Hansard — Tuesday, May 13, 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		12347

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		12347
	Mining industry in B.C.
	D. MacKay
	Racism awareness
	D. Thorne
	B.C. history poster contest
	I. Black
	Marlene Swift
	G. Coons
	Canadian citizenship
	J. Rustad
	Asante Centre for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
	M. Sather

Oral Questions		12349
	Government action on forest industry
	C. James
	Hon. R. Coleman
	N. Macdonald
	B. Simpson
	Funding for post-secondary education
	R. Fleming
	Hon. M. Coell
	J. Kwan
	Seismic upgrades for schools
	D. Cubberley
	Hon. S. Bond

Petitions		12354
	D. Thorne

Second Reading of Bills		12354
	Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 27) (continued)
	S. Simpson
	J. Horgan
	D. Thorne
	S. Fraser
	G. Robertson
	C. Puchmayr
	L. Krog
	Hon. I. Chong
	Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 33)
	Hon. W. Oppal
	L. Krog
	B. Ralston
	University Amendment Act, 2008 (Bill 34)
	Hon. M. Coell
	R. Fleming
	C. Trevena

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		12386
	Estimates: Ministry of Children and Family Development (continued)
	N. Simons
	Hon. T. Christensen
	M. Farnworth

Hon. M. Coell: Mr. Speaker, over the lunch hour members of the opposition and members of government met with the executive of St. John Ambulance of British Columbia. I thank you for hosting that lunch.

I'd like to introduce them now: Mr. Stuart Clyne, chair of the British Columbia and Yukon Council, St. John Ambulance; Mr. Larry Odegard, chief executive officer, St. John Ambulance, British Columbia and Yukon; Mr. Logan Stewart, vice-chancellor of community services, priory of Canada, St. John Ambulance; and Mr. David Harris, chair of the Victoria branch, executive committee of St. John Ambulance.

St. John Ambulance will mark its 125th anniversary of volunteer service and first-aid training in Canada and its 97th anniversary of volunteer service in British Columbia. St. John Ambulance branches are located in 26 British Columbia communities, and the members of this organization have served their respective communities with professionalism and dedication.

St. John Ambulance is Canada's leading first-aid trainer. At cultural, community and sporting events throughout the province, these volunteers are on the scene to provide first aid and health safety–related volunteer services on an as-needed basis until medical assistance arrives. St. John volunteers serve British Columbia communities by providing over 12,000 volunteer hours a year.

Please recognize St. John Ambulance and our guests for the service they do for British Columbia.

Hon. I. Chong: Today I have a special introduction, and that is for my administrative assistant Linsey Cole. She is the cheerful voice and friendly face you encounter when you contact my office here in the Legislature.

Linsey will be taking a few days off and next week as well, because on Sunday, May 18 she will be getting married to her fiancé Chris Tupper, who works for the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General.

I would like to wish my administrative assistant the very best as she embarks on this new journey with her new partner in life, and I wish the House would please give them their warm wishes.

Hon. J. van Dongen: I have two sets of introductions today. Visiting the Legislature is the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region executive leadership group. They've had a full morning of meetings, with more meetings with ministers to come.

Joining us today are State Representative George Eskridge of Idaho, PNWER president; speaker pro tempore Jeff Morris from the Washington State House of Representatives and president of the Energy Horizon Project for PNWER; Senator Lesil McGuire from the Alaska State Legislature and PNWER vice-president; John Leech, executive director and registrar of the Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia; Neil Windsor, professional engineer, president and registrar of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta; his counterpart Derek Doyle, professional engineer, president of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia; John Hansen, president of the North West CruiseShip Association; and Matt Morrison, executive director of PNWER.

Also visiting the Legislature is Chris Sands, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Washington D.C. — a great partner of PNWER. I ask the House to give them all a great Victoria welcome.

J. Horgan: Members of this place will be familiar with my alpha and my omega, spouse Ellie. Joining her in the gallery today is my youngest son, the able and always charming Evan Horgan. Would the members please make them very, very, very welcome.

Hon. R. Thorpe: Today visiting the Legislature are 11 team members from the Ministry of Small Business and Revenue. They work in the customer service and information branch. They are Wayne, Danna, Belinda, Cynthia, Andrea, Claire, Kevin, Cynthia, Kristina, Terry and Mila. I would ask all members of this House to give these very dedicated public servants a warm welcome to the House.

D. Hayer: I have two special guests today from my constituency: Hanif A. Karmally, CFO of the Teal-Jones Group, and John Pichugin, manager of engineering and forestry from the Teal-Jones Group. Would the House please make them very welcome.

Hon. J. van Dongen: Also visiting us today is Rosie Llewellyn-Thomas from Fort McMurray, Alberta. She is visiting her daughter, my administrative coordinator Marnie Llewellyn-Thomas. She's been enjoying Victoria for the past two weeks, and I ask the House to please make her very welcome.

D. MacKay: This is Mining Week. British Columbia has been one of the world's major mining regions since the 1800s, and today we continue to be a key international player in the mining industry.

The Hudson's Bay Company started producing coal on Vancouver Island in the 1840s, and the discovery of gold along the Fraser River in the 1850s saw a gold rush that resulted in the settlement of many parts of our province that we call home today. Most of the early mining activity took place underground until the

In 2007 we saw $416 million spent on mineral exploration throughout our province. That's a remarkable 1,300 percent increase over 2001. We saw 1.25 million metres of drilling, an increase of 51 percent from the previous year. Today we have ten metal mines, nine coalmines and over 30 industrial mines in production. As reported in Pricewaterhouse today, production from those properties generated $6.9 billion. That's a lot of money.

Today there are 20 new projects under environmental review. Some 54 percent of Canadian exploration companies are based right here in British Columbia, and 28,000 people in 15 communities are employed in the mining sector. Once again, I would remind everybody that wages and benefits within this sector average $101,000 annually.

Mining is part of what British Columbia was and continues to be. Mining Week is an opportunity to acknowledge and recognize the importance of this sector to the economy of our province.

D. Thorne: Today more than ever, youth are aware of societal issues and are tremendously keen to take action on those issues. Hillcrest Middle School in my riding has two students who have done just that recently. They have sent me a letter, which I'm going to read to you, but I just want to say first that these two students researched the problem of racism and then embarked on a campaign to collect signatures for a petition that I will present later.

Their youthful idealism propelled them to walk their neighbourhoods, talk with people and ask for their signatures. They are aware that government does take measures to address the problem of racism, particularly amongst youth, but they believe that more can be done. I'd like to now read their letter.

That is signed by Mathew Brown and Connor Wright, and they are the representatives from the grade 8 class at Hillcrest Middle School. I just think they've done a tremendous job.

I. Black: Yesterday in the Legislature the Office of the Speaker held a celebration to showcase the winners of the BC150 poster contest. The contest, which is entitled "Discover Your Community: History in Art," was launched to support the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Crown colony of British Columbia.

Students from across the province were invited to submit a poster depicting a historical event in their local communities. I'd like to congratulate Tessa Warhurst of Lillooet, Lisa Xie of Vancouver, Derrick Van Viegen of Port Alberni and Eric Kim of Vancouver for their first-place entries.

But how in good conscience could I stand here representing the riding that includes the City of the Arts, Port Moody, and not celebrate local students who also submitted some very, very impressive displays? Two local students, in particular, fared really well.

They are not only in the same grade and in the same school, but they are also identical twin sisters. Ariana and Saskia Vaisey from Summit Middle School were the first and second runners-up respectively in their grade category. Both girls submitted original work commemorating the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which also happened in Port Moody.

Ariana's poster illustrated a poised Agnes Macdonald, wife of Prime Minister Sir John A., as she rode the rails across the country for the very first time. Saskia's poster portrays the Golden Spike Day, the party that celebrates the completion of the railway — a party that we still continue to celebrate at our annual Golden Spike Days in Port Moody. It's the July long weekend. Do mark your calendars.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet these amazing young women when I paid a surprise visit to their school to present each of them with their BC150 prize packages, compliments of the Speaker's office. This contest was a great opportunity for our young people to learn about our history, to contemplate our heritage and to celebrate our province.

G. Coons: Today I'd like to take a couple of minutes to honour one of my good friends and constituents Marlene Swift, whose story of strength, courage and survival should stand as an inspiration to us all. First I'd like to congratulate Marlene as being one of the six

Marlene's story of poverty, violence, addiction and abuse could have easily led to an unhappy situation, but because of her extraordinary will to overcome, her endless forgiveness and the force of her character, she has triumphed over her many challenges.

As a youth she was born into a family troubled with alcoholism and violence, and she suffered from sexual abuse at the hands of family acquaintances. At age 16 she tried to escape her family through marriage, but it proved no better than what she had left. Driven into alcoholism and drug abuse, her partners were violent, her children were taken from her, and her life was filled with darkness.

The tragedy that changed everything happened in 1983 when Marlene was working as a cab driver in Prince Rupert. One November morning her passenger turned on her with a knife to her throat and ordered her to drive out to a deserted stretch of highway. She was brutally raped, tossed out of the cab and left for dead. She managed to flag a passing motorist who took her to the hospital, but her deepest wounds were beyond anything that the doctor could do. She was afraid to leave her house or answer the phone.

However, this tragedy would prove to be one that drove her to triumph. Marlene's assailant pled guilty, and Marlene was determined to turn her life around. She began to face her pain and conquer her addictions. Today Marlene is a voice of hope for people who are struggling with their own demons. In her work as project coordinator for Prince Rupert RCMP victim services, Marlene is truly an inspiration to many of us.

I'd like to conclude with a few of Marlene's own words to those who suffer from addictions: "Life is worth living without the addiction and the addictive behaviour, because you are worthy."

J. Rustad: Citizenship is something that's often taken for granted. So when I spoke with Karen Muir, a grade 12 student at Nechako Valley Secondary School in Vanderhoof, I decided to share her comments. Karen recently attended a 4-H event in Ottawa and wrote the following:

M. Sather: FASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, describes a full range of disorders and effects that can occur in a person whose mother drank during pregnancy. In 1993 citizens from my community of Maple Ridge began a coordinated and strategic process to address the issues of FASD. Named after FASD treatment and research pioneer Dr. Kwadwo Asante of Maple Ridge and funded with a $136,000 provincial grant, this grass-roots-based group implemented their community action plan, creating the FASD Society for B.C in March 1999.

A not-for-profit society, the Asante Centre in Maple Ridge — under the direction of the executive director, Audrey Salahub — has created a compassionate and knowledgable community that works together to prevent FASD and to support individuals and families living with FASD to reach their full potential. With a professional team that includes pediatricians, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, clinical counsellors, social workers, nurses, family support workers and research, they and the staff of the Asante Centre bring extensive knowledge, expertise and hands-on experience to all aspects of their work.

Services provided by the Asante Centre include diagnosis and assessment, educational workshops, counselling and family support. Individuals with FASD and their families experience a multitude of difficulties that persist throughout life. Everyone with FASD is unique, and with the assistance of their dedicated staff, the Asante Centre is able to meet the specific needs of these unique individuals and their families.

C. James: Yesterday I was in Kamloops with hundreds of forest workers as the city's sawmill closed down. It's a story we've seen over and over again under the B.C. Liberals' failed forest policy. It's a story

that the Minister of Forests has tried to ignore and downplay, even though these are permanent job losses and permanent closures. Instead of helping, instead of bringing forward a real plan, the Minister of Forests accused us of spreading false hope.

Well, I've travelled the province. I've listened to workers and their families. I've listened to communities. They know it's not false hope. They're looking for leadership, but all they get from the Minister of Forests is a minister with no hope.

My question is to the Minister of Forests. If he can't get the job done, if he says his hands are tied, why doesn't he step aside and let someone move in who will do the job?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, maybe I could get the Leader of the Opposition to take the opportunity to read Hansard from yesterday, where I talked not about hope or false hope…. I talked about being honest with British Columbians. That's something you could start….

We're really concerned about the workers in Kamloops and other areas of the province of British Columbia, but I never heard a thing or saw a thing in any media interviews by the Leader of the Opposition where she told that worker who was on television last night, who wanted to get his grade 12 education, that there was a tuition plan in place by this government for that worker.

I never saw anything where you said to the person who was talking about being an older worker and wanting to transition to retirement that there was a plan in place for them to be able to transition.

I saw one quote from the member opposite talking about the fact that we need to do silviculture. Maybe she should go read the silviculture plan to find out that we did 257 million seedlings last year, and we're investing $161 million in silviculture the next….

C. James: Well, that's exactly the problem. We've just seen it illustrated here today. If the minister would stop talking and start listening, he'd hear from forest communities that this government has done nothing to help them — nothing.

I've been to communities like Mackenzie, like Prince George, like Kamloops, like Nanaimo and seen firsthand the devastating effects of this minister's hands-off approach. He should resign.

I've talked to the workers who are losing their family-supporting jobs, worried about whether they're going to be able to pay their mortgages. I talked to a worker just yesterday who told me about the fact that there were lockers being cleaned out every single day at the school, because families are leaving because they've lost any hope.

B.C.'s forest industry is collapsing. This government is ripping the heart out of communities, and the Minister of Forests refuses to hold himself accountable. Again, to the Minister of Forests: will he own up to his failure, his failed hands-off approach, and step down today?

Hon. R. Coleman: In Kamloops Daily News, May 10, 2008, the Interior Logging Association says that government is helping thousands of forestry workers in Interior communities to bridge the unprecedented challenge facing the forest industry. It goes on to say, "ILA manager Wayne Lintott…said the association is satisfied the provincial government is doing what it can to address the crisis by adjusting policies," and giving loggers input into those changes.

I know the member opposite has a policy that says we would rather not have seen $2 billion come back to our companies in British Columbia so that they could sustain themselves in bad times. They would much rather have a 30 or 40 or 50 percent duty being paid to the United States out of the pockets of our forest industry, which would help nobody in the province of British Columbia and would destroy our industry all together.

We're not interested in your policies, hon. Member. We've got good policies in forestry, and we'll continue to have some.

C. James: Let's take a look at what this government's policies have brought to British Columbia — nearly 40 mills closed, 13,000 jobs lost in this last year alone, communities across this province on the brink of collapse. That's what this government's policies have brought to British Columbia.

The entire industry has lost faith in this minister. They don't want someone who has thrown in the towel. They want real leadership and a real plan, but we're not going to get that from this minister. He's given up, and he's admitted that to all of British Columbia.

My question is to the Premier. This isn't about false hope. This is about leadership for communities. Would the Premier fire the Minister of Forests today and actually give some hope to the industry in British Columbia?

Hon. R. Coleman: We'll never give up on the fact that since 2004, over $5 billion or $6 billion of capital has been invested in B.C.'s forest sector — the highest

investment in capital for efficiencies and operations in the history of the province of British Columbia.

We won't do what the opposition believes we'd do, and that's just to sell the industry down the river by abrogating the softwood lumber deal and putting them back into punitive duties going into the United States, just destroying our industry's future. We will not do that. We will not give up on our…. We will not give up.

I know the member opposite never wants to recognize that we put in place $129 million for retired workers for tuition and for other training and job creation in the province of British Columbia.

N. Macdonald: Yesterday we had the minister trying to avoid questions by sitting down. Today we see bluster.

What is clear to all British Columbians who are watching is that it seems that…

N. Macdonald: …the only forestry job that this minister is willing to fight for is his own. For the 20,000 others, he couldn't care less. This is the province's most important industry, and it is in complete collapse. Everyone in the province knows that.

In Mackenzie alone, four mills have gone down in the last seven months. This year 13,000 jobs have been wiped out, and there's been no provincial money. There's been federal money, but no provincial money.

The minister designed and delivered a meaningless seven-page coastal strategy, and then he refused to curtail raw log exports. He handed over private land so forestry companies could become realtors at the expense of communities. He has failed to fix first nations forest and range agreements. Failure, failure, failure.

If anyone in this House deserves to be fired, it is him. The Premier should be doing that today.

Hon. R. Coleman: I'm sure the people of Revelstoke would appreciate the fact that the member of the opposition from their community would rather sell the Downie Street mill down the river than actually stand up to his own party on the abrogation of the softwood lumber deal.

You know what the high-value cap did for the Downie Street mill. They've told you that, hon. Member. You know darn well that those jobs are a lot more stable in your community because of that deal, and you want to sell off the forest sector. It's entirely up to you.

Hon. R. Coleman: Mr. Speaker, $129 million to help people transition to early retirement and millions of dollars for tuition for workers to go get retraining while this downturn takes place. While we do that, we'll keep the industry stable so we can meet what the analysts say will be, frankly, a terrific….

Hon. R. Coleman: Actually, to the member opposite who just said what he did: I was an RCMP officer for eight years, and that insult of me personally would never bother me, because I've heard it all.

N. Macdonald: There are reasons, and there are excuses. Every day we come here, and we hear excuses. Let's be clear what the reasons are. The reason that forest worker deaths and injuries have increased is B.C. Liberal forest policy. That's the reason.

N. Macdonald: The reason that the value-added sector has collapsed is B.C. Liberal forest policy. The reason that raw logs are being exported at a record level is B.C. Liberal forest policy. The reason that forest-dependent communities are abandoned and left on their own is B.C. Liberal forest policy. The reason that over 20,000 jobs in 46 mills have gone is B.C. Liberal forest policy.

The excuse we hear each and every day — tough markets. Well, British Columbians are sick of the excuses. They are sick of this minister. The Premier should get up and fire him today.

Hon. R. Coleman: Not telling British Columbians the truth. Housing starts are at an all-time — decades — low in the United States. That's not telling the truth to the people of British Columbia. Having a dollar that's gone to par from 85 cents where every one cent takes $130 million out of the bottom line of forest companies in British Columbia…. That's being dishonest with British Columbians.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, let me talk to you for just a second about B.C. Liberal forest policy. In 2005, $1.939 billion in capital investment in the forest

sector in the province of British Columbia — big numbers every year. I've got all kinds of analysts' reports and comments with regards to the future of our sector. We're going to stand with our sector and continue to work for solutions with them for the long term and with the communities for the long term. This industry has a great future in the province of British Columbia if we weather this storm together.

B. Simpson: In October 2005 in this House, the opposition asked this Forests Minister to put together a select standing committee on forestry because we believed at that time that the crisis in the sector was going to deepen, that more forest workers were going to lose their jobs, that more mills would close and that more forest-dependent communities would be hurt. That was 32 months ago.

What did this minister say? "No way." It wasn't necessary. We were just being Chicken Little. That's what he said. Well, the chickens have come home to roost. This minister also said — and this is a direct quote from 32 months ago: "The reality is that we're going to move very quickly. Very shortly there are going to be some things done out there that will assist our forest sector…. It's pretty critical that we move…expeditiously."

Talk about false hope. Talk about being dishonest with the people of British Columbia. It's 32 months later, and this minister still doesn't have a clue what to do. Will the Premier do the right thing? By any measure, this minister has failed. Will he make him job loss 13,001 in the forest sector and take that job away from him?

Hon. R. Coleman: Again, the member opposite refuses to recognize what the government of British Columbia has done for the people of the province with regards to forestry. We're not going to go….

You know what their policy was. Go buy the Skeena Cellulose pulp mill, blow half a billion dollars out of the taxpayers of British Columbia, and leave nothing but a wasteland behind it in the northwest area of the province. Their other policy was that they were going to have a jobs and timber accord and create 21,000 jobs — and created zero jobs.

Hon. R. Coleman: The opposition were in government when they totally ignored the beetle epidemic in the Interior of the province of British Columbia. They put no plan in place.

Hon. R. Coleman: I always know that I'm getting closer to a nerve, the louder the heckling gets to me across the hall.

This is what we've done. Tens of millions of dollars for the coastal forest action plan, including FPInnovations, which is finding new markets and new uses for things like hemlock, which is an important species for the future of the coast of British Columbia.

B. Simpson: We're talking about permanent mill closures, permanent job losses — communities where their entire forest sector is shutting their doors, communities that this minister has told in the public domain: "There's nothing I can do." He said in here: "There's nothing I can do."

We deserve a minister who knows that his primary job is to make sure he is doing something in this time of crisis and that his primary job is to protect forest workers and their communities to get them through this crisis. The people of British Columbia deserve better.

So my question is to the Premier, not to the Forests Minister. I challenge the Premier today to stand up in this House and defend this Forests Minister. Is he the right person for this time? Is this the minister that the Premier wants to take this forest industry forward, or does he want to continue to see it melt down under his leadership?

Hon. R. Coleman: Actually, I love it when they editorialize my comments. I said that there's not much I could do about the U.S. market or the dollar. That is a true factor.

These members opposite are disingenuous to British Columbians if they think they can go down to the United States tomorrow and have them build another million houses. The reality is that they abandoned British Columbians in the 1990s with the pine beetle. Today we spend $642 million in communities across British Columbia to fight the pine beetle.

Nothing — not one dollar — invested by the NDP in fighting the pine beetle, only so they could devastate the land base, sell out those communities and then stand up in this House and think that they're on the side of the angels. I got news for you, Mr. Speaker. The largest amount of capital investments in history is taking place in our forest sector. Our industry is well positioned with modern mills, modern ability to compete, and they will compete in the future.

R. Fleming: The chair of Vancouver Community College, Mr. Mark Stock, wrote to this minister about how this minister's cuts imperil excellent programs at that institution and will eliminate 400 FTE student spaces and over a thousand individual student spaces at that institution.

Vancouver Community College is looking at closing the American Sign Language and deaf studies department, yet it is connected to one of only four interpreter training programs in all of Canada. When will the minister admit that his last-minute cuts to colleges like VCC are causing chaos and unacceptable cuts to programs, and when will he do something about it?

Hon. M. Coell: The Ministry of Advanced Education has the highest budget it has ever had in the history of British Columbia. It has a $68 million increase in its budget this year. We've invested over $1.5 billion in capital infrastructure, the highest infrastructure program in the history of the province, and the members continue to berate a system that is doing just great.

R. Fleming: Week after week out there in the system and across British Columbia, we hear about programs resulting from this minister's cuts, adult basic education programs being eliminated in north Island, engineering and business programs being eliminated at UBC Okanagan, cuts to CNC in Prince George. Last week it was SFU's seniors program.

So here's another example. We have a severe shortage of trained interpreters in B.C. and Canada. Maybe the member opposite can remember that not too long ago his government issued a gilded statement, and one of the great goals, goal 3, was to build "the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities."

Does the minister tacitly agree with the cancellation of this sign language training program? Does he think it costs too much? Or will the minister finally step in and do his job and start saving these critical programs before they're gone forever?

Hon. M. Coell: I don't know why the NDP disagreed when we doubled the number of doctors, but they did. I don't know why the NDP disagreed when we've nearly doubled the number of nurses, and we're still focusing on nurses. We're focusing on skilled trades and training. We're focusing on graduates…

J. Kwan: Just last week Stats Canada reported findings about how large B.C.'s income gap is between Canadian-born and immigrant workers with the same skills — half the earnings, more likely to be unemployed and a growing number of skilled immigrants living in poverty. Why? Because so many are unable to improve their English or get credentials recognized.

VCC's cuts will cancel the financial management program, a program that helps immigrants with accounting backgrounds learn workplace English competencies and Canadian accounting standards. Will the minister admit that his cuts are hurting the immigrant community, and will he commit today to restore the funding?

Hon. M. Coell: As I said, there is a $68 million increase in the ministry's budget to our institutions. I'd like to ask the member why she voted against that.

J. Kwan: Well, I'd like the minister to actually answer the question. Dale Dorn, the VCC president, says they're faced with a $5.5 million budget shortfall.

Here's another proposed program suspension that the minister might be proud of. The education and employment assessment program for women specializes in working with marginalized women to give them basic literacy and skills training that they need to get access to the workforce.

Will the Minister of Advanced Education today stop denying that his cuts are actually hurting the community and eliminating valuable programs that are pertinent to the marginalized community and the immigrant community?

Hon. M. Coell: Over the last few years we've added thousands upon thousands of new seats in the institutions in this province. Only the NDP could think that a $68 million increase is a cut.

D. Cubberley: Many parents in British Columbia recall the Premier's 2004 promise to launch a complete seismic upgrading of B.C. schools at high risk of collapse in an earthquake. There are 300 B.C. schools at high risk. They recall the Minister of Education's promise to fast-track the 80 highest-risk schools over three years.

Three years have passed. Only a handful of the 80 schools have been dealt with, and all this minister can say to worried families is: "It's taking more time than we thought. It's more difficult to do than I realized." The truth of the matter is that this government has simply not put its money where its mouth is.

So my question to the minister: when will this government give seismic upgrading of schools for vulnerable children the same priority that this government gives to making Olympic facilities happen and building a convention centre?

Hon. S. Bond: This government has put its money exactly where its mouth is with a $1.5 billion commitment to seismic projects. You know, it's really ironic that this member would even stand up and ask such a question.

Let's listen to this quote: "British Columbia's biggest stash of liquor is safe from an earthquake, but the government says it doesn't have the money to reinforce a school just down the street. The liquor distribution centre on East Broadway was seismically upgraded shortly after a $2 million plan to upgrade Vancouver Technical School was cancelled."

D. Cubberley: Once again, the minister puts more energy into changing the subject than she does into going after the money to honour her promises. This is pathetic for a government that…

D. Cubberley: …came into office and cut capital funding by 50 percent for schools in its first year and has never restored that funding. It's hypocritical to promise action and then do nothing. It's hypocritical to stand on a platform with parents and advocates and acknowledge the vulnerability of children and promise to fast-track action and then do nothing.

D. Cubberley: This minister knows the funding isn't in the equation to meet the government's commitment to seismically upgrade these schools. So my question to the minister is this. Is this sheer incompetence, or is it outright hypocrisy, or is it a blend of both? Why did you lead families to believe you'd move fast when you weren't prepared to pay for it? Will you, in light of the tragedy in China, finally honour your promise and fast-track seismic upgrades at B.C. schools?

Hon. S. Bond: This is the first government in the history of British Columbia that has put together a seismic mitigation program, a 15-year plan, and $1.5 billion to accomplish it. Not only that, let's talk about the capital investment by this government. Since 2001 this government has invested over $3.1 billion in school infrastructure.

Every member in this House is concerned about what happened in China, but I can assure you of this. We made a commitment. We're moving forward with that, and by the end of this year, we will have almost a hundred schools that are in the position to be under construction meeting the commitment that we made.

D. Thorne: I'd like to present a petition to make a provincial ministry of racial awareness.

Hon. M. de Jong: I call continued second reading debate on Bill 27 and, in Section A, Committee of Supply, for the information of members, continued estimates debate on the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

S. Simpson: I'm pleased to be able to rejoin the debate in regard to Bill 27, the green communities bill. Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk a little bit about the role of local communities and to make some connection to concerns that I know have been raised by numbers of organizations in regard to Bill 27.

What we know, of course, is that our local communities, local governments, play an integral role in planning. They play an integral role in terms of dealing with issues that will be essential to dealing with questions of climate change, primarily looking at issues related to sprawl, to land use planning, to how they build compact complete communities.

Those are all initiatives that it's going to be essential for local governments to get on top of, to continue to improve in terms of best practices on, and those are issues that are going to have to be addressed by local government. We see, increasingly, many local governments heading down that road. Vancouver has done some good work in that area, as have a number of other communities around the province which have very effectively looked at that, including places like Maple Ridge.

As I noted yesterday, the planning process seems to work best at the local government level. Local governments have the staff that they commit to that. In fact, they engage communities very directly, whether it's through outreach consultation or through the public hearing process.

Of course, as we know, local government is the one level of government that…. It's very accessible for the general public to be able to get at their mayors and councillors and be able to do the work to engage the mayors and councillors in terms of discussion around what it is that they're interested in advancing.

The problem here is that we may see the provincial government, through Bill 27, heading in a direction that I believe begins to not only download additional responsibilities onto local government to deal with climate change initiatives, begins to advance those initiatives related to the 2012 objective of carbon neutrality. There's no commitment, and we see nothing in this legislation that talks about resources being applied that support those communities in terms of doing that work.

There just aren't significant dollars to be able to do the work around beginning to do retrofits to improve infrastructure, to enhance the planning process for those communities that maybe aren't larger and don't have the same levels of resources that some of our bigger communities do. So there's a great concern that this is a bill that will lead to additional downloads.

There's also a concern I hear that it's a piece of legislation that leads to further edicts from the provincial government to local governments. We know there is a great amount of concern about the download and the sort of direction and the removal of powers from local government.

We only have to reflect back to Bill 30, around private power projects, where the government took away the authority of regional districts and local governments to plan and look after the interests of their own communities. They took that away, and they handed that power off to the Utilities Commission. That's raised great concerns. We've seen it with other bills, like the streamlining act, that have — again on matters of controversy — taken away the authority of local government to look after the interests of their citizens.

The other concern, of course, that we have seen around this — and it's a concern that is compelling because of the conduct of the government to date — is the issue of consultation and who this government talks to about their plans and initiatives. We have certainly seen that as a challenge. We saw it again in terms of the lack of consultation that happens largely around private power projects with communities. When there was disagreement and there was consultation, the government used Bill 30 to rip up that authority.

We've also seen it most recently in many of our rural and northern communities, of course, with the fuel tax. There we have seen community after community that we've talked to and municipal association after municipal association address this issue. What they continue to say isn't that they don't want to be a participant in getting at the challenge of climate change. What we don't hear them saying is that they don't want to pay a fair share. What we hear them saying is: "We want to be dealt in, in part of the discussion, and we want to be engaged in this process."

Of course, what we know is that they have been excluded in large part. They have not been part of this process and the discussions that now go on, as I understand that Mr. Whitmarsh has his PowerPoint out talking to some people…. Well, what I hear from those communities is: "It's all good and fine, but it's a bit much to come and consult us after the fact. We are looking to be engaged in these discussions before the decisions are made, and we're looking for decisions where we see our voices reflected in those decisions and made by government."

But that isn't what's occurring, and what has been a consistent problem throughout the whole climate change initiative — if I can call it an "initiative" — by the government over the last 15, 16 months or so has been this incredible level of secrecy.

So what this bill should be doing but what it's not doing. This bill should be providing greater expertise for local governments to be able to deal with these challenges, but there is no assurances in this bill that that will, in fact, occur — that they will get the access to the resources for that expertise, whether those resources be provincial officials who can provide that insight or support to be able to contract externally to bring in advisers who can help them to develop some of those strategies that will begin to deal with improved greenhouse gas emission reductions. But there are no assurances of that.

We should see in this bill a fundamental commitment to the issue of consultation and community engagement. That should be a guarantee in this bill that we will have consultation, that we will have community engagement that's meaningful and that that will involve all the players in the community who want to be part of the discussion about how to achieve the objectives that we all have.

It's not about saying that the objectives change. The objectives are there. They're in place. That's not what's

at debate. The debate is: how do we get to achieve those objectives? That is a legitimate thing to be consulting around, to be engaging communities around, to having a discussion around. There are no guarantees in this bill, at all, that we're going to see that.

Finally, certainly what we should see in this bill that we don't see here is the commitment of resources that will help to ensure that those communities that have been asked to be carbon-neutral by 2012, that are going to be asked, I believe, to carry the bulk of the responsibility for the climate change initiatives of this government…. There is no commitment that, in fact, resources will be provided to support those efforts.

As we have heard to date, there certainly is no commitment to ensure that the additional costs that will inevitably come with that to local government…. That's to be expected. There will be additional costs, but there's no commitment here from the government to ensure that those costs don't detrimentally impact on the delivery of legitimate and important services to British Columbians. We need an assurance that that will be the case, and the provincial government needs to step up and make those commitments and begin to look at the way that it helps to ensure that they are engaged.

This bill should be about building the partnership between local government and the province on the issues of climate change and greenhouse gas emission reductions. It should be about building that partnership, but I don't see the partnership in here. I don't see the partnership in here when it comes to the critical issues, to the core issues that need to be addressed, because the bill doesn't talk to those issues.

Sadly, on this one it appears more than likely that the government will be as silent on these questions of consultation. I would hope the minister would stand up when she does get a chance to close debate on this and say that we're going to hear more about consultation, more about engagement. I would hope the minister is going to do that when she does get her chance to close debate, but I don't know whether we're going to see that.

We need to have the government stand up and say: "Yes, we're going to change our ways. We're going to start talking to British Columbians. We're going to end the secrecy. We're going to start with local governments and local authorities, and we're going to start by opening up the doors in Bill 27." But Bill 27 today doesn't do that. The silence, I'm afraid, will continue as we've had silence for over 16 months from this government on the question of engaging British Columbians in trying to find solutions around climate change.

That's the reason I believe we're starting to see an increasing amount of concern by British Columbians about the government's initiatives here, and they're concerns that are problematic, because if we all want to achieve successful resolution in terms of British Columbia's commitment, we can only do that if all British Columbians are part of that solution and part of that strategy.

Today the vast majority, everybody but 24 or 25 cabinet ministers and their staff, seem to be left out of this discussion, and that's not going to get us where we need to go. If this bill is supposed to complement climate change initiatives that have been put forward by the government elsewhere, if it's supposed to help get us to those solutions, then it's got to deal people into that conversation. Local government is a great place to do that and deal them in. Sadly, this bill is quite lacking in that area. It raises concerns.

I look forward to committee stage, when we get the opportunity to discuss in more detail how the minister explains that and how the minister will open this process up. With that, I will take my place.

J. Horgan: As always, it's a pleasure to rise in my place and represent the citizens of Malahat–Juan de Fuca speaking today on Bill 27, the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act.

Before I begin my remarks, I just have to commend the minister. I think she's the fourth minister to bring in a bracketed act that has the word "green" in it. Just in case anyone is missing it at home, the government wants you to think they're being green, so much so that they're bracketing the word and putting it on the front of everything they pass out. I don't think there's anything wrong with good labelling, good branding, pretending to be doing something that you're really not.

If that is the government's objective, I give them full marks for labelling all of their legislation so that, in case the backbenchers on the other side are curious, they'll know what they're standing up to vote for, because they certainly don't speak about the bills in this place. That's the objective of the opposition, in most instances.

In this case, I have just two things I want to focus on with the minister. I know she is very familiar with the regional growth strategy here in the capital region district as a former municipal official herself and responsible for the Community Charter. She'll know full well that the regional growth strategy here on southern Vancouver Island has been a hard-fought document with communities working together to come to some resolution about where growth will occur, where growth will not occur, what types of developments we want to see in and around the capital region.

Nowhere in this region are these issues more important than they are in my community of Malahat–Juan de Fuca. Hon. Speaker, you will know that I live in the city of Langford, the fastest-growing city on southern Vancouver Island, where innovation is not something that the citizens there shy away from. In fact, they embrace innovation. Were it only an opportunity for the member for Oak Bay to come to Langford periodically and to see that innovation on the ground, she wouldn't be forced to say such things as she did in debate yesterday.

I just want to read just one paragraph from her comments yesterday in starting off second reading. The minister said as follows: "This is certainly what has been mentioned and connected to the 2007 and 2008 Speeches from the Throne as well as the Premier's

annual address to the UBCM convention, particularly last fall. As a government, we must rise to the challenge before us, and we want to tackle these important issues head-on. But we know we cannot work in isolation."

So that's the minister's objective, and who could argue with that? I know those that are watching at home or those very thoughtful people that are in the gallery, my family included, would say that that's a laudable goal and a laudable objective, and I certainly wouldn't want to dispute that.

But then I look at the reality of the past number of years in our community, particularly in Malahat–Juan de Fuca, and I have to take members back to that dark day in January of 2007 when the Minister of Forests, without any consultation — I am advised by the minister after canvassing this issue with her in estimates — with first nations in my community, without any consultation with the capital regional district, arbitrarily made a decision to release 28,000 hectares of private land from tree farm licences on Vancouver Island.

Now, on the surface that seems like a trivial and insignificant thing, but when you put that action….

Hon. K. Falcon: I thank the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca for ceding some time here.

Madam Speaker and friends, I want to address the fact that we've got a visiting group from Cloverdale Catholic Elementary School in my riding who are visiting here today. I want to welcome them. It's a group of grade 5 students, 28 of them, along with their teacher Miss Doreen Brady. I would ask the House to please make them welcome.

J. Horgan: I thank the minister for that introduction of the kids in the gallery, and I hope they're enjoying the debate here today as well.

I was speaking about the regional growth strategy and the decision by the Campbell government to…. I cede the floor to the member for Langley.

M. Polak: I couldn't let this opportunity pass. I wanted to welcome the students here today and acknowledge that Cloverdale Catholic Elementary is my former elementary school. It's very nice to have you here today.

J. Horgan: Again, my best wishes to the member for Langley, to the school group and to her alma mater.

Where were we? Regional growth strategy, Western Forest Products, tree farm licences — a lot of acronyms. That's the RGS, the RFLs and the WFPs. All of that adds up to a classic and complete contradiction of what the objectives of Bill 27, the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act, is supposed to be all about.

The minister, upon introducing this bill this spring, would have known full well of the debate raging in my community about the prospect of urban sprawl, this expansive development all the way up and down the Strait of Juan de Fuca unencumbered by any rules or responsibilities. It's an unincorporated area.

The minister responsible for unincorporated areas, you would have thought, might have been aware of this fact when the government made this decision. She certainly would have been aware of this fact when she tabled a bill which she alleges is designed to reduce urban sprawl and to create what she called "compact communities."

Now, what, hon. Speaker, in your opinion and in the opinion of those in this place, is a compact community exactly? What would that be? Would that be a community that's been emptied by job loss in the forest sector? Would that be Mackenzie? Would that be a compact community — getting smaller and smaller with each day of Liberal government as jobs are shed from the forest sector?

Or would it be a massive development on the west coast of Vancouver Island in and around Shirley, Otter Point and Jordan River where there is no infrastructure of any consequence? There's a two-lane road, a ribbon of highway that stretches along the beautiful wild west coast of Vancouver Island.

According to the government on that side of the House: "It makes good sense" — says the Forests Minister — "to release lands to developers that were traditionally used for resource extraction, for forestry, and that were contemplated in the regional growth strategy as no-go zones."

There will not be development on these lands, because they were resource lands. If you look at a map of southern Vancouver Island, it's pretty clear. We have the capital regional district water supply in the Sooke Hills. That area of land is off limits to development. We have forest lands that have been harvested two and sometimes three times over the course of the past 100 years, regenerating for jobs in the future, regenerating for habitat, wildlife on southern Vancouver Island.

But then we come to this Legislature where up is down, black is white, the bizarro world of British Columbia where the government can say on one day it's okay to Western Forest Products to sell vast tracts of land that they put into a tree farm licence as part of the contract 50 years ago to protect and preserve forestry on Vancouver Island…. It's okay to throw that out the door, because we've got the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act that's going to somehow protect us from urban sprawl on Vancouver Island. Unbelievable.

This side of the mouth says: "Fill your boots, Western Forest Products." This side of your mouth says: "Oh, don't worry about us. We're green. We've bracketed it on all of our bills. It says so right there —

'green.' Couldn't be more green if we tried. We even print it on our underwear when we get up in the morning."

"We are the greenest government in the history of mankind," says the B.C. Liberal Party. Hogwash. Hogwash, I say. Absolute hogwash.

J. Horgan: How can the member for Shuswap actually applaud the prospect of massive development up and down the west coast of Vancouver Island with no infrastructure? Volunteer firefighters are now moving out of the community because the forest jobs are gone. They're moving out of the community.

There's no forest protection. There's no sewage protection. We're going to be burning greenhouse gases driving back and forth, back and forth.

J. Horgan: I often enjoy sparring with the member for Shuswap, and I'm just delighted that he's been able to join us here while my family is watching because we do exchange discussions over the dinner hour about how engaging and droll he sometimes can be.

In any event, I'd like to get back to the substance of this bill. I want to take the opportunity, because the Minister of Labour has a small part to play in this as well, and I'm glad I caught her attention on this issue. Some months ago an announcement was made by the head of the public service that the government was looking for some 300,000 square feet of office space that was going to be located in downtown Victoria. We're going to put more offices in downtown Victoria.

Well, local representatives of local government in my communities, in Langford and Metchosin and Colwood and Highlands, sent a letter off to the government saying: "Why wouldn't you put office space where people live? Why wouldn't you try and reduce the commute? Why wouldn't you take steps to reduce our impact through transportation on greenhouse gas emissions?"

The response from the Minister of Labour, who I do hold in high regard, was: "We don't know where our employees live, so we can't track and monitor where they're coming from."

Well, I'm a government employee standing in this place, and on my paycheque is my address. I'm fairly confident that with the IT, the information technology, capacity in the province of British Columbia…. I know it's not as simple as pushing a button, but it's pretty darn close. Let's find out where our employees live. We wouldn't be violating any privacy issues. We send paycheques to people every day. Let's find out where they live.

Let's see if we need 300,000 square feet of office space in downtown Victoria. Or would we be better served, would it be a more cooperative, more green approach, to look at the whole region and say: "Let's build some office space in Langford so that we're not commuting back and forth. Let's take our government employees and seat buildings where they live"? That makes sense to me. I know it makes sense to the Minister of Labour, but unfortunately, we don't know where our employees live.

I, for one, live in Langford just down the road. I have to commute here every day, and I do it happily because this is the place where I work. But government employees that live in my community don't have to get on the bus every day or don't have to get into the Colwood crawl and drive into this place. They could work in their communities if a progressive, thoughtful government was truly green and wasn't just bracketing it and branding it as something that they think they are. Maybe if they tried to be green, we would have green policies rather than just greenwash.

Although I know that the Minister of Labour is listening intently, I'm hopeful that she will review the process and review the concept of building more office space in Victoria so more people can commute. Let's build it where people live so that we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

If we're not going to do that, at a minimum, why don't we…? I'm a broken record on this, and I know the member from Oak Bay–Gordon Head has heard this more times than she cares to. I'm going to tell her anyway, because it's my opportunity. As you know, I've got half an hour, plus or minus school visits, to say my views on behalf of the people in my constituency.

What we want to see in Langford, Colwood, Metchosin, Sooke, Highlands, up the Malahat into Shawnigan and beyond, is commuter rail service on Vancouver Island. Why wouldn't we want to get people out of their cars and get them into a train? It's clean. It's green. It's efficient. Upgrading the railbed would have no impact whatsoever on the commute. The train tracks are already there.

In fact, the train runs every day on Vancouver Island, and this will come as a surprise to many people. It leaves Victoria at eight o'clock in the morning and goes north. It goes in the wrong direction. It goes north to Comox nearly empty every day and comes back at night nearly empty every day, rather than switching the service around and bringing commuters into the city in the morning, getting them out of their cars and demonstrating a true commitment to green technologies.

We don't get that. We get brackets on bills: the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act. A lot of branding, a lot of talk, a lot of bluster, a lot of blow but not a lot of progress on issues that are important to people in my community.

Before I conclude my remarks, I want to thank the minister for bringing this forward. Certainly, we want to at least hear the government talking about progressive policies and hear the government talking about green initiatives, but I implore both the Minister of Community Services and the minister responsible for the public service to genuinely sit down and think about: how do we work in the capital regional district?

We have a regional growth strategy that says we're going to be developing in Langford and in Colwood.

Why wouldn't we take that opportunity and build office space that can be filled by public servants so that they're not in their cars? They can bike. They can walk. They can find other means of transportation. For those who must come to this place, into the downtown core, into the capital region, why not use the train?

I don't think a day goes by since I was elected that someone doesn't come up to me and say: "Keep fighting for that train, Member. Keep fighting for commuter rail on Vancouver Island." It makes sense now more than ever, I would argue, in a time of climate change. My friend from Victoria-Hillside talks about these issues all the time.

Improving transportation in the southern part of Vancouver Island is absolutely vital to our economy. It's vital to our environment, and it seems to be only lip service from this government. This bill, bracketed as it may be, does very, very little to get us to the objectives that we all want to see here.

There's a group called the Communities for Commuter Rail, and they meet in my area of Langford and also in View Royal. It contains members of local government. The minister will know them — members from the councils in Langford, View Royal, Colwood, the mayor of Sooke participates, and from Victoria and Esquimalt. All councils are represented on this committee. They meet monthly to advance the cause of commuter rail.

Has anyone from the provincial government ever joined us at that table in two years? No. We've made presentations to government. We've advised the Minister of Transportation. Certainly, the Minister of Community Services is aware of this committee. We work diligently every month to try and bring forward initiatives that will advance commuter rail and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the capital region. But the province of British Columbia is not at the table.

The minister, in this legislation and in her remarks, said that she wants to be a leader in developing this consensus. As I take my seat, I invite her to come to the next meeting of the Communities for Commuter Rail. It's on the 21st of May. I'll drive out with her in her Smart car, if she wants to. We might even take the bus, if that's okay with her. Or, if I can get shoes big enough…. She can maybe borrow the Minister of Finance's running shoes, and we can take a hike on the Galloping Goose Trail.

If the minister wants to really get something done in this community, and I know she does, come to our committee meeting. Go to the Minister of Transportation and say: "Let's get that train going now, not sometime in the future. Right now."

D. Thorne: Well, I can't really say that it's a pleasure for me to stand today, but I felt I couldn't let the moment pass without getting up and speaking on behalf of the residents in my community of Coquitlam-Maillardville and for the whole city of Coquitlam, which I know for a fact is reeling under the onslaught of the downloading occurring over the past few years upon the cities and municipalities of our province.

Bill 27, the Local Government (Green Communities)…. My colleague has made me see those brackets like I never have seen them before. He's right. Those brackets are everywhere, in fact, and I'm not going to miss a bracket again in my time in this House, I can assure you. The city of Coquitlam and other municipalities across the province are reeling with the new responsibilities that are being downloaded.

This has been going on for several years now. I think the first bill…. I was still on city council at that time. I think it was Bill 75. I might be wrong on the title, but it was the first bill that basically really made city councils sit up and take notice of what was happening in Victoria around not just the lack of consultation on what was going on but the fact that the downloading was occurring at the same time as their powers were being, perhaps, not necessarily taken away but eaten at around the edges.

So these three things — the lack of consultation, the downloading of the costs and the inability to fight back, to have the power to make the final decisions…. This sort of axis of evil, you might say, coming from Victoria down to the municipalities has gotten to be quite a concern for the communities.

I've noticed over the last few days that the members on the other side of the House keep…. When we speak or when we make a comment on this side of the House, even to articles in my local paper made by members from the other side of the House, the word "disingenuous" has come up again and again. I hadn't heard that before in this House. So I would like to use that word myself today, because I feel this is another in a long line of bills that kind of fit very well under that description.

When you talk about the province giving local governments the discretion to reduce or waive DCCs for developments, all kinds of developments — developments designed for dense housing, for affordable housing, those with low environmental impacts and all of those kinds of new words, the sustainability words that we're all getting used to using, the green words, if you would, the bracketed green words…. I mean, it's wonderful when you read them. If you didn't look behind the words, you would think: "Well, this is great. This is very nice."

But if you look behind the words, the financial burden that this has put onto the cities and the municipalities — or could put on if they choose to exercise their discretion — is a huge financial burden. The municipalities and cities are the least able to afford this kind of requirement.

So to say that we're giving the province, that we're going to give the government the discretion to reduce or waive charges for any kind of development…. I think that's rather disingenuous, if I'm pronouncing that properly. It's not a word that, I have to say, I ever used in public before today. It's a word that I actually haven't heard in this House until the past few days. But I feel that that fits very well under there.

My understanding, as a city councillor for many, many years, is that we always had that ability. If we wanted to waive DCCs, that was up to us. We could do that. So to suddenly be coming out and being, you

know, kind to the municipalities, giving them the right to do this…. Really, what they're giving the municipalities the right to do is pay for all of this. The only way that municipalities get their funding is through taxes and charges, and DCCs and other development types of charges exist to provide funding for necessary infrastructure that must always be built to support new development.

New development costs cities money. There's no doubt about it. We did study after study to ensure that, because developers always say: "Well, this will be great for the city." Well, generally speaking, it's not great for the city financially. It doesn't pay for itself. You have to charge DCCs and other charges to developers in order to have water and sewer hookups, parks, schools, roads, intersections and all the inspections that have to be done when development is being done.

Discretion to waive those charges…. All it means is that if you're going to put those services in — and by law, you have to; there certainly will be no new development if services aren't put in — you have to probably raise taxes in order to balance your budget.

So that's terrific. That's where that word "disingenuous" comes from. That's why I think it fits there. The provincial government can then wipe its hands of any mess that occurs in the community. Their taxes are being raised by the city councillors. The province has nothing to do with it. The province is behind it, though. Does that not fit under the meaning of that word?

On the one hand the province is encouraging local governments to have density and environmentally friendly developments, but there's no help, no support to help accomplish any of those worthy goals. There's nobody here that isn't in favour of environmentally friendly developments. I'm sure there isn't a member on either side of the House that would stand up today and say: "I am opposed to environmentally friendly developments."

Density. That's another one of those green words. Aren't we all in favour of density? I can tell you that city council of Coquitlam is in favour of all those things. Their problem is that they just don't know where they're going to get the money to accomplish all those things and provide all the old, traditional, expected services.

Libraries. Don't we all expect libraries and fire halls? You know, roads are a given. But what about libraries and parks? They're not necessarily a given, are they? In the city of Coquitlam we could build out Burke Mountain totally with 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 people over the next ten or 15 years expected in Burke Mountain, the second-largest development in the history of British Columbia. Yes, we have to have roads and intersections and the schools. We know there will be schools, and there'll be water and sewer as well. Most of that is already in.

But libraries, parks…. We don't have to have those things. If we are expected in the cities and municipalities to pay for all these new green developments, then how will they do it without raising taxes? I did want to get up today and raise that point on behalf of other people in the city who can't get up and raise that point.

The other thing I wanted to talk a little bit about was the lack of consultation in general. Over the past few years, it seems to me, there is less and less consultation taking place on behalf of the province of British Columbia in general, but also — and specifically speaking to Bill 27 — with the municipalities.

Several examples. My colleague — I always think of him as my colleague from the Malahat, but I know that isn't his proper title — talked about Bill 30 and the independent power projects as an example. I mentioned Bill 75. There are a few other bills that have come along, which really were a bit of a shock to the cities and municipalities over the past four or five years.

The recommendation that by the year 2012, cities would need to have carbon neutrality — where is the support for that? There's a huge cost to the cities and the school boards in trying to bring up standards so that they will have achieved carbon neutrality. They don't have the ability to access cash and money to fund these things the way the provincial government does. They don't collect taxes to pay the costs of these kinds of programs.

You know, the government calls it the carbon tax. We call it the gas tax, the fuel tax. Where was the consultation with communities around that? That's going to be a huge burden on the community.

Again, when I give it the first read, I look and think that this is an open bill, that this is a transparent bill, that this is moving us in the right direction. But I know that's not true. It's moving us in the opposite direction — away from openness, transparency and more meaningful community consultation at a time when the opposite should be happening.

There are parts of Bill 27 that would certainly be recommended, were this bill to give a commitment to more openness, transparency and consultation before we brought in these kinds of bills and if we were truly trying to move, as my colleague mentioned, in an overall green direction by the government rather than bits and pieces with certain ministries moving along in this direction and certain others pulling them back. It's like the old adage: "Two steps forward and one step back." I feel that this bill is contributing to that movement, or lack of movement, and it really concerns me.

I will conclude my comments there. Thank you for letting me put out what I know are the feelings right now at the city of Coquitlam and in my riding.

S. Fraser: I rise today to speak to Bill 27, the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act, 2008.

It sounds pretty good on the surface. Official community plans and regional growth strategies must contain greenhouse gas reduction targets. Mandatory exemptions to development cost charges are given to small, self-contained residential units, and local governments are given the discretion to waive or reduce DCCs.

Now, the first clue that there's a problem here…. They are sort of weasel words here — "given the discretion." That usually is a key and a cue for downloading — just downloading, offloading responsibility. Again, giving responsibility sounds good, but when there are no resources to go with it, that's just a form of downloading.

So we're looking at requirements under legislation that will make local governments be, in theory, carbon neutral by the year 2012 — again, I think it's a laudable goal — and then giving them the discretion to cut their development cost charges — local governments. It won't be discretionary if under law, local governments must be carbon neutral by 2012. What this means is they will be forced to reduce one of their basic forms of revenue streams to provide vital and essential infrastructure.

If the Liberal government had maybe asked somebody in local government or if any of the members opposite, the government members, who were in local government actually thought back to when they were a councillor, an alderman, a mayor or a regional district director, they'd realize: "Gee, this won't work."

This particular bill was developed like many Liberal bills, most Liberal bills — in total isolation and without any consultation. It's sort of a siloed approach, where it sounds good on its own — more responsibility to local government and the discretion to waive a basic income stream that is essential, which is made much more essential by the pattern of downloading of services and responsibilities onto local governments.

We've seen this over and over again. We've seen the gutting of the manufactured home park act that basically put a huge amount of pressure on local governments to try to fill that vacuum and address homelessness issues that would be created by this government's abandonment of those residents and people living in manufactured home parks. So we've seen a cost associated with that go to local governments — a downloading, if you will.

We've seen costs around everything from septic inspections downloaded onto local governments. We've seen environmental inspections downloaded onto local governments. We've seen changes in laws like the Private Managed Forest Land Act back in 2004, I believe it was, which basically took away the ability of local governments having any say over an industrial activity that could direly affect their community. Local governments have been given the dubious distinction of having to deal with the problems created by these things with absolutely no resources.

Others too — I mean, no consultation around the implications for local governments around, say, the trade agreement with Alberta, TILMA, that was being debated by my colleague earlier today.

The gas tax. I don't know of any community, any mayor or any councillor that was ever consulted about a gas tax, which is punitive when you take into account that it is aimed at some and gives exemptions to some of the worst polluters and industry. Doing what's right, but downloading it onto communities and an abdication of responsibility at the provincial level by this government.

We've seen it with independent power producers, the sellout of our rivers. Again, local governments have to face the problems associated with that and, in some cases, have been removed from the process of having any ability to have a say over those projects, even though they may certainly affect the quality of life in the community but also other river uses that are integral to the community.

We've seen it with aquaculture. This government has again taken away the ability of local governments to have any say over whether an aquaculture initiative is to be brought forward even within their boundaries — and resort community status. I could go on and on and on.

This government has made an art form of downloading problems and challenges onto local governments without any consultation, removing the ability of local governments to even have a say in a lot of initiatives when they are directly affected and are given no resources to deal with that, because local governments can't just invoke taxation. There's nothing allowed under law for mayors and councils to do that.

If mayors and councils and regional districts are made responsible for being carbon neutral by 2012 and the means they're given to do that is the ability to cut their revenue and remove their development cost charges, that will make it more difficult to accomplish many of the basic infrastructure projects and needs that communities require.

Again, how does Bill 27 actually work on the ground? It may come as a surprise to the government members, but there are municipal associations — like on Vancouver Island, I represent Alberni-Qualicum, west coast, Pacific Rim. The mayors and councils from Port Alberni, Qualicum Beach, the regional districts in the area, Tofino, Ucluelet, all of these communities…. They all go to a convention as such, and they do resolutions that reflect the needs and the will of the communities. It's very grass-roots, and it's a very important thing. What they do is try to bring these resolutions forward to the provincial government.

So I'd suggest to government members that they could go to these conventions and maybe listen to what is required and needed from the grass roots, from the community level, and then maybe use that in their decision-making. That would be wisdom — I would call that — but we don't see any wisdom here.

I'm being somewhat cynical in my statements, but these government members and ministers are not listening. They ignore resolutions. They ignore dire warnings from local governments to back off and allow a consultation on things like TILMA, like the gas tax, on run-of-the-river projects — on the whole range of issues that I suggested earlier.

Then there's the Union of B.C. Municipalities. That's a compilation of all the regional associations. They get together with these resolutions, and then they bring forward sort of an umbrella for the whole prov-

In some cases they oppose government, whichever government is in power, and in some cases they will applaud government decisions. What we're seeing, though, is a complete ignoring of the needs of local governments.

I've been a mayor. I was the mayor of Tofino from 1996 to 1999. I know the challenges that go along with running a local government. The challenges since then have quadrupled, have increased geometrically because of this government's ignoring of local government needs.

The provincial government, the B.C. Liberals, listen to those that pay them, and they ignore local governments. Any government that ignores the grass roots, the mayors and councillors and regional district directors of this province will do so at their peril. The problem is that's a political peril. The problem is that damage is done.

If we're seeing communities being forced to reduce DCCs to meet emission targets set arbitrarily by this government without any consultation, that's a problem. Reducing emissions is something that I think we can all agree we need to do. You will hear that from mayors, from councillors and from regional district directors. But how you do it must be in an inclusive way, and that simply hasn't happened.

This is like the gas tax. There has been no consultation. There has been no thinking out of the box from this Liberal government as to what the fallout of these decisions will be to local mayors and councils and ultimately to the people of British Columbia.

I'm a big fan of local governments. Local governments, I think, in many ways represent one of the best forms of democracy. Mayors and councils can't go in and get a quart of milk in less than an hour or two. It takes a long time because the issues are on the ground. The wisdom and advice gained from local officials is invaluable for any government to make an informed decision, but that has been ignored by this government. They have slapped local governments in the face — figuratively, if not literally.

Bill 27 is the siloed approach. The idea, the goal of reducing greenhouse gases or emissions, is certainly laudable. It's the process — how this bill came to be — that is flawed. It is consistent with Liberal policy, mind you. A Liberal government does not listen to local governments. They do not even pay attention to resolutions that come out of government associations or local governments. They sort of foist legislation onto mayors and councils and regional districts without any consultation whatsoever. A recipe for failure, yes. A recipe for disaster, quite probably.

If we're looking at green initiatives — and this is supposed to address environmental concerns — how siloed is that? When you look at government policy that has removed 120,000 hectares so far, since 2003, from the tree farm licences just on Vancouver Island and at the same time brought in an act that allows much lower environmental standards, all at the request of industry friends of this government, and allowed the wholesale liquidation of the forests and the export of that fibre, those trees, to other jurisdictions and took local governments out of the picture with that act….

It was section 21 or 23 — I don't recall now — that specifically removed local government's ability to have any say over those lands if it affected the bottom line of the companies involved, the companies that have contributed greatly to the B.C. Liberal Party. Now, this is a problem.

So you're going to try to reduce emissions? Great. If you wipe out all the green stuff, it's all irrelevant. You can't do these things in isolation. You're going to download the costs of trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to local governments and remove the ability, in some cases, for them to collect development cost charges to do that. It is counterproductive. At the same time you've taken away the ability of local governments to have any say over the removal of the green stuff, if you will — the plant life on this planet, the trees that produce our atmosphere.

You can reduce carbon emissions all you want, but if you simultaneously wipe out all the green stuff for short-term gain of political friends and cronies at the expense of communities, it's all for naught. Although the bill has some merit on the surface, in some ways this bill is a greenwash.

It is pretending that the B.C. Liberals are actually green when they've actually created laws to wipe out the forest base on Vancouver Island, on the coast, and become major shareholders in the companies that are doing that after they created them. That's a big problem. We know that has led to another court case.

The new relationship is at stake. There are many things here that are linked to this green bill, and "green" is in brackets. I wonder if it should have been in quotation marks. It might have been more appropriate.

There are other concerns I have with the bill, and it's the result of the process. A bill brought in, like all bills from the Liberals, is in isolation. It's a siloed approach. So while they're bringing in a bill with no consultation that deals with trade laws with our neighbouring province of Alberta — TILMA — without any consultation, we're seeing that this bill being brought in hasn't even taken into account the potential for conflict with their TILMA bill.

Article 6(1) in TILMA says: "A party may adopt or maintain a measure that is inconsistent with Articles 3, 4 or 5…provided that the party can demonstrate that…(b) the measure is not more restrictive to trade, investment, or labour mobility…."

Bill 27, in how it's administered or attempted to be administered with no resources given by local governments, could be challenged under TILMA, the trade agreement. Now, that's simply bad management. You've got a government that has a left hand and a right hand that have no links. There is no communication from one bill to another, from one ministry to another. That drafting of legislation in isolation and in the vacuum of this government, without any consultation with local governments, is a recipe for disaster, and all British Columbians will suffer for that.

Again, referring to article 6 in TILMA: "Anything innovative that local governments want to do on climate change will be vulnerable to challenge under TILMA." Unlike the Premier's climate change plan, local governments don't have the resources to create a whole secretariat. Local governments are fighting to deal with the massive download that this government has already foisted on them over the last seven years. Local governments won't have the ability and don't have the ability to hire a secretariat or hire experts. They're going to have reduced revenue streams if they cut their development cost charges.

The folly of this legislation, Bill 27, is completely consistent with the folly of just about every bill this government brings in.

In closing, this bill does not complement any other climate change initiative. This bill, I think, should have required government to consult with local governments, to listen to resolutions that come out of municipal associations or the Union of B.C. Municipalities — fundamental involvement of all levels of government in an attempt to address needed environmental changes.

If this government believes they can do things like Bill 27 in isolation, in a vacuum, siloed without any consultation and ignoring the local government officials that have the wisdom from the grass roots, then they are simply failing as a government. It is essential for governments to be inclusive and bring in legislation that can work. They can't do that if they do it in isolation. On that note, I shall end my chat today.

G. Robertson: I rise to echo many of the comments of my colleagues here on the opposition side in our general support for the intentions and aspirations in Bill 27, the Local Government Statutes Amendment Act. However, it is important that we express our real concerns with many of the elements in Bill 27 that have real problems.

I'll start on the positive side with some acknowledgment that it is good to see the directive in this bill that OCPs, official community plans, and regional growth strategies must contain greenhouse gas reduction targets. We need to be reducing our greenhouse gas emissions dramatically across the province, and it's crucial that that happen at a community scale which over two-thirds of emissions are connected to. So it's positive to see that here within the bill.

The general guidelines attributed to that through this bill, as well, are important in that they encourage local government in setting these targets and achieving these goals. Right away as we get into the details of this bill and the directives — specifically on local government without assistance, without support, without resources to help these local governments implement and achieve the targets — we see real challenges with the viability of the bill and its intentions.

We have a real challenge here, as my colleagues have stated, around the downloading that is imposed again on municipal governments by this bill. We have continually raised issues here around the development cost charges. These will only exacerbate the fiscal imbalance that we see for local government. Local government does not have the resources to address the critical need to reduce carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. By pulling away the development cost charges from local governments, it will only make things worse in many situations as local governments are starved out.

Clearly they're unable to escape the costs associated with development and those costs that are typically covered by DCCs. However, with DCCs being exempted or excluded from local government revenue, that means a shortage of funding.

One has to wonder what the purpose is. There's a noble intention in ensuring that development is greener and that there is a provision for smaller, self-contained residential housing units. However, if all of these good intentions conflict with the ability for local government to actually implement and survive on the scrawny budgets that only property taxes and the charges and levies which they are empowered to collect provide, then we're going to have problems down the road here. We're not going to achieve the targets that have been set and that by this bill are being imposed on local governments.

We have a number of other conflicts here. My colleagues have mentioned — and I will add my voice — the concern around TILMA and the challenges that we will undoubtedly see with TILMA and in particular article 6, the legitimate objectives in the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement with Alberta. Again, TILMA has the potential to get in the way of actions taken by local governments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

It is conceivable that a company from Alberta could come into B.C. and claim that a municipality and its rules are restrictive to trade or investment and are designed to favour local companies, specifically because they, in doing so, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So we've got a significant conflict arising here between forcing local governments to reduce emissions and the TILMA coming into play, which could torpedo the opportunity for local governments to implement initiatives that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions because they interfere with trade or investment according to the TILMA. Anything innovative, anything creative that municipal governments want to do on climate change is potentially vulnerable to a challenge through the TILMA.

We will, obviously, raise this in our debate specific to TILMA and the bill that is being debated in the House on that agreement. But it surfaces here related to Bill 27, because in Bill 27 we see these targets being mandated. Of course, municipalities will have real challenges with that if they are also being mandated to comply with the TILMA.

My colleagues have also mentioned the lack of consultation as a fundamental breach in terms of Bill 27 coming into practice. Given the significance of Bill 27 and the number of changes, and significant changes,

that Bill 27 makes to a number of different acts, including the Community Charter, the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District Act, the Greater Vancouver Water District Act, the Local Government Act and the Vancouver Charter….

Given that all of those acts are amended by Bill 27, there should be significant consultation done with municipalities about the potential impacts through these acts on their activities and their jurisdictions. We haven't seen this consultation. Many municipalities have raised these concerns.

I will clarify that there was consultation on Bill 27 with the UBCM. However, there have been many local community organizations that have raised concerns and are calling for Bill 27 to be held up — to be hoisted as such — until there is adequate consultation with communities around the province regarding the potential impact of this bill, and I will refer specifically to a number of organizations in my riding and in the city of Vancouver.

Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver voiced their strong concerns and disagreement with the content of Bill 27 and, fundamentally, the lack of consultation with these organizations, focusing their concerns around the downloading of costs onto the community, particularly the potential impact of that when funding is shifted, required to be funnelled into provincial responsibilities like providing transit rather than civic infrastructure and amenities.

These are meaningful concerns, and the opposition, of course, will never shirk our responsibility, our duty, to represent the voices of local governments that aren't being heard in this chamber. Again, that consultation was not done adequately enough with respect to Bill 27. That is a big concern that we're going to raise here.

The other big issue that I'll raise now in terms of conflicts here and problems that Bill 27 creates at a municipal level is that the targets that are being imposed and the mechanisms within this bill that are in place to create so-called green communities have no support for retrofitting and investment in new and cleaner infrastructure.

It's one thing to impose the rules. It's entirely another thing when there's nothing not only within the act itself to support communities in achieving the targets and complying by those rules, but beyond that, there is very little in the budget this year or the service plans for the ensuing years that support communities in the dramatic investment that has to happen to retrofit the municipalities and all of their infrastructures to be carbon-neutral or, beyond that, to be carbon-smart.

These kinds of initiatives require real money, and they require the support from the provincial government. Municipalities do not have the financial resources to embark on the kind of reconstruction and retrofitting that's critical for us to achieve the emissions targets and to reduce our footprint.

This support has to come in part from the provincial government. We would like to see it, as well, from the federal government, but this provincial government in particular — in setting these big targets, in putting forward legislation that requires municipalities to achieve these targets — has to show up with resources, with the money and with programs that will enable communities to achieve these targets and to reduce their footprints.

It's a great intention to make every community around the province green. It's quite another thing to claim that on paper, to impose it in law, but to fail to support it with meaningful resources.

With that, I look forward to third reading of this bill and to understanding in detail how this government sees it possible for local governments to achieve these targets without those supports and with the conflicts that the opposition has raised here in this act that, clearly, make it more difficult for our municipalities to achieve the targets.

C. Puchmayr: I rise, certainly, with some caution on this bill, Bill 27. Again, it's one of these bills that comes out with — if I can use the term — airy-fairy words in it. It's the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act. Whenever I hear those types of flowery words with "green" after them, I have some concern.

Since I've been here in this grand chamber, grand hall, for almost exactly three years now, I've learned about how bills are named by this government. The name normally represents the opposite of what is in the context of the bill or completely the opposite of the direction they're going. I'll just give you a couple of quick examples.

There was one in 2003 called the B.C. Hydro Public Power Legacy and Heritage Contract Act. You read that, and you think that that is some great news. We're talking about legacy, and we're talking about heritage. We've now through legislation prevented B.C. Hydro from even producing its own power source, and we've opened the door for multinationals and foreign companies to come in and build independent power sources that are going to cost British Columbia very, very significant amounts of money because they have guaranteed contracts at rates far, far greater than what we were supplying and developing power for through our own power system.

Another one is the health care protection act. Bill 29 had similar types of words in it, and Bill 29 literally gutted the retention ability for health care workers in British Columbia, put thousands of health care workers out of work, tore up contracts, reduced their incomes and just had absolutely devastating effects.

That bill also was a bill that was challenged at the Supreme Court of Canada and was ruled to be an illegal act. Government had to reverse on it, and the cost of doing so was millions of dollars.

Deputy Speaker: Member, the bill under debate is Bill 27, the local government act.

C. Puchmayr: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will talk about the bill itself. I was just giving a parallel, but I respect your ruling.

Bill 27, the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act, 2008. It sounds good, just like a lot of other bills have sounded good.

Now, when we look at the choice between whether the municipalities can or cannot charge DCCs right now…. DCC, the true development cost charge, is a charge for new development going on to sites, which is strictly so that when a new development comes into a community, that development will pay for roads, for sidewalks, for sewer and for sewer hookups.

When you're going into an area where you have new lands that are being developed, a DCC can charge for infrastructures. Some of those infrastructures are schools. Some of that infrastructure is for libraries and certainly for roads and other amenities that are required.

If you pass legislation which says that they may or may not…. The thing is, if you don't charge DCCs into new development areas, who will pay for that cost? That's the question one needs to ask. Who will pay for that? There are two sources of revenue that are true sources, that are positive sources of revenue — positive meaning that you can adjust it to bring in revenue. One is a DCC, which brings in revenue, and the other one is property taxes.

Granted, municipalities have parks and recreation, where they have skating facilities. They rent lacrosse floors in most communities. They rent soccer pitches. Those actually just offset some of the costs of maintaining them. Certainly, in my community those do not make a profit for the city. They go towards maintaining and keeping some access to those facilities available for the public.

So it isn't that you can build a whole number of arenas in your community and make a lot of money at selling or renting ice time. That's not why it is done. It is done to allow people affordable ice time and venue time in the communities.

Let's say a council gets on and decides that they don't want a developer to pay any DCCs. They can now do that. A council can actually be elected that says, "We're going to allow development into that area," and the developer doesn't have to pay a cent of DCCs. Well, the roads still have to be built. The sidewalks still have to be built. The sewers still have to be hooked up. The sewers still have to go in. The water pipes and infrastructure have to go in. The telephone poles or underground wiring have to go in.

Those are all huge costs to the municipality. In some cases, those development cost charges equate to 10 to 15 percent of revenue for the city so that they can offset the cost of building a new library or building a new pool or upgrading a facility so that it has a greater capacity. Take that away from a municipality, and there's only one place to go — that is, to reach that talon deeper and deeper into that poor taxpayer's pocket and grab from it.

What I'm seeing now in my community, and it's alarming to me, are seniors who tell me that they can't even afford to pay the taxes in the city. It's not just my city; it's not just New Westminster. It's Burnaby. It's Vancouver. It's Langley. It's Abbotsford. It's up in the Interior as well, where seniors have their homes completely paid for. But just in order to pay, on a fixed income…. It's not only seniors. There are some single parents, and there are some families that are struggling, trying to pay a mortgage.

Just focusing on the seniors, some have their homes completely paid for. They're having difficulty in paying that tax bill. There's the water bill, and there's the property tax bill. Just in order to pay that…. Imagine adding another 15 percent on to that. Imagine adding that on to that bill every year, when the tax increases are…. I know our council, when I was on it, tried to keep them as low as possible. We tried to sustain. In New Westminster when I was elected to council, we were the second-highest-taxed municipality in B.C., second to West Vancouver. We brought that down to about 13th, I think, by the time I left council, but we had to bite the bullet.

So now you have it where you're still trying to maintain an affordable tax base, and you allow this type of legislation to go in. You have a council that comes in and decides it's a free-for-all — no DCCs. Where is that going to come from? Out of the pockets of the taxpayer. A lot of times those taxpayers end up selling their homes and moving out or moving to another area. Eventually, they'll be selling those homes, as well, and moving to another area.

So it's not a direction that we should be going in, unless…. There have to be some incredible safeguards in place, and there has to be, certainly, some incredible consultation that goes with that.

I want to talk a little bit about consultation or the lack of consultation. The UBCM has had concerns in the past with this government on the TILMA issue, and some of TILMA is woven through here. I was at that meeting at the UBCM, and it was almost a unanimous vote in opposition to where the government was going with the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement.

It had incredible impacts on municipalities, and it exposed them to a significant liability with respect to a possible action by a company that deems, maybe, that they're not treated fairly. It could cost a municipality a significant amount of money.

So now you have no DCCs in one area, and then you have TILMA in another area. Basically, you've handcuffed communities so that they're not even able to function in the best interests of their constituents. Even by doing so, they could be exposing their constituents to a liability that could create, overnight, an incredible increase on their tax base by virtue of a ruling against the municipality. So that, certainly, is not a way to go when you're dealing with municipalities.

Municipalities. To me they're the grass roots of politics, of government, of school boards. Municipalities — every little community has a regional district or

a municipality. People can read the local paper, or they can go to the local council meetings. They can become active. They see their councillors walking down the street. They can talk to them about issues that concern them. There's a real direct link between the people on the street, the people that live in the neighbourhoods and the city council.

Once you get to this level, you find that you can be away from your constituency for one third of the year — you're over here in Victoria — and then you're rushing back on Fridays to try to deal with constituency issues.

So this is sort of the finger on the pulse. The ear on the rail is the interaction between the grass roots of democracy, which is municipal, civic and the regional district. They have a very good link. They can deal with issues that vary from community to community. They can deal with them in such a way that they can bring an issue to the forefront. They can deal with it. They can work with council on it, or they can work with their local governments on it. They can bring those things to fruition for a better quality of life in that community.

That's what it's all about. It's having a democratically elected council that has an ability to interact with its citizens for the sole purpose of having a better quality of life for your community.

This is at risk, and it troubles me that it's at risk. It troubles me that sometimes there just isn't enough time to go through the details. I spent most of this morning working on my TILMA response, and the bill was pulled this afternoon. We had one responder. I don't believe our lead on it was even completed yet. No, he wasn't. And so on to the next bill.

There needs to be debate. There needs to be discussion, especially when legislation comes in that could impact the very grass roots of our community — the people at home, the people that live in our community, the people whose children go to school in our community, the people whose children play organized sports in our community and the families that we're trying to ensure have a quality of life that's affordable so that they can live in the community and play in the community and, hopefully, work in the community as well.

It concerns me when legislation comes in that sounds green. I look at the results, and sometimes I worry that the only green will be the greenbacks that come out of people's pockets as they're taxed so that a developer can make a profit without paying the full shot of his development into an area that needs DCC application.

People say that they quit making land a long time ago, but they never quit making people. Well, that's true in a sense, but when you develop land, when you take a piece of land that…. You have an acre of land and you decide: "Well, I'm going to put 16 housing units on there." Well, you've actually created 16 housing units from that one piece of land. When you have a piece of land and you go up 24 storeys, you've actually created that floor space 24 times, up to the clouds in some cases.

So there is a way of developing, and there is a way of responsibly developing, but that developer that builds those developments needs to pay their fair share. They certainly in the last little while when the real estate market took off…. I know when I was on council, developers used to always come and talk about how they were paying too much for development cost charges and how they were paying for schools and they didn't feel they should. You know, they're always trying to find a way of maximizing their profit.

Well, when those developments quadrupled in value and they still paid the same fees to the city to build them and they still paid the same DCCs, they didn't come running back with a bucket full of money to say: "We feel that we owe you this. Here you go." So this type of legislation needs to get some real honest scrutiny, and we need to look at the long-term impacts of this on our community.

We talk about the carbon tax. It's not a carbon tax as far as I'm concerned. It's just another tax grab. Let me give you an example, and this is something that the municipalities are grappling with right now. The municipalities are concerned because they've gone…. I remember the morning of the throne speech when I was coming to Victoria, the price of fuel was $1.10 a litre. That was the morning of the throne speech. It jumped about ten cents a litre immediately, because the government sent the message to the oil companies: "Hey, we agree there should be a higher price for fuel." So they sent a message to the oil companies.

This morning it was $1.35 a litre. So that's a 24 percent increase. The price of a litre of fuel has gone up 24 percent before even a penny of this so-called carbon tax has kicked in. Not even a penny has kicked in, and already there has been a 24 percent increase before the first 2.4-cent increase is even there.

I'm thinking: well, we have to…. Certainly, people are becoming more efficient, and people are becoming conscious of what they're driving, and those are good things. But you look at Shell Oil. Last year their profit — after taxes, after paying for research, after drilling, after everything — was $70 million a day. That's after everything. That's after tax, after everything — a profit of $70 million a day.

Why don't we put a carbon tax on them? The last budget actually gave them a cut. They gave them exemptions, and they gave them moneys back. Why aren't they paying from the profits that they're making? Why aren't they paying the carbon tax?

Why is the municipality…? They have to provide fire trucks. They have to provide police services. In my municipality we have our own police force, we have our city works yard, and we even have our own towing service. We contracted in our towing service. It was a great initiative, very well received, and it's actually making a little bit of money for the city as well. But again, now this so-called green tax is just going to be another tax grab from people who can least afford it.

C. Puchmayr: The member for Prince George–Omineca was heckling from the corner there. I hope he stands up and talks about how he supports that in his community.

I've spoken to people in his community that have to drive many, many miles, and sometimes in weather that is inclement at its best in the middle of winter. Some of them drive over an hour a day just to take their children to a bus stop so their children can be taken to school. Talk to them about how great this carbon tax is and the signal that it sent to the oil companies that, in my opinion, have literally been gouging the people of British Columbia. I hope the member….

C. Puchmayr: You know, this is a House for debate. While I'm debating, I know there's a bit of chatter in the corner there from the member for Prince George–Omineca. I challenge him to stand up and make his comments here in front of the cameras to the people that are watching at home and defend that tax, defend the cuts to the oil companies and defend the cuts to the banks. They really need them. When we have the highest child poverty rate in Canada again, here's a member that's defending tax cuts to the banks and oil companies and doing it through heckling rather than getting up in this noble debate and speaking in this debate.

You know, that's where this government has been on so much of the legislation. So many of the bills that we have introduced have gone without any member on the other side rising and defending some of these atrocious pieces of legislation that they're bringing forward — atrocious, draconian. Some of them, I challenge, will end up in court again. There's a piece of legislation where homeless people can't vote. I challenge you. I predict that that will end up in the Supreme Court of Canada.

C. Puchmayr: I will, absolutely, Madam Speaker. This will even affect the homeless people in my community — this bill, Bill 27, the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act — because there are people that are homeless in my community, and there are service providers in my community that also have to pay taxes.

The service providers. We have some incredible service providers in my community that deal with homelessness and mental illness, and they've done such an incredible job. I worry now that we're going to lose some of them when something like a DCC comes in place or is waived and when all the rest of the buildings in New Westminster have to pick up the tax burden for the fact that that DCC isn't in effect anymore.

I worry about all the good work of all of the non-profits that are still paying rent, that are renting places that have triple-net arrangements where when the taxes go up, their rents go up. So this will have an effect on all of those components in my community.

This talks about regional planning. It talks about regional growth strategies that need to be green. You know, I'm proud to come from a community, a city, that certainly took some leadership on regional planning, on strategic growth planning. New Westminster has always been a leader in that, and there are results from it.

One of the results is that at one time — and I would venture that it's still accurate today — we had the second-highest transit ridership. We have two SkyTrain lines that intersect into New Westminster. We have the Millennium line, which was built in the '90s by the NDP. Certainly, it received criticism from the other side and from some of the political pundits.

But you know what? For what it cost to build that and the growth that it's actually creating outside of the green belt, outside of the farmland, outside of the wetlands…. The growth in the northeast sector of Burnaby is extremely positive. It shows that someone had vision and foresight.

Why did they have that vision? Glen Clark didn't have a crystal ball and say: "Let's build it there." What Glen Clark did or what that government did was looked at the livable region strategic plan. They looked at the 2021 growth strategies plan, the plan that won a United Nations award for development of growth in British Columbia in the Lower Mainland area, an area that is very challenging because it has some of the best farmland in the world.

It's challenging because it has a potential of a very dangerous airshed from the Cascadia airshed. It has a border on one side, mountains on the north, and it has an ocean on the west. So they engaged in a plan that preserved green space, preserved wetlands and preserved the farmlands. It concentrated the growth in the area.

Well, New Westminster was in a growth area. They came to New Westminster, and they said: "Here's the growth that you need to have in your city. You need to have some growth in order to fulfil this plan."

We endorsed it. New Westminster endorsed it. It cost the city to have growth, because growth does not pay for itself. If it did, New York and Los Angeles would never have been at risk of total collapse, as they have been in the past, because of the massive cost to running those cities and the infrastructures.

New Westminster engaged in that. We looked at the plan. The provincial government looked at the plan and the strategic transportation policy. The West Coast Express was part of that policy as well. They built HOV lanes over the Port Mann. They did the connector from the Alex Fraser Bridge. They built the Barnett HOV system as well. That was because of growth.

This talks about strategic growth, but you know where the strategic growth is now? The strategic growth now exists with this new, appointed transportation board, which used to be TransLink. Their first 30-year plan is one that they can develop without any consultation, behind closed doors — secret meetings. So that's where your growth is now.

Again, I look at this, and I go: yeah, this sounds really good, but where are the regional growth strategies? They haven't come out yet. The regional growth strategies are going to come out. If this new and improved TransLink, with interests in business and land development…. How do we know it's not out in Chilliwack? I hear there's a lot of growth potential in Chilliwack lately. How do we know that that's not the strategic plan now?

The city of New Westminster took all that growth, which is painful and hard. It means our library is full, our pools are full. Our recreation facilities are at pressure. We had to take the ice out of one of the arenas. We had a year-round arena. The Canucks used to practise there in August. We had to take the ice out so that we could accommodate the fine young lacrosse players in New Westminster.

All this growth — we paid for it. We paid the price for this growth, and now some unelected group is going to tell us where the growth is.

This document talks about growth and talks about strategic plans. Well, we don't have a strategic plan anymore. We have a plan that's being developed behind closed doors with no input from cyclists, no input from labour and no input from transit users. I caution everybody when legislation such as this comes forward. The real proof is in the pudding, and we need to ensure that this thing gets the proper debate and then goes to committee stage.

I'm sure we can take it apart in committee stage, make the minister that introduced it accountable for what's in it and ask the important questions. Let's make it so that we have something that truly works, not something that is just going to, as I said earlier, put the government's talons deeper into the taxpayer's pocket.

L. Krog: I'm going to try to stay on course in my remarks, but I couldn't help noting today that there was an interesting piece in the Times Colonist. The headline reads: "Loss of Bees Across B.C. Worse Than Expected." A small article, perhaps inconsequential to many people. But there's a signal there. It's why a notoriously pro-business, right-wing government, a party that has stood on the side of the power of money throughout its political history, is in fact putting forward the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act. It's one of the reasons.

It's because the world has woken up. Something as basic to reproduction in agriculture as the common, ordinary bee is in danger of disappearing. Whoever would have thought we'd live to a time when something so fundamental to the existence of agriculture, of flora, would be an endangered species, if you will? That's why we're debating this bill. That's why the government is bringing it forward.

Frankly, no government in 2008 anywhere on the planet should be doing anything other than whatever it possibly can to ensure that we reduce what has become known in the language as our carbon footprint, that we do something to stop the continued destruction of the planet which sustains life. That's why we're here.

But to take it from the high and down to the low, if you will, the problem with this bill is not that it isn't well intentioned, not that it isn't an approach that has to be considered. It's not that. It is that the provincial government is asking local government to pick up more of a burden than local government, with its minimal taxation base, is in a position to carry. That's the problem.

In the '90s when debt and deficit were on the lips of every Canadian, when the western world was going through this great revision where we decided that social programs weren't affordable, that governments and nations were in danger of collapsing because of rising debts and all those things, the federal government downloaded onto British Columbia, as it did to every other province in Canada, responsibilities that provincial governments could barely afford to carry.

In the '90s — and I was there — the NDP stepped up to the plate in this province. Instead of cutting health care spending and cutting education spending, it stepped up to the plate and tried to maintain, as best it could, those programs — and took a lot of flak for doing it. Some may say cynically that it would have been better for them to simply pass on those reductions in services that are crucial to a civilized society — pass them on, blame it on the federal Liberals, sit back and wait for the federal Liberals to pay the price.

Instead, we end up at the end of the decade of the '90s with the Liberals happily in power, beating the Tories election after election, and the heroes for having beaten the deficit. But here in British Columbia the price was paid, as it was by every provincial government across the country.

Under the guise of doing the right thing…. It is the right thing. Everyone should be thinking about strategies to create greener communities and a greener lifestyle, to discourage rampant growth, to encourage small-unit housing — all of those good things. Essentially, the provincial government today, with this statute, is doing exactly the same thing, except now we're shifting it down onto the municipal level of government.

We're asking that local governments have to exempt development cost charges for small — smaller than 29 square metres — self-contained residential housing units. On one level, I think that might be a good idea, because it's pretty clear that nobody but the non-profit sector would ever be building those kinds of housing units anyway, although in the great city of Vancouver, maybe that's changing with the rising cost.

It then talks about giving discretion to waive DCCs for green developments for "for-profit affordable rental housing" and "subdivision of small lots…designed to result in low greenhouse gas emissions," etc. But we know that municipal governments face tremendous cost pressures today. Their tax base is extremely limited, notwithstanding the great hoopla that surrounds every dollar that gets dropped in the municipal government's lap by a federal or provincial cabinet minister.

My goodness, the press release and the overtime that goes into the hoopla that surrounds that is just amazing. You bring a couple million bucks into the communities nowadays, you'd think the waters had parted and the Israelites had escaped through from Egypt. But it doesn't begin to meet the burdens that we expect municipal governments to carry.

On one level, there's no question that the opposition is going to support this bill. But what I'm asking the government to do is step back for a moment and ask itself realistically: can it continue to expect municipal governments to take on a greater and greater share of the cost of doing things that were formerly always expected and seen to be part of the responsibilities of the federal and provincial levels of government?

As some of the listeners may not appreciate, there are only two levels of government recognized by the constitution in this country, and those are the federal and provincial governments. Their responsibilities and their powers are outlined very clearly. That's what constitutional law is all about.

If the provincial governments didn't create municipal governments, they wouldn't exist. They have no inherent status. They have no inherent right to exist. So they are creatures only of the provincial government. Municipal government should not be seen to be a further dumping ground, if you will, for provincial governments to off-load their responsibilities to meet the challenges that each and every one of us face.

I know there was a certain belief amongst some people in British Columbia that we cannot face the challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, of showing leadership in the reduction of greenhouse gases, because what does it matter? China requires such an enormous amount of energy that what we do here will be absolutely infinitesimal. If you eliminated Canada as a nation, if you took us off the face of the planet tomorrow, we couldn't begin to have any significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions, planetwide.

We know that. Notwithstanding that cynicism amongst some, surely we have a duty here. In one of the wealthiest parts of the world, still enjoying a relatively clean environment and still some pristine wilderness, surely we have a responsibility to show leadership.

In showing that leadership, I would strongly suggest to the government benches that they consider showing the leadership and figuring out a better formula to ensure that the municipal level of government in this province gets the support it needs in order to meet these kinds of responsibilities. The provincial government is in a position to do it. It can afford to do it.

It's pretty hard for us to turn to the emerging powers of India and China — many of whose people live in conditions that British Columbians would regard as extreme poverty — and say to them: "You go do the right thing." They can't afford to provide proper housing, health care and education for all of their people. We can. We don't always, but we can.

I say to the provincial government, around this bill, that if you're going to ask local government to do the right thing — and there's nothing wrong with that; it's a good thing; we should show leadership at every level of government — then please, as you're doing it, step back and ensure that the municipal government has the tools, the power and the ability to raise funds necessary to meet the new obligations you thrust upon it.

If you don't, then where I started when I talked about the bees and the symbolism involved in that…. It becomes nothing but meaningless political rhetoric. In 2008 that just doesn't cut it anymore. You've got to put your money where your mouth is. I'm not convinced the provincial government is doing that.

They appear, on the face of it, to be moving in the right direction, but we're not going to be moving in the right direction if you don't give them the ability to do it. You will simply ensure that the municipal government will have to cut services that it is by law required to deliver. It is the level of government that is expected to deliver those services.

No municipal government asked the province to lay the sewer lines, to pave municipal streets, all of those sorts of things. If we're going to do it, I say to the government: "It's all well and good to pass the legislation, but open up your chequebook at the same time."

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no more speakers, the Minister of Community Services concludes debate.

Hon. I. Chong: Firstly, I do want to acknowledge all the comments made by members opposite. I always appreciate hearing their points of view. I may not always agree with it, and that's the way things work in this legislative chamber, but I do appreciate the fact that they have offered their comments.

I have to say it's…. The best way to characterize it is that I found their comments somewhat interesting. I wasn't sure where they were headed, whether, in fact, they were truly supporting the bill or generally supporting the bill or will, in fact, support the bill.

I do hope that when we conclude, I will have support for this bill because this just represents another piece of legislation towards combatting our greenhouse gas emissions. This is another tool that we've offered, especially toward our local governments, to help them do that. We've seen time and time again how members opposite have opposed almost every initiative and measure that we've brought forward to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I was very proud to have introduced this bill a number of weeks ago, almost a month ago, on April 15. I'm very proud of the work that was done to put this piece of legislation together, because contrary to comments made by members opposite, there was consultation taken, certainly through the UBCM.

While I can appreciate that it may not have been with every single municipality or regional district, because that undertaking would perhaps take well

over a number of years, I think members know that the UBCM executive are those who are representative of their member municipalities. They are sent there to represent their areas and, in some cases, their municipalities.

I can say, and I can say this absolutely, that since being appointed minister back in June of 2005 — for almost three years now — I have attended every single UBCM executive meeting. I have never missed one. There was an occasion where I almost did, as a result of a family crisis, but I was there nonetheless. I attended every meeting. They know this, and I know they appreciate it. I do want to hear from them. I want to also share with them ideas that governments are looking at and get their viewpoints as to how we can move forward.

They were instrumental in helping us develop the climate action charter, which I'm proud to say 125 local governments out of 188 have now signed onto. There has been some consultation with UBCM through their executive, and they have indicated to me that they are supportive of these changes because they understand — and I can appreciate that the members opposite do not — that this piece of legislation is, in fact, enabling.

If a local government chooses not to take advantage of the tools that we have provided, so be it. But I can't believe that that would be the direction that they take, because so many of them have signed on to the climate action charter. So many have said that they want to take responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dealing with climate change head-on.

They want to be a part of the solution. I do believe that that is where they're headed, and I do believe that at the end of the day, they will work with us and find ways to share their best practices with others. That's what I hope I will be able to put forward to other smaller communities that may not be able to develop those ideas themselves.

I want to just quickly speak to some of the comments that I heard. The one in particular that came up quite often was in regards to DCCs — development cost charges. The DCCs, for the benefit of those who have not served on the municipal or regional district councils and boards, may not be as familiar as to those of us who have. DCCs are charges that local governments have the authority to collect from developers to help pay for the cost of off-site infrastructure that is needed as a result of that new development. Certainly, that is a way to raise dollars, but it is for that particular development.

The legislative amendments here in this bill, Bill 27, mean that local governments can — not that they must, but they can — waive or reduce those charges if they find that a developer comes forward with good ideas in terms of building affordable rental housing, perhaps undertaking small-lot subdivisions and development that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions or building a development that has low environmental impact.

Currently what we are finding — and it may be hard to believe by members opposite — is that there are developers out there who are wanting to put in good developments that have a low environmental impact, who have ways to reduce greenhouse gases and who want to actually build affordable housing. But municipalities and regional districts cannot waive the DCCs on that — contrary to the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville, who has served on council. They cannot do that. There are only certain places or areas where you can waive DCCs.

What are we to do? Well, the local governments said: "We would like the opportunity to do this because it might make sense. If we reduce our environmental impact, if we also find ways to conserve energy and have less impact on infrastructure in our community, maybe — just maybe — we should let that development take place and help that developer by waiving, reducing DCCs."

You know what? The Community Charter doesn't let us do that. The only way we can reduce or waive our DCCs is for non-profit social housing or supportive living housing — nothing else. So we said: "Well, let's put that in." It was an idea that came from the development community and was actually welcomed by UBCM as well.

I think that's really important. If the members are questioning that, I will refer them to section 933(12) in our Local Government Act, which allows local governments to waive a charge for non-profit rental housing, including supportive living housing.

I just provide that for the members. I don't know every section of the Local Government Act, I assure you, but that is the section they may want to look at and see why we moved forward with this particular change to waiving and reducing DCCs, if that were to take place.

I also want to address an issue that I think members take some delight in, and that is regarding the financial resources to municipalities. Contrary to what, again, members opposite are saying, never before have so many financial resources and dollars been made available to local governments.

I have been in this legislative chamber since 1996, and I recall in 1997 when we saw a unilateral — just a complete — breach of the Municipal Act when the government of the day eliminated a local government grant. That's what happened, and if anything, that is what local governments have been complaining about for a number of years, because that is what was done in the 1990s. I'm sorry that members have to hear that, but that is the case.

What we've done is increased municipal unconditional grants to our small communities. We said we would double it over four years. We're in year 3 of the four years, and I can see huge amounts coming back into those small communities, unconditional dollars for them to spend where they want.

In particular, for our small communities which are having difficulty putting in the resources that they need or the infrastructure that they need, we have developed new programs to cost-share. One in particular is the Towns for Tomorrow, small communities with

populations under 5,000 people. There are over 90 of those communities around this province, and they are able to access dollars on a 20-80 cost share — the first time ever.

How did that come about? Guess what. We were speaking to people in our rural remote areas, the small communities. We listened, and they said: "We need something different that works for us." We delivered on that. So there are opportunities for local governments to access dollars to help them combat greenhouse gas emissions, to deal with the carbon footprint in their communities.

Our LocalMotion fund will assist in that area — $40 million over four years. I can tell you that we have many local governments applying for those dollars. They may otherwise have to take on those projects on their own without the benefit of the provincial government assisting them.

I do believe there are funds that have been made available — not to mention, of course, some of the federal dollars that have come in. I acknowledge that those are federal dollars, but we have to work with the federal government to ensure that those dollars come back to the local communities and come back to them in the most efficient and effective way.

We've done that with the gas tax moneys. The $635 million over five years goes right to UBCM as the organization that administers that. We don't have to deal with that and create a level of paperwork. That goes right to UBCM, who then flows those dollars out. That agreement…. Even though it has not yet expired, we've just signed another four-year extension. The same rules apply with, again, as few strings attached as possible in terms of getting that out to the local community.

We have worked with local governments. I am very proud to have been a member of a local council and to have served on a regional district, and I know that many others in this chamber have. I do acknowledge and recognize the importance of being involved in the area association meetings, going to UBCM conventions, listening to what their needs and concerns are. While you can't put everything in place, you certainly will try. And we have done this over the successive number of years that I have been involved in the provincial level of government.

The traffic fine revenue-sharing is just another example where we originally promised 75 percent of that being returned to local governments. Well, surprise, surprise. It made sense to return 100 percent, so guess what we did. We returned 100 percent to those communities who have to pay policing costs — again, as another opportunity for local governments to receive those funds to decide how best to use them for the benefit of their citizens.

I do want to quickly mention…. I don't take delight in sometimes singling out members, but the member for Nanaimo…. I was actually quite surprised to hear some of his comments regarding the dollars that have been coming into Nanaimo. I would have thought that he would have risen to the occasion and sung the praises of the leadership in Nanaimo and of all their work. The mayor and council, the business community, the port authority and the university community have all worked together.

The one telling story about Nanaimo is something we should all actually hold up as an example. I'm sure Mayor Korpan and his council will like to hear this. They actually got together with all those agencies that I spoke of and developed a plan — a plan to move their city forward, a plan for a future. That is why they now have a university of Vancouver Island, why they now have a terminal for their cruise ship, why their airport has been expanded and why their downtown has been revitalized.

I have gone into that town, and I've seen what they have done. My colleague reminds me of the convention centre — a very, very proud building for them to host all these.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention all those, because if anyone were paying attention to these debates, they may have thought that Nanaimo was not receiving a good share of support from this government and also not able to move its town forward. That's not true.

I was disappointed to hear the member for Nanaimo being rather dismissive of the millions upon millions of dollars that have been invested in that community. I know that if they continue on with the kind of leadership they have, they will continue to see those successes for the benefit of their citizens.

While I've found that the debate has been interesting, and I'm sure that we will have opportunities to discuss various sections of this bill through committee stage…. I look forward to that. I have much to provide to the members, and I can tell you that if I were the designated speaker, I could go on and on for two hours about the wonderful things in this bill.

But I know that we have other business to take care of, so with that, I would like to move second reading.

Hon. I. Chong: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 27, Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes 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. C. Hansen: I call second reading on Bill 33, entitled Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2008.

Bill 33 amends a number of statutes. Minor amendments to the Adult Guardianship and Planning Statutes Amendment Act, 2007, will ensure smooth

implementation of the act by providing clarification and flexibility around guardianship, powers of attorney and representation agreements.

Amendments to the Degree Authorization Act will allow private degree-granting institutions operating in British Columbia to grant honorary degrees as a means to publicly acknowledge people for their contributions to society.

Amendments to the Financial Institutions Act will end the mandatory appointments of the chair and vice-chair of Financial Institutions Commission to the Financial Services Tribunal.

Members, could we just keep the chatter down a little. It's hard to hear the Attorney speaking.

Hon. W. Oppal: The chair and vice-chair of the tribunal will now be appointed following a merit-based process administered by the provincial Board Resourcing and Development Office.

Amendments to the Forest Act will strengthen the compliance and enforcement by making it an offence to attempt to export timber or wood residue that is required to be manufactured in the province without first obtaining an exemption from that requirement. Those found to have attempted the illegal export of such materials will be subject to penalties up to $500,000 and/or two years' imprisonment.

Amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act will ensure that commitments made in range stewardship plans are enforceable and will clarify planning and approval requirements for range tenure holders.

This bill also amends the Local Government Bylaw Notice Enforcement Act to outline a clear process for Charter matters to be referred to the Provincial Court.

As well, amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act will provide additional authorities for effective traffic management during the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games and beyond. These amendments provide authority to designate highways and lanes for specialized traffic management purposes, to regulate traffic using these roads and delegate authority to staff to vary conditions governing the use of these roads.

The Passenger Transportation Act will be amended to increase efficiency and reduce costs for licensees operating commercial passenger vehicles under a general authorization passenger transportation licence by eliminating the requirement for each vehicle to have its own unique identifying plate. In addition, licensees wishing to add vehicles to their fleet will no longer be required to apply to the registrar of passenger transportation.

As well, amendments to the Pension Benefits Standards Act will increase the maximum pensionable age, the age at which an individual must begin to receive a pension, from 69 to 71, harmonizing with federal income tax rules. The amendments will also provide for phased retirement benefits, which will allow certain individuals to work and contribute to their pension plan while simultaneously collecting partial pension benefits.

The Public Sector Employers Act is amended to require the implementation of improved executive compensation reporting for senior executive employees across the broader public sector, ensuring that B.C. is in line with evolving best-practices standards. In addition, boards of education will be responsible for setting the terms and conditions of employment for superintendents, including their compensation.

As well, amendments to the Teaching Profession Act will help ensure student safety. The B.C. College of Teachers requested the authority to act on matters of member competence that may manifest outside of a member's role as an employee of a board of education or independent school authority but that may affect the member's ability to carry out their professional duties and responsibilities. In the past the college could only respond to on-the-job incidents. This amendment will provide the college the authority to consider the competence of its members in a more general way.

As well, this bill will amend the Business Paper Reduction Act, and that's repealed because it was made redundant by the Business Corporations Act that was passed in 2002.

Also, the Scholarship Act is repealed to allow more flexibility in providing funding to winners of the Queen Elizabeth II British Columbia centennial scholarship. Recipients will be able to receive their funding in years 1 and 2 of their graduate studies rather than in years 1 and 3 as the act requires. The scholarship program will now be administered by policy consistent with all other provincial government scholarship programs.

L. Krog: For those watching at home, they must find it odd that one could arouse much passion for the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2008, Bill 33. You know, in this business one has to find a little humour and interest where they possibly can.

I can't help but note that the Attorney General in his remarks referred to the repeal of the Business Paper Reduction Act. The explanatory note on the side says that it's self-explanatory, and I would have thought the Business Paper Reduction Act was also somewhat self-evident in the circumstances when you repeal it.

This bill is much like a scene from the Star Wars movie where they all slide down into what's the garbage hold of the starship. This is where every other cabinet minister tosses all the things that they can't see getting past cabinet in a bill on its own. Toss it over to the Attorney General, who then gets the pleasure of piloting through the Legislature a bill that covers as many statutes as one can possibly cram into 24 pages.

Notwithstanding the little bit of humour that I've been able to draw out of this, there are certainly some concerns for the opposition. Everyone who went to

school in British Columbia was taught by a teacher. That's rather self-evident. It strikes me that the provisions that relate to amendments to the Teaching Profession Act are not necessarily going to improve the quality of the teaching profession.

I'm afraid that in some respects they will be seen by the teachers of this province, who are expected year after year to take on an increasing burden in terms of caring for children in our society, and young people…. They may well see it as an attack on them.

Having gone through the public school system in British Columbia, start to finish — although I'm old enough not to have experienced kindergarten, because my school district didn't offer it — with very few exceptions would I have had any complaint about the quality of the teachers, their behaviour, their deportment, their conduct, their professionalism. That even includes a few of them who were, I think by common definition, alcoholics but were superb teachers who provided inspirational guidance to me and to other classmates.

So when I see this kind of amendment, it does give pause for concern as to what exactly the government's driving at here. Is it somehow to expand now the ability to get rid of teachers who may be somewhat troublesome? Is it really necessary? This legislation, on the face of it, may seem to create new possibilities for grounds for dismissal of teachers or discipline of teachers, including behaviours outside the workplace.

One has to ask: why does this not apply to other provincial employees? What's the importance of it? What's the political purpose? What mischief is it designed to remedy?

I've said in this chamber many times that the whole point of legislation, if you're making amendments…. Based on the way the courts interpret it, they see the words as having meaning. They believe that some kind of problem has been discovered, if you will, by the government and has to be remedied. I'm not entirely sure that we have as big a problem as this bill would suggest with the teaching profession in the province of British Columbia.

I'm afraid that it may be seen, as I say, by the teachers themselves as an attack on their profession at a time when one would have hoped, after a strike and after all the difficulties this government has created for itself, that they would have had a more conciliatory approach to the teaching profession, particularly at a time when it is so difficult for teachers to get a permanent position.

I met a teacher at a meeting last Thursday night in town. Excellent teacher. He was one of our son's teachers in high school. Superb teacher. Eight years — still isn't on a permanent contract. Eight years teaching steadily, and he still isn't on a permanent contract.

What's the government saying to him by, it appears, expanding the reasons for which he could be fired or disciplined? Is that the response? I would have thought that a permanent contract might have been a better response to a teacher of his ability and quality.

There are also amendments around the Public Sector Employers Act that appear to download costs and responsibilities to local school boards. As I said in the earlier bill this afternoon, Bill 27, downloading has become a political epidemic.

We now find the provincial government trying to shift off, again, more costs onto school districts who are already facing enormous challenges from a fiscal perspective, who are now having to issue layoff notices and take steps that reduce the quality of cleanliness in schools, that see class sizes changing, that see more and more pressures on teachers and educators and the staff who support them. That is never a good thing.

As much as I don't think that the opposition is going to go to the wall on this bill, there are certainly areas that are worthy of criticism and comment. As they say about many things in life, the devil in this is in the details.

There are a number of changes, some of them around the adult guardianship legislation — which at this point hasn't even been proclaimed — that appear to be appropriate. But I want to assure the Attorney General that we in the opposition will be asking a number of questions to ensure that, in fact, these changes are appropriate and necessary.

There are certainly concerns around the changes to the Forest and Range Practices Act. It is the opposition's duty to ensure that the government is doing the right thing with this kind of legislation.

I know that there are others in the chamber today who have some comments specifically around their critic roles in this. I would like to give them the opportunity to make a few remarks during second reading debate, so I'll take my place.

B. Ralston: Well, I hope I'll do something here to earn the thunderous ovation that I just received for standing up on this bill. I do want to make a couple of brief comments on sections 11 and 12.

There are some amendments to the Financial Institutions Act. Those are probably best pursued at committee stage, but they do basically correct an anomaly in the act, where members of the Financial Institutions Commission also sat as members of the Financial Services Tribunal. So this is legislation that would separate that membership and create a separate appointment process, although I understand that this tribunal sits only about 12 times a year. So it is, indeed, a minor amendment.

The amendments to the Public Sector Employers Act, particularly those at sections 69 and 70 of the bill, are certainly a step forward, although what I've learned in the briefing that was provided to me on this section is that while there will be greater disclosure, it's still somewhat limited. What is proposed — and this is not reflected in the legislation, so I presume it, like many other things that this government does, will be dealt with in regulations — will require public sector

employers to publish the compensation of senior employees, and the act refers to senior employee compensation.

The intention is to publicize, by making documents available for public inspection at the office or on a website, the compensation of the top five employees in the firm — and limited to those salaries which are in excess of $125,000. If one were to take Fraser Health Authority as an example, the intention would be to publish the compensation of the chief executive officer and the four next-highest-ranking members of the executive group, in terms of salary.

Although the executive group at Fraser Health, like many public sector organizations, is bigger than that — many more people involved in what would be described as the executive team — the proposal would limit that disclosure to those top five. It would also exclude physicians who by virtue of their income from the Fraser Health Authority might exceed the guideline of $125,000. They would not be included in that group, because they would not be considered members of the senior executive team.

So the apparent rationale — and I think we'll pursue this further, should this matter get to committee stage — is based on disclosure in the corporate sector. Sometimes that's a useful comparison, but I think there is a different obligation here in the public sector. We'll certainly pursue that at committee stage. It's not entirely clear that some organizations, where there is some ongoing public interest in the operations and, I suppose, the value for money in terms of executive compensation, such as B.C. Ferries and TransLink…. They will not be included in this definition of public sector employers. It's broader, but it does not include those employers, as I understand it. So we will be pursuing that further.

The only additional comment I would make is that there are amendments to the Pension Benefits Standards Act to conform with federal legislation. Those amendments are really not of the type that are easily pursued at second reading, but certainly an appropriate stage at which to consider them would be committee stage. They are significant for those people who are likely to receive those forms of pension benefits. Accordingly, they should be given and will be given some scrutiny if and when this matter comes to committee stage.

My concern, I suppose, is that given the very compressed legislative agenda that this government has embarked upon in this House, the time may not be afforded. However, I am assured that there will be time provided for committee stage of this bill. So that is significant, because it's important. There are those who will be receiving these pension benefits who will want the kind of explanation that will come and can only come through committee stage.

So perhaps this bill might serve as an example of what can be achieved at committee stage in terms of a clarification of a bill and contrast that with the other significant bills which will not receive the same amount of legislative scrutiny despite canvassing important public issues. With that, I would conclude my remarks.

Hon. W. Oppal: I won't drag this out for two hours, as has been suggested by some of my colleagues and the members opposite. I move second reading of Bill 33.

Hon. W. Oppal: I move that Bill 33 be referred to the Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting after today.

Bill 33, Miscellaneous Statutes 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. M. Coell: I move that Bill 34, the University Amendment Act, 2008, now be read a second time.

The legislation will allow us to establish five new universities in British Columbia: the University of the Fraser Valley, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver Island University, Capilano University and the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

We are creating these universities to deliver on our throne speech commitment to expand B.C.'s public university system and to create new opportunities for higher learning in British Columbia.

We're also responding to the Campus 2020 report, which stated: "It's clear that people want university degree programs in all regions of this province." The Campus 2020 report specifically recommended that B.C.'s three remaining university colleges become universities.

Three years ago we replaced Okanagan University College with UBC Okanagan and Okanagan College. We also transformed the University College of the Cariboo into Thompson Rivers University, with a provincial mandate for open learning in B.C. The wisdom of these changes has been proven many times since 2005.

Meanwhile, however, our remaining university colleges have told us that they face challenges in marketing the university college designation outside of the province, as it is an unfamiliar term. Under the amended University Act, this challenge will no longer exist once these institutions become universities.

The act will set out a general mandate for these new universities. The new universities will focus on teaching excellence and will address education and training needs in the regions that they serve.

For the four regional institutions, in addition to degrees, this includes continuing roles in delivering developmental, career and vocational training leading to certificates and diplomas. They will also conduct applied research and scholarly activity that supports their programs. The amendments enable the designa-

tion of these universities and recognize their focus on teaching excellence and regional needs.

Three university colleges, one community college and one provincial institute will become universities by regulation. We are including Capilano College, in keeping with the spirit of the Campus 2020 report, which highlighted British Columbia's desire for more access to university degree programming closer to home. After Kwantlen and UCFV's regions, Capilano serves the next most populous area in B.C. without a public university.

Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design is, in many ways, already a university. It is degree-focused and will continue with its provincial mandate for fine arts and design programs, building on its excellence and tradition in supporting the creative arts.

The amendments will also create a separate senate for these universities based on the Thompson Rivers University governance model as recommended by Campus 2020. The senate will be the chief governance body that sets out academic standards at the university.

The amendments also include a new process for appointment of a chancellor for all universities based on the Thompson Rivers University model. This will replace the former process of electing the university chancellor and is similar to what is in place in most universities in Canada.

Finally, the legislation includes amendments to ensure the smooth transition to university status for these institutions. I look forward to hearing the comments from other members in the Legislature. [Applause.]

R. Fleming: There's some smattering for you, and I didn't get to announce any one of these instant universities.

I'm sad to see…. I was hoping the minister might bring in some balloons this afternoon to celebrate the introduction of this bill, because the legislation was not given to the House until well after the party had started at some of the institutions — three of which were recommended and long identified for becoming universities and for having their name redesignated as regional universities, but two seemingly randomly picked or lobbying efforts underway to be included in this legislation.

As I mentioned, the party was well underway. The announcements had been made. The fanfare and the hoopla had begun. The Premier was there, and the minister got to join him to make those announcements, and it has been interesting ever since to see the reaction amongst those in the advanced education sector to this legislation.

I think more than the interest from the sector in this legislation, the potential repercussions and the potential benefits too — I'm going to speak to both this afternoon — is the fact that the consultation did not occur before this legislation was introduced with those who have a real interest in this, and all British Columbians do.

The presidents of the established universities, for example, were not asked their opinions. There were many institutions that remain community colleges that are wondering what they did to perhaps not be in the good graces of the minister and have the sun shine on them, to get new letterhead and be able to open their doors in September calling themselves a university.

Mind you, they will all be opening their doors in September with less funding. That's the backdrop to the introduction of Bill 34. The backdrop to Bill 34 is that those institutions are all receiving the same 2.6 percent funding cut, as opposed to the three-year service plan, that everyone else is.

The interesting context of this bill is that it's being introduced by my friend and colleague the minister, but it's being introduced only several weeks after he had failed to defend his ministry's service plan from last-minute $60 million cuts — funding that was anticipated by every board of governors, by every administrator, by every interest group that had been allowed to participate in the budgeting process. It came as a complete shock. One-third of the way through the three-year service plan, barely one-third of the way through, just at the beginning of the new fiscal year, money was being cut from the university sector.

I mean, let's not forget that the last time there was a flurry of announcements and the government wanted to boast about something, one of the items they would tout was that they had brought in stable and predictable funding in three-year service plans. Yet here we have 2008, a year that is not going to be remembered as the year the minister "created" five new universities. It's going to be the year, the advanced education sector will remember, that so-called stable and predictable funding for those institutions was broken. Multi-year funding was violated by the government and abrogated.

Those agreements and those memorandums that anticipated funding to those institutions weren't worth the paper they were written on. So it's hard to take this bill entirely seriously because of its content but also, as I've just mentioned in part, because of its context.

Listen. The legislation contains some things that certainly were long anticipated. The remaining university colleges in B.C. were expected. They articulated and argued for a redesignation as regional universities. That was supported by the well-compensated Mr. Geoff Plant and his Campus 2020 report. Those were longstanding areas of interest for Malaspina University College in Nanaimo, Kwantlen and UCFV.

It was felt that it was a change that was needed to fit the evolution of those institutions from the time that the designation "university college" was created in the early 1990s. That designation was created because at the time, it was part of a dynamic and innovative system such as we have in British Columbia and have had for many decades.

At the time it was felt that the university college designation aptly described those community colleges,

which had begun to focus on degree-granting activities and had begun to expand university transfer programs or had substantial enrolments in those departments, had sophisticated enrolment levels, department differentiations.

That was the designation that they sought. It was something that had not happened, but B.C. was used to being unique. B.C. had since the 1960s created a community college system that wasn't entirely understood by the rest of Canada but that came to be much admired. Many provinces hoped to imitate and indeed model themselves, in some cases, on what B.C. had embarked upon.

In the 1960s, thanks to the Macdonald commission, thanks to the demand from hundreds of thousands of British Columbians…. UBC students were at the forefront at the time, and other members of the student movement and people who had been involved in that commission report. They had strongly supported B.C. creating institutions in the many regions of this province, and that's how we got the college system that we have.

It simply wasn't affordable for every British Columbian to move to the big city to study at UBC and try and earn a degree that way. Therefore, B.C. did not produce many degrees annually. Therefore, in terms of the density of the population with degrees, B.C. lagged behind the rest of the provinces. We were underdeveloped very much in that regard.

So the momentum began to bring the ability for students to at least complete their first two years of post-secondary education closer to their communities, and that was how we evolved our system of community colleges. That's not the same as, say, a province like Ontario where "college" for a century had a different meaning, a mostly vocational meaning in that context.

Over those decades, after community colleges were successively constructed in areas that deserved and needed them and embraced those institutions, B.C. quickly gained a reputation for having some of the best-quality education available in communities where British Columbians actually lived. That's something we should be proud of because in most parts of Canada to this day, community colleges do not grant degrees. In British Columbia they do.

One of the more controversial recommendations made by Mr. Plant was to take away that power of community colleges to grant degrees. I think that's a bad recommendation. I will offer the minister this. I think he was absolutely right to dismiss that recommendation out of hand.

University colleges were an attempt in the 1990s, after three decades of building up a first-class college system in British Columbia, to try and acknowledge that there was a differentiation — a club, if you will — emerging of community colleges that had become quite well attached, had sophisticated partnerships with the large universities in B.C. and were granting a greater variety of degrees than most community colleges.

From the early 1990s, when that designation was created, to today, Malaspina, UCFV and other places have certainly marketed themselves to students in B.C. and to other places in North America and the world as places where you can earn a degree. The university college, which was a specific part of B.C.'s lexicon, to a certain degree did penetrate into the understanding of those in advanced education in other parts of Canada. But to be honest and fair, not many parts of the world use the term university college, which is kind of a clunky hybrid term.

I think, on this side of the House, changing the designation from university college to regional university…. There's no problem with that. But what we do have a problem with — and the problem will be compounded by the fact that we don't have time, likely, in the remainder of this session to debate properly — is the fact that with the mandate change, with the increase potentially in responsibilities, we aren't seeing the kind of changes and the sector hasn't had the chance to participate and be invited to envision what kind of governance model it would like.

Certainly, of course — most importantly, perhaps — any discussion around enhanced funding that might go with the designation "regional university" has been completely taken off the table.

So it's hard to take this bill seriously as well, because it is and has clearly been part of a public relations exercise that was underway by the Premier before the legislation was tabled, as I mentioned. It is a PR exercise that is designed to make it appear that instantaneously, the government is creating five new universities at a time when they are in fact cutting funding to all 25 post-secondary institutions in B.C. — colleges, universities and formerly university colleges alike, all 25 of them.

It's been called the magic wand effect. You take a three- or four-decade-old valuable institution and change the name. This isn't a new university, of course. The Malaspina University College will be called Vancouver Island University. The campus will physically be exactly the same. The funding will be the same. It will be reduced by 2.6 percent, just like everybody else next year when they open their doors in September. They have already issued some layoff notices, I understand, to cope with those cuts. There will be fewer programs on offer.

The course calendar of the new Vancouver Island University next year will potentially be thinner than the course calendar this year for Malaspina University College. It kind of takes the shine off the announcement when that is the reality of what's going on behind the scenes.

The same at Kwantlen. There are cuts being pushed through on Kwantlen University College — so $400,000 of cuts that they still don't understand how they will manage. They have not produced a new budget through the board of governors. They had a budget that was balanced, which didn't involve cuts before March 12 — a draft budget. It is now out the window because the ministry changed the anticipated funding after that date.

Malaspina University College, as I mentioned, was $3.6 million shortchanged. There have been rumours of

For University College of the Fraser Valley, $1.8 million of anticipated funding will not be in that budget next year. There are only so many ways you can get to a balanced bottom line as required under the legislation. It's that you offer fewer programs, reduce faculty or a combination of both, maybe pare down the administration, ancillary services and those kinds of things — all the things that add up to what most people would judge as the quality of an institution. It's the combined experiential part of attending a campus — campus services, those kinds of things. Those will have to be reduced at UCFV, and they are being.

It's not yet clear how they will be, because the administrators are scrambling around right now to figure it out themselves. They don't know. They didn't expect this. They've expressed an interest in running a deficit perhaps, because they were told of these cuts only at the very last minute, with less than two weeks' notice before the new fiscal year.

I don't know if the minister has responded to those requests yet, because they have to ask his permission to run deficits. He's put them in that position, and they are arguing that they may be able to manage it over longer than just one fiscal year. To do it all in one year would mean cancelling valuable programs.

We've been talking about that in this Legislature on a number of occasions at community colleges, and those cuts are real in every region of the province.

So that's the backdrop to this public relations exercise — the illusion of creating brand-new public institutions right here in 2008 when, in fact, the entire post-secondary education sector understands 2008 as being the year that the government turned its back on advanced education, the year that the B.C. Liberals advanced and launched a surprise attack on core funding. It's the year that high tuition fees, record student debt in British Columbia and the shift in funding burden from government to students were all done in the name of quality.

It's come full circle. Now students pay substantially more in British Columbia, a few years on in this government's mandate. It's substantially more — 15 percent higher than other Canadians. Just because they're British Columbians, they pay fees of that magnitude. They're paying more, and now they're getting less — less choice, less quality, fewer course selections available in the areas that they want to study. That's the backdrop to this announcement.

The subject at hand — the creation of universities, higher learning institutions in B.C. — is a perfectly serious matter. There are few things that a minister responsible for advanced education could ever do in his or her career, I imagine, than create a new university. Successive ministers and governments did, of course, launch new universities in B.C.

I guess I could go back further, but I will maybe begin with the University of Victoria in 1963 or Simon Fraser in 1968 or UNBC in more recent times. In the early 1990s the University of Northern British Columbia was opened for the first time. Royal Roads in the mid-1990s was a brand-new university in our provincial system.

Those were occasions when there were genuine new institutions that were created from scratch. They represent times in our province's advanced education system history when we were taking quantum leaps to grow the knowledge and the enrolment and the participation of British Columbians in advanced education.

That's what it represented. Those weren't rebranding exercises. They were part of a genuine expansion of B.C.'s advanced education system.

This bill, on the other hand, is a bit of a farce. It takes this very important and serious topic of establishing universities and turns it into political theatre. I have no objections to the principles contained in this bill, and as the opposition's designated speaker, I'd like to talk a little bit about them this afternoon.

This is the province's 150th anniversary, and I know that because the government, courtesy of the ever-suffering taxpayers of B.C., has seen fit to remind me of it every time I turn on my television. One cannot watch a game….

R. Fleming: I'm merely telling members that one can't help but notice. If one wanted to watch a single period of Stanley Cup hockey, they would probably be bombarded over a dozen times with the occasion of B.C.'s 150th anniversary, which is a bit of a misnomer. It's the pre-Confederation anniversary. We celebrate regardless, and it is a significant milestone in our province's history when the union of this Island and the mainland occurred.

There was the University of British Columbia as our first university, and that is a proud and venerable institution. It's really, in many respects, the original core of higher learning in the province. It has produced hundreds of thousands of well-educated graduates, some of the brightest minds in our province, in our nation and indeed the world. The luminaries who have benefited from that institution are legion.

One that springs to mind is the late Dr. Michael Smith, who is of course a Nobel laureate. In typical Canadian fashion perhaps, he dedicated his prize to helping others pursue advanced research.

That was an incredible occasion, the founding of UBC and the history since then. It has evolved into one of the finest universities in the country.

Then, as I mentioned, there was the University of Victoria as our second that has produced, again, an incredible range of graduates — seven Nobel Prize winners just last year who are conducting research there. Hundreds of millions in annual research activity at that institution. It has very definitely matured and grown into an established university.

Simon Fraser, as well, in 1968 — a radical idea at the time, epitomized perhaps in the architecture and in the campus and the early years of that generation, not my generation, that chartered Simon Fraser into what it has become. We can appreciate that. Simon Fraser has gone on to become a world-renowned institution of higher learning.

Again, the University of Northern B.C. was the first new university in the province of B.C. that we had seen in three decades. It was the first time that British Columbians, particularly those in the north, could stay near their homes and pursue a full university education, a graduate or post-doctorate education. Its establishment was so auspicious that even the Queen herself arrived to open the institution in 1994. It's gone on to develop a respected and enviable reputation, and it's made a terrific contribution to northern B.C. and to Prince George.

As I indicated earlier, Royal Roads is a bit of an anomaly. Not to take anything away from the institution, but it has existed as a university in this province for decades as a creature of the federal government, but it became a new and exciting part of the provincial system when the federal Liberal government of the day rushed to close it in the early 1990s. It has carved out its own niche and its own distinct identity and adds considerably to the system.

The point I'm trying to make, with the arrivals and the creation of a coherent system in B.C., is that it has happened organically. It has happened naturally over time in British Columbia. It has served all parts of the province very well — indeed, specifically some regions that were underserved for a time. We have addressed systematically over decades gaps in the system, areas of expertise, focuses and priorities within the system.

I think what is cheap political theatre, as I referred to it before, is to use within the space of a week press conferences and announcements to unveil — seemingly on the surface, anyway — a new departure and a new constellation of and balance between universities and colleges in B.C. in this manner without consultation, without thinking through some of the repercussions. To me it's bizarre, and I hope it does not prove, when we look back on this in a few years, to have been in the name of cheap political theatre — bad public policy.

We don't know what Capilano College, for example — now Capilano University — will do with that designation. As I mentioned, Mr. Geoff Plant strongly recommended — and he picked up on this idea because it was out there for many, many years before — that the university colleges should become regional universities. That's vernacular that's best understood in the world. They had matured into that type of function.

It had worked well at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. The rationale was strong. There was interest there. The work had been done. Those institutions — UCFV, Malaspina and Kwantlen — had done the work, had shown the interest, had evolved as institutions. It was a recommendation that was out there for Mr. Plant to say: "Yeah, you know, in terms of improving and looking forward a couple of decades at B.C.'s advanced education system, that makes sense to get us where we want to be in 2020."

When you look at, for example, a region like the Fraser Valley which has horrendously low degree attainment rates in B.C., the worst in the province…. It always has had; it always has been underserved. The transition rate from high school to post-secondary in that region is the worst in the province or near worst. It makes sense to try and ramp up and grow and expand.

Mind you, I have cautioned that this bill is not about expansion. This is about rebranding. But it makes sense to focus on the Fraser Valley in a big way.

Ironically, actually, Simon Fraser University's Surrey campus had an ambitious expansion program that would contribute to that deficit of post-secondary opportunities in the Fraser Valley. Interestingly, this year they've been snared in the funding cuts, and they are not on track anymore to expand as per the memorandum of understanding that was signed by this government. They are not getting the funding to offer the FTE spaces for that campus. That's part of that backdrop.

The point I was making is that there was a strong rationale in the Fraser Valley and here on the Island at Malaspina University College to evolve and become a different type of polytechnical university institution that would serve these regions well. That did not and does not exist in the case of Capilano.

I heard the minister's very brief remarks as he opened debate on this bill suggesting somehow that now Capilano University serves a distinct region. I thought they were part of Metro Vancouver and the GVRD. Apparently the minister thinks that West Vancouver or Sea to Sky country or whatever region he's talking about has been a real pauper in the university equation. If I heard him right, I think we can say quite safely that that is absolute nonsense.

Mr. Plant says the exact same thing, interestingly enough, and I've got a quote from him. He of course stands behind the element of this bill that allows Kwantlen, UCFV and Malaspina to call themselves regional universities, but he has gone on record saying that he is absolutely opposed to Capilano College calling itself a university. He said: "I don't think it's the right place to create a regional university today. I get it that Cap reaches way up to Pemberton, but the core audience of Cap College is the North Shore of Vancouver, which is within very easy reach of UBC and SFU."

That's a good point. It is within very easy reach of SFU and UBC. And you know what? Just as Fraser Valley students are horrendously under-represented in the post-secondary education system today, the very opposite is the case for those who call the North Shore home. They are overrepresented in the post-secondary education system today.

I mentioned earlier that Kwantlen, UCFV and Malaspina had to work hard and labour to make their case for years to this ministry and this minister's predecessors and him, again, that they wished to be called

regional universities and have different powers afforded to them under the University Act.

They had to work for that. They made their case, they grew their institutions, and they offered unique degree programs that weren't offered elsewhere. They offered more and more of them, which offered students a considerable choice, to grow their enrolment.

My understanding is that today there are only four degrees offered entirely at Capilano College, and three of them are in the field of tourism management — which is great, but that's very typical of degree programs offered by a number of other community colleges.

So the question is very valid: why Capilano College? Students from the North Shore aren't in any way under-represented in advanced education. In fact, they're overrepresented. Why not Langara College? Why not Douglas College? They offer more degree programs than the four that Capilano does — significantly more — and they were given no such consideration.

So what was it? Did Capilano College run a really good campaign the last 12 months while the run-up to Campus 2020 was going on? Were they really loud in saying "me too" with UCFV and Kwantlen and Malaspina? Is that good enough to become a university? Is that how we make public policy now? They ran some great bumper stickers on some TransLink transit buses?

We've seen the ads — "Make it Cap U" or whatever it was. I presume it was tuition fees and tax dollars that paid for that advertising campaign. That's interesting whenever you see tax dollars used to lobby government for changes to legislation. That's always interesting that we pay for that kind of thing. It's problematic in my view, but that is the background to what we're talking about.

Why not closer to the minister's home? Why not Camosun College? They offer significantly more degrees than Cap College does. They offer more than four designations. He's entrusted them with responsibilities around nursing training and very sophisticated higher education programs that are offered there. But they didn't get any such consideration. What about Cranbrook?

R. Fleming: What about — thanks for joining us, Minister — Cranbrook? Their College of the Rockies…. They might have been interested in becoming a university. I don't know.

I don't think so. Some of the community colleges are very proud of the designation they have and have had for many decades, and they're proud of the excellence that community colleges represent.

They didn't become universities under this legislation. Did they not buy ads on the transit buses in Vancouver to promote their case and did not get due consideration from the minister? I mean, while the going was good, while five were done in a week — that seemed to be the time the iron was hot.

R. Fleming: The minister is heckling me. Presumably he thinks we should call every college and every institution in B.C. a university and that that would be a good idea. That would make sense to the world.

You know, one of the comments he made in the media to justify it was: "Well, you know, Boston has 50 universities." Well, actually, it has a very few, but he's right. It has 50 colleges, high-quality colleges. We can all think of some of the names in the Massachusetts area that go under that designation and are very expensive, elite private institutions that continue to call themselves colleges.

So that wasn't a very good rationale as to why he created Capilano University to the exclusion, presumably — because they haven't done it in this bill — of College of the Rockies, Northern Lights College, Camosun College, North Island College, Selkirk College. Those institutions were presumably not given the opportunity to call themselves universities and to have the Premier and the tour bus and the balloons come up and announce a brand-new letterhead and that they were going to change their names.

It's just very curious. What did Capilano have? They didn't have the degree sophistication. They only had four degree programs. I guess they had the campaign that they ran with taxpayer dollars on the airwaves and on the transit system in Vancouver. Maybe that was a point in their favour. I know that there's a family member of the Premier that is in senior administration at Capilano, but I have a hard time believing there would even be conversations about legislation between siblings in government and an institution.

Deputy Speaker: Member. Member, please move on to a different line of argument.

R. Fleming: I'm just about to conclude on this element of Capilano College, but I'm uncertain as to why that would be considered out of order during second reading, Madam Speaker. I'm commenting on one of the five institutions that is going to be included under these amendments in the University Act.

You know, what's interesting at Capilano College…. Many of the students, no doubt, were supportive of the name change there. What's interesting is that they will come back to school, most of them — because summer is generally a slower time with lower levels of activity on campus — in September with the brand new logo on the school, and they will try and enrol in courses and programs that are no longer being offered.

Why? Because with all the music and all the confetti and all the celebration going on at Capilano University and the new name, there was another story going on, and that was that serious core funding was being withdrawn from that institution. Whether the day before called Cap College or the day after called

Capilano University, the same board of governors is going to have to wrestle with the reality that they have less funding next year than they were anticipating and were promised and was committed to them in the three-year service plan.

They are going to have to decide what combination of faculty layoffs that involves, what combination of program cuts, course cancellations, campus service cuts and the like. They're going to come back to Capilano College, and they're going to say: "We signed on for this? We're called Capilano University now, and the English course I wanted to take I can't get or the specialized program I wanted to do in business isn't available. Why is that? Because while we were celebrating last year, core funding was withdrawn to that institution?" That's very interesting. That's what's going to happen in September when students not only come back to Capilano but come back to schools across B.C.

There is some insidious stuff in this bill. Government has signalled its intention to use the guillotine to push this through no matter what. There seems to be no concern that there be adequate time to debate this at committee stage, but there are a lot of heads being scratched. There are a lot of surprised people out there who are wondering, and haven't been given an answer, why chancellors at universities and at the special purpose universities will be appointed by government.

Now, one of the oldest academic traditions in B.C. and in Canada and many parts of the world is that the campus community — students, faculty, administrators, employee groups — gets to participate in the selection of the chancellor. The government has never before had a problem with this to my knowledge. They've had a lot of problems with different things in the advanced education sector, and they've changed them.

They doubled tuition fees. They eliminated student grants. They hacked and slashed through all the equity and accessibility initiatives of the previous government when they first came into power with a vengeance, but they never voiced a concern that democracy on campus was a problem — in fact, quite the opposite.

The rationale, you'll recall, Madam Speaker, for doubling tuition fees in three short years was because they wanted to "increase the autonomy of university institutions to govern their own affairs." They wanted to give them the ability to gouge students for more of their revenue, stand on their own two feet more, get away from government, offer private scholarships as a way to provide student aid, not student grants for low-income students. They were all in favour of that in the name of autonomy.

Now this opportunity here in 2008 with this bill…. They are apparently harbouring something that they've always disliked, which is elected chancellors. I can't figure out why. As I said, it's a time-honoured tradition in universities for faculty and for employee groups, students and student alumni to be able to play a role in the selection of chancellors, and it's being taken away.

It's not just that it's being deprived to the new special-purpose teaching universities, the new regional universities. It's being done to the oldest institution in B.C., the University of British Columbia. There has been no explanation given to that campus and the members of that campus community as to why, retroactively, UBC is going to lose democratically selected chancellors.

This is going to become — what? — a plum patronage position of government now? We don't trust the universities that we said should have a high degree of autonomy to run their own affairs? We want to appoint that ceremonial post and reserve it for a friend of the government rather than trust students and faculty to vote for the right person? Is that what the purpose of this change is? I don't know. It's a good question.

I hope we get an answer from the minister when he has an opportunity to provide one, because he has been receiving letters now to this effect. This came as a sudden surprise. So, understandably, people are scrambling to come to an interpretation of this section of the bill, but it's there. Sections 9 through 12 specifically deal with the chancellor issue.

I think the students, the alumni and the faculty are quite right to be asking those questions. It has never been a controversial feature of university life, but it has been a valued and treasured one. It's part of the collegiality, the respect and, indeed, the best part of the autonomy of the institution of the university, but it's being taken away.

The other question that I would put to the House this afternoon — because again we may not get adequate debate time to examine this if this bill ends up being pushed through with the use of closure — is whether there's an element of a tuition fee grab in this bill.

As you know, one of the hallmarks of university colleges and community colleges in B.C. was that, relatively speaking, the tuition fees they charged were affordable compared to UBC and SFU — relatively affordable, always significantly less, about 60 percent of what typical university tuition fees are. So at a university college, typically a student might pay $2,600 or $2,700 in tuition fees. Now that's been doubled since the Liberals came to power.

Now at UBC, SFU, UVic and places like that, students will pay anywhere from $5,000 to $5,500 for two semesters of university fees. That's quite high, well above the Canadian average, and it's a legacy of the Liberal government that they put their political support behind a high tuition fee policy in B.C. and pursued that aggressively.

So does this legislation open the door in renaming and rebranding the university colleges as regional universities? Does this open the door to ramping up tuition fees there, to going in for a grab, to saying to those institutions that are now complaining, every one of them complaining that their funding was cut by 2.6 percent this year…. They're asking for new money from the minister. Is he going to turn around and say: "You want more money? Get it from the students."

That's a fair question because we don't have any legislated tuition fee assurances in B.C. right now. The government says it has a tuition fee cap, but it is a

voluntary thing that is administered off the side of the minister's desk that suggests that you limit fee increases to the rate of inflation. It has no teeth. It has no legislative status. Now, without any legislative status, it may be very tempting indeed for the minister to deal with a bunch of new university presidents who all want money to go do the good things that they anticipate they will enjoy with the new status and name change, to say: "Get it from the students. Increase their tuition fees. The sky's the limit. Go nuts."

That's a genuine concern because we have seen that before. There was a pattern of going after students for funding rather than looking to public investment in institutions, and that was the story of this government, particularly in the early years of its administration.

There are some questions around Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design that are legitimate as well. I mean, there again, I would create a distinction between Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Capilano College in its case to become a university.

I think Emily Carr is a very specialized institution. It is profoundly about degree and now, collaboratively, master's programs that are offered there in an incredible array of emerging arts and digital media and traditional fine arts offered on that campus. I think there is a case for them to say: "We offer a considerable array of degrees now. We have established a credible niche for ourselves as an arts-focused university."

I could understand the minister considering developing, perhaps working with Emily Carr towards that goal. After all, there is an active collaboration between SFU, UBC and Emily Carr at the Great Northern Way Campus right now to provide master's-level education, and it could be very promising. It's just getting started, but it could be very promising indeed.

So I could understand the minister saying, "Well, you know, that is something that we should talk about some more," because he has supported them collaborating with the major universities to offer master's-level education. He has done so, and the government has done so, in the name of promoting collaboration within the sector. Instead of having competing departments pursuing new degree programs that are, frankly, responding to new technologies out there, the idea was to get them all together and create a unique value-added program.

But now, giving Emily Carr University the designation, there could be a temptation to say: "Hey, we're a university. We don't need to collaborate anymore. Let's go on our own here. Let's pull back because we can make some of our own rules, and we can develop our own curriculum more fully without collaborating with others. We need to generate enrolment. We need to get our FTEs up."

Everybody is competing for enrolment. Enrolment is incredibly soft right now all across British Columbia, so institutions are actually in a vein right now where they're competing very aggressively with one another.

So actually, in the name of creating more semblance of order and sanity in the advanced education sector, it could be creating more discord and greater disconnects between the institutions that supposedly we wanted to bring a more complete provincial picture to, which was envisioned by Campus 2020 looking ahead to bring order to the system. I think there's a risk here that we have just added fuel to the fire on the competition that is raging between institutions right now. That is a concern.

Certainly Capilano College, in becoming Capilano University…. When they were asked publicly why they so desperately sought to become a university when Douglas College and Langara College and others within a few minutes' drive of their campus were not seeking such a designation, they always said: "Well, we want to compete. We need to be called Capilano University so that we can compete overseas and attract foreign students and attract more students wherever we can find them." That's not a good enough reason to elevate that community college — which, as I mentioned, only has four degree programs offered currently — to the next tier of the system over and above the other community colleges.

There has been very little time for institutional leaders to comment on the announcements that were made the other week by government. As I said, there was no consultation. This was done in relative secrecy. It is always interesting, when you're trying to promote your advanced education system and create a more complete system between institutions, that you would operate in relative secrecy around an announcement like that.

The feedback that has occurred has been limited because nobody from government has invited them to provide input. They were not consulted properly as stakeholders. This was a rushed announcement — make no mistake about it — that had a political deadline.

The political deadline is probably the election next year. Maybe it's an indication that the government is not going to have a fall session. They had to get this through now, so they had to rush up all the balloons and confetti and throw together those announcements real quick while the spring session was still around and they could still get this bill into the House and pull it through using closure in the dying days of the spring 2008 session.

The political time line, which took the imperative of this government — as opposed to rightfully more academic considerations that could have been considered if the government had actually consulted stakeholders — has produced sporadic commentary.

One of the presidents who did not receive a university designation — I guess they didn't win the lottery or didn't get the balloon passed to them — was Douglas College's president, Susan Witter, who said on the record:

Indeed, when the minister has even bothered to give a slight rationale as to why he cut 2.6 percent of the funding from all 25 of our institutions, he said he reallocated money from the universities to the community colleges.

It didn't actually happen that way. It was apparently a correction, to acknowledge that skills training deserved the scarce, finite dollars in the context of what was being cut. But now we see, seemingly, a disowning of what community colleges do, the kind of trades and vocational education that occurs there, which, as Ms. Witter correctly points out, is addressing 42 percent of the skills shortages in our economy right now compared to the universities, where there is only a 7 percent shortage of graduates with those credentials. That's a fair question.

Again, I don't think we're going to get to hear from the minister on why that conundrum exists, on why that inconsistency exists in what he has done in the 2008 budget and what he is trying to do in pulling the wool over people's eyes with the use of this bill.

UBC is definitely concerned about having this number of universities all at once coming on stream in the Lower Mainland, especially since they have done relatively well. They have overachieved their FTE utilization in recent years. They've done everything government asked them to do in terms of space expansion, and their reward this year was to have funding pulled away from them.

They have concentrated on their UBC Okanagan program to take the brunt of the FTE reductions at UBC. Now they're seeing a community college, a former art institute and university colleges going out to aggressively market as universities and trying to attract students that might come to UBC. Naturally, their back is up a bit.

One professor at UBC, referring to Emily Carr — this is somebody who comes from UBC's fine arts department — suggested: "I think it's more about politics than it is about academic or educational value. I think, in a sense, there's a mistaken idea that to call everything 'universities' (a) is going to make them universities, and (b) is actually going to serve the purposes of the institutions themselves and their students. And I don't think it will."

You know, the point I had made earlier about what students at the new universities will come back to experience in September — fewer courses, programs cancelled, maybe their favourite faculty laid off because they're experiencing the same cuts as everybody else — was more politely referred to by the president of Malaspina University College, Mr. Ralph Nilson, who made comments.

He's obviously happy that his institution is going to be called Vancouver Island University. He articulated that position for many years. His institution supported that, and they did the hard work to get that.

But when he was asked, following the announcement the other week, whether this announcement and this mandate increase, the new responsibilities for Vancouver Island University came with funding, he answered: "No funding came with this announcement."

He did allow that it would enable them to compete with other institutions, and maybe through competition and battling for enrolment with other long-established universities in British Columbia, they'd be able to find revenue dollars that way. Of course, he made the obvious comment that the announcement of all five of them coming from government didn't have a new dime or dollar attached to it — not one.

So at Malaspina University College students there are staring a variety of program cuts in the face, as we speak. The board has not worked through it yet. They don't know how that will sort itself out. The faculty union is very concerned, because there have been rumours of significant layoffs of their members, and students are concerned that they may be enrolled in a program that isn't offered next year.

That, of course, was the entire point that the government used in its message a few years ago when it said that it was interested in stable, secure, long-term funding over three-year cycles and all the rest. They said that universities deal in two- and four-year cycles or longer. They have to put students through course sections in groups, in cohorts. They have to have students completing one section available to go on to the other section and new students coming on stream into a separate section.

They have to do that over many years and many semesters contained within those years, and that is exactly why they are entitled to, and should get, secure and stable funding on a multi-year timetable. If they're going to offer new degree programs, particularly, they can't say, "We're going to enrol you now. We've got this great new degree program," and then a year later say: "Guess what. The funding wasn't there. All your time and money is down the drain. Sorry. You won't be getting that credential."

That was the rationale for bringing in stable, secure funding. And now it's happening; now some of those degree and diploma programs are actually being cancelled. There are people being left in the lurch. They put their hard-earned money…. They've taken out student loans, and they're in diploma and degree programs that are being potentially abandoned. Some of these programs are being abandoned at what was just redesignated, amongst a lot of fanfare, as new universities.

What a way to celebrate. Talk about a hangover from the party — when you find out that what you've been paying into and working hard and studying hard for, and taking out loans in some cases, isn't going to be there next year. But the consolation is that your institution's got a new name. You're out of luck.

That's the consequence of the government abandoning, in the same year that it's pursuing some of the goofiness in this legislation…. In a very unfair, last-minute way, it pulled its support from the three-year budget plan that it led administrators to believe they could rely on right up until March 12, right up until the very end of the fiscal year and almost the start of the new one. Draft budgets had been completed and were on very numbered iterations at that point. That's what's going on today in the background of this announcement.

There's another element of this bill that…. Again, in trying to, I think, create fewer tiers of advanced education in B.C., we may in fact be creating more. The new regional universities differ significantly from the traditional universities. Obviously, that's understandable in some ways. I mean, the large, established universities UBC and UNBC do engage in research activity in a different way than many of these polytechnic, primarily teaching-oriented universities conduct most of their educational activities.

But if you're going to be a university, one would expect that there would be some enduring elements of the internal governance of those institutions. I mentioned the chancellors and how that is now going to be a plum government-appointed position, rather than an internally, autonomously elected position that necessitates the respect of the campus community where they seek to be elected.

I mentioned something else, and that is senates. There is no provision in this legislation to have senates, as we understand them, in the established universities. That means that there will be no oversight and ability for these universities to develop for themselves degree programs. That will presumably be left with the minister primarily — again, an element of centralist intrusion in here that is very interesting.

I know we were speaking about Malaspina on a couple of occasions just here this afternoon. Again, I bring up a live example of something that's going on there — frustration with the ministry currently, where there is a fine arts degree that is being pursued. It was under advanced stage of development for a bachelor of fine arts, and it looked like it had a lot of support. Certainly, the Malaspina University College supported it very much. The curriculum was sophisticated. It was a visual fine arts program.

But final approval rested with the ministry, and the ministry has failed to provide the institution and its leadership, let alone the faculty and those professionals involved, who feel particularly strongly and have professional pride in this BFA program…. It has completely left them in the dark as to the reasons why that degree program has been turned down on two occasions now.

There's some suggestion that it regionally clashes with something offered at another college further up the Island, but upon closer examination, those programs don't overlap at all. It's a different group of students. It's a different skill outcome. It leads to a different type of employment in the economy.

Malaspina University College is frustrated with that today. They've been turned down on two occasions without adequate explanation from the ministry, but tomorrow, as Vancouver Island University, it will be the same old story. They will seek to create degree programs like this BFA program, and they can be turned down for no particular reason by the minister, by the ministry.

That is not the way that UVic or Simon Fraser or UBC or those that have enjoyed university status for many, many decades in B.C. conduct themselves. They have the right, the expertise, the trust and the autonomy to use their senate to vet and give oversight and to ensure quality and academic rigour. They then launch degree programs of their own that they see as complementary and advantageous for their institutions.

The new regional universities will have no such thing. I can't understand why what is good for the university sector — in terms of some cherished and actually vital areas of autonomy that drive, frankly, innovation and uniqueness in the university sector — is going to be deprived from the five newest universities that we're supposed to be celebrating.

It's like we don't trust them. "We're just giving you the name change, and you don't get the keys to the car," basically. There isn't the trust there. So that is something that would be regrettable if we don't get an explanation from the minister, if we don't have time to debate properly here in the remainder of this session. I think that's a shame, because there are questions that are emerging right now as we speak.

This legislation was not shopped around. It was not focused on stakeholder groups who have some knowledge and who have a material and academic interest in launching these universities with the greatest degree of success possible. In fact, it has been kept from them, and that's a concern.

I look forward and I sincerely hope that I get the opportunity to hear from the minister on that, because just as he hasn't explained the suddenness and the reason why — behind the curtain, so to speak — someone at Treasury Board and in his cabinet, one of his colleagues or a gang of them, grabbed 50 million bucks' worth of funding…. It has caused all kinds of chaos throughout our 25 post-secondary institutions in B.C.

Just as that has occurred, we now have legislation where we are similarly going to be left in the dark. It's going to be kept behind a curtain how this bill was arrived at, who made the decisions and why — to deprive things like elections of chancellors, things like academic senates with full powers of the rest of our university system.

I think I would like to just conclude on some points of what the significance of the legislation may mean, because we are having to guess at some of the implications here. We are going to have to just live through it, I guess, because this bill will likely go through without proper scrutiny.

There may be no chance to amend and make the legislation stronger and better. It may be forced through, using closure by the government. We will be stuck with these amendments for the foreseeable future, and we will have to see whether the new universities are in some ways put at risk of faltering because they are deprived of some of the tools and the institutional capacity that the real universities have.

We know that the maiden launch of the three university colleges in particular, which have a very strong, legitimate case for being redesignated as regional universities, is marred by the larger context of the funding cuts that I've outlined this afternoon — $3.6 million in

the case of Malaspina, $1.8 million less funding in the case of UCFV and $400,000 so far for Kwantlen University College. They're going to have to open their doors next year — brand-new, happy universities with fewer programs, thinner course calendars, fewer students, potentially. Imagine that. "We're no longer a college. We're a university, and we have fewer students."

What is being put in motion may hit students very hard indeed at those institutions, because new money that is very much needed is likely to come out of the pockets of students themselves. B.C. students have had their pockets picked for a considerable amount of time by this government.

When tuition fees doubled, when student grants for years 1 to 4 were eliminated, predictably, a few years later B.C. boasted that from having the second-lowest level of student indebtedness in 1999-2000, it now had the second-highest level of student debt in the country.

Eliminate grants. Jack up tuition fees. Imagine that, but it happened. Now we have a funding shortfall that is rampant throughout the system, exacerbated by this government's broken promise to have secure, stable multi-year funding. Next year they're going to go looking for new sources of revenue, and they're going to look to students. They're going to look to tuition fees. What is that minister going to say?

I don't think students could be blamed for not trusting this government to do the right thing and stand by them. I think they've got to be pretty worried about shelling out more cash to study at a campus that has fewer courses on offer, that maybe doesn't have the program anymore that they originally enrolled in, and that's a very sad thing indeed.

I think that in the case of Capilano College, we've outlined some reasons why that just seems to be a square peg in a round hole, why other colleges may rightly be wondering and upset that that was made. I know the minister's only comment so far was to try and build a case that the North Shore is some kind of autonomous region unto itself.

Well, if it is an autonomous region, it's one that, as I mentioned earlier, is overrepresented in advanced education. It is one whose residents are more likely to achieve a degree than any other British Columbians and have incredible access and ability to attend UBC and SFU, which they do in disproportionately high numbers.

That's not a good enough rationale. I'm not the only one saying it. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Geoff Plant said the same thing. He felt that there was no case at all for Capilano College becoming Capilano University. He rejected it outright. It completely clashed with the Campus 2020 report that he delivered to government.

While Mr. Plant hasn't said that he is upset that government has so far ignored most of the recommendations of the report — the vast majority of them — one has to wonder. After all the work that was put in, certainly one would feel somewhat slighted. What the government has focused on is all the packaging here around the new universities — the sizzle.

But what Campus 2020 focused on — and this is because British Columbians came out and told them it should focus on this — is some of the real problems in our system, which are chronically low aboriginal participation rates and low-income students being disproportionately kept from attending universities.

None of those — which would require investment, which would require overhauling and reforming the student financial aid system — have been pursued. Just the one recommendation, for university colleges to become regional universities, has been picked up by this government and added to, inexplicably.

With those concerns in mind — with the context of the cuts from which this camouflage bill is offered to British Columbians in this House today, with the governance concerns that we've been able to raise at second reading and may not even get a chance to bring up at committee stage of the debate — I will take my place this afternoon.

C. Trevena: I wanted to speak on Bill 34, the University Amendment Act, 2008 — on just, really, a couple of points about it. My colleague from Victoria-Hillside, I think, has given a very full and detailed argument from this side of the House about why we are concerned with this, pointing out some of the good points about it but also the real concerns.

I would like to raise the concerns from my constituents' point of view. My constituents' point of view is the waiting. We now have a university of Vancouver Island. We already had a University of Victoria, but now we have a Vancouver Island University at Malaspina.

Malaspina is just a little bit south of where North Island College's mandate runs, which runs from Port Alberni, Comox Valley, Campbell River, up the north Island and then onto the mainland coast. North Island College has been trying very hard to provide very good service as a community college for people across the north Island, particularly in the Alberni Valley, the Comox Valley and the Campbell River area.

Unfortunately, as you get further north, it does have fewer opportunities for people who want to go on to post-secondary, but there is still the opportunity to do some university transfer and get some of the courses that one would need to move on in education. This is really one of the purposes, I would say, of our post-secondary system and our college system — that students from wherever they are in the province can move on, can get that education, get those first steps in education, maybe take one course which will then lead them on to university or to start doing university transfers.

Unfortunately, just before the minister and the Premier announced the new universities across the province, the government also announced cuts to college funding. The 2.6 percent cut had a huge impact for North Island College. It had an impact right across the college system, but particularly in the real North Island, the Port Hardy campus. We've already seen North Island College being shrunk down to one

The cuts that came in have had a huge impact. It's not just ironic that we have both the announcement of these new universities in April, just a few weeks after the cuts come, and that these cuts have such an impact. I know that we are hearing from North Island College that they're trying their best to keep up the programs in the Port Hardy campus. They say that they are actually still trying to invest $70,000 to support new programs in Port Hardy.

However, communities in the North Island are very concerned. The regional district of Mount Waddington has raised its concerns with North Island College and, I think, will be raising its concerns with the minister. They are very worried that the cuts in the core funding, the cuts in the North Island College budget, at the same time that we're hearing about universities, are going to have a huge impact on the accessibility of education for people in the North Island, where there are people who might want to go on from school. Some of the secondary school programs and other programs are at North Island College.

We are seeing a big cut in the faculty right across North Island College because of these cuts. As I say, this all comes at a time when we are talking about new universities.

We have, as I say, for the Port Hardy campus…. We've got university transfer English, university transfer math and science gone. Because of the cuts that we have seen in the college system, we have a university system that students won't be able to access. They can't access the courses they need in the college system because the same minister who is announcing that we are going to have new universities is also announcing cuts, and those cuts, no matter how hard a college tries to have a minimum impact, are necessarily going to impact students.

We have students who maybe want to move from Port Hardy or Port Alice or wherever they are in the North Island and do their university transfer through North Island College so they could take up the opportunities of going to one of these bright new universities that have been created but won't be able to do so, because a few weeks before we get the new universities announced, we get cuts in the funding, which means that we can't have any of the courses running.

It's a very bitter irony that we see faculty from North Island College going, we see courses being pulled back, and yes, we see North Island College trying very hard to keep going and to continue investing in certain programs and investing a certain amount of money in the Port Hardy campus. But on the whole, we're seeing attrition. We're seeing that that attrition is going to impact students — particularly students in the rural communities, particularly students who depend on these colleges, who really need to have access to these colleges, who would otherwise not enter further education. They struggled through school.

We're talking about students who are often first nations students who may have dropped out of school and come back, and this is their way of getting through the education system. This is their way of taking on their lives. This is what this government keeps saying they want to do — make everybody have the best life possible. Yet we're seeing one of the key avenues that people can have, which is through education, through self-betterment…. The door is closed.

Students who might have been able to go in the past to the Port Hardy campus and say, "I'm going to upgrade myself, and I'm going to work through these courses one by one until I can do my university transfer, until I can get to that stage where I can get to university," are seeing those doors closed in their own backyards. These are the people who really need that help — people in the rural communities who have no access to the schools and to the universities in bigger communities.

Even if they did have access to those bigger communities, they may not feel comfortable, may not feel safe in leaving their communities. They're very concerned. For a start, they may not have the money to leave their communities, and even if they did have the money to leave their communities, they may not feel comfortable in moving to a bigger centre.

That's why we have these smaller centres. That's why we have these community colleges where you can have the university transfer. At the same time as creating five new universities which, whether or not we need them…. We are seeing these universities being created, I believe, at the cost of education for people in rural communities, at the cost of education for people in my constituency, of those who really need the opportunity to have the self-advancement, the gaining of skills and the gaining of knowledge.

One of the things about university, one of the things about education, is the ability to gain knowledge — not just the book learning but to gain more knowledge. Again, this is being withdrawn because we have had the sudden cut, the 2.6 percent cut in funding a few weeks before this came down.

The other advantage of these colleges is that they are affordable. They're affordable for students. If students want to be able to better themselves, want to be able to move through the education system, want to take that opportunity, they need to be able to afford to do that. This is going to have another impact, so that even if they could move down-Island and take up opportunities elsewhere, they've got the living costs and they've got the costs of education.

I go back to my very fundamental point. There is a very bitter irony that while we have a college that is trying to provide services and trying to provide courses across a very broad range of places, it is faced with making cuts. Unfortunately, they make the cuts in the areas which can least sustain them, and we're going to see a ripple-down.

I'd be very interested to see an assessment in a few years time of who is actually accessing these universi-

ties. I'd like to see how many people are continuing to be able to access higher education, because I think that the impact of these universities being established at the same time as cutting the funding to community colleges is going to have a hugely detrimental effect on post-secondary education and the improvement in the access to education of many, many people, particularly first nations people and people in rural communities.

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

Just to continue where we left off yesterday, if that's all right. To go back to staffing issues, I was just reviewing some notes that I had made and the figures I had for full-time-equivalents in the Ministry of Children and Family, child protection. For 2001-2002 there were 1,268. Then, for 2005-2006 we were down to 1,103. I know that the ministry's statistics may differ. We'll test the veracity of those numbers later. For 2004-2005 it went up to 2,494.

I'm just wondering if the ministry has the figures for '05-06. We did '06-07 and '07-08.

N. Simons: I have the figures from 2002 to 2005. If you have them all in one little box, that would be helpful. You can just rattle them off, and I'll write them down.

Hon. T. Christensen: Sorry, Mr. Chair. I'm going to ask the critic to clarify what he's looking for in terms of whether it's social workers broadly, whether it's social workers doing a particular kind of work — for example, child protection workers — and whether it's employees or FTEs, because we have lots of different numbers that we can provide.

N. Simons: What I'm actually looking for is the number of child protection social workers.

Hon. T. Christensen: At the end of 2007 there were 1,255 child protection social workers. That's an increase of 45 over the year previous. The lowest figure, at least in recent years, was in 2004 when it was 1,137, but it has steadily increased since then and will continue to increase as we identify what the additional human resource needs are.

N. Simons: I'm actually looking for numbers going back to 2001, if that's possible. I believe the 2002 numbers are slightly higher than that 1,137.

Hon. T. Christensen: I don't have firm numbers for that time period, but I'll get those for the member.

N. Simons: Well, I'm trying to reconcile the statements of the previous minister, who said in 2006 that there would be an additional 405 FTEs. I'm just wondering if that occurred. That would be generally, not just child protection — just for that.

Hon. T. Christensen: The number of FTEs — that includes, certainly, child protection workers and a broad range of other employees, like child and youth mental health workers and others — in 2005-06 was 3,743 and in 2008-09, the current fiscal year, is 4,547, which is an increase of 804.

Hon. T. Christensen: There are 332 in respect of the child and youth mental health plan, 128 in respect of children at risk. Again, those have primarily been allocated to the regions for front-line positions. There are another 187 in what is broadly referred to as regional services, another 27 in respect of autism, 12 in respect of aboriginal governance and then another 100 that are in an "other" category. That's a range of services, like the IST project co-op program, some work around quality assurance, some workload issues, some information technology helpdesks. It's a range of things that covers off that last hundred.

N. Simons: Can the minister describe who is being hired for the autism program — where that fits in?

Hon. T. Christensen: In respect of the 27 additional FTEs that are allocated to the autism category, those are divided between folks that are working in the payment unit and that are processing payment to individual families — who are able, then, to purchase services.

That's really reflective of the pretty significant increase in caseload. As the member likely knows, we've gone from a caseload of about 600 children and their families who were receiving services back in 2000-2001 to, now, well over 6,400 last year, and that continues to grow. So obviously, there are significant additional administrative requirements there.

As well, approximately 12 to 15 of those 27 were allocated to CLBC in terms of some of the front-line work that they are doing with families in respect of autism.

N. Simons: I think we need to talk about autism services for a moment. I understand that a large group of parents met with the minister yesterday and emerged from that meeting, I think, not satisfied that the minister understood the issue that they were presenting. Specifically, that had to do with the RASP list and the eligibility for the services that they want and that they have sufficient knowledge and understanding of to know those programs are helpful for their children.

Can the minister describe how it is that his own policy is not actually being followed? Or if it is, it's being inappropriately followed, thus excluding parents from using their particular form of intervention, which is RDI. I'm just wondering if the minister can explain to me and to the parents what he believes the issue is and why he believes the issue cannot be resolved under the existing legislative and regulatory framework.

Hon. T. Christensen: The member is correct. I did have an opportunity, thankfully, to meet with a number of parents and consultants briefly yesterday. It was about a 15-to-20-minute meeting. I certainly wish we had had more time, but we were in estimates all afternoon, so we couldn't find another opportunity.

I felt it was a good meeting for me to hear directly from parents. What I undertook at that meeting was to arrange a further meeting between some of my senior staff, particularly those that are working specifically in the area of autism, and members of that group so that we can better understand the issues they are raising and how they might be resolved.

Certainly, it is my belief that existing policy is being followed, although some members of the group expressed some concerns around that. That's what we want to, quite frankly, get to the bottom of. As well, I don't believe that there's a need for any legislative or regulatory change to address any of the concerns that were raised briefly in our meeting yesterday.

As I say, what we want to do is ensure that we are identifying and supporting services that work well for children along the autism spectrum and their families. We look forward to that opportunity to further meet in a more fulsome dialogue with some of the folks that I met with yesterday.

N. Simons: I think that's precisely the issue. I think they're concerned that the minister is believing that this is an argument around effectiveness. Clearly, the issue is about whether the policy allows for parents to engage a particular type of therapist in the intervention and as a therapy for their children.

There are a lot of parents in this province who feel excluded by a policy that isn't intended, I believe, to be so exclusive. We have senior medical experts who say that they find it baffling as to why service providers using the RDI approach are unable to get the same funding as those using ABA or other methods.

What seems strikingly hypocritical, if I may use that word — they haven't used that word — is that this policy for excluding one therapeutic modality only applies to children six and over. They're unable to use this for zero-to-six.

If maybe the minister can explain that, I'm sure that the parents who are so concerned would be pleased to hear it.

Hon. T. Christensen: As I indicated in my previous answer, we look forward to a further meeting with the parents. I'm not prepared to comment on the potential implications of what might come from that meeting.

From the meeting yesterday, I have a clear understanding that there's a strong concern about application of existing policy. I want to flesh out that concern with that group, with senior staff within the ministry so that we know we understand it. Quite frankly, I think that to comment on it prior to having that opportunity to more fully discuss it and consider those concerns would be inappropriate at this time.

N. Simons: I would disagree that an opportunity to correct the problem before 24 parents of children who have autism need to travel from Vancouver and from other parts of the province to make their case in person…. I think this is an opportunity for the minister to perhaps head that off at the pass by simply having a look and realizing that in fact, the policy is being inappropriately applied.

Hon. T. Christensen: As I suspect the member recognizes, the evolution of services for children along the autism spectrum and their families is occurring quickly.

If we look back over the last eight years, we've gone from a place where there was essentially no funding available, where 600 families across the province were receiving some service, to a situation today where more than ten times as many families, almost eleven times as many families, are receiving services. We've gone from a place where the budget was $2 million or

Within that context, our intent is to identify and support approaches that are working for families or for their children and to be working with families when they identify approaches that work for them. It is in that context that I welcomed the opportunity to move beyond a simple 15-to-20-minute meeting with a group yesterday and have a more fulsome discussion to be able to respect the viewpoints that parents are bringing forward about what they believe is working for their families.

Perhaps the member will disagree, but I certainly think that is the responsible way for us to move forward. We work with an expert advisory panel in terms of looking at how we can best support children and their families, children who have autism or are on the autism spectrum. Given the rapid evolution in autism services and our recognition of autism, we continue to invest significantly in additional research here in British Columbia. Together with the federal government, we've established a National Chair on Autism at Simon Fraser University that will be looking at different approaches to working with children with autism.

We are participating and have contributed over a million dollars to participate with the University of British Columbia, including a B.C. cohort of 100 children and the cross-Canada autism pathways project through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in the hopes that we can get greater clarity as time goes on about exactly what the most appropriate approaches are and how new approaches can be developed so that we can help ensure that children who are diagnosed with autism have the best chance for a successful future.

That's the commitment we've made. I think we've backed that up with significant additional funding year over year, and we will continue to work with parents, service providers and others to identify how we can be supporting therapies that work best for those children.

N. Simons: Well, thank you, hon. Minister. I understand that the diagnosis of autism has increased significantly and that the ministry previously had this under another budget. So you know, those figures about increases and everything are not really going to satisfy parents who are dealing with the issue when they wake up in the morning until they go to bed at night, knowing that the program they want to use is not being funded by the government. That simple fact contradicts the policy that exists.

So I'm wondering: who sits on that advisory panel that makes these kinds of decisions? What kind of oversight does the minister have over that panel?

Hon. T. Christensen: Unfortunately, I don't have the names of the advisory panel here with me. But we'll certainly get those to the member so that he can review them.

I think the critical issue, though, to me is that we actually have a panel of experts in place to help provide advice in terms of how services should be provided and what sort of services should be funded, rather than ministers making those decisions based on political considerations.

The member has advised us — and it's what I heard yesterday — that there's a group that supports RDI as an approach that works for their children. They are concerned that the policy, as articulated by government, may not be being followed. That concerns me, too, if they think that. That is why I have invited a further discussion with them beyond a last-minute meeting arranged yesterday for 15 to 20 minutes.

That may not be sufficient for the member, but I actually believe that I had 15 to 20 minutes where I was introduced to people and had about, I would say, less than a five-minute opportunity to actually hear any particulars of their concerns. The prudent response in that circumstance is to arrange for a further meeting so that we can fully understand the concerns that are being raised as to whether or not a policy is being followed. We can then act in response to that full understanding as opposed to reacting to what was a very short meeting.

N. Simons: Yes, I understand that sometimes the intricacies of lobbying, etc., are kind of complicated, but I would point out that the minister received the full package of information in March. I think that in March, perhaps, a response would have been appropriate to indicate that the minister was actually looking into the issue.

This is not a conflictual relationship. In fact, it's families and some service providers just saying: "Here's another opportunity the government has to make life for families and for children with special needs — to actually get the support that they want." I've seen nothing in the minister's or the government's statements that say they want to impinge on the rights of parents to choose.

In fact, what we see in most of the documentation of the ministry is that we want to provide choice to parents. It seems to me that the list, as it's being interpreted about appropriate choice, is extremely exclusive. I'm quite convinced that upon careful reflection on the documents provided to you — and I'll go on to another subject — you will see that in fact it is an infringement on the rights of these parents, and it is contrary to what the minister and the ministry has stated in the past.

So with greatest respect, and looking forward, for sure, to the meeting with the parents, I hope it's a meeting where they can come and hear how the minister has addressed this problem. I'll look forward to hearing that information and that news.

Still on the subject of autism funding, can the minister describe how it funds individual school districts in terms of specific money for children with autism?

Hon. T. Christensen: This ministry doesn't fund school districts in respect to services for children with autism. The Ministry of Education does, and while I

think I know the answer to the question, it would be better responded to by the Minister of Education.

I believe that some of the positions are jointly funded, if I'm not mistaken. I'm just wondering if at the end of a school fiscal year, funding is ever returned to the minister because it hasn't been used.

Hon. T. Christensen: I'm not aware of the Ministry of Children and Family Development spending any of our autism funding in a way where we're directly providing that funding to school districts. It's possible that in some circumstances where we fund a contracted service provider in a community, that service provider could have some financial arrangements to be supporting work with a particular student where, obviously, the school district would be involved. Certainly, the Ministry of Education provides direct funding to school districts.

I know that the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith and a couple of parents met with me a couple of weeks ago now and did raise a concern in terms of some funding that, it was suggested to me, his school district had returned to government. But I don't believe that that was to the Ministry of Children and Family Development. If the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith or if the critic has information that contradicts that, I'd be happy to receive it so we can look into it further for you.

N. Simons: Well, I'll certainly do some more looking into that. Clearly, the issue at the base of this is that many times children are no longer funded once they reach school age. Can the minister just describe how that works for families who have children with special needs — how their funding works from zero to six and then from six to school age and onward?

Hon. T. Christensen: In developing an approach to funding services for children with autism and their families, we worked closely with the families a number of years ago and chose to adopt an individualized funding approach where families of children zero to six, upon receiving a diagnosis that their child has autism, receive up to $20,000 per year from government to purchase services.

They can either take that funding, purchase services and then account back to government for the services that they've purchased, or they can make arrangements for government to fund a service provider directly so that the parent isn't in the middle of the paperwork so much.

Increasingly, parents are choosing that latter option because of some of the administrative intricacies in trying to do all of that contracting themselves. So that is available up to $20,000 for children zero to six.

Once a child is six, the expectation is that the child is enrolled in school, and the individualized funding reduces to $6,000 per year per child — again, for the family to spend in a manner that best benefits their child for eligible services.

The expectation is that…. This is where the Ministry of Education comes in. The Ministry of Education provides, I believe — we'll get confirmation of this from the ministry for the member — $16,000 per child to the school district to support the school district in providing services to children with autism within the schools, and that then complements the $6,000 per child that MCFD is providing directly to the family.

I do know that the Ministry of Education, within the last couple of years, I believe, has broadened the number of children that are eligible — for the school district to receive that additional $16,000. It's a much broader range of children along the autism spectrum than historically were funded.

So certainly, that was seen by school boards as a significant improvement, given some of the challenges they face in trying to identify the best services to provide to those children.

N. Simons: How effective are these programs? Are they meeting the needs of the families? Are they meeting the needs of the children? Are they meeting the needs of schools? How is that measured, and will the minister share those?

Hon. T. Christensen: Certainly, the effectiveness of different approaches in terms of supporting children with autism and their families is a key question. Given that, as I indicated earlier, these services and our knowledge around autism generally are evolving at a pretty rapid rate, I think it's something that we always need to be paying attention to.

When we introduced the individualized funding approach, we recognized that we should measure it against the minimal services that had been available earlier, which were through the early intensive behavioral intervention program.

I believe that in 2005, I think it was, UBC did some research to look at outcomes in respect of children who had participated in EIBI and children who had participated in individualized funding. Now, there were wide variations, depending on the acuity of the autism for a particular child, but they did not find a marked difference in outcomes in terms of those two different approaches.

As I indicated earlier, we continue to invest heavily in research. British Columbia is a participant in a Canada-wide study that began in 2004. That's a five-year study. I think that jurisdictions across Canada are looking forward to the results of that in 2009 so that, hopefully, we can see with some clarity what approaches are working better than others. We can make adjustments as necessary to ensure that we can have

confidence that we're providing the very best services and supporting the very best services to children with autism.

I think the other thing that we have certainly recognized and are working actively with the Ministries of Education and Health around is that there is a need to better coordinate services between MCFD, CLBC, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health for children and youth with special needs generally.

We've developed a common framework, as I alluded to yesterday, to guide that work going forward so that we can be confident that in transitioning from the type of individualized services that may be available for zero-to-six-year-olds as they go into the school system, that transition is working for them and that they are getting the support they need once in school through the funding that the Ministry of Education provides to school boards.

N. Simons: Okay, well, since we're back on that issue, I found something that will really be helpful to me in explaining what I think is the concern that some parents have about that funding and perhaps about a perceived sort of…. The word "bias" is often used in the wrong way, but there's a weight of information coming from one particular side.

Now, in the ministry's policies on autism, the objectives are as follows: "to provide funding to parents and legal guardians to assist with the cost of autism treatment and intervention; to support and maintain independence and the integrity of the family; to build community capacity; to promote choice, innovation and shared responsibility; to improve the ability of children with ASD to function in their homes, schools and communities; and to alleviate the features of ASD."

What I think is the problem is the way that ACT in B.C. has interpreted the ministry's policies and the current RASP list — which is the registered autism service providers — is framed or formed in such a way as to exclude other forms of intervention. You know, it's one thing to talk about….

It's important to continue and to be part of any sort of academic research that will help us to understand this growing field, and we understand that it's growing fast. Perhaps the experience and the expertise that comes from that experience of parents could be brought into play earlier in the process.

Again, I'm looking forward to the meeting where this will be clearly illustrated. I think that the ministry's policies should allow for the inclusion of proven — as far as any system is proven — intervention therapies for autistic children and for families working with their autistic children.

I think that we've dealt with that specific issue. Now, in terms of school funding, many parents have expressed concern that after the loss of their individualized funding or the dramatic decrease when their children are in school, they find that the services that they previously had are now non-existent, and they find themselves struggling significantly.

I'm just wondering what kind of assessment process…. To sort of repeat my last question, what assessments are in place that indicate that either the outcomes of the children are better or the outcomes of the families are any better — or, I guess, measured, so better or worse — from not only individualized programs but in the school-based programs as well? Where are the measurements, and how does the system work?

Hon. T. Christensen: We've recognized, as I indicated in my previous answer, that we want to be better at coordinating services to children and youth with special needs between a range of ministries that touch upon those services, primarily in this context between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

We do not have, within MCFD, good data in terms of recognizing what is particularly effective for children over six. One of the shortcomings in a lot of the research to date has been that there's a good body of research around zero to six, less so in terms of children over six. That's something where we're certainly always trying to find out what additional research is there to best inform some of our decision-making.

I can otherwise only really report anecdotally some of the challenges we're hearing. Quite frankly, it can vary quite dramatically from one school to the next and one child to the next in terms of whether or not a family believes that their child is seeing results from the types of support they may be getting.

N. Simons: Earlier the minister mentioned that he wasn't aware of MCFD funding going directly to school districts, or maybe I'm incorrect in that. Can the minister clarify how MCFD funding gets to schools and how it's allocated or how it's distributed to the individual students?

Hon. T. Christensen: In respect of the autism funding within the Ministry of Children and Family Development, none of that is directed to school districts. The funding that school districts get, I understand, comes from the Ministry of Education in respect of children with autism.

There are some other limited circumstances where MCFD, through our regions and local offices, may cost-share with a health authority or with a school board for a particular service, typically speech and language therapies or occupational therapy, where that service might be delivered in the context of the school.

So where there's been an identified need for that service, a board of education would typically approach the ministry. If we were in agreement that we felt the service could best be delivered in that manner, then we would cost-share, as I say, often with the school board and sometimes with the health authority involved as well.

Sometimes that funding might go directly to the school board to hire somebody. Alternatively, all three, or two out of the three, may get together and contract

with a community service provider to make a particular professional available to provide the service in a school on a part-time basis or perhaps a full-time basis.

N. Simons: Can the minister just outline how much of the ministry's budget is going to schools, either direct contract or through service providers?

Hon. T. Christensen: We don't have a list with us of any school boards that we may have provided direct funding to for a school-aged therapy service, but I can advise the member that the overall budget in 2007-08 for school-aged therapy services was $4.2 million.

Typically, that funding would have gone to a school board, a health authority or a community service provider. It would likely be combined with other funding being provided by either the health authority or the school boards themselves. Together, the funding would hire the appropriate professional, who could be an employee of the school board, might be an employee of the health authority or might be an employee of a community service provider. The key part is that that professional would deliver services to a school-age child, often in the context of the school.

I think there is obviously somewhere where that information is available, I hope. Yeah?

Well, maybe the question should be, more appropriately: what are the ministry's regions providing to school boards in their regions? I presume that if the money is being allocated other than from the provincial office, it would be easier to track. I'm just wondering: would it be possible to get those…?

N. Simons: Through the Chair — you know, it's confusing; I'm talking to you — I wonder if the minister would be able to provide me with a breakdown from region to region on the allocations to ministries.

N. Simons: Let me move to a particular case of one individual who has had significant problems with the autism funding processing unit. I'm wondering if the minister has heard concerns about how the funding unit assesses funding needs, provides funding and audits that funding. Has the minister received concerns from parents directly?

Hon. T. Christensen: The short answer is yes. Certainly, from time to time I receive letters of concern from individual parents who are frustrated by some of their interactions with the autism funding unit. We work hard to try and overcome those frustrations and ensure that they are receiving clear information and have a clear understanding of what type of expenses are appropriate for the individualized funding they are receiving and those that are not.

I can advise the member, as I've indicated a couple of times earlier, that the evolution of autism services has occurred pretty rapidly. When we embarked upon individualized funding, we did that very much in response to what parents and other caregivers were telling us they felt was most appropriate. Once we had a few years of experience with that, we did audit the program ourselves to look at how it was being administered.

Based on that audit, we have undertaken to make improvements in the program so that information is much more clear for parents and there are appropriate accountabilities in place for the expenditure of these significant millions of dollars on behalf of B.C. taxpayers to support children with autism and their families.

We have recently — just this year, in fact — been able to provide a number of additional information resources for parents, including our autism program's website, to try and provide much greater clarity to parents as to what exactly is eligible for funding and what is not. We've also updated the parents' handbook that provides a plain-language summary of eligible or ineligible expenses. It provides step-by-step information on accessing funding, a sample behavioural plan of intervention and updated, more understandable forms for parents.

We've also undertaken more joint training for CLBC facilitators, who are often the most immediate point of contact for families who are seeking to access funding — that is, joint training with our autism funding unit staff. We've also undertaken to contact all new applicants for funding by telephone at the time of their program enrolment to try and develop a relationship, quite frankly, with families so that if they have questions, they're more comfortable picking up the phone and talking to somebody from the ministry to get clarity around whether or not a particular expense would be eligible.

Also, as I indicated earlier to the member, when individualized funding first started, the reality is that parents were very much responsible for all of the administration of that — the keeping of invoices and the submitting of those invoices to government — to ensure that there was appropriate accountability about what the funding was being spent on.

We are seeing more and more parents and other caregivers who are choosing instead to identify the service provider they wish to retain and then have the ministry work directly with that service provider in

terms of their payment arrangements so that the parent or caregiver isn't put in the place of having to administer all of that.

We certainly believe that is a more practical option for those families that want to take advantage of that. We've seen considerable growth in the number of families that want to deal with it that way, as opposed to handling all the administration themselves.

N. Simons: A concern was raised by Kathleen Kyler in my constituency regarding her twin autistic kids. I think that she has probably illustrated some of the issues and concerns that she's had with the autism funding processing unit.

I'm wondering how many people work at that unit. How many families are currently served, or how many families are currently receiving funding through that unit?

Hon. T. Christensen: There are 20 employees that are processing the funding. That's double what it was a couple of years ago. It's reflective, as I say, of the growth in the caseload.

Those folks are serving about 5,800 families. That's a little bit less than the 6,434 number I gave you earlier in terms of the number of families receiving autism services. That's because there are about 600 families that are served under broader contracts with a particular service agency.

Hon. T. Christensen: In June of 2002, when individualized funding commenced.

N. Simons: Specifically, the autism funding processing unit itself — when was that established?

N. Simons: The concerns that one particular family has…. I'm told that she was told, specifically, to write to you. This letter is dated February 28, and she hasn't had a response. But just to outline some of the confusion and concerns that many parents who've contacted me have about it, and reflected in the representative's report…. The amount of work expected on the part of parents who are already, in certain circumstances, dealing with very challenging issues in their families….

This particular parent said her children did without services all summer. This was because the autism funding processing unit, without notifying her, started to audit her expenditures. She wasn't told why. She wasn't even told that it was occurring. She hadn't changed her accounting practices in five years. She'd been doing it five years just exactly the same way.

She contacted the ministry's client relations, and they said they couldn't do anything to help. It was only, I guess, with the intervention of my office that she got information as to why her funding had stopped.

She said that the most challenging time with her children is in the summer, obviously. They're unable to attend summer camp or extracurricular activities because she couldn't afford to send them. She's a single parent of four children living on Canada Pension disability with an annual income of approximately $25,000. She's being told that she owes $13,597. She's currently in ill health and has very few options. This bill, understandably, is not exactly helping her physical and emotional health.

I'm asking the minister if he will ask his staff to find that letter from Kathleen Kyler of Sunshine Coast and try to find a resolution for her that is fair and based on the needs of her children and the family. To put that in the form of a question: is the minister able to commit that he will do that?

Hon. T. Christensen: Certainly, the short answer is yes. I'd be happy to do that.

The member commented, and rightly so, in terms of the work expected by parents in terms of accessing the funding and accounting for the funding. That can be a significant administrative burden. It's one of the reasons that we have made arrangements within the autism funding processing unit that we would pay service providers directly. So we try to remove the parent, if they wish to be so removed, from being in the middle of that funding arrangement.

Rather than the funding flowing to the parent and then them paying the service provider and having to account back to government and demonstrate how the funding flowed and provide invoices and that sort of thing, the autism processing unit can actually be invoiced directly by the service provider and we can take some of that administrative burden away from the parents. As I indicated, that is an option that is increasingly being chosen by parents for the exact reasons that the member outlined.

N. Simons: So the addition of ten extra staff is to accommodate the increase in the number of families accessing services. Is 20 going to be enough?

Hon. T. Christensen: The increase to 20 was in response to projections of caseloads. What we have seen over the last eight years is a dramatic increase in the number of children that are receiving services and the number of families that are receiving financial support to purchase those services. That's understandable, given that there are new people of all ages who weren't getting services before that applied.

What we're doing a much better job of today is identifying earlier those children who require services so that rather than coming into the system at the age of, say, ten or 12, they're coming in early on, which is good for a number of reasons. They're getting an earlier diagnosis, which means we can intervene earlier and start to provide services. But it also will allow the

number of children being served overall to plateau at a certain point, as opposed to the rapid increase, and that will allow us to better identify exactly the number of staff required to serve them.

To date, what we've done is added staff to that funding processing unit as necessary. If the increase in families exceeds our projections, then we'll look to add additional staff to make sure that we can process the funding in a timely manner.

N. Simons: The ministry has an agreement, I guess, with CLBC on services to children. I'm wondering what the current status of that agreement…. What are the arrangements between the Ministry for Children and Families and Community Living B.C. when it comes to serving children under 19?

Hon. T. Christensen: I'm not sure how detailed a response the member was looking for, but I can tell him, in terms of the children's agreement, that generally when CLBC was established there was a children's agreement that was put together between the ministry and CLBC to set out how children would be best served.

The goal, initially, was to enable children with developmental disabilities to have continuity of service from CLBC from the earliest point in their lives right into adulthood and into old age. That was certainly reflective of a strong message that we heard from a number of community living advocates — that that was the most appropriate manner in which to deliver services.

The expectation, and what was contemplated by the children's agreement, was that children with developmental disabilities would be served by CLBC, and the ministry would retain the ability and the responsibility to serve a number of other children who may have particular special needs but who didn't necessarily have a developmental disability.

What we found relatively quickly was that the practical application of that agreement had some very significant challenges. That resulted in a memorandum of understanding between CLBC and the ministry as to a division of responsibility for services to children.

Both CLBC and the ministry, together with a number of organizations — the Children and Youth Representative, I think, has commented on it as well — recognized that the current division of responsibilities, again from a practical level, creates some confusion for families and is certainly not ideal. We have been working closely with…. There's been a working group between the ministry and CLBC over the last four or five months, whose goal has been to develop and produce, for the consideration of CLBC and myself and government, how we might resolve some of that confusion and ensure that we have a structure that makes the most sense to parents who are trying to access services for their children.

We are right in the midst of coming to the conclusion of that process, which will enable us to make some decisions about how we proceed to best serve families. Certainly, the goal of that process has very much been to put ourselves in the shoes of a family that is seeking to access services for their child to address a particular special need — whether it's a developmental disability, autism or some other special need — and to ensure that we have a system that is responsive to the parent and the family first and foremost so that they can access the right services in a timely manner.

N. Simons: What currently guides the ministry-CLBC interaction, then, over services to children? My understanding is that currently some children are served by the ministry and some children are served by CLBC.

Hon. T. Christensen: Currently that division is governed by the memorandum of understanding — until we make a decision as to how that might change.

I'm not sure if the member is at the point in our conversation where we want to shift to matters that are primarily dealing with CLBC — because those folks are here. We could probably better answer some of these questions with their support.

N. Simons: Maybe this is a good time. We're sort of seguing into CLBC. It was going to be done by stealth; you wouldn't have noticed. But there you did.

I did want to cover off one subject that's been in the news — it's something that has been brought up quite regularly — and that is the closure of Corner House as a respite provider. The letter that the parents got was that the service was underutilized and that four times as many families would be able to get the same service. I'm wondering if the minister realizes that the alternatives provided to these families don't even come close to being the same services as they received with Corner House.

Hon. T. Christensen: Perhaps, because I have now been joined by some folks from Community Living B.C., I should just first highlight, for the members opposite, who we have with us.

I'm pleased to have join me Rick Mowles, who is the chief executive officer for CLBC. He's joined, as well, by Richard Hunter, who is the chief financial officer, and Carol Goozh, who is the vice-president of policy and program development. I'm sure that they will provide able assistance as we try to answer the member's queries.

The member was asking about Corner House, which is a respite facility here in Victoria, and the decision to move away from that model of providing

respite services to a different model. In doing so, CLBC believes that they'll be able to serve up to four times as many families who are requiring respite services as are currently being served with the same funding. That is based on experience elsewhere as, I guess, facility-based respite resources have shifted more to a family-based respite approach.

CLBC has been working closely with the families who had been receiving services from Corner House to find respite arrangements that are acceptable to those families.

The two general options that exist are to have a respite provider come into the family home so that the child — or, in some cases, where an adult is getting respite services — is able to stay in their own home and simply have a caregiver come in to provide additional support. Or alternatively, to have the child or the person requiring care go into another family home that will provide a break for the day-to-day caregivers for that child. CLBC ensures that those persons are qualified to provide appropriate care.

The decision around Corner House has really been driven by three separate factors. Firstly, one of ensuring that CLBC is able to provide services to as many people who require services as possible and that they are operating and spending their budget efficiently in terms of paying for necessary services for children and families in the province.

Secondly, Corner House was experiencing increasing challenges in terms of staff recruitment, in terms of being fully staffed and able to provide respite at all the times that a family might wish to have that respite. Certainly, it was available on weekends but not necessarily all weekdays. That was becoming an increasing challenge for Corner House, as it has for some other resources as well.

Thirdly, CLBC, since it was first formed, has been moving in a direction where they are focusing on trying to provide individualized supports to families and to persons with developmental disabilities. Their current approach around respite is to try and work with families to identify an individualized approach that works for them.

We recognize, and CLBC recognizes, that a change in the nature of the service being provided or in the service provider can certainly be a challenging transition, so they have attempted to work closely with the families to try and smooth that transition — although I think, as most of us would acknowledge, often in hindsight, there are things that can be done better in terms of those transitions.

N. Simons: Let's put this on the record. Families received a letter from Community Living B.C. saying that the service — on a mutual decision, mind you — was being terminated because it was underutilized. Now, in this simple little question, I get that it was about budgeting, it was about staffing, and it was about change to a new model.

The families who are affected by this closure are community members from this very city. This closure is symptomatic of an underlying problem that families who have members with disabilities are going to face in this province, because it's all about the bottom line. It's not about the effective services.

Can you tell me how sending your child to a family's home with a single parent and no other children to spend the weekend is going to either provide that child with appropriate respite or provide the parents with the peace of mind that comes with having their children attend a fully staffed overnight stay with peers, where they can do programming, where they can be provided with the benefits of socialization, where they can have a peer group unlike any other peer group they can have? How can that even be called comparable?

Hon. T. Christensen: I recognize that it is the leaning of the opposition — and I suspect, of any opposition, to be fair — to all we say that everything is about budgets. The reality is that the budget for respite services over the last four years has increased by 35 percent. That's gone from about $20.8 million to $29 million. Approximately 6,000 individuals around the province are receiving respite support today. About 3,500 of those are children, and the other 2,500 are adults.

We recognize that effective respite services are a critical component of supporting families. We feel that there is an obligation upon government and upon CLBC to ensure that we are taking those available dollars and serving as many families as possible in a safe and effective way. Best practices from around the world, in fact, are moving towards more individualized, home-like settings for respite, away from the more institutionalized setting.

There are staffing challenges in terms of the type of facility that was at Corner House. While this transition for these families could have been handled much better, CLBC is working closely with them to try and identify respite resources that will meet the needs of their children, first and foremost.

They're working with them to try and ensure that the social opportunities for these children to be spending time with friends that they met at Corner House are maintained. CLBC will continue to do that. Certainly, the experience in other communities around the province, as CLBC has gone through the transition of some of these global respite contracts to a more individualized approach, has been that those transitions are successful and that families end up getting a respite service that is more flexible to their needs and is meeting the needs of their children.

I believe, actually, that I'm going to be meeting with the member and a number of families that were at Corner House in the coming weeks. I look forward to that meeting to hear from those parents directly, but, certainly, the direction that CLBC has taken is a reasonable one in terms of ensuring that they are providing needed respite services to an increasing number of families across the Victoria area and around the province.

N. Simons: I don't know how the minister can say it was a reasonable decision before he understands the

impact, which he will understand when he meets with this family. We're talking about a grandmother who raised her granddaughter from the time she was born. She's now 16, and the grandmother is saying that it's becoming more and more difficult. She knew it would. She was so thrilled that she got Corner House. In fact, she was offered Corner House six months after she started using the service, so something to do with the communication in the ministry might need to be addressed there.

Another family with four children, where two are typical and two have severe disabilities. They could sleep through the night on those weekends when their child was at Corner House. Now they can't.

As a child protection social worker, I can tell you that families come to my office, and they are at the breaking point. They don't need someone to come into their house and babysit while they're sleeping upstairs. They need a time when they know that their child is not only going to be well cared for with the appropriate trained staff, where they can socialize with children like them….

Each one of these parents — through tears, I might add — will tell you that their children don't have a peer group. Corner House offers a peer group. It offered a peer group twice a month, in some cases once a month. It was a saving grace to these families. It's what allowed them to continue.

I will tell you that I can be quite sure that families who are affected by this kind of cut…. The ministry is cutting off its nose to spite its face. These are families that are going to require more intensive services. They are going to require services that are not yet even defined.

Individualized funding — it all sounds good. Everybody can get individualized funding, and suddenly your wait-list is gone. But where are those services? At least half of the families in Corner House have not even been provided with alternative services. They might have been given some money and told: "Find your own." That's no way for a government to support families, and families with children with special needs.

This was an excellent program that existed in the community. We have five different reasons for its closure. The public of British Columbia should pay some heed to this, because it's coming to a community near you. Families that need help because their children have special needs require a variety of options, they require a choice, and they require innovation. And all this government can offer is a cheque that's inadequate.

Once again, what is the point of the parents coming to meet with the minister, if he's already made up his mind in five different ways and they don't have any options?

I was told by a young child that I looked angry on television. I'm passionate because these are families….

There's another example. We have a woman, a single parent, raising her child. She works as a registered nurse. She's able to work as a registered nurse, partly knowing that one weekend — three days every month — she can have time to relax and maybe have a social life of her own.

All of these families, they don't pretend to cry. They don't pretend to be at their wits' end; they are seriously at a point where they wonder what they are going to do. It's not this rhetorical "what are we going to do?" What are they going to do?

Can the minister describe to me how reducing choices, how taking away an option, is giving more parents choice?

Hon. T. Christensen: The CLBC is continuing to work with the families. I think the member has made comments, certainly negative comments, in terms of having a respite worker come in to provide support in the home. That is one option, but out-of-home respite options have been presented to families. I understand that in some cases families have wanted to pursue that. In others they have not, and CLBC will continue to work with them.

The member's suggestion that this is coming to a community near you simply doesn't bear out, because the reality is that staffed respite facilities are very much in the minority around the province. The reality is that in most communities around the province these types of facilities were phased out some time ago and that families have increasingly been taking advantage of more individualized respite approaches.

Once families have the opportunity to identify the individualized respite opportunity that they are comfortable with, they find that those work very well for them. They often offer much more flexibility than does a staffed-type resource, and at the end of the day they receive the service that they require and, most importantly, that their family member requires, in a very safe and qualified way.

As I said, I look forward to meeting with the member and the families directly impacted by the decisions around Corner House and to learning from them in terms of what has happened and the types of supports that families are looking for.

I do very much expect, as we continue to add millions of dollars of resources to support developmentally disabled children and adults in the province, that in each case CLBC looks at how they can support as many families as possible with that funding. The record clearly shows that there have been dramatic increases in funding and that there continue to be funding pressures in terms of the work that is necessary to support children and adults with developmental disabilities. I think it's incumbent upon all of us to ensure that we make those resources serve as many possible families in as effective a way as possible.

N. Simons: Well, it's clear that there's no measurement of the effectiveness of programs, and that's been repeated numerous times by independent oversight.

It's about a family's ability to function. It's not about, you know, changing cable companies here. They're not going to get the same service.

Can the minister tell me if the amount of money, the $2,800 at-home program, will buy opportunities for kids to spend time with professional caregivers, to take them on outings, to provide them with socializing opportunities? I think not.

I mean, it's pretty obvious. It's pretty obvious to people who understand what it's like. It really should become more obvious to those who are making the decisions that these shouldn't be done at the last minute through a cursory, abbreviated letter to family members telling them that, essentially, their lifeline is being discontinued and good luck finding a respite provider.

The respite providers are not available. There's no point getting a cheque if you can't spend it anywhere. What will end up happening? CLBC will claw it back. I'm wondering if that's part of the old plan.

I don't understand how a well-functioning program — perhaps more expensive than others, as we can always find more expensive and less expensive programs — would be the target, especially announced before those families have had an ability to find an alternative. It's bad enough they had two months to try to figure it out with assistance and figuring how much money they'd get. But in terms of finding an alternative that would even come close to the service that those children got….

I've got to remind myself sometimes that it's parents who are getting respite, and the kids are getting respite too. The kids are getting benefits from this opportunity to maybe get away from stressed-out parents and maybe have a good time with kids their age. We're talking about teenagers. Teenagers shouldn't be just sort of babysat somewhere out far from home.

I find it really difficult to understand how, when this government talks on one side about choice, then eliminates a choice and then so blatantly finds different excuses to justify that removal of choice…. To me, it's symptomatic of a problem that we have in the social services sector.

Why don't we try to find programs that are effective, and why don't we measure their effectiveness? How many families, eligible for individualized respite funding, are able to find a service that provides parents with the peace of mind and the ability to continue to look after their children? What are the numbers on children receiving respite services?

Hon. T. Christensen: A number of the statements that the member has made require some additional response.

Firstly, the member suggests that the families are only eligible for $2,800 to pay towards respite support. That's not the case. Families have been offered more than that amount to ensure that they can obtain the respite support that they require. CLBC has identified a range of potential respite opportunities for families and will continue to work with families to try and find the right fit for them.

I certainly would agree with the member, as would folks at CLBC, that this transition could have been handled much better in terms of contact and discussion with the families. But we currently have approximately 3,500 children across the province that are receiving respite services. The vast, vast majority of those are through an individualized approach that is working well to provide the type of support they need.

For the member to suggest that those alternative respite options are simply babysitting — and he's used that word a couple of times — is an extreme insult to the respite care givers, who are providing strong care to people across the province. These are qualified individuals who care for the people that they are providing respite for and for the children that are put in their care, and I think that to suggest otherwise is wholly inappropriate.

Finally, the member rightly points out that it is important that children who were being served by Corner House have the opportunity for appropriate socialization. CLBC is developing a day support program to ensure that those children continue to get that opportunity to socialize with each other and with others, recognizing that that is a critical component of their development.

N. Simons: I take the minister's comments seriously, and I have to clarify the babysitting comment.

When you compare a home where a number of children come on the weekend and where there are staff resources and where they have activities and evening events and they get to hang out with each other…. Meanwhile, at their parent's home they do other things with their other children who don't have those special needs. They can actually have a sort of a "normal" evening or weekend.

When I contrast that with the image that I get when families describe what they've been offered…. I did use the word babysitting, and it's probably inappropriate. I wouldn't want to insult anyone. If I've offended anyone, I apologize.

The issue is that it is a very, very different thing for a family to be able to know with comfort and certainty that their child is being well cared for. Families who use respite are not kicking their kid out for the weekend. It's basically that they're hoping their child has an enjoyable break, as they are going to have a break.

When you think of single parents looking after children without any other children around or of circumstances where there aren't those opportunities for socialization, it becomes a bit of a temporary, stopgap measure.

What we would like to see in a respite program is one that provides both the parents and the child with a rewarding, enriching experience. So I won't use it as a babysitting…. But I think we do think that we need to consider quality of care. If that allows us to contem-

plate the broad range of respite care that would be available to children, we should recognize that the whole spectrum can be covered.

I'm sure Corner House was one of those that provided more than other places, and for that very reason, one would expect it to be a supported arrangement. If it was underutilized, it was because of a lack of referrals. If it was understaffed, nobody else knew about that. If it's a budgetary decision, that should have been clear and precise. If it wasn't a mutual decision, that should have been clear right from the beginning.

Unfortunately, parents were left with two months to try to figure out what to do. They had been desperate for respite when it was offered. They had been thankful and appreciative when it was provided.

Let's not forget that it wasn't just the weekends. If some of these families had a week off in the summer, their child would have a week off at Corner House. They would know that their child was well cared for. They would know that their child was being adequately supervised and that their special needs were being met.

I think that we would probably be belabouring the point. I would like to know specifically if there is any hope that these parents can have that they'll be able to purchase equivalent or even close to equivalent services with the financial resources being provided to them by CLBC. Will they be able to access equal or reasonably similar services? How and where?

Hon. T. Christensen: Certainly, a clarification in terms of the availability of what Corner House could provide…. There were discussions with them in terms of why respite wasn't available on a more often basis than primarily on weekends alone. The answer clearly was staffing — the challenges in identifying staff for the resource. There was no indication that those challenges were going to subside.

Certainly, CLBC has worked with each of the families to try and identify alternative respite arrangements that are acceptable to those families. Some of the families have pursued those options. Some have indicated that they're very happy with those options. Others, at one point, had accepted different options and then changed their mind for some reason. And for others, no acceptable option has yet been identified.

The commitment is to continue to work with each of them to look at what their concerns are in terms of the options being presented, to try and work through those concerns so that we can all be confident that the families have a respite arrangement that works for them.

In many cases, CLBC has identified an opportunity where additional respite time would be provided over and above what they were previously receiving and has identified the ability to do that to try and better meet the overall respite needs for these families. Obviously, that work continues and needs to continue until the point where families have an arrangement that they are confident in.

N. Simons: Would it not have been more appropriate to address their needs prior to the closure of the facility?

N. Simons: So we have some families that have been offered and have refused or have turned down the offer. Can the minister explain why families are turning down the offer of financial incentives over actual respite?

Hon. T. Christensen: No, I'm not going to purport to speak for the families. I haven't spoken with any of them directly at this point and certainly don't want to put words in their mouths.

N. Simons: I'll take words from their mouths. They say quite clearly that they can't find anything that comes close to the service they expect. They don't know what training people have had. It's difficult to send your child away to strangers. If those people are being screened, what is their training? In one option, the woman didn't have a car. You know, we're talking about kids with intellectual disabilities in one case, cerebral palsy, hearing loss.

This is what one parent says: "My situation is I have a 13-year-old daughter" with those disabilities. "I have a brother with a chronic illness. I help him manage his money, help him sustain his living situation." She works as a registered nurse with chronic back pain. Her one friend is very ill, unable to provide the support she needs. She has an aging father, 81.

When you think about it, when the burden of all caregiving is in a family, it is most often on the woman in the home. I think it's just another downloading of expectations to family members who are already overburdened.

I could probably ask about this issue and still have questions tomorrow, but I think the point is clear. Families are being denied choice, their options are being reduced, their children's outcomes will be negatively affected, and the family's stress level will increase. That's the effect of the closure of Corner House.

Four times as many families will be unable to access services, because they don't exist. That's not a success in my opinion. I'm just hoping that the minister can commit that with any further reductions of services to families, the families will be advised in time so that they can make alternative arrangements.

Hon. T. Christensen: Certainly, a number of the questions that the member raises are exactly the questions that any parent would ask in terms of looking at different options for respite.

Any parent, I would expect, is going to want to know: what is the training of the caregiver? What

screening has occurred in terms of that particular caregiver? How can I be confident that my child is going to be safe in that particular arrangement? All of those are appropriate questions, and all of them are questions that can readily be discussed with CLBC in respect to a particular respite option and that I would fully expect would be discussed.

The member made some suggestion in terms of the burden of all care being imposed upon families. We are providing more respite today than ever before, and the decisions made around Corner House will actually expand the number of people who are able to receive respite support in the Victoria area. As I indicated, CLBC continues to work with the families who were being served by Corner House, as well as a range of other families, to identify effective respite resources that meet the needs of those families.

As I indicated in an earlier answer, there's every opportunity in working with CLBC to identify a respite provider that is acceptable to the families that were served by Corner House, to each of them, so that they may have the opportunity to actually increase the respite that they were being provided. In that way it will lessen what the member describes as a burden of all caregiving to those families.

I have admitted readily that, certainly in this case, the transition could have been handled much better, and it is my very full expectation that this has been a good learning experience for CLBC in terms of ensuring that these transitions are handled more effectively as they work very hard to meet the needs of more families across the province.

But the reality is that the nature of the respite opportunities and options that have been presented to the families that were served by Corner House are the types of options that are currently proving to be effective for approximately 3,500 children around the province. CLBC, on an ongoing basis, receives feedback from those families who are satisfied with those types of respite arrangements and the opportunity it's providing for them to get a bit of a break and the opportunity it's providing for their children who are in those respite arrangements.

So getting back to the specifics of the member's question, the short answer is yes.

N. Simons: I wish I had Hansard for everything I did. Now, the issue around respite: is there an official waiting list for families waiting for respite, and if so, how many children are on that list?

Hon. T. Christensen: There is not a sort of specific list in terms of identifying those who are waiting for respite services specifically. CLBC is working to gather that type of data so that we can all be better informed in terms of the service demand and how we can respond to that.

Certainly, the priority on a local level always…. CLBC is able to respond immediately to any respite need that is driven by a health and safety concern, and that is always the number one priority. They certainly have the capacity to do that, but there's continuing work in terms of trying to develop more comprehensive information and data around how many families may have identified a desire for respite, why they're seeking respite and what the true demand there is.

N. Simons: There is no wait for families needing respite on a health and emergency basis or a health-and-safety-driven reason? They can get respite right away?

N. Simons: All right. My next questions will refer specifically to the monitoring brief, and I'm just hoping that, you know…. I'm going to try and make sure that they are relevant to CLBC.

The concerns raised were that when there is a need for an out-of-home placement for a child, there is confusion about the roles and responsibilities about how MCFD and CLBC staff work together. I guess the issue is whether it's a program for the child or for the parent. Is that how the ministry divides the requests? How is the vetting of that service requirement done in the ministry's office? Or is it all in CLBC if a child is under 19?

Well, my question is around the perception, at least, that there's confusion over who's responsible for a child and their specific needs. Is it the Crown corporation that does the assessment, or is it the ministry that does the assessment of a child under 19?

Hon. T. Christensen: The general division of responsibility depends on whether the need is driven by the child and the needs of the child. If it's a disability-related need of the child, the general door into service would be through CLBC. If it's because of a need of the parent or a concern in terms of the parent's capacity, it would tend to be through MCFD.

There will always be some circumstances where it's a little bit grey and on the margins. If a family were to approach CLBC or the ministry and be expressing significant concerns in terms of their ability to care for their child, whoever was approached first would be contacting the other to look at how we could be working together to support that particular family.

N. Simons: I think it answers enough to say that it hasn't quite been created as a seamless process yet.

Is the minister actively attempting to consolidate services in such a way that the public will know where to go for assistance or for services?

The Chair: Committee A will now recess until five o'clock for a health break.

N. Simons: To change tacks quite suddenly and abruptly without prior notice, I did have a letter written with respect to Ms. Duran. I believe that it was brought up in estimates yesterday. However, specifically, I was wondering…. There's an issue around a Maples assessment and whether or not that was sufficient to trigger the involvement of Community Living B.C. I suppose that letter has been sent, and I'm wondering if the minister has any initial response.

Hon. T. Christensen: I hesitate a little bit in terms of specific cases, because I'm not confident of what I should or shouldn't share. I know that the member for Burnaby-Edmonds has raised the issue with me, and I believe that he's got a consent form signed, which would allow me to share a whole bunch of information with him. It may be better for us to arrange to sit down very soon and do that, because it's an important issue that the member raises. But I'm a bit hesitant to talk about the details of an individual case on something that is a public record.

I hope that that can be arranged and that the member for Burnaby-Edmonds can provide an appropriate response to the family who raised the concern.

If I could move over to another issue, and that's the transition to adulthood. Many young people receive services that they need until they turn 19, whereupon new criteria come into play and, oftentimes, are left — as their parents and friends describe it — without support. Can the minister inform me how many 19-year-olds are on waiting lists for CLBC services, and what are those services that they are waiting for?

Hon. T. Christensen: We're aware of 427 — I guess they're called youth at the age of 18 — individuals who will turn 19 in the 2008-09 fiscal year, which isn't how people normally count their birthdays.

In terms of the specific services identified, in terms of services that those individuals and their families may be seeking or that may be appropriate to them, we don't have a good sort of comprehensive list of those. That gets back to some of the work we're doing around trying to bring that type of information together from various offices around the province so that we can have a more effective planning tool to get ahead of the challenge of knowing who is coming, what they may need and how we plan to provide that.

Certainly, there are individual cases that come to my attention where CLBC is continuing to work with families to try and identify, firstly, what the appropriate service might be, based on need, and then secondly, whether that service is available, and if it's not available, what the reasons for that are. Is it a funding issue? Is it an availability of the actual service in a particular community? There may be a host of reasons that are involved in terms of why something is not available.

We certainly believe, since CLBC came into existence and some of the work they're doing around how they track things and gather information, that we're making progress in being able to better identify those kinds of critical information needs for better planning for the future of this particular population.

N. Simons: Has the minister received feedback from families with respect to services for children transitioning, youth transitioning into adulthood, and if so, what specific actions has the ministry undertaken that will address the needs of these 400-plus young people so that they don't have to wallow in sort of a lack of service sort of netherworld? In many cases we see that happening, and young people get involved with the criminal justice system and more expensive forms of government intervention.

I'm wondering specifically if there are attempts to open up group homes or to find alternative resources for these young people.

Hon. T. Christensen: Today we are doing a better job of identifying the transitioning population earlier. Ideally, we like to identify everybody by when they're 16 so that we have, in fact, three years to start looking ahead at what their needs might be and towards those transitions. Certainly, we aren't able to identify everybody in terms of their being 16, but that is the goal, because it does allow for more effective planning.

Part of that transition is to sit down with the family and try and figure out the nature of the supports that might be necessary, what the level of ability is of the individual to participate in the community and what supports they might need to do that. CLBC has had some success in partnering with the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance around some of their employability efforts around persons with disabilities.

While this will be somewhat anecdotal, I certainly know that in my own constituency one of the service providers there has in fact had some incredible success in terms of enabling persons with developmental disabilities to become effectively employed. The employers are thrilled, the individuals themselves are thrilled, and it gives them an incredible sense of independence in those particular circumstances — where that is appropriate, where the person's level of ability is such that they can be effectively involved in the workforce.

I think that there are some exciting initiatives there that are showing great promise and really enabling people to fully participate in community, just as any one of us is expected to participate as we turn 19 and enter the wonderful world of adulthood.

We've also initiated — I believe it was in 2006-2007 — additional options around adult respite so that families that were receiving respite while their child was a

Now, this is a generalization, so I want you to recognize that, but what we're typically finding is that families of persons who are entering adulthood are very much interested in how their child can participate in the community in an effective way and what the type of supports are that will assist them in doing that.

They're not typically looking for group home–type arrangements that may have been available or may have been sought out in the past, except in situations where the needs are very, very high, because they're recognizing that there is an opportunity for a pretty full inclusion in communities.

The types of options that are available vary somewhat from one community to another, but are driven very much by what families are identifying that works for their children. It's something that certainly is an exciting area of expansion for CLBC and others that are involved, in terms of looking at how you best facilitate persons with developmental disabilities being included, to the greatest extent of their abilities, in community.

The one factor that does always become the number one driver of the provision of service is certainly health and safety concerns, as would be expected. Beyond that, CLBC then looks to determine the nature of the services that best fit the needs of an individual client, and how they can then support that client accessing those services.

N. Simons: There was some brief discussion about extending…. I believe that the representative suggested extending the age from 19 to 24. I'm not even sure whether it was for her monitoring of the services or whether CLBC….

Let me skip that. I'll come back to that question afterwards. Yeah, it's one of those issues….

Can the minister tell us how many adults are actually currently in living situations other than their own home, other than living independently — adults who are in the care of CLBC, so to speak, in the various forms of care? Enumerate, if possible.

Hon. T. Christensen: There are currently — it may change a little bit from day to day, but this is pretty close — 2,204 adults in a home-sharing arrangement; 2,429 in a staffed residential resource, typically a group home type of environment, which they are often called; and 505 in a semi–independent living arrangement; for a total of 5,138.

The total number of adults receiving services is approximately 10,870. The balance of those individuals…. They are either living independently, or some of them may still be living at home with parents or other family members.

Hon. T. Christensen: Again, it isn't something where I have a definitive number for the member. It is something, certainly, that CLBC is continuing to try to work up so that, again, for planning purposes, we can have more confidence in terms of what the demand is and what we need to do to better meet that demand.

N. Simons: How many adults moved as a result of the residential options program?

Hon. T. Christensen: Some of them have been filled, and others have not. It really depends from one community to the next and an identification of an appropriate fit for the potential new placement of somebody in one of those.

N. Simons: Is there any attempt or is there any policy, written or unwritten, that tries to steer people away from the group home model?

Hon. T. Christensen: The short answer is no. It's driven by the individual planning with the individual clients, and what CLBC seeks to do is align the particular vacancy with the needs of an individual client. The goal is to have a placement that is compatible in terms of the individuals who would be living in a particular resource together. Sometimes that may work against putting somebody who is 21 into a home where the other three people living there are 60 and have been there for a long time together.

It's those kinds of practical factors that come into play, including what the needs of the residents of the particular home are as well as the individual that is looking to find a care option — whether it's a group home option, a shared-care option or a semi–independent living option.

The number the minister provided earlier, 427 individuals who will turn 19 this year…. How many…? It wasn't the wait-list question. There are 10,870 adults receiving services from CLBC; 5,138 of those, potentially, are in residential care. Sixty-six spaces, essentially, were opened up, created somehow, through the residential options program. I'm presuming that there are thousands of people waiting for services, including residential services.

Is there any estimate — even a broad range, as we've heard before — of individuals who are waiting for services? I know that there are estimates from different sectors. They suggest numbers. But what number has CLBC, maybe in association with BCACL or another one of the umbrella organizations, decided to use as a reliable estimate of the wait-list for residential services?

Hon. T. Christensen: The member has actually highlighted perhaps one of the most significant challenges around planning in this particular area of interest around persons with developmental disabilities. CLBC — and prior to that, community living services within MCFD and prior to that, community living services within other ministries — has never come even remotely close to serving the number of individuals that the population prevalency rates would suggest have developmental disabilities.

Often the question that I will ask, as minister, of the people advising me, and others will ask, is: where are all those people that the population prevalence rates would suggest have developmental disabilities? They've never approached government in terms of seeking a service, and they've never approached CLBC.

It gets back to some of the answers to earlier questions. What we are trying to identify or what CLBC is trying to identify much better than has been done in the past is how many people require service, what is the nature of the service they require and how do we then plan to meet that need.

Part of that is better enabled, I think, today than it has been in the past by the fact that we're working to try and identify folks when they are 16, 17, 18. We can do that better than we could historically because they tend to be in the school system, whereas 30 years ago that wasn't the case. We can see who's coming and try to plan a little bit earlier. We're not there yet in terms of doing that as effectively as we'd like, but I think that we're making progress.

CLBC has invested significantly in information systems to try and better gather that information, to undertake the planning with families to identify the nature of the services that are necessary and to be able to better project what's necessary next year. Equally importantly, if we look out five and ten years, what do we need to be seeing?

What we've seen in terms of people approaching CLBC and seeking services is an increase of about 4½ percent per year over the last few years. That seems relatively steady, but it's certainly an increase that is in excess of what normal population growth is. Those are the types of figures that are being used in terms of trying to plan ahead around budgets.

As I think the member will know, the projections over the next three years are for a steadily increasing budget for CLBC. But this year, when we looked at the three-year planning cycle in CLBC's service plan, the third year of that actually quite deliberately doesn't include caseload increases, because we weren't confident about what those numbers might be.

So we're doing a lot of work between the ministry and CLBC and others in government through this year to try and get a better handle on what is the demand side in that third year out so that we can respond appropriately.

M. Farnworth: I just want to pick up on the minister's comments, because two things come to mind. First, around his earlier remarks in terms of around the need to do a better job in terms of identifying exactly what services are there and making them available to parents at a very central location so that they can access them, I'll ask a couple of questions. One, I'd be interested if there are any time lines as to when that should be completed or when we can expect to see something like that?

The other issue relates, again, to what the minister said a few moments ago about what parents have been doing or where people are coming from because of the increasing demand. I think one of the things that has been taking place is that parents have been coping. Parents have been raising their children, and they have been accessing services that are there. Naturally, in the family unit they're doing a lot of that work themselves — picking up either the shortfall when there is no service, or they are using what services are available.

I think that what's happening now is that children are turning 19, and they're finding that those services are not there. I think that's a real issue. I know that the minister and I have been working on one particular case, and we'll continue to do that, but in my office in the last two weeks alone there have been four new families that have come forward, all with the same problem; that is, their child is turning 19, and they're finding it very difficult to either access the services or are not sure what services are there.

My question to the minister would be: when can we expect to see some sort of time line? Or what is the time line so that people are going to know exactly what's available and, more importantly, how to access those services?

Hon. T. Christensen: Essentially today, when somebody is turning 19, as in the situations that the member has pointed out, or they may be 35 or 45 or 50 and simply never have accessed services before, they approach a CLBC office. That's the first that they've been heard from, which is a particular challenge that I may comment on briefly in a moment.

A family will approach a CLBC office. They'll be able to sit down with a facilitator to try and identify…. Part of the planning process is to identify, with the family, the nature of the services that the family believes would assist the individual — so really, what the family is looking for in terms of the needs of the individual and the interests of the particular individual.

They then look at what services may be available in the particular community, and that can vary from one community to the next. That discussion then moves to okay, are the services currently available in terms of either there being perhaps a vacancy in a particular program or, alternatively, whether there's funding available to support the service.

What we've seen over the last three, four years is that there are about 450 additional adults each year that CLBC has been able to provide services to. They

prioritize those based on health and safety first and then go beyond that to try and identify what else it is that they're able to do for particular families.

There are challenges in that in terms of getting ahead of the curve on some of this planning so that it's not just on an annual basis but so that we know two or three years in advance. This gets back to my comments earlier about trying to plan, or start it at least, when people are 16. If we can get ahead of that curve, then we're able to plan much further ahead and have a greater confidence that we're going to be able to meet their needs when they're 19.

Certainly, I hear the same situations that the member opposite hears, when a child is turning 19. There hasn't been a lot of discussion prior to a few months before they're going to be 19 about what they might need, and people are kind of caught out in terms of being able to effectively plan for them. We have certainly seen increases each year in the number of adults served that are approximately equal to the number of people turning 19.

The other challenge which is certainly in the system is those adults who haven't been receiving services and may be at a much more advanced age, and the system simply didn't know that they were there yet. Their parents are becoming elderly and can no longer care for them. In some cases you have individuals in their 50s that are now seeking service who nobody actually knew about, or much about, before.

That's the other kind of planning pressure that we're trying to get a handle on in terms of looking to the future. Part of the reason that we haven't been definitive around what the caseloads might be three years out is because of some of the work being done to try and better identify those numbers.

I hope that answers the member's question. If I haven't, I'm sure he'll remind me of the part I've missed.

M. Farnworth: Hon. Chair, I am mindful of the time, so I'll return to my critic.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of people out there who are seeing their child turn 19, and a whole set of rules come into play that impact them dramatically. The issue is, in part, I think, that 19 is a calendar definition. The reality is that their child's developmental or physical developmental disability bears no relation to a calendar change. I think that's something that we need to take into account far more than what we've been doing to date.

I know that the minister has made comments about wanting to identify the child at 16, and we're able to do that far more than we used to. But there are these pressures coming on from kids that weren't accessing, weren't getting the services. Maybe what is needed now is to say, okay, you know what? That 19, in many ways, is artificial, and we need to look at…. The real criteria should be the needs of the individual as opposed to a calendar age. I would like the minister to look at that as a very real change that needs to take place.

The other thing in getting to that point is that there's the recommendation from the children and family youth commissioner about changing from 19 to 24, which, again, would also give, I think, an opportunity for the ministry to have a period where you can evaluate and make some significant changes in terms of what services are available and how we deliver them.

My questions are: one, I'd like the minister to look at the issue around the issue of the age of 19 and changing it to needs-based; and two, in order to get to that point I think there is a recommendation out there that would assist greatly in doing that, which would be changing the definition of 19 to 24. My view would be to look at some point going from that, as I said, to a needs-based approach. That's what I would like the minister to think about.

Hon. T. Christensen: At the risk of having a heated agreement about this, certainly I think we recognize — and this isn't limited actually to those served by CLBC; it includes all individuals that actually the Ministry of Children and Family Development has responsibility for — that 19 is a historical cutoff in terms of a host of things by virtue of somebody becoming an adult. Certainly people, upon legally becoming an adult, have a number of rights and obligations as an adult that you don't have as a youth or a child.

We have recognized that we could do and want to do a much more effective job around transitioning to adulthood. Whether it's 19 or 21 or some other number, it's still actually an artificial cutoff, and what we want to look at more closely is what the natural transitioning occurrence is.

For example, for many people as they approach the age of 19…. At 17 or 18 they're likely — hopefully — graduating from high school and then making a choice about where they go next in their life. That will typically be to some post-secondary opportunity or to employment. We hope it's one of those two options, or travel the world if you're one of the fortunate folks.

What we need to be doing is looking at how we can support those transitions more effectively, including for those with developmental disabilities. A number of individuals do have the opportunity to transition into employment, and we believe that by starting earlier, ideally at around 16, that we will be able to get ahead of what is going to occur when that person is 18 or 19 or 20, in terms of the natural course of their life based on their ability and the ability of their family to be caring for them or supporting them, and better identify then what's necessary to plan ahead for that individual.

Now that, I hope the member will agree, is a laudable goal and an appropriate goal. I think the challenge for us is how we put that into practice. The member has lots of experience in government. He will recognize

that that's not typically how governments work. It is very much an approach that we are committed to trying to embrace in terms of planning ahead for these individuals as they age and get away from these artificial cutoffs.

I suspect that there will always be some element of age-dependent programming, perhaps. But the more we can move away from that and focus on the needs of the individual, I think the member and I would agree, is the appropriate path to take.

N. Simons: I know it's getting late in the day. My question is about the eligibility requirements for CLBC services, specifically in reference to IQ.

Now, I know there are court actions involved on this subject. I hope that doesn't preclude the minister from being able to identify what direction the ministry is going in terms of ensuring that all individuals who require support in order to be contributing members of our community have access to it and are not excluded because of specific individual criteria.

Hon. T. Christensen: Certainly, the expectation is that there are likely to always be eligibility criteria, in terms of determining who needs support and how those supports are provided. The question, really, becomes one of what the appropriate eligibility criteria are.

There has been criticism of the current eligibility criteria, which are based on a DSM-IV assessment that is undertaken by a psychologist. I'm not going to claim for a moment to be an expert in psychology, but that is an assessment that we believe is supported by the existing law as well as by international standards.

I think it's also fair to say, though, that international standards are evolving. There are a number of jurisdictions that are struggling with the challenge of how you determine eligibility for the nature of services that an organization like CLBC provides in a way that is fair and that recognizes both the abilities and the disabilities of the persons the organization serves.

We have been involved in some work within the ministry to try and look at what other jurisdictions are doing. We've tried to look at the implications of any particular changes in terms of our ability to serve people who we may not currently be serving, and that work continues.

At the current point in time, the eligibility for CLBC services is dependent upon the DSM-IV assessment — one component of which is IQ, which the member referred to. But it is not limited to that single component.

N. Simons: Essentially, the issue has been addressed with respect to determining eligibility for young people. I guess the focus would be that the assessment should be based on functional ability and not on diagnostic findings.

I know that there are a lot of parents who are very concerned because their youngster, their former foster child, or children they know will be left without support. They know that they're going to either be victimized or become offenders in some respect. One way or another, our communities will have to reckon with the fact that their needs aren't met.

I know that there are a number of young people out there who have IQs in the low 70s but who, at the same time, are unable to use reasoning and judgment that will keep them out of harm's way. I know that you know about the case of the young individual who was arrested for breaking windows, who was essentially homeless. He had actually been in care, in the ministry's care, since he was 12, and when he turned 19 last summer, he was left without a place to live.

The transition to adulthood isn't only for those who are unknown to the ministry but for those who are actually in the care of and under the guardianship of the ministry. So the problem is obviously deeper and more critical than just finding new clients.

I'm wondering if the minister can give direction to CLBC to use functional-based assessments as opposed to diagnostic-based assessments.

Hon. T. Christensen: As I indicated, we're certainly alive to the issues that the member mentions, in that we are looking at the appropriate means for determining who should be receiving services from CLBC.

But I think it's important that we also recognize that across government there are a host of other programs and service opportunities that are intended to assist what are vulnerable British Columbians. If we look at mental health services, there are some options there — again, dependent upon an eligibility criteria. The income assistance for persons with disabilities is certainly a critical area of support for some individuals.

But the goal is to try and figure out where it is that currently people may be slipping through the proverbial cracks in the overall system and how we then help to support them. Again, this isn't specific to CLBC or to MCFD, for that matter, but government has undertaken a number of initiatives around housing supports, supportive housing, to try and address or start to address some of those gaps.

The member, I think, mentioned persons who are in care of the ministry in terms of their transitioning to adulthood. We are acutely aware of some of the challenges there. Somewhat consistent with my answer to the previous question around that transition to adulthood, we recognize that there's some additional work for us to do to be working more closely with youth in care as they transition to adulthood so that they may be more successful.

We've adopted some approaches that will allow us, provided the youth wants us to, to have greater engagement beyond the age of 19, to hopefully have greater success in that transition to independence.

We face some unique challenges, perhaps, when a youth that MCFD has had involvement with turns 19 and is no longer in care, in that they are legally independent. We can offer some supports and are working

towards doing that more effectively, but we can't obligate them to accept some of that assistance.

As the member will know, I'm sure, from his professional background and perhaps from just having been a youth at one point in time, sometimes people will sort of go off on a track that…. Notwithstanding, we try to provide the supports. We can't resolve all of those things. But I would agree that we're working to try and address some of those gaps that are there.

N. Simons: Would the minister say whether he believes that CLBC is adequately funded?

I do, actually. I think that we've worked hard to identify the funding supports that are necessary for CLBC, and we continue to work hard with CLBC to better identify the demand-side pressures.

I think it's appropriate for government and Treasury Board and the finance folks that have to be involved in these decisions to ask the tough questions. What is the nature of the service that needs to be provided? Can we be confident around the projections in terms of the funding necessary?

I think we're working very closely, between the ministry and CLBC and government generally, to better identify what we believe the necessary caseload support will be in future years so that we can align funding with the ability of CLBC to provide the necessary services.

N. Simons: I'm not allowed to ask anyone else that question, I suppose. I'm going to ask about community councils and their role in determining CLBC policy. What role do they play, how often do they meet, and how often do they report to CLBC?

Hon. T. Christensen: There are currently 17 community councils around the province, and most of them have been established over the course of the last year. As I'm sure the member knows, they're made up primarily of family members of persons with disabilities who may be receiving services from CLBC in different communities around the province.

Their role, I think it's fair to say, is evolving, but their primary role is to advise staff at a local level in terms of their perception of service needs and how services might be better provided in their particular community. So it's very much a focus on gathering that local output.

Just this past weekend the community council chairs and vice-chairs met with the board of CLBC to have an opportunity to talk about what their role might be, how they perceive their role and how they believe they can be most effective in providing that local input. Certainly, initial feedback is that that was a very positive meeting.

That's their role in respect of, I think, providing advice to CLBC as an organization and particularly the staff and the board. Their other role is to become involved in and promote local projects that support inclusion of persons with developmental disabilities. In my experience in terms of the members of community councils that I've spoken with, most of them have lots of experience with those types of initiatives and are a welcome addition.

N. Simons: I know that we don't have a lot of time left. If I could just cover the issue of Woodlands and the impact on adults with developmental disabilities and adults who have, I guess, waited for quite a long time for some form of compensation.

I think it's appropriate, though, that when we talk about an issue that does have some possible cross-jurisdictional issue involved, I would suggest that the Ministry of Children and Family Development might be able to exert a certain amount of influence from the perspective of adults living with challenges and with, as well, the impacts of historical abuse, institutional abuse.

I think that when we're talking about a legal decision as to whether or not to settle with individuals after protracted court cases and hearings and all the rest, maybe the perspective of one of the ministries that serves families will be able to impress on the minister responsible directly, the Attorney General, to make a decision that will finally allow these individuals to have some closure to what has been a difficult part of their life.

I'm simply asking if the minister will carry that message to the Attorney General and try to expedite a resolution that is a common experience resolution for those individuals. I don't know what they can do about the pre-1974 individuals. However, my question is if the minister will be able to exert his influence on the Attorney General in that regard.

Hon. T. Christensen: I do appreciate the member's question and his view on this. He is correct in that I'm relatively limited in any light I can shed on this, because I'm not directly involved, as the member knows. The Attorney General has responsibility for the file, given that it is a class action.

I do know, from conversations with the Attorney General, that the government would very much like to find a settlement in terms of this ongoing dispute. I'm led to believe that there are a host of complex legal issues that are before the courts right now around definition of the class and representation of one or more classes, all of which have served to make this much more legally complex than I suspect anybody initially anticipated.

I think that all in government, including the opposition, would like to see some resolution to this outstanding matter. I'm very confident that the Attorney General seeks that as well.

N. Simons: I don't want to open up another category of questioning, and considering that the minister

did say I was right about something in his last answer, I thought that it would be appropriate at this point to move….

Thank you very much to the minister and to his staff. I really do appreciate the opportunity to ask some questions. I'm sure that I will have more, which I'll put in writing.

Hon. T. Christensen: I move that the committee rise, report resolution and completion of the Ministry of Children and Family Development and ask leave to sit again.

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