested, you would have a very large and unwieldy group.

As I said earlier, I fully expect that some of the ITOs will want to have union representation at the table. Other ITOs may choose not to go that route, but we are leaving that decision up to them.

D. Routley: In my way of thinking and viewing this issue from this side of the House in a critical role of government, I have the impression that our province is flying somewhat blind in that we do not have clear numbers to assess where the shortages are and how they're being addressed.

If the government just pulls back and lets industry drive by its immediate need and does not take a role in identifying strategic objectives, that might create great problems.

One example I would use is the fact that there are no programs or training available for moulders who

work in foundries. This is a very strategic link in the industrial chain, in that it offers us incredible flexibility in our industries — our forest industry, our marine construction industry, our civic infrastructure. We can, through these foundries, make customized castings which address many, many needs and allow us to adapt to new processes and products.

But that industry is under great pressure. In the recent past there were, I think, 15 foundries in the Lower Mainland. Now there are five. It's a very strategic link in the industrial chain, but without some sort of strategic objective, it's one that could be missed.

It could be missed in terms of cap-and-trade, because it could be one of those businesses that is most pressured in down cycles of the economy. Opportunities in cap-and-trade might pose the threat of the same sort of loss of those strategic links in the chain. I think that if the government doesn't take some role in having a strategic objective around the priorities of labour market force adjustments, then we will encounter those kinds of critical losses.

Will the minister agree that there should be something, beyond the immediate marketplace-driven training model, that anticipates, plans for, accommodates and implements strategies to address those strategic links that might be lost?

Hon. C. Hansen: I think the member made reference to the employers looking at their short-term interests. Again, the employers that I talk to very much have a long-term view, and they recognize that the issue of labour shortages is here to stay in British Columbia, and I think that increasingly, companies are looking longer term to make sure that their labour force needs are being met.

I would argue that the industry representatives that sit on the ITOs actually have the best window on where labour shortages would be materializing. We tap into all of the tools that are available to us when it comes to forecasting labour force needs of the future.

The member may be familiar with the COPS system, which is the Canadian Occupational Projection System. I think I've got that right. That is national. In fact, I attended the conference in 1981, when the COPS system was first established, and I think it has served Canada well since then.

That system relies on input from employers. It also relies on input — and we rely on input — from tools like our major projects inventory in the province, where we know from our latest listing that there is just shy of $150 billion worth of major construction projects in the province that are either in development today or are being planned. So that's a valuable tool for us in looking not only at what kind of occupations are going to be required but where in the province those occupations are going to be required in the years to come.

We do rely on all of those tools to ensure that we target the occupations that are going to be most in demand in the future, and one of our most valuable sources of that information is, in fact, the employers.

D. Routley: It used to be that after six months folks who didn't continue their training were delisted from registration numbers. Currently the ITA lists, I believe, around 38,000 registrants, but those circumstances or prerequisites to being recognized as registered have changed. Now a person stays on the books for 18 months. There are also issues of multiple registrations in different programs because of the wait-lists.

I wonder if the minister can give me updated information on how many registrants there are, what level of duplication, triplication and so on that he anticipates is present and whether or not there's a good argument for reducing the length of time that someone is kept on in the registration.

Hon. C. Hansen: First of all, with regard to the number of registrants, our latest numbers show that we have 39,797 registered apprentices and youth participants in our programs today. With regard to wait-lists and double-counting of people on the wait-lists, it is estimated that about 3 to 4 percent of the apprentices on wait-lists are in fact either double- or triple-registered — in other words, would have been registered at more than one institution and waiting to get into a program. So it's a fairly small number. Generally speaking, we estimate that fewer than 5 percent of our registered apprentices are on a wait-list for courses.

D. Routley: So 39,797 registered apprentices and youth participants. Can the minister break that number down and tell me how many of them are youth participants and how deep that goes into the K-to-12 system? Are you including only the participants in ACE-IT and other high school programs, or are you going deeper into the programming?

Hon. C. Hansen: The number of youth participants in our registered apprenticeship program is 5,481. That's since the ITA was first established in April of 2004. That's an increase from what was then 861 participants, so it's actually a 536 percent increase over that period of time.

All of them — these 5,481 individuals — are participating in our ACE-IT program or our secondary school apprenticeship program, so they are fully registered apprentices in the province. They are recognized as apprentices. In most cases, these students, when they complete their grade 12, will also have completed at least the first year of their apprenticeship as a result of the high school programs.

D. Routley: Is there updated information as to the continuation rates of those students in completing their apprenticeships? Now we're into four years from the beginning of those programs, so I assume we'll be getting numbers on those completions.

In Alberta the system does not count first-year participants in any way as registrants in apprenticeships

in their training program numbers. Given the low rate of completion overall, 39 percent, does the minister think it's really accurate to include those first-year participants given that the completion rates are so low and that continuation rates may be low?

Hon. C. Hansen: I want to differentiate between the continuation rate and the completion rate. When we talk about the continuation rate of our secondary school programs, that measures the number of individuals who continue with their apprenticeship after they have finished high school. In the case of the ACE-IT program in the high schools, we have a 97 percent continuation rate, which I think speaks to the great success of that program.

In the secondary school apprenticeship program we're seeing continuation rates of about 57 percent, which we consider to be far too low. Just last month the Industry Training Authority provided a grant of $1.1 million to the Career Education Society to help us look at the reasons why that continuation rate is not higher and what we need to do to increase it.

When we come to the completion rates, that is a measurement of what percentage of registered apprentices have completed their apprenticeship training six years after they first started it or first became registered. Completion rates across Canada have been an issue. It's difficult to compare province to province because there are different methodologies. It's very much a case of comparing apples and oranges when you try to compare rates across Canada.

But I think the one thing that is consistent is that every province is finding that completion rate is a challenge. We expect that has a large part to do with, really, the dynamism in the economy today. Certainly anecdotally, we know there are many apprentices who are putting off their formal training component because of the fact that there is such a demand for their hours in the workplace. We also find that employers are reluctant to allow their workers to take the time necessary for that training.

We've been trying to address that. That's part of what the tax credit program was aimed at. It was to give an incentive both to the apprentices and to the employers to complete the formal part of their training and get on with it.

I think that when you compare the completion rate between B.C. and Alberta, the fact that we do include all of the first-year apprentices in our statistics actually creates a much more robust measurement for British Columbia. So when Alberta doesn't include their first year….

They don't start counting their registered apprentices or calculating completion rates until after the completion of first year. That will tend to drive up the statistic for completion rates in Alberta compared to British Columbia. But we think including all registered apprentices, including first year, gives us a far more valuable measurement because it really does speak to the success of the system right from the time that the registered apprentice first registers.

D. Routley: I would suggest that there was a political imperative in advertising huge increases in registrations, which is misleading because, of course, the first year does distort the figures. In fact, it brings down our B.C. completion rate rather than bringing up the Alberta completion rate, if you want to look at it from the other point of view.

I would suggest that the more effective goal would be to measure the outcomes, and that would obviously be completion rates of Red Seal trades. What we've seen was a drastic decrease in that number since the loss of ITAC and the founding of ITA. I acknowledge the very difficult circumstances that the ITA developed under. Still, that was a loss.

Now what employers and the economy read, measure and feel is a shortage of completed, qualified, skilled workers, not a shortage of registrations. So it's not as though industry says: "There just aren't enough registered high school students in apprenticeship programs." I'm not trying to demean the value of those programs but trying to bring the focus to the completion side.

So what will the minister do to ensure that that completion rate, however it's measured, whether we include the first year and end up with a 39 percent figure or not…? What steps are being taken to improve that?

Hon. C. Hansen: The Industry Training Authority is helping to fund three national research projects to look at this specific question of completion rates. British Columbia was actually the first province to publish our completion rates, and other provinces have followed suit, but as I mentioned earlier, using somewhat different methodology. Therefore, it's hard to compare province to province.

The completion rates are not unique to British Columbia in any way. This is a national concern. We are working with other provinces, and we are supporting these national research projects to look at how we can drive up completion rates and what the factors are that are causing the completion rates to be as low as they are. What we anticipate will develop out of this work is a national strategy that will address the issue of completion rates.

D. Routley: One of the elements of the previous program, ITAC, that was very beneficial to apprenticeships was the role of the counsellor. The counsellors would, if there was a lack of completion or if an apprentice was not released for their block training, inquire as to why that was happening and what might be done to support that student making the choice to go on and complete. Unfortunately, that role has been removed.

Does the minister think it might be wise to reinstate some sort of counselling program to assist apprenticeships in navigating the system and assist them in negotiating with their employers adequate release time to complete? The minister may answer that the hot economy is responsible for employers not releasing employees, but we've had building cycles like this before. Those counsellors did ensure that apprentices had the opportunity to complete their training.

Will the minister reinstate the counsellors? Or, in their absence, will he somehow offer a suggestion right now as to how that might be facilitated?

Hon. C. Hansen: I remember that a year ago the member asked me the same question, and the answer is essentially the same as it was last year.

First of all, the counsellor service that was in place was a very expensive process. We do not have any evidence, other than anecdotal examples perhaps, where the fact that the counsellor service existed produced higher completion rates. We think there are other ways of accomplishing that, and that's part of what we are looking at nationally.

If you look at other provinces, they have seen decline in their completion rates comparable to what British Columbia has seen. Some of those provinces may have counsellors, and some of them don't. We may be the only province that went from having counsellors to not having them, and yet we saw that the change in our completion rates was comparable to what other provinces were experiencing as well.

The industry training organizations that are now in place, which I think cover about 85 percent of the apprentices in the province, are taking a very active role in encouraging completion. They are directly working with the employers and the apprentices to encourage them to engage in the formal training.

The other thing that's happening increasingly is that the colleges themselves want to ensure that they have full classes. That has been a bit of a problem over the past couple of years. Many of these classes around the province were going half full. The colleges now realize that they're not going to get funded for having half-empty classes, so they are being more proactive in ensuring that employers and apprentices know that there are classroom spaces available for them in these courses. That also is making a difference.

D. Routley: The budget for the ITA allows approximately 6 percent for administration and a customer service centre. I assume that those kinds of capacities that I've just referred to would be included in that function of the business.

It allows 88 percent for programs, foundation programs like ACE-IT included; 3 percent for program development; and 2 percent for ITO core administration. There are a couple of questions that flow out of that. The first one I've already asked.

Would those capacities to support apprentices be included in the 6 percent? Does the minister feel it's adequate? Does the minister see an increase in that function of the budget?

Hon. C. Hansen: The ITA is developing a new information technology platform, which is going to be much more available, much more user-friendly for registered apprentices around the province. They will be able to get electronically much of the information that they now rely on our customer service staff for. It's called RITA, which stands for the registry of industry training achievement. It will be accessible 24-7.

Colleges and other training institutes around the province will be able to directly input information about that particular individual's courses and programs, where they are in that process of completing their apprenticeship and the availability of courses, for example. This is going to free up the administration staff and customer service staff.

So the short answer to the member's question, "Is the 6 percent budget adequate?" is yes, I believe it is. It's through the use of some of these new technologies that we expect we will be able to provide even more access to personalized service, either over the counter or over the telephone, that the apprentice may be looking for.

D. Routley: In fact, I've heard from several people in different organizations that once the information is provided to an ITO or to the ITA about the hours served by apprentices, many times those are not adequately registered by the ITA. They phone in for an update and get an answer of zero for someone who has many hundreds of hours, or they get an answer of many hundreds of hours for somebody who has essentially zero.

For some reason, that information is not being processed adequately. Estimations are being made. This has been confirmed by the people over the phone — that there's an estimate that you should have completed so many hours over a certain length of time. So the information that they're relying on currently may not be adequate. I'd suggest that the budget may be expanded to at least look at that to determine whether or not it's being efficiently handled.

Then, when we take the total budget of just under a hundred million dollars for industry training in this province and compare it to the overall commitment of the province to post-secondary training, it seems that industry training is allotted less than 5 percent of that overall post-secondary budget in British Columbia.

Given the fact that our current economic activity is encouraging more hiring of skilled trades, does the minister think that perhaps another approach might better address that need?

Hon. C. Hansen: First of all, with regard to the data that the individual apprentice would have access to and the accuracy of that, we believe that the system we have today is accurate. Certainly, if somebody was basing their information on estimates, that's not something the ITA would condone.

I think it underscores even more the reason for moving towards the new technology with the RITA system. That kind of information will be accessible to the apprentice on a daily basis, 24-7. They can log in and find exactly where the data is at. It allows for, as I mentioned, the colleges to input data directly. So I think the information that will be available under the new system will certainly be more robust and of a higher…. Well, certainly, the kinds of examples that the

In terms of the overall budget, we actually have the largest budget today for industry training that the province has ever seen. The budget for ITA is significantly higher than the budget that was in place for ITAC in the previous system. I don't have those exact numbers, but in terms of the budget for the ITA, we have seen an increase of the ITA's budget since it was established four years ago from $77 million to over $100 million today. That's a 30 percent increase in that period of time.

If you look forward, the budget for this year is actually $1.538 million. Next year we will see that budget go up to $104.938 million. We do recognize the importance of industry training, and we are putting additional resources into it.

D. Routley: It's clear that in New Zealand, from where the model was adopted, there was a much larger commitment of public funding on a per-capita level — approximately three times what we see in B.C. So I'd argue that we need to make a strong case…. The minister perhaps should make a strong case to his cabinet that there is insufficient funding for industry training in the province and that there could be an increase that would be realized in great return to the province. The argument could be made that whatever we invest will be returned manyfold.

In program development — it's approximately 3 percent of the budget — once industrial training organizations develop curriculum, that becomes their property, if I'm not mistaken. Is there any thought to addressing the issue of proprietorship of information when it comes to the training programs? They're partially funded in their development by the public and yet then become sole property of the ITO. Then once the curriculum is delivered to the institutions that might deliver the training, there's no obligation on those institutions to train in the way that's prescribed by the curriculum delivered by the ITO.

So we have the existence, I would argue, but certainly the possibility, of a very disjointed outcome when we start with public funding directed at developing standards and training programs in a particular sector of the economy, guided by an ITO. That becomes property of the ITO, then the transfer to the actual training on the ground can be quite disjointed in its outcomes. Is the minister aware, does he agree, and will he do something to address that?

Hon. C. Hansen: First of all, the ITOs do not develop curriculum. What they do develop are program outlines for the courses. They develop table of specifications, and they also develop the exam banks. So what the ITA and the ITOs will then do is engage the colleges to provide a particular program, and it is the colleges that develop the actual curriculum that meets the specifications that are set by the ITA and the ITOs.

Basically, under the collective agreement that college instructors have, they have proprietary rights to some of the curriculum that they would develop. We have to operate and respect and recognize those collective agreement rights that are in place.

In B.C. we've actually made significant progress over the last number of years in getting more consistency around the province. In the past what happened was colleges were given block funding, and they would develop programs in isolation of other colleges. At least now we have some standardization around the program outlines and the table of specifications in making sure that we actually evaluate, in a common way, the progress or the success of an apprentice and when that individual is ready to move on to the next stage in their apprenticeship programs.

We have pushed hard to ensure that there is more standardization in, for example, the duration of certain programs. We have made some progress in that regard, but I think the member is right. There is still, in some instances, more work that needs to be done to have a greater degree of consistency.

D. Routley: One example of the additional supports and an example of better outcomes in terms of completion is the building trades' approach to apprenticeship funding and apprenticeship support. They, in their collective agreements, charge each employee 35 cents per hour. There were 16 million hours worked last year. That was 20 percent of the industry total, and that resulted in a $7.5 million budget for them to support apprentices.

They get over a 90 percent completion rate through increased apprenticeship supports. They ensure that students are able to register properly, that they're able to have their block release and all of those things. They even extend their support to arranging things like child care and other issues that I would like to bring up in the next few minutes that we have left. It's an example of the high degree of success in offering those kinds of supports to apprentices. Those are the kinds of supports that I referred to earlier.

Does the minister believe that perhaps those kinds of apprenticeship or student supports would increase our completion rate from the 39 percent we now see?

Hon. C. Hansen: Again, this is a subject that we canvassed last year, and at the time I indicated that the data we have shows that there's no discernible difference in completion rates between the different ways programs are offered in the province.

I think I put the invitation out last year that we would welcome data and information from the building trades to substantiate the kind of statistics that the member just indicated. I will renew that offer again this year, because we'd certainly like to work with them. I think the building trades are a great partner for the Industry Training Authority. They provide a great apprenticeship training service, and we are very pleased to work with

them. We'd like to continue to build that relationship, and we would be most interested in any data that they've got which might help us to better understand completion rates.

D. Routley: I appreciate the answer. Thank you for that, Minister. I'm sure they'll be glad to hear that they are valued as a partner and that there will be a willingness to work together.

In terms of questioning their outcomes, if we look at the Coast Mountain Bus Co. corporation they have similar completion rates, and they're driven by the same sort of premises of apprenticeship supports provided through labour being a partner in those agreements. They boast similar completion rates — as do the plumbers, pipefitters and floorlayers. Several other labour-driven programs boast similar completion rates.

I'm sure that information is available to the minister, but I will encourage them to take the minister up on his offer.

When we look at the completion rates and the credential counts…. It was noted in a Crown corporation meeting on January 16 of this year, by Ms. Steward of the ITA, that the increase in the credential count was due to the fact that there were credentials that were being awarded to welders, people coming out of welding programs, that didn't count before. They were simply included in the count, and that was why you saw an increase.

She further went on to acknowledge, on a question by the critic of Labour, the member for New Westminster, that if those adjustments hadn't been made, we would have actually seen a decrease. This was acknowledged as correct by the representative of the ITA. Then the remark was made by the critic that this was alarming. I agree that that is alarming. We would have actually seen a decrease in credential counts.

So the clarity and transparency of numbers and the back-and-forth between the minister and myself on the interpretations of those numbers really clouds this issue, and it's clear in this case that the outcomes are clouded by the way the numbers are acknowledged. Can the minister give me an idea of what the completion rate would be without those adjustments to the way credentials are being recognized?

Hon. C. Hansen: First of all, it's important to differentiate between completion rates and the number of credentials issued, and I think that the member is trying to use them interchangeably. But we don't have the statistics on the number of credentials issued for welders, so I will have to get that information for him. I know, from the ITA, that they'll undertake to get that number and convey it to the member.

The member mentioned Coast Mountain Bus, for example, and the completion rates there. That's because we're talking about diesel mechanics primarily there. What we find across the province, across the country, is that regardless of the model we find very high completion rates for diesel mechanics, so it's not unique to Coast Mountain Bus. It's also, if we look at other occupations…. If we look at millwrights, for example, they have a very high completion rate, typically around 75 percent. On the other hand, we will see in carpentry very low completion rates of about 30 percent. That is part of what we're trying to better understand nationally from these various research projects that we are undertaking.

D. Routley: The service plan calls for the ITA to increase participation rates amongst under-represented groups — the disabled, aboriginal people and women. Can the minister give me a breakdown as to the percentage of registrants who fall into those groups?

Hon. C. Hansen: Of the new registrants, approximately 5 percent of new registrants are aboriginal. That is actually a great success story, because that is higher than the percentage of the population that is aboriginal in British Columbia. We have hired a director of aboriginal apprenticeship, and he is actively working on developing a new aboriginal strategy, which we will be rolling out later this year.

As far as participation of women and other under-represented groups in industry training, this is a baseline year for us, as indicated in our service plan. We are trying to establish what the baseline is now for those stats, because we have not in the past singled those out. We do know that in our school programs, in our ACE-IT programs and secondary school apprenticeship programs, 18 percent of the participants are women. We will be working this year quite aggressively to develop new programs to drive those numbers up.

D. Routley: From what I've heard from apprentices, from those who train apprentices and from women who provide support to women in various aspects of life, women's services, one of the things that inhibits their success is the culture that they eventually encounter on the job and a lack of — how can I put this delicately to those involved? — understanding of the pressures that women feel in a male-dominated workforce or work setting.

What role does the minister see for the ITA in addressing those workplace cultural issues that play a negative role in hindering women's success on these jobs, which are traditionally male-dominated, and also aboriginal apprentices who work in situations where, perhaps, the workforce isn't used to working with identified minorities?

There are problems that are well documented, very unfortunate. What can the minister offer to those young people or those apprentices who are encountering those difficulties?

Hon. C. Hansen: I think that progress can be made on the issues that the member mentions if everybody, actually, takes a role in ensuring that some of these workplace issues are addressed. I think it's true for employers, it's true for the trade unions, and it's true for workers as individuals, who all play a role in making

sure that the workplace is an inviting and welcoming place for under-represented groups. Employers are certainly very keen today on ensuring that their workplaces are welcoming and inviting, and the ITA is working to make sure that that is encouraged.

One of the things that we are looking at specifically is the role that women mentors can play in working with new female apprentices on the jobsite, to ensure that they have someone that they can go to and talk to.

Also, with regard to the increasing numbers of aboriginal apprentices in the workplace, we're ensuring that we are reaching out to the elders and that there are the opportunities and the sensitivity that the employers would have to ensure that the workplace is accommodating for cultural differences and to ensure that that workplace is a welcoming, safe and respectful environment.

D. Routley: In fact, the number one obstacle that I've heard from women in terms of apprenticeship and training in general has been roadblocks of child care, accessibility to child care. This has been brought up in a number of ITO meetings.

Has the minister had a voice in cabinet discussions or in any realm where he might have supported the need for increased child care support from the perspective of the minister responsible for supporting the development of skilled trades in this province?

Hon. C. Hansen: Yes, it certainly is something that is recognized — that the access to child care around the province in the worksite is an important component in ensuring that we can attract the needed workers into the jobs that are going unfilled. Employers are increasingly recognizing that having access to child care is an important part of recruiting and retaining women into the workforce to fill those jobs.

This government has expanded the funding for child care. I know that my colleague the Minister of State for Childcare has recently just announced significant new and additional funding for the creation of child care spaces around the province.

D. Routley: There are a number of very significant differences between the apprenticeship programs of this province and the province of Alberta. Given the agreement to the TILMA and its implementation, I wonder if the ITA has any detailed assessment of exactly what those differences are, where they exist and how they are impacted by TILMA.

Hon. C. Hansen: The ITA has been working through with their counterparts in Alberta to ensure that the labour mobility provisions of TILMA will be met by the required date of April 1 of 2009. They now have all of the certificates of qualifications that would be recognized by the other province. What it means is that workers in all occupations by April 1 of next year will be entitled to be certified in the other province in the occupation for which they have been trained.

D. Routley: Well, if all levels of certification are to be recognized, then does the minister feel that there might be the widely discussed downward pressure on standards if one jurisdiction has a lower standard than another?

Hon. C. Hansen: There is no requirement in TILMA to adjust standards downward. What there is…. Where there is a difference in standards, those get reconciled by the two licensing bodies between the two provinces. In some cases we actually see a heightening of standards, but the challenge is for those licensing bodies to look at what the appropriate standard is to ensure that we have only qualified individuals engaged in those respective occupations.

D. Routley: I'll ask one more question and then pass on to my colleague here. That would be a comment and then a question.

ITAC was disassembled in 2003-2004. There appeared not to be a lot of plan or vision. There was a loss of focus in the sector. There was a decline in completion rates of over 40 percent. Just now we're coming to the kinds of completion rates that we saw in '96-97 by numbers.

So we're in a scramble. We're scrambling for answers in terms of immigration and bringing women and aboriginal peoples into the workforce, and those are positive things. In the meantime, we've lost a lot of time.

There was a large amount of chaos, and that's been acknowledged by several people even within the ITA in terms of how the ITOs were originally established by CEOs working out of the backs of their cars. I know that there are several CEOs of ITOs who had to put up personal credit in order to establish service contracts for their offices — this sort of thing. So there was a disarray for some time. After that the new model left labour and educators out of the definition of industry, and I think the outcomes speak for themselves.

While the government can boast of increased registration numbers, the government cannot boast of increased completion numbers, particularly when you view that four-year span where things were not happening the way they should. You know, my job…. I'm paid to criticize the government, so I hope the minister takes that in that spirit — that the plan, despite some of its advantages, was implemented after the dismantling of ITAC, and we had this gap.

So now how does the minister think that British Columbia is going to catch up to the demand for skilled tradespeople, given that we had such a dip in completion rates?

Hon. C. Hansen: I think what the member fails to acknowledge in his comments is that other provinces saw the exact same decline in completion rates. So you've got other provinces that were not going through any kind of a change in the delivery model of apprenticeship programs. You had other provinces that had

different models from what we had, either before or after the creation of the ITA, and yet they also saw the same significant decline in completion rates. British Columbia was definitely not unique, so you cannot attribute the decline in completion rates to the transition from ITAC to the ITA.

Clearly, any kind of a transition like that is difficult. It was a new model, and a lot of the angst that was developed at the time was coming from colleges who were used to receiving funds and developing their programs in a different way. I think part of the significance of the shift that was made three years ago, the shift of the Industry Training Authority from the Ministry of Advanced Education to the Ministry of Economic Development, was more than just symbolic. It was actually saying: "Yes, the apprenticeship programs are a big factor in the economic health of the province, and it needs to be driven under a new model."

That transition certainly did ruffle a few feathers, but I would argue that the increased resources that we're putting into industry training today — the 30 percent increase in the budget, the significant increase in the number of individuals who are engaged in formal apprenticeship programs and the significant increase in the number of employers who are employing indentured, registered apprenticeships — are a big factor. We will continue to drive those numbers upward to make sure that these needs are being met in the future.

R. Fleming: I want to ask the minister a few questions, just to pick up, I think, on the discussion he's been having with the critic this morning. He just made a comment about completion rates, and I know they've been conversing about that this morning. He said there was a general trend in Canada towards falling completion rates in interprovincial comparisons, and we have a provincial trade and mobility agreement with Alberta.

I wanted to ask him about a comparison and a trend line analysis between B.C. and Alberta over the last four years since the ITA was created. I wonder if he could provide B.C.'s numbers on completions — not active apprentices, because I think we've discussed the problem with that figure as B.C. compiles that statistic, but compare B.C.'s completion rates for apprentices with Alberta's. It's my understanding that, although Alberta has a population 25 percent smaller than British Columbia, their completion rate is higher per capita than British Columbia's.

I wonder if the minister can share some of those statistics either here at committee or at another time.

Hon. C. Hansen: We had that discussion about an hour ago, and I'd be pleased to send the member a copy of Hansard.

R. Fleming: Okay. I wanted to ask the minister about the ACE-IT program at our high schools — that apprenticeship program, in particular, because it doesn't have any completion rates or numbers of students in that system that then go on to register as active apprentices.

I want to ask the minister, first of all: is his ministry working to fix that problem and to track those students? Because there is significant funding going to the ACE-IT programs, and it seems bizarre to me that students enrolled in that program are then not tracked to see how many of them actually go on to become registered, active, participating apprentices.

Hon. C. Hansen: We had this discussion about an hour ago, but I'll repeat it. What we do track very carefully is continuation rates. So students who are actively engaged in the ACE-IT program in high school — in grades 10, 11 and 12 — are registered apprentices. They will typically complete their grade 12 not only with their Dogwood grade 12 completion, but they will also have under their belt the first year of their registered apprenticeship program. So we do track that, and the continuation of students in the ACE-IT program is 97 percent.

R. Fleming: Could the minister, then, provide the completion rate numbers for ACE-IT students who go on to register and then complete a trade?

Hon. C. Hansen: We measure completion rates based on how many students have finished their apprenticeship program six years after the time that they are first registered. The ACE-IT program is a relatively new program. I think we're into the third year now on the ACE-IT program. Those would not come up. We are obviously tracking those students, and once they get to their six-year mark, we will be able to evaluate how many of those ACE-IT participants went on to completion within the six-year time line.

R. Fleming: I wanted to ask the minister how his ministry relates to school districts that have provided feedback. This program does have some kinks and some growing pains to it. I know there are a number of schools that have expressed frustration with dealing with ITA staff, with being able to come on stream with programs that they wish to expand or offer or to simply get guarantees that the support is going to be there for programs they're offering.

I wanted to ask the minister how his ministry has responded to some of the comments and suggestions that school districts have made on how the system can improve and how he's going to implement it in this budget.

Hon. C. Hansen: Two things that are underway…. One that I mentioned earlier was the funding, the $1.1 million grant that was announced just last month, where the ITA is funding the Career Education Society to help boost student participation in the secondary school apprenticeship program. They are seeking input, obviously, from the school districts around the province that are participating in that program today to see how we can better improve it.

The other thing that we are undertaking now is a strategic review of the high school programs, the ACE-IT

program and the secondary school apprenticeship program. We've now got three years under our belt on the ACE-IT program, and the ITA felt it was timely for us to undertake a review of the progress and the success and help identify what some of the challenges may be to ensure that we have continued and perhaps even greater success under that program. That review will actively engage and seek out the input of the school districts around the province.

R. Fleming: I wanted to ask the minister when the school districts can anticipate the receipt of that review. Could you also outline their ability to participate and their role in the conduct of that review?

Hon. C. Hansen: The ITA is now developing the terms of reference for this review. We anticipate that it will be rolling out late summer. As part of that process, there will be contact made with each of the school districts that are actively involved in our high school programs, to seek their input and to invite their suggestions and questions and some of the challenges that they think need to be addressed.

R. Fleming: Well, we look forward to getting a firmer completion date, I think, on that review. It strikes me as odd that it has taken this amount of time to conduct a review, given that funding for the program has been diverted from other apprenticeship programs.

I wanted to go back and ask the minister a little bit about this $1.1 million grant to the Career Education Society and how that money will be dispersed — whether it's for participating districts in small grants to do promotional, marketing and recruitment campaigns or whether it's a centralized operation that is still under the oversight of the ITA. So if he could just give me details on the role of school districts in receiving that money, what a typical size of that grant might be and how it might be spent — whether it's for active recruiting, whether it's for materials or curriculum design or those kinds of things.

Hon. C. Hansen: So this grant that flows to the Career Education Society…. They, in turn, will be allocating money to school districts around the province. The school districts will be eligible to receive funding ranging from $15,000 to $40,000. That depends on the size of the school district. That would be one of the biggest variables. What it does is allow the school district to purchase blocks of teacher time.

The role of the teachers will be to provide that one-on-one mentorship with the participating student but also to help identify employers who would be prepared to give those students on-the-job experience in conjunction with the formalized training that they would be taking as a result of either the ACE-IT program or the secondary school apprenticeship program.

R. Fleming: I certainly hope that the allocation to school districts goes considerably better than the playground equipment administration that we're seeing in the Ministry of Education right now.

I think it's interesting that this is filling a gap that was identified many years ago around counselling and around liaising with employers. I think the ministry has been very slow to respond to that. I think that we will be monitoring very closely whether the improvements that are outlined and hoped for with this very small, very modest program, I would add, do accomplish something.

I think that buying blocks of an existing teacher's time can well produce other problems within schools, but I'll leave the minister to contemplate how those might be avoided and ask him an additional question that just leaves aside the ACE-IT program for a moment.

I wanted to ask him whether his ministry is surveying companies that are building capital projects in B.C. I know he keeps an active registry on the ministry website of anticipated projects and ongoing projects in the construction sector in the province of B.C. These are companies that are facing skills shortages in different ways in different regions of the province.

I wonder if the ministry is trying to get an economic impact analysis of what it is costing construction companies — B.C., Canadian and international — that are experiencing skills shortages in terms of projects that are not being completed on time; projects that are not being completed on budget; or projects, as we're seeing now in the condominium sector, that are not being proceeded on at all.

Could he tell the committee here today whether such a review is being contemplated? The ministry certainly talks about the anticipated benefits to the province — and rightly so — of some of the plans going on, on the capital construction side, but there doesn't seem to be an analysis of projects that are not proceeding, not on time and not on budget. Surely, those have an economic cost, and they're definitely related to the skills shortage. So I wonder if the minister has contemplated undertaking such a review and releasing that kind of discussion to the public.

Hon. C. Hansen: There is no question — and I've said it publicly many times — that while the economic future of British Columbia looks very bright, particularly in contrast to other parts of North America…. Whatever clouds there may be on those horizons, we believe that British Columbia is going to weather those very well. But there is no doubt that it is the issue around labour shortages that is going to compromise what otherwise may be higher economic growth in British Columbia.

I think the study that the member is asking for has already been released. It's on the website. It's called the WorkBC strategy, which was put up on our website last April. What it identifies is that there is no one solution to this. Certainly training is a very essential part of

ensuring that we have the workforce of the future that we need, but that in itself is not going to solve the problems. We need to encourage under-represented groups in our workforce to increase in numbers.

Whether it's women in these occupations or whether it's first nations or whether it's people with disabilities, we need to encourage more active participation in the workforce by those under-represented groups. We also need to ensure that we encourage in-migration to British Columbia, whether it's from other parts of Canada or other parts of the world, to make sure we meet these jobs.

The member mentioned the major projects inventory, which is something that we track very closely in our ministry. If you go back to 2001, we had $46 billion worth of major construction projects that we were tracking. Today we have just shy of $150 billion worth of major projects.

Also, as part of that inventory, we will delist projects that are cancelled. Anecdotally, we are certainly aware of projects that are at least deferred. That's not necessarily a bad thing. If we have a very hot construction market today…. For a proponent of a construction project to decide that they want to delay that for a few years until, perhaps, the availability of skilled labour is easier to obtain, that does have the effect of ensuring that this strong economy we have today will, in fact, continue well into the next decade.

So it is something we track. We have developed the strategy, and we are implementing the strategy.

R. Fleming: While the minister partially gave a response that they do delist projects that are cancelled, the more specific point that I was trying to ask is whether the ministry is trying to get a handle on the economic costs, the economic impact of the skills shortage that B.C. is experiencing.

Of course, the context has been set this morning that we've had a falling completion rate for apprentices. There have been a variety of import strategies — in-migration strategies from other provinces and all kinds of things — to try and meet that. It still is difficult. I know the minister is well aware of that from contractors and others that he talks to in his business. I think the point here is that we should be trying to assess the cost to our economy of projects that are not being built on time, not being built on budget or being forgone indefinitely to B.C.'s economy.

A simple answer from him as to whether his ministry is conducting that kind of review and analysis and will put it out for public consumption to look at was what I was directly asking him. I'd appreciate an answer.

Hon. C. Hansen: That is a component of the WorkBC strategy that was released last April. I don't have that with me this morning. I could certainly have access to it this afternoon, but it is on our website and has been there since last April.

Just picking up on some of the minister's comments from an answer a moment ago where he talked about the need to do more to recruit typically under-represented groups into trades — women, aboriginal people, other minorities. It's very interesting that that is being expressed as an aspiration now, in 2008, and that new additional programs are being contemplated for that when we have been through a building boom in this province that has lasted several years. When the horizons being talked about on the North American continent and in other jurisdictions closer to us here in Canada are looking at going from a heightened construction environment to a more normative period, the minister is talking about recruiting from non-traditional sources now.

What is going to happen is that there will be a surplus of labour, undoubtedly, in many trades if in a year or two from now there is less building going on in the commercial and residential sector and the institutional sector.

I think one of the costs that B.C. is going to experience is that the failure to produce people who have completed their apprenticeships during this time, during this busy period, is that those people do not have a trade that they can bank on to set up their own business, to try and shift strategies to find work in different areas, to become small business people, to hire others. I think that is going to have a cost. The failure to do that and to see a declining completion rate so dramatically over the last several years, in the next period of the construction phase that we're going to enter, is going to have a cost.

So I want to ask the minister if he has looked at how well or how poorly his ministry has done in administering the ITA and the apprenticeship system over the last several years in attracting and growing participation rates by the non-traditional sectors.

Hon. C. Hansen: Again, this was something that we canvassed earlier this morning with his colleague. In terms of the new registered apprentices in British Columbia, about 5 percent of them are aboriginal, which means that there are a higher percentage of new, registered apprentices than there is the portion of our population. So I think that's good news.

In terms of other under-represented groups in trades training in British Columbia, this, as is noted in our service plan, is a baseline year for us, and we will be establishing the measures for that. It's not something that we have singled out. As I mentioned to his colleague earlier today, we do track the number of women in our high school programs. So 18 percent of our high school participants are women.

But coming back to his other comments about the future of the construction sector in British Columbia, there is absolutely nothing to indicate that there is going to be a decline in construction activity in British Columbia in two years' time.

If you look at the major projects inventory, it has been increasing every single quarter in terms of the

number of projects and the total value of those projects that are in the planning stage or in development at any one time. Many of those projects will not even have a shovel in the ground for several years hence.

We have every expectation that the construction industry will continue to be as dynamic two years from now as it is today, and we know that we have to continue to do more to attract skilled workers. That is exactly why we are implementing the WorkBC strategy that was brought down last year. That's exactly why we have increased the budget for the Industry Training Authority by 30 percent over this period of time, and that is exactly why we are putting additional resources and new programs into ensuring that the labour market challenges of the future are met to the best of our ability.

R. Fleming: Well, I appreciate the minister's confidence, looking several years into the future. It certainly clashes a little bit with the lending industry today, and even people such as Mr. Podmore, who does work on this government's behalf and runs a very respectable development company in the province, have suggested otherwise. Lending practices have in fact changed, and that's in response to developments across North America.

So fair enough. We'll leave that there. But I wanted to just remark upon one aspect of the minister's answer around the lack of baseline data for some of the topics we've been discussing this morning. It is incredible to me that a ministry that has talked for so many years about increasing participation for under-represented groups does not even have a baseline year established for that to date.

I think it speaks probably to a larger story about the abuse of performance reporting and the failure to live up to the promise of performance reporting from a decade ago in the province of B.C., from ministries that now see their role as contracting the amount of indicators that are reported to the public rather than expanding and making more transparent the successes and the performance results of public spending in those ministries.

I think it's really shameful that the ministry has missed the boat on tracking how well its recruitment efforts have done, because we've certainly spent a considerable amount of tax dollars on making those efforts. To not even track the results or even contemplate putting something in a baseline statistic until this year, I think, is a very poor statement on how this government takes seriously performance reporting for the public.

I want to ask the minister about some trends within the ITA around the cost to run that entity. Maybe I could begin with just asking him how much the cost of administering the ITA has increased from 2004 to today in 2008.

Hon. C. Hansen: The target that was set by the board of the ITA a number of years ago, at the outset of the ITA, was that those costs should not exceed 10 percent. The ITA has met that in every single year, and that includes the cost of operating the ITOs that are in place.

In terms of the member's comments about performance reporting…. Actually, I'd love to be able to compare our performance today in industry training as it pertains to under-represented groups to ten years ago. But quite frankly, under the NDP government, there was no performance reporting. There were no service plans. There were no targets set, and it's actually this government that has brought in service plans with specific performance targets.

In fact, in the case of the ITA, the number of service goals and measurements are more today than there have ever been. We've actually been increasing the number of measurables that are reflected in the service plan.

R. Fleming: I'd like to ask just further on the ITA administration costs…. Originally when ITAC was disbanded and the regional offices, all 15 of them in the province, and the 60 apprenticeship counsellors were laid off and dismissed and that program was wound down, the model that was being pursued by the government was one with a "small, lean" organization. It was suggested that the ITA could be administered by as few as eight FTEs.

I wondered if the minister could comment on the size of the ITA administration personnel today.

Hon. C. Hansen: I'm advised that currently there are 45 FTEs under the Industry Training Authority.

R. Fleming: Thank you to the minister for that answer. I wanted to ask about the ITOs and their administrative costs as well. I know there are six ITOs today — maybe the minister can confirm this — and perhaps up to ten or more that may come into existence. If he can give me a precise figure, I'd appreciate that.

There was a directive, as it was understood, from the ITA that originally each ITO would get up to $300,000 maximum to administer their suborganization. I understand that the construction industry training organization has a $3 million budget, and that the resource industry training organization budget is in excess of $1 million.

I'm wondering if those were fixed guidelines at one point in time that have been revised and whether there is a funding formula or funding cap in place between the ITA and its ITOs.

Hon. C. Hansen: The member is correct. There are six ITOs. There are currently another two that are in the planning stage. The six ITOs that in place today cover 88 percent of all registered apprentices. With the additional two, that will bring that number up to about 93 percent of registered apprentices that will be covered by a functioning industry training organization.

I'll just read this description of how the operational funding for the ITOs works.

R. Fleming: I just wanted to ask the minister…. He's confirmed that the ITA has grown from what was projected to be an eight-to-12-FTE organization to 45 FTEs. I wanted to ask, specifically on the ITOs, how many employees these organizations are hiring. If he can give me an indication of the six — and even in the two, if it's in that part of the planning stage where they're certain as to how many employees will be hired there…. If he could confirm the amount of budget being consumed by these administrative staff. How much is that reducing the funding for the overall budget that is there for training?

Hon. C. Hansen: The staffing levels of the ITOs vary from ITO to ITO. The largest is the construction industry training organization — I may have that right — CITO. They have, apparently, a staff of four, and that would be the largest one, the only one that would have that many. I don't have the exact numbers for the other industry training organizations, but they do have smaller staff than the four with the CITO organization.

Also, the total cost of administration for the ITOs has to fall within the board-set guideline of a maximum of 10 percent of the ITA budget going to administration. So they are constrained and must fall within that measure.

With that, hon. Chair, I move the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

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