Hansard — Tuesday, May 6, 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


Tabling Documents		12003
	Office of the Auditor General, report No. 3, 2008-2009, Management of Aboriginal Child Protection Services

Second Reading of Bills		12003
	Public Health Act (Bill 23)
	Hon. G. Abbott
	A. Dix
	D. Chudnovsky
	C. Wyse

Tabling Documents		12017
	Property Assessment Appeal Board, annual report, 2007

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		12017
	Estimates: Ministry of Forests and Range and Minister Responsible for Housing (continued)
	B. Simpson
	Hon. R. Coleman

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I have the honour to present the Auditor General's report 3, 2008-2009, Management of Aboriginal Child Protection Services.

Hon. G. Abbott: In Section A, I call continued estimates debate for the Ministry of Forests and Range, followed by the Ministry of Attorney General. In this chamber I call second reading debate of Bill 23, intituled Public Health Act.

Hon. G. Abbott: I move that Bill 23, the Public Health Act, be read a second time now.

Public health has always been and will continue to be about the promotion of health and the prevention of diseases, injuries and disabilities. This legislation, the first significant overhaul since 1893, will still address these twin challenges. It is the nature of those challenges that has changed significantly from an era when clean drinking water was not to be taken for granted and diseases like typhoid fever, smallpox and cholera didn't just happen in some distant place but were concerns within our own province.

Today our challenges are both more complex and more common, and the tools we need must evolve. We have new names to contend with — words like Walkerton, avian influenza, crystal meth and SARS — each highlighting a new challenge for public health.

We've already begun the process to address some of these challenges, replacing outdated sections of the Health Act with the Food Safety Act in 2002 and the Drinking Water Protection Act in 2003. It is now time to replace the rest of the Health Act with legislation that is modern, coherent, comprehensive, outcome-oriented and flexible, legislation that will provide tools to address the public health challenges of the 21st century.

This new act has been in development for over four years. It's been built on the foundation of numerous consultations and dialogues and the input of health professionals and community leaders. It also reflects the needs and interests of all British Columbians.

During the recent Conversation on Health we heard strong support for more proactive measures to promote health and prevent diseases, disabilities and injuries. That is the main purpose of the new Public Health Act: to provide public health officials with the authority to take action and with direction to promote and protect the health and well-being of British Columbians.

These directions follow and build upon the solid, proven foundations of programs such as ActNow B.C. Through ActNow B.C., government has helped British Columbians to create over 150 active community plans, encouraging people to become more physically active and helping to reduce the risks from heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

In the government's recent throne speech we continued to move in that direction, setting a number of public health priorities, such as the banning of trans fats in the preparation of foods in schools, restaurants and food services establishments by 2010; encouraging more healthy eating; and addressing the roots of chronic disease. We have also increased our efforts to improve nutrition with an expanded school fruit and vegetable snack program, enabling our children to do their best both physically and academically.

Some of the specific ways in which the new act will address the future public health of British Columbians include allowing the minister to require development of specific public health plans; updating powers of inspection and powers to issue orders to address health hazards; modernizing provisions related to examination, treatment, quarantine and isolation of people who pose a threat to public health; and improving access to mental health and addiction services in our communities, helping a vulnerable population to begin the recovery process and avoid other significant health risks such as hepatitis and HIV.

Many Conversation on Health participants also called for a stronger public health voice on environmental protection and a strong, robust system to address infectious disease outbreaks. The new act will address these challenges by providing a regulatory framework to deal with activities that cause health hazards or that adversely affect the health status of the population, by increasing the ability to collect information of public health importance while protecting privacy, by enhancing public health emergency responsibilities in accordance with the best practices set out by the World Health Organization and by expanding the reporting of communicable diseases to indicators of health hazards like lead or mercury poisoning.

We also heard calls for better access to immunization services and for greater public involvement in the delivery of health promotion programs. The act provides for enhancing collaboration between health authorities and local government; creating comprehensive abilities that enable the act to serve as a useful and flexible tool; and developing specific public health plans to address issues such as potential infectious disease outbreaks like West Nile virus and dealing with more chronic conditions such as diabetes, alcohol and drug problems.

The act also ensures that local public health officials will continue to have the powers necessary to investigate

health hazards and monitor compliance with the act. In fact, these capabilities will be strengthened within this new legislation. Health officers will be able to issue orders to groups of people to take appropriate measures to control a health hazard, instead of the present need to issue specific orders to each affected individual.

New provisions within the act will also allow decisions and orders of health officials to be reconsidered and reviewed, providing fairness and balance to the process. As well, a number of older pieces of legislation — including the Health Act, Venereal Diseases Act and Public Toilet Act — will be combined and updated.

The new act will also maintain the current roles of the provincial health officer and medical health officers in health promotion and protection. It provides clear authority for medical health officers to direct the public health response to local threats and the public health officer to direct a provincial-level response to a widespread threat.

The act will clearly establish the powers and duties of the minister and public health officials for public health monitoring and reporting, communicable disease control, environmental hazard response, chronic disease and injury prevention, and public health emergency response.

This new act will make a difference to the current and future health, safety and well-being of all British Columbians. It will provide the tools we need to face present and emerging threats from disease and natural and human-caused health hazards. It will enable us to take strong, positive steps to support healthy lifestyles, healthy living conditions and healthy communities.

A few weeks ago I asked the provincial health officer how long in coming this act was. His response was that there were requests for legislation in the 1990s and in the 1980s, but they never went forward. I think this shows the concern on this side of the House with the modernization, improvement and enhancement of this Public Health Act.

Governments have had decades to modernize public health legislation and to put in place stronger tools to address preventative health initiatives and the growing burden of chronic disease. Previous governments made a choice and chose to let the growing burden of chronic disease continue to attack the sustainability of our public health system. We're taking action as a government to provide more tools to address the burden of chronic disease and the sustainability of our health system.

I would be remiss if I didn't address the NDP Health critic's recent comments that the ban on trans fats in the preparation of foods was actually an NDP idea. My staff checked Hansard, looked at estimates debates over recent years with the present and previous Health critic, looked at private members' bills and looked at their caucus news releases, and since I've been Minister of Health, the NDP has not stood up on any occasion in this House and advocated a ban on trans fats.

We're well aware that an NDP MP from Manitoba has been pursuing this initiative in Ottawa, but it is a little much for the NDP to take credit for an initiative undertaken by a federal Member of Parliament for Winnipeg. Nonetheless, I do hope that members on both sides of the House lend their support to this worthwhile and very necessary piece of legislation.

A. Dix: Everyone knows that the best parts of the Minister of Health's speeches are when he diverts off what's been provided by his staff and gives us his flights of fancy.

I was going to recommend one particular website to the Minister of Health just at the start of this, which is called google.ca. As he knows, you could probably pick up Mad magazine by going to google.ca and getting access to that. Then he'd be able to see that these proposals on trans fats, of course, came from the NDP. Not that we want to claim credit, because I think those issues…. I leave the considerable job of trying to claim credit for this government's sorry health record to the Minister of Health.

I think it's important that people understand what we're doing here. This is a very extensive piece of legislation and one that, because of its very nature, we'll be spending more time dealing with at committee stage than at second reading stage. What we're talking about, for people watching the debate, is a bill that runs to approximately 126 sections, 92 pages and ten parts. A lot of that is essentially part of existing legislation. Some of it's amended; some of it's not.

The bill is a general bill to consolidate previous public health bills such as the Health Act, and it includes, as the minister suggested, changes to and the elimination of some pieces of legislation or the consolidation of some pieces of legislation, such as the Public Toilet Act.

I want to talk a little bit…. We're living in a time where I think our understanding of health policy issues — the fact that health policy issues are not confined to hospitals or to doctors' offices but have a broader importance — and other issues outside of what you'd call the health care budget or the health care system have a profound difference on public health.

For me, I learned this in a personal way. As I have mentioned before to members of this House, I am a type 1 diabetic. I was working in this building when I was diagnosed with juvenile-onset diabetes. One of the great fortunes for me — because the minister mentioned chronic disease; he mentioned diabetes — is that when I was diagnosed with that disease….

We have this discussion about ActNow and people's responsibility for their fate. When I was diagnosed with this disease, it was in November of 1992. I was working here, and I was preparing to run the Seattle Marathon. At that time, I was probably in the best athletic, the best physical shape of my life — aside from, of course, getting sicker and sicker because I was showing signs of having diabetes.

I have to say that at the time my ignorance about diabetes led, actually, to quite a delayed period of being diagnosed. It's one of the reasons it's so important and one of the reasons I want to speak out on those issues

— so people understand and know the signs so that they're able to take action.

Six days before I was diagnosed — I ended up at Royal Jubilee Hospital that day — I ran 20 miles in training for a marathon that was going to take place two days after I was to end up in hospital. I, of course, didn't end up in the marathon. I was in the hospital. I got stabilized.

Just to give you a sense of the work that, in that case, diabetes nurses do…. I was stabilized, I left the hospital, and I went to a public health program that was run by some outstanding nurses. They trained me on how to be a type 1 diabetic.

Part of that, of course, is balancing food on the one hand with the intake of insulin on the other hand. I've had the good fortune since then of never having to go to an emergency room, which is often a problem for people with diabetes, especially type 1 diabetes, and of having had relatively good health over that period, although, like all chronic diseases, diabetes has the capacity to surprise you on a regular basis.

I attribute that, I think, to really outstanding public health education at a personal level done, essentially, by public health educators — not doctors, in fact, but public health educators, diabetes nurses. It concerns me that in some places in British Columbia some of those programs that helped me so much and that probably saved the health care system a whole bunch of money are being shut down or being cut at present. That's highly problematic, but that's an issue that we'll be discussing with the minister in estimates.

I want to say another thing about it. What it says to me, as I said earlier, is that I think societal issues that go beyond the health care system have such a profound impact on public health. The other reason, of course, why I've done well with a chronic disease is that I've had supportive family members, supportive friends, and I had good jobs that paid well. Therefore, I've never had to go, for example, to a supermarket — I think the minister was talking about Ferraris yesterday; I don't think this is true of car dealerships — and not buy something because it was too expensive.

Of course, we know that for many people who live with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, that's not the case. In fact, the social determinants of health…. If you were someone, for example, with type 1 diabetes working in the tray line today at Royal Jubilee Hospital, the place where I was taken after I had my blood sugar reading of 43 and stabilized, earning much less than I earn, your opportunities to deal with diabetes — where you can live and the social determinants, if you will, of how well you'll do with that chronic disease and how well your health will be — will be less positive, I think. You'll be more likely to die early, more likely to end up in an emergency room, more likely to lose a limb such as a foot as a result of the disease.

When we talk about public health in this context, we often talk about specific measures to respond to public health concerns. But of course, we know and everyone in this House knows — including the government, because some of their initiatives in this area have been good — that those issues of public health are much broader than just the health care system as we know it.

Yesterday we learned from Statistics Canada — and this is the context for it — that British Columbia again is leading Canada in child poverty and, by extension, family poverty. We know in this Legislature the profound impact and the profound divisions that the increasing inequality has on public health — the very issues that we want to get at with legislation such as the legislation we're bringing in today.

I'm reminded of a speech. There's a man named Trevor Phillips who is quite a controversial figure in Great Britain. He's been involved in the current Labour government, and he's been chairman of the British Commission for Racial Equality. He came here and gave a speech — it was quite controversial here — both about the social determinants of health and the increasing divisions of society that he saw in Britain.

He spoke a lot about issues such as multiculturalism, which I won't get into today because they're not as relevant. What he said is that in Britain young Britons under 30 are increasingly segregated into microcultural and uni-ethnic groups or tribes that increasingly do not speak to each other and do not understand each other and that, in fact, the divisions which are economic, social and cultural in Britain indicate a growing lack of social integration, a two solitudes in that society, if you will. He warns — and he was warning Canadians as well — of the dangers of a divided, unstable and vulnerable society. Those are the issues. Those are the dangers that I would suggest to you that we talk about and that we deal with when we deal with the broad issues of public health.

Divided societies — and we can have all kinds of examples across North America of this — respond less well to catastrophe, but particularly to catastrophes that are beyond our ability to control when they occur. Our ability to respond to public health issues is affected by these divisions. For me, this bill and what it treats are increasingly affected by the growing gap between rich and poor and by its overall impact on our health care system.

Recently, there was a survey released in British Columbia. It showed that British Columbians believe that the gap between rich and poor has grown over the last ten years despite economic growth. If you think about it…. I'm thinking about a study by the Canadian population health initiative, which is part of the Canadian Institute for Health Information. It showed that this difference is not just a difference between provinces or between countries. It can be between neighbourhoods. In Vancouver they discovered that there's a 15 percentage point gap between neighbourhood groups in the proportion of youth and adults who rated their own health as excellent or very good. Similar gaps have been found, of course, in other cities.

What they showed, in fact, is that neighbourhoods that jut up against each other, whether they're in Vancouver or others, have very different levels of personal health. Now, this measure is how we feel about our

own health, of course, which is subjective perhaps, but it's important. I would suggest that what it shows is that when you increase divisions between neighbourhoods, between groups in societies and socioeconomic difference, it in fact affects one's ability to use laws such as this new Public Health Act to resolve the problems you want to solve.

When you are divided, when some groups have housing and some groups do not…. My colleague from Vancouver-Kensington will speak about this when he talks about the bill soon, I think.

When you have some people that have housing and some that don't, some neighbourhoods that have outstanding public services and some that don't, some municipalities that can pay for the best services and some that don't, some municipalities that have community centres and lots of community services on one side of town but not on the other side of town, some municipalities that have public institutions like playgrounds on one side of town and not on the other side of town, etc….

These divisions that are growing in our society and that, I would argue, have grown in particular in the last few years, have an impact on our ability to respond to the very public health issues that many of us fear — the spread of disease, catastrophe.

We've seen these things, not in some distant place in recent times but on our very own continent. We in Canada have struggled with the SARS issue. In the United States we saw the terrible consequences in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I think we're seeing a situation in our province that we've never seen before. In every period of sustained economic growth in the 20th century there were overall improvements in living standards. Yes, some people may have gained more than others, but we saw a lift in the overall living standard of everybody.

Today we are living in an unprecedented period where sustained economic growth has meant that some people have done very well, but a very significant percentage of people…. I don't mean 5 percent. I'm not talking about people without shelter here. I'm talking about a large segment of the population that has seen its living standards go down during this period of economic growth.

In fact, that division, the gulf between some and others, has grown. You can even see this, by the way, in the health care workforce, where we have a whole group of people in the health care workforce, thousands of them, losing their jobs. We're going to deal with this issue in another bill before the House.

The consequence of that…. I talked about the tray line at Royal Jubilee Hospital. What happened at the tray line at Royal Jubilee Hospital is that people lost about 50 percent of their income in 2002, in 2003. They lost that. What that meant for their public health, for a person on that tray line who has juvenile-onset diabetes or other chronic disease…. Imagine what that means for them — for their ability to control their blood sugar, their ability to stay out of emergency rooms, their ability to respond and sustain themselves in difficult public health times. They became more vulnerable.

This happened within the health workforce, where some people have actually done well and increased their overall living standards against inflation. Other people have become dramatically less well.

I think there's a growing sense — and we had this debate last week in the health care debate — that equality and access to health care is somehow a frill that we can no longer afford. Of course, we disagree with that. We think, in fact, that the opposite is true and that fairer societies — societies that are as fair to the designated speaker for the NDP on this bill as they are to the health care worker at Royal Jubilee Hospital, as fair to me as they are to them…. Those systems, in fact, are more entrepreneurial, dynamic and successful societies.

In fact, our long-term entrepreneurial success depends on fairer health outcomes between some groups in society and other groups in society. There have been many studies that have shown this. They've compared jurisdictions, and they said that those societies that invest the most in public health, the most in public education have the greatest movement in terms of social mobility. I'll just refer to one of those studies for the members opposite, from the Royal Economic Society in London. It's called Nonlinearities in Intergenerational Earnings Mobility.

I think that when we're dealing with this bill, we have to recognize that our ability to intervene in the health care system is, in many respects, dependent on our ability to resolve and to limit this growing inequality and this growing lack of social cohesion that inevitably flows from that.

We often heard — the minister heard, everyone else heard — during the Conversation on Health and over the last decade much more public conversation, and I think this is a good thing, about what are called the social determinants of health, which in fact have an enormous impact, in particular, on public health issues.

What are they? Income inequality, social inclusion and exclusion, employment and job security, working conditions, contribution to the social economy, early childhood care, education, food security and housing — the social determinants of health.

If you take that list and say to people, "What are the major problems facing society today, the individual problems?" they will look down that list in my city of Vancouver, in my community, where people used to be able to buy a house and now cannot…. Those issues of growing income inequality…. Are we seeing more, growing income inequality? Yes, we are, in British Columbia.

Their impact is on social inclusion and exclusion — on people's access, in fact, to those services they need to involve themselves in the community. The fact that they are working longer and harder for less money, for many of those people, is there. The lack and the cuts to early childhood care that we've seen, not just at the provincial level but at the federal level as well, have had an impact — and the growing concern about food security.

This weekend my friend from Vancouver-Kensington and I were at the Food Security Institute at

Collingwood Neighbourhood House in my riding. What we did there was take part, as we do regularly — I'm a big supporter of this program — in a breakfast program. Dozens of people come to Collingwood Neighbourhood House every week, twice a week. They have no shower, so they shower. They have no breakfast, so the community got together and said….

It's an extraordinary thing, because most of the people who take part in that program aren't from the community. The community said that we have to feed this group of people breakfast. So we have this extraordinary situation.

That has enormous impact. As the growth in homelessness that the member for Vancouver-Kensington and so many other people have dealt with, the social determinants of health…. Those nine social determinants of health are income inequality; social inclusion and exclusion; employment and job security; working conditions; contribution to the social economy, which means one's ability to participate in society — if you join clubs, hon. Speaker, if you have time to join clubs, if your children are able to afford to play hockey, that's an indicator of your health; overall, all of our ability to participate in those events is an indicator of public health and the health of the entire community; early childhood care; education; food security; and housing.

Think of that person when we're thinking of these public health issues that we're dealing with here and our ability to respond to serious incidents of public health, our ability to respond to the growing crisis of homelessness and mental health services in our streets and in our communities. Our ability is in fact affected dramatically by changes in society, and we can't band-aid those changes when something happens. We can't band-aid it. Those social determinants of health also tell us….

We have a big debate about personal responsibility, and it's one of the reasons that I tell my story. I was in the best physical shape of my life. I had a job I loved. I had a workplace that supported me. I have a loving family, everything one could possibly imagine. I was preparing for the Seattle marathon, and I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. How does one view that in the personal responsibility debate?

Equally, we know that people don't live in the same circumstances. If you are wealthier, you have more access to services, sometimes to food, than people who are less wealthy have. When we talk about people's personal responsibility for their health, we have to put it in that context. When we're dealing with public health issues, as we are in this bill, we have to deal with it as well.

I think that what the weight of the evidence showed — and this evidence was brought together by many people in the Conversation on Health, to the Romanow commission, to the Seaton commission — was that those social determinants of health I talked about have a direct impact on the health of individuals and populations. They're the best predictors of individual and population health. They interact with each other, those nine social determinants I talked about, to produce health. That's what the evidence shows.

What the evidence also shows in terms of the health of populations, greater populations, is that the disparities — the size of the gap in inequality and social and economic status — between groups within a given population greatly affect the health status of the whole. The larger the gap, the lower the health status of the overall population. All of the evidence shows that — evidence that the minister, of course, is well aware of.

What I would say on this bill — and I know the member for Vancouver-Kensington is going to speak on this as well — is that those gaps, addressing the social determinants of health, are a critical element of the equation. You can't just say in a law, "You shall provide more mental health services," and things will get better. You cannot say in a law, "We will improve coordination between agencies," when something happens but do nothing about the social determinants of health.

A continuing and growing inequality in our society will checkmate our efforts to do that from above, and we have to recognize that element of the problem as well.

Surely, the lessons of our neighbours and friends in the United States during the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and the experience of our own country in dealing with the SARS epidemic, which wasn't at the same level in terms of human dislocation, show differences in the way that we run societies on both sides of the border. It has shown how divided societies and, I would argue, conversely, more united societies such as our own and the public health systems that we've put in place over decades either can be defeated or can overcome calamity.

We cannot continue to grow inequality and respond to the public health challenges of the 21st century. I should say on SARS, because this is an issue that happened, actually, in the early years of this government's administration…. I think the systems put in place have been in there in place, and it's a legacy of not just NDP governments but past governments and of our public health system.

In terms of infectious disease surveillance, monitoring and testing, we worked together in a public framework to battle that virulent epidemic of SARS. But imagine a society whose inequality is reaching away from where we've been and towards where they are in New Orleans. Imagine such a society.

If our society and our systems in it were more divided, separated and not unified by a common access to services and social opportunity and social mobility, the experience of the public sector in New Orleans — where they also have public health acts, where they also have statutes that say X, Y and Z — shows us that in spite of those statutes, if you allow a disintegrating society, your ability to respond to those issues is compromised. That is a point, in terms of dealing with this bill at second reading, that we on the opposition side, of course, wanted to make.

In terms of some of the specifics of this legislation, I was interested in the minister's analysis of how legislation comes forward in this House. As you know, hon. Speaker, there are two kinds of bills we often deal with in the House. There are bills that are generated by discussion with groups and kind of through the public

service over a period of years, and then there are what you'd call more political bills.

We have some examples. We had an example last week of a political bill. The sustainability bill, as you know, was an idea of the Premier. It wouldn't have come out of the Ministry of Health or anyone else or the Conversation on Health. If the Conversation on Health had come forward for another 10,000 years, it wouldn't have come forward. It came from the Premier.

So that's one kind of bill, and you call it "generated by the politicians," which is fair enough. Politicians are representatives. They're elected to do that. If the Premier wants to bring forward such legislation and defend it in the way in which we've become accustomed to him defending such legislation, fair enough.

Of course, there's a second type of legislation as well, which sort of comes from the public sector, the public service. It's the constant updating and need to update a bill. So I'll just give you a historical view of what happens.

In the 35th parliament we had 22 health bills. Many of those bills, because the 35th parliament, as you will recall, was actually led…. The Premier was Mr. Harcourt, a previous MLA for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. Those bills, of course, focused on supporting our public health system and ensuring that our public health system, in spite of federal Liberal cuts, could be maintained and supported. It made us, in fact, the number one health care system in Canada.

So 22 bills in the 35th parliament. But not all of those were political bills. Not all those were bills to support the founding principles of medicare, which that government supported and this government doesn't. Many of those bills, in fact, were kind of non-partisan bills, generated by the public sector. So 22 bills in the 35th parliament.

Then, in the 36th parliament, led by a previous member for Vancouver-Kingsway, there were 14 bills. Some of those, again…. Bills such as the tobacco damages bill, which the government of the day supported and put forward and the opposition of the time spoke against but didn't vote against. This happens from time to time, I think, in this parliament. Bills such as that, but also other public health bills. So there were 14 bills in the 36th parliament.

In the 37th parliament…. We all remember those days. The government remembers those days with a fond heart, when there were only two opposition members in the whole chamber. You couldn't hear a voice of dissent. Oh, there was one, on one of these health bills from a government member, but generally you couldn't hear a voice of dissent. Halcyon days for the government — not for the people of B.C. but for the government of B.C.

A. Dix: Well, parts of them turned out to be illegal, and we'll be dealing with those. Others of those bills, such as Bill 92, which was introduced by the now Minister of Economic Development, were passed unanimously by the House. They were intended to defend public health care, and then they weren't proclaimed, because the Premier didn't want them proclaimed. But there were 18 bills, including some mentioned by the minister in his speech. What we saw was a regular coming forward of ideas from the public service.

I wasn't going to raise this issue, but the minister inspired me with his comments about government blocking these ideas from the public service. Until this session of the Legislature and since this Minister of Health became minister, there have only been five bills. Now, some of those bills did a very good thing. They overturned the attack on public health that happened when the government overturned WCB regulations with respect to tobacco. So they overturned those, and that was a good thing. They principally dealt with that.

But there have only been five bills. So the government had, in fact, not encouraged that process, but seemed to be blocking that process. Now we have some bills in this session which are kind of the pent-up bills that have come from that. So after the seven bills introduced — to give the minister his full due — we're now at 12 bills. Assuming there'll be a fall session and the government will bring in perhaps more public health legislation…. Assuming that's the case, he might even get up to near the kind of average.

Up to now there's been a hold on those bills. So I think the suggestion that this government has been more supportive of the public service in bringing forward good and modernizing amendments to public health care is inconsistent with the history. But I don't want to be too fact-based, because I know it bothers the minister.

What did Dr. Perry Kendall, our outstanding provincial health officer…? He told the press, when he was doing this bill, that these were proposals to update the public health legislation that had been accumulating in government files for the better part of a century and "they just never got onto the legislative agenda."

Now here we are. The government needs to show that it has an agenda on health care other than weakening the Medicare Protection Act and support for the Canada Health Act in B.C. So we see this legislation come forward, and we're glad to see it, people on this side of the House, at second reading. We'll be debating the details of this at length at committee stage. But people on this side of the House will be supporting this bill at second reading.

We believe that the support for the institutions that maintain public health is critical and that we have to do it. But we will be raising some issues, as you would expect. Not just me as the designated speaker for the opposition but other members of the opposition caucus.

In particular, we'll be raising — and I know my colleague from Powell River–Sunshine Coast will be raising — a concern that, in fact, has been raised by others, including the West Coast Environmental Law group and others, about provisions in the former Health Act that have been deleted from the new act.

I'll just go through it in a short sentence, because I know we'll be discussing this at length, and the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast will be developing this issue at length at committee stage. The member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast has raised this issue, and people in his community have raised this issue.

Sections 57 and 58 of the Health Act allowed for individual citizens to trigger an investigation into health hazards. That authority has been removed. This was relevant. You'll all recall this, people who've been paying attention to issues of watersheds in British Columbia. This was relevant during the controversy over logging in the Chapman Creek watershed. My colleague from Powell River–Sunshine Coast will, I think, in his second reading speech and in committee stage, be developing this issue at some length.

For years citizens in that area had been complaining about the potential impacts of logging on their drinking water. A report by the local medical health officers confirmed their concerns that it was a health hazard, but the regional district was unable to act because they couldn't develop bylaws to regulate forestry operations.

What local citizens were able to do…. This option has been removed. Fair enough. It's a modernizing of the act, so fair enough. We're going to have a discussion at length at committee stage as to why that might be. Local citizens were able to use the Health Act to trigger an investigation by the district, which ultimately resulted in an order to halt logging in the watershed. They were able, in fact, to do that.

Ultimately, they didn't win in the courts, in terms of halting that. But they were able to use the Health Act to raise an issue that their local medical health officer said was a health hazard and raise it as a public concern, as they should.

Under the new law the local medical health officer would be required to report the health hazard, not to the public, in that sense, but to a designated person. That designated person, of course, will be determined by regulation, but it's not clear what is required of them once they are in receipt of that information.

So there's a local issue. I think this gives people, when they're looking at this very long bill, which takes up other acts and which has, as I say, 126 sections — just to give people a sense of the debate that we're going to expect at committee stage…. Even though it seems, when you look at big bills that have been produced over a period of consultation and time, it's hard to see the individual…. It's hard to see, shall we say, the trees for the forest, to turn that around.

I wanted to say to my friend from Cowichan-Ladysmith, whose community is struggling from lack of access to forests…. I just wanted to remind him of better times. The fact of the matter is that in this legislation there are going to be lots of issues like that.

I think it's our responsibility in this Legislature to go through in detail and ask the Minister of Health, who presumably will have the provincial medical officer of health with him in the House, the sort of detailed questions over a period of days that are required to ensure that the legislation does what it wants — and also to develop and increase public understanding, not just at the public level but at the local government level, as to what the legislation does and what it does not do.

Now, what are the key elements of the legislation? The minister has gone through them, so I won't go through them at length. But I just wanted to sort of lay out what the minister has said the key points of the legislation are and what the government is arguing that the key points to the legislation are.

In a general sense, as I've said, we support these changes. I think it's important to acknowledge that. But one of our major concerns is that…. It is one thing to say that the cabinet, for example, may develop regulations to facilitate the implementation of the plan, such as requiring people who are making legislative decisions to consider the plan or restricting or placing conditions on licences or permits or restricting exercise of power.

It's one thing to say that local governments have to come forward with plans and acts and so on. It's another thing to say that they have the resources to meet the test of the law. That's why it's important to continue to emphasize the fact.

We can say, for example, that a city should have a mental health plan, but if responsibilities without resources are downloaded, then that's a concern. Of course you would agree that a city should have a mental health plan, but a mental health plan without resources is, to use a historical expression, a scrap of paper.

What we need…. I know the member for Vancouver-Kensington will discuss this as he takes on what he's learned about public health, in particular over his extraordinary tour of British Columbia, meeting with the growing number of people who don't have shelter in our province, whose vision of what it means to have public health would probably be quite different from those of us in this Legislature who not only have access to health care but who have things that are really important to public health, like a fixed address.

Their perception, I think, when the member for Vancouver-Kensington and I talked to them about access to health care and what would happen in terms of a public health calamity, is very different from ours — from the lack of a family doctor, to a lack of proper access to food, to all the things that they raised with us.

The impact of sleeping outside on a regular basis and the physical worries of being in fact without the things we think are common…. To be able to shut our doors, lock our doors and feel safe inside those doors while we sleep and while our loved ones sleep — that's something that they don't feel and that has a profound impact on public health.

The minister talked about this as well. And I'm delighted to again…. Happily, the minister's ongoing desire to debate the patent of a trans fat ban aside…. We, of course, on the opposition side support that. It was — I'll be very delicate for the minister — an NDP idea that appeared on national TV in 2004.

If you google "trans fat ban in Canada…." If you use the website www.google.ca, which I believe exists

even in a minister's computer, you'll see that in fact it was Pat Martin…. We had public meetings. He came and promoted the bill in Vancouver. I've spoken to Pat many times. He's done an outstanding job of changing the way we perceive that issue. He's a trail-blazer on that issue.

You know what? I know it's shocking to the Minister of Health. He's a member of the NDP, and this idea came from him. He drove it at a federal level, and he's had real impact on the debate across our country about the dangers to public health of trans fats, just as a previous NDP MP, Lynn McDonald, had a profound effect on our perception of the dangers of tobacco in the 1980s, which drove many public health initiatives, including control of advertising, and other issues and initiatives that have been taken up in British Columbia proudly in the 1990s under an NDP government, that profoundly improved public health and that limited and led, I think in part — including the involvement of the public, of course — in the reduction of tobacco use in British Columbia to the lowest level in Canada in 2001.

It hit a bump in the road in 2002 when the government overrode the WCB in terms of protecting workers from secondhand tobacco smoke. Now they are going on, as the government has reversed its position and is supporting those measures.

So yes, I believe I'm going to continue my speech. I believe my colleague wants to rise in his place and seek leave to make an introduction. So if he will rise — because I don't want to give up my place — and raise that, then I will await his doing that.

R. Fleming: I want to thank my colleague from Vancouver just to give me a moment to seek leave to make an introduction.

R. Fleming: With us in the precinct today in the gallery is Ms. Dianne Boyce, a teacher at Oaklands Elementary School. With her is a group of 28 grade 5 students, boys and girls, with parent volunteers accompanying them today. Oaklands is one of the best elementary schools in my constituency, and I want to make them all welcome. They've had a thorough tour this morning and are enjoying themselves in the buildings.

A. Dix: I know that other members of the House will want to take part in this very important debate on the Public Health Act, but I wanted to just say in a general sense what the act does and why we support it before I conclude.

What the act is intended to do is enable medical health officers and environmental health officers to investigate health hazard complaints, and I'm quoting from the government here: It "supports preparations and responses for public health emergencies and ensures that government and health officials have the authority they need to mobilize resources and take action to protect public health."

Of course, the modernizing of that act is something that we would support, with the caveat that we will be going through — over, I'm sure, a period of days in committee stage — the details of this very long and important bill. I think that when the government tables such a bill more than halfway through a session, they would expect nothing less.

In fact, I think that if we spent the time on this bill, because I think it's very important that this bill become law after we've gone through the details of it…. It's very important, clearly, what that means. The government, I think, would agree with me that this is extremely important, and that committee stage debate on this bill should have priority over the other bills during the days that follow.

It means, of course, that other legislation that's perhaps less important than the modernization of the Public Health Act will be dealt with in a fall session. We've said that we won't stand in the way of that, that we'll have a very lengthy but serious debate about the Public Health Act at committee stage. The minister, I know, will be delighted and interested in that — in fact eager, I suspect, to have that debate. That may mean, of course, that other bills, as our parliamentary calendar suggests, will be put off till the fall session.

One of the most important issues about that…. This is normal because, as the minister says, it's not like public health laws haven't been changed since the 1890s. The minister made no critical comments about the 1890s, but I think we know that laws….

A. Dix: The minister likes the 1890s. He prefers a time before public health care and before public education. He seems to prefer that. He seems to prefer that time. It just goes to show, I guess, that the term antediluvian may well apply over there.

In any event, this bill, naturally, because this is an area where regulations were required, leaves a lot to the regulation. I think that's another reason why it's very important. If you go through the bill, you'll see a lot of the provisions, in fact — those provisions dealing with health planning and reporting; those decisions dealing with inspection powers and emergency powers; health officials' inquiry in other matters; the administrative penalty provisions…. Many of them will be dealt with and brought into force and affected by regulation.

I think this is typical of many bills. It's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on what the provisions are. For example, if you were to put in by regulation that your access of information depends on the Minister of Health, then that might not be a good thing. That might be contradictory, in fact, with the whole idea. But in a general sense, of course, it's normal, especially in an area of public health, that one would need regulatory power.

But it's another argument…. The extent, I'd argue, of the regulation-making powers here in the act are a really compelling argument as to why we need to have a very long and very fulsome debate on this legislation at committee stage — that we be allowed to do that. I know the government, by bringing in the bill in April and calling it today, understands that that is required and, in fact, wants that debate to take place and will make the changes to the legislative calendar required to allow that debate to happen.

Many of the groups who have been involved in this have also indicated their support in a general sense for the legislation. Those groups include the Canadian Mental Health Association, which indicated its support but, again, with the caveat of the need for resources because of the requirement for planning to address mental health and addiction facilities.

If that's the caveat, if that's what we need to do, then surely what will flow from that are the resources to do so. It seems to me that the critical issue of resources, of access, was highlighted most dramatically recently by a report by the Vancouver police department. Just indicating from what the Canadian Mental Health Association said and taking a look at the Lost in Transition report, what that report shows and what it attempted to quantify was the prevalence in Vancouver policing calls of people suffering from mental health issues.

It took a two-week period, and it was quite an extraordinary report that I think had a real impact on the public understanding of mental health issues in Vancouver and their consequences to the broader public debate beyond the actual application of mental health services — that it is not neutral. It's not just the people not receiving those services that are affected, but it's every police officer that's affected. There's public safety that's affected. The whole community is affected, just as they're affected when our brothers and sisters, our fellow citizens, don't have access to the care that they need.

What the report discussed was the consequences for the mentally ill who come into contact with police and the gaps in the mental health system leading to the overwhelming number of calls related to mental health. The report was actually a survey. They reported over a period of 16 days in September 2007. Of the 1,154 calls in that period, 31 percent involved at least one mentally ill person, a number which increased significantly in some areas of the city such as the downtown east side where 49 percent of calls involved mental health issues.

For the police department, not for anyone else, the estimated costs of this over a year are $9 million. Consider this: 90 full-time police positions. And this is without counting the tens of millions of dollars of indirect costs that come out of this lack of services.

What this says to me — and it's something that I think will characterize this debate — is a concern not just with the legislative framework that we're talking about here but, more than that, about the effects on real people of the lack of real services that flow from the plans that are set out in the system. We, of course, need services directly to help people.

It's great that people are concerned in Victoria about the problems of people suffering from mental illness in Ladysmith or in Vancouver, but what the people who suffer from mental illness need are places to live and supports to help them get well or to cope with their mental illness. That's what they need. You can't have one without the other.

The report goes on to say — I think this is important — that current options for the interaction between the police and the mentally ill…. Well, one of those is jail. If anyone thinks that the number of people in jail is not a determinant of the health in society, they're wrong. Recent reports indicate that the mentally ill form 40 percent of the prison population. The impact of that is enormous.

There was a series of recommendations made. I know my colleague from Vancouver-Kensington will go through this in detail. This disconnect between legislative action and practical reality is a key part of our view of public health that I think will form a key part of our alternatives under this legislative basis that we are passing today in this Legislature at second reading and then dealing with in detail at committee stage.

The reasonable plan to address public health has to include a plan to ensure equality of access to services and equality of access to opportunity. It matters to public health that they have a giant playground in St. George's but not one at Graham Bruce. It matters to public health — this growing inequality, this divide between the access to health care services and to other services in some of our communities and the lack of it in others, the growing inequality in terms of income levels. They matter to public health.

I think we were all horrified and fixated by what happened in New Orleans. What it said is that when the kinds of catastrophes happen that would need to invoke provisions of this public health care act…. If you haven't dealt with those matters of inequality now, if they don't become part of the non-legislative basis for a public health act now, if you don't respond by raising the minimum wage now, if you don't respond by ensuring that farmworkers have employment standards which are vital to their social determinants of health now, then your ability to use legislation and your ability to use the legislative provisions of this act to deal with those issues will in fact be undermined.

What we need as we pass this legislation, which we support on this side of the House, is a renewed commitment to address the problem of inequality that has been highlighted as recently as yesterday when we again were found to be leading Canada in child and family poverty. If we don't do that, then our systems may be great, but our results will not be.

We need a renewed focus. I think it's fair to say that many of the people, some from groups that the minister has criticized — B.C. Health Coalition, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, other groups and the hundreds of people from those groups who took up the challenge to participate in the Conversation on Health — said that the social determinants of health are critical.

I just leave by reading them: income inequality, social inclusion and exclusion, employment and job security, working conditions, contribution of the social economy, early childhood care, education, food security and housing. The way to implement and ensure that this legislation has the effect that we all desire is to address those determinants. That's the lesson.

The Public Health Act has been generated by years of discussion. It surely didn't come out of the Conversation on Health. No one could possibly make that argument.

What did come from the Conversation on Health was the determination of citizens to say to their government that growing inequality is affecting the quality of access to care and, more important than that, affecting the health outcomes of real people.

Those nine social determinants and others that flow from them and the interaction of those social determinants will have a profound impact on the success of this legislation — as I say, legislation we support.

We will continue to focus in this second reading debate on the profound disconnect between the lofty goals of the act and the growing inequality that we're seeing in British Columbia society.

D. Chudnovsky: I'm pleased to speak today about Bill 23, the Public Health Act. I need to begin by saying, in very general terms, I'm very pleased indeed that the government has brought before us an act which draws attention to, makes improvements to and points a way forward in the issue of public health in the province. I'm pleased for two reasons. Two reasons push me to be pleased about the introduction of this bill.

The first reason that I'm supportive of an initiative with respect to public health is that the whole concept of public health, the whole set of principles on which public health policy is based, is good policy. Preventative, community-based, broad-based, front-end-loaded public health or health policies are the most effective. We are making good policy when we front-end-load the resources available for public health, for health, and when we provide those resources at a community level and set ourselves the task of developing policy that meets those principles and those visions.

The first reason for being supportive of the government's initiative in this area is that, in very general terms, public health as a concept is good policy — better to expend the resources of the community on public health initiatives than acute care initiatives at the other end. That's rear-end-loaded expenditures. We know, from all the work that's been done in the area of health outcomes, that front-end-loaded resources are more effective and efficient. So that's the first reason I'm supportive.

The second reason that I'm supportive of initiatives in public health at this particular moment is because we have, in the area that I'm particularly concerned about — mental health services, addictions services and homelessness — a crisis of public health. We have a public health crisis in this province. We have a public health emergency in this province when it comes to mental health services, addictions services and homelessness.

So when a government, any government, even this government, comes forward and says that they will draw attention to and provide initiatives in the area of public health at the same time as we have a public health emergency when it comes to mental health services, addictions services and homelessness, everybody has to be pleased. Everybody has to be pleased about that.

These two reasons — good public policy; we're facing a crisis — push me to be supportive in general terms of the legislation that's before us. Now I want to look at a number of the specifics of the legislation and put forward some caveats, put forward some concerns, put forward some worries that I and we on this side of the House have about the legislation.

I want to do that by looking at some of the changes that are included in the legislation. For instance, this legislation says that the minister may require that a public health plan be made to monitor the health status of the public and factors influencing public health to prevent communicable diseases or health hazards or to protect or promote public health or for other necessary reasons.

That public health plan — it doesn't say so in the quotation that I've just put before the House — that the legislation refers to and that that quotation referred to is a municipal public health plan. So the minister may require that a municipal public health plan be put into place. Now, that might be a very good idea. I think that with the proper understandings and the proper constraints, it could easily be a good idea that the minister may require that a municipal public health plan be put in place. But the worry I have is that without resources, municipalities aren't able to make that public health plan mean anything very much, except words on paper.

It's important that if government, senior government, require of municipalities that they take action, that those senior governments provide the resources necessary to take those actions. It doesn't make sense. This government, as we know, has a history of doing this, has a history of downloading responsibilities to municipalities, to school boards, of downloading responsibilities without at the same time providing the resources necessary.

So while on the face of it we can support in a very general sense the notion that the minister can require of a municipality to have a public health plan — yeah, not

a bad idea — it's just words on paper if the resources are not available to the municipalities to do what's included in the plan that the minister could require.

A second element. The minister will set the terms of reference for the plan, including who prepares the plan, the purpose, the issues to be addressed, the geographic area of the plan, those who must be consulted, how the plan is to be coordinated with other plans, the outcome of the plan and anything else necessary. The minister can require public bodies to develop plans, including regional health authorities and local governments.

Now, that one sure sounds like this government. That one sure sounds like this government. It is a government that is intent and has been intent on micromanaging the actions of municipalities and school boards while at the same time not providing the resources necessary for those bodies to do the work that needs to be done.

So in a general sense, is it a good idea for a Minister of Health to be able to require municipalities to have a public health plan? Yeah, in a general sense, that's a good idea. Should the minister at the same time or contemporaneous with his or her ability to require a plan provide the resources necessary? Yes. Should that minister intervene in the detailed requirements of that plan? I'm not so sure. General guidelines, resources and accountability? I'm okay with that. That sounds a lot like the Canada Health Act, actually. General principles, resources and accountability — isn't that the model? But not micromanaging without resources, which it sounds like this government….

Cabinet may develop regulations to facilitate the implementation of the plan, such as requiring people who are making legislative decisions to consider the plan or restricting or placing conditions on licences or permits or restricting exercises of powers.

Again, maybe that's an okay idea, but if we're requiring of boards, municipalities and other bodies in the province that they take specific kinds of actions, then it seems to me that the government has the responsibility to provide the resources necessary to, in fact, take those actions, or else it's just words on paper.

I wanted to take a few minutes to speak to this issue of public health with some specificity. I said a minute ago that initiatives with respect to public health are a good idea because we face right now, today, in the areas of mental health, addictions and homelessness, a public health emergency in British Columbia. So it is fitting that government would bring forward initiatives with respect to public health, would create a structure, a superstructure, within which public health policy would be promulgated — fair enough. But we've got to get down to brass tacks.

We've got some problems in the province in these areas, and I want to spend a few minutes talking about those. The Vancouver police department recently…. This is the Vancouver police department. It's not the opposition. It's not the health coalition. It's not the health care unions. It's not the opposition Health critic. It's not the opposition. It's the Vancouver police department that recently put forward a study about this very question of the crisis, the emergency in public health when it comes to addictions and mental health and homelessness in the city of Vancouver. They said the key finding of this research is that:

Now, that's an indictment of the mental health system as it exists in this province. It comes from the Vancouver police department.

So while we welcome initiatives put forward by government to modernize the Public Health Act, we request of government, we implore of government, that we have initiatives that modernize public health. The act is one thing.

We've got a crisis, an emergency, with respect to public health happening right now. The Vancouver police department tells us that. This minister and this government are responsible for public health, and we say that, together with initiatives in modernizing and streamlining the act, there have to be policies that deal with the current crisis emergency of public health when it comes to mental health and addictions.

The Vancouver police department report — not the opposition, not the health coalition, not the advocacy groups — says that up to 49 percent of all calls they attend in one of the sectors of Vancouver in which contact with an individual is made involves a mentally ill person. So we've got a situation. We've got a situation in which the police department tells us that there is a crisis in the availability of resources for people who are mentally ill and addicted and homeless in Vancouver and that in one of the regions of Vancouver, 49 percent of the calls that the police are making involve somebody who is mentally ill.

That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to send law enforcement officers to deal with health care. That's inefficient, inappropriate.

The VPD report goes on to say…. I want to focus on this quotation from the police — not the opposition, not the Health critic, not the health coalition, not the unions. The Vancouver police department says: "The downtown east side is a predictable example of what happens when people who need various levels of community support are left to fend for themselves." That's what the police have said to us.

While we welcome the government and the minister bringing forward legislation which modernizes and streamlines the act, we demand of this same minister that he bring forward policies that deal with mental health. The act — words on paper. People's lives, people's health are at risk. We have a crisis. We have an emergency.

In general, the Vancouver police department says this to us. This fact, the fact that the police are dealing

with mental health issues, is supported in current literature, where it's widely accepted that the police are, by default, becoming the informal first responders of our mental health systems. The problem with that is that the police aren't part of the mental health system.

We've got a situation in which police officers, by default…. They're doing the best they can. I live in Vancouver. I see the police officers every day doing the best they can to deal with a situation which isn't a police situation. It's not a policing situation. It's not a law enforcement situation. It is, in fact, a public health situation. It's a health crisis, and the police department has pointed that out very clearly to us.

So we say to government, to this minister, that the VPD report does several things at once. First of all, it's an indictment of the current state of public health, of mental health, addiction services and homelessness in the city. Secondly, it points to the reminder that this opposition is providing to the minister that it is not possible to deal with this crisis, with this emergency, without the appropriate resources. And thirdly, it reminds us, or it should remind the minister, that downloading those responsibilities without providing the appropriate resources is inappropriate and won't solve the problem.

Finally, if I may, I would like to quote a final time from the VPD report where they say: "Lack of resources. The final and perhaps most significant issue affecting the enforcement of current legislation is the lack of resources for people who are mentally ill." Madam Speaker, we need to listen to that report. The Vancouver police have told us that there is a lack of resources for those who are mentally ill.

I want to broaden the discussion a little bit, because I think that while the Vancouver police report is tremendously significant, it doesn't speak to the rest of the province. Unfortunately, the problem is worse in the rest of the province, and I have had personal experience in recent weeks with that.

I was at the Lookout emergency shelter on the downtown east side of Vancouver. I recommend highly to every member of this Legislature that you take a little bit of time and find, in your own community or in Vancouver or in Victoria, the time to visit an emergency shelter — and not just whisk yourself in and out of the emergency shelter, those places that are there as a temporary refuge for some of the homeless people in our community, for some of the 10,000 to 15,000 homeless people in British Columbia. Of course, there aren't nearly enough homeless shelter beds, temporary emergency shelters for all of the people who are homeless. But for some of that enormous number of homeless people in our province, we have emergency shelter beds.

I recommend to every member that she or he visit an emergency shelter and spend some time speaking to our neighbours, our neighbours who find it necessary to seek shelter in these emergency shelters. I was at the Lookout shelter in the downtown east side of Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, and I spoke to two people — one of them from Surrey and one of them from the Kootenays. I asked them what they were doing in the shelter, where they'd lived before and what happened that resulted in them taking refuge in the emergency shelter. They both said that they had mental health challenges for which there were no appropriate services, none, in their own communities.

So they were forced to come to Vancouver and stay in emergency shelters in Vancouver, when the appropriate and the most healthy thing for them to do would have been to find those services in their own communities, where they had family and friends who could provide the support necessary for them to be more successful. So it is not just a Vancouver problem.

I want to draw our attention to another report, a significant report that came out a couple months ago. The report comes from the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction in the faculty of health sciences at Simon Fraser University. It's called Housing and Support for Adults with Severe Addictions and/or Mental Illness in British Columbia. It has to be mentioned that in this report the authors, who are respected researchers and academics, estimate that between 8,000 and 15,500 people in British Columbia with severe addictions and/or mental illness are homeless.

Think about that. Between 8,000 and 15,500 people who have severe addictions problems or mental illness or both are homeless. What's happened is that the researchers have begun to use the figure 11,750, which is halfway between 8,000 and 15,500, as their estimate for the number of homeless people who have mental health problems, addiction problems or both.

Now, we know there are thousands of people in the province who have neither mental health problems nor addiction problems, who are homeless. So that begins to give us a sense of how many in the province are homeless. But they tell us that there are 11,750 homeless people in the province who have mental health problems, addiction problems or both — a staggering figure.

The week before last, the Fraser Valley homelessness count was announced. I think it's worthwhile mentioning just a couple of the results of that count. First of all, there was a significant increase in homelessness reported in the Fraser Valley count. That shouldn't be surprising to us, because that's the case in every community in the province — significant increases in the number of homeless people. It's a 364 percent increase in the number of street homeless in Vancouver since 2002 — increases everywhere.

Two other factors were announced as a result of that count. Some 35 percent of the homeless people in the upper Fraser Valley work at least part time, and 75 percent of the homeless people in the upper Fraser Valley call the Fraser Valley home, which gives the lie to this kind of urban myth that somehow the homeless people in our communities are from somewhere else. "They're not us. They come from somewhere else, and they travel to our communities to be homeless." No, they're us. They're us — the homeless people in our communities.

What did the SAMI report, Housing and Support for Adults with Severe Addictions and/or Mental Illness in British Columbia, have to say?

That's a question, Madam Speaker. In contrast to implementing solutions, what is the cost of the status quo? That's a question we asked directly through you to the minister. What the researchers are saying to us — and I'm sure the minister has seen the report; if not, I recommend it to him highly — is that the cost of doing what we're doing is way more expensive than providing the necessary housing and supports for people who are mentally ill, people who have addictions problems and people who are homeless.

Why? Why is it that it's cheaper to provide homes and supports than to do what we're doing? Well, the police department report told us. Think of the costs of policing, of the courts, of the jails, of the ambulances, of the emergency rooms, of the acute care beds. A report today in the media tells us that a quarter, 25 percent, of the beds at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver are filled with people with mental health problems or addiction problems who are homeless.

It's way cheaper to deal with the problem and provide housing and the supports necessary for those people who are housed to be successful than it is to do what we're doing. We recommend that to this minister and to this government, if they are concerned about the nuts and bolts of public health and not just the structure as defined by the legislation.

The same Simon Fraser report reported a list of challenges. I would argue that these are the challenges that are faced by government if they are serious about providing solutions to the mental health, addictions and homelessness crisis that we face today, right now, in the province.

First of all, the report argued for increased planning and communication. I would argue that that's very important. I want to say, based on the work I've been doing over the last couple of months and the travelling I've been doing across the province and speaking with service providers who deal with people with mental health problems and addictions challenges and homelessness, that there is an increased integration of planning and communication. But at the end of the day you can increase coordination all you want. If you don't have homes and services, it doesn't make a difference.

Income assistance. This report says income assistance is necessary. At $8 an hour or $375 a month for the shelter allowance, it's impossible. We need increases in both of those things.

Supply of low-cost rental housing. There's a crisis. All the talk in the world, all of the coordination in the world, all of the outreach workers in the world can't find people places to live unless those places to live exist.

"There needs to be a crisis orientation," said the report from Simon Fraser. There's an emergency right now, a crisis right now. Government has to set its mind to it.

Insufficient community programs and supports for people with addictions and mental health problems — that's what the Simon Fraser report said.

To conclude, while we support in general an updating and streamlining of the public health legislation, we say that what's more important to government is public health.

We've got a crisis. We've got an emergency when it comes to mental health services, addictions services and homelessness in this province. While we support this improved legislation, we say to government: your responsibility, much more important than changing the legislation, way more important than words on paper, much more important than updating old legislation from the 1890s….

The real responsibility, the real task, the real test is what government does to help people who are involved, who need public health help, our neighbours who have mental health challenges or addiction challenges and are homeless. So we ask of the government, we suggest to the government and we implore the government to take important steps in those areas.

C. Wyse: It is indeed my pleasure once more to be up in the House to speak on a bill — Bill 23, the Public Health Act — that is important. It is a bill that in broad generalities, I believe, is supportable. But as I share my thoughts here with the House, I have some cautions that I would like to share with you, Madam Speaker, and with the people here in British Columbia watching this important discussion taking place here.

There is no question in my mind on the importance of public health. There is, to me, a self-evident fact that when we have legislation that goes back to the '90s — in this particular case it is the 1890s since an overall comprehensive review has been done — it says that this legislation needs to have a review.

However, and I will return to this point later, one of the cautions I do have is that once more we have legislation here that is enabling legislation. What it does is allow the cabinet to take on the responsibility for developing the regulations, for actually putting the meat and bones upon this legislation.

As we know from previous discussions we've had in here, the cabinet is an arm of government that meets in secret. It does not make the rationale on how the decisions were made available to the population at large. It is done in a fashion that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the people of British Columbia to have direct input to this particular arm of government.

It's a very powerful portion of our Legislature's setup. Once more we are taking aspects that are important to British Columbians and removing where the decisions are made from a venue in which input is provided — and an ability to see what is happening. That raises three or four cautions that I find here in the bill and that I would like to share with you.

I've had a tendency to look upon the effect of this particular bill from my area of responsibility, from a

local government and community services overview. When you look at the bill, it contains within it the ability to override local government zoning bylaws that prohibit types of health services. In discussion that has taken place leading up to the development of the bill, it has been mentioned as examples that we'd be looking at types of health services such as needle exchanges or methadone clinics. That's one aspect of it.

The cabinet then ends up in a situation — presumably, the regulations that they develop — that in overriding the zoning bylaw that exists within a community, they have taken on the responsibility amongst themselves to determine where such a health service would be provided.

It raises this question, and it's a hypothetical situation. In the past we have seen situations in which the population have raised their concerns about this type of health service being in their neighbourhood. By having this responsibility now being passed on to cabinet, it does potentially raise the situation of an overall fairness.

When the cabinet looks upon where any opposition may be coming for such a service area, does a community have the assurance that the entire community will have the oversight, the protection assigned to it by the cabinet? I beg to draw this conclusion — that you do not have that assurance anymore because in the cabinet there is absolutely no guarantee that the community where the decisions are being challenged will have a cabinet minister sitting at the table to bring forward those community interests.

At the same time cabinet ministers, when they sit as members of cabinet, are sitting there with the responsibility to the cabinet, and they have left at the front door their responsibility for their ridings and the communities that in actual fact have elected them. It also raises the question: what about all of those ridings that belong to the opposition, whichever party that may be? This is a caution that I bring forward. When you have enabling legislation that removes oversight and puts it into secrecy, then the aspect of fairness also comes into play.

A second point that I would also like to bring up at this time and share with you is the responsibility for government at the senior level. Sometimes it's provincial, and sometimes it's federal, but most often the responsibility for the services being provided in health care belongs at the provincial table. When the provincial government doesn't provide for those services for mental health, for addictions and for homelessness, the results of that lack of services being provided are felt at the local government level.

Mr. Speaker, it's good to see that you're back. I'd like to acknowledge that you have joined me to hear my points that I'm making, and I wish to acknowledge Madam Speaker for having listened so attentively as you change the guard.

The point I'm raising here is that those services not being provided to the community leave the local government suffering the consequences. Last weekend I happened to be at a local government meeting of the Southern Interior Local Government Association. I had one of the local elected officials, a director of the TNRD, approach me about homelessness that has turned up in her area.

Now, this isn't a community. This is a rural unincorporated area, and the issue of homelessness has turned up in her area of responsibility. She was asking me, as the provincial elected person, what I could do to help support her in that area. I will get back to her, but the point I'm making here is that it's the local government that experiences the effect of public health services not being provided in their area. They are the ones that have to live with the consequences.

Remember that this legislation provides the cabinet with the ability to override the zonings of the local government. But I do not see in the legislation the provincial government taking on the responsibility for ensuring that the funding responsibilities for providing these health services also turn up and arrive there. So that is one of the cautions that I bring forward about this particular bill in front of us.

Secondly, the bill itself has removed the explicit power of local governments to sit as local boards of health to make orders to remediate a health hazard. I'm sure there is an argument that can be developed for this particular rationale, but by doing such, this has removed the ability of individual citizens to actually call in for the investigation of a health hazard. Now you have, in the legislation, removed that potential ability from individual citizens and incorporated it at the most distant decision-making aspect of government, of legislatures — at the cabinet level.

That is something that I believe is worth mentioning here. We have had an example at Chapman Creek where there was a health concern. The health officer was in actual fact in agreement that there was a health concern.

But now, as I read the legislation, the ability for local government to move upon that health hazard directly is removed, and this is what we now have for the plan. We have an individual who goes to a health officer, who goes to a designated person, and we now wait for the development of the regulations. We then determine at that point what will happen with the health concern.

At one point in time the only filter that was in place was the individual approaching the local level of government and then moving on that item, should the local level of government feel that it was necessary and prudent for it to move on it.

So I have those concerns. The concerns also go into other aspects of public health that have an effect on local government. We do know that public health is the best method of dealing with health situations if we're dealing with the preventative aspect of it, if it remains community based and if the resources are provided at the community level. I think there is unanimity on both sides of the House with those particular principles.

As I've pointed out, the community-based aspect of it has now been moved further away from the community

in the process of implementation. The question of funding for the services likewise remains there.

In the area of public health, the province has responsibilities — for example, in looking after septic field regulations. There's an aspect that the regulations that have been introduced by this government in 2005 have caused quite a wide range of issues and problems across the entire province. In doing such, the UBCM wishes to work with the government to have a large number of changes made to those regulations. This particular bill, when we look at the regulations that are developed, may provide the same set of encumbrances to looking after public health.

Noting the time, Mr. Speaker, I am going to very quickly wrap up at this moment in time, and I will be turning it over to my colleague. I wish to thank you for this opportunity to present my points of view, and I will reserve my place for after lunch.

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

Hon. R. Thorpe: I have the privilege to table the annual report of the Property Assessment Appeal Board for the year 2007.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF FORESTS
AND RANGE AND MINISTER
RESPONSIBLE FOR HOUSING
(continued)

The Chair: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Douglas Fir Room. Committee A is meeting for the estimates of Forests and Range.

Before I start, I would like to remind all members of the House to keep their comments and their side comments to themselves. There is to be no interaction with the gallery at all. The same rules apply in the small House as they do in the big House. Any member of the gallery that makes a noise or in any way interrupts the proceedings will be asked to be removed from the gallery.

I would like to point out to the member for Nelson-Creston to keep his comments to himself and allow the individuals on both sides of the House that have the floor to be able to make comment.

The Chair: Member. Member, all comments are through the Chair. You know, we're just going through this process now, and it's respect for the House and the way the House runs. So is it clear to the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke?

B. Simpson: Again, my thanks to the staff that are all coming in here, and we'll try and get through the remainder of the day. My understanding, for the Chair's edification and for the minister, is that we have until close of session today on these estimates. I guess we're still aiming for about 11:45 so that we can take it into the House.

The Chair: Yes. Member, the rules for the House are 15 minutes before the close of the day for the small House.

I'd like just to wrap up some of the work that we were doing yesterday on Pope and Talbot. Then I'd like to move on to tenures in general, and through that we'll canvass forest and range agreements and canvass B.C. Timber Sales issues. Hopefully, we can get on to some general issues of the coast today before we break.

With respect to Pope and Talbot, overnight I had asked whether or not we could get clarification if the court had ever been informed that the private lands in tree farm licence 23 were encumbered. Was the minister able to get that clarification?

Hon. R. Coleman: Yesterday — and I'll give this to the member, actually — the hon. member asked when the government had notified the court that the sale of the private land was encumbered.

Ministry of Forests and Range and Ministry of Attorney General staff have had discussions with a court-appointed monitor and made it clear that the private lands were subject to the TFL. They have also made it clear that the minister's approval is needed for the lands to be deleted from the TFL. It is clear that the monitor and the court understood that the lands are subject to the

TFL and that the approval from the minister must be obtained for the lands to be removed from the TFL.

For example, in the third monitor's report to the court dated November 28, 2007, page 14, paragraph 6.5.2: "In October 2007 the company submitted to the Minister of Forests and Range a formal request to remove the private lands from the TFL. Under the Forest Act, the approval from MOFR must be obtained for the disposition of the private lands if the private land is subject to a TFL."

It goes on to say: "The listings of properties in appendix C denotes which properties are included in the TFL and the requirement to have it removed prior to sale." The hon. member should be aware that there is a notation in the land title that indicates the land in question is also subject to the TFL.

B. Simpson: Thank you. That's a helpful clarification. Again, just for the public record, a lot of the questions that we ask in estimates are on behalf of other people that are seeking that clarification. It's good to have the clarification on the public record. We can then ship it out to them, which is what we do. We take Hansard and give it to the various stakeholders that ask us to bring those things forward.

With respect to the timing of the approval, when can we expect the minister's decision on the removal of these private lands from TFL 23?

Hon. R. Coleman: At this point in time, there's been work done with communities, first nations, etc. It's on the deputy's desk. It hasn't come to mine. My folks have been advised, even subject to yesterday's debates, that prior to it coming to me it has to go out for some public meetings within the communities.

So there is no time line for that. It's not going to happen this week, next week, or whatever the case may be, because we're obviously here until the end of the month. I would anticipate that the request for the decision, which doesn't necessarily mean the decision gets made one way or the other, is some time away, but it's not imminent today or tomorrow, sort of thing.

B. Simpson: Yesterday, there were some questions about which first nations…. I assume the Okanagan Nation Alliance is part of the consultation process. That's who we have had correspondence from as recently as February of this year. So they're part of the first nations consultations?

Hon. R. Coleman: To the member opposite, and I may have some trouble with some of the pronouncing of some of these names because I don't have the phonetic ones, the Adams Lake Indian Band, the Ktunaxa Indian Nation Council, Little Shuswap Indian band, Lower Similkameen, Neskonlith Indian band, Okanagan Indian band, the Penticton Indian band, Shuswap, Splats'in, Westbank, Okanagan Nation Alliance and the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council have all received communication with regards to this from the ministry.

B. Simpson: Again, I want to be clear. The minister has indicated that, in this case, public meetings will be held in advance of the release of the private lands?

Hon. R. Coleman: We will go into a couple of the affected communities, and people can come to those meetings. But yeah, we'll go into one or two communities and have a public meeting with regards to the lands in the TFL.

B. Simpson: I guess for the sake of the people on Vancouver Island: Why? Why is this happening now? I mean, it's great that people are going to be consulted with, but why didn't this happen on Vancouver Island? That's what we've been saying all along. The people of Jordan River have had to take to the streets because this didn't happen.

I would like an explanation on the public record. Why the change of heart? Why, when you've got a small amount of private land in the Interior — the last bit of private land, really, of any substance or value — that's left in tree farm licences, are we now going to turn around and consult with the public, from the perspective of the minister anyway? We're happy that he's going to do that, but it should have been done on Vancouver Island. Why the change of heart?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, I'm not going to get into the debate about what happened with the other TFL, quite frankly. The member read into the record yesterday the report that came that there may be minimal public response to this. I think it was the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin. We just felt, after going through that, that we could try and improve our processes, so that's what we're trying to do as we learn as we go along.

We had contacted local communities in this area and, frankly, haven't received much response, so we thought the best way may be, in this case, because we're not getting the response, to go to the community and have a meeting and see what the thoughts are with regards to this TFL.

B. Simpson: Well, again, we've got too much to canvass to keep beating this around. I'm glad that you're going to go in and do that.

I've got e-mails. My e-mail inbox got full, just as other members' from the Kootenays did when this hit the press, so I find it hard to believe that there hasn't been much feedback. Maybe it's just coming to us and not to the ministry.

The reality was that when the Weyerhaeuser deal was done, there was considerable backlash around those. So that lesson should have been learned between the former Forests Minister and this Forests Minister before the Jordan lands were released.

Anyway, we have to move on because of time. With respect to the TFL 23 transfer to Interfor, will the silviculture obligations that have accrued to Pope and Talbot continue with Interfor? Will they continue to hold those obligations?

Hon. R. Coleman: The answer to that question is yes, but I do want to read this into the record, for the member's information: "A number of local community representatives attended a conference call on November 1, 2007." I'll just repeat that just in case the member was distracted.

B. Simpson: I was distracted at the beginning of the minister's comments. Will the silviculture obligations be passed on?

The next question on this is the status of the Interfor deal and the status of the two mills. Now, Interfor has communicated to the workers there that they may not run those mills for some time or until the market turns around. There are issues, then, for Celgar. There are issues for logging operations and so on.

There are also the considerable questions around all of the independents who operate in that area and whether or not they'll be able to secure the kind of fibre supply agreements that they had with Pope and Talbot, because they did log trading to get the log profile that they needed. There are also questions about whether the northern portion of the cut will end up going to Adams Lake and therefore will end up starving the Castlegar and Grand Forks mills of the fibre that they need to be operational.

Is there any consideration on the part of the minister — because we used to do this with TFL transfers and mill closures — to go into communities and have Interfor hold public meetings where they give a report to the public about what their intentions are for those public forest licences and for the future of those operations? Is the minister in any discussions with Interfor where Interfor is going to be asked to do that kind of public discussion and consultation?

Hon. R. Coleman: It's not required under the transfer. It hasn't been required under the transfer. My understanding is that Interfor has had some conversations in the area with different folks, and what we can do is encourage them to do something along the lines the member describes.

I've had no indication whatsoever, quite frankly, from the company or anybody other than the comment the member makes that any of this wood is going to Adams Lake. As a matter of fact, they're in the process of asking for a subdivision of another licence in the Interior to accrue additional fibre for Adams Lake through that. My understanding is that they would have more than enough through that than through Adams Lake. So I wouldn't anticipate that that would be the case.

I think this company feels that it has some responsibility to communicate. I know that their people have been over in the Kootenays talking to folks, and I'll have a discussion with the company in that regard.

This company is a corporation that I think wants to make the green timber and the opportunity in this area of the province work. I think that's why they made the long-term investment to do this deal. They see it as a long-term opportunity, given the issues in and around the mountain pine beetle and basically, also, the closeness to market and transport. They see some opportunities here. At least that's what I was told after they made the decision to go after this area of the province, and I would have to take them at their word on that.

Frankly, I don't know what their process has been the last couple months, but I can certainly check with the company.

B. Simpson: Again, there used to be formal processes. It was the changes in 2003 that removed those formal processes. So the communities got an automatic input into what was going on with the private lands.

I want to just finish up some things on private lands, some questions that are out there with respect to removals on Vancouver Island. Then I'll come back to Pope and Talbot under some general questions about tenure.

Are we paying any of the companies that we release private lands to — TimberWest, Island Timberlands, Western Forest Products — for access to Crown land through their road system, and if so, how much are we paying?

Hon. R. Coleman: The policy is that when we do this…. It's like we did with the Western one. We got $2 million for the road, 17 kilometres, which was the major access, so that we could get to Crown land and for recreational purposes.

There is the occasion where it's more convenient to take another road that we don't have on private lands to access a fibre supply, and at that point, road charges would apply. We don't have the information as to when that's happened in the last year or so, but it isn't unusual. It's no different than going across anybody's private land. We would do that if we needed to access a cutblock in an area that would take us off the roads that we either controlled or owned.

B. Simpson: I guess for some of the people in the Port Alberni region, where a lot of those lands were under TFL control, they find it unacceptable that we're now cutting cheques to get through some of those now private lands. It would be good if we could get some information on how much it does cost the ministry,

particularly through private lands that have been released from tree farm licences and that are now private lands, whereas we didn't pay for that before.

A final question on private land removals: does the ministry track the log exports from private lands that have been released, particularly to Island Timberlands and TimberWest? Does the ministry keep track of and differentiate the profile and the volume coming off private lands that the ministry released from tree farm licences?

Hon. R. Coleman: What we do is we track it by timber mark. Each private land has its own timber mark. We track that and then put it into our data. What we can do is actually generate a report from timber mark.

B. Simpson: I want to be clear, for the public record, why that question is being asked. It would be good to have that data, because when those private lands — there are 100,000-plus hectares of private lands on Vancouver Island — were under tree farm licence control, they were subjected to provincial surplus tests and provincial regulations for log exports. They would have been part of the provincial log export constraints.

The minute they were released, they become part of the federal constraints, and they're free and unencumbered from the provincial constraints. That's why we react the way we do in the Legislature when the minister says: "Well, don't worry about it. A lot of those log exports that are going out the door right now are from private lands." Well, yes, private lands released by this government from tree farm licences that otherwise would have been constrained log exports.

Those figures would be nice to have, because I know that the people in Port Alberni, in Campbell River and down south here are starting to be concerned about that. That flip of status from tree farm licence lands to private lands has increased and exacerbated log exports on the coast. The small volume of public land log exports, which I'll get into in a minute, is not the real story. The real story is how much of the log exports are coming off these released lands.

So those figures would be good to have. If the ministry can provide them, it would be good to have them from 2004 on so that we can see what has happened with log exports off private lands over that period of time since they've been released.

I want to move on to general tenure questions just now. We've got the situation where a number of tenures are in the process of flipping. A number of companies are in the process of closing down operations yet still hold tenures or forest licences. What appears, and we've been saying this for the last three years, is that we have now effectively privatized the public land base.

The tenures are basically assets that are held by the companies to cash out or to flip and trade when they see fit, but there are public policy considerations when these tenures do that or when companies make decisions. One of them right now is part of the Pope and Talbot deal, and that's the whole APP offer that may or may not go through. As it stands today, it's been withdrawn. There may be some other negotiations going on.

What I'm curious about is: when does that come? When do those kinds of tenure transfers come to the attention of the minister, and what role does the minister play in looking at who is actually going to get public land tenures? So when does the minister get involved in those things, and what filters or what scrutiny is given to the companies that are intending to get tenure in this province?

Hon. R. Coleman: Typically, the transfer of tenure arrives, first of all, in the ministry by an application or a request being filed by somebody to do so. The review is then done to see if there's any undue lessening of standing timber and chips relative to competitiveness. Then in some cases in the past, between the federal Competition Bureau and us, there have been some divestitures here like, for instance, the Hampton mill in Fort St. James. West Fraser had to divest itself because of when they did that on that deal.

The ones that are still outstanding…. There is the one in Fort St. James, which was a tenure transfer. We did advise that we felt the company could proceed because the transfer there would work for the mill up there. Now that the deal isn't going ahead, the transfer wouldn't go ahead, because it was basically part of the request.

We don't have an application there. We just had the inquiry, basically to say: "Could we do this?" The answer after the review was yes, but of course, now that's all changed in the courts in the last 24, 48 hours, so that will now be sitting in limbo.

There are no other ones that have actually been requested at this point in time.

B. Simpson: I'll come to the Weyerhaeuser one in a second. I want to finish the APP and the Fort St. James one.

Part of my question was the scrutiny put on the companies that are requesting tenure in British Columbia. Pope and Talbot, in this case, would flip it to a subsidiary of APP, a company that has lost FSC certification, that has defaulted in other jurisdictions.

What scrutiny was put on a company like that getting access to public land in British Columbia? Does the ministry actually sit and take a look at the company's track record, or does it simply say that this looks like it fits from a fibre flow perspective, so go ahead and do it? Do we scrutinize the company's record and make a determination on whether we think they will be good forest stewards and will act in the public interest in B.C.?

This is what is required from British Columbia. First of all, any debt to us as a province has to be paid. Secondly, they have to accept the silviculture liability and the environmental liabilities on the land base. They have to deposit with us the appropriate deposits,

which are a requirement, and they have to abide by our current laws as they operate on the land base, which we monitor as the Ministry of Forests.

B. Simpson: I don't think that gives a lot of comfort to the people of B.C., especially under FRPA, especially under the difficulties that we're having with professional reliance and making professional reliance work on the ground and especially given the fact that the government never increased compliance and enforcement capabilities as it promised. We've actually decreased compliance and enforcement since we introduced the Forest and Range Practices Act, and we've flatlined it going forward.

One would expect that some level of scrutiny on who's going to be a forest manager in this province with public forest licences would be expected. I guess that's too much to ask.

With respect to the APP deal, just to close that part off before I look at other tenure flips, has there been any consideration on the part of the minister to work with the company — Pope and Talbot in particular, not the buyer in this case — to figure out ways to make sure that both Mackenzie and, in particular, Harmac have sources of fibre available?

In Harmac's case that is a major stumbling block for anybody picking that mill up and investing in it. Before we talk about interference and going back to Skeena Cellulose…. That's not what we're talking about.

We're simply asking if every avenue has been explored, particularly in the Harmac case, although Mackenzie will be in the same boat. If Canfor stays down, if AbitibiBowater stays down, if the Fort St. James mill doesn't come up…. It's in the same circumstance. The minister should be aware that there's a pulp and paper report out there that says we have a significant fibre-supply shortage in the Interior for our pulp sector, post–mountain pine beetle.

Are we working to deal with that part of this deal, to structure the deal for the best possible success? It is within the minister's domain of experience or policy-making abilities to make sure that we try and get fibre to those two mills and, hopefully, make that deal more palatable for somebody to buy those mills.

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I wouldn't want to just couch the discussion with regards to this that a particular mill's only problem is chip supply — just so that we're clear.

We're actually working…. As the member says, it's not just a concern for the mills that the member mentioned, but it's also a concern for pulp and paper in general that the chip supply concerns actually exist in many parts of the province.

We're working with them to look at how we can do stuff with the logs and stuff to be able to meet their needs. We've met with some of the companies as recently as a week ago. We're working with those on the possible sources. We've asked our staff to continue to immediately investigate any concerns there are with regards to any chip supply relative to the two operations the member mentioned, to see how we can solve those if that's the issue.

My understanding right now is that the issue with regards to what's before the courts on these two mills doesn't have to do with that issue. It has to do with something more globally with regard to financing and dollars — whether they can leverage the dollars to actually buy. That's one of the issues in front of them, and it's because of some of the issues in and around, I guess, the global markets on lending. That's one of the things we were told overnight with regards to this.

Whoever is interested in any of these operations, we will be glad to sit down with them and identify where the long-term chip supply can come from and work with them to solve any issues with regards to it.

B. Simpson: I never meant to suggest that that was the only issue. But it is certainly one of the issues. You can do all the capital investment upgrading you want. If you don't have a steady flow of chips, it doesn't amount to much.

Moving on with the tenures. The Weyerhaeuser deal in Kamloops, as the minister is well aware, caused a lot of public concern about how that deal unfolded. Is the West Fraser deal with Weyerhaeuser public? How much did they pay? What is the nature of the transfers — all of that? Is that a public deal when those kinds of transfers occur?

Hon. R. Coleman: We don't even have an application on that one yet — on the transfer between the two companies. Any material, if there are negotiations, if it's subject to confidentiality between the two companies on what they're paying for — whatever — would become public because they're public companies. It would be a material change if the deal ever closed. At this stage of the game we don't even have an application.

B. Simpson: This is where I think the confusion comes for people, because there's a public announcement to the effect on the mill closure. As far as the public in Kamloops are concerned, the deal is done. That's how that announcement went forward.

West Fraser has bought the timber licences, the tree farm licences and forest licences. Subsequent to that, a portion of that was going to Interfor. That's what the Shuswap First Nation understand. That's what the mayor of Kamloops understands — that the deal is done.

I want to be clear. From the minister's perspective, that deal isn't done? And does that give room, then, for more public consultation before the deal actually gets signed?

Hon. R. Coleman: Just so we're clear to the member: the subdivision to Interfor is here. The transfer of the licence is not. They have not applied for the transfer of the licence.

The transfer has to go…. As I said earlier, it has to be reviewed from the standpoint of when it comes to us with regards to undue lessening of the standing timber and the chip issues with regards to that particular area, the competitiveness of the market, etc.

The companies have come to a financial arrangement. What they've announced is that they have an agreement of sale between them — right? It still has to, at some point in time, come to us for the transfer.

Our power is that we review the deal based on the basis of what I described, which is the standing logs and chips and competitive markets. Basically, we get the application. It's filed, and they have to meet the criteria, which is actually that any debt to us would be paid. Except for any silviculture liability, the appropriate land deposits would come to us under the current laws, etc.

That's where our power is. At this point in time, any companies can go and negotiate back and forth to buy something between the two of them. We're part of the process as they bring it to us. When we get the application, we'll deal with it.

B. Simpson: I wonder if the minister could clarify what he meant by "The subdivision is here."

Hon. R. Coleman: Evidently, I misspoke. So Weyerhaeuser, Weyco, has applied to subdivide a piece of one TFL that Interfor is interested in purchasing — a subdivided portion of that with regards to Adams Lake. That we have in front of us, but they have not applied to actually transfer the TFL at this stage.

B. Simpson: Does either the transfer or the subdivision require public consultation? As the minister is aware, Shuswap first nation has been trying to get access to more fibre in that area for some time. Is this an opportunity for them to get access to more fibre if this is open to public consultation?

Hon. R. Coleman: Yeah, the only thing that's required on this is consultation with first nations, which has been going on.

B. Simpson: So if I understand the minister correctly, the only criteria now on tenure transfers and the collapsing of some of these tenures…. In this case I had a long conversation with Wayne Clogg from West Fraser mills about that wood moving up in 100 Mile House and Williams Lake. He actually phoned me to let me know that some of those folks in those areas were very happy with that move and that, since Williams Lake was in my riding, I should be aware of that.

My response to him is that I don't think they're going to be very happy when we keep collapsing the wood flow down to four or five megamills spread around the province, and only four or five communities get to benefit from this wood. The mayors of 100 Mile House and Williams Lake won't be happy when the megamill in Quesnel becomes the place where the wood from the whole region starts getting manufactured in.

As I hear the minister talk about the criteria that's used in order to make these determinations, I don't hear any community impact assessment. In the case of Kamloops in 2006 — I don't have the 2007 figures — it was already a net contributor out, in its area, of a significant volume of wood. In the total harvest area — 3.6 million — over 2.1 of that harvest left the area, and they brought in 500,000. So they net about 1.6 million that was going out.

These licences are going to make it even more that's going out of those communities. So is there no community impact assessment done on these licence transfers?

Hon. R. Coleman: We review it, as I said, from the competitive point of view with regards to standing timber and chips. We can take it with regards to the competitiveness, with the competitive stuff, and federally. Basically, there is no requirement for a public process, and none is anticipated.

B. Simpson: Again, that's as a result of changes made in 2003, where the communities were cut out of the process. Now what we're going to see over the next little while, as far as I can tell, is the further collapse of this industry where fewer and fewer communities get benefits from it.

With respect to chips, is the Domtar pulp mill in jeopardy as a result of this wood moving to Adams Lake and up to 100 Mile House north?

Hon. R. Coleman: I met with Domtar. They didn't indicate that this would put their operation in Kamloops in jeopardy. They did have some concern about the shutdown of the mill because of the amount of waste that was available — the by-product of the sawmill. They're concerned, as other pulp mills are, with the downturn in the sawmilling industry and the availability of chip supply in general. They did feel that there were other suppliers that they could work with.

I understood that they were in discussions on the long-term issues with the Adams Lake people and that sort of thing. We've had lengthy discussions with all of these guys about them chipping pulp logs when there's a downside. Of course, the challenge of that, as the member knows, is it's more expensive to chip a log, even if it's 25-cent wood, than it is to get the waste from the mill.

That's a general concern for the pulp and paper sector across the Interior as the mills have slowed down and taken curtailments basically because of the market conditions. But Domtar, actually, I must admit, were very optimistic about the future of their mill and the future of their relationship in Kamloops. They were happy with their relationship with the community and felt that they had some great opportunities in co-gen, as well, and they were pursuing those.

In their case, I think they're in the short term as concerned as anybody about their chip supply, but they see the fibre basket as having pretty good potential for them in the long term.

With respect to another side of tenure, and that is when companies shut down processing operations, there used to be requirements in this province that that had to be dealt with through the minister. We had a Job Protection Commission. We had mill closure review processes that engaged the public. Again, the premise is that these are public forests, and they're supposed to return a good to the public and to the communities.

So we have a situation with AbitibiBowater up north that have closed their operations, and they're signalling that they're doing a restructuring. They, I understand, have a million cubic metre cut in that region. We have the situation on Vancouver Island with TimberWest, where TimberWest has gotten out of manufacturing — and I've said it many times, and I'll say it again — and have indicated that they're land developers and log exporters, and yet they continue to hold public licences.

So what happens in those circumstances, where you have public forest licence holders who are no longer doing what everybody believed that they got the public forest licences for, that is to create jobs, manufacture products and return benefits to the community?

Does the minister or his staff take a look at those circumstances and have discussions with those, or do we just wait for AbitibiBowater to put their forest licences up for sale and treat it as a cash commodity?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, AbitibiBowater…. I've met with them. They have issues with regards to a number of issues, including transportation costs and stuff with regards to that operation. As the member knows — I'm sure, because I think he mentioned it — they're actually looking at their overall business at this point in time to decide whether this mill is even in their long-term plans. They haven't made that decision yet.

The issue with regards to the tenure…. We don't force companies to operate. We don't say, you know, "You have to operate if you want to keep this fibre," because there may be a point in time when the company can't operate and then comes back into operation.

We maintain a five-year cut control. Any undercut can actually go back out into the marketplace for other users of that cut control if they're not using it. We talk to the company even during the five-year period. If they're not going to deal with the wood…. We've actually, at times, negotiated with them to take the fibre and put it into B.C. Timber Sales or something like that so we can move it some other way. We would continue to do that.

B. Simpson: Has volume been taken back as a result of the cut control and given to B.C. Timber Sales in the recent while — I guess since 2003, since the changes occurred? Has B.C. Timber Sales gotten volume from takeback of volume as a result of undercuts anywhere in the province?

Hon. R. Coleman: We're actually working on doing that right now with some undercut in the Okanagan-Columbia area.

B. Simpson: I want to come to B.C. Timber Sales here shortly, so I'm glad the man who knows all about that has joined the Chairs there.

I just want to be clear, though, that Abitibi is — and I agree with the minister's assessment — going through a restructuring. I know from inside the industry that the language I'm hearing, seeing and reading suggests that they are going to hive off those B.C. operations. In which case, then, if they actually shut them down — if they don't find a buyer for them and shut them down — is it the minister's understanding that they are holding a cash asset in the forest licences that they can simply sell on the open market to whoever wants to buy it — could be West Fraser, could be Canfor, could be Dunkley — and then move that wood to another place in the province? Is that a possible outcome of the situation with Abitibi?

Hon. R. Coleman: Technically, they could put the licence up for sale, and we would review the sale on the same terms as I described earlier.

B. Simpson: Again, I fear for what's going to happen in this province as all these licences start collapsing and we start to concentrate. My concern is that we will have a few high-volume, high-capacity dimension lumber mills producing to the U.S. That's what the industry is going to collapse to unless we figure out another way to free a lot of this tenure up for other ventures and other purposes. I hope I'm proved wrong.

Let's go on to the other aspect of tenure, and that's reallocation of tenure. Is the full takeback of the 20 percent complete? Has all of the 20 percent been taken back and paid for?

Hon. R. Coleman: The volume was obviously legally acquired some years ago. Now 99 percent of it has been identified, and 95 percent of it is complete on compensation. There is a small area that presently is under negotiation, and $285 million was set aside to compensate licensees for returning their logging rights to the Crown. To date $239 million has been paid out.

B. Simpson: Now, we've paid for the annual allowable cut takeback. Are we now also paying for roads and bridges? Is that separate to the amount that the minister just gave?

My understanding is that we now have another wave of payments. We are paying for roads and bridges and infrastructure. It seems like the industry keeps coming and asking for more money for this takeback.

Hon. R. Coleman: The number for the $239 million includes roads and landings and stuff like that. There are still some outstanding ones in the balance that some people think that…. One company, in particular, who I meet every once in a while…. I don't know what they pave them with, but they think that their roads and landings must be worth a lot more than what we're prepared to pay. So they are still out there, not getting far with their negotiations.

B. Simpson: There is that aspect of the reallocation. There is now a question of whether or not we actually paid for real volume. Has actual ground-based inventory been done?

My understanding is that we are now reallocating this volume. We'll get into that in a second. As the licensees get it, as B.C. Timber Sales gets it, they go out and try and find the volume, and they find it might not actually be there, that we may have bought magic wood.

Is that analysis being done — that we actually paid for volume that is real, that can be realized and reissued to other licensees?

B. Simpson: I guess I'll cover that off a little bit when I get into B.C. Timber Sales, because there is information within B.C. Timber Sales that they are struggling to find volume out on the land base in certain parts of the province. Maybe we'll have that conversation when we get to that.

With respect to the reallocation, the minister heard in Quesnel that one aspect of that reallocation was supposed to be going to woodlots for doubling the woodlot program. To my knowledge, that hasn't been done. He heard from John Massey in Quesnel that there are problems with actually being able to realize that.

Hon. R. Coleman: I was very clear with the woodlot association at their annual general meeting that I wasn't going to double the woodlot program. The reason for that is that I had made a decision as the minister to concentrate for now on community forests, to try and get more community forests their probationary licences out there and to move the community forests licences to 25 years.

Actually, ironically, one of the toughest places we've had to try and find a little bit of volume in an area that has some pressure is in the member's own backyard — for the Quesnel community forest.

We are planning an expansion to the woodlot program. We think it'll probably be about 25 woodlots a year for each of the next three years, but it isn't going to be the doubling.

Frankly, I was very clear to the woodlot association about why the decision was made. I just happen to believe…. When I looked at the volumes that were there, looked at the requests from communities versus woodlot association, looked at the volumes and said, "Where is the largest benefit…?"

The experience I've had as a minister is that I've seen great community benefit from community forests and felt that that was helping a larger number of people. Therefore, the priority, which I asked the ministry to concentrate on, would be community forests first and woodlots second.

B. Simpson: Thank you for that, and thanks for the clarification on that. I also fully support community forests. I think, though, the volume is questionable when they get small volumes out. I'd prefer to see them with much larger volumes in those areas, but I'll talk about general tenure in a second.

The other aspect of the takeback was the First Nations forest range agreement, and the minister did mention at the round table in Quesnel that there is a process that's going to be looking at that. But I have an open letter here to the minister from the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council on behalf of three of their bands. I'm sure that the ministry staff are well apprised, particularly of the Nadleh, who have led this, in that…. I don't want to get into all of the politics around FRAs and FROs and how great they are and so on, so let me cut to the chase on that.

In this letter it says: "At the recent First Nations Council summit in Vancouver in early March there was a unanimous agreement amongst the chiefs in attendance that the FROA strategy does not work in its present form." What the first nations are looking for is a long-term, area-based tenure, and that that legislation was to be coming forward in the next little while.

The Nadleh are also seeking redress to their particular situation, and they have a conflict with B.C. Timber Sales, as far as they're concerned, in their operating area. It's, you know: who's got volume, where is the volume, and can they operate at an operational basis?

They're asking for four things. I've had communications with them since the Prince George round-table meeting, and they believe that the minister's announcement at the round table only addresses the first. That's their belief. If that can be corrected on the public record, then that's good.

Stage 1. They believe that the minister is talking about addressing…. That is immediate implementation of the community forest tenure stumpage rates. Stage2 is a 100 percent rebate on all stumpage and annual rent payments. Stage 3 is legislation to create a long-term, area-based first nations tenure. Then, stage 4 is a revenue-sharing formula for other revenue derived from the forest land base in their territorial area.

If the minister could clarify, on the record, the process that he is talking about that should be forthcoming, when will it be forthcoming, and what of the

asks from the Nadleh and others in the Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council are going to be addressed in that process?

Hon. R. Coleman: Actually, I'm not going to comment on the details of the letter because I don't have it in front of me. Besides which, every one of those things that are described in that letter could be or are in some form of process with government. Some of it could be affected by treaty negotiations. Some of it could be affected by other international agreements or whatever the case may be.

I've met with these folks on a number of occasions, in Prince George in December. I met with a group of them, again, as the member mentioned, just a week or so ago. They had a number of issues in the meeting that I had with them. Certainly, there are committees in government that look at issues with regards to a rebate on stumpage, which would be — if that recommendation came up — a cabinet committee that would meet on that, on aboriginal relations and reconciliation.

With regards to revenue-sharing, that's a much larger discussion for the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation with regards to whether it's an interim measure to a treaty or whatever the case may be and way outside the purview of my ministry. What I've said to the first nations is that we've taken their recommendations with regards to FROs and the pricing and have prepared a paper that will now go forward to government.

I've told them very clearly that I'm not in a position to tell them what that decision will be, because it will be a cabinet decision with regards to the recommendations. At the same time, I'm not in a position to tell the member what the recommendations in the paper are, other than the fact that what I've told them is that those issues that they brought forward, and other options, have been identified in the paper.

The paper is actually a cabinet document and subject to cabinet confidentiality until such time as my colleagues have a chance to actually read it and make a recommendation on the final cabinet submission. Then at that point in time we would advise the first nation what the results of those discussions and recommendations were.

B. Simpson: Is there a time frame for that? One of the things that people struggle with is this perpetual two-week cycle. "You'll see it in two weeks; you'll see it in two weeks." Do we have any kind of a definitive time frame on when this will be released to the public?

Hon. R. Coleman: I mean, the member's language is wrong. It's not a release to the public. It's getting to the cabinet agenda. Cabinet agendas are set weeks in advance. The presentations by members of cabinet and the things that go on the agendas or are put on the agendas are the same thing. They're confidential. So it's not in my right to tell somebody what's on a particular cabinet agenda on a particular day or what week or month it will be on there. It's just not in my right because of the confidentiality that I'm sworn to as a minister.

Quite frankly, even if it was on an agenda for a cabinet meeting a week from now, that agenda could change. If some other priority hits government for whatever reason, then the agenda changes. All I can tell the member is what I've told the first nations. Our work is done, and it's going forward to the processes of government.

B. Simpson: Again, if the minister doesn't have the letter, I can get him a copy of the letter. It was an open one, I assume, that went to him as well. The frustration in there is that the Nadleh, in particular, feel that they've been trying to address this for the last three years.

My understanding is that some of the forest and range agreements come up for renewal starting this year. Are they going to be replaced with something new? Is that the intent, that we're going to have a replacement, or are we just going to roll them over because we don't have anything to replace them with? What's the thinking around the FRAs that come up for renewal?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, we're aware that some are coming up for, basically, the end of their five-year period this year, and we're working towards that deadline.

The second thing is that…. I'll tell the member this: it's not just us that took time with this particular file. We asked the First Nations Forestry Council to do an extensive amount of work, which they did, taking them back into the late fall of last year. We went back and had some other discussions with them with regards to FROs. They finally came to us with recommendations.

Those recommendations then went into a cycle where we have to look at the financial implications of government, because anything we do that can have impact on the fiscal plan has to both be looked at by Treasury Board and by our ministry with regards to our fiscal plan going forward. I've explained that to the first nations, and they've been quite understanding with regards to that.

As we've done that work, we've come up with our recommendations. The recommendations are now in the cycle to go to government for a final look and decision. I cannot tell you today what those recommendations are, because that would, like I said, breach the confidentiality of cabinet — or the agenda or when it's arriving. I can tell the member we're aware of the deadline. We're working towards that.

We're working on options if one doesn't match up with the other, what we would do with a renewal or something to hold a first nations hold if there was a situation where one expired in the meantime. But we think we're going to match up. We think we're okay with our cycle. This is a bigger issue than just saying: "Do one or two things."

It's been a lot of work. I actually commend the First Nations Forestry Council which has done two things on behalf of first nations. They've not only done a lot of

work, and we've given them funds to do the review, but they've also done a lot of work trying to work with individual first nations groups across the province to try and get some consensus, I believe, with regards to what the future of these things may look like.

Having said all of that, there are still some differing opinions between some first nations groups as to what one should look like versus another in the future. I think that will always be some challenge because you have 150 different bands and their leadership and councils, some who may have a different perception as to how they want this to look. We're trying to get to something that works for most of them. The others…. We will work out those issues as we go through them.

I've been very clear with the first nations that our work is done at the forestry side. We've put it into the cycle of government. It will get on an appropriate agenda, I would believe, in the not too distant future. But frankly, given what other agendas may be in government, when we get to actually get it there is up to the planning schedule of cabinet.

B. Simpson: First nations have asked for some kind of area-based, long-term tenure. In the coast forest action plan, there's a statement in here that the government is considering, on the coast, a shift from volume-based tenures to area-based tenures.

We have a bill before the House on a bioenergy tenure. We have, as we canvassed yesterday, a restricted non-renewable forest licence that's a form of tenure. We have the BCTS process. We've got woodlots coming on stream. The minister is going to put some more community forests out.

Meanwhile, in the background, I just got a copy of apparently what is the deputy minister's discussion paper on forest tenure. Inside the ministry there's a forest tenure document floating around which says that maybe we start to think about tenures from a whole different perspective.

My question to the minister…. Maybe this is where the chief forester's "privatize the public land base" comes from, because…. I don't see page numbers on this. "Is British Columbia up to the challenge?" is the subheading for this portion of what I'd assume to be the deputy minister's forest tenure discussion paper, and: "Should it privatize parts of the forest while strengthening its ability to effectively regulate the sector?"

There are a bunch of options in here. Some of them appear to be quite intriguing, but we have all of these tenures, as we'll see when we get into the mountain pine beetle area. Overlapping interest areas and tenures are causing grief as to whether the volume is actually there. We're issuing new tenures, when people are saying: "Wait a second. We've got to rationalize the tenure system."

The minister mentioned yesterday that the round table has tenure as part of their discussions. It wasn't in their terms of reference, so that was a bit of an interesting revelation. But tenure in the province of British Columbia ought to be a public discussion and ought to see the full light of day in the public domain.

Is the minister going to conduct a specific tenure discussion in the province of British Columbia? The people of British Columbia own those forests, and I think they have a right to be engaged in that debate in a meaningful way as soon as possible. Is there going to be a public discussion about tenure reform, or is it only going to be within the purview of the Ministry of Forests and behind the closed doors of the round table?

Hon. R. Coleman: I don't want the member to couch something unfairly to the public that's not happening. Let's be clear. The chief forester's thing was an Internet communication just with questions for people's thoughts. It wasn't saying: "We're making tenure reform." It was saying: "What are your thoughts about tenure? Give us the answers to these questions." We actually like to hear from our people once in a while. That's what we're trying to do — just talk about ideas.

The member is saying that he's surprised because it's not in the terms of reference of the round table when they're talking about the future of forestry. I would have thought that any one of us thinking about the future of forestry would think that at some point in time in that discussion somebody would raise the question of tenure reform. There's no process in place that's going to say that we're going to go into tenure reform.

My opinion would be…. If it was one of the things that the round table thought that government should look at in the future, in December this year, I would think that that is one very large, very lengthy discussion with the entire province of British Columbia. Quite frankly, it's for a number of reasons.

For one, as the member says, we are used to a certain form of management of our lands. A tenure reform would be such a big shift that I think we'd have to have those discussions with ourselves — in public, across the province. The second thing is that tenure reform has a dramatic impact on first nations and on what may be rights and title and all of those issues.

That is not one that I would suggest would be a short-term, simple thing. Nobody is going to go out and reform the tenure system tomorrow. Nobody is going out to reform the tenure system as a result of the next few months. However, I wouldn't be surprised, having already heard from six communities and some people's comments with regards to tenure…. They're pretty diverse, quite frankly, which would mean that it's going to be a pretty diverse discussion, which oftentimes has you default to what you're comfortable with.

I would never think of prejudging or saying that we're going to go into a tenure reform in any way whatsoever. Certainly, if it happened, if there was going to be that discussion, it would have to be one of the widest-ranging discussions, I think, that the public would have in B.C. in a long, long time.

B. Simpson: I agree wholeheartedly with the minister. That's my point. While the minister says that that's an internal conversation going on with the Ministry of Forests, the fact that it's going on, the fact that the coast action plan says that the shift in tenure is possible…. In

fact, there are a whole bunch of other tenures that are going out there that will have legal implications. I know we can't get into the actual legislation because of the rules of the Legislature, but especially a bioenergy tenure has significant implications.

Meanwhile, you've got these rumblings that part of the problem — and I believe it is a fundamental part of the problem with the structure of the industry just now — is the tenure system. So I hope that the minister does follow through on his comments.

I have looked at the round table website. Every community that the minister has been in has said "tenure reform." I know there are diverse views about what that looks like, but if we're going to embark on this, it shouldn't be just be within the Ministry of Forests and Range, or it shouldn't just be in the context of the coast action plan. It should be a full public debate and some form of meaningful dialogue with British Columbians. On that I fully agree with the minister.

We have come out and said that tenure reform is a big part of the agenda that we have put forward, that it has to happen and that it can do all kinds of things, including the possibility of making the softwood lumber dispute go away if you do it right.

We've only got a couple of minutes left. I want to do a couple of quick operational questions. I'll come back to B.C. Timber Sales afterwards. There are rumblings about some office closures, potentially Kamloops and Prince George — some offices or some services being retracted from those two communities. Will MOFR be taking any services out of those two communities?

B. Simpson: My understanding is that there is going to be a shift, though, from Victoria to Kamloops for the protection branch. Is that correct? What is the reason for that shift, and what are the costs associated with that shift?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, because I thought it made sense. I don't think that government always has to have all its operations confined to the city of Victoria, particularly with regards to fire control, when most of the forest fires in British Columbia take place in the interior of B.C. We already had our fire control operations in Kamloops. We felt that the provincial fire control office, aviation services, systems redundancy, and fire and weather forecasts — all associated with those positions and functions — could be there. This relocation approach will address, basically, our long-term operational and succession needs as part of our plans.

Nobody is affected job-wise. Those that wanted to relocate were allowed to. Some clerical staff and some residual policy people are still here, and they will be fine.

It's been one of the discussions within government to look at whether there are operations that might be better suited to be in other locations in cities across British Columbia. Frankly, my staff, when we had that conversation, looked at this one and thought that this one would make sense, and that's why we did it.

B. Simpson: I'll ask one more question, noting the time, because we do have to go into the big House.

I'll volunteer Quesnel for the next one. Whatever it is you're going to hive off, you can bring it in there.

One of the questions that's been raised about this, on a more serious note, is the question of losing some institutional knowledge. We experienced that when West Fraser decided to relocate a lot of the Weldwood head office into Quesnel. In fact, I was at their annual general meeting, and Hank Ketcham indicated that they did lose whole groups of people.

In this transfer are we going to be losing some senior people who will just not move? Are we going to be losing some institutional memory there and some experience that we need? Because fire — and, hopefully, we'll get to it this afternoon — is becoming an increasing threat, something that is a major forest health issue and a disturbance for us. So did we lose some folks in that process?

Hon. R. Coleman: We're pretty comfortable that we're doing this at a transition speed so that we will not lose a dramatic amount of institutional memory. You have to remember that we have a great deal of institutional memory already in Kamloops, where we've been running a fire centre for some time.

It's like a two-sided coin. We also believe that we will attract some people into this piece of our ministry who will actually find it, from affordability of housing and other opportunities, more attractive to be in Kamloops in the future than perhaps Victoria, where housing costs are higher. There may be a little bit of that, but we feel we have enough backup in the centre. Plus we also feel that we have enough of a time frame as we do this to make it work. We think that those are the benefits.

Noting the time, I move the committee rise, report progress and seek leave to sit again.

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