Hansard — Wednesday, May 7, 2008 p.m.

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Introductions by Members		12091

Statements		12091
	Anthony Humphreys
	Mr. Speaker (Hon. B. Barisoff)

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		12091
	Preservation of agricultural land
	M. Sather
	Child and Youth Mental Health Day
	M. Polak
	Foundation skills assessment
	N. Macdonald
	Ward Clapham
	J. Yap
	North American Occupational Safety and Health Week
	C. Puchmayr
	Bob McNary
	I. Black

Oral Questions		12094
	Disclosure of documents in B.C. Rail court case
	L. Krog
	Hon. W. Oppal
	B. Ralston
	Government action on forest industry
	D. Routley
	Hon. R. Coleman
	C. Puchmayr
	N. Macdonald
	Passenger safety on SkyTrain
	M. Farnworth
	Hon. J. van Dongen
	A. Dix
	Hon. K. Falcon
	Tenancy dispute resolution process
	D. Thorne
	Hon. R. Coleman

Notice of Motion		12098
	Committee of Supply to sit in three sections
	Hon. M. de Jong

Petitions		12098
	H. Lali
	R. Hawes

Second Reading of Bills		12099
	Health Professions (Regulatory Reform) Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 25) (continued)
	A. Dix
	H. Bains
	J. Brar
	H. Lali
	C. Puchmayr
	M. Karagianis
	Hon. G. Abbott
	Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 26)
	Hon. G. Abbott
	A. Dix

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		12129
	Estimates: Ministry of Forests and Range and Minister Responsible for Housing (continued)
	D. Chudnovsky
	Hon. R. Coleman
	M. Sather

Hon. G. Hogg: We are joined in the House today by two people who are making their first visit to Victoria. They are great contributors to the community of South Surrey–White Rock. Would you please welcome Ms. Bev Poole and Jack Boyce.

Hon. C. Richmond: I have some very special guests visiting us in the House today. I'd like the members to welcome Jeff Riley from CAYA, Communications Assistance for Young Adults; Susan Blockberger from the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication; Ms. Melinda Rundell and Peter Martin, who are recipients of some of their devices; Jill Elvins, Melinda's caregiver, and her husband Bruce Elvins. Would the House please make them very welcome.

N. Macdonald: This is a particularly special day for me. We have a class of students that have come all the way from Lady Grey Elementary School in Golden. They came by bus. That's Rogers Pass. That is Three Valley Gap. That is the Coquihalla. They know it all well. For some of them, it's their first trip on the ferry.

They are here with parents Larry Lindequist, Cheryl Beech, Barry Klassen, Heather Sadler, Neil Allkins, Wanda Johnson, Joe Devlin, Caroline Cuyler and of course their teacher Kara Hunt.

I want you to welcome the group that has travelled the furthest, I think, in the history of B.C. to watch us in action. So please join me in welcoming them.

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

J. McIntyre: I'd like to introduce two special guests today who are here in the gallery. They're very special to someone who is special to me, my excellent legislative assistant Cayley Brown. They are her grandparents Mac and Dorothy Atkinson, who are visiting here today from Nanaimo and whom I had the pleasure of meeting before they went to lunch in the legislative dining room.

I learned that this month they will be celebrating their 85th birthdays as well as their 59th wedding anniversary. I would like the House to join me in congratulating and welcoming them today.

Mr. Speaker: Members, I want you to pay close attention to this next introduction, because you know how proud I was when my first granddaughter Kayla was born. The Minister of Tourism and Sport has a special announcement to make.

Hon. S. Hagen: I have two introductions today. The first one — I would like to introduce her to the world, actually. Born this morning at 9:35, our first granddaughter.

In the legislative precinct today we have a group of 40 grade 10 students from Mark Isfeld Secondary School in the great Comox Valley. The students are accompanied by their teacher Mr. Barry Walker as well as some parents and chaperones. I look forward to meeting with them in my office after question period. Would the House please join me in making them welcome.

D. Hayer: I have three special guests here today. The first one is Dalminder Del Virk, notary public. He's the director of the B.C. Notaries Public and a community leader in Surrey who's really helping the community out. The other ones are Wayne Braid, executive director of the Society of Notaries Public of B.C., as well as Kenneth Sherk, president of the Society of Notaries Public of B.C. Would the House please make them very welcome.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, as you know, Tony Humphreys, the Sergeant-at-Arms, has been absent from the chamber for several weeks. I'd like to inform members that this afternoon Tony is undergoing multiple bypass surgery at Royal Jubilee Hospital. His surgery is likely occurring right now as we speak. I know that the members will want to join me in sending Tony the best wishes for a speedy recovery.

M. Sather: Farmland is one of the most valuable resources we can have in our community. Local economies rely on it being used wisely for agricultural production and other agriculturally oriented farm-

income-generating pursuits. In my communities, Pitt Meadows — the sixth-largest agricultural area in British Columbia in terms of economic significance — has annual gross farm receipts of just over $50 million. In Maple Ridge the annual gross farm receipts are approximately $39 million.

Farming contributes to the local economy, provides greater food security, protects environmental values, maintains rural character, supports local business and provides local employment. Farming can bring tens of millions of dollars of economic value to communities with varied production of anything from berries to dairy.

As a result of the Agricultural Land Commission Act in 1972, approximately 4,744 hectares of land were initially reserved for agriculture in Maple Ridge. In 2003 that total consisted of 3,679 hectares, or approximately 14.3 percent of the area of Maple Ridge. This represents a 24 percent reduction in land base since the ALC was established, in comparison to a 7 percent decline for the whole of the Lower Mainland.

Preserving our agricultural lands is a high priority for citizens around the world in an age of peak oil and rising costs. We know what we must do. The challenge for governments, however, is to commit to preserving and conserving agricultural lands for our future so that we may all survive and thrive.

M. Polak: When we consider the health of our children and youth, we most often think of their physical well-being. We're much less likely to think of the significance of mental illness in the lives of our young people.

In reality, mental illnesses surpass all other health problems in terms of the number of children affected and the degree of impairment. One in seven, or an estimated 140,000 children and youth, will experience a mental disorder serious enough to cause significant distress and impair their functioning at home, at school and with their peers and family.

Today we recognize Child and Youth Mental Health Day. Through its proclamation, we seek not only to raise awareness but also to provide hope and support to those who can often feel hopeless and unsupported.

Over the past five years, we've witnessed a significant shift in how children's mental health is approached in B.C. There's a greater emphasis on prevention through initiatives like the Friends program, which has served 90,000 grades 4 and 5 students through a partnership with the Ministry of Education.

There's a renewed vision for early intervention as the child and youth mental health plan has been implemented. Public education has been enhanced through a partnership with the Knowledge Network and the Children's Health Policy Centre. Sexual abuse intervention programs have been assisted through training and new standards of quality and consistency.

As a province we've recognized that without effective treatment, children and youth with mental health problems can be robbed of their ability to become contributing members of their community as adults. We've taken leadership in providing support to 19,000 B.C. children and youth with a mental health plan that's the first of its kind in Canada.

On this Child and Youth Mental Health Day, I know that my colleagues in this House join me in offering support, encouragement and hope to those who need to know that they are indeed not alone.

N. Macdonald: Last week The Vancouver Sun published a ranking of elementary schools put together by the Fraser Institute. They used the foundation skills assessment test results.

I've administered FSA tests as a teacher and as a principal, and they are very specific skills that are being tested. In math, they test word problems. The FSA test is on word problems not because it's the most important skill; it is just one of thousands of skills. FSA is not meant to be used the way the Fraser Institute uses it. It's like measuring and ranking MLAs, using data like the number of business cards handed out.

What parents and educators know is that a good school is about teaching a wide range of skills, but it's also about developing honesty, tolerance, work ethic, self-confidence, appreciation of the arts, sportsmanship and a whole host of things that you cannot measure.

Kara Hunt is here. She taught my daughter 15 years ago. She came back from university, and I told her that Kara was coming. Her first words were: "I loved Kara Hunt. I remember that she made me feel good about myself. She made us all love what we were doing." That is an intangible that the Fraser Institute will never measure.

The Minister of Education talked about the school that was ranked at the bottom of the Fraser Institute list, and she said that it was an exceptional school. The Minister of Education has the ability to judge that, and the Fraser Institute does not.

J. Yap: The long arm of the law just got a little bit shorter in Richmond. After seven years with the Richmond detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Supt. Ward Clapham recently announced his retirement, drawing an illustrious policing career to an end.

Entering the RCMP in 1980, Ward spent the first 17 years of his career in various Alberta detachments, moving to Vancouver and Nanaimo before coming to Richmond in 2001.

As a cop, Ward was unique in that he believed in preventative policing. Under his watch, Richmond's RCMP detachment has become a model for all others in the delivery of community and youth-focused policing. Ward believed that in addition to enforcing the law, it

is a police officer's duty to be a positive role model for youth, especially those at risk of becoming offenders. Ward challenged his officers to spend time reaching out to youth, and many followed his lead, participating in sporting activities like basketball to allow youth to interact with policemen and policewomen in a positive environment.

One of his lasting legacies will be the onside positive ticketing program in which youth are given rewards for good behaviour, rewards such as sports passes and movie tickets. This program is helping to change the thinking and attitudes of Richmond's youth, one young person at a time.

Ward's innovative approaches to policing garnered him international attention not just from other police forces but also from groups such as the Stephen Covey organization. Ward engaged the community in supporting police initiatives. He's also a tireless supporter of worthwhile community causes and service organizations like Rotary. He's a member of the ActNow B.C. leadership council.

It is said that the Mounties always get their man, and with Ward Clapham, they were lucky enough to keep him for 28 years. His legacy of goodwill and relationships will live on in our city, and I'd like to thank Ward for his contributions to public safety in Richmond and our province.

I ask all members to join me in wishing Ward Clapham a happy retirement from the RCMP and best wishes for the next chapter of his life.

C. Puchmayr: Today I rise to acknowledge North American Occupational Safety and Health Week. It's a time for all of us to reflect on the important reminder and focus on ensuring that we do everything in our power to fill the gaps and enhance the standards of protection for all workers. Whether young, old, white-collar or blue-collar, we all need to be aware of our hazards and stressors that we are exposed to as we earn a living every day.

There are many challenges to this endeavour. Long hours and fatigue are causative of shorter life expectancy. Unmanaged stress is also related to working environments. Safety hazards and chemicals in a workplace are causative contributors to injury and even death.

This year's theme is "Commitment for life." This is intended to be a reminder for every employer and employee and partners that the public is focused on the importance of preventing injury and illness in the workplace.

A week centred on occupational health and safety has been recognized in Canada for over 20 years. In '97, with growing economic integration of North America, the awareness has extended into Mexico. This is a reminder that the world becomes smaller. We must use every day to arrive…. From around the world, we must develop and export good safety standards for all.

Involvement in Occupational Safety and Health Week has been shown to raise awareness, improve attitude toward safety, and increase understanding of occupational health and safety. This week is a time to prevent accidents and recognize the hazards of our daily toil. The success of this week is rooted in a community-based approach. Speakers will be going to high schools and speaking to students.

Last year a record number of young people died on the job in British Columbia. Most of the injuries and fatalities happened to workers in the first six months of their employment.

We are the ones with the ability here to change the conditions in B.C. and create and export best practices throughout the world. This is a good week to take the time to reflect on the ways we can make a difference. Remember, focus on hazards, report unsafe conditions, do not perform unsafe work, follow safe work practices, and look out for yourselves and others. Let's all devote ourselves to treat every day and every week as Occupational Safety and Health Week.

I. Black: I read a humorous quote a couple of days ago on the topic of volunteering, which said: "Don't ever question the value of volunteers. Noah's ark was built by volunteers. The Titanic, on the other hand, was built by professionals."

Bob McNary is a man in my community who could have built that ark single-handedly. In the 45 years since Bob moved to Coquitlam with his family, he's been responding non-stop to the calling of, and lending his gifts and experience to, dozens of organizations throughout the Tri-Cities, playing the role of president, board member or dishwasher — whatever was needed. There was no job too big or too small for Bob McNary.

To the likely chagrin of his beloved late wife of 49 years, Marge, he's never been a guy who can say no. He's got an enormous heart, a delightfully grumpy demeanour, a wickedly dry sense of humour, and he'll tell you exactly where you stand.

Let me tell you where Bob stands. Bob is one of only ten Freedom of the City recipients in Coquitlam. Bob has touched more lives and helped lead more organizations than I can list off in these two minutes. Notable ones of a partial list include the Coquitlam Public Library board, the Special Olympics, the Sportsman Club, Eagle Ridge Hospital Foundation, Crossroads Hospice, Douglas College, the Coquitlam Foundation, the Festival Coquitlam and InnerVisions.

This guy is a rotarian, a kinsman and a Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year winner. Knowing his quiet modesty I can tell you, because he's watching right now, he's pretty choked that I'm doing this.

You can learn a lot about a person when you ask him: "What are you most proud of — completing a project? Your kids? A prized possession?" I asked that of Bob, and here's what he said: "I'm most proud of securing Coquitlam as the host city for the B.C. Special

Olympic games twice in ten years. I'm most proud of securing a new home for the public library, and I'm most proud for helping start the Evening of Caring fundraiser for the Eagle Ridge Hospital."

He also jokes that one of his biggest accomplishments was staying the heck out of politics for all these years. Please join me in saluting a great friend of Coquitlam and a role model of mine. He's one of the good guys — Bob McNary.

L. Krog: In 2007 during debates in this Legislature, the Premier repeatedly told this House that neither he nor anyone in his office had anything to do with the disclosure of government documents in the B.C. Rail corruption trial or investigation. He said: "The Premier's office does not have a direct input into that."

Court affidavits recently obtained by the opposition completely contradict the Premier. The RCMP wanted to question various government officials and cabinet ministers including Gary Collins and Judith Reid about three specific documents.

The court affidavits show that these three documents were discussed with Ken Dobell, the Premier's deputy and closest adviser. He made the decision to disclose them just to the RCMP.

My question to the Premier: does he stand by his assertion that his office, that his deputy, that his political staff had no involvement with the disclosure of the documents?

Hon. W. Oppal: We've been very clear about this. We're not going to engage in any specifics as to what took place. This matter is before the courts. The opposition members know about it. We're not going to talk about it.

L. Krog: I would have thought integrity is just the thing we'd want to talk about in this Legislature. In an e-mail from the government's own lawyer George Copley to Ken Dobell, Mr. Copley states: "After discussing these documents, your instructions were to waive privilege with respect to these confidential documents for the limited purpose of the proposed investigative reviews."

That is absolutely unequivocal. There is nothing to interpret. Ken Dobell gave very specific instructions about the disclosure of documents — documents that went to the heart of this corruption investigation. It completely contradicts everything the Premier has said.

Again to the Premier: who's telling the truth? Who's right — the Premier or the government's own lawyer?

Hon. W. Oppal: Let me quote from what the member for Nanaimo said on November 2, 2006: "It is essential to the rule of law that the integrity of the judicial process not be interfered with. High-profile prosecutions have failed in the past because politicians felt compelled to make comments in the public that were later deemed prejudicial."

L. Krog: The questions are not about the documents, and they're not about the outcome of the corruption trial. They are about the Premier's credibility and his integrity in this House. They are about comments this Premier made in this House.

The government's own lawyer has directly contradicted statements the Premier has made. Mr. Copley is now on record as saying that Mr. Dobell discussed documents and issued instructions about their release. The RCMP then used those documents to interview Ministers Collins and Reid.

Will the Premier finally come clean and tell British Columbians what he and his office were trying to hide and who they were trying to protect?

Hon. W. Oppal: These issues are all before the Supreme Court of British Columbia. They will be judged in the Supreme Court of British Columbia as they should be discussed and judged in that court, not in this House.

B. Ralston: The Attorney General has a unique constitutional position in the government and in the cabinet. He, in one respect, is a political member of cabinet and participates in political debate, but he has a second part of his duties which is as the guardian of the public interest. He is to exercise that in a non-partisan way. His job goes beyond running political interference for the Premier.

The Premier said here in this Legislature in 2007 that the Premier's office did not have direct input into that — referring to the disclosure of documents. Why did the Premier try to hide the fact that Mr. Dobell, his deputy minister, his alter ego, reviewed crucial documents in this case?

Hon. W. Oppal: Well, that member got it partly right. I do have a special role, and part of my distinctive role in government is to protect the integrity of the process and the independence of the courts. For that reason, we don't comment on whatever takes place in the courts. The member is a lawyer. He knows better.

B. Ralston: Part of the difficult job of the Attorney General is when questions like this arise and involve other members of cabinet. He has the duty at that point to exercise his independent jurisdiction. That's something he's not prepared to do, obviously, and it's shameful.

Mr. Dobell reviewed crucial documents in this case. He did not sign an undertaking, as did the other four people who had access to these documents. That protocol requiring the signing of those undertakings was to protect the integrity of the investigation and the integrity of the evidence.

How can the Premier convince anyone that Mr. Dobell didn't speak to him about those documents?

Hon. W. Oppal: Whatever Mr. Dobell did or didn't do is something that will be determined in a court of law, and we should wait for the judge to determine what he did or he didn't do and if it did impact on the system. That's entirely within the…

Hon. W. Oppal: …jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. We don't comment on those matters. That's pretty basic.

D. Routley: Today, on the very day when 500 people in Nanaimo find themselves without jobs, our Forests Minister is quoted in the media saying that there's nothing he can do. He's thrown in the towel again. Hundreds of families have lost their jobs, and the best he can offer is: "I can't stop bad business practices."

Well, the worst business practices in B.C. flow directly from that minister's offices and into our communities. When will that minister do his job and do something — anything — to protect the jobs of forest-dependent communities on the coast of B.C.?

Hon. R. Coleman: For the member's information, they're back in court with regards to Harmac right now, and there's been no decision made on Harmac.

D. Routley: That's not offering the people of Vancouver Island and the coast anything. Mr. Speaker, 535 people are losing their jobs at Harmac, and the minister knows it — and 251 last week in Mackenzie.

One thousand people lost their jobs last week. Those are big numbers, but when you get down to it, they're ones and twos — one worker, one or two kids, a coach, a volunteer here and there. At the heart of it, it's about hard-working people paying for that minister's mistakes.

This Minister of Forests is not a Minister of Forests. He is the new Nero fiddling while the communities of B.C. burn. When will our new Nero put down his fiddle and do something for the forest-dependent communities of B.C.?

Hon. R. Coleman: I don't think there's been a government that's had better policies and been more progressive in the forest sector….

Hon. R. Coleman: I'm as worried about Harmac and those workers as he is. We're trying to find solutions for it with the courts. At the same time, our people are prepared to work with whoever may be a proponent that may want to buy that mill to make sure the fibre supply is there for that mill. We've always done that. We've always managed to get the fibre supply.

The fact of the matter is that on the coast of British Columbia and across this province, this government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the forest sector in the last three years.

Hon. R. Coleman: You know, I think what the members opposite would like us to do is go up and buy the Harmac mill.

I don't know what he's asking for. We've always said we'll have the fibre for Harmac, but I'll tell you what. I mean, the member opposite is getting excited and inflamed. I know what he wants us to do. He wants us to do another Skeena Cellulose, which we're not prepared to do.

In actual fact, Mr. Speaker, all you have to do is go back to April 30, 2008, where the Leader of the Opposition said: "You know, the days of bailing out old mills are gone. I'm very clear about that. I've said that publicly."

C. Puchmayr: The minister recently announced $25,000 to laid-off forest workers in Prince George so that they can have a meeting. But it's not just Prince George forest workers. It's Campbell River. It's Nanaimo. It's New Westminster. It's all over British Columbia, and the minister won't even formally meet with many of those that are losing their jobs. Why Prince George, but not New Westminster?

When will the minister admit that his ad hoc, knee-jerk approach just isn't working?

Hon. R. Coleman: The United Steelworkers, which is the union that actually represents forest workers all over the province of British Columbia, asked us to provide the $25,000 to Prince George, and we did.

Hon. Speaker, in British Columbia today there is $5 million for research for forest management and $17 million for forest health, $32.65 million to UBCM for fire threats in communities, $642 million since 2001 for the mountain pine beetle and $300 million in addition to that from the federal government, and another $25 million to Forestry Innovation in order to put money into finding use for the fibre on the coast, to find new markets for the fibre on the coast and to build the future of forestry in the province of British Columbia.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested. As we do that, we're going to continue to work with forest workers in the province to actually have them transition and be able to help them look to a strong future in forestry in British Columbia.

C. Puchmayr: The minister talks about community transition, but certainly that's not going to keep schools open. That's not going to pay the mortgage. That's not going to replace those valuable jobs in those communities. Transition money will not create valuable jobs in those communities. Those jobs are leaving those communities.

Can the minister explain to the forest workers in a town like Mackenzie why he doesn't have anything for them to keep their pulp mill open at the time when prices of pulp are extremely high and profitable? Why can't he supply the fibre for that town so that those jobs can remain?

Hon. R. Coleman: We can supply the fibre to Mackenzie. We can find the fibre for Mackenzie, but the member should recognize that presently that operation is before the courts in receivership and doesn't have a financier that's prepared to fund its operation. That's why we're looking for another purchaser for the mill.

N. Macdonald: The government's forestry policy is a combination of do-nothing, it's a combination of ad hoc, and it's partisan. The minister goes to his cabinet minister friend's community of Fort Nelson, and he gave the mill there a massive break on the cost of logs. It was a massive break.

When he's not feeling the heat from colleagues at the cabinet table, he does nothing. Every other community in the province is left with nothing. It's completely inconsistent and politics of the worst kind.

Can other communities now expect the minister to come to their communities and give their mills access to cheap logs or to logs at all?

Hon. R. Coleman: I should remind the member that he's got a mill in his community that is, quite frankly, supportive of the softwood lumber deal, which you guys want to abrogate, which you would flush down your own mill on behalf of the policies of your own opposition. It's a sad state when you get up and want to talk about that, but you want to ignore the fact of the great things they've done.

So the softwood lumber deal got back…. Millions of dollars came back to British Columbia companies. They can survive this downturn because they got those deposits back.

They have a 15 percent tax at the border today when they had a 29 percent duty before, and it went on every dollar of value that went down into the United States. Today that's dropped down with a high-value cap of $500, which is a real benefit for forestry in the province of British Columbia.

Hon. Member, let's remember that we have a market pricing system in the province of British Columbia in our timber in the areas where we have sawmills, and there is not one in Fort Nelson. In that case, the market pricing system has seen the price of stumpage come down by 50 percent in the last six quarters.

Member, just wait until you're recognized, please. The member has a supplemental.

N. Macdonald: Okay, let's understand this, and let's see if the people of B.C. can understand it. For three years this minister has stood up and said he can do nothing. He watches as the forest industry collapses in this province.

The critic has given him the things that he should be doing in a list again and again and again, and he does nothing. The only time he does something is if it's somebody who sits beside him or whispers in his ear, and then he goes up and gives him a special deal. That's how it works.

The minister should have been doing something three years ago. If he's doing something, it should be for each and every community.

So the question is this. Can the minister explain to the people of Castlegar, Kamloops, Campbell River, Nanaimo…? The list of failed mills goes on and on. Can he explain to them why they get nothing, but the Minister of Energy…? His mill gets whatever he wants because he sits beside you, and he sits in cabinet. How's that for forest policy?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, that's just absolute nonsense. It doesn't matter whether it's Merritt or Kamloops or any community. We sit down with people that

have issues around fibre on a daily basis in this province to find a long-term solution for them. The only thing your critic would like to do is abrogate the softwood lumber deal and flush the rest of the industry in the province of British Columbia.

On the coast of British Columbia alone, we have the coast recovery plan. We've been successful in moving towards hemlock. We've been successful….

Hon. R. Coleman: You know, we have the coast recovery plan — $21 million to transition from old growth to second growth. It promotes the value-added sector where we've invested over a million dollars in B.C. wood in addition to another value-added investment of $1.8 million with FPInnovations, which is actually finding markets for our value-added sector in places around the world.

We supported a competitive pulp and paper sector, which is actually working in the province. We're investing in new technology with that sector. We've improved the viability — something they don't like. We've improved the viability of first nation tenures, and we put more wood out there for small operators, which is very important to the future of forestry.

M. Farnworth: My question is for the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General. Six criminals are at large riding SkyTrain with impunity after a savage swarming and beating because of a failure of the security cam system. This has happened six times since 2002. This failure continues. What is the minister responsible for public safety doing to stop these failures?

Hon. J. van Dongen: The province of British Columbia is the first jurisdiction in Canada to have transit police. That force was put in place in 2005. We have 127 armed officers. We also have on SkyTrain 360 SkyTrain attendants.

Certainly, videotape evidence is helpful in convicting criminals. The videotape system is the jurisdiction and under the management of TransLink. I understand that they will be putting in a new system in July, and that will have a longer running time to help collect evidence.

M. Farnworth: Videotape evidence is not just helpful; it's crucial. Criminals don't operate on a two-hour loop, but clearly this government does. This government has known about this issue for two years now. These failures have continued for two years. We have had two years of excuses — conflicting excuses.

Again, can the minister tell us why these failures have continued and give a guarantee as to when these failures will cease?

Hon. J. van Dongen: Public safety is a partnership between the police and communities and, in this case, TransLink. I need to inform the members, remind the members, that this government is returning 100 percent of all traffic fines to local police forces, which has resulted in the hiring of significant additional police — 950 additional police officers.

I need to remind the members that the deployment of police resources is up to the police. They manage their operations. It is inappropriate for me to interfere in their operations. They manage those resources to the needs in the community.

A. Dix: Supplementary to the Minister of Public Safety. I think those words, those comments, about fines will be cold comfort to Sheshleen Datt, who is the victim of this assault.

The fact of the matter is that TransLink has repeatedly refused to put a live person at SkyTrain stations when it's in operation and repeatedly refused to live up to its promises to keep security 24-7 at SkyTrain stations.

Here's what TransLink says to the travelling public, and I say this to the Minister of Public Safety. They say: "If someone truly needs assistance, they just have to wave to the camera."

Clearly, nobody was watching in this case. In fact, the excuse used by TransLink is that they taped over this because someone at head office who presumably was watching decided to tape over a six-on-one assault. It's not possible.

When will this government take action to ensure that transit riders are safe on our SkyTrain system?

Hon. J. van Dongen: As I said, there are now 127 armed and trained police officers on the SkyTrain system. If they feel they need more resources, they would make representation to the TransLink board.

I've also said that TransLink has confirmed in July that they will be implementing new cameras, new video systems, that will have a longer running time. But they will be legally limited to one week, and those cameras will be installed.

A. Dix: Clearly, the minister isn't listening to constituents in Vancouver and along the SkyTrain line — clearly not listening. There are serious concerns. These have been real assaults. The government has taken no steps. TransLink has taken no steps.

I know that the Minister of Public Safety can't do anything about a do-nothing Minister of Transportation. I know he can't do anything about that. But he's responsible. He's responsible in the cabinet for public safety.

A. Dix: We have a Minister of Transportation who finds his way to support more money for the board of directors and fare increases for transit users, but does nothing on the issue of transit safety.

When will he intervene to deal with the very serious security issues on TransLink? When will he take steps to ensure that what Sheshleen Datt suffered isn't suffered by other constituents in Vancouver-Kingsway and across the transit system?

Hon. K. Falcon: First of all, I'm sure all sides of this House share the concern for that young woman who went through what must have been a most horrifying experience. But for this member opposite to say that this government has done nothing when the member knows that the SkyTrain police complement in the last two years has gone up by a third…. That's 127 officers that now look after that system today.

But let me just give actually a more concrete example of what doing nothing is all about. Doing nothing is when the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, when she was part of government, flew to London with a bunch of bureaucrats, spent $80,000 to look at a gated system in London and came back and did absolutely nothing.

What's the difference? This government is going to make sure we've got a gated system on all the SkyTrain stations to make sure that young women can feel safe on SkyTrain throughout the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

D. Thorne: When he revised the Residential Tenancy Act, the Housing Minister said that if it didn't work, he would fix it. Office closures, downsizing and a phone-in system for dispute resolution have now created a system that is in shambles.

Last year June Ross moved into a new apartment and immediately had to move out, due to an infestation of rats. Two failed arbitration hearings later, June Ross was lucky enough to find a lawyer who would work pro bono. She went to Supreme Court and won her appeal, but most renters in B.C. cannot find lawyers who do free work.

I want to ask the Minister for Housing today if he will live up to his promise and do what is necessary to fix this phone-in dispute resolution process. Or will he continue to rely on the Supreme Court to settle tenancy disputes in British Columbia?

Hon. R. Coleman: To respond to increasing demand for dispute resolution, we are today adding 32 staff members and opening a call centre in Kelowna. That is a huge increase in the number of staff. We're training additional dispute resolution officers. We've increased…

Hon. R. Coleman: …the budget by over $2 million so that we can…. We've streamlined administration to speed up the dispute resolution process. For instance, hearing packets previously available two days after application are now available to clients within minutes of the application. We have also simplified the application notice forms and put them in plain language.

We've made significant improvements to the system and are investing in people to speed up our call times and our response times at the branch.

Hon. M. de Jong: I just want to advise members that I'm tabling today a motion that would provide for the creation of a second committee room for the purpose of referring non-contentious committee stage debate. I'll provide a copy to the Opposition House Leader. In the event that the opposition seek to avail themselves of that option, I'll be pleased to receive that information from them.

H. Lali: I have a petition with 662 signatures of residents in the Princeton area who are protesting the cuts to the health care services at the Princeton hospital. My constituents want the Legislative Assembly to keep the ER room open and to reinstate surgical services at the Princeton hospital.

N. Simons: I'd like to introduce four people who have all in their own ways contributed to the health and safety of children in this province. I'd like to introduce Warner Adams, executive director of Carrier-Sekani Child and Family Services, and Mary Teegee, program director for Child and Family Services, along

with Karen Isaac and Lincoln Heaney. Will the House please make them all welcome.

R. Hawes: I am presenting a petition from 1,250 people regarding Grand Street Lodge in Mission, requesting that it be kept open.

Hon. M. de Jong: I call in this chamber continued second reading debate on Bill 25 and in Section A, Committee of Supply, for the information of members, continued debate on the estimates of the Ministry of Forests and Range.

A. Dix: It's good to continue debate on Bill 25, the Health Professions Amendment Act, 2008. When we were starting to discuss the bill yesterday, we talked about some of the key issues, particularly around retention of health care workers, which I think is a key part of our efforts to deal with health labour shortages and with professional issues.

I wanted to get more into the detail of the bill in this second reading speech — a bill that the opposition supports in principle at second reading — and, in particular, just go through the key clauses of the bill and then go through them in detail to discuss some of the issues involved.

What the bill intends to do is create, amongst other things, a health professions review board that will assist qualified health care workers or health workers to fully utilize their skills. They're going to set up advisory panels to assist this process. In addition — and this is in addition on that line of the bill — they're going to attempt to ensure that health professionals who are certified to practise in other Canadian jurisdictions will be welcome to practise in British Columbia and have their credentials recognized.

Further, there are proposals with respect to restricted licences that will allow internationally trained physicians to practise in their specific areas of qualification. To quote from the minister: "A new framework will be developed and implemented to allow Canadian citizens trained outside of Canada to practise in British Columbia." So that's one set of elements of this bill.

There's another set of elements to this bill that deals with issues of professional transparency, issues that have been raised as a result, in particular, of a number of cases in recent times where it would appear that the inconsistent standards by various health professional colleges have kept information that might have been helpful to members of the public in protecting their interests…. Those cases indicated that we had a problem, and this bill attempts to address that problem. This is the second set of issues.

Of course, connected to that were a series of throne speech initiatives which are non-legislative but which attempt to address and support the initiative found in the bill.

One of the notions of the legislation is a new notion — what we call scope-of-practice reform. In a general sense, certainly the opposition supports this, as do many of the people in health care. The idea is to break down — while protecting, in all cases, the security and protecting patients, we would hope — the historical notion, the historical idea of what you call professional exclusivity so that if a single profession has performed certain services and procedures, by definition other professions cannot perform those services.

We've found — and, of course, this has happened over time and is in place over time — that there is considerable overlap in responsibilities between doctors and nurses, between nurses and licensed practical nurses and others.

The idea of this kind of reform is to address some of the difficulties and to widen it in such a way that the system is governed by, on the one hand, what you call a scope-of-practice statement — which are descriptions that are non-exclusive — and then within that also have a defined list of very important, maybe more high-risk activities that must not be performed by any person. So it's a more mixed system as opposed to a system based on notions of professional exclusivity, which in fact may not be appropriate any longer.

One of the most important areas in Canada which shows…. It's one of the important things proposed by the opposition in the 2005 election. I'll just repeat a little bit of what we said then and how it's certainly consistent with our support for the expansion of the role of nurse practitioners. At that time we proposed to expand the role of nurse practitioners to emergency rooms.

This idea of nurse practitioners is of course not a new one in Canada or even in British Columbia, and I think the idea of promoting it is very much part of virtually every reform of primary health care proposed by all governments in Canada. We're obviously encouraged

to see that role developed with one caveat, which we will talk about in a moment.

It's important to talk about it, because I think there have always been suggestions out there that…. This is sometimes the case because the use of nurse practitioners has occurred sometimes in regions and communities where there are doctor shortages. So the notion is that we go to this model simply when the preferred option or the default option isn't available for some reason.

I'm sure the Minister of Health would agree with me that this is not really the right approach — that in fact there is a great deal more that nurse practitioners can do and that this notion that they can only be used when a doctor can't be found is in fact the wrong notion.

There was a landmark Canadian study in the early 1970s looking at family practices in Burlington, Ontario. What it showed pretty clearly at the time was that the appropriate use of nurse practitioners with the appropriate additional education — and we have outstanding nurse practitioners in British Columbia….

They did this in one family practice, which was kind of overwhelmed, in Burlington. This is dating back to the 1970s. In that case, the nurse practitioners took care of 67 percent of patient visits.

What all of the recent research has shown and confirmed — this goes to this idea and this broader notion of scope-of-practice reform, which is contained in this legislation and in other actions by this and other governments — is that nurse practitioners can do more. They can work very well in providing a wide range of services. In fact, they do so now, and they can do more.

For example, there are studies all over the health care system, and they confirm this. I think what they also confirm — and it's very interesting. These two studies are American studies, one in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the other in the American Journal of Public Health. The first is called "Primary Care Outcomes in Patients Treated by Nurse Practitioners or Physicians." The other, in the American Journal of Public Health, issue 72, if people are looking at that, is by Ramsey: "Physicians and Nurse Practitioners: Do They Perform Equivalent Care?"

What these studies show pretty clearly is that especially for minor injuries and illnesses requiring care on the day in question, patients who see nurse practitioners do as well — and in some cases better, because in some cases they get more attention — as patients visiting doctors. The research also showed — and I think this is important — that they're just as healthy in the six months following the treatment.

This idea is one thing that we have to work to break down. This is particularly true in the area — which I know something about as a patient, as we spoke to on the previous bill — of issues of chronic disease. It's particularly true in that area, including issues of hypertension, diabetes, asthma and other chronic diseases.

What they show is that sometimes patients respond better to nurse practitioners in those areas than they do to physicians. This isn't because physicians do a bad job, but it's because in some respects — and this is what the evidence shows — nurse practitioners sometimes tend to ask more questions. And in some cases, although of course this isn't always the case, they may be prepared to spend slightly longer with patients, answer more questions and be able to offer more options to patients.

Here's an important study. It's the study from the American Journal of Public Health. What the study did was look at two groups, and 99 percent said that they would be prepared to see a nurse practitioner again. What that indicates to me — and I know the minister would support this — is that the increased use of nurse practitioners in the health care system, given their availability, is a good idea.

In fact, those people that use nurse practitioners seem to validate that in a rather dramatic way; 99 percent is a pretty high test score for anybody, I would suggest. Certainly, what it indicates is that the work done by nurse practitioners is outstanding.

That's an example of that part of the legislation, this idea that in fact there are often overlaps and that the system, within careful review — and this is what the intention of the legislation is to provide — should become more flexible in this regard. That is what, hopefully, the various advisory panels and review boards will help to facilitate as well.

Obviously, one of the questions that is raised and dealt with by the legislation is the issue, in addition to that, of doctor shortages. Of course, the member for Yale-Lillooet knows the issues and its implications for health care in Princeton at the moment. I think those issues are pretty significant.

We've heard — and I know the member for Kamloops–North Thompson would know this — of the challenges that the community of Clearwater is going through with respect to attracting doctors to deal with their issues. These are very significant problems for communities. They can indeed sometimes affect the very economic life of rural communities. In a sense, one of the reasons why people stay in communities — this is particularly true of seniors — is access to a family doctor and to medical services.

It's one of the challenges for communities when services, as they have been quite frequently under this government but not exclusively under this government, are centralized. So what you have when services are centralized, it seems to me, is a taking away of the very supports that doctors, nurses and other health professionals — but in this case particularly doctors — want to see.

In most jurisdictions — and this includes British Columbia…. We have to, clearly, engage in more of this in terms of rural doctor shortages. Most of the Canadian provinces have various incentive programs to address and bring doctors to rural and remote areas. This is the case, but the interesting part of that…. There are lots of good ideas in this area, some of which have been implemented and some of which haven't — ideas like forgiving student loans, ideas such as financial incentives.

But what the evidence also shows — and this is a real challenge for policy-makers — is that it's not just

an issue of financial incentives. We all know this because we all know our family doctor and other doctors. You know that doctors often or for the most part don't do what they do for money. They have many options in terms of finding successful remuneration.

Often the incentive programs, things such as signing bonuses…. There was a recent study in Quebec called "Evaluation des Mesures Incitatives Visant l'amélioration de la Répartition Géographique des Médecins au Quebec," which essentially looked at some of the incentive programs used in that province in terms of bringing doctors to rural areas.

What they found is that, for example, forgiveness of student loans ranked 22nd out of 23 factors. In that case, signing bonuses ranked 21st out of 24. They found that incentive programs won't work alone. They need to go hand in hand with modern facilities and high-quality infrastructure.

That's what the studies have shown. I think what that shows to all of us is that when we centralize services…. If we take services out of a community such as Princeton, it becomes more difficult for a doctor to go in there or want to go in there.

In addition, obviously, lifestyle issues become an increasingly important part of the equation. But the very cuts that are sometimes made in the centralization of a health care system tend to mitigate the success of programs to attract rural doctors to communities. It's something that I think we have to remember when we're closing down regional hospitals and centralizing services. This has a real impact, I would argue, on our ability to attract doctors.

That having been said, some of the measures in this legislation, hopefully, will assist, in particular — and we hope in combination with the expansion of residency and access to residency for foreign-trained doctors — in increasing the number of doctors who are eligible to come here.

Of course, there's always this sort of archetypal story of a doctor who is trained and is needed, who is doing something other than practising medicine — the archetypal story of driving a cab, for example. Not that that isn't something extremely valuable to do. But it's often very frustrating for a health professional and for a community in need of doctors when they hear such stories.

That's why we support the ideas, first of all, of a restricted licence to allow physicians to practise in specific areas of qualifications; increased access, clearly, to residencies, which is important to allow foreign-trained doctors to meet, if they require, Canadian standards; and a more reasonable approach to cutting through the red tape that is often put in place — often for legitimate reasons of professional quality control, but which ends up being a deterrent to people coming and practising in British Columbia and in other jurisdictions.

We are hopeful that this will have the effect of addressing some of these issues of doctor shortage. With respect to that, I think that the measures on the bill — and I know my friend from Surrey-Newton will speak on this question as well — come some of the way to responding to that problem, and we are happy to support those measures.

Certainly if you ask British Columbians, hon. Speaker, I think what they'd say is that they would, under most circumstances, support all efforts to ensure that while quality standards are maintained — and I think that's the intention in this case — people who are qualified to practise, be they doctors or nurses or other health professionals, be able to practise in British Columbia. That will require, beyond legislative action, a lot of work to make that happen.

But in saying that, we shouldn't forget that these answers to these questions, which is increasing supply, require a public health care system that is appropriately funded, appropriately supported in communities across British Columbia and that provides health care where and when you need it. It's a reasonable place to work. We discussed this yesterday.

One of the challenges we have, especially on the question of nursing shortage, is not just the issue of recruitment but the issue of retention in the context where hospitals are often not given the support they need. I spoke yesterday in this House about the situation in New Westminster, but it really could be about the situation in Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George, Vernon, Nanaimo, Victoria or any of the other communities that I have visited as opposition Health critic. I think this is a key point that we have to consider as we go forward.

It's certainly a key point for the B.C. Nurses Union on these broad issues of scope of practice that we hope to address, these systemwide issues of scope of practice. What many nurses say to me is that they very much support efforts to expand their scope of practice, but they often look at them with concern because they feel — I think justifiably, and probably the Minister of Health would agree with this — that what it will mean, when their workload is already unacceptable, is merely a piling on of more work that will make their position less and less sustainable.

I'll just quote from a nurse in Victoria who said that going home at the end of the day feeling that they haven't done what they ought to have been doing is common, that they don't have time to talk to patients and that nurses are fully capable — as long as there is enough time and manpower — to do more to in fact expand the scope of practice to do things such as suturing, allergy testing, local anaesthesia and cardiac stress testing. All of these are things that nurses are prepared to do, but they need to be given the opportunity to do the extraordinary work that they were trained to do.

Instead, what they say to me — and this is typical…. In this case what the nurse Victoria McCallum says is: "To free up time, nurses need to stop answering phones, doing paperwork, folding laundry and running around finding equipment."

The minister has recently visited Royal Columbian Hospital, and I've recently visited Royal Columbian Hospital. What they tell me is that they go in early to

try and secure linen privately and in advance because there's never enough linen, and they're always racing around.

So the cuts to other services have made it very difficult for nurses to envision an expansion of the scope of practice. They clearly support it, and good evidence-based practice argues that nurses can do more. We have to support that, because I think it's the right decision for a public health care system. But in order to make it work on the ground for nurses, we have to provide them with the support they need.

It seems to me that one of the key issues for nurses is, for example, better security and safety in hospitals. Many nurses feel, especially since the privatization of those services — this is what they say — that their security has gotten worse, that cleaning has gotten worse, that the quality of food has gotten worse. They feel they have to go around the halls and not look people in the eye because people have so many problems with the support services that if they meet up with someone, they will not be able to make it through their rounds.

So it takes more, it seems to me, than expanding the scope of practice, which is an excellent idea. But if it's not combined with efforts to in fact ensure that nurses are not overwhelmed with these other tasks outside of their scope of practice, if you will, it will not or cannot succeed. I think that's a key question — not just what happens in the Legislature or in the legislation but how that jibes with the reality that nurses feel on the ground.

That same circumstance and view are, I think, shared by many health sciences professionals. Health sciences professionals are highly trained. They provide critical services to people in every community in British Columbia — medical lab technologists, diagnostic imaging, respiratory therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists. That association — the Health Sciences Association — represents pharmacists and other professional groups.

What they are saying is that there are profound shortages. Unlike other professions, principally doctors and nurses, very little has been done in their area. So we're seeing and running into extraordinarily serious shortfalls that are having an effect — I think a profound effect — on the ability of those health professionals to do their job.

We need more of them. We need to support more of them. Right now there are not — in terms of the Ministry of Advanced Education or the Ministry of Health — plans to address what is a growing catastrophic shortfall in those professions. We all know this. Everybody in this House knows that proper diagnosis is essential for patient care.

If we don't have the lab and the medical imaging technologists to provide the tests, run the tests and get the tests done, then treatment is delayed. The consequence of treatment being delayed is that the entire system gets backed up.

We're going to go through the numbers because the numbers are quite dramatic. There are reports from both the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the Fraser Health Authority. Just to put them in context, just to show what a significant shortfall there is in these areas…. Those professionals deal in diagnostic, clinical and rehabilitation. Those are the basic areas of what they do.

Medical technologists: a shortfall by 2015, according to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, of 85 percent. Radiation technologists: 18 percent shortfall. Diagnostic stenographers: 72 percent shortfall. In those two areas combined: a 58 percent shortfall.

The Fraser Health Authority did its own study, its own report — again, not a report by the opposition — that said that B.C. will need an additional 1,154 full-time-equivalents in diagnostic imaging alone by 2015. That was their estimate.

This is not an area where we've added sufficient spaces or really very many spaces at all. BCIT is the only institution in the province that has a diagnostic imaging program, and they're going to train only 600 additional technologists by 2015. Assuming all of them come into the system in B.C., that's a shortfall, according to the Fraser Health Authority, just in that area alone of 554 imaging jobs, or people to do the jobs we absolutely need to get done in the health care system.

The Fraser Health Authority reports that there are 165 vacancies right now in six health sciences professions. I think this is an area that we have to get at and get to. I know that the Premier and the Minister of Health have met with representatives of the Health Sciences Association, but clearly we have not done enough in spite of the fact that these jobs are very rewarding.

They're very important positions, and they're very challenging positions. I think we need to make a more significant effort to invest to provide the staff we need in this area, be they physiotherapists or diagnostic imaging specialists or others, to ensure that the health care system not in some distant time in the future but in the short-range future has sufficient staff to do the job.

Look at what we're talking about in terms of physiotherapists. Just to give you a sense, the Interior Health Authority — let's not just talk about the Fraser Health Authority — needs to hire 44 physiotherapists right now to address current service levels.

Well, the only institution in B.C. that trains physiotherapists — and they had serious problems last year, as the minister will know — accepts only 40 students per year in British Columbia. What we have are efforts and investments on the doctors-and-nurses front but insufficient efforts — and we have to do significantly better — in dealing with the issues of health sciences professionals.

They will tell you that a plan focused exclusively on doctors and nurses, which ignores the important role of health sciences professionals but also ignores the important role played in the system by LPNs and care aides and others, will unfortunately lead to serious issues in the not too distant future — in fact, serious issues now. I think this has shown a bit of a disconnect between the Ministry of Health, which surely sees all this stuff coming, sees these issues coming….

We often say — and the minister often says, and others often say — that it takes ten years to train a

doctor, and so on. It takes two to six years to train health sciences professionals in these areas.

We have to get going now. We have to increase the spaces now to deal with the situation, or the system that we have set up, which depends on the extraordinary work done by health sciences professionals, will in fact break down. It is a concern that I know is shared by all people around this chamber, but it's one we have to address now. It's what puts the meat on the bones, if you will, of this legislation.

We've seen scant increases in the number of spaces for health sciences professionals, certainly nothing to address the growing demand. There have been small increases — one in Prince George and a small increase at BCIT last year — but nothing that will address this critical long-term shortage.

I think that as legislators, we need to both promote these professions — because they are extraordinary career opportunities for people if they want to take on these jobs — and provide the spaces necessary to allow health authorities and others to have the health human resources that they need in the future. That means training more technologists, stenographers, physiotherapists, speech pathologists, pharmacists and others.

That is a key area, I think, of the health human resources picture that we are not succeeding at. We are not making progress at it right now, or at least nothing like the progress we need to make in order to address a crisis. It's kind of a daily crisis for people.

I meet with health sciences professionals all the time who tell me about their discouragement, their real discouragement, at their sheer workload, the volume of overtime that they have to do, and that there seems to be no end in sight. Positions are left unfilled. This is a real crisis. It's not a crisis exclusive to this government. It's a crisis in other jurisdictions, but it's one that, if we don't address it, is going to have the effect of making all of our health care system less effective in the coming years. In fact, we're facing those stresses now.

We talked about this a little bit yesterday. We talked about the government's key initiative in health human resources — we'll be talking about this more when we get to the next bill on the schedule — which is its impact on the shortages of care aides, LPNs and others in the system, many of whom are represented not just by the Hospital Employees Union but others and who play a critical role in our system. Many of them, of course, are not represented because of the efforts of this government to take away their representation as well as their jobs and, in many cases, their salaries.

I think what that shows, even before the Supreme Court of Canada said that what the government had done was illegal in what it did to health care workers and that three sections of Bill 29 were illegal…. Even before that happened, the market was saying to the government that their policy of slashing wages and privatization was failing.

The member for Nanaimo knows very well about what's happening at Nanaimo Seniors Village, where we've seen a consistent pattern of using mass layoffs to try and drive down wages, and the disruption that that means to people.

A strictly elitist approach to health human resources fails on that, because in the current marketplace the work done by LPNs, care aides and other health care workers is actually extraordinarily valuable. They, in this time, have market power. All that is left — often to the government's financial supporters, who own some of these facilities — is to do these mass layoffs, which are disruptive for everyone. They're sure disruptive for seniors.

But what they also do is what we absolutely can't allow to happen, which is the message they send to people. The message they send is: don't become a care aide.

It is absolutely vital to our health care system. The work they do on a daily basis is extraordinarily personal. We had a message sent by an entire government, 77 MLAs — well, 76 actually, because one member on the government side, the current member for Peace River South, opposed the legislation — that essentially this work may be valuable, but don't do it.

According not to me but the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, there is a dramatic shortage that they're facing by 2015 in care aides. So it takes more than legislation, I suggest. There's also a shortage, according to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and the Fraser Health Authority, of LPNs.

There's a shortage in those two categories. It seems to me that's partly because of efforts to cut the salaries and also to diminish the value of the labour that is done.

If we're going to address these health human resources issues, we have to provide the legislative framework — hopefully, what we're doing today will help assist in that; we're certainly hopeful that it will — but also provide the support and encouragement to people and in a sense send the message that this is extraordinary work. It's work that is valued by society. We don't say that the work done by doctors is great, but the work done by care aides doesn't have value. We say that they both have value, because we know that.

When we visit any care home in British Columbia, the quality of care — how a senior feels in that care home — is often, on a daily basis, more dependent on the work done by a care aide. So the decision on the government's part, which I think was extremely wrong-headed, to devalue that work was wrong.

If we're going to address these broad health human resources questions, it seems to me that we've got to reverse that message. We've got to send a different message that we believe that people in the health care system can actually do more. We have an expectation that people should be fully able to utilize their training, be they doctors or nurses or others in the health care system. But we also have to say, I think, very clearly that all of the work is valued.

I think what has happened with care aides and LPNs in particular in the last few years is that the government's position, which sent a message…. You can't

send a stronger message than a piece of legislation that targets two groups and devalues their work. That's a pretty strong message to send. We can't have that any longer in British Columbia. We need to do the reverse. We need to encourage people to do that important work in our public health care system. It may seem like a long shot, but I hope that the government has learned from its mistakes in this regard.

Equally — and this is dealt with by the provisions of this legislation in part and by the government's announcements in its throne speech, which are connected to these — the changes in scope of practice for ambulance paramedics…. Again, one could be very supportive of an expanded role. But what ambulance paramedics are telling us is that when they raise issues around their work or the challenges of recruitment in the context of a $2-an-hour wage, in some cases…. It's not really a wage. It's a per diem or a small stipend. That isn't good enough to provide the recruitment opportunities.

The government rejects that. They take all of those issues off the table. They say the union is collective bargaining when it does that. The changes that the government proposes would allow ambulance paramedics to diagnose and release, rather than transfer to hospitals, in many cases — so increase their responsibilities. There's a concern on their part — a legitimate concern, I think — that the intention of this isn't a broader care but to limit access to health care and to limit transfers to hospital and therefore be a cost containment measure.

I don't think it needs to be strictly a matter of that, but what it requires with it is addressing enhanced training opportunities and providing an adequate support and wages for ambulance paramedics. We've raised in this House the stories and the issues in communities such as Alexis Creek and others. There are stories from around British Columbia, including the urban areas, of ambulance paramedics under pressure to meet targets that are increasingly on paper but not really vested in reality.

Ambulance paramedics feel, for example, that they haven't been consulted in this regard. The changes aren't in place now, so that's fine. They need to be consulted, obviously, and the regulations would have to be prepared.

I think that without, again in this case, the resources and training and support and the commitment that this isn't just an issue of limiting access to health care choices we could be supportive of this, but it requires all of those resource issues. It's not a simple matter of saying: "Ambulance paramedics can do more, but they're already overstretched and overburdened, so they'll just do more on top of that."

This is an area…. The increased authority for ambulance paramedics in this case would have to be accompanied by all those other tools for ambulance paramedics to properly do that, or you'd be in a very serious situation. Of course, there are significant liability issues above that that ambulance paramedics face. So that's another example of where expanding the scope of practice may well be a good thing, but it certainly requires, in the case of ambulance paramedics, a greater commitment to their work than the government has shown in recent years.

Equally, expanding the roles of midwives, something that the NDP government previously did…. You look at studies of the work of midwives. Certainly, the NDP government in the 1990s was innovative in this regard. The major North American study of the work of midwives showed that 98.7 percent of mothers…. I won't round that up. I'll just say 98.7 percent. But if you were to round that up, 99 percent of mothers who used a midwife would choose a midwife for the birth of their next child.

That's a pretty impressive satisfaction rate for midwives. So I think that the innovations that it brought in and ensuring, in fact…. I'll just quote from the national society representing obstetricians in Canada. I'll quote from a policy statement from 2003, which you can find, if you're checking this at home, in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada. What did they say? They said: "The integration of midwifery into the obstetrical health care team is fostering excellence in maternity care for Canadian women and their families."

Clearly, following up on the innovations of the previous government and potentially expanding the role and the responsibilities of midwives and promoting the use of midwives in our system is a good idea. It's an evidence-based idea, and expanding on that effort — on which, of course, the NDP government in the past took the lead — seems to me to be an excellent idea.

Having dealt with some of those issues, which are very important in this debate, we want to talk about the issue of transparency. This was a case, I think it's fair to say — I think the minister would agree; he even mentioned it, I think, in his scrum on the legislation — where the role of the media in this regard, raising issues, played a critical role in seeing this come forward — in particular reports by journalists for the Victoria Times Colonist, Lindsay Kines and Jeff Rud, who I think has left the Times Colonist but is of course an outstanding journalist.

What they showed in many cases, be they a case of "a pair of Vancouver Island chiropractors, each facing multiple counts of sexual assault, continue to practise under the condition that they see female patients in the presence of a chaperone. The presence of the chaperone must be documented" — in that case — "and those records are checked by the college on a regular basis…." But here was the kicker. The chiropractors were under no obligation to notify patients why they are practising under those circumstances.

What happened — and I think it's why the legislation is useful — is that in the different health professions…. Some had on-line registries; some did not. The different health professions, even though they all perform critical work, all had different standards. Clearly, in terms of transparency and accountability, the idea would be to ensure that a public right to know — which is necessary in these cases, which is I think central — is in place and also, on top of the idea of the

public right to know, a consistency in standards. We shouldn't have some colleges being significantly more transparent than others.

Hopefully, the effect of these changes will be to ensure that that situation is properly dealt with. I think it's critical to the successful practice of all the medical professions, be they chiropractors — and I didn't cite that case to single them out in particular — or physicians or whatever profession you would like to note, that the idea of public confidence, the sense that the public can have access to information and know when they're choosing a chiropractor or choosing another health profession, that the public would have a reasonable expectation to be able to know if there were issues regarding that professional…. I think it is an important one. It will build, I would argue, public confidence in the professions, not take it away.

That aspect of the bill I think we'll deal with in more detail at committee stage. To go through the minister's thoughts on that part of the bill would be useful, and useful for the professions. On that question, we are generally supportive of those proposals, especially here at the second reading debate on principle.

These are critical issues for our health care system that we're discussing today, and I know other members will take up some of those issues. We live in a time where many people in British Columbia have difficult access to primary health care, and it's a critical issue. I'm going through it now; everybody's going through it. Many people are going through it, particularly people who are, because of income level in some cases or economic circumstance in most cases, unable to find a family doctor. People who move around a lot and aren't able to maintain stable places of residence are in this position. I think these are issues that matter to people.

Now, for some people…. We saw this recently with the proposal of the False Creek Surgical Centre to sort of take advantage of this situation. They saw a shortage of family doctors, and they saw a business opportunity. I think most people would argue that instead of going to a community that needed family doctors, setting up a business opportunity to try and have people pay for primary care isn't the right course. Both myself and, I believe, the minister spoke out on that issue. I think that if you look at that situation, that's their response to it, and that's sometimes the response of for-profit health care.

I think the truth of the matter is that a strong public health care system supported with adequate resources, combined with legislation that's flexible and can allow people to come into the system; a training program that doesn't just focus on some professions but looks at all of the needs of all of the professions, be they represented by unions or professional groups or whatever; and a strategy that looks at all of them and doesn't focus on some are what we need in British Columbia.

It's one of the reasons why, in our positive approach to this debate, we will be supporting this legislation at second reading. Unlike the government, no matter where ideas come from, if they're good ideas, we support them on this side of the House. If they're ideas that will improve health care for our constituents, we support them on this side of the House. That's a contrary position to the ideological approach we often see across the way.

We know people who could benefit from the work of nurse practitioners. We know people who need a family doctor. We know doctors who haven't been able to get certified and should get certified in British Columbia. We know health care workers whose work was demeaned and the impact that that had on our health care system. Every day we meet health sciences professionals who struggle to meet the increasingly unreasonable demands on their work who are saying: "Where's the plan to address our issues?" We know these people.

We think this might be a small contributor to that, and we'll support it, but what's required, as well, is a commitment to public health care that, sadly, we frequently don't see from this government. When you brag about going from second to seventh place in supporting health care, most people would say you're on the wrong track.

We need to get back on the right track with public health care. We will support good ideas wherever they come from, and our support for this legislation is consistent with that principle. Our party founded public health care in this province. We know that addressing these health human resources will help ensure that the next generation will have access to that.

What is also required…. A second element is required; that is, a government that truly believes that public health care is central to British Columbia life and deserves commitment and support. That's what we need. That's what we'll be campaigning on, going forward between now and the election. We think that's the difference between us and them.

It's not that we have all the ideas. It's not that they don't have any good ideas. When they come up with one, we'll support it. I remember saying, when the trans fat ban, which was an idea that was promoted, as you recall, and put on the political agenda by NDP Member of Parliament Pat Martin…. When the Premier came forward and said, "We want to do a trans fat ban," what did I say? I said: "Even the Premier finds an acorn sometimes." That's what I said.

A. Dix: So the minister…. When the member for Nanaimo introduced private member's legislation in this House…. The member for Nanaimo — the minister will remember that. It was with respect to smoking in cars.

A. Dix: Oh, we'll talk about trans fats. Three years of promotion from the NDP to get the attention of this government to that issue, and finally, we got their attention. We're very pleased with that.

But we believe in health care where, to use the Premier's term — one that he's since abandoned, one that he's buried in his policy backyard…. We believe, unlike the government, in health care where and when you need it. That's what we believe in. That's not what they believe in. That's why we're supporting good ideas wherever they come from. That's why we're supporting this legislation, and we will continue to fight to ensure that public health care is there for the next generation and the generation after that and the generation after that.

H. Bains: I am indeed also honoured to speak on this issue, Bill 25. I think it goes quite a way toward dealing with some of the issues that we face in health care today. I think one thing that is on our citizens' minds on a constant basis is whether they will receive health care and whether health care will be accessible to them when they need it.

The minister, for whatever it is worth, brought a number of bills here in order to fix some of those problems. We on this side have examined all those bills, as we are doing with this bill. I think some of them don't make sense at all. I think that's a waste of time, and we have said that in this House.

There are others that we want to talk about. I think they have some elements in those bills that we can support because they do go towards dealing with the issues that we have in the delivery of health care in this province.

One of the areas that I want to talk about is the accreditation of the foreign-trained professionals, especially the medicare professionals. I've been following this for a number of years now. There are a number of activists and organizations who actually have been bringing this issue to the forefront. They are trying to bring awareness — organizations such as Capacity B.C. and people like Patrick Cody and Priti Shaw. I want to thank them for bringing this issue, having a debate over this issue and bringing the details about how far and how deeply the problem exists.

I think we have heard…. The member for Vancouver-Kingsway has said and many have said before that we have seen fully qualified doctors driving taxis or working in the construction industry. It's not that those occupations are not worthy of being in there, but I think these professionals who actually took training and invested a lot in their professions wanted to work in those areas. They couldn't because there was no process in the province for them to get their credentials recognized so that they could come and help in their area of choice and help the people of this province at the same time.

We've seen, I know, some cases of people with PhD degrees in marine sciences and in medical sciences. They are not working in the field that they chose and have expertise in. When that happens, you know what happens? They suffer; they lose. The province loses, and overall, the patients of this province lose. We have seen the long lineups at the ER. We have seen long lineups trying to get in and get some of the MRI or other diagnostic tests done.

The reason — and the minister has said this many times — is that we don't have enough professionals in that particular area. Well, guess what. When that was going on, for the last seven years nothing was done by this minister, the minister before him or by this government.

Finally, I say that there is a small step in the right direction in Bill 25 to deal with this issue. Now, I will be waiting, going into the next stage of this bill's debate, when we question the minister clause by clause, to see how this will be unfolding and how, actually, it will be helping those professionals who are anxious to get into the field of their choice but can't because of the barriers and the obstacles that they face. So I think that's where I will wait; I will wait for the details.

We have also heard a very famous case where a world-renowned doctor, a specialist, came to teach at UBC. He taught and trained our doctors, but he was not allowed to practise in B.C. I mean, that's how bad the situation was.

I know the Attorney General hears all those issues from the community all the time. I know that he also is aware and that he wants to do something about this. I'm not so sure until we see the final details and the next stage of the debate. I think we'll find out how far this goes to deal with the issue.

I know Ontario has actually taken the lead by bringing in legislation. Bill 124 was brought in just to deal with these issues, and not only to talk about the health care professionals. That bill dealt with and deals with professionals in all areas. It deals with how those professionals' credentials are going to be recognized, and similar to what this bill talks about — having an overview board to oversee the registration and accreditation process going through — there is a fairness commissioner that has been appointed by Ontario under that bill.

That commissioner actually looks and oversees how those professional organizations will bring about changes that are required under the Bill 124. So it's an ongoing thing. It doesn't deal with only one profession; it deals with all of the professions. I think that's where we need to go in order to deal with all of the issues that we face in the area of foreign-trained professionals.

I have seen and I have heard many people — I'm sure the Attorney General and the many other members who live in the Lower Mainland have heard, walking down the street and you come across…. Hardly a day goes by when you don't come across somebody, and sometimes they use very harsh language about how we treat these foreign professionals. Many call it a fraud. I've heard it, and I'm sure other people have heard it.

I think why they call it a fraud is because the Canadian government and B.C. government representatives go all across the globe trying to promote and ask those professionals in those countries to come and practise in this country and this province. But as soon as they come in and land at the airport, they start to face the

reality that their credentials, which they once were told are needed in this province and this country, are no longer good enough.

I think the journey of painfully establishing themselves in this province starts right there. No wonder that we have doctors and other professionals doing other jobs that they're forced to do but don't want to. They want to stay in their own profession. I think that's why people call it a fraud.

No wonder some people have said that if you wanted to have a heart attack in the province of British Columbia, it's safer, actually, to do it in a taxi in Vancouver someplace rather than a block away from Surrey Memorial Hospital where…. You know, trying to get into the Surrey Memorial Hospital, there's a six- to seven-hour wait trying to go through the system.

You know how the nurses, doctors and other health care professionals in Surrey Memorial Hospital are overworked, overloaded with very few resources, thanks to this minister and thanks to this government.

So I think that's what we need to…. I think this bill actually goes in a small way….

H. Bains: I don't think the minister of small revenue likes to hear the truth.

H. Bains: Small Business and Revenue — I correct myself. You know, maybe what I said inadvertently fit the minister, but I wouldn't go there.

I think the Minister of Small Business and Revenue doesn't want to hear the truth. I invite that minister. I invite the Minister of Health to come to Surrey for one hour. Come to Surrey for one hour, and then walk with me and stay in the emergency ward for one hour. Stay in there for one hour, and then see with your own eyes the experiences and the pains that the patients have to go through trying to get the very basic health care services that they deserve and need.

That's all it takes. Come down to Surrey and walk with me on the streets of Surrey. Walk with me on 72nd Avenue. Walk with me in front of the Sikh temple. Maybe we should go and visit. Maybe there is a time to atone for your sins, and then they'll be given the opportunity.

H. Bains: I think we need to get back to the bill. I was actually distracted by the Minister of Small Business and Revenue, who didn't want to hear the truth.

Let's talk about Bill 25. I want to talk about the area of shortages in health care professionals. I think if we do it right, this bill probably will deal with some of the issues that are faced by us, and I think we need to also talk about why we are at the situation that we are today. Why is there a shortage of health care professionals? There have been seven years where we have seen that this government has shown nothing but disrespect and contempt for health care workers, and if you…. I think the Minister of Small Business and Revenue would like to hear this as well.

This is another fact. Bill 29 was brought in. You know, when you see thousands of hard-working health care professionals…. They were told, "Your services are no longer needed because we want to bring in our friends," who will come in and make profits at the expense of those workers' wages. They were let go. Many of them, actually, were not allowed to get hired again by the contractor, because the instructions to those folks were: "Well, if they come back, they probably will bring a union in." That's how badly they were treated.

When you treat your employees, your workers, with disrespect the way it was done by that government, you get the desired results. It means that those professionals will stay away, and they stayed away. They stayed away, and now we see all kinds of shortages.

I also want to talk about those who stayed away and those who came here because we told them that we needed their services and that we needed their skills, because we need them. We have a shortage of those.

But let me talk about the other area that hasn't been talked about so far. We have, probably, thousands of Canadian-born students who can not get spaces for the training that they need in the health care professions, whether they want to be doctors or nurses. They could not go through the universities here because no spaces were available. They end up in foreign countries.

My daughter, along with her friend, after waiting one year, could not get into their chosen profession at UBC or any other university here in the province. They ended up going to Europe to get the training. Now they will be incurring hundreds of thousands of debt. If that isn't bad enough, when they come back, they will be told: "Your credentials are not good enough."

That's how the system worked in the past. I think it is unacceptable. It is really serious stuff, and that's why I said to the minister that it was long overdue.

Finally we have it before us, and finally we will be standing with the minister to support this bill. It's not the case that when the minister or the government brings in any legislation, that we as opposition always oppose. When we see that the minister has some wisdom to put some common sense into the legislation, we support it.

Here's another example. Thank you, Minister, for listening to all those activists who actually woke you up one day, and you realized that something needs to be done, and you have tried to fix it. Like I said, I will be watching the details in the next days of the debate here.

So here we go. I think I talked about all those folks who have had to leave the country to get training and many of those who are here who are not able to get their credentials recognized. I think we as a society have a duty. We as legislators have a duty to see how

we want to fill all those vacancies, whether it's health care or other professional areas.

My priority and, I'm sure, everyone else's priority is that we train our own here. We have our children, who are our future, who will be taking over from us, who will be running this country. Those are the people that we need to give all the tools and resources to for them to stay here and train so that they can take this country to the next level. Well, we're failing them as well. Like I said, thousands of them have to leave this country because of lack of spaces.

I'm not only talking about the health care professionals or the health care area. I'm talking about, generally, all skilled categories. We don't have an apprenticeship system here where we could fill the vacancies, which we need. We used to have a pretty good apprenticeship system. Alberta does a better job than we do.

We're failing our younger generation, which needs our help. We as legislators have been elected to do the right thing and give them the resources, the opportunities for them to excel in their future and their chosen fields, but we haven't done enough. I think that's another area that we need to work on.

We want to talk about this bill and what the details are. I want to draw your attention to Bill 124 from Ontario. Although Bill 124 isn't the answer to everything, there are some really good sections in it that the minister could take some advice from. For example, the purpose of that bill is similar to what we are trying to do here, although that one covers a whole host of other professions.

The purpose listed in Bill 124 is that a regulated profession has a duty to provide registration practices that are "transparent, objective, impartial and fair." That's what we need to establish. I hope that this bill will go in that direction, and I hope that the board of review or the board that will be overseeing this will be able to move us in that direction.

I think that was one of the areas that people like Priti Shah and Dr. Patrick Coady have brought to the forefront — that there wasn't a one-stop shop where they could click on something and all of that information would be available. I think that is the area that we need to move in. Like I said, I will be really looking forward to the next stage of the debate, where we could find the details of how this bill will be applied.

I want to also thank our counterparts in the federal NDP, who also have been in the forefront trying to promote this issue and deal with this issue. Olivia Chow, an MP from Toronto, has put forward a position paper where she also lists a seven-point proposal that would actually deal with this issue or go a long way to deal with this issue. I want to thank them as well.

I think it was the hard work by those that I mentioned before, Capacity B.C., Priti Shah, Patrick Coady, Olivia Chow…. And many others who are the activists in this field have been working hard trying to promote this issue. Finally, we see some results — some results, I want to emphasize — in seeing that this issue might get resolved in the area of the health care profession.

My colleague from Vancouver-Kingsway talked about many of the good things in this bill. He mentioned a few. I want to go over some of those that I think are the right things that this bill will do.

I think having a review board probably will work well if they are given the tools and the resources they need so that we see all of those different areas of transparency, accountability as far as the registration part is concerned — if that review board is given those tools and resources. That's what we need to find out — if that is there. Those were some of the key points I wanted to talk about.

I want to talk about some of the real challenges that the health care professions and the health care facilities are facing, both in the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and in the Fraser Health Authority. When we talk about what we see in the growing communities such as Surrey, which is the fastest-growing community in the country, actually…. We have probably the most diverse community in the country. At the same time, it brings with it its own challenges — the fastest-growing community with the different needs of that diverse community.

When I look at the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, there are many shortages that they have identified. On nursing, by 2015 there will be about a 39 percent shortage if we don't start to work on and deal with this issue, and LPNs, 8 percent.

H. Bains: The member is asking some questions about what happened about seven years ago.

H. Bains: I'd just like to see what happened in the last seven years, and as inaction of this government…. These are the numbers put together, not by me…. These are the numbers put together by the health authorities themselves.

H. Bains: You think this government is trying to do something right. When you hear some heckles and

some comments from those ministers from the other side, you think: do they really mean it? You start to question that. You question whether they really mean it.

These are the numbers put together by the Fraser Health Authority, by the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. They are the numbers that are saying that the nursing shortage by 2015 will be 39 percent; LPNs, 8 percent; care aides, 75 percent. So the total in this area of nursing — a 42 percent shortfall is anticipated by 2015. The members on the other side basically are dismissing this.

I'm surprised that the minister is dismissing this. I don't understand, and the people at home listening to this debate don't understand. The health authorities put these numbers together. These, according to the minister, are professionals. They deal with the issue on a daily basis, so they have to actually put in place a plan and a forecast of what they need to deal with in coming years.

This is what they are saying. Diagnostics area, medical technologists — 85 percent….

H. Bains: I think it's no different than a few days ago. When you start to put some facts together, to bring the truth out, you start to get heckled from that side, because they don't want to hear the truth.

Here the list goes on. For the radiation technologists there will be a shortfall of 49 by 2015, 18 percent; diagnostic stenographers, 72 percent — a total of 58 percent in the diagnostic area. In the therapy area a 14 percent shortage of physiotherapists is predicted by 2015; speech pathologists, 4 percent. For pharmacists a 34 percent shortage is predicted, and community health workers, 76 percent. So when you add all of that up, there is a prediction that, thanks to this government's inaction, a 41 percent reduction or shortfall will be seen and experienced by 2015.

I want to talk about Fraser Health. I want to talk about Fraser Health shortfalls. They have put together some numbers as well. They're saying that for the medical lab technologists, we will have a 19 percent shortfall by 2015; diagnostic imaging, a 17 percent shortfall; respiratory therapists, 12 percent; occupational therapists, 12 percent; physiotherapists, 11 percent.

So when you are looking at these numbers and when you couple that with the fastest-growing community and the challenges that we face at Surrey Memorial Hospital, and you add that up with the delay by over a year that this minister is allowing in completing our emergency room expansion and the ambulatory unit to be built, then you see that these issues will actually triple, or they will be multiplied in equal proportions.

Anytime you talk to the minister, anytime you talk to the Liberal MLAs from that area, they think everything is fine, but everything isn't fine. The health care system is in crisis.

I think this bill goes, like I said, a small way in dealing with the issues of recognizing credentials for those who have actually got their training outside of Canada, who came to Canada because we invited them, because we told them their skills are needed. We told them that we have a shortage of those skills, and when they came here, they could not practise in their chosen fields because of government inaction — of not putting a system in place and a process in place so that those credentials can be recognized.

The Ontario government, like I said before, saw it over a year ago. They wanted to deal with the issue, and they actually put steps forward to deal with the issue. They didn't just make these statements. Like I said, it's not the overall answer to deal with that issue. But this government made nothing but statement after statement, announcement after announcement, photo op after photo op. That's all we've been seeing in Surrey.

I actually stopped counting how many times the minister and the Premier have been in Surrey, trying to make the same announcement about the expanding of the ER, the building of the ambulatory unit. Every time they go, it's the same announcement, but a little bit delayed, which is hidden in some of the small print — that it will now be completed, "not at the same time that we promised you last time we were here, but it will be completed sometime in 2011."

So that is what the people of Surrey have been experiencing for the last seven years. Seven years of broken promises. I want to draw your attention….

I have some family members who have gone through the Surrey Memorial Hospital, and you know what? They have nothing but admiration, nothing but good things to say about the health care professionals in Surrey. But they saw, as well, that the reason they could not get timely health care service is because this government didn't give those professionals the resources or provide them the help that they needed. Instead, all they have seen, actually, over seven years was disrespect and contempt towards the health care workers — disrespect and contempt by this minister, by this government.

I think that what we are seeing here in Bill 25 is, in a small way, the minister trying to deal with the issue. But you know what? This is one small, good thing in the overall number of bills that the minister has brought in, and I think we will be supporting that.

J. Brar: I am pleased to speak to Bill 25, and I would like to continue the debate in the same spirit that the

The fact that we have public health care in this country makes me proud to be Canadian. It makes me proud to be a British Columbian, and it makes me proud to be a new Canadian. There has been, from time to time, debate about public health care versus private health care. In my opinion, that debate is over.

We have had a Canadian commission looking into that question. Mr. Romanow has brought forward a report, talking to the people of Canada in almost every part of the country, and it made it very clear that the people of Canada want public health care. I think that debate is over. In light of that comment, I support any idea, any action, any innovative ideas that support and strengthen public health care.

This bill has a number of things that I would like to touch upon. To start with, there are some good ideas in this bill, as I said before. The first one that I would like to speak to is that this bill basically talks about establishing a new board called the health professions review board.

The role of that board, as I understand from the notes I have from the bill and in the absence of the discussion we are going to have at committee stage, is basically that the people who are going to apply to different regulatory bodies for a licence…. In the case that their application is rejected, they can go and appeal to this review board.

I think that's a good step. I have been a member of the council of physicians and surgeons as a public member for three years, and I have seen that there are people who come from other countries. If and when their application was rejected, they didn't have any place to go. This bill will provide a place to go where their application can be reviewed and probably can take a different course.

I remember the case of four physicians who came from different countries when I was there. All of them made the application for a licence to practise medicine in the province of British Columbia. Somehow, at that time, under the criteria the college had at that time, they were not given a licence.

As a result of that, they basically went to the Human Rights Commission at that time, and they also went to the other side of the border to the United States to practise in their area of profession. It was very surprising to note that almost all of them — all four of them, who came from different countries, not from one country — were actually given the licence to practise medicine in America, when they had failed to get any licences in this province.

The Human Rights Commission, after going through all the deliberations, listening to both parties — the College of Physicians and the new applicants — at the end of the day decided in favour of those four applicants. The college has to pay them the damages and all that kind of stuff, and the college was also required to make a number of changes when it comes to the licensing process.

We are talking about only one college. We need to do this to make the system fair, open and accessible to all the bodies, and this bill talks about all the health profession bodies. So that's why I say this is a step in a positive direction.

I remember a joke. People say that if you have to have a heart attack in Canada, you should have it in a cab, because we have a lot of people who are professionally trained doctors, professionally trained physicians from other countries, but somehow they could not get a licence in this country, and they are driving cabs.

So that's the situation. This review board will not completely turn the page, in my opinion, but this will provide at least a review and a chance to get in. I hope there will be some progress made when this review board is established at the end of the day. As I said, I support the idea to establish a review board where people can go and make an application if they lose the chance to get a licence from a professional body.

The number of people who come from other countries…. Whether they are doctors, nurses or other health professions, they come to this country for a better life, for a better life for their kids. After leaving their own country, where they probably were established and knew what to do and knew the tools of the trade, they came to this country and made this country a new home. But I know many, many professionals who, once they find out that, in fact, they cannot practise in their area of profession…. It's a huge, huge setback to those people.

For many, it's very hard to digest as a family, as a person, because that's the profession they are qualified for, that's the profession they know, and that's the profession they want to be in. When they actually get the "no" from the professional bodies, it's very hard for those families, when they come here, to accept. That, of course, would be hard for anyone.

The second thing that I think this board will serve, in probably a positive way…. We have in this country a shortage of health professionals, or many of the professions, and particularly doctors. When we talk about doctors and nurses, there's a huge shortage.

The member for Surrey-Newton and the member for Vancouver-Fairview have spoken about that. We have a number of people coming to this country from other countries, and there are a significant number of people who are trained professionals, health professionals, who came to this country with qualifications and experience, but they don't get in. So that shortage to some extent, you know…. If this review board is really effective and has impact, to some extent this will probably impact that particular part when we talk about a shortage of health professionals, because we can bring in people who are actually trained, who are now doing similar professions.

This will also allow, to some extent, if the review board is effective, as I said before…. In any licensing process, in any process, we need to have a fair and just process. In the current system, with any regulatory body, once they say no, nobody can go anywhere else. But this particular board will allow those people to go and review their application.

It makes the system to some extent better and fairer for those professionals who come from other countries. Frankly speaking, it also makes those bodies accountable, because at this point in time, it is basically in their hands. If they say no, that means no, and that's the end of the chapter. But this way, those people can go to the next level.

This also raises the question that we are talking about, under this particular proposed bill, only health professions bodies. There are a number of other regulatory bodies where people from other countries — particularly I'm talking about professional people who come to this country — go through the same process and face the same kind of challenges. I think that if this bill is a message to this government, then we must expand the same kind of process to all those bodies rather than limiting it to health professions, as this bill limits it to those bodies only.

The other thing I want to speak about is that this bill also provides a framework to allow Canadian citizens trained outside Canada to practise in Canada. As the member from Newton just spoke a few minutes ago, I know a number of young people who are, at this point in time, going through training programs to receive medical degrees outside Canada. A number of young people of my friends and my relatives are taking that training outside the country because they could not get in, in this country.

Those young people are Canadian. Those young people are our kids. Those young people are the future of this country. I think it's very important for us to open the access, to open the door to those people so they can come back and practise medicine in this province.

As I said before, we have a huge shortage of health professionals in this province and in this country. That certainly makes the case that those people can come back and have some hope that they can practise in this country rather than the majority of them, at this point in time, going to the USA or other countries to practise their profession. So this will be a step to the positive as well.

My interest in this one is that I have from the very beginning, as a member of this society and as a member of this Legislative Assembly, been supportive of public health care. The second thing that I have been concerned with from the very beginning, from the very first day I came to this House, is the situation we have at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

At Surrey Memorial Hospital the capacity, particularly at the ER room, is to serve almost 50,000 people per year. In fact, the number of people walking in is over 70,000. That is an issue. The hospital is way over capacity because Surrey is the fastest-growing community in the province.

This government has been in power now for seven years — seven long years. As far as Surrey Memorial is concerned, we have not seen any action from this government and from this minister. Yes, they have done announcements — announcement after announcement after announcement. We know about that.

I would like to make a point here that during the middle of the election in 2005, the Premier went particularly to Surrey to make an announcement. The announcement was that the Premier was going to fast-track actions. Under that, the Premier asked the Fraser Health Authority to put together a report to address the health care capacity in the city of Surrey and at the Surrey Memorial Hospital.

That report was actually prepared and presented to the Premier and the Health Minister that we had in December '05, which is now almost two and a half years ago. There were three excellent recommendations made in that report to build the health care capacity in that city.

Those three recommendations were…. The first one was significant expansion in the ER room, and that was to build a.s.a.p.; the second one was building a new out-patient hospital, and the third one was to add 62 acute care beds a.s.a.p. Particularly, I think the deadline was given as November '06.

This government and this Premier and this Health Minister have made seven different announcements for that, but they have not given us even one 2-by-4 to build the hospital. That's the situation. The only thing they have done, the Minister of Health, is delayed the construction of the ER as well as the new out-patient hospital, and that is a shame. Surrey is the fastest-growing community in the province, in the country, and we need actions right now.

But actions in Surrey were promised and then delayed. That's a very, very big surprise to me and to almost every person in the city of Surrey. As I have said on many other occasions, whenever I go door-knocking, every house has a story about the ER room at Surrey Memorial Hospital. We need to fix that problem, and to do that we need to build the capacity at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

When we talk about this bill, Bill 25, my concern when we talk about Surrey Memorial Hospital is that what we have seen from this government until today on those two or three recommendations is delay. When we ask about the delay…. The delay has various factors, different reasons — whether the licence is for the particular space where the hospital is going to be built, whether they have to move certain services somewhere else before they can start the construction, and all that kind of stuff.

My fear is that at the end of the day, if that happens…. Now both the hospital and the ER have been delayed for one year. If and when they start building it and if and when they complete particularly the ER and the new out-patient hospital, will they have the staff for that or not? That's the question, because we have a shortage of doctors and a shortage of nurses and many other health professionals. But this bill does provide some hope that if the implementation of this bill is done on the right footing, that may start addressing those kinds of questions, which are shortages of health professionals.

It's very important for us in Surrey to have more nurses, to have more doctors, to have more health professionals. Otherwise, even if this government built a

building after two or three years, that would not be useful, because we don't have staff anyway to serve the people of Surrey. That's my huge concern.

The nurses and doctors we have now are way over capacity. I was in hospital just a couple of weeks ago. If you talk to nurses, the workload is so high that we cannot add any new thing, any new responsibility when it comes to nurses or even doctors. We cannot expect anything more than what they're doing now.

This bill also expands the scope of practice for many professionals, including nurses, pharmacists and some other professionals. Again, that's a good idea. But the thing is: can a nurse take on any more responsibility at this point in time? The answer is no. If you go and talk to nurses, the answer is no. They say that they cannot even perform the duties they have now because of the over-capacity at Surrey Memorial Hospital. The number of patients they are receiving and treating is almost 40 percent over the capacity of nurses.

In that respect, the expansion of the scope of practice does make sense from a philosophical point of view. But when it comes to implementation, I don't know how it's going to change or how it's going to basically bring positive outcomes, because those nurses do not have any room to perform any new responsibilities.

The other thing this bill talks about is that the health professionals who are licensed in other provinces at this point in time can come back to this province and — as I understand, at this stage, without going through third reading — can practise in B.C. That is also one of the concerns I have heard from many, many professionals historically — that if you move to this province, there are a lot of barriers. You have to pretty well start the whole licensing process from the beginning.

In that way, that particular move will be a positive change. But the question is: how many people will we receive from other provinces, and how many people will we lose to other provinces? I don't know. But this will provide some positive outcomes when people come from other provinces.

I was talking to somebody just a few days ago, a professional from Ontario who came to B.C. This was a person who came from India and had gone through all the licensing process in Ontario and provided all the documentation there. But when the person moved to B.C. after getting a licence in Ontario, the person was asked to do everything the person did in Ontario. That doesn't make any sense to me, because the person had gone through a similar body which had done the due diligence before handing over the licence to that individual to practise medicine in that province.

The other thing this bill talks about is giving a limited kind of licence to the international medical graduates so that they can practise in certain areas — in my opinion, the areas where we now have difficulty finding particularly physicians and nurses — in the rural areas. As per my knowledge, this has been going on for many years. I don't know what the change is in this bill.

When I was there as a member of the council, I saw people from South Africa, Australia, U.S.A. and probably England who were qualified international medical graduates. They used to, at that time, get a licence, and the licence was of course restricted to certain areas, probably for five years. In five years they had to basically upgrade their qualifications.

I don't know whether this particular component of this legislation is a new thing or, if it's new, how it will be new or if it is just kind of bringing in what is out there being practised at this point in time by the professional bodies and just making it part of the law. That's my understanding. But when we go to committee stage, we will ask those questions — whether there's any change or whether this is an expansion to other countries.

As I recall, the majority of people who were walking in under the temporary licence were probably from a few countries which were at that time defined as having a similar quality of training programs as we have in Canada. The quality of care is always the case.

I just want to make sure I cover everything. I would like to conclude by saying that the intent of this bill is to provide and strengthen public health care, and that's my intent. That's what I think is being done here. We need to, of course, improve the capacity of our institutions and provide more tools and flexibility, because that way we can improve the system.

So if this is a bill to improve public health care…. I think the ideas in this bill are good ones, but I have a number of questions I need to ask to clarify. At the end of the day, they have to make some difference because, as I said before, the expansion of the practice of nurses is a good thing. But can a nurse take any new responsibility? The answer is no at this point in time, because they are overworked already.

Similarly, to bring in professionals from other countries and give them a temporary licence until they have full qualification is probably a good step, but that has already been going on for many years. Is this a new thing, or is this an extension to any other countries which are not being taken at this point in time?

In that respect, I don't know whether this will at the end of the day make any difference when it comes to the people of British Columbia to provide better health care, to provide better access to health care. As we know, more than 200,000 people at this point in time don't have family physicians, for example. Will this change anything?

As we know, the wait-list at the ER is beyond understanding at this time. At Surrey Memorial, as I've said many times, people have to wait probably five, six or seven hours. Will this make any difference at Surrey Memorial? I don't know, because we don't know the outcomes until we ask the questions to the minister at committee stage and until we actually see those changes starting to make a difference in the system — a positive difference.

Having said that, I like the ideas. We will support those ideas in this bill, but we would like to see…. We

have some expectations at the end of the day that this bill will actually improve the public health care we have in this province, the public health care system we are all proud of. Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this bill.

H. Lali: Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to stand up and take my place in the debate on Bill 25.

As has been mentioned by my colleagues earlier, this side of the House will be supporting Bill 25. I also want to thank the hon. Minister of Health, who has been sitting through these health debates, listening attentively. This side of the House is very appreciative of the fact that we can have this dialogue.

Hon. Speaker, as you know, the tradition with parliaments in Mother England, where it all began in terms of modern democracy, had the two sides of the House set apart with an aisle in the middle, two sword-lengths apart — with the tradition dating back centuries to parliamentarians and representatives at the time having to come in full regalia with their sword tied to the gird as well, to the side — just to keep the two sides of the House separate from each other, at least two sword-lengths away, so they didn't happen to get into any kind of scuffle.

Unfortunately, although parliamentary democracy has done wonderful things throughout the world everywhere it has been instituted, at the same time…. It may be two sword-lengths apart, but often people will say that governments and oppositions throughout the centuries sometimes are much further apart, when it comes to issues and philosophies, when they come to the people's House.

But there are times when we can work together, both governments and oppositions. When the government puts forward something that in the opposition's opinion is in the best interests of the public, it is the role of the opposition to support the government on those types of initiatives. This is one of those.

Having said that, obviously we have some concerns which are legitimate concerns, which I will be tabling on behalf of my constituents. I'll do that, but I also want to again recognize the Minister of Health.

I have some rural issues that I want to highlight. Coming from the Interior like the Minister of Health, we're both rural Interior boys. I'm very proud of my rural roots, as I'm sure the minister is as well. He comes from a beautiful community — Salmon Arm. I come from Merritt. Both are beautiful communities.

There's a reason why folks live in the Interior, why they are attracted to the Interior. I just want to mention, in terms of health care, some of the communities that I represent: Keremeos, Hope, Lillooet, Lytton, Logan Lake, Merritt and Princeton. These are municipalities. There are many other communities that are not municipalities, like Yale, Boston Bar, Spences Bridge, Tulameen and other communities. They fall within the sphere of these business centres, the seven municipalities that I mentioned earlier.

Obviously, one of the issues I want to raise in terms of rural health care — I would be remiss if I didn't — is in the community of Princeton. I know these other communities that I've mentioned have faced challenges now and then in terms of health care, but the one that's going through certain challenges is my community of Princeton at the south end.

I know that regionalization came into effect almost a decade ago. Then this Liberal government actually changed it further when they came into office. The way the Interior Health Authority works…. The folks up in the Princeton area are, generally speaking, not too happy with the way that has worked. We are looking to the minister to make sure, as the minister in charge, that that relationship actually works well.

I know in terms of the shortage of doctors that has taken place, the Interior Health Authority has been involved and actually has been working with Mayor Randy McLean and his council in Princeton to make sure that the needs of my constituents and his constituents are going to be looked after. They've been working very closely in that regard, and it must be noted right here — to pass on that message to the minister.

With regionalization, as you know, and the concentration of many of those services for health care that were formerly available in communities like Keremeos, Hope, Lillooet, Lytton, Logan Lake, Merritt and especially Princeton, some of those services have been pulled out to be regionalized in communities like Kamloops, Kelowna, Penticton and others, and Abbotsford and Chilliwack on the other side.

That has not always been to the benefit of these small rural communities. Especially when services are pulled out of small communities, you would expect — when folks had to drive off to Penticton or Kelowna from Princeton and area — that those services would be readily available. That hasn't always happened. Again, we look forward to the minister to actually rectify that situation so we don't have these kinds of mini-crises with these issues surfacing every few months.

Of course, right now the community of Princeton is going through quite a bit of turmoil. The inability to keep doctors and have new doctors come into the community…. As is evident in rural communities throughout the province, it is difficult to attract those doctors and actually have them stay there for any long duration of time in order to look after the health care needs of the people there.

Just as individuals, when they're moving, say, from an urban area and going into rural British Columbia — whether the jobs take them there or educational opportunities, personal relationships or whatever that happens to be — are looking to see what they're attracted to in that community, they want to see what kinds of amenities are available — whether it's recreational, shopping or, obviously, health. Access to health, especially for seniors, is very, very important.

In this regard, doctors are no different. They're professionals. Most of them have families, and they want to see what's available for their families, but doctors want to see what kinds of services are available at the hospital. You know, they get training for anywhere from six to ten years or more at educational institutions

throughout the country. Then when they get out of university they want to be able to practise what they've learned and practise what they've been trained for, whether it's surgery or some specialized medicine.

To be able to attract those doctors to these small communities that I've mentioned, especially like Princeton…. They want to be able to practise, and a lot of those services have been pulled out. So it poses a problem in terms of how long they're going to stay because, like anything, they want to be able to practise what they have learned and keep their skills sharp. When they can't do that, then they'll move to other areas. That often means going to Kelownas and the Kamloopses and the Pentictons and the Abbotsfords and the Vancouvers of the world, and it's difficult to keep those doctors there.

One of the things is that doctors also need supports around them. Whether it's technology or some of the kinds of procedures that they've learned, they want to be able to practise those. But especially, it's in terms of nursing staff that they need in order for them to practise their medicine and the health care techniques, and it's also other health care workers that they need.

Obviously, right now there's a huge shortage of nurses in these small communities, and some of the unfilled positions are also there. That's the case in Princeton, as well, in terms of some of the unfilled health care positions that have to be filled.

On behalf of my community…. They've asked me to lobby the minister, and I guess that in one sense, while I'm speaking to the bill, I'm also lobbying the minister to give a little bit of attention to these communities. I'd even invite the hon. minister to come to Princeton along with me so that we can actually meet with the health care professionals. I know there's dialogue, in terms of telephone conversations and through e-mail and letters, etc., that takes place. But I think it would be really beneficial for the minister and me to go into the community and meet with these folks so we can look after their needs.

The other issue I want to talk about is accreditation of foreign credentials, foreign degrees for health care professionals. Indeed, it is a problem Canada-wide and British Columbia–wide not just in health care but in other professions.

People from Africa, Asia, South America or other parts of the world come here with a good intention of practising what they have learned and with their degrees that they've been able to obtain through their formal education and their university educations. Whether they're from India, China, the Philippines, South America, Mexico or other parts of eastern Europe and southern Europe, they come here with good intentions.

Unfortunately, due to any kind of major push by governments across Canada and the Canadian government as well to actually solve that problem…. What ends up happening is these people are either underemployed or not employed at all in those health care professions that they were able to obtain their degrees from — whether they're doctors, nurses, X-ray technicians or many other occupations within the health field.

I grew up in India. A lot of my former countrymen and -women have come here. Although the multicultural population is not that great in my constituency, it is fairly large in the Lower Mainland. Surrey, for example, is a community where well over 100,000 South Asians are living there. Obviously, they've asked me to take that message forward not only to my leader in the opposition here but also to the Legislature and to the government.

I'm passing that message on to the minister. All of these folks who have foreign degrees are looking for an accreditation process. They're looking to have their degrees recognized so that they can actually get on with their lives and have family-supporting jobs here in the professions that they were able to get their degrees in. What's happening for a lot of these folks is that as I mentioned, they are either not employed in their fields or underemployed.

If not all, then most of these health professionals, when they come here from other countries, have to take jobs that are lower-paying and not in the fields that they were trained for. There are a lot of, for instance, doctors and folks who are nurses driving taxis or working in the hospitality industry while they're waiting either to upgrade or to try to get accreditation.

I think the minister and this government and the cabinet need to rectify that situation. We have shortages of nurses and doctors and health professionals in British Columbia. There is a workforce readily available here who need to have some sort of process, a quick process, to have their degrees recognized or a process whereby they can challenge some of the exams in order to be able to upgrade or be accredited in their particular fields. Obviously, that is something very important.

As I mentioned earlier, often governments and oppositions historically are at odds with each other, and they may be a million miles apart in terms of philosophy. The government has put forward a bill that we support. We're reaching out.

I'm reaching out to the Minister of Health — and I see him waving back — and hoping that he's willing to work with us to make sure that…. I've raised the two issues. There's the specific one that's taking place in Princeton with the health care professional shortage — doctors in particular — and at the same time the accreditation issue.

This side of the House is more than happy to work with this Minister of Health and the government to make sure that we can actually deal with those concerns and issues that my colleagues have raised and particularly the two issues I have raised here. I'm looking forward to working with the minister, another rural Interior boy like myself, making sure that we can look after our constituents together.

I want to thank the Speaker for giving me this opportunity. Again, before I sit down, this side of the House will be supporting Bill 25.

C. Puchmayr: When I look at this bill in principle, I can certainly support it. As has been said earlier by our

Health critic, we need to ensure there's meat on the bones so that this is not just some legislation that has some good-sounding initiatives that don't come to fruition. We need to ensure that all the stakeholders are working together to ensure that we have the best legislation with respect to the issues that are prominent in this bill.

My observation certainly from New Westminster is where we saw the closure and demolition of St. Mary's Hospital. Then we saw this incredible increase in the acute care overload at Royal Columbian Hospital. What we're hearing from the professionals who work there is that there is a serious issue of retention, burnout, stress and overload.

I look at some of the initiatives with respect to maybe modifying some of the duties and the tasks of those health care professionals. On first blush, I say that they're certainly something we need to look at. But when we look at them, we need to do it with all parties coming to the table. It shouldn't be something that's imposed.

It appears now that the health authority comes in and posts a new procedure. They throw a bunch of money on one issue, and they get everybody to change their ways of practice. Then all of a sudden the thing just sort of falls away because the stresses and demands of the job prevent any of these initiatives from going forward.

In order to truly have a system that has the proper initiatives and the proper go-forward, we have to bring those professionals to the table and work with them and see how we can modify some of the delivery services and the delivery systems we have in our health care system to ensure that these initiatives actually work towards retention of health care workers and don't continue to put stressors on health care workers leaving the industry.

The minister, when he introduced this bill, didn't go into a lot of details on the bill. The minister went back to the '90s and continues to make these allegations about the '90s.

If you want to just take a focus on health care in the '90s and health care today, in my community and growing up in Surrey — which was called South Westminster at the time and then New Westminster — I certainly saw a more accessible health care delivery system than we have today. What we need to do is look at: where did it go wrong? How did it get derailed? How do we bring it back on track so that we have a health care system that people enjoy working in?

I want to segue from that into people enjoying working in health care. There was a time, certainly, when I was younger and going to school, when many of the young people in school, young men, spoke about wanting to be doctors. Young women, now young women and men, spoke about wanting to get into the health care profession, to become nurses. It was a very noble and honourable direction to go. It would fill people with pride when they spoke about their desires and their dreams to graduate from high school and take a bit of university and then get involved in the health care system.

At that time, a lot of the young women — at that time it was young women — that went to my school would also volunteer in the hospitals as what I think they called candystripers, because of the striped uniform. They volunteered, and they sat down with the seniors and with elderly people. They talked to them. They had this compassion, this giving feeling that they were participating and becoming some type of a care provider, especially in the twilight of some people's lives.

Now when I visit the hospitals or when I visit with health care professionals, whether they be doctors or nurses, the first thing you notice is the stress, which you actually physically see on their faces, and the burnout they experience. When you listen to the stories of what is happening in our hospitals today, it certainly hits home that there is a crisis in the retention of health care workers in British Columbia.

I recently met with some nurses and health science professionals, and we talked about the different hospitals. They were from different hospitals. One was from Royal Columbian Hospital. To listen to some of the concerns that they have…. When a helicopter comes in with a critically ill patient on a ventilator, who is coming in critically injured, where there's a one-care-practitioner-to-patient ratio, a 1-to-1 ratio…. Once they get into the hospital, they need to be at least in an environment where it's a 3-to-1 ratio while they're on the ventilation, in the very critical early stages of trying to save someone's life. They're still on a 1-to-1 ratio.

There isn't the capacity. The hospital is full. The emergency room is full. Every bed is full. They even showed me beds that didn't have numbers. They weren't even counted as additional beds. They would put a curtain up in a section of an admitting area in the emergency room, and that was actually a bed area where they had three or four beds for very critically ill patients.

You can imagine somebody who is coming in, who has come out of school trying to do good and gets into the noble health care profession, being exposed to this type of almost MASH unit–type environment almost on a daily basis. It is very traumatizing to these employees. It creates a significant issue with regards to retention.

It's not surprising that that would certainly resonate down through the public, through the schools, where eventually young people are saying: "Why would I get into the health care field because of the pressures and the stressors that are involved in working in that field, into a field that is, at this time, not managed adequately enough to deal with the issues?"

Bill 25 has some interesting proposals with regards to health care professionals coming into Canada and practising. I'm certainly aware, from speaking with some of the providers…. I sat on a social issues committee for a couple of years with the Federation of

Canadian Municipalities. The credentialing issue is something that has been grappled with for many, many years across Canada. We met with the then minister in Ottawa at one time and put the case forward for the need to expedite credentialing of doctors, especially coming into Canada, into British Columbia.

The real crisis, the travesty, with respect to doctors is twofold. When a doctor gets to the front of the line in a foreign country because he's a health care professional — he's a doctor; he's a high priority to get into this country — everything is done to move him quickly into Canada. Then, when he or she arrives, they're not able to practise medicine. It becomes difficult for them to practise medicine.

I met a doctor one time. I think his name was Weslav Rawluk, and he was from Poland. He left Poland in the early '80s with his wife and child and tried to become a doctor in British Columbia and had an extreme difficulty getting a residency so he could practise. He was a pediatrician, a gynecologist, a surgeon and a practitioner. I mean, he had unbelievable credentials and couldn't get into the system and ended up having to go to Labrador and received a residency and an internship there. So we have a long way to go to get doctors here.

The second dilemma with respect to that is the fact that when a doctor leaves a Third World country, for instance, and comes to Canada and we don't allow them to practise or we don't accelerate the means to get that doctor to practise, we've taken them away from a country that really desperately needs that doctor. We've taken a doctor from that country, and now we have the doctor here doing something other than practising medicine or at least other than being a practising physician or surgeon.

Dr. Rawluk ended up managing a care facility, a care home, in Vancouver for a while prior to getting his accreditation. I've heard that some get on, possibly, with an ambulance service. Some were working in the hospitals as cleaners just to sort of be in the loop or be in touch while they were trying to improve their English and get their residency so that they could practise medicine here.

Bill 25 going in this direction and trying to fast-track in a sense or trying to expedite or make it more palatable for doctors to come into our system is all good. It's great to have more doctors coming in here, especially in the rural areas that need them, that are suffering a crisis of not having doctors in their area.

But when I speak with doctors, especially emergency room doctors, and hear about the incredible pressures that they're exposed to…. I hear them talking about how the grass is greener on the other side, and they certainly get more money in the United States, and they can get the operating time. They're able to at least practise their profession without having their operating theatre time taken away.

We had one doctor here recently that had his entire surgical calendar bumped for a whole month. Every surgery that he was to perform in that month was bumped because of emergency cases coming into the hospital and not having all the operating theatres open, and staffing was one of the reasons for not having them open. I won't take that away from the Health Minister. I agree that staffing is one of the reasons that sometimes operating rooms are closed.

Having said that, when we look at the burnout, when we look at the pressures that are being put on these incredibly gifted health care professionals, the registered nurses, the nurses, even the care aides and the doctors, and we look at the pressures that they are exposed to on a daily basis, it's no wonder that there is some difficulty with retention.

We're told that for the increased numbers of training that is going on and the increased number of accreditations that are happening with registered nurses, there is such a volume of them leaving the profession that it's almost balancing out. So here we're going to increase training, and we're going to try to get more into the country, but if we don't fix the systemic problems at the delivery centre, at the health care centre, we're not going to be able to attract people into that field.

It's an attempt that really isn't addressing the problem. We shouldn't be training because we're making it so that people are leaving the system. We should be training to enhance the system, to improve the system, to get more health care workers so that they don't have to work around the clock, some days in overtime, to provide the services.

I think that's what creates a healthy health care system, not one where people are so pressured and so stressed that they're looking (a) at a way to get out of that specific department, so they're posting out into something else, or (b) they're leaving the profession entirely. We have to address the root of the problem first to truly get a working and a functional health care system back into British Columbia.

Certainly, some creative issues are coming forward here. The bill talks about not only credentials but also about internationally trained physicians in areas of specific qualification. It talks about a new framework to allow Canadians trained outside of Canada to practise in British Columbia, and then there are some issues with respect to pharmacists.

I certainly look forward to the committee stages of that. Again, we're going to need to ensure that the safeguards are in place if we go in that direction. I don't know if the safeguards are really covered off clearly enough. We'll have to get the minister on record to ensure what's happening there.

Expanding the technical requirements and qualifications of health care workers is one that obviously needs to be engaged in with training. It's one that needs to have the people sitting at the table with the care providers, with the health authorities to develop a system that works.

Just heaping more work onto an already burned-out health care professional isn't the answer. It's going to look good on paper. It's going to look like we're streamlining, we're modifying, or we're turning the Chevy into a Ferrari. But it's not going to provide the service when that Ferrari breaks down and doesn't run again.

We have to make sure that all the players are together on this and that we have a system that is functional. I think the focus should be retention. What will it take to retain health care workers in our health care field? What are some of the key things that are causing health care workers to leave? What are some of the key elements that are causing doctors to leave?

We need to look at that. If you go from that basis forward and start addressing those concerns, then you can come to some good conclusions on what is necessary in order to ensure that we have a proper health care system.

I'm going to be speaking on Bill 26 later as well, so I'm only going to touch on this other part briefly. Again, this is a retention issue. This is sort of the message. Bill 29 sent a chill through the health care professions — certainly through the health sciences, the nurses, those that clean our hospitals and those that cook the food in our hospitals. There are some real horror stories on what happened when this government introduced this illegal legislation, and it was illegal legislation. It was challenged in the Supreme Court, and the government had a year to resolve it.

One example in Nanaimo, where a care facility exercised and enacted the provisions of Bill 29…. I thought it was four times, but I think it was three times. Three times they took this illegal legislation, and they just said to the workers: "You're all gone, except…. Well, we'll hire you, you, you and you back, but the rest of you are gone. See you later." Again, if we're talking retention, what does that do to people that were just about to get into that field? They thought: "Wow, glad I didn't take that job. I would have been fired. I could have been fired."

So here's a piece of legislation that, for some reason, the government thought was prudent — tearing up a collective agreement, allowing private care homes or non-profit care homes, as some of them are called, and their boards of directors to merely terminate everybody.

Imagine the impacts, not only on the people that lost their jobs and their livelihoods. It even had severe impacts on the seniors in those homes. Some of the seniors end up in a care home at age 70, and they live to 100. You know, they're 30 years in a care home, and for 20 years they have that same care worker coming in. A senior with dementia only knows Sally or Sam, the care worker that they see every day, that comes and helps them bathe, that feeds them, that tells them stories or that shares stories with them. And all of a sudden, where did they go? They're gone. They were fired. They try to get used to another one. Where did they go? A few months later, they're fired. And, then, again.

It doesn't only create turmoil for the workers and their families that are losing their incomes. The seniors, the people that did the heavy lifting to build this province and this country — it's an abuse to them as well. It's painful for them as well.

I know that when the changes were made to the Queen's Park Hospital, there was a real issue. There was a real concern about when they restructured that and moved some patients out. Patients don't live very long when they've been in a facility for a long time and suddenly their whole world changes at a time of their life when they're mentally not capable of understanding that.

The impact on the families. I know our Health critic has heard of it and many of my colleagues have spoken to people who lost their jobs in that field. The impacts are severe. There was a reduction in wages, for instance, from 15 percent to, I think, 42 percent — a significant reduction in wages. Those are the ones that were terminated and came back in with one of the contractors. Some weren't able to get hired back or couldn't afford to be hired back. It had a severe impact.

Some of them — quite a lot of them — had dual incomes. They had husband and wife, partner and partner, working in the same field. They met in that field. They were married. They had children. They had a mortgage, and they coached soccer or lacrosse. Then two incomes gone by this illegal legislation. It's devastating. It was absolutely devastating.

We've heard of family breakup. We've heard of suicide. We've heard of severe trauma, stress, loss of homes, foreclosures, and people having to move out of their community to rent somewhere else because they couldn't afford their mortgage. That's all because of this illegal legislation. No one went to jail. They all passed "Go." They all collected their bonuses. And the impact on families was absolutely devastating.

So again, we're talking about retention. That didn't do anything for the retention of health care workers and also the impacts on hospitals.

I had the misfortune of ending up in a hospital for about ten days right after that. It was in 2004, and I couldn't believe the workload on the cleaners. I mean, they were literally run ragged, being called from one part of the emergency room to the other. The conditions did not look very clean while I was in there, so you can imagine the concerns with different bacteria and infections — staph infections, C. diff infections — and things that need a really high degree of cleanliness.

Somebody in their wisdom thought a private contractor could hire people for minimum wage plus $2 and get them in there to provide the type of cleanliness that's required to maintain a sterile and viable health care system. The impacts certainly were severe in that. I will speak more about that when I go into…. I have some interesting figures and some costs of all that that I will share with my colleagues on the other side.

The overcrowding, certainly of the hospital in my community, has to be addressed. I mean, there are days that I go there, and there'll be a dozen ambulances parked all around the emergency ward. They've now created a new waiting area. One of the staff there told me that it was just too easy to get a camera through the window to show all the people waiting, so they created this sort of satellite waiting area to try to make it look like it isn't as severe as it is. That's an attempt to sort of cover up what's really happening in there.

Since this government has taken over, I have never seen the likes of that type of overcrowding. Doctors tell us that some people, while waiting to be admitted, will go into cardiac arrest. I asked one of the nurses: "Will people die in the waiting room?" She said: "Well, they don't die in the waiting room, but they could very quickly once they cross in." It's usually once their vital signs get so severe or so critical, or they go into cardiac arrest, or they literally fall out of their chair, that they're bumped up in the priority, and they're moved in.

The bill does have some initiatives with some type of different work arrangement for paramedics. I certainly don't know how that is going to work out, and I look forward to the committee stage of that, as well, to find out if that is even functional or workable. Will the paramedics have to get malpractice insurance? Is that going to be our new operating theatre? You know, how far is this going to go?

I don't want to see band-aid solutions to such a serious issue and such a serious crisis in this province. That's why we're prepared to look at the initiatives that are being put forward in this bill to put the meat on the bones that we require to do, to work to try to get a health care system that is functional.

Now, bringing in all these changes, I still have to caution my constituents that the previous bill added "sustainability" to the Canada Health Act. I'm worried about how all of this will be interpreted when the sustainability test has to be one of the tests of whether or not these services are viable and for how long they will be viable. That is very concerning on this side when you change such a strong provision, which is the Canada Health Act, and you weaken it by adding a word that in essence opens the door to privatization. Privatization is certainly something that this side is going to fight against.

You know, Tommy Douglas is the father of medicare, and he's also Canada's greatest Canadian. We will continue to fight to ensure that health care in British Columbia is the best health care in the world and does not fall victim to privatization, which is where I feel that this government has been pushing, and pushing extremely hard, towards.

With that, Madam Speaker, I see the red light has come on. I thank you for your indulgence.

M. Karagianis: I'm happy to take my place here, following my colleague from New Westminster, and to engage in this debate.

It's no secret that we in fact are not opposing this bill, but I think that it's really, really important for us to engage in this debate, probably more important now than it even was a few days ago. We know that we will not be permitted to engage in debate on all bills in this House in this session. We know that the government has now invoked a legislative act that will pass bills without the appropriate amount of accountability and scrutiny, without the appropriate amount of democratic debate that we and the citizens of British Columbia are entitled to.

I think that it's going to be incumbent on all of us to speak, then, to all of the bills that we can speak to, whether we support them or not, to try and exercise our rights as we can — because they, in fact, are being denied to us by this government by the ramming through of bills here in the final hours of this session, as they have done in the past, and by the denial of this House for a fall legislative sitting. I think, therefore, it is imperative that we all stand up and debate on the bills that we're allowed to, whether we agree with them or not. That's why I'm exercising my right here today.

It seems to me, in looking at this bill and subsequent bills here — a bill that we'll debate next on this, which is Bill 26 — that this and many other bills that we are debating here in the Legislature right now are kind of…. They're government do-overs. It seems to me that the government has had to, on so many instances, be forced to backtrack on actions that they initiated in the early days of their term in government here after 2001.

We're constantly going through this exercise of a do-over, where the government has had to be forced — either by the public, by the opposition, by the media or the forces of all of those combined — to backtrack on actions that they have taken. That will certainly be, I expect, the central theme of the debate on Bill 26, which comes next.

The government here is not, in fact, forging any new territory with Bill 25, which they are bringing forward today. I know so often the government members like to stand up and say that they don't know what the New Democrats stand for. It's because they are, in fact, refusing to listen to what New Democrats stand for. They don't like to hear the message that we bring. They don't like to hear the advice we bring. They don't like to hear the platforms that we would put in place. So by their very denial, they continue to accuse us of having no position.

But in fact, leading up into the 2005 election, we had a platform that very clearly outlined a number of health care provisions that we would have put in place in 2005 had we been successful in being elected government. Now here we are, several years later, and we see the government implementing some of the very things that we called for.

Leading into the 2005 election, part of our platform — part of the Carole James platform — was to expand the role of nurse practitioners.

Hon. G. Abbott: Yes, a couple of things here. You might advise the member that she should not use personal names in the Legislature, for one. Secondly, I'm sure if I wait only a few more minutes, I will hear

the member turning to the second reading debate on Bill 25, which is the business of the assembly this afternoon, apparently.

A. Dix: In response to the point of order, clearly the member's speech is in order. It deals with issues of scope of practice and other issues that are dealt with in various ways in this legislation, and she'll be getting to that anon.

The minister is, of course, doing what he typically does here, which is to raise points of order that are completely irrelevant. He should listen carefully to the member's speech.

Deputy Speaker: Member, you remember the rule that we do not use members' names in the chamber.

M. Karagianis: I appreciate that, Madam Speaker, and in my zeal, I simply overlooked that.

M. Karagianis: Certainly, the point of order…. I believe, in fact, I am speaking to Bill 25 here, which deals with expanding access to health care professionals, which is a regulatory reform amendment act. I'm talking about the very genesis of some of the proposals that government is bringing forward today. I'm speaking directly to Bill 25.

If we look back at the things that were called for by the opposition members, New Democrats, leading into the last election, we see those very components here — right? We called upon this province to put in place nurse practitioners as one of the very viable solutions for the health care services shortfall in communities around British Columbia. It was, I think, a very sound idea then, and it is a very sound idea now.

In addition, we called to make it easier for foreign-trained doctors to complete residencies and set up practices here in British Columbia. What do we have here before us? We have some of these very components in this bill here. I think it's very germane to the debate here on Bill 25 today.

In fact, I will also look back to the government being put on alert a year ago to the number of shortfalls that were occurring. The government refused to take action then but obviously, in the subsequent year, has had a little do-over and is ready to take action now. In fact, the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, our Health critic, set the stage one year ago by outlining very clearly the kinds of shortfalls we would see around this province for health care professionals.

I also think that the member then and those of us in the House now reminded government that it was some of their very own actions that set about a domino effect that, in fact, has discredited this government severely on the way they have treated health care workers in this province. I'm speaking about Bill 29, which set the stage in the very early days of this government's term in office around what kind of respect they had for health professionals and what kinds of actions they were prepared to take to undermine and in fact hack away the underpinnings of the health care professionals here in this province.

We, of course, have subsequently seen — and as we will see with Bill 26 coming up — that this government has had to do a major do-over on the results of their actions around Bill 29.

In April of 2007 it was very clearly pointed out by the member for Vancouver-Kingsway, our Health critic, that the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority had shown the kind of shortfall that they would experience in the coming years by 2015 — 85 percent fewer medical laboratory technologists than it needed; 72 percent fewer medical diagnostic sonographers than it needed; 75 percent fewer bedside care aides than were needed; 39 percent fewer RNs than were needed; and 34 percent fewer pharmacists. And that was in one health region alone.

It was very apparent, much earlier than even a year ago. All the signs have been pointing to a health care crisis looming for a very long time, and yet what did this government do when they took office? They immediately embarked on Bill 29, firing thousands of workers out of the health care industry, and we have been trying to have a do-over and a make-good ever since. So, yeah, this is a do-over. This is another do-over bill, and I don't think we should have any hesitation in saying this. Bill 25 tries to rectify a situation that should have been rectified a long time ago.

But I would like to speak in a very personal way to the issue here of trying to find a physician, because I have a growing concern. I'm glad to see that the government is finally taking some steps, although it will probably be significant days and months and perhaps years into the future before we see a resolution here that suits the needs and requirements of communities across British Columbia. I have a growing concern about the ability of people to find a family doctor here in the province of British Columbia.

Whether it's in rural British Columbia or whether it's in the urban centre, the crisis is the same everywhere. I know from experience that young people — my children, my neighbours' children — have a growing crisis of lack of family doctors. The growing dependency of young people on walk-in treatment centres as being their only source for any kind of family doctor, I think, has long-term implications for the health and well-being of our current generation as well as generations into the future. Because without a health history, without a connection to a family doctor, without the ability for that continuity of knowledge, of history, of experience between a doctor and the patient, all kinds of things can go wrong.

I fear that this propensity now for young people to expect that they will never have a family doctor, to have no reliance on a connection with a family doctor, is in fact putting them in jeopardy. I am concerned. My experience is even with my youngest daughter, who has had to depend on a walk-in clinic as her family doctor. She lives on Mayne Island. She comes into Victoria

once a week to do shopping, groceries, business, that kind of thing, and any kind of medical care she needs. She has grown up without the concept in her young adult life that she would have a family doctor who would know her, who would know her health history, who could, in fact, perhaps predict any kind of health problems that she might have and would understand the long-term relationship that she would have had with that family doctor.

She is like thousands and thousands of other young people in this province who are experiencing the same thing — or young families who are experiencing the same thing, who don't have a family doctor and are raising their children based on this kind of haphazard health care relationship that they have with walk-in treatment centres and doctors there.

I think that there has been a crying need to address that issue of having that relationship and that security — that there is a doctor who knows who you are, that you can rely on being there the next time you go in for some kind of health treatment and will, in fact, have some understanding and some history with you so that you can avoid health problems and health crises.

I think that growing concern is even more magnified when you go outside of the urban areas, because many rural areas and small towns across this province are experiencing the same kind of thing where there are only one or two practising physicians. Some of them are now reaching retirement age, and there is a huge challenge — a huge, huge barrier to overcome — in trying to attract doctors to take over those practices.

You hear the stories every single day. I've heard them. I've seen them. I've heard from my constituents. I've heard from family members, from friends who live elsewhere. You hear the stories when you travel around the province and get into conversation with people.

One of the number one things on their mind is whether or not they will have a doctor to serve their needs in their community or when they need it. I think that there has been a desperate need for us to take real, essential steps forward and practical, commonsense steps in finding ways to resolve the lack of doctors and other health care professionals

But first and most specifically, I'll talk about doctors, because I do think that it is putting the public in jeopardy every single day, and more and more. If you do not have any access to a doctor, anyone who has knowledge of your health situation, and something goes wrong, there's far too much reliance now on a new face, a new doctor, an emergency doctor, or a treatment centre doctor to be the one to address your health issues.

In many cases the people who need health services have complex needs. As you get older, you have complex needs. I know that my colleague from Vancouver-Kingsway has talked a lot about other health complications — his personal experience with that. The kind of health complications that that member has talked about are not unlike those that many hundreds of thousands of people across the province experience.

That's the kind of health situation that cannot be adequately addressed by a drop-in or an emergency doctor who has no idea who you are or what your history is, and really has no ability to look at your history and understand your health needs, who so often is only addressing most superficial needs in your health situation.

I think that as we kind of have to deal with the dichotomy of the move towards wellness and prevention on the one hand, we are moving further and further away from having a doctor or other health care professional who knows you, who can actually contribute to that wellness in your life. So I am glad to see that in this bill there is a concerted effort to make some practical steps.

Health professionals will be certified to practise here in British Columbia who are now certified in other Canadian jurisdictions. It seems to me that that's a very practical move to have taken. I'm uncertain why it would take so long for us to have reached the conclusion that a first step that we should be taking is to make it easier for that certification to go from province to province to province.

Having a new restricted licence that will allow internationally trained physicians to practise in the province, again, seems to me to be almost a no-brainer. When the health care crisis became evident, why would we not have immediately moved towards thinking about that?

It's been a discussion across Canada, I know, and here in the province for many years. It just seems to me so commonsense, so practical — that here's a little checklist — that it could have immediately been taken care of when the health crisis became evident. It has been evident for many years, and growing more and more dire.

I think that the other part of the bill here, a new framework that will be developed and implemented to allow Canadian citizens trained outside of Canada to practise in British Columbia, is again pretty commonsense, and certainly not as complicated as it has been made. I think the issue around people coming from other jurisdictions and practising here…. Those barriers should have been dropped much before this. That would have been a very easy solution to have put in place five or six or seven years ago.

In addition, the other two implementations here of some kind of licensing for internationally trained physicians or for British Columbians trained outside of Canada to practise should be easy to implement. I think that they will go a long way to addressing the concerns that we have here for the lack of doctors in urban areas, in suburban areas and certainly in rural areas.

I think that as you go further north, the circumstances become more critical and more dire. Hopefully, there will be some resolution to some of that. Unfortunately, some of these things will take a number of years to bear out the kind of fruit that's needed.

I also think that the expansion here of other health professionals and of the duties and authority of pharmacists is a very good one to make. This is, again,

something that I think has been a pretty easy fix. I know that pharmacists have lobbied the government for some time for this. I think it is an easy and practical solution, certainly in communities outside of the urban centres, where often the pharmacist may be the only health professional that you have easy access to. So I think it's fair and right that, with some monitoring, pharmacists should be able to be given the authorization to renew prescriptions.

I think that we need to make sure that, at all times, we are taking a more pragmatic approach to some of the challenges here, because a lot of these solutions have been in front of our face for a long time. They've been very easy to address, and you have to just wonder why it takes so long for these commonplace things to occur.

I do have some concerns around — and I know this has been flagged — the implications that this bill might, in some way, overburden the existing resources. My eldest daughter is just now finishing a nursing course up in Campbell River. She is, I believe, currently doing a practicum and graduates in June from that program. She has spent a long number of years training while she raised her family. She's trained to be a nurse while raising her family and balancing and juggling the responsibilities of both family and advanced education here.

I know that she anticipates with great enthusiasm engaging in the profession. I would not want to see her, like so many other professionals across this province, find that the workload is so extraordinary and that this legislation in any way adds to the burden and the workload.

I know that the B.C. Health Sciences Association has criticized the changes in this legislation, saying that it now heaps new responsibilities onto already overworked nurses and is not the solution that they would see. They call for an immediate plan to train the health science professionals we need today and into the future.

I think that that's a realistic expectation, observation and recommendation from them — that we cannot expect that this will in some way overburden a system which is already at snapping point.

Every single day, I hear from nurses who are working hard. I don't think there is a person in this chamber — and certainly anyone who has had connections with nurses in the hospitals or in long-term care facilities — that doesn't understand that the health care providers who are currently serving the system here in British Columbia are all working far and away above and beyond the call of duty.

Almost every single nurse and health practitioner that's involved in the hospital system right now or involved in long-term care is going way above and beyond. They are doing double shifts. They are pulling all kinds of overtime. They are coming in off very short turnovers and holidays in order to fill backfill positions. This has been going on for some years here.

So I would not want to see that, in any way, the additional responsibilities for nurse practitioners will increase the problem or make it any more difficult for nurses within the system to do their job and to have some kind of dignified quality of life while doing their job. I don't think we can praise them often enough or long enough or hard enough.

Any occasion I've had to engage with the health care system — and that is a bit more often these days than I would like — I run into the same situations where I talk to nurses, many of whom are working long, hard hours. They have a passion and a love for their job that has benefited all of us very greatly, because it's their passion for their work that has allowed us to exploit their skills and resources to the maximum.

As a province, I think we have exploited our resources and our human power here by expecting that the system would function while it was underfunded and undermanaged, while the expectations were growing greater and greater on health care professionals. Or our expectations and demands of them have far exceeded what we should have expected from anyone and maybe what we are even ourselves capable of providing.

So each time I've talked to a nurse who's pulling double duty or who's been called in off holidays or something, I try to express my extreme gratitude for the work they do. I would not want to see that in any way this legislation is adding to that burden or creating more pressure on that system.

You know, the health employees union spokesperson has said that without new workers, the work situation in hospitals will become more intolerable. If we in fact are going to improve our public health care system, if that's what this bill, Bill 25, is about — amending and improving the lot of health professionals and the public health care system here — then I don't think we can allow the environment to continue to be intolerable.

We do need to make sure that we are making a concerted effort to find ways to bring in more of those resources, whether it's training more nurses or whether it's acknowledging more quickly the credentials of nurses from outside of this province so that they can use their skills and their talents here. Then, I think, it's imperative that we move as quickly as possible towards doing that.

In looking at this bill, I would have to say that there are, unfortunately, a few things missing from this bill. Those things also concern me. There probably could have been more done to go that extra step further, because there are other shortages that also need to be addressed, and I think they fit very clearly in with this package.

I mean, pharmacists are being given expanded duties, but frankly, we don't have enough pharmacists. So we need to find a way to build that sector up. We don't have enough diagnosticians. We don't have enough people in rehabilitation. Those are all key pieces of the health care system as well. Wherever you're lacking in one sector, it puts pressure on the rest of the system. I think there are a number of other parts of the health care system that also need to be addressed, and we should not forget them.

I would have to say here that, looking at the full implications of this bill, I think it's well past time for us

to expand access to these health care professionals. I do know that within my community there are many foreign-trained health care professionals that will be looking forward to the process that allows them to take their place within our health care system.

I do hope that we don't put so many barriers into this and so many complications that it continues to turn people away. I have heard stories about those who have tried, in various ways, to jump through the hoops that it takes to practise here in the health care system in British Columbia. They've basically been exhausted by the requirements for them to jump through hoops here.

I would hope that this is also something that eases the system, that not only defines that we will allow this but that eases the system and makes it easier for health care professionals to go through the various barriers and to take the various steps that are needed for them to acquire the appropriate certifications so that they can begin serving us.

I also think that the government needs to be clearer on how they are going to encourage deployment of health care professionals outside of urban areas. I think it is very attractive to come to the urban areas of British Columbia. I think that is, in many cases, the first stopping point for not only immigrants but for anyone looking for work. They seek to live in the beautiful lifestyles of southern Vancouver Island or of Metropolitan Vancouver.

I think the government should make a concerted effort to ensure that the bolstering of health care professional resources is spread equally around the province. Far too often we see, as I commented earlier, that the further north you go, the more meagre are the resources.

I think northern and aboriginal communities tend to be in even much more dire straits. While I stand here and complain that my kids can't find a family doctor or my neighbours and my constituents can't find a family doctor, I think it's much worse as you travel out into the rest of the province. Certainly, in first nations communities I think there is a huge crisis there in the kind of health care professionals they have access to.

I would hope that in implementing this, in implementing and expanding the access and ability for health care professionals to practise here in British Columbia, we are looking at equity for all communities and at finding ways to encourage doctors and nurses and health care professionals to want to take up residence in other places in British Columbia besides the Lower Mainland or the Island here and ensure that communities right across British Columbia all have equal access to that.

I haven't heard a deployment strategy from the government. I certainly hope they have one. I expect they must have one, because they would be hearing the same stories that we do when they travel. I know, certainly, that the Health Minister himself is not a metropolitan urbanite, and so I expect he would understand very deeply, as many of the members of this cabinet would, that the need out there in rural British Columbia is very great and very pressing.

I'm glad to see that we're taking practical steps. I'm glad to see that we're following some of the directive that the New Democrats laid out in the last election. It was needed then. Here we are a number of years later. It's needed now. I'm glad to see that we're implementing it.

I'm happy to support this and look forward to debating other bills at every opportunity I can. For the bills that we're allowed to debate, I intend on debating them as vigorously as possible.

Hon. G. Abbott: It's a pleasure for me to rise and close debate on Bill 25. I thank the members for their comments in respect of Bill 25. I am pleased to hear that the opposition will be supporting Bill 25 at second reading. That support…. I guess I would hasten to add that it didn't prevent a number of members from canvassing a wide range of concerns, some of which were even well connected, I must say, to Bill 25 — not all perhaps, but some certainly were.

I certainly enjoyed the range of speeches, thought particularly the member for Yale-Lillooet provided a particularly thoughtful speech and probably the best I have heard from him. I appreciate that.

I did, however, hear what I thought were quite fascinating assertions at times during the second reading debate. I thought I heard — and I may have been wrong about this — the opposition Health critic suggest that the NDP founded public health care in British Columbia. Maybe I misheard on that point, because the first NDP government wasn't elected in British Columbia until 1972. It was there until 1975, and of course, public health care in British Columbia long preceded that time in office.

In fact, I think it would be safe to say, historically speaking, that it was a Liberal government, followed by a Social Credit government, that brought public health care to British Columbia. But that was only one of a number of remarkable assertions that I heard.

I heard just now from the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin that the 2005 NDP platform called, I think she said, for a greater role for nurse practitioners in the health care system. She's confirming that's the case.

That does represent a kind of astonishing conversion on the revisionist road to Damascus — quite an astonishing conversion, given that it was not until the current B.C. Liberal government was in place prior to 2005 that we ever had nurse practitioners in the province of British Columbia. I think it is important to note for the historical record, as well, that it was a B.C. Liberal government prior to 2005 that created the nurse practitioner program. There had been no nurse practitioners prior to 2001 in British Columbia — notwithstanding, I'm sure, opportunities to create exactly such a program.

That, I guess, goes to the theme that I have articulated at other points in the debate on other health bills, which is that the NDP tends to focus on rhetoric. We

tend to focus on action. That is, I think, probably a fair division of labour. The NDP are very good at rhetoric. We are very good at action. So it probably represents a very fair balance in terms of the division of labour between the opposition and the government.

We do things. They talk about doing things. There is kind of a remarkable symmetry that does come through in all of this.

Hon. G. Abbott: The member from Revelstoke is right. We should always set the record straight. I appreciate him reminding me that I should do that.

Just to try to think for a moment about the challenges that we are trying to address in Bill 25, there is no single magic pill or magic bullet that will immediately remediate all of the challenges we have in the health care system. I thought the members of the opposition made some very thoughtful comments in respect of that.

I think, to pick up on the nurse practitioner point, one of the things I have seen as a Health Minister is the quite remarkable range of settings that nurse practitioners can be a very valuable part of. I have seen nurse practitioners in emergency rooms, in street clinics, in doctors' offices, in primary care centres. They do provide, I think, a very important opportunity, moving forward in this province, to assist with the challenges that we have in the health care system.

The issue of ensuring that nurse practitioners work to full scope — just as other health practitioners in the province, we hope, will be able to work to full scope — is an important one.

Now, physicians are a very important part of the system. There is no question about that. We have well over 8,000 physicians in British Columbia. Some of those are family physicians. Some are surgeons and so on. One of the things that we resolved as a government not long after we took office in 2001 was that we needed to take concrete steps to deal with what was undoubtedly going to be a huge challenge in terms of the physicians that were practising in the province of British Columbia.

We took the very bold step of committing to doubling the number of physicians, young British Columbians that we were educating at UBC, University of Northern B.C., University of Victoria and, in the future, at the UBC Okanagan. Last fall we celebrated the doubling of physician education spaces at UBC and elsewhere from 128 when we took office to 256. That was a huge step ahead.

Of course, physicians have an extensive scope of practice, as they should. I think that where some of the action will be in the future is around how they are deployed within primary care collaboratives — in partnership with nurse practitioners, nurses, nurse educators, pharmacists, physiotherapists and others — to try to deal with the quite remarkable growth in chronic care challenges that we have in this province.

It's the same, I think I would say, for nurses. Again, we recognized as the incoming government in 2001 that we had to deal not only with the fact that during the 1990s we'd seen an actual reduction of 32 percent in the number of nurses that had graduated between 1993 and 1999 but with a 32 percent reduction in the number of nurses that were graduating. We were seeing fewer nurses coming into the health workforce at a time when the demographics were working in the opposite direction. That is, many nurses in that 50-to-65 range were getting to the years where they would be contemplating retirement. That's been a huge challenge.

We have been every year adding new investments on the nursing education side. Now I think that we are well over 90 percent in terms of the increase in the number of nursing spaces in this province — incrementally, I think, 3,770-some additional nursing spaces that we have committed to.

A very important part, as well, of meeting that challenge for doctors and nurses has to be making the best use of international medical graduates in this province. As some members of the House have noted, there have certainly been times when there has been an underutilization of those skills in British Columbia.

One of the members said…. I think Surrey-Newton said that the old adage goes that you might be better being in a cab and having a heart attack than in an emergency room. I think I may have commented at the time that I'd take my chances in the emergency room, thank you. I would particularly say so because I think there are far fewer of those kinds of instances today where internationally trained physicians are in fact not being utilized effectively.

I must say that we have been working in a very concerted way since 2001 with the international medical graduates association, or the Association of International Medical Doctors, as I believe they are currently termed. They've been doing a lot of great work in terms of trying to ensure that we do maximize our utilization of those international medical graduates.

Of course, Bill 25 is very much centred on the point that if you have a medical degree — it may be as a physician, nurse, pharmacist or any of the professions — we want to ensure, through the mechanisms we are creating in Bill 25, that we do not have any inappropriate barriers to licensure and credentialing of those skills, so that they can be utilized in the province of British Columbia. There are huge opportunities in terms of international recruitment for nurses, physicians and other health professionals.

I know it wasn't probably a couple months ago that we celebrated the fact that over the past two years over 500 nurses who were recruited from the United Kingdom are now working in the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. That tells you just what an important adjunct the recruitment and the recognition of the skills that that recruitment brings to British Columbia is to the successful delivery of health care in the province. That is a very important piece.

Complementing that will be ensuring that all of the medical professionals in this province work to full scope, whether those medical professionals be licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, pharmacists or physiotherapists.

I know that sometimes members across the floor, when I am realistic about this, claim it is some kind of defeatist thing, but it is a reality. We have shifting demographics in our society, and many people in this chamber, including me, are a part of that shifting demographic.

The opposition Health critic, I know, is much younger and may escape that for a period of time, but in fact, that is going to be a huge challenge, without a doubt, as we continue to see that shift from about maybe 13 percent to 14 percent of the population today being over 65.

In another ten or 15 years we will be close to 25 percent of the population being over 65, including me, Mr. Speaker, and perhaps even yourself, although I suspect you're much younger that I am. Considering the look you're giving me, you're perhaps much, much younger than I.

That's one of the issues. Of course, chronic disease is another. Some of that is related to the aging of society. But the moral of the story, I think, is that in every case we are going to have to maximize the utilization of all health professionals in this province. We're going to have to ensure that we do that by training, educating, recruiting and retaining and by having all work to maximum scope of practice.

A number of members — I think it's appropriate that they raised the issue in second reading debate — referenced the challenge that exists, particularly in smaller or rural communities, with respect to recruiting physicians to those communities in British Columbia. Actually, I am one of the members that is going through that issue in Armstrong, where there have been a couple of recent retirements and some challenges in recruiting new physicians to the community.

I'm happy to say that there is a program, Family Physicians for B.C., which has been proving very successful. I believe some 56 family physicians now have committed to the FPs4BC program, and that's great news, because that's 56 new family physicians in rural communities who might not otherwise be there. That program provides up to $100,000 to support them. Often these will be physicians that have recently graduated, and the dollars can help them retire some of their student debt and can also help them set up a practice in that location in British Columbia.

We also have a very vigorous Health Match B.C. recruitment program that's been very successful. I mentioned the nurses in Vancouver Coastal. That's just one example of many of the successes that have been enjoyed around Health Match B.C. On the nursing side, we do have a loan remission program for nurses who are prepared to go to underserviced communities in British Columbia, and that, again, has proven very successful.

Where I would have less and often no agreement is around the suggestions that I heard from the opposition Health critic around so-called cuts, so-called centralization of the health care system. These are simply not borne out by the facts. The facts are that when we took office in 2001, the Health Ministry budget was $8.3 billion. This year it is well over $14 billion. The investments by government in this area have been huge.

There was a suggestion that hospitals were being closed during our tenure. Well, we can't hold a candle to the NDP in that regard, since over the period 1991 to 2001…. This is according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. There were over 230 operating hospitals in British Columbia when the NDP took office, and there were less than 200 when they left office. Two of those hospitals, I would note, were two-thirds of the hospitals in my constituency. Armstrong and Enderby hospitals were community hospitals that were closed during that time. So, to me, the sanctimony at some points is rather excessive in respect of that matter.

Also, I heard suggestions around too much work for nurses. I agree with some of that. But if we have nurses that are being overworked — and I think we do — how, then, do we go back and say…? How do we rationalize suggesting that we deplore nurses being overworked when as part of government's policy during the 1990s…? I think the opposition Health critic has acknowledged this. He suggests it was characteristic of other provincial governments at the time too, and that may be.

Clearly, the NDP government of the 1990s bought into the notion that one can best control health care costs by controlling the number of health care professionals who are educated and who work in a jurisdiction. That is why, I think, we saw that reduction of well over 300 nursing graduates between 1993 and 1999, about a 32 percent reduction in the number of nurses who were being graduated in British Columbia through the 1990s. We continue to reap that whirlwind in the form of nurses working more overtime than is at all beneficial in a health care system. But we are making the huge investments to try to remediate that issue.

The opposition Health critic also went on at some length about the health sciences, medical technologists, physiotherapists, etc. Yes, I think I agree that there is a challenge there, and we are working vigorously with the Ministry of Advanced Education to try to ensure that we graduate sufficient numbers in those areas. However, the reports cited do reflect what the shortfall would have been had we continued to do as a government what the NDP had done in the 1990s, which is nothing. Today they condemn the fact that there's a shortage, yet they did nothing to address it in the 1990s.

Maybe I'm missing my own point, which is that I should acknowledge that the NDP are remarkably good at talking. They're remarkably good at rhetoric, and we're remarkably good at action. Once I can accept that fundamental division of labour, which appears inherently a part of the legislative environment, perhaps I'll understand it better. But the fact is that what they are deploring is very much a consequence of their inaction during the 1990s. Again, it is another example of the disconnect between the rhetoric of the NDP and their performance when in government.

In terms of the reality around medical professionals, it is a fact, Mr. Speaker, that when we took office —

you know this so well, being an MLA from the Interior, as I am — in 2001 there was one MRI, one permanent MRI in the entire interior of British Columbia, including Prince George. There was one fixed MRI and one that moved around to a variety of locations in the Interior.

That's changed dramatically. We have moved from nine MRIs in the province when we took office to 19 MRIs today, and we should be very proud of that. We should also be very proud — I think this is reflective of the investment that we have made in medical technologists, radiologists, and so on — that the number of MRI procedures has more than doubled since 2001, when we took office. Obviously, we have health human resources issues, but the facts point to us having more and better utilization of those resources as well.

The same, of course, can be said for the huge increase in the number of CT scanners and the number of CT scans that are undertaken.

I do want to conclude on this point. Again, when one looks at the vision that's articulated here…. I'm glad that part of the NDP vision appears to be endorsing what we have in Bill 25. That's a good thing, but I still have a sense that their vision is either back to the future or forward to the past. I'm not sure which it's going to be. I do get a sense from a number of the comments that they are still bent on having a kind of hidebound, inflexible kind of health care delivery system, and I think that's unfortunate.

Again, the issues in the 1990s prompted, at times, the forced closure of emergency departments because there wasn't even sufficient flexibility in terms of the deployment of human resources to move nurses from one emergency department to another emergency department. It had become remarkably bureaucratic, remarkably inflexible. It had become unmanageable.

I don't know whether it will be 30 years or 300 years until the next NDP government is elected in British Columbia. I'm sure it will be somewhere in that range, probably between 30 and 300, but should they ever form government again, I do hope that they will give some thought to whether they should be embracing greater flexibility. I do hope that it's not all reflexively opposing, that it's not all advocating spending as the only solution. I think that there are things that can be done to build a stronger system.

A final point. I only say this because there were some disparaging comments that were made in the course of the debate about B.C. Ambulance Service — in particular, some disparaging comments made about the $2-per-hour on-call rate in community for ambulance paramedics in remote settings. I guess the first thing that should be noted about that is that the $2-an-hour on-call rate in community, in remote settings compares, I think, quite well to the zero dollars and zero cents for ambulance paramedics in the NDP day.

This was something that was negotiated in the last round of collective bargaining with the B.C. Ambulance paramedics. I do look forward to working with the B.C. Ambulance Service and with the paramedics union to identify ways in which we can build stronger and more satisfying careers for paramedics in this province. They are a very important part of health care delivery, along with doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and physiotherapists.

There are a great number of medical professionals who work hard. Some 140,000 of them get up each and every day to provide the best of care to British Columbians. We believe that Bill 25 is an important step to providing greater support to them and to ensuring that we do have the health human resources to help us meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Hon. G. Abbott: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House for committee stage debate after today.

Bill 25, Health Professions (Regulatory Reform) Amendment Act, 2008, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. B. Penner: I call second reading of Bill 41, Patient Care Quality Review Board Act.

Perhaps the members would be more interested to debate second reading of Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2008.

Hon. G. Abbott: While personally fascinated at the thought of doing either, I move that Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, be read a second time.

As this is a general amendment act to a few statutes, my second reading comments will be relatively brief. I do look forward to discussing the proposed changes with members of the House in greater detail during committee stage debate.

As indicated during first reading, the Health Statutes Amendment Act will make a range of changes to existing legislation. When section 49 of the Medicare Protection Act was created by the previous government, it restricted the ability of the Medical Services Commission and the minister from publicly discussing or disclosing to a complainant the status or outcome of an investigation or complaint.

Section 49 of the Medicare Protection Act is being amended to permit the commission or the minister to disclose to a complainant the status of their complaint or, if it is resolved, the outcome of that complaint. The amendment will also allow the commission or the

minister to disclose to the general public the status or outcome of an investigation if it is deemed to be of public interest.

This legislation will also amend sections of the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act and the Health Sector Partnerships Agreement Act to ensure consistency with the Supreme Court of Canada's 2007 ruling on the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act in the context of the resolution of issues negotiated with the health unions.

Government resolved all outstanding issues with the affected unions earlier this year, and we look forward to their support of these amendments. The court was very clear about the importance of consultation and negotiation, and the government is committed to those principles.

The main amendments to the Emergency and Health Services Act support the province's changes to ambulance fees in the fall of 2007 for ground and air-ambulance transport. These amendments will enable the province to make regulations to waive or vary ambulance fees for different groups of people. For example, MSP premium assistance clients already are not charged ambulance fees. Now they will no longer need to apply for waiver of fees to get remission of ambulance service charges. The amendments will streamline administrative procedures and remove one source of billing complaints for ambulance services.

Finally, housekeeping amendments will transfer the power to appoint members of the Emergency and Health Services Commission from the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council to the Minister of Health. Currently, the Lieutenant-Governor can make permanent appointments to the commission, while the minister makes temporary appointments. These amendments will improve efficiency by giving the minister the necessary authority to make appointments.

The Health Statutes Amendment Act demonstrates our commitment to our public health system and the health of British Columbians.

A. Dix: Certainly, that second reading speech was an uncharacteristically modest effort by the Minister of Health. In fact, of course, the legislation in question is of great significance and has been part of a struggle that has characterized most of the life of this government.

As the designated speaker for the official opposition, I think that the issues raised in this legislation — namely, the government's attack on health care workers, the growing incidence of extra-billing in British Columbia under this government — are, I think, worthy of a significant debate in this House.

As you know, this legislation repeals sections of Bill 29. There are, of course, always new Bill 29s every session, because we tend to pass at least that many bills going forward. But for many thousands of people in British Columbia, Bill 29 is synonymous with the early period of the government's first mandate.

In fact, the legislation we're dealing with today, Bill 26, deals with a bill that was passed on January 28, 2002 — a bill that was an attack not just on the bargaining rights but on the livelihood of a group of health care workers.

I think it's important to put that attack in context. What made it so beyond those elements of the bill — which we'll get to — which were found to be illegal by the Supreme Court of Canada and which were in fact struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada, which has forced the government to come to the House today and acknowledge that its behaviour was, at least according to the Supreme Court of Canada, illegal.

Let's just put these provisions in their political context. We had a period leading into the election in 2001 where the current Premier of B.C. was the Leader of the Opposition. Specific to these provisions of Bill 26, because they are tied to this and are fundamental to the provisions that we are getting rid of today, what did the Premier say? He met with health care workers. He met with them. There was, by the way, contrary to what the Premier suggests, no secret about their collective agreements.

Indeed, the provisions of Bill 29, many of the most important provisions — including some of the ones that we're dealing with today, which were dealt with by the Supreme Court — were not based, as the minister likes to say, on contracts negotiated in the 1990s. Some of those provisions, the bumping provisions, had existed for 30 years, had been negotiated for 30 years by a variety of governments from Social Credit to NDP. The contracting-out provisions that the government summarily struck have been around for 20 years.

So the Premier was asked. He was then the Leader of the Opposition. It wasn't an election yet. The election hadn't happened yet. They asked him: "Will you tear up the contract?" The contract wasn't a secret to him. He knew what was in it. There's really no room for equivocation on this. He said no. He said he wouldn't do it.

He was asked a follow-up question. Here's the follow-up question he was asked. Does a 48-year-old housekeeper who has finally, after decades of struggle, come up to an average wage have anything to worry about in terms of privatization from the Liberal government? Here's what the Premier said about the provisions of the bill precisely before us today.

What did he say? He said, and I'm quoting him because one wouldn't want to misquote the Premier: "I say no. What she's going to find is that the people of B.C. and the government are recognizing the value of the work she does. Most importantly, she's going to find the quality of work she's able to do more rewarding and more fulfilling." That's what the Premier said to health care workers in the election campaign of 2001.

I think that health care workers might have reasonably thought that the Premier's explicit words — not only that but the sentiments that came with those words saying: "I will not tear up your contract; I will not attack your bargaining rights…." They might have

thought that meant something. Yet this government, when it came to office, explicitly and deliberately attacked the very fundamental rights, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, the freedom-of-association rights, of those workers. That's what they did.

On January 28, 2002, they passed this legislation. They drove it through the House, and they cannot say that they weren't warned. In fact, the member, the Leader of the Opposition at the time…. Oh, I know that that democratic government didn't recognize her as the Leader of the Opposition, but the people of British Columbia recognized her as Leader of the Opposition.

What did she say to the government? What did Joy MacPhail, the member at the time for Vancouver-Hastings, the Leader of the Opposition at the time, say to the government about their reckless actions — stripping rights away from this workforce, from hard-working people who contributed enormously to our province and to our health care system?

Here's what she said. It's worth repeating, because some of the comments in the court decision by members of the opposition — the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, who I hope will speak later in the debate, and the member for Vancouver-Hastings, Joy MacPhail — were picked up.

What did she say? She said: "It's going to haunt this government, perhaps in court — the absolute untruth of the repetition of that kind of statement." She was referring to what the government was saying, that somebody gets 56 weeks of job security after working one day. She challenged that. It was untrue, what the government was saying, and she said that will haunt them in court. Boy, was she right.

It sure did haunt them in court. Pretty prophetic words, when you consider that what the government did on that day….

A. Dix: Well, the Minister of Health wasn't the Minister of Health. Just to be clear, he and all of them, all 77 of them, were in the caucus. He was in the cabinet. They stood in this Legislature and voted for this attack that precipitated the largest layoff of female workers in the history of Canada. They did all that thing. There are all their names. We can, of course, go over those names. Seventy of them stood and did this.

What were the consequences of it? Well, we can talk at length, and we may, about the consequences of that reckless action. But think for a moment of a woman I know who lives on Euclid Avenue in Collingwood, and what it eventually meant for her. Her wages — because she ended up in virtually the same job as she had before — were cut by 50 percent. She's a single mother. What it meant was that she had to do, because she's very determined to provide as best she could for her children…. She ended up taking on private clients and cleaning banks and taking on other jobs. She ended up working 70 hours a week.

That action, which was a betrayal of health care workers, which they had been told would never happen and which has subsequently been found in significant sections to have been illegal by the Supreme Court of Canada…. What it meant for her was a profound change in her life. What it meant for her kids — she went from working 35 hours a week to 70 hours a week — was that they lost their mom for 35 hours a week more, every week. More than that, she had to travel to all kinds of different jobsites. It was a new reality for her. What it meant for her was profound.

That's what they did. They broke their promise to do that. Their action was found subsequently to be illegal by the Supreme Court of Canada, but you know what? All the compensation in the world…. They've had to pay — not themselves but with our money, of course. They're paying some compensation. But you can't take that time back. You can't repair the damage that they did.

People's wages — hospital cleaners' and cooks' wages — dropped in many cases by more than 50 percent. How can you do that? By legislative diktat. Not by negotiation; by legislative diktat. The rights that they'd had for 20 or 30 years from successive governments were stripped away from them.

Oh my, hon. Speaker, you bet that the unions that represented them — in many cases it was "represented," because they lost those rights subsequently — went to court on their behalf. They went to lots of people, the International Labour Organization, a United Nations agency. Oh, I know the scorn that the discussion of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization will bring on the other side.

What have they found? They concluded that Bill 29 violates international conventions that protect workers rights to freely associate and organize. The ILO called on the B.C. government in March 2003 to repeal or rewrite the laws to bring them into line with international labour standards.

Worse than that, I mean, was the effect on people's wages. There was the effect on their community. But what happened? It's important to remember this in the whole sweep of Canadian history in terms of labour law. The consequences of what they did: 9,000 to 10,000 health care workers, predominantly women, in the Facilities Bargaining Association and members of the HEU, the BCGEU and other unions lost their jobs.

The Bill 29 firings constituted the largest layoff of female workers in Canadian history. One would have hoped that the government might have more to say

about that, that the government would have stood up here and said…. Not that this is part of a small health statutes amendment act, because it's not. This is enormously significant. They might have said: "We were wrong." They might have had the decency to stand in this House and say, "We were wrong," to my constituent and to the thousands of workers in British Columbia that were negatively affected by this outrageous action. Think of this.

Let's talk about another case: "Hospital laundry aide Felinor Adriano works for about $12.50 an hour. The salary isn't enough for his family to live on, he said, so he also works full time as a security guard, and his wife works two jobs as well. Away from home more than 90 hours a week, Adriano misses out on raising his five-year-old daughter. He also doesn't earn enough to visit his family in the Philippines. 'I didn't see life like this.'"

You know why he didn't see life like this, hon. Members? Because he believed the Premier. That's why he didn't see life like this.

We can go through, and we will go through some of this, stories of what the lives of hospital cleaners mean. They have to live farther away from their work. They have to often scrounge for food. The $8, $9, $10 and now, because of negotiations, the $12 and $13 an hour that they work for is not a living wage — working in our health care system, doing essential work in our health care system, work worthy of respect.

What did the Supreme Court say? Let's reflect directly on how we got here. What did the Supreme Court of Canada say about this government which treated…?

A. Dix: Yeah, they said they were wrong. They said that the provisions dealing with contracting-out, layoffs and bumping deals were matters central to the freedom of association.

What the Supreme Court of Canada said very clearly was that this government, in its zeal to attack health care workers, workers who got up every day and did jobs that I suspect many members of the government wouldn't do themselves, the hard jobs but the necessary jobs….

If you're going into a health care facility, into a hospital, you would like your hospital room to be clean, and not only that, it's essential to your health that it be clean. At a time when you need nutrition the most — you're in hospital — you would like the food to be good.

Instead, what we have from this government…. The consequences of what they did, so determined were they in their zeal to go after this group of workers, workers that they had promised they wouldn't do this to…. They betrayed them. They made that promise.

R. Chouhan: I remember that promise. I was there when they made that promise.

A. Dix: The member for Burnaby-Edmonds was there when they made that promise.

What did the Premier say? He said he wouldn't tear up the contracts. He said: "What she's going to find" — talking about a health care worker — "is that the people of B.C. and the government are recognizing the value of the work she does." That's what they said.

How does taking away their rights, violating their freedom-of-association rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, taking away their salaries, forcing them to work unreasonable hours every week — like 70, like 75, like 80 hours every week…? How does that meet that promise that the Premier made to those workers? It doesn't. It is an enormous betrayal.

It is an enormous betrayal of their rights. Just because the Supreme Court of Canada has made this ruling does not mean that they get that back. Those workers still are in this situation. They will get some compensation. They will get some prospective rights, because the government was, happily, humiliated in court — happily so for those workers. So they'll get rights. The government doesn't take responsibility for those rights, but think of those five years. Think of those workers.

Now, earlier in the week the direct changes that we're dealing with in this legislation…. We spent some time talking about the social determinants of health. When you take away people's freedom-of-association rights and then, on top of that, you take away their ability to earn a living and you take away real dollars from their kids, what are the long-term consequences of what the government did — what they're not talking about and what they're not apologizing for? They have real effects, I would argue, on the health outcomes of health workers.

You know, we see it every day. We saw it this week. They ignore it. They don't think it matters — the worst record in the country on child poverty.

When you take people who are earning a living wage, who fought decades to get to earn a living wage, and you say to them: "We won't negotiate with you. We don't have to negotiate with you. There are 77 of us in this room, so your rights don't matter. They're a scrap of paper. Never mind that we promised it."

They all stood. With one exception, the member for Peace River South, they all stood, and they did that. That had real consequences. The discussion in the Supreme Court may seem arcane, and we'll get back to it, but it had real consequences for the health of those workers, for their kids and, I submit to you, for the people of British Columbia who use the health care facilities that those workers served so well in.

It had real consequences. It deserves more than saying that this is part of a miscellaneous bill. This is significant. This was an extraordinary fight. What else did the Supreme Court say? What else did they say?

I have to tell you those are not the words of an opposition member of the Legislature in British Columbia. Those are not the words of Joy MacPhail, Leader of the Opposition in British Columbia. They're not the words of the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant or the leaders of the HEU or the leaders of the BCGEU.

This is what the Supreme Court of Canada thinks about what those members over on that side of the House did. It had, and we will be going through this, an enormous impact, I submit to you, on not only those workers in this case, the workers who were affected directly — our neighbours, our friends — but the quality of community life in our communities, and the quality of hospital and health care services.

I think that in some fundamental sense it's about respect for the value of work. The contempt for which the work that the workers who provide laundry services, cleaning services, food services and, further from that, care aides and others is seen on the government side as if the value of that labour, which we all know has enormous positive consequence…. You give me a care aide and you give me a stockbroker, and you ask me who contributes more to society. Well, I don't know, but I can tell you, I wouldn't be choosing the stockbroker every time. The care aide makes an enormous contribution to society.

When our relatives are in care homes and they depend on care aides and people running laundry services and cleaning services as part of the quality of their lives, I don't think that work, that labour they do, should be diminished. I think it should be celebrated in this province — people working hard.

I think that work is of extraordinary value, and instead, that group of workers was betrayed. They were betrayed by this government with incalculable damage to their lives and to our communities — incalculable damage. Hon. Speaker, when you consider the impact of it, the largest layoff of female workers in Canadian history; the violation of their freedom-of-association rights, which isn't established by me; the diminishing of the value of their work…. Surely, it's work, as I say, that should be celebrated. I think an apology is owed. I think it's an apology. Instead, we have more arrogance.

My colleague from Nanaimo…. When you think about Bill 29, you will recall what happened at Nanaimo Seniors Village, and it happened in lots of other communities as well. A group of workers, because of Bill 29, were laid off, and then they were laid off again, and then they were laid off again. Every time they tried to fight for a little bit, a little piece of a living wage, they got laid off. The people who were laying them off are political contributors to the government. The people who were devaluing their work were political contributors to the government. I don't think the seniors whose care was affected will be political supporters of the government.

I don't think that those workers deserve this fate, and when we get up and raise questions about it, what did the Minister of Health say? What did the government members say? "It has nothing to do with us. It has nothing to do with us, hon. Speaker." It was like Murder on the Orient Express in here. They all did it. They all did it, but when they're called to account for the reckless consequences of their actions, they run for cover.

Today they introduced this legislation in the House. They don't even talk about the struggle of those health care workers. It is outrageous.

Hon. Speaker, I will happily reserve my place in the debate and adjourn the debate now. I'm looking forward to getting going tomorrow.

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

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

D. Chudnovsky: Good afternoon to the minister. Never had this experience before — engaging the minister one on one, mano-a-mano, so to speak. We'll see how it works, you know. I look forward to productive discussion.

Hon. R. Coleman: It's not a quantifiable number. With our homeless counts that we do in communities in Metro Vancouver, Vancouver, greater Victoria…. It's about 4,500 in the major population of British Columbia. If you extracted those numbers out you might be up to 7,000 to 8,000 people, depending on which count you were taking.

The reality is that there is no quantifiable number that is available. There have been different speculations by different reports without any actually quantified backup either, where the numbers range. So it's not possible to give you a definitive number.

We do know what the count was in Vancouver. We do know what the count was in the Fraser Valley. We do know what the count is in Victoria. If you look at those population bases and you extract it across the population of B.C., you can extract up to a number of maybe 6,000 plus.

D. Chudnovsky: Well, I want to deal first with what the minister has just said. We seem to have housed 2,000 homeless people in the time it took the minister to answer the question. He started by saying to extract the Lower Mainland and Victoria numbers you'd get about 8,000, then he finished by saying 6,000. So — or extrapolate the numbers — you would get 8,000, and then he said 6,000. Which is it?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, I did say over 6,000. Like I said, the number is not quantifiable. I said it depends how you extract it. If we're going to spend the afternoon debating homeless numbers, I would suggest the member just keep answering his questions, and I'm not going to actually respond. Because we're not going to get into a debate on what he thinks is 10,000, and he's gone out and crossed the province and done his own so-called count, which I don't find actually has a lot of substantive backup to it.

I do know what the counts are. I do know what we've done with the counts, as far as funding them, who went out and did them, and we use the data from there. We don't use the member's data. Quite frankly, if he wishes to, he can spend the afternoon deciding what his count is, but if that's where he wants to go, I'm not going to waste my time responding.

D. Chudnovsky: Certainly, I wouldn't want the minister to waste his time with anything. But he does have a responsibility to respond to the questions that are asked in estimates, and I propose to ask questions.

The minister says that the number of homeless people in the province is not quantifiable. How does he respond, therefore, to the research done by the Simon Fraser group, which reported in October that, for the groups with severe addictions and mental health problems — just those groups — their work indicates between 8,000 and 15,500 homeless people in British Columbia.

Does the minister discount those figures? Does he think they're wrong? What's his view of those figures?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, I'll tell you what my view is. They're wrong. Flat out, they're wrong. The official counts that we've done clearly show us that in all the communities across…. In most of the communities we've done it, we add them up, including Metro Vancouver, Victoria, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, Smithers, Williams Lake, the Sunshine Coast, Saltspring Island and other areas across the province. The numbers are around 4,899, if that count is actually correct and there wasn't any duplication, which is also hard to quantify.

I know that the member's website has the same numbers at 6,624, so he's out, by what the official count that was done was. He also has a larger number on the Lower Mainland, which is out by almost a thousand with regards to what the official count was.

So I can't say that the Simon Fraser guys are that accurate when they say 8,000 to 15,500 is the number, which they're saying it is. It's a pretty big range. It tells me that they didn't actually do a count. But I know that we've done the count. We continue to do it with our community groups, and we'll continue to do that. What we're doing is trying to respond to the problem.

D. Chudnovsky: Could the minister indicate for us what he thinks is wrong with the Simon Fraser methodology? What is wrong with the methodology of the Simon Fraser study?

Hon. R. Coleman: Clearly, the Simon Fraser study was done on informal interviews. That's pretty much wrong if you're going to put the number to something and try and say: "That's a social problem, and this is the number." I thought that was very weak research, quite frankly, especially when we do counts.

We take our community organizations. They actually go out on the streets, into the shelters and count and talk to people. That's a whole lot better research than just having informal interviews with some people across the province and then saying, "We have a range" — imagine, a range — "of 8,000 to 15,500" and actually thinking somebody would give any credit to those numbers.

The Chair: If I could remind the member, the questions should relate to the estimates as well. They should be directed at that.

D. Chudnovsky: They relate directly to the estimates because, of course, the minister is responsible for the area of homelessness in the province. We may have a discussion about this in a few minutes, but it seems to me that it's important that if we're really dealing with the problem of homelessness, we should know how

I want to probe a little bit further with the minister, who seems, today at least, to be confident about the counts that have been done by community organizations. The minister would agree with me — would he not? — that in every single case that the community organizations did counts, they indicated that their counts were conservative and that they think, based on their experience, that there are significantly more homeless people than the counts showed. Would the minister agree with me that that is what has happened with every single community count?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I won't agree with the comment that in every single case…. There may have been some people that were doing the count that felt…. They may have had their individual opinions and comments.

We do the count. We do it with volunteers. We do it with the best methodology we have. We try and improve that methodology for the next count, which we will do. Quite frankly, we have to work with the numbers we get, and it's the best measurement we have today out of all the processes we have.

D. Chudnovsky: The minister will know — or I hope he will know — that, for instance, not individuals but the organizers of the Vancouver Metro count, both in their written material and in their presentation, which was made publicly for the media and the public at the time of the announcement of the count, said very, very clearly and warned everyone who was listening that their count was extremely conservative.

Similarly, the minister will know or should know that at the Fraser Valley count announcement, which was done several weeks ago, the organizers of the count — not some individual, not somebody's opinion, the organizers of the count, the very people who he says he has confidence in — said that they are completely convinced, based on their methodology — and their methodology is based on the work of reputable social scientists, in both cases — that their numbers were a significant undercount and conservative. Is the minister aware of those things?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, I'm aware that the member opposite is upset because he came up with a phony number, in his mind, and it didn't reflect in the count. It's been bothering him ever since, which is fine.

We will go with the count. We believe that it's the best methodology we have today. If we can improve the methodology in the future, we'll do that. But certainly from the standpoint of whether the number is high or low, it depends on whether it's conservative or not.

Actually, I've talked to different organizations involved in the count, and some thought that there were a number of double counts done in some communities with regards to people who were counted more than once — people that were in a shelter and were also counted on the street. They had concerns about that.

So that's always going to be a challenge with regards to the count. But, quite frankly, the numbers are the numbers we have from the counts, and those are the numbers that we work with.

D. Chudnovsky: I'm, of course, not privileged to be with the minister when he speaks to people from various organizations who tell him what they tell him. I was, though, privileged to be at both the announcement of the Metro count and Fraser Valley count, and I was there to hear the organizers — not individuals, not individual organizations, but the very organizers that the minister, just a few minutes ago, said he had confidence in. I was there to hear them very, very clearly, in both cases, say that their counts were significantly undercounted, and they were conservative.

So the minister can interpret that any way he wants to, but it seems to me that in the first ten minutes of estimates he's unfortunately insulted the researchers at Simon Fraser University and the organizers of the Metro and Fraser Valley counts. That's his privilege, and he gets to do that if he wants.

Hon. R. Coleman: Certainly, it is important to know — have an idea of the numbers, hon. Member, because you build your programs around that.

Hon. R. Coleman: The methodology that's used is used with volunteers. We go out, we fund these things, and we know the numbers as best we can by the methodology we use.

Can we improve the methodology in the future? That's a possibility, and that's what we're looking at now as we go forward. So we try and work with the non-profit sectors, etc.

Quite frankly, we take the count at the face value it is. It comes into the matrix of what we're looking at with regards to housing, and it certainly instructs us with some information that we find we can use as we're trying to build programs.

Hon. R. Coleman: We fund different ones from time to time. We also fund the organizations, frankly, who are clients of ours, who actually use their volunteers and their organizations as well.

D. Chudnovsky: Thank you to the minister for the clarification. I think that that's a useful clarification.

If I may, I just wanted to make a comment. I think that the minister is right in that it is very, very important to know and understand how many homeless people there are, because if we are, as a province, as a people, as a community, trying to solve the crisis of

homelessness in British Columbia, then it would be very, very difficult to do that unless we knew the breadth and the depth of the problem.

I think the minister would agree that in the absence of an understanding of how many homeless people there are in the province, which the minister has asserted we have — we have an absence of understanding of how many homeless people there are in the province — then it is very, very difficult to take on the problem in a serious way.

I want to add a second reason why it's extremely important that we know how many homeless people there are in British Columbia. It seems to me the second reason is that we owe at least that much to the people who are struggling without any place to live in our province — that we notice them enough that we give them that little bit of respect, that little bit of hope. To notice them, we have to take the time and the effort and the energy and the resources to actually determine how many there are.

I want to encourage the minister and, through him, the government, to expend that time and energy and effort and those resources to determine how many homeless people there are for both reasons: the one that he stated, which is that it's impossible to determine appropriate policies unless we know the depth and breadth of the problem — which we don't; and because the homeless people of our province deserve at least that much respect, that we notice them.

What definition is used by the ministry when it looks at homeless people? What is a homeless person?

Hon. R. Coleman: People who don't have a home and are on the street and, also, people who are sheltered homeless, who don't have a permanent place.

Hon. R. Coleman: That's a very difficult population to estimate, as the member opposite knows. Because they're not in a system somewhere to know, we would refer to them more as people at risk of homelessness.

D. Chudnovsky: Well, I'm not sure that's the case. I have before me a letter from the Ministry of Forests and Range and Minister Responsible for Housing in response to a freedom-of-information application, which indicates in its definition of homelessness that "individuals and families who are living in temporary accommodation where they do not have control over the length and conditions of tenure, e.g., staying in a guest room, name not on lease," is included in the definition of homelessness. It's not included in the definition of at risk for homelessness.

So I'm wanting to ask the minister to clarify his definition. I think it's important that we understand what the minister's understanding of homelessness is.

Hon. R. Coleman: I think the comment in the letter actually shows the member opposite that we recognize them as a vulnerable client group. It is a very difficult thing to quantify and to identify.

So is my daughter coming back to live with me in my home while she's going back to work in British Columbia, while her husband is in Manitoba, considered something that would fall under that definition? I would say not — right? — because there is some permanence to the relationship, at least as long as she's good to her dad.

But at the same time, you know, there are people who are couch-surfing, as the member knows — a very difficult population to quantify — that we look at as at risk of homelessness because they don't have a permanent shelter. In some cases they have a more permanent relationship or an opportunity to go back to another residence, but they're couch-surfing because of their lifestyle or whatever the case may be.

All of those things are very difficult to quantify, and that's why you have to basically have a continuum of opportunities within programs to have any success with all the vulnerable populations.

D. Chudnovsky: Just to clarify my question to the minister, because I think he's made an important point. My question didn't go to the issue of counting. I would agree absolutely with the minister that people who are couch-surfing are very, very difficult to quantify. In fact — and I'm sure the minister has had the same experience as I — those who work in the field say there are way, way more of those people than we know or can count.

My question wasn't as to the difficulty of counting them. My question was about the definition. Perhaps I can read the definition that was provided to the individual in the freedom-of-information application. The following is the housing policy branch's working definition of homelessness. I'll just read it all and ask the minister if he concurs.

tion is: is the minister satisfied that his definition of homelessness is the same as the one I've just read?

Hon. R. Coleman: I don't know that that necessarily fits into an expansive definition of homelessness as much it fits into an expansive definition of people who are at risk within the housing marketplace, whether it's in homelessness, in a shelter…. I agree with the member opposite that for somebody living in a shelter, that's not a home. I agree with the member opposite that those people who are coming out of an institution like a hospital and who have nowhere to go, yeah, right now they are at risk for homelessness. We try and help them as they come through that piece. We try and help them not become homeless.

I think that the definition is broad enough to actually define more than just homelessness — define the vulnerable populations that we're actually trying to deal with.

D. Chudnovsky: I have to say that I'm a bit confused, because in every case, the counts that the minister relied upon a few minutes ago to indicate what he thought the total number of homeless people in the province is…. Let's not argue about the number for a minute. But in every case the counts that he pointed to as being appropriate and on which he relies include people in the final category that now he's saying, I read, are not people who are homeless but are at risk of homelessness. So I wonder if the minister could clarify that contradiction.

Hon. R. Coleman: We have vulnerable populations we identify. We're not just going to call them all homeless, because in some cases they have other forms of shelter. We can sit, I guess, and debate whatever definition the member wants to come up with. I never actually entered into that level of a debate when I tried to design the programs, because in actual fact 4,800 families that presently receive the rental assistance program, by the member's definition, could be considered to be at risk of homelessness. If they didn't get that money every month to stay where they're living affordably, they could be on the street.

Now the member's going to get up and say: "Well, on this piece and that piece and all that…." Fine. There are people on the street. There are people that are sheltered homeless. Those are the people that we counted. That's the count we rely on.

D. Chudnovsky: No, I'm not going to talk about people at risk of homelessness. That's another category. That's another group of people. There are tens of thousands of them in British Columbia. We can have a discussion about them if the minister wants. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the minister who's the minister responsible for homelessness who said it was important to know who is homeless a couple of minutes ago.

A definition provided to an FOI application…. I apologize. The name at the bottom of the letter is — and I may be looking at her — Heather Brazier. I also apologize that I haven't been introduced to at least one of the people who's here. She says that this is what homelessness is. This woman, I assume, is a wonderful civil servant. She works for the minister. She's got a definition of homelessness.

All I'm asking is for the minister to agree that the definition that somebody who is working for him gave for homelessness is really the definition for homelessness. The minister is talking about risk of homelessness, and he's not interested. All I'm asking is if he agrees with the definition of homelessness that was provided to a citizen by somebody who works for him.

Hon. R. Coleman: Actually, the member mentioned something here just a second ago which I neglected to do, so I should introduce the people who are with me. To my left is Shayne Ramsay, who's the president and chief executive officer of B.C. Housing. Mary Freeman is the associate deputy minister in the office of housing and constructions standards branch. Suzanne Bell, who's the executive director of the residential tenancy branch, is behind me.

A staff member obviously gave a broad description in a letter. That is not my definition. My definition would…. When I designed and looked at the strategy for housing in British Columbia, I believed that there's a continuum within housing that has to be addressed.

I believe that you have people that are homeless from the definition of being on the streets or living in shelters. You have people at the risk of homelessness that are living in other situations that are not, frankly, what we would call optimal. We have people who are at risk of homelessness because of affordability. We have a continuum of housing.

The debate over definition, actually, doesn't help a single person. What we did was say way back in 2006, when we launched Housing Matters, that our focus was going to be on people. It was going to be on individuals. It was going to be on having a continuum of services for people that were at risk and were homeless in British Columbia, so that we could adapt the programs to match up to their needs.

We knew that each individual would have individual issues that needed to be addressed, in addition to their accommodation, for them to have a stable, long-term lifestyle.

D. Chudnovsky: I would respectfully disagree with the minister. The debate about numbers is absolutely crucial. The difference between the minister's estimate of 6,000 and the estimates that have been provided by everybody else in the province who works on this issue, which are somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000, is absolutely crucial. It's central.

If the minister is really concerned about individuals, which I know he is, then his estimate of 6,000, and other people's definition of 10,000 to 15,000, leaves out thousands of homeless people who need to be provided with homes.

So to blithely say that somehow the debate about numbers is irrelevant seems to me nothing more or less than spin. The minister knows very well, and I know he knows because I know he cares about homeless people, that the numbers of homeless people in the province are crucial to us as a community and a province as we try to do our best to find solutions to this crisis of homelessness.

I wonder if the minister could tell us what the total amount of money is in this year's budget to deal with the issues of homelessness in the province.

Hon. R. Coleman: I don't have all the breakdown of the numbers here. We do have $58 million that goes into the shelter program, and then there are 4,000 units of supportive housing for people who were homeless or at risk of homelessness, because these are the ones that we connect people to initially. I don't have the operating costs and the capital costs of those, so I'll have to get those for the member.

D. Chudnovsky: Forgive me, Minister. If you could just repeat what you said. I'm floating around. I wonder if you could repeat those two points that you made. Please, please indulge me.

Hon. R. Coleman: The shelter program is $58 million. Then we have the homeless outreach program, which over a budget cycle is, I believe, about $3.8 million or $4 million a year for each year over a three-year period. I was close — $3.9 million.

Then you have 4,000 units of supportive housing, which are all relative to the homeless issues. Those have two costs. They have operating costs, which we would have to break out, and in addition to that, the capital invested in them. Last year alone I think we spent about $80 million or $90 million just on purchases of units and an additional large amount of money in the capital side of building 895 additional units as well.

What I will undertake for the member is that we will try and get that breakdown. We may be able to get it this afternoon, but we'll get it.

D. Chudnovsky: I want to explore some comments that I've heard the minister make in various public statements that he's made around this budget. I have to confess, I've been a bit confused.

The minister has talked a number of times about the tripling of the budget. Sometimes he says that it was tripled since this morning. Sometimes he says it was tripled since the last couple of years. Sometimes he says it was tripled since 2002. Sometimes he says it has been tripled since 2001. I'm hoping that the minister can help clarify that for me and give me the figures that he uses to indicate this tripling of the budget.

Hon. R. Coleman: The numbers I use are…. The budget for B.C. Housing was $120 million in 2001, from the provincial government's share to B.C. Housing. Today it's $383 million.

D. Chudnovsky: I wonder if the minister could help us understand what has increased. I'm not asking for dollar for dollar. I'm asking for a general accounting of what has increased — what categories of the budget or areas of policy or any way the minister wants to slice it — and by how much, approximately, since 2001.

Hon. R. Coleman: There are a number of things that have changed since 2001. There are 4,000 new units that have been generated on the Premier's homelessness initiative. A shelter budget that was $12 million is now $58 million, including additional cold-wet weather strategy and moving a number of shelters to 24 hours, seven days a week. There's $51 million in aboriginal housing, and there is the rental assistance program.

I guess we could try and do the comparison, but let's say, for instance, there were 1,300 units of supportive housing in B.C. in 2001. There are now 4,000 in addition to that number that have been built or renovated or bought over that period of time.

There's an increase in the budget for shelter which was a $12 million figure in 2001, which is today a cost of $58 million a year. That allows for the 24-hour shelters to take place, cold-wet weather and extreme-wet weather strategies to take place.

There is a significant amount of capital in the aboriginal housing side — $51 million. There's the rental assistance program that did not exist in 2001. That's different today.

There's a change to the SAFER program which allowed for about 3,000 additional participants. It changed the rules so that the residency rates were such…. It used to be that you had to live here, I think, for ten years before you were eligible, and now it's a year.

There was a construction program that has some operation costs with regards to Independent Living B.C., which has some of the seniors programs that we do. There are about 4,500 units there.

Something that wasn't done in the last number of years that is being done now is the upgrade and renovation of a number of existing seniors rental units that we have in B.C. so that they will be able to have people adapt and age in place by putting in lever-handle doors, taps, bars and those sort of things with regards to their ability to stay in their communities.

Some of them will actually have additional services eventually brought in to them so they can also operate without moving. We could bring a kitchen facility to them, that sort of thing, so we can actually allow them to have more of a supportive housing environment. So there's all of that, and including….Well, I think that probably covers the major categories.

D. Chudnovsky: First, if I could ask, how much of those — and I think I'm probably talking about the last category that the minister was talking about — used to be charged against the Ministry of Health and is now charged against the Ministry of Housing? What percentage of that?

D. Chudnovsky: Let me just be clear that none of the seniors housing or supportive housing that is now charged in this budget, previously…. None of the costs of any of that was charged to the Health budget. Is that correct? I'm open to that answer. I just want to be sure that's the answer.

Hon. R. Coleman: Just so we're clear, in 2001 there were no publicly funded assisted living units in British Columbia. Then what happened is that we did 4,500 of them. What we do is we collect, just like in other social housing, the percentage of the rent from the resident, and we pay the difference of the operation of the housing component. These units do have the ability to have clinical assistants come in to the people, whether it be a nursing aide or that sort of…. That component is not paid by Housing; that component is paid for by Health.

D. Chudnovsky: Does the ministry or does the provincial budget, the provincial government, receive any moneys from the federal government that are dedicated or calculated or aimed at homelessness strategies?

Hon. R. Coleman: Actually, the member beside the member opposite probably remembers well how different federal programs have or have not worked in conjunction with provincial programs over the years.

Right now in our portfolio, which is the existing portfolio — not the operating budget but in addition — there's still about $140 million a year that comes in under old cost-sharing arrangements on social housing stock. The member may be aware that the federal government left that sort of arrangement back in the early 1990s, I believe it was.

In addition to that, they have from time to time put up one-time capital that will come in and help us lever. They'll put up capital, and what we've chosen to do with capital when they've made it available was to lever it into things like Independent Living B.C. or the homelessness strategy. We've been allowed to do that.

They also have what they call the homelessness partnering strategy, which is delivered directly — one of the bugbears of Housing ministers, quite frankly, across the country. We've always asked the federal government to do something bilaterally, not unilaterally, because oftentimes their programs will come into a jurisdiction and they will fund some project.

They might give it a two- or three-year window of some operating money. Then at the end of the two- or three-year window they cease to fund, and we usually end up having to deal with the continuing operation even though it may not have been a project that we saw as a priority at the beginning. That has led to some challenges and risks.

To give you an example of what the federal homelessness partnering strategy means to British Columbia, just to put it in context, it's about $9 million in Metro Vancouver. As an example, for the hotels we bought in Vancouver, the capital alone was $68 million. So you can imagine that $9 million doesn't go very far on this file.

Let's set aside the partnering delivered directly, because that doesn't flow through the provincial budget at all. Let me just ask about the homeless strategy, $9 million in Vancouver, that the minister talked about a minute ago. Does that flow through the provincial budget? I assume it's a little bit more if you're talking about the whole province. Does that money flow through the provincial budget, and if so, where?

Hon. R. Coleman: No, it doesn't. I was talking about the bugbear about unilateral decisions. They fund into individual organizations and make these announcements, and they're not always even partnered up with projects that we're doing.

D. Chudnovsky: If I could ask about the $140 million that the minister itemized first. Cost-sharing for existing social housing — does that flow through the provincial budget, and if so, where?

Hon. R. Coleman: No, it doesn't flow through the provincial budget. What it does is flow to B.C. Housing. So our share…. For instance, in '08-09 we will send B.C. Housing $383 million. The federal contribution from that program is about $139 million.

The other revenue is B.C. Housing, which would be tenant revenue, at about $40 million, for a total revenue and budget of about $563 million.

D. Chudnovsky: That was clear. I'm going to finish with this little section in a second, sort of.

The minister mentioned the cold and extreme weather programs. Now, I understood, and perhaps I'm mixing apples and oranges, that one of those programs was a federal program. The extreme — can't remember the name of it…. I see the minister's facial expression telling me, and maybe we can save a minute,

that that's not what he was talking about. He was talking about provincial programs only, when he mentioned those. Is that the case?

Hon. R. Coleman: The $9 million may go to some of those, in addition to money we already give them, but it doesn't flow through us. Some of it goes somewhere else, because the feds make a decision with that, but it doesn't go through our budget.

D. Chudnovsky: The minister mentioned a couple of minutes ago that there are 4,000 additional units of housing since 2001. I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about those 4,000 units of housing. My first question is: how many of them exist now?

Hon. R. Coleman: So 2,498 units have been completed, and that's including the 1,122 units in the SROs. There are 992 units under construction or in development. In addition to that, there are close to 2,000 other ones that are presently in MOUs, going through zoning to go to construction.

D. Chudnovsky: How many of those 2,498 that the minister describes as completed are occupied?

Hon. R. Coleman: Pretty well all of them are occupied, with the exception of some recent SROs we bought that we're renovating and that will soon be occupied.

D. Chudnovsky: Well, that wasn't clear enough for me, I'm afraid. So I'm going to keep going.

Pretty well all of them except for some SROs…. Let's get into the SROs now. If there's time later this afternoon, we'll get into them in quite some detail, but let's talk about the general case for now. My understanding is that there are 16 or so SROs that the province has purchased. How many of those are occupied now?

Hon. R. Coleman: There were 16 buildings bought in Vancouver. Out of the 16 today, there are four of them that are vacant. One of them has just finished its renovation and will be occupied very shortly. Two others are close to being ready, and they will be occupied — not too soon. I guess we got one of them that's a pretty big job, and then, the Carl Rooms, which is a particularly big renovation, is ongoing.

As they get done, they get occupied. In the meantime, some of them had significant health and safety issues. Some of them had, well, pretty well any issue that you could find with regards to infestations right through to security issues and stuff. So we're investing the money to renovate them so that the stock can be preserved for the long term.

D. Chudnovsky: Is this the end of the story; that is, 12 are already renovated, and four are left to do? Or are there renovations coming up, with the other 12, that will make….

People are looking at me like they don't know what I'm talking about. Oh gosh. I thought that I was being clear.

You're renovating these SROs, and four of them are vacant. One is going to be finished soon, two are coming along, and one is a big job. The other 12 — were they already renovated? Are they scheduled to be renovated? Are there going to be any closures of those?

Hon. R. Coleman: Just for the status of these ones…. The other ones all still require some renovation, but they've all been done for health and safety. Then we have the non-profit management in place. The non-profit management will now manage any renovations from here, but the renovations that are required will not require anybody being displaced.

Maybe I should clarify. They may actually have to move a room within the building as they renovate — to transition. They may keep a couple units so that they can transition room to room within the facility, but no tenants that are there will be displaced.

D. Chudnovsky: Well, that's an interesting model. Somebody might consider it for Little Mountain. Who knows? We might all be able to agree.

The four that are renovated are what we might call major renovations. What is the average time that those facilities were closed and, therefore, vacant?

Hon. R. Coleman: Three of the four that are left were already vacant when we bought them. We knew when we bought them that they required extensive renovations. We do know that it's more economical to do the renovations when there are no tenants in place. So those were vacant already. We're restoring that stock to bring it to the market, to make it available.

The fourth one is the Carl Rooms. It was a pretty notorious building, and the city wanted to condemn it, and all of those things. It had to be vacated in order to even get at it. It was a notorious building. I don't think we have to…. Because you're from Vancouver, I guess, we all know about the Carl Rooms.

That one is going through a renovation, and it's a significant job. We're doing it, obviously, in the light of a pretty heated-up housing market, so we're trying to be as prudent as possible in our costs. Also, getting trades and stuff can be a challenge. So far they've done a pretty good job getting the health and safety in them, but all four of these needed significant renovation in order to protect the stock.

D. Chudnovsky: Speaking of the Carl Rooms in particular, what will be the length of time from the purchase through the renovation, during which nobody is there, to the occupancy date of the facility?

Hon. R. Coleman: Just to be cautious with the member, the Carl Rooms was the worst property that we bought, by a long shot. We purchased the building a year ago. We've started the renovations. We don't

actually have an anticipated completion date, because it's hard to quantify at this stage. We're finding some challenges, I understand, as we do this renovation.

D. Chudnovsky: I'm well aware of the challenges, at least some of the challenges. I don't know about the trades and the contracting and all of that. Nonetheless, it's important for us to know and understand.

It has been a year — this is one of the April 2007 ones — and the minister at this point in time can't give us an estimated time of departure. How about an informed guess? Are we talking 2008? Are we talking 2009? Can you give us some idea of what we're talking about?

Hon. R. Coleman: We think by the end of 2008. That's the best guess we have. When we bought the place, it really had to be cleaned out. It was notorious. It had all kinds of crime issues going on in it. We had to basically get the building under control enough to actually vacate it, get the permits and then do an assessment of the building.

You know, it was a building that was identified by one of the members — I think the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant — as one that we should take a look at, which we did. I think it was a tough….

Hon. R. Coleman: I wasn't going to get into the rhetoric. If we want to get into the rhetoric, we can. There's rhetoric at question period, and there's the language and calmness of estimates, so we can choose which one we want to do.

Hon. R. Coleman: The serenity of estimates. Then I can get into how many you bought in the '90s and all that, but I'm not going to do that — okay?

The fact of the matter is that we bought the Carl Rooms. I think it was supported by the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant as well as a lot of people who knew the notorious side of this one. It is our most difficult one. But even if it takes to the end of 2008, or if it even took to the spring of 2009, that would be two years. Two years to actually get that number of rooms through zoning — if you could find the land, get it zoned through the city of Vancouver — is still well above the lightning speed of what the city can perform under normal circumstances.

D. Chudnovsky: The minister makes an interesting comparison. I've heard the minister say that there are…. We're going to have an opportunity to get into a more detailed discussion of the projected projects. I've heard him say that some of them are going to be up and running by 2010 or near the middle of 2008.

Is the minister saying that the renovation of the Carl Rooms…? Well, I guess he is. I asked whether the minister agrees with me that what in fact he's saying is that the renovation of the Carl Rooms is a bigger and longer project than the building from scratch of other projects.

Hon. R. Coleman: Oh no, that's absolutely not what I said. The member should listen to this.

Under normal circumstances in the city of Vancouver, if you take a piece of raw land and put into the zoning process, that's at least two years. That's before you actually dig a hole. Then you have the construction time frame, which in concrete or wood frame can vary, and it will be anywhere from 12 to 18 months. That's if you can get all your inspections and everything done and get your occupancy permit. So this is about a two-year deal, max — right? — even on the worst building that we've got.

We've managed to do the health and safety on all the other ones. The other ones we already bought vacant, so they were stock. It was vacant to the marketplace. This one here is a particularly harder building, but it's still quicker than if we had bought it from scratch.

Now, I guess we didn't have to buy it. But we thought, when we were looking, that we could solve a number of problems for the city of Vancouver — not just preserve some stock, take it and renovate it but also, quite frankly, clean up a significant criminal and other social issue problem that they had, which was identified by not just MLAs but by community workers, police and all of that with regards to this particular property.

So we happened to get it at the same time. We're not complaining about it. Don't get me wrong. We're not complaining about it. We've taken the building. We're renovating it. It'll become solid stock for the future.

D. Chudnovsky: The minister's indication is that it will be upwards of two years until the Carl Rooms is completed.

Now, I wanted to talk about the identification of the additional units. The minister told us a few minutes ago that since 2001 there have been 4,000 additional units. Then, when I asked him how many of them exist now, he said that 2,498 exist now, of which 1,122 are SRO units. So the minister would agree with me that "additional" has one meaning when you talk about additional to the stock that has been built, or has been renovated by government, and has a different meaning when you talk about additional units of housing available to the community.

The minister would agree with me, would he not, that those 1,122 SRO units are not additional units available to the community? They all existed. A couple of them were unoccupied, but they existed before they were unoccupied. This is not additional housing available to the community.

It's a good thing that the government bought them. The minister will be well aware…. As the critic for the opposition, when I'm asked about this, I always say that it's a good thing that the government has bought them. But the minister would agree with me that these are not additional units of housing available to the community. After all, people lived in them already.

Hon. R. Coleman: I actually disagree with the member's interpretation of this, and I'll tell you why. Some of this housing was in the private sector. When we looked at this strategy, I said to my folks: "You just can't get it built fast enough." Quite frankly, it takes so long to identify the land and get…. So we're building…. In addition to the 2,498, there are 1,122 that are in SROs. There are 992 under construction today in addition to that.

But in addition to all of that, I think that you have to take into account that this is safer housing. It's better-managed housing with the non-profits. It brings in support services to secure the client base and to help the residents. That wasn't there in any of these units before. It was a call that was coming from many people that somebody should step in and try to preserve some stock. So I thought it was a pretty bold move, frankly, that we did. I thought that it was an important move for the city of Vancouver.

I also believe that it did something else. It actually raised the awareness in the city that we were serious about partnering up, and I think that's what led to the 12 sites relationship that's fast-tracking the zoning and all of those things and that's putting up the capital for all of those. I believe that this was an important move to actually move this file along.

D. Chudnovsky: I want to thank the minister for a very, very laudable answer to a question I didn't ask, but I want to tell him that I agree with virtually everything he said about the importance and the positive aspects of purchasing the SROs.

But that wasn't the question. The question was: would he not agree with me that those 1,122 SRO units are not…? God, I did it — a double negative. Would he agree with me that those SRO units do not add to the stock of low-rent housing available to the people of Vancouver and the province?

They already were occupied — some of them, most of them up until the day they were purchased and the rest of them up until a few months ago. So my suggestion is…. It's a good idea. I support it, for all the reasons that the minister gave.

The question is a different question. Will he agree that they don't add to the stock of housing available?

Hon. R. Coleman: No, not for the stock that we need. I don't agree with the member.

D. Chudnovsky: Well, that's a good try. It may get by that side of the table, but it won't get by this side of the table or anybody else in the province. We know and they know that while the government has purchased these SROs — and that's a good idea for all of the reasons the minister gave and others — they do not add additional housing stock, and therefore, do not contribute to the solution of the homelessness crisis.

The minister can't even disagree with that with a straight face. He doesn't know how to. And good for him; it's a good sign. It's a good sign that he's unable to disagree with a straight face, because it indicates that underneath he knows exactly what we're saying and agrees.

So let's subtract the 1,122 from the 2,498. We've got 1,376 additional units that exist now. Among those 1,376, are any of those shelter beds, shelter spots, emergency shelter spots?

The member opposite thinks that crack houses — criminal activity, infestation — and messed-up housing where people are actually in a no-life-savings situation and are put in danger and violence…. All of that is suitable housing stock. And to actually take it away from that and change that and make it into supportive housing stock with non-profit organizations, with supports in place for people…. That's not new stock for that vulnerable population? I do disagree with him.

If he wanted those ten buildings to stay in the state that they were, they could have. They would have continued to be buildings that would actually not be serving that vulnerable population. They could have been left there.

For me, I believe that they're new stock to serve a very vulnerable population, safety-wise, health-wise, with supports. I think that it was a very important move, and it should be counted as stock for that vulnerable population.

The alternative was that it was going to disappear. It wasn't great stock. I guess that if the member opposite thinks that's the lifestyle people should have to put up with, rather than having managed better with support services, he's allowed to do that.

Remember, Member, there are 992 other units also under construction at the same time today as you do your counts. In some of the integrated project, there may be a few shelter beds, because the integrated projects have a little bit of shelter, transition and supportive, built into them. We're going to get the number, whether any of that is included in that count for you.

D. Chudnovsky: I would begin by saying to the minister, with the greatest of respect — don't tell me what I support or don't support. I've been absolutely clear and charitable in a time of….

Nobody in this House is more critical of this government than I am, and I'll talk from now till tomorrow about all the things that I criticize. But when people ask me, as the opposition critic for homelessness, what I think of the SROs, I tell them that it's a good idea that the government bought them, for the very reasons that the minister has put forward. So don't, I would ask through you, Chair, respectfully to the minister, ascribe motives to me about my support or lack of support for upgrading housing in Vancouver.

But it's upgrading. It's upgrading. It doesn't reduce homelessness. It doesn't reduce homelessness. When you've got a building, and…. In fact, it increases it a little bit, because happily there are renovations going on in those buildings, and I'm told that the net number of units in those buildings will be less at the end than it was at the beginning.

Is that a bad idea? No, it's not a bad idea. It's a good idea. Does it reduce homelessness? No, it doesn't reduce homelessness. No amount of aggression from the minister and no amount of snippiness from the minister is going to change that reality. The fact is that the SRO purchases were a good idea, but they don't reduce homelessness.

Secondly, I'd like to say to the minister — thank him…. We very much would like to know how many of the 1,376 units that are additional to the housing stock are shelter beds. That would be a very, very important number to know, because of course, the minister said himself an hour or so ago: "Emergency shelter beds aren't homes." He's right about that. It's very, very important for us to know how many of the 1,376 net existing additional units are shelter beds.

I'd also like to ask how many of the 1,376, which are net additional, are projects that were in the Homes B.C. plan that was cancelled by the government in 2002 and then brought back on stream. How many of those units came originally from the previous government's social housing program, were cancelled and then brought back on?

Hon. R. Coleman: Actually, I don't even think I'm going to deal with the diatribe. I think, quite frankly, that if you take housing that nobody wants to live in — and those who are living in it are circulating through it because of the crime, the crack house and the issues in the buildings — and you fix it, and you bring in supports, then people can now be stabilized and stay in housing rather than thinking they've got to cycle back to the street on a regular basis.

I think that you do reduce homelessness. I think you do have an impact, a significant impact, by having that stock as better and newer stock for that vulnerable population. So we're just going to agree to disagree on that.

At the same time, there were a couple of projects that were in the Homes B.C. that continued on through. We did an assessment of the Homes B.C. Some of those projects had to be repartnered or get better partners but they did…. I don't have the exact number, the breakout, but we will get that for you. We may not be able to get it in the next 20 minutes, but we will get that for you.

I choose to not worry about whether a good project that was in the stream got done or not. If it got done because it's a good project, I think that's a credit to everybody, and it doesn't matter which side of the House. To me, the whole strategy is about helping people and continuing through to have success.

D. Chudnovsky: Obviously, in the context of a crisis of homelessness like none we've seen since the Great Depression, if we build housing, that's a good thing. It's a good thing, as the minister says, independent of who planned it and who can take credit for it or not take credit for it.

But last week or the week before in the House I asked the minister a question in question period, and he said that they've built every single one of those projects. I think the quote was that every single one — you can check it, pretty close — of those projects that were on the books for Homes B.C., so I thank him for having…. It was the social housing program of the previous government, which was defeated by this government in 2001.

They came in, and they cancelled that. Now they've gone ahead, and they've built some of those or all of them. It depends on what day it is. I thank the minister, because I think it's important, from our perspective at least, to know how many of those net 1,376 units — now we have two things that are coming from the minister — are shelter beds which aren't homes, as the minister said a few minutes ago, and how many of them were in the pipe and cancelled in 2002 by the government and have now come back on again.

Okay, let's change the subject a little bit. We anticipate and thank the minister for that information even before we get it.

I want to talk about Little Mountain social housing for a little bit. I understand that a developer has been named. So I wonder if the minister could tell us, in very general terms, what the plan is for the Little Mountain site as we move forward from the choosing of the developer.

Hon. R. Coleman: There's an MOU with the city that details the public consultation process. This developer has assembled what is arguably the best design team in Vancouver. They will start that process according to the outline of the MOU with the city of Vancouver and move the project through.

D. Chudnovsky: Now, the MOU with the city of Vancouver indicates that there will be no construction beginning at the Little Mountain site until spring 2010 at the earliest. Is that the case?

Hon. R. Coleman: When we did the MOU with the city, we wanted to give it enough latitude to get to the start point. We would like to see it happen quicker if it's possible. If the city can move its processes through and we can start earlier, we will.

D. Chudnovsky: Am I to understand that the contract between the developer, who was announced today or yesterday, and B.C. Housing does not include that element from the MOU between the city and the province that indicated that no construction would begin before the spring of 2010?

Hon. R. Coleman: The developer is bound by the MOU. However, you know, if the city was able to speed this up, we could adapt the MOU to be able to go sooner. But when we sat down and did the MOU with the city, this was what their expectation was of how long it would take. So the MOU was designed around that.

I don't expect that they will fast-track this particular project compared to some of its other sites, so at this point we're anticipating that the dates in the MOU will be the dates that match up.

D. Chudnovsky: It seems a bit of a strange provision in a contract to me, in an MOU. Are there other examples in any agreements that B.C. Housing has with anybody for anything that says: "We won't build until after a certain time in the future"?

Hon. R. Coleman: It's not unusual to have dates of expected things to happen in order to have a close or an MOU or whatever the case may be. These dates were selected by the city in anticipation of what they thought their process would take — right?

As the development team and the city get together, they may find that there are synergies that can maybe save some time in that. If they can do that, they can always amend the MOU. But it was based on what the city thought was the time frame that they would be able to perform within as far as this particular site.

D. Chudnovsky: Two comments. First of all, I'm not sure that I heard the answer to my question. It's true, of course, when people have projects to do — whether it be construction projects or planning the retirement dinner — there are schedules. You decide you're going to do this first and that second and that third. That wasn't quite the question that I was asking.

The question I was asking is whether there are other examples of projects where there's a not-before date in the MOU or the contract. That was the question.

The second point I want to make…. Perhaps I'll wait and make that point after.

Hon. R. Coleman: We don't have the MOU in front of us, so we've asked somebody to clarify this for the member. We don't think that language is in totality of the entire MOU, that there's some flexibility around a clause that says: "Certain things can happen with the city." So we're just going to check that for the member.

In answer to the member's question: no, we haven't done one like this, but then, this is probably the first time that we've done this. However, I can tell the member that I know of other real estate deals where there are best-before dates, and certain things can happen.

Actually, the most recent example would be in Vancouver, particularly in and around the 2010 Olympics. There are some developments that actually would be allowed to start construction but are being told that they can't occupy before a certain date. Even if the building is finished and the occupancy permit is there, because of the security zones around the Olympics, in that particular case, they are actually told they can't move in until after the Olympics.

Then there are others where the clause is…. I would think there are some interesting clauses in and around the Olympic village, quite frankly, with the purchasers and then the turnover of that building and who has to meet what deadlines there with regards to the city.

I'm not familiar with those contracts. I haven't read them. I just know that in the discussion in real estate there's…. Well, there are always different clauses, but for us this is not the norm.

D. Chudnovsky: I think it's a valuable exercise to have a look at the MOU. I certainly did and read it carefully and was surprised and a little confused about that element of the MOU. So I think it would be useful to have a look at it and try to understand it and explain it.

If I could just be…. I know the minister has said this, but I want to just be absolutely clear. It's the minister's understanding that the motivation for this "not before spring 2010" date in the MOU came from the city side, not from the province side, in that negotiation. Is that my understanding?

Hon. R. Coleman: My understanding is that this came from the city on their expectation of what the timetable was. But the person who did the MOU isn't here, and the MOU isn't here, so we're going to get that information for the member.

D. Chudnovsky: I appreciate that commitment. I think it's an important one, and the clarification will be very helpful to us.

Now, let's just talk a little bit about Little Mountain itself. Would the minister be aware of what the current occupancy level of the 224 units at Little Mountain is?

Hon. R. Coleman: We've been working with the Tenants Rights Action Coalition and with the tenants on this site for a number of months now. So 170 of the tenants have now moved into other housing and are subsidized elsewhere. They've actually received housing. So out of the 224, 170 are no longer there.

D. Chudnovsky: Here's where the "not before spring 2010" date becomes relevant. It's pretty obvious. We've got a memorandum of understanding that says

that nothing's going to happen here until at least the spring of 2010. We've got 224 units, and 170 of them are empty, and there are thousands of people in my town who don't have anyplace to live. So why is it that we have a situation where we have 170 empty units at Little Mountain — those people have been moved to other social housing units where other people could have gone — and there are people with nowhere to live? How does that make sense?

Hon. R. Coleman: Our commitment was that the people that lived at Little Mountain would have a place to live. We've decided to move that process along in a very managed way. We're eventually going to get, hopefully in the not too distant future, to where we'll be into demolition. We'll be into site soils testing. We'll be into environmental issues on the site. All of those things have to be done way before construction. So the disruption on the site will take place as we build into these different stages.

You can't just say: "Let's move 500 people in a month or two." That would be unfair to them to disrupt their children and what have you. We made a commitment to that community that we would transition them at times when their children could enter schools in the place where they want to be and that we would find housing for them over time, and we're doing that.

Don't lose sight, Member, of the benefit of this project. It is going to allow us to expand even further the other supportive housing we can build in the province of B.C., and 224 new units will be back on the site for stock for these people. They all have the first right of refusal to come back, if they want to move back into those units. We're just managing it through, working with our partners, all of them, as we go through this, and that's what we're going to do.

D. Chudnovsky: If I understand the minister correctly, he said three things about the fact that there will be a site. There are these 224 units of housing. It's spring 2008, and there's no construction before spring 2010. I allowed as how I thought that was a little strange, and his explanation for it was three things.

One was a manageable relocation of people — makes sense to me. The other two were demolition — I don't think that's going to take two years; that will take a couple of days — and soil testing. It seems to me that those are the minister's explanations.

First of all, I'd like to test whether that's, in fact, the reason for this situation. If it is…. Well, am I correct that those are the reasons?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, there's no way you're demolitioning these things in a couple of days. They need to be done in a very controlled and managed environment where people are not exposed to the asbestos that is in some of these buildings. You have asbestos; you have environmental concerns. Your demolition is going to have to be phased as you manage the site for folks.

We've been very responsible on this site with the people that live there to make sure they have a place to go to, that they will know that they're secure in their housing for the period of time that the project takes and that they have an opportunity to come back.

I know the member thinks you can just reoccupy, but if you go to disturb the buildings again at some point in time, you have another disruption of people's lives. I don't think it would be fair to those folks.

I think people know that we're going to do Little Mountain. I think people know that we're working with the different groups to make sure that we take care of the people that live there in a responsible and humane manner. We're going to do a responsible development, which will take care of all the health and safety issues as we come through it. We've given ourselves enough time with the processes we may go through to have a date that we can deal with.

We thought we had the MOU, but it's a different MOU that was delivered here. So we're still going to try and get the one and have that discussion with regards to that section and the MOU with the member.

That has been the direction to, first of all, pay attention to the people that live there and work with that community to transition them to housing in a managed way so that their lives weren't being inordinately disrupted, as we had to do some things on the site. This may require some off sites, some on sites; it may require some asbestos remediation. The demolitions in those circumstances are not overnight things that can take place. So there are a lot of things that have to take place with regards to this site for its success.

D. Chudnovsky: Are the people who live and have lived at Little Mountain aware that there is asbestos in the buildings?

Hon. R. Coleman: In buildings of this vintage, there's often asbestos contained in the drywall mud that was used when they were built, and in some of the insulation. When not disturbed, it has not been a problem in buildings of these vintages. It's when you decide to disturb that that you can start to create the issues. So that's why you have to be…. There are protocols as to how you do that, how you manage that when you go to demolish a building and move it out and change it, and that's why you have to be cautious.

We will obviously have a risk assessment done before demolition so that the extraction is done in a way, under supervision of the rules that have had to deal with asbestos within these types of buildings. We know that that's an issue that we may face, and that's why we're being very cautious.

D. Chudnovsky: Thanks for that, but once again it wasn't quite the question I asked. The question I asked is whether the people who lived there are aware that there is asbestos in the buildings, because of course, in the course of living there….

These are my neighbours. I live a 15-minute walk from this place — two-minute drive. Some of them have lived there for 50 years. I want to know if they were made aware that there's asbestos in their building. People change. They paint the place. They renovate. They put their fist through the wall. Things happen in people's houses. The question is: were they made aware…? Are they aware that there's asbestos in their dwellings?

Hon. R. Coleman: We don't know that there's asbestos there. We know that in this vintage of building, you will find in some things, like the drywall mud, some asbestos. So when you disturb it, you have to do asbestos testing before you can demolish a building of this vintage. That's protocol. That's what we intend to do with the buildings. There are no safety or danger issues here.

In the form of where it was done in those days, anybody who has a home of that vintage would probably find, if they actually tested some of their drywall mud and that sort of thing — the old plasters and stuff — that there would be some elements of asbestos in it. It's sort of like….

Actually, what I'll do is…. I think it would be better, because if I go down a road and try and give a technical explanation, I'd be wrong. Why don't I undertake to get the member opposite an opinion — like a briefing or whatever you want to call it — on that particular issue so that I don't go down a road that I'm not technically capable of answering?

I want to go back to the issue of the two-year best-before-date question. Is it the case that in any of…? I understand that before you choose a developer, there are discussions with possible developers. I want to know whether, in any of the discussions with any of the developers, including the one who was successful in getting this contract, there was ever a time when the developer asked that the construction not commence until after the spring of 2010.

Hon. R. Coleman: No. There was no discussion with regards to that, and the process for the bids was not handled by myself or by B.C. Housing. It was done by Colliers International on a request for expressions of interest. Then that was narrowed down to a couple of proponents, I guess, who had the better presentations and who then were interviewed with all things in mind as to which was the best proposal. But no, that wouldn't have been part of that process.

We have the MOU here, and we're assuming that you may be looking at an addendum, not the actual MOU. There may be confusion over that, and we're going to try and get that confusion straightened away for you.

D. Chudnovsky: As I recall, the addendum to the MOU is, basically, the MOU — it repeats itself — but I appreciate you having a look at it. The provision that I referred to is certainly there, and I invite you to take your time, have a look at it and figure it out.

I could help you a little by saying…. Maybe I could help; maybe I'm just making it worse. There was a report to city council which has the provisions of the MOU, and then actually, the MOU was an addendum to the report to city council, as I recall. That's the way it showed up in the city, anyways. It may have shown up here in a different way. In any case, I encourage you to take a look at that and respond.

I'm not sure I understand, Minister. Maybe I could ask it this way: when did the expressions-of-interest discussions take place with potential developers? When did that happen? Was that before the MOU, was it contemporaneous with the MOU, or was it after?

Hon. R. Coleman: We have the MOU here, and there's no reference to any dates. We're now asking for the report to council so that we can clarify for the member his questions. But I can tell you that we have the MOU in front of us. It has no reference to a spring start of 2010 within the MOU with us. The RFP for this project went out in October, and it was completed in April.

D. Chudnovsky: Could we have a sense of the schedule of events that are going to proceed from here? We talked a little bit about them in general. We talked about the need to move people, and I want to come back to that in a little bit. We talked about demolition. We talked about soil sampling. What's the expectation of when all that's going to happen? When is the site going to be prepared, and what's the schedule for that?

Hon. R. Coleman: With the selection of the proponent, the work starts immediately. His team will start to do that work and will come up with a schedule that they will present to us with regards to the phases of the schedule that they think they're going to achieve and then the design and all of that stuff. They wouldn't have done that in advance of being selected. They will now do that work, and the whole project effectively starts immediately in its process.

D. Chudnovsky: Forgive me. I've never done one of these before or even been close to one of these before, so maybe the questions are a little — whatever.

So it is in the contract. We'll give you X billions of dollars, and you'll build the project. What are the provisions of the contract? If you don't have a schedule, if you don't have a plan, what is in the contract?

Hon. R. Coleman: Sorry for the delay, hon. Member. We were just reviewing something here for you.

First of all, it's important to understand that the proponent has their team in place. They're ready to go. They now…. I guess I'll take a minute and just maybe sort of walk through the development process for the

member, because I have some experience with it in the city of Vancouver and elsewhere.

Normally, you would take a piece of land. You want vacant possession of the property so you can do the job — to go and get it developed — when you purchase it. In this case, that's why we…. Vacant possession isn't a criterion, but at the end of the day we have to provide vacant possession to the proponents so they can do their work on the land.

Basically, they have to develop a plan for the site, and that requires a number of things. First of all, while they develop a plan for the site — with architects or whatever and moving to engineers — they need to know the land base. So they have to go in and do soils testing. They have to check the soil for any contaminants as well. They have to do all of those things with regards to soils testing.

They also need to get, frankly, to the point where they can test underneath buildings, etc., in order to be able to do all their work. They actually hire individual engineering firms, usually, to do that work, because they're specialists within the field. So that all has to be scheduled in.

As they do that, they will also design the site. In designing the site, they will go through a process where they'll have community consultation. They will have public hearings. They will have design panel discussions with the city of Vancouver, get the working drawings nailed down, and then they'll come through. Then they'll start construction, dig it, build it, etc.

That's the process. That's where that sits as far as that is concerned. They would have effectively started…. Now that they know that they're the proponent, they will start doing that work and get on with it.

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I'd like to clarify for the member that he's incorrect with regards to the date being tied to the MOU and tied to some legal process. This was a policy-planning program report to the city. They were comments made by city staff that say: "If approved by city council, B.C. Housing intends to proceed without delay or interruption with the policy review and a rezoning application. The expectation is that the construction can start in early 2010." We're not bound by the spring of 2010. We are actually able, if we're successful in our rezoning process, to move that date up.

On the actual deal itself, as in any deal of this magnitude, there's a confidentiality clause. When the actual transfer occurs, we will disclose the details, including the purchase price.

D. Chudnovsky: Thanks to the minister for that. I think he's still not referring to the same provision that I was, but we'll straighten that out. We'll find it. You'll find it. We'll deal with that.

Hon. R. Coleman: We know that there are 224 units of social housing that will be replaced with the same number of bedrooms as were on the site before. The rezoning process will actually determine the number of units, because that will be determined by whatever FSR the city decides is going to be allowable on this particular site through the rezoning process.

D. Chudnovsky: Is the deal contingent on rezoning? Is it conditional on the rezoning? Clearly, depending on the rezoning that the city is prepared to do, the deal will be worth more or less to the proponent.

Hon. R. Coleman: That would be prejudicial to the negotiation of the people of the city, subject to the confidentiality clause. There is an FSR provision on the site, which everybody is aware of. What the proponent decides to design and take to the city will be up to them. There's not a subject clause that necessarily deals with that.

What the expectations are…. I don't know how to put this. The conditions in the deal are subject to confidentiality until such time as they go through their public process with the city of Vancouver.

D. Chudnovsky: The minister would agree with me — would he not? — that if the deal is not conditional on rezoning, the proponent runs a significant risk.

Hon. R. Coleman: The proponent knows his risks, and he decides on his risks. We have a confidentiality clause, which I am not going to breach, with regards to this particular deal. At this stage of the process that would be completely inappropriate. When we're in a position to transfer the land, all of that will be disclosed.

D. Chudnovsky: Why wasn't the redevelopment of the…? A question before that. Who is going to own the land? At the end of the day, who is going to own the land that the social housing is sitting on?

Hon. R. Coleman: Probably the best explanation is that there would be two stages of ownership. When the deal closes, the owner takes possession of the land, and then he builds it out.

As the member knows, this most likely isn't going to be a single-family-lot development. It would be a strata-title development. The strata-title owners would own their unit. The limited common property would be owned by the strata, as would the property. On the strata portion of ours, we would own our portion.

D. Chudnovsky: I got it until the very end. On the strata portion of ours, we would own that. Will we be in a strata relationship with somebody after…? Will

British Columbia or B.C. Housing be in some kind of strata relationship with somebody when this is built?

Hon. R. Coleman: No, and that's why I stumbled over it as I came to it. We will own our buildings with our units.

D. Chudnovsky: And the land. B.C. Housing will own the buildings and the land.

Why was it that it was decided that the B.C. Housing portion of this deal would not be done in a phased project which would allow the residents, or most of the residents, to stay in place?

Hon. R. Coleman: Our advice was that this wouldn't work as a phased development because of the extensive site preparation work that would be required. The entire site needed remediation because there are old storage tanks on it. There would be grid patterns that would have to be established for roads, water and sewer and all of that, as well as other services. So it was felt that the best way to handle this was to provide a vacant site.

Hon. R. Coleman: My understanding is that prior to natural gas, this site was heated with oil. So there are still storage tanks on the property that may have been like my mother's place in Penticton — I haven't gone and looked at them — where they filled it with sand when she switched to natural gas but the tank is still in the ground.

All of that has to be remediated, and if there was any leakage or whatever, that would have to be handled as well.

D. Chudnovsky: Surely, taking out old oil tanks isn't…. I'm not a developer, but I'm walking-around intelligent. The fact that there are oil tanks in the ground at these buildings doesn't prevent a phased development of the buildings. If you develop the site in a phased way, you can take the old tanks out one at a time and keep a community, which has been successful for 50 years, intact.

Hon. R. Coleman: That's just one example. I don't purport to be an expert, and I know that the member isn't either. We're taking the advice that we took. The decision was made to go this way, and that's the way we're going.

We think it's the right way to approach this site, and that's why we've been very good about making sure that everyone there has a place to go and will be able to be moved and then will have the opportunity to come into a new unit when it's built.

D. Chudnovsky: I want to ask about the strategy that B.C. Housing has adopted here. The strategy, as I understand it, is that we have a valuable piece of property. We're going to sell it. We're going to make a bunch of dough. We're going to replace the existing social housing units, and we're going to use that money that we make to buy social housing somewhere else. The fact that this land is in the centre of Vancouver means that it's relatively valuable and that we'll be able to buy more social housing somewhere else.

Hon. R. Coleman: Let's be clear. It's not a B.C. Housing strategy. It's part of a provincial housing strategy. Basically, it's unlocking equity in a site, maintaining the same number of units on that site and getting those back.

In addition, when you unlock the equity, two things happen. Fifty percent of the equity is going back into the city of Vancouver to develop additional housing stock, so it's going to help us accelerate and build additional stock within that community because this site is actually home to British Columbians. Although there's a large issue of housing in Vancouver, the other 50 percent is going to be invested in other communities where housing stock needs to be built. So this is us unlocking equity to do more.

D. Chudnovsky: If that's the case, if the unlocking of equity — rather clever little phrase — is the goal, why not sell it all?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, I'm not sure I get the member's question. Why not sell it off? Is that the question?

Hon. R. Coleman: Because I want to replace 224 units of housing on the site for people for social housing in Vancouver to maintain the same number of units in the stock. I want to take the balance of the equity to invest in other housing projects to expand the number of units in British Columbia by maybe as many as 1,500 to 2,000 units.

I think it's actually a pretty good story — to take one site of 224 units and leverage it to create more stock for more people that need it, maintaining the same number of stock on the site that existed in the first place.

D. Chudnovsky: I'm having trouble seeing the principle here. I see that the minister is confused by what I'm saying, and that probably means that I'm not explaining it well enough.

The minister says that we're going to make 224 units and that we're going to make them into more units. They're expensive here; they're less expensive somewhere else.

The minister says that the equity from the site will be used to purchase more social housing in other places. There's some internal logic in that assertion.

The question I'm asking is: what was it that made the minister or the ministry or B.C. Housing decide that what was going to be left in terms of social housing at Little Mountain was 224? Just nostalgia? Or was it based on some kind of understanding of what the mix of housing would appropriately be on that site? Or was it made on the basis of how much unlocked equity was needed? How was it made?

It could just as easily have been the decision of the ministry to sell the whole piece of property and build more social housing somewhere else. It could just as easily have been the decision of the ministry to sell a little less of the property and build more social housing at Little Mountain. What was it that led the ministry to make it this balance and not another balance?

Hon. R. Coleman: I'll take responsibility for that. I said that if we were going to go to Little Mountain, I wanted exactly the same number of units back there as we were going to displace under the development. At the end of the day, I wanted to retain the same number of housing stocks.

I don't think the member intended it with the language. The intention isn't to go out and purchase additional stock. The intention is to use this to build new stock. So it's to take the equity we get and build more new stock.

It's not cheaper everywhere, hon. Member. I can tell you that a lot of it will get built in Vancouver, but some of it might be built in Victoria — land values here aren't exactly peachy either — and Kelowna, Surrey and places where the needs are identified for additional non-profit social housing stock.

There may be a philosophical thing here, but I think that it's pretty creative and smart to be able to take a site, rebuild old stock, keep the same number of units at the end of the day so, therefore, you haven't lowered the number of your stock, and then take the equity that you take out of this and build more stock.

Now, there might have been a philosophical argument on that if somebody had said let's take the money and put it against the debt or general revenue or whatever, but that's not the case. We're allowed to use this equity as leverage to do a whole bunch more housing in British Columbia for the people who need it the most.

D. Chudnovsky: Well, let's have a little bet. We'll just have a little side bet that nowhere where social housing is built with the….

Nowhere where social housing is built with the money that comes from this deal will the land be as expensive. That's just a suggestion on my side. Why not double the amount of social housing on the Little Mountain site? It's a big site. It's in the centre of the city. We know, from all the work that anybody has done on social housing and housing in general, that diverse and mixed communities are the most successful communities. Why not?

I've heard the minister speak about anywhere from 1,200 to 2,000 net units on that site. He's used those numbers over the months. If that's what we're looking at the end of the day, why not double the amount of social housing on that site and make it more diverse than what it's going to be, which is a little pocket of social housing and million-dollar condominiums?

Hon. R. Coleman: We have 200 units going into the Woodward's site, for instance. There's a mixed-use project there. There's no set formula that says what the numbers should be. The decision is made that it's one-for-one, that we want to be able to leverage the dollars to do more for more people.

This site may not be conducive to some of the client groups that we need to immediately help in the future. For instance, would it be better to do an 80-unit, small-size suite unit closer to the people that need supportive housing or where the services are, somewhere in Vancouver where the need is? Would it be important to develop a project beside a successful drug and alcohol treatment centre with supportive housing in it in a location, let's say, in Surrey or in Delta or any community?

I am not prepared to prejudge that. I think what we're doing is that we're saying: "Let's take a piece of property that's underutilized and make sure that the number of units that are there at the end of the day are there for that community to still have their 224 units." Let's take that underutilized piece of property, and let's sit down with mayors and councils across B.C. as we do this and show them how density can help actually pay for future housing and do more with less — or not with less, because it's going to cost us money.

The member said we're going to go where the land is cheaper. Well, frankly, the city of Vancouver is putting up 12 sites. The city of Surrey is putting up three. Victoria is putting up three. Kelowna is putting up two or three. We have other cities looking. Of course the land is cheaper because those communities actually stepped up to the plate and said: here's the land.

Imagine that. You take the land portion, and then you have some capital. How much more can you do than you would have done traditionally? The old formula was that a non-profit would go out, they would option a piece of land, speak to their local council, try and get it zoned, then B.C. Housing would come in and buy that land at retail, and then build the units on it at retail.

You know, imagine if you could leverage these dollars to create a multitude of opportunities stacked on top of each other, which actually takes off and builds even more housing. I just think that this is actually a very good way to look at your assets and say: "We can leverage this better to do more." That's what we're doing.

D. Chudnovsky: In a minute one of my colleagues is going to ask a couple of questions. Before that,

there's a rumour going around Little Mountain. I wonder if the minister could confirm or deny this. They expect that the Little Mountain site will be used as a parking lot for the Olympic site that is a couple of blocks away, until 2010 when the construction is likely to start. Has the minister heard anything about that?

The Chair: The member for Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows has the floor, and we'll listen to the member who has the floor at the present time.

M. Sather: I wanted to ask the minister about a project that the Alouette Home Start Society is trying to get up and running in Maple Ridge; it would be a 40-some-bed subsidized housing unit with supports for people with mental illness and addictions. I did have a chance to talk to the minister briefly about it a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if he can update me a little bit on how it's looking in terms of that project proceeding — what information he might have on that project.

Hon. R. Coleman: We have given the Alouette Home Start Society some predevelopment funding to do a feasibility study. Also, we are working with them on a site location. We are also in conversation with the local community, Maple Ridge itself, as to whether they have any potential sites.

Once we actually identify a location, then the organization would have to — we would help with the funding to get them through the process — see whether there was support at the local council for the particular site and the number of beds, etc., and whether it met with the community goals. They will ultimately make the zoning decision. But at this point in time we're funding the organization on predevelopment funding.

M. Sather: That's encouraging. I'm glad to hear that the ministry is working with the municipality on that. I know that the council has supported the project, so hopefully it will happen. It's very much needed in my community.

A question that was raised by the society for me to ask is…. Now, this is going to be a supported housing program, and they wanted to know if there are going to be other affordable housing programs for those that don't need support? Maybe the minister can tell me if there already are or not?

Hon. R. Coleman: Not to be glib, but this might be an example where Little Mountain might help, because money can come from this site to help with other sites, in social housing and affordability.

To the member's other question. We made a strategic decision on certain forms of support in our housing strategy, where we went to rent assistance programs for people who make under $35,000 a year, where they can receive a cheque where they live, in the rental market today. The numbers on that are pushing close to 5,000 families today in a little over 18 months that are now availing themselves of that program. So that is something….

I'd actually be surprised if the Alouette Home Start Society didn't know this, but I'd certainly encourage the member, if they don't, to give them some brochures. If they come across any clients they think need immediate rental assistance, they should give them the brochure and point them to the B.C. Housing website so that they can apply and get assistance. A lot of these people are actually housed, and oftentimes there are challenges — you know, the price they're paying for rent.

One of the challenges I identified when I became the minister was that you have the ability to do a certain amount of capital, a certain amount of investment and a certain amount of debt service. If you tried to build 5,000 homes in today's marketplace for families, the number would be somewhere around $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion. To build 5,000 homes, given zoning, time, costs and development stuff, would take years. I took the approach that I wanted to help people immediately, so that's why I created that program.

M. Sather: The question was: regarding the overall housing continuum, what is the province doing with respect to affordable home-ownership, mixed-income housing? There used to be a Homes B.C. program. Is the government considering bringing back a program like that?

Hon. R. Coleman: The member identifies what is the next piece of our puzzle that we're working on but that we haven't designed yet because we felt we had to concentrate initially on the supportive housing and homelessness initiative, the issues in and around affordability for those people that were at risk for homelessness, and that sort of thing.

It's a multiprong challenge for all of us, and it's something that, hopefully, jurisdictionally across governments we can set aside and actually try and solve this issue of affordability.

The example is that municipalities can actually use density as a way to create affordability. So they could have a large-scale development come in and say…. Vancouver has done this in some cases, where they say that a percentage of the project needs to go to affordable rental or affordable ownership. They could do that by increasing the density, which is basically like adding more lots than what you expected to build on the property.

Densification will actually become the driver of affordability. If you are familiar with out our way…. You and I are on both sides of the river, but we have the same situation in that we're either backed by mountains on one side or surrounded by agricultural land reserve. There's no more land to build on, so how do you create the affordability? The single family lot price has gone through the roof in the last three to five years, and that's because there are fewer and fewer of them.

If we can get our municipalities to change their thinking — and this is not easy, by the way…. My own municipality is still struggling over whether they want "towers" in their municipality, because they want to keep their rural feel. Well, there are a million people coming here, so you're going to have to infill and do something. Things like the amount of parking we require in a building affects affordability.

If we still live in the world where we say two parking places per unit and 0.25 for visitors, we just added a whole bunch of costs to the building. I can tell you that I know of a project in a non-profit organization I was involved in years ago in a municipality near me that required 2.2 parking stalls per unit for a social housing 50-unit townhouse project. The site was constrained, so they had to go underground. In order to deliver that social housing, that cost was put on the cost of the debt servicing to make that thing work.

Today they say an underground parking stall is anywhere from $25,000 to $30,000. So if you start to think about how you do your parking, that can save you money. If you decide how you're going to actually do certain design stuff, you can save money, which can actually bring affordable opportunities.

If you could get municipalities to identify, on their land base or in their relationship with density, opportunities to do something different, you can have some remarkable success.

I'll give an example of a project in a municipality a number of years ago. A developer came in and said to the municipality: "We would like that piece of property, and this is what we will do." The property was worth about $450,000. "We'll give you $100,000 for the property, and the other $350,000 we will put against down payments on eight units in our development that will now buy down the costs for affordable rental in that building, and we'll give those units for management to a non-profit. With the rest of the building, if you want to make this deal, we will do something called share equity, which is a hybrid somewhere between ownership and a co-op."

Basically, what it says is that the owner gets to own it, but every time he resells it, 15 percent of the growth in equity comes back to the municipality to go into a housing fund. That building is actually still working today, and it was done in the 1990s.

We have to get innovative for affordability — right? That's what we have to do. That's why the housing endowment fund…. We're looking for innovation like that, and I believe that those opportunities exist.

As we do that, if we can also recognize something that…. I was on the other side of this room, actually, in 1996 and 1997, with the present House Leader, and we had a discussion about housing. At that time I said that my biggest concern about housing wasn't the social housing. Some delivery costs concerned me in our long-term costs on it, but my biggest concern was that in Canada we had decided to vacate what used to be the incentives for people to build rental housing in this country.

Today the recapture on capital gains of an older apartment building that somebody wants to sell can be such that it's more beneficial for them to demolish it and build condos and to actually do it, because then the recapture of the capital gain is treated totally differently.

All the housing ministers in Canada have made the same overture, and so have a number of mayors of major cities, to the federal governments — not this one, but successive federal governments. I do believe that even your housing ministers of the day did the same thing. We've all been talking to them probably collectively, that I know of, for 12 years.

We would like to see them move back to allowing some of these changes tax-wise so we could incent the market to start building rental housing again. If we can backfill some of that stock, we would have more for the rental assistance program to be able to work with. I also believe that there are too many municipalities…. I'll just use one example. We've gotten on to a topic that I love, by the way.

One other piece, and it's astounding to me, I'll tell you. I won't name the city, but do you realize that there's a city in the province of British Columbia that if you want to build a legal suite in your home to actually create another form of affordable housing — because, let's face it, suites are actually a pretty good form of affordable housing — you have to pay another $25,000 development cost charge?

Then they come to the minister and say: "We want you to build some affordable housing in our community." The minister looks at them and says: "Actually, I think you should get rid of that DCC first. We want to incent your community. We want to work with you, but my goodness, let's be fair here — right?"

Those pieces of the puzzle are going to be a big body of work that needs to take place over the next year or so with UBCM, with municipalities. I think that the density message is starting to get out. I'll give credit to both sides of the House here, because I don't think that the message on density has been any different from either side.

We're saying to our communities: "You've got to start thinking differently about how we can actually create more housing and affordability, and we don't control the zoning process, so you guys have got to help us." That's why we say that if you give us land, we're prepared to come in, fast-track the zoning and build for specific supportive housing.

We'd love to have a site that some municipality has said to us: "Well, we've done this. There's 20 percent of this that can now go to an innovative housing thing. Would you come in and fund and put that piece together or tell us how?" We'd be there in a heartbeat. So those are the things that I think we have to look at.

M. Sather: I have two more questions, but I'll write one to the minister in the name of time. The other one was around a question that came up at the business

Like many communities, our community has some landlords who are really difficult in town, and the municipality is thinking about bringing in a bylaw to sort of give them more power to deal with these landlord-tenant disputes around those kinds of situations.

The staff of the municipality, though, expressed concern to me that residential tenancy really is responsible for landlord-tenant disputes. They're concerned that if they get into that business, a lot of time will be taken up and they won't have the funding to back that up. They sort of think it would be a downloading on the municipalities.

I heard the minister say something earlier in the House about some more funding for residential tenancy. I know myself, from phoning, that the wait-list can be long. It can be really frustrating. Can the minister just comment on that?

Hon. R. Coleman: Yeah, I did say that in the House in answer to the question from the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville. First of all, I think you should understand that…. Anecdotally, I guess the best way to describe it is that I met the then Attorney General who is now a federal Member of Parliament — who was actually the leader of your party — in the dining room one time when I was going to do estimates back when I was the Housing critic.

He said: "How much time do you think you'll spend on residential tenancy?" We were trying to figure out the time for estimates. I said: "Well, probably an hour, an hour and a half." He said: "Good. I didn't understand that thing when I was in law school, so maybe you'll help me understand it."

It has some complicated issues in and around it. The plain-language rewrite that took place a number of years ago put in place some disciplines where, if there was no tenancy agreement, the one that was on the Internet was automatically deemed to be the tenancy agreement. Before, there weren't tenancy agreements, so people didn't know what the rules were in between. A number of other issues were taken care of.

The challenge with it is that we had a process of arbitrations. Our arbitrators were like independent contractors who would be paid a fee-for-service and would do a certain number but not necessarily a lot of numbers of arbitrations and, actually, in some cases could basically call their own hours. We identified that as an issue, and it took us time to actually manage out those contracts. We went to dispute resolution officers, who we now hire in government. They're employed. We can measure their performance. We can measure their decisions and try to bring some better sense to that.

About a year ago that waiting time was about 92 minutes on the phone — not acceptable. We're down to about 40 — not acceptable. That's why we went to Treasury Board this year and upped the budget by a few million dollars, and we're hiring and training additional people. We're adding another call centre in Kelowna, in the central Interior, and we're upgrading our processes with regards to dispute resolution and how fast we get the packages up.

If there's one piece…. I do think that I've got good people in place that are doing the job to manage this thing, and they've moved it along a long ways. I think I needed to go get the resources from Treasury Board, though, quite frankly, to push them over the top, and they now have those resources.

D. Chudnovsky: I wonder if I could ask about one specific SRO hotel that was purchased in the last round. There were six additional hotels purchased, five of them from one landlord. But the last one was a little strange, and I'm wondering whether the minister could help me with an explanation for that.

The Marr Hotel was purchased from a private individual in January of 2008 for, I'm thinking, around $900,000. I can't remember. It was purchased for an amount, a fairly low amount, and then it was purchased from B.C. Housing a few weeks later for a higher amount, a substantially higher amount. Could somebody explain to me what that was all about?

Hon. R. Coleman: What we did when we purchased these is we looked at the market price, what we thought we could get it for, and made an offer. As the member well knows, one of the biggest concerns in that whole marketplace was that there was a bunch of speculation that was going to continue to go on, where people thought they would tear these down and develop them into condos. We felt that we had to move on the market price because this one was available.

At the end of the day, it actually cost less than $100,000 a unit. We know the replacement costs for us would be substantially higher than $100,000 a unit to be able to do it. We can't control the market that comes before us, but we did the comparison to the price to the other units we bought and the price per unit, and the recommendation from the agents we were using on market and decided to purchase it. We felt we were paying market.

D. Chudnovsky: But as I understand it, this was a bit more complicated than the other deals. I think I remember the numbers now.

Early in January B.C. Housing purchased this hotel for $1.9 million, and then six weeks later, there was another transaction between B.C. Housing and the government of British Columbia. That's my understanding. I saw it myself, and then I was asked by a journalist about it. It looked very…. Since then I haven't had the opportunity to ask the minister or B.C. Housing. But, you know, it went into my estimates file.

Since then I've asked all kinds of people: what possible…? First of all, what does it mean for the government to buy something from B.C. Housing? That was the report that was on the website the day of the sale. When the six properties were sold, five of

them were bought from the one guy, who has made a fortune off of us — Robert something something.

Five of them came from him. The sixth was reported as being purchased from B.C. Housing. When it was checked out, B.C. Housing had purchased it — I don't know from whom — just a few weeks before. The price changed substantially. It went from $1.9 to $3.4 or something like that in the intervening weeks.

Now, I couldn't understand it then. I still don't understand it. I was hoping that it would all be clear today.

Hon. R. Coleman: There was no intervening purchase, so that was just misinformation. B.C. Housing bought it for the asking price from the person that had control of the property, as I guess you'd describe, but there was no "We purchased it here and then sold it back to ourselves for that." None of that took place.

D. Chudnovsky: Thanks to the minister for that, and I accept that. But I want to explore this and investigate it further. It was reported in the Province newspaper the next day. But what I want to do is ask, just to help in the investigation…. Of course, not everything you read in the Province is true, you know.

What I'd like to ask, which would help in my investigation, is: what is your understanding of what the purchase price of the Marr Hotel was?

Hon. R. Coleman: The Province story was wrong, according to my staff. But we're happy to pull the title and share the information with the member.

We paid $2.3 million for the Marr. That was the price that we made our offer from, and that's what we paid for it. But we're happy to clarify the confusion for the member.

D. Chudnovsky: I'd like to pursue that with the minister or his staff and understand better what happened with that purchase.

I wrote the minister a letter, and he eventually wrote me back — with emphasis on eventually. The question in the letter had to do with the forums that were held around the Premier's homelessness strategy, or whatever it was called, in June and September of '06. I wrote the letter because people asked me about it. It wasn't something that I knew about. But at the time that they were held, the…. Yeah, just to be clear, I wrote on October 24, and we received a letter sometime in the middle of February. It was a quick one.

The homelessness forums took place in June and September of 2006, and people had said to me…. When I was just taking up these responsibilities, somebody said that there were these forums, and there was this consultation, and they were going to put up the results of the consultation on the website, and it never happened. This was a year and a little bit later.

Then I wrote to the minister, and eventually he wrote back to me, saying: "You should be able to obtain the reports from the website shortly." I looked today, and I'm wondering if shortly has happened yet?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, that's not performance. I'm not going to try and make an excuse for it. It's evidently ready to go onto the website. But frankly it should be there now. I will apologize to the member for the delay, quite frankly. We will…. Well, it didn't happen, so I guess I have to take full responsibility for that.

Certainly, I'm prepared to follow up immediately after this meeting today to see where it is and why it isn't, because my understanding is that it could. I don't know whether it's just an oversight that it wasn't, or it's sitting there ready to go or whatever the case may be. But certainly, I apologize to the member. Shortly isn't the time frame that the member just described, certainly not in my world nor his.

D. Chudnovsky: I will pass on your apologies to those, and I take it seriously. Thank you very much for that. I leave it at that. We make commitments; we do them — right?

I wonder if I could talk about the housing endowment fund for a little bit with the minister. Now, I have looked very, very carefully at the projects. I think there are now four or five projects that I know about that have been improved through the endowment fund.

I have to tell the minister that except for one of them, and we'll talk about that one in a minute, I don't understand what the difference is between those projects that have been approved under the housing endowment fund and a whole bunch of other projects that go on as a matter of course. I'm wondering if the minister could help me understand that better.

Hon. R. Coleman: In the traditional sense of housing at B.C. Housing, there are certain housing initiatives that can be done. Oftentimes what we traditionally do at B.C. Housing, or through the Housing Ministry, is in a program, whether it be supportive housing or whether it be social housing or whether it be Independent Living B.C. — those sort of things.

Also, within government there is sometimes a challenge moving budgets to get some innovation. I'll just use an example. There's one we just opened up in Victoria where really it was an opportunity. It was called the Victoria Youth Empowerment Society, but we call it the Taj Mahal.

There was this building sitting there where there was an opportunity to take the commercial kitchen and create a hospitality training centre, to have some counselling for street youth for addictions and mental health and to have some housing upstairs, because it was actually at one time run like a bed-and-breakfast. There were eight rooms that were in pretty good shape upstairs.

So you take a look at this package, and what happens is that there's no proposal call that matches up.

There's no program that matches up, but here's a great opportunity to try something different. So in order to be successful, you say: "Well, what are the partners, and where can we help?" In the past, governments — and I'm going to say governments, because whether it be ours, NDP, Socred, B.C. Liberal, it doesn't matter — have always had a difficulty putting that round peg in the square hole. So a lot of these things slide by.

We put some money into that project to get it done. As a result of that, the other partners came to the plate. You had the restaurant association come in and establish the training program with them. They're looking at this, basically, as an opportunity to build skills of people that can come and work in their establishments over time. You have real estate organizations that put money into it. You have the city step up to the plate with some stuff. The endowment fund allowed for that innovative housing thing to take place, because somebody had to break the cycle.

Another example is the one up in Chilliwack, where we used to have a camp. There was a prison camp — right? It was for prisoners. It was a correctional facility, but it was not a secure facility. The first nations came together and said: "We would like to have a healing centre for youth and people in our community, and we would like to put it there." They wanted to have 28 healing beds on site, counselling and recreation and to have some of the cultural values of their own community taught to these guys.

Again, what happens in government is that somebody says: "Well, whose responsibility is that?" The responsibility goes…. It could be the INAC, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada; it could be the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, but they don't do programs in housing; it could be Children and Family Development, but they don't have the expertise necessary in the housing component.

You can get this sort of idea that can bounce around in any government. The ability of the endowment fund was to step up to the plate and say: "Okay, we'll come in with the prefunding. This is where we'll go, if you guys are prepared to partner up so that we can make this happen." So that's what happened with that. The endowment fund is really there for innovative housing opportunities. There are some that we're looking at now, a number of them.

One of the ones that people have asked us to look at and that we haven't found the opportunity for yet is to take a group of developmentally disabled adults whose parents are concerned — because they're getting older — that there's going to be some form of housing or comfort for them as they move forward in their lives.

One suggestion is: what if you bought one condo on a floor for the care worker, and had four or five others that were owned by the families for their kids so that you could teach them meal skills and help them with their stuff but give them some independent living at the same time?

To try and do that innovation doesn't pigeonhole well into ILBC. It doesn't pigeonhole well into Health. Where do you do it? So the idea was to have a fund that could look at those opportunities for some creativity.

D. Chudnovsky: I wonder if the minister could…. There aren't that many of them. He's talked about the Victoria project and, by the way, from what I had read previously about these projects and what the minister has said, they all sound like terrific ideas to me. That's not the point.

I wonder if the minister could just outline the other already funded projects under the endowment and explain the innovation. Or maybe it's not the innovation so much as the way in which the square peg doesn't fit into the round hole.

Hon. R. Coleman: Sure, I'd be happy to. So there's the Ch-ihl-kway-uhk Tribe site, which I mentioned. The Victoria Youth Empowerment Society. The SAFERhome Standards Society, which is basically getting a program certified, including cost-effective, 19-point design criteria — because it's not always just for social housing — for any new residential or commercial building plans.

SAFERhome-certified houses will be designed to be safer ergonomically, electronically innovative and environmental beneficial through design. It's basically a focus on accessibility for seniors and what they will need for aids in the future. We felt that if we could seed capital, which worked, it might actually bring that along.

For instance, there was one where it just needed a little bit of money to get over the top to convert an apartment building to five co-op units for low-income families and individuals. They had this opportunity in front of them, but we don't do co-ops. Co-ops aren't part of our funding structure in B.C., and the federal co-op program is gone. For $70,000 we were able to help them have success with creating their co-op.

We recently did a grant to the Canadian Home Builders Association for Built Green. It is basically to help us to get to more people that are Built Green–certified to meet the government's goals with regards to greenhouse gases and what have you.

We have LEED. We also have Built Green. We want them to marry up. We want those folks to be better trained. We felt that if we could incent the program and allow them to keep their fees down a bit so that they get more people who get trained on the Built Green, everybody would benefit. So that's why that was done.

At Covenant House there's homeless and at-risk youth. It was an expansion to the Pender Street building, with 32 new transitional housing beds for youth, plus a commercial kitchen, lounge area and additional space for programs and services. This is one where you had an existing organization with a very good track record that wanted to go outside some traditional boxes.

Normally, we would fund the housing component but not the counselling space or the kitchen space in the building, and somebody else would say: "That's not us either." So what we said is that we'll step up and put some money on the table so that can actually have some success.

On Cortes Island we have an issue with some affordability for seniors. There's an aging population there. This was one where we thought that the innovation…. This was a $380,000 project. They wanted to build six cottages for the low-income seniors in that community. They were going to build the entire thing supported by volunteer labour.

We felt that they couldn't get, of course, enough capital to sort of get it started. So we thought that was an opportunity to allow some people to build something together and show how it can be done, not unlike Habitat for Humanity. But this is individuals for a community that they can help build.

Then there's the B.C. Professional Fire Fighters Burn Fund. This is a project that is absolutely amazing, first of all. It's the first project of its kind in North America. It may be the first of its kind in the world. What it does…. It has taken a number of components and said: "Here's what we're going to do." So the first piece is…. There is a housing component, which is the eight units that are there, which are rooms for burn survivors and their families when they come to Vancouver for treatment.

It is a significant stress on families and the burn survivors themselves. It is a significantly painful experience, as the member well knows, to go through. To have to move and have stability in motels and stuff is a challenge. So even by itself, you'd say that it's not that innovative. But when you look at the fact that you have a partner in the city that says, "We'll put up land," and then you're going to put in two other things in this project and some additional stuff, then you say: "Boy, this is pretty innovative."

What's going in this facility, in addition to that, is a world-class lab. There's a Dr. Kähäri who has chosen British Columbia to do synthetic skin research. Dr. Kähäri doesn't have the lab space here to do this, but his success stuff is remarkable, and the opportunity for long-term impacts for burn survivors is remarkable. They're going to put the lab in the same building.

At the same time, they're going to put in a burn environmental education centre, which will allow us to have school children and other folks come through and do the interpretive stuff and actually experience smoke and teach kids — and families as well — how to deal with fire, with burns and all of that stuff on an education side. Then, adding into it the management of the time, all of this combines to help the folks in the housing component.

We deem that to be pretty innovative. The challenge with it was, again, that it's one of those ones where somebody says, "Well, Health should build the lab," and somebody else says, "Well, Education should do this," and somebody: "Well, that piece of that is Education, but I don't really want to do this piece." And then the housing side as well…. Is the housing health? Is the housing children?

The question is: is there a way to take this innovative presentation and see if you can make it work? That's why it was selected.

D. Chudnovsky: The minister anticipated part what I wanted to say in response. Let me begin by saying that all of these projects sound terrific. Certainly, any government would do well to support them. The question is: how do we manage our money inside the envelope that is available to us?

I have to say that the burn unit is a great project. It should be built, but it's genuinely confusing to me how the capital funds for that would come out of the housing innovation fund. Certainly, people have to stay there for a while, but it stretches it.

If what the minister is saying is that this is a great project and there wasn't anyplace else in the provincial budget to figure out how to pay for it and we had to do it this way, I think that's great. But I guess I want to understand better what the criteria are, and I'll come to that in a second.

I also want to make a comment about the Covenant House example. I think it's a really, really important example, but it kind of makes the point I made in my introduction to the initial question. The minister talked about beds, counselling space, kitchen. Covenant House is a terrific organization and does wonderful work.

I'm all for supporting their project, but there are dozens of facilities that I've been in over the last three or four months across the province that include all that stuff. Again, that one is confusing to me as to why it would be funded from an innovation fund and not from the regular budget. Those are comments that the minister can do with what he will.

The concluding question that I have from all of that is: how does all of this work? How do you get to be considered for a housing endowment fund grant? Is there an application process? Is there bumf out there in government offices? How do I know about it? How do people know about it, and how do they access it? What are the criteria by which the decisions are made?

Hon. R. Coleman: Basically, the process for applying is that you submit an idea to the housing endowment fund administrator at B.C. Housing. It's reviewed by the associate deputy minister and the CEO of B.C. Housing. They basically….

We decided not to say: "You have to go and invest $50,000 in some application." So if there's an idea that needs to be addressed, the opportunity is for them to come to us. "Here's the idea. Can we work with you?" We actually try to build the partnership.

In Covenant House that's what happened. Youth is actually not a group that Housing typically funds. Typically, funding in Housing is for adults — right? So the challenge is on youth. On some of the addiction issues for youth, it's also not a typical funding thing. So we look for innovation there.

By doing what we did, we brought partnerships to it. We brought MEIA, MCFD, VANOC and private funding. Even the feds came in with some HPS funding.

The beauty of Covenant House is that by doing what we did, Covenant House takes over the entire financial responsibility for the operation in three years,

which is a pretty good investment. You actually double, I think…. At least, you double the access for youth, in a situation which is difficult to stickhandle the funding through, by having an ability to come in and say: "Okay, here's what this endowment fund is for."

It's to create the opportunity for partners to come together to do something creative for housing. It's not typically fitting within a box, so that's why Covenant House. That's the process.

I think I'll stop there because I do know that by standing orders, we have to adjourn.

D. Chudnovsky: I want to make the motion, but before I do so, I'll just go over a couple of administrivia items. Just to go over with the minister that he's committed….

I thank him again for committing to us the information on how many are shelter beds among the units of housing that have been created since 2001; how many came from the Homes B.C. project, were cancelled and then came to be when they were reinstituted. And I thank him for the commitment to the discussion about the memorandum of understanding on the Little Mountain issue, which I look forward to continuing the discussion on.

There was a commitment to confirm whether it was the city or the province that requested the spring 2010 beginning date. There was going to be some explanation for me as to asbestos use in Little Mountain social housing.

Just to let the minister know, I misspoke only a tiny bit on the Marr Hotel. It was bought on January 3, 2008, for $900,000 by the Provincial Rental Housing Corp, and it was sold to the province later for $2.3 million. That's what was indicated in the newspaper, and I'm open to the notion that that's completely bogus, but I want to explore that as well.

Having said that, I want to thank the minister for this opportunity to speak with him. I would that it would have been much longer, but that's the way it goes in life. I thank the staff, as well, for helping the minister to answer my questions.

D. Chudnovsky: No. You'll see the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville tomorrow morning.

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