Hansard — Thursday, May 22, 2008 a.m.

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

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Second Reading of Bills		12705
	Carbon Tax Act (Bill 37)
	Hon. C. Taylor
	S. Simpson
	B. Ralston
	M. Karagianis
	G. Robertson

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		12720
	Estimates: Ministry of Environment and Minister Responsible for Water Stewardship and Sustainable Communities
	C. Trevena
	S. Fraser
	Hon. B. Penner
	R. Chouhan
	C. Wyse

Hon. C. Richmond: In this chamber I call second reading of Bill 37, the Carbon Tax Act, with the hon. Minister of Finance; in Section A, the Douglas Fir Committee Room, continued Committee of Supply estimates debate of the Ministry of Environment.

Hon. C. Taylor: I move that Bill 37, the Carbon Tax Act, be read a second time.

Bill 37, the Carbon Tax Act, follows through on the government's commitment in Budget 2008 to introduce a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

Bill 37 introduces a comprehensive, revenue-neutral carbon tax that will encourage all British Columbian families and businesses to lower their carbon footprint and will help meet our goal of reducing emissions by 33 percent by 2020.

There is considerable evidence that the climate is changing, that it is largely being caused by human activities and that its effects will worsen if no action is taken. Most of the world's top scientific experts in the subject agree with these conclusions, drawn from the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

There is also an overwhelming scientific consensus that the main cause of climate change is the creation of greenhouse gases due to the use of fossil fuels by humans. In B.C., 65.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions were released in 2005. Under a business-as-usual scenario, emissions are anticipated to continue to rise as they have in the past. However, this government is committed to reducing 2020 emissions to 33 percent below the 2007 level.

Madam Speaker, we consulted extensively prior to introducing the carbon tax and found that in B.C. a rare consensus has formed among individuals, certain business groups, environmental organizations and economists that a carbon tax is a key tool in the move to reduce emissions, provided that the additional revenue is recycled to taxpayers through reductions to other taxes.

Bill 37 imposes a broadly based revenue-neutral tax on the purchase and use of fossil fuels in British Columbia beginning July 1, 2008. The tax rate is calculated on the CO2-equivalent emissions generated from the burning of fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas, home heating fuel, propane and coal. Since different fossil fuels generate different amounts of CO2-equivalent emissions when burned, the carbon tax has been translated into tax rates for each specific type of fuel.

As announced in the budget, the carbon tax is based on five principles. First, the tax will be revenue-neutral. All revenue from the tax will be returned to taxpayers through tax cuts. For 2008 and 2009 the tax cuts take the form of reductions in personal and corporate income tax rates as provided in Bill 2.

Bill 37 requires the Minister of Finance to table a three-year carbon tax plan with the main estimates every year. This plan must show how carbon tax revenues will be returned to taxpayers over the following three fiscal years. The minister must also show how any excess revenues from previous years will be returned. This ensures that there will be full, transparent, ongoing revenue recycling.

A financial penalty will be imposed on the Minister of Finance if the legislation necessary to return the carbon tax revenue to taxpayers for the first fiscal year of the plan is not introduced within 120 days from the date the plan was tabled.

The second principle is that the tax rate will start low, based on the equivalent of $10 per metric tonne of CO2-equivalent emissions, and will rise gradually to $30 per tonne by 2012. For certainty, the rates for the first five years are included in the legislation.

This phased-in approach will give taxpayers time to make adjustments to reduce their emissions and, consequently, their potential tax burden. It also provides the certainty required for a price signal to be effective. It will encourage the development and adoption of new and more efficient technologies and will not penalize taxpayers for decisions made prior to the announcement of the tax.

The third principle is that low-income individuals and families are protected. The ongoing, refundable, low-income climate action tax credit will ensure that those with lower incomes are, on average, compensated for the tax they pay and that most will be better off. This is a continuing commitment. The amount of the credit is laid out in Budget 2008 for the first two years, and the government will review the credit annually to make sure that it does reflect the impact of the carbon tax on lower-income groups.

Fourth, the carbon tax has the broadest base possible, given current technological, measurement and data limitations. Virtually all emissions from fossil fuel combustion in B.C. captured in Environment Canada's national inventory report will be captured by this tax.

The final principle is that the tax will be fully integrated with other greenhouse gas reduction measures. To avoid unfairness and double taxation, provisions in Bill 37 include general and specific regulatory powers to provide relief from the carbon tax for taxpayers who may be subject to other greenhouse gas reduction measures, including the cap-and-trade system.

Madam Speaker, the carbon tax is intended to tax carbon-emitting fuels used in British Columbia. This

carbon tax relies on the protocols developed by the IPCC to distinguish between domestic or made-in-B.C. and international emissions. Based on these internationally accepted protocols, the B.C. carbon tax will not apply to exports or international aviation or marine use. The carbon tax will be a consumption tax, like the motor fuel tax, and will be payable at the time of retail purchase or use of fossil fuels in B.C.

There were extensive industry consultations after Budget 2008 to ensure that the compliance burden on those who will collect the tax is minimized. With the exception of natural gas and propane, tax collection and remittance procedures for the carbon tax will be based on the motor fuel tax. The collection of the tax on propane and natural gas will be administered like the social service tax, because this is the approach the sellers are most familiar with.

The legislation has similar provisions to the Motor Fuel Tax Act and the Social Service Tax Act with respect to refunds, audit and inspections, assessments, penalties and appeals.

The carbon tax has been designed to achieve a very important objective, and in order for it to be truly effective, the tax has to be applied consistently. Each of us has the opportunity to reduce the impact of the tax by making climate-smart choices in our daily lives. By putting a price on carbon and then returning every dollar raised by the carbon tax to individuals and businesses in B.C. through tax cuts, our approach is a win for the environment and a win for the economy. We all contribute to climate change, and we will only make progress if all British Columbians participate.

S. Simpson: I'm pleased to have the opportunity to join in this debate, as it will be around Bill 37, and I would note for your information, hon. Speaker, that I am the designated speaker on this bill.

One of the early comments of the minister certainly is something that I agree with, which is the whole question around the importance of this issue of climate change. This is an issue that has not just captured global interest and attention but really, I think, has begun to bring people around the world and engage them in a discussion about climate change — what the impact on our planet will be, what the impact on biodiversity is, what the impact will be on future generations of Canadians and of people around the world.

We know that this is arguably the issue of our time. We know that this is an issue that we all need to be engaged in and that we all need to make efforts to resolve.

We also know that the importance of action is pretty essential around this. What we know about the reality of that is that there is a body of eight or ten or 12 initiatives that people talk about, including emissions pricing. That envelope of actions makes sense, but what we also know about them is that this is a work in progress.

We don't really know a lot about how these programs will work when they're engaged. We have a responsibility to develop and evolve approaches that allow us to, in fact, find solutions that work for everybody and, in British Columbia, solutions that work for all British Columbians.

I guess the first note point that I'd like to make around this particular piece of legislation…. It is important legislation. It's certainly important legislation for this government. The government introduced a budget that they called the green budget. In that budget, there were a limited number of initiatives, but there was the tax — the tax that's reflected by Bill 37.

This really was the keystone of the budget. It arguably is the keystone piece of legislation for this government in this session. What we know is that the extent of debate on this legislation, arguably the most important piece of legislation that this government will bring in this session, will end in less than an hour and 45 minutes. Before noon this debate will be adjourned, and that will be, in all likelihood, the end of discussion of Bill 37 and of this carbon tax.

On the most important piece of legislation that we are going to see, based on the government's own pronouncements around this, there will be less than two hours of discussion in this Legislature about this bill. Hon. Speaker, the government will tell you that time is running out and that they don't have the opportunity to bring it for longer, and they will make suggestions around the role of the opposition and whether we would hold the bill up.

Well, this session, with the addition of this week, becomes 13 weeks long. We have had a 13-week session by the time we close this out at the end of next week — 13 weeks to have brought what is arguably the most important piece of legislation for the government in this session. And when do they bring it? They bring it with half a dozen days left in the session. They bring it at the very end.

They bring it at a time that does not allow for full and free debate. They bring it at a time when everything is getting jammed up at the end, and they introduce it, arguably, at ten o'clock in the morning. To the best of our knowledge and of what we believe, when the debate adjourns for lunch at 12 o'clock, it will not come back. There will not be another opportunity to discuss this bill.

The bill has significant flaws in it — significant flaws that need work, significant flaws that may have been able to be addressed with amendment — but we'll never get to that discussion of amendment, because the debate will end after a handful of speakers at best.

This is a problem that we have seen time and time again during this session. It is endemic of this government's penchant for and commitment to secrecy. It is endemic to this Premier's and this government's sense of entitlement in this province.

What it has resulted in on this issue — that we, on this side of the House, understand is arguably the most compelling issue that we will have to deal with over the next 20 or 30 or 40 years — is a tax and, increasingly, an overall package of initiatives that aren't working and that will not accomplish the objective that this government says it desires to achieve.

What we know is that this debate around Bill 37…. Let me be clear about this. This is not a debate about the value or the principle of emissions pricing. It is not a debate about the value or principle of cap-and-trade. It is not a debate about the value of a carbon tax or about the potential role of a carbon tax as a tool, among many others, to bring down emissions. It is not about whether these are good ideas. This is about this particular piece of legislation. This is about this particular bill. This is about whether this bill accomplishes the objectives it needs to accomplish.

It's much like a piece of legislation that we've been dealing with earlier — Bill 18, the cap-and-trade legislation. We, on this side of the House, are supportive of a cap-and-trade model. We, on this side of the House, believe that cap-and-trade is an effective tool. The problem that we have with the legislation in Bill 18 is that it is enabling legislation. It tells us very little, if anything, about what the government's intentions are around cap-and-trade.

It has pages and pages of regulatory authority for cabinet that authorize cabinet to be able to, essentially, write every rule, set every standard, set every benchmark and to make decisions about auction or allocation, about thresholds and about scope — without bringing any of that discussion back here, or without having that discussion with British Columbians anywhere in this province. That's not acceptable to this side of the House. It's not an acceptable model, and it's not one that we can support.

When you look at what happens around that, you only have to really look at the kinds of comments around that secrecy that I've talked about, particularly in regard to the issue of the cap-and-trade bill. It references well to this carbon tax bill, to Bill 37.

I'd like to read a quote from a letter that was sent from the David Suzuki Foundation to the Minister of Environment, in regard to Bill 18. I believe it is applicable to most of the activity of the government. "The breadth of confidentiality provisions in this legislation undermines the crucial objective of keeping government processes open and accountable to the public. Within the context of effective climate change policy, provisions limiting transparency are profoundly damaging to the public trust regarding the government's commitment to have large emitters implement their fair share of emission reductions."

That's what the foundation said in response to that piece of legislation. What we know is that that piece of legislation leaves so much sitting behind closed doors at the cabinet table that I believe the public just simply doesn't have comfort with that level of unfettered control.

The principal value of a carbon tax, of Bill 37, which is the other piece of the emission-pricing strategy…. Emission-pricing strategies tend to come in the two pieces. There's a cap-and-trade option, there's the carbon tax option, and there's a combination of the two. The second piece of that really is the carbon tax itself.

We need to be clear, and I want to restate again that this is not a question of being opposed to the principle of carbon taxes. It's not a question of being opposed to the principles and the importance of emissions pricing, but there are serious questions about this fuel tax and about whether it is fair and whether it is effective. Those are two questions that need to be answered. Until we can answer the questions about fairness and effectiveness, we really have to ask ourselves whether this tax is accomplishing its objective.

When you look at the government's actions over the past seven years, not over the past year…. The government likes to talk about the last year, since the revelation of the Premier on climate change. But when we go back and begin to look at the conduct of this government over the last seven years on issues related to climate change, on the positions that the government took in its first term and continued into its second term until about a year ago, what we see, of course, is that the government has done a couple of things.

First of all, we know that the Premier initially rejected the notion of Kyoto….

J. Rustad: It's a great pleasure today…. Not often do I have school visits come down from my riding. It's a very long journey to make. Today I have a group of 18 students and adults from the Northside Christian School in Vanderhoof. They're here to tour the facility and to see the proceedings that are going on. I had a chance to meet with them earlier. They're a great group of kids, and I ask that the House please make them welcome.

S. Simpson: As I was saying, part of what we have to look at…. When we look at where the government is today on this particular piece of legislation, we need to look back at the record of the government and determine whether, as British Columbians, we can have confidence in this government to achieve its objective.

We know that this is a government that rejected Kyoto, essentially — rejected what was then the federal government of the day's initiatives to be part of the Kyoto protocol. We have a Premier who dismissed the role that British Columbia could play around climate change for most of the first term.

We have a government that has looked to expand — with significant, record subsidies — the oil and gas sector, the production of fossil fuels. We have a government that has continued to promote and look for ways to make offshore oil and gas happen. We have a government that has continued to promote a range of issues around the advancement of roads and bridges over transit.

We have a government that has created a total disconnect between this file related to climate change, which gets driven out of the Premier's office, and what seems to be much of the program and policy of the government in many other areas. That's not necessarily all that the government has done.

In contrast, the previous government, the NDP government that preceded the B.C. Liberals before 2001, took a look and developed a series of environmental initiatives and climate change initiatives that, if the government had not torn them up, would have put us in an ideal place today. What did the government do?

What we know the previous government did is pioneer integrated land use planning that looked at how it balanced environmental, economic and social priorities in ways that had never been done before. It included strengthening protection of the agricultural land reserve, strengthening regional planning powers and encouraging the reduction of sprawl.

The NDP government developed B.C.'s first greenhouse gas action plan and climate change plan. It pioneered the Green Economy Secretariat, which was developed to look at the creation of green jobs and to stimulate a green economy. It established the strictest automobile emissions controls in Canada, and it expanded transit. It established innovative green building initiatives, AirCare and Power Smart programs. It met the UN goal of protecting 12 percent of our land base through the Muskwa-Kechika, Kitlope, Khutzeymateen and many other protected areas and parks.

Hon. Speaker, it was the first government to take steps forward on tax-shifting, and it established the position of a sustainability commissioner through the Auditor General's office that would have reported to this Legislature, had it been put in place after 2001.

The challenge here, and what we need to understand, is that nearly all of these initiatives, without exception, were wiped out by this Premier and this government within 30 days of coming into office. They took all of those initiatives. Now, I understand that the idea of sustainability and the idea of responsible planning is a foreign matter to the Minister of Transportation. That's okay. He doesn't understand sustainability.

S. Simpson: So what we have is a government that dismantled most of the sustainability initiatives that were in place, a Premier who dismissed issues related to climate change at the time he was elected and continued to dismiss them until about a year ago, when he discovered his new religion on this.

It's the secrecy. It is this record of a lack of leadership by this government over seven years and this inordinate secrecy that we see today that makes British Columbians nervous and concerned about whether this government can be trusted, on this file, to move things forward.

As I noted previously, there are significant current contradictions. There are the contradictions around the significant record-breaking subsidies for oil and gas at a time when we're reducing fossil fuels. There are contradictions around what's suggested with this tax itself, as to what's required in order to make this tax work. I would note that in this tax itself the projections are….

Interestingly, in an editorial piece in The Vancouver Sun related to this, Harvey Enchin said, on May 2, "…the revenue forecast" for the fuel tax "requires that the number of cars on B.C. roads increases at double the rate of population growth and that demand for gasoline and diesel fuel rises faster than any time in the past 20 years," in order to make the estimates work.

What we also know is that the projections in the budget are for 2 percent increases in fuel consumption every year over the next four years. We know that ICBC has projected out an 11 percent increase in vehicles that they will insure over the next three years in this province. So clearly, there's no expectation from this government that over the life of this we're going to begin to see a reduction in vehicles on the road. I would think that a reduction in vehicles on the road would be an objective if this tax was to become effective. But those contradictions are the reality of this government and the way that it deals with matters.

So what about the tax? Is the tax fair, and is it effective? Those are the questions that we need answers to. We have said that we don't believe the tax is fair, and we have said that we don't believe the tax will be effective. This tax applies to people without alternatives. It applies to people who face heating costs that are greater in regions. It makes no acknowledgment of those regional differences, and this is a place where we disagree and part company with the government on this tax. We represent and recognize the need for regional fairness and regional differences.

It is a tax that potentially compromises key industries and threatens jobs. It's a tax that we don't see the balance in, in terms of balancing it with other sustainability measures around economic and social matters. It's a tax that downloads to community services, whether they be school boards, hospitals or local governments. We have heard from all of those communities, as have the members on that side. The Minister of State for Mining is being a little testy today, because I'm sure he's heard from many of his constituents their concern about the tax that he's embracing.

We have a tax that applies to public services, with no recognition by this government that those services are cash-strapped to start with because of the levels of support that they've got from this government. They're services that will cause increased additional costs for people in British Columbia.

For example, the city of Port Coquitlam estimates the fuel tax will add over $800,000 to their five-year economic plan, resulting in about 1¾ percent tax increases

at the local level in order for them to meet the challenge of this tax. The government is not discussing that matter with them. The government has not engaged in that.

As a result of that, we have a growing list of communities and key organizations that are raising concerns, whether it be Port Coquitlam, Prince George, Quesnel, Fort St. John, Kitimat, the North Central Municipal Association, other municipal associations or the B.C. School Trustees Association. We now have mayors in communities around this province encouraging their councils and councils looking at adopting resolutions that say they will hold back the tax in order to protect the interests of their members.

The other thing we know about these communities is that not one of these communities, not one of these mayors, has said they don't want to be a participant in helping to resolve climate change. Not one of these mayors has said that they don't believe there are costs that will need to be paid by people in their communities.

But what they do say is: "We have not been consulted. We have not been talked to. We have not been engaged in a discussion about the important issues in our community and had the opportunity to make our case to the Finance Minister, to the Premier, to the climate secretariat — and not just to make our case but to make our case and to be heard." Well, that secrecy and that lack of fairness create a huge, huge problem.

The other unfair aspect of this is that it does…. While the Minister of Finance says it captures all emissions, the reality is that we know there are 30-plus percent of emissions that won't be captured — some of them from the big polluters — for a number of reasons. There is no sense of how those get captured in the short term.

The government will tell us that they may get captured by cap-and-trade down the road, but we don't know what cap-and-trade is going to look like. That discussion is ongoing. We have no idea what it's going to look like, and we're not confident about when it will actually come into play.

The other issue around fairness…. The Minister of Finance talked about the low-income tax credit. We know that for the first year or so, the low-income tax credit works pretty well. It works well to offset the costs of the tax, but that becomes much less sure in future years. We don't see a guarantee in here that people will actually be protected for their costs — low-income folks. That guarantee is not there in years 3 and 4 and 5.

What we know is that if we see increases, as has been discussed, in the tax credit linked to the rate of inflation, yet we see the tax going up at a significantly faster rate than the rate of inflation, then people will fall behind. It will be the people who are most vulnerable and who are least able to deal with additional costs who will fall behind.

We know, as well, that those costs for those folks will be reflected in ferries, will be reflected in food costs, will be reflected in a range of costs. There is no reason to believe that is going to be offset, because there is no indication as to how those costs get offset for people in those situations.

So we have a situation where we have a tax that isn't fair, a tax that doesn't recognize regional issues, a tax that was developed without consultation. When all of those matters are taken into account and you say, "Okay, that's all occurred," then you have to ask yourself: if it's not fair, is it at least effective? Is it at least effective? Is it at least going to accomplish the objective? This is a place where we will have some debate, as well, around this question of effectiveness.

What the Minister of Finance told us in her opening comments is that it puts a price on emissions, and she's correct. This puts a price on emissions. What she didn't tell us is that the expectations and the projections are that it will have a minimal impact on the reduction in emissions through 2020. Right now, based on the budget documents and on the numbers in the budget, what we know is that the government is expecting about 2 percent of emissions to be reduced by the tax by 2020 — 2 percent of our emissions, something in that range. That's maybe about three million tonnes or so, a relatively small number.

The question then is: is the tax going to be effective as structured? Does the tax work best at this front end? Would the tax have been better placed at source and in ways that in some cases…? In some of the Scandinavian countries they appear to have had some greater success by placing it elsewhere and structuring the tax quite differently.

We wouldn't know that, because that discussion was never had. There was no public discussion. The government hasn't released economic modelling to show how this tax succeeds. None of that information has been provided to this House. None of that information has been provided to British Columbians.

It's simply a trust-me. It's a trust-me with very large tax breaks to corporate British Columbia and to others. You almost have to wonder whether those tax breaks are a bigger part of the deal.

We assumed that should the debate have actually gone through second reading, if we weren't an hour and a bit away from the debate closing on this matter after less than two hours on the government's signature legislation…. You have the government's signature legislation, and they're prepared to close it in two hours.

Well, there are amendments that could have been moved to this legislation around regional fairness. There are amendments that could have been moved to ensure the protection of low-income people. There are amendments that could have been moved about reviews of the legislation and its effectiveness. There are a variety of things that could have been done, which may have improved this bill.

In fact, we may have moved a referral if we had had a full and free debate on this. Maybe we would have moved a referral that would have asked this Legislature to do what the Premier hasn't been prepared to do.

The Leader of the Official Opposition and I recently wrote to the Premier. We wrote to the Premier on April 25 and asked the Premier at that time to establish an all-party committee of the Legislature to give the issue

of the carbon tax, the issue of cap-and-trade, the recommendations of the WCI, which we're now seeing — they're being discussed in meetings yesterday and today in Salt Lake City — and to give the work of the Climate Action Team around 2012 and 2016 short-term targets and their recommendations, which will become available in July….

Give that material to an all-party committee, along with access to the climate change secretariat and their data. Ask that committee to spend its summer out on the road talking to British Columbians, talking to experts, talking to others around the world who know about this and can provide information and to come back for the fall session to dedicate a significant part of the fall session to the question of climate change — put these issues on the table and see whether we could in fact come up with a program that involves British Columbians.

I know that for many in the cabinet, the idea of involving citizens in matters that affect them and that they pay for is a foreign matter. It's a foreign matter.

S. Simpson: I'm sure the Minister of Transportation could get up and join the debate afterwards, if he'd like. He'll get his chance.

What we know is that we asked the Premier to set up that committee to take this issue, which is arguably an issue more than any other that British Columbians should be engaged in. But the Premier rejected that.

The Premier said that he doesn't want legislators talking to British Columbians about climate change. He doesn't want legislators talking in an open and transparent way. He doesn't want legislators out spending that time doing their job on this critical issue, bringing back information for this Legislature to consider in the fall, in our fall sitting, and hopefully being able to move forward with a program that was bipartisan in nature.

But that's not what we have. Instead, we have this tax. You know, when we look at this tax and look at who is concerned about it, it's interesting to note that we in the official opposition are certainly concerned. But it's interesting — the comments of the leader of the B.C. Green Party.

What we know, of course, is that there is a case to be made for that connection. We know that companies in British Columbia that own facilities that emitted 100,000 tonnes or more of greenhouse gases in 2006 donated over $1.6 million to the provincial Liberals between 2005 and 2007. So the big polluters are the big donors.

There's a direct correlation between those who pollute and those who give money to the B.C. Liberal Party. I suspect there's a direct correlation there as to why we see with this tax and why we see with most of the initiatives of this government the talk about individual responsibility and about loading this onto consumers, with very little of it back at source, to date, around the big polluters. It will be important for us to see where the government goes with that over the next period of time.

What we know about the whole question of meeting the challenge of climate change is that while emissions pricing certainly is important, there is no assurance here that it reduces emissions. What it does is says, "Let the market deal," but it does not say much about reducing emissions.

What we know, if we're serious about this, is that we need a combination of programs. We need a combination of programs that provide for a strong regulatory regime and that provide incentives for people to be able to make changes in behaviour and that move through and look at ways that we engage British Columbians in finding solutions.

I want to take a couple of minutes and talk about some of the aspects of a framework, with some examples about what we think needs to be done if we're going to be successful.

The first thing we believe is that whether it be the B.C. Liberals, the NDP or anybody else, we have no monopoly on good ideas. There is no monopoly on good ideas. We know that there are many good ideas out there in British Columbia and elsewhere.

We know there are people out there who want to be part of this discussion. We know they want to be engaged in the solution. We know they want solutions that they can take ownership of. We know they are prepared and willing to do that, and we know they're prepared to pay the price to make British Columbians' contribution in the fight against greenhouse gases.

So we need to start from the position that says we are going to talk to British Columbians. Leadership is about saying: "Here are the objectives that we need to accomplish in terms of reduction of emissions. Here are the objectives we need to accomplish, and we all have a role and responsibility to play in getting there." And it's to then say: "Now let's talk about how we get there, and let's develop solutions that will work."

It's not about edicts from on high. It's not about an autocratic approach to this. It's about being firm with your objectives and then being confident enough in your ability to sit down with people and actually engage in a discussion that you hope brings consensus and engages people in a way that allows solutions to be achieved. That was the reason for the letter to the Premier. Clearly, it was not successful.

What we're looking at here is a plan. We're looking for a framework that needs to be fair. It needs to have

equity for all regions and for all citizens. It needs to be effective in terms of its actual climate change pollution reductions. It needs to be open and accountable in its planning and implementation, and it needs to encompass within it the kind of environmental stewardship and resiliency that our communities need to meet the challenges of climate change.

We're arguing, on this side, for seven core components to that kind of plan. We're arguing that there are seven aspects of that, which we need to engage this discussion with British Columbians.

The first of those is tougher regulations for polluters. We need to have tough and compulsory regulations, which are essential to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. What we know is that voluntary measures don't work. They certainly haven't worked to date, and there's no reason to believe they would work effectively in the future.

You need, when you're going to put a regulatory regime in place, to increase the monitoring and enforcement to ensure that you are in fact accomplishing the objectives you've laid out.

Just an idea of some of the kinds of things that we should be doing now and things that we could do very quickly. We need to toughen oil and gas regulations by banning fugitive emissions and all flaring. We know there's some work to be done to get there in terms of fugitive emissions and flaring, but we should be looking at charging royalties on that flaring and those emissions until such time as the company finds the way to reduce and eliminate that flaring and emissions. I'm sure it would be a great incentive for them if they had to pay royalties on that to be able to do that and reduce those.

We need to invest, and we need to encourage the industries to invest in carbon capture and storage around coal and other producers of carbon dioxide. Coal is an important industry in British Columbia. It's going to be an important industry for a long time to come. We need to develop the carbon capture-and-storage strategies not just for British Columbia but so that we can have technology that we hopefully have some capacity and ability to sell, as well as selling our product.

We need to look at the green building code that gets talked about. We need to implement a comprehensive green building code. Buildings are a significant portion of our emissions. Municipal governments play a significant role in emissions; 60 percent to 70 percent of emissions are linked to local governments in some way, shape or form.

The building code is an integral part of the work that they do. We need to have the building code in place that begins to get us where we want to go on this issue, and we need to reduce waste going into and emissions coming from landfills.

Those are just some examples of some of the regulatory efforts that we need to be making in British Columbia. We do need fair and effective emissions pricing. We need emissions pricing that not only helps us to change behaviour and encourage alternatives that reduce emissions but is fair, effective and looks at cracking down on those who create the emissions.

A cap-and-trade system is a big piece of that. It's a piece that we think needs to be done in a thoughtful way. It's a piece that we're looking very closely at — what the western climate initiative is saying. We're looking at their recommendations that are on the table right now in Salt Lake City, which will be refined, and we'll be looking forward to looking at those more. But we know some of the components of that cap-and-trade system that absolutely need to be in place. We need to set aggressive real caps — not for some unspecified time in the future, but real caps.

We should be talking about what those caps look like now. Even if the plan, the program and the cap-and-trade model aren't in place today, we should be looking at and talking about what those caps are, if for no other reason than to telegraph to industry the kinds of numbers we're looking at and the kinds of approaches we're taking.

We need to target all significant polluters including oil and gas, large industry, commercial transportation, aviation and shipping as it functions within our area. We see that the WCI is talking about 10,000 to 25,000 tonnes as the threshold. That seems like a pretty good number. That's a number that we need to be looking at — not 100,000 tonnes, but a significantly lower number that will capture all of the players.

We also need to capture transportation. That's a very large piece of this issue for us, and we'll need to see what the recommendations are. But British Columbia needs to be saying yes to capturing transportation.

We also need to auction these permits. Allocation is not a system that is recognized by many as effective. We need to look at an auction system that auctions a majority or all of the permits. We certainly need to have a discussion about what those levels are and whether you cap the auction amounts in the early days, in the early cycle of a cap-and-trade system. But we absolutely need to look at an auction system.

As Bill 18, the cap-and-trade bill, talks about offsets in a significant way, offsets are an important tool. They're an important transition tool to assist industries as they transition. They're an important tool for some industries that are going to have a particularly challenging time, like aviation, to be able to reduce their emissions because of fuel demands that they have not found alternatives for yet. There's no doubt about that.

They should be seen as a short-term measure. They should be seen as a transition measure. They should not be seen as a way for large polluters to buy their way out of reducing emissions. Ultimately, the objective has to be the reduction of emissions. The objective has to be getting to the point where we don't require emissions pricing because we have in fact reduced our emissions. But we're a long way from there.

The current tax — Bill 37, this tax — does not tell us in any significant way how emissions get reduced. So what about a fair carbon tax? Well, a fair carbon tax does need, in a place like British Columbia, to recognize regional differences and recognize questions around access to public transportation, if transportation is the key issue.

A fair carbon tax does need to look at industry and job impacts and develop transition plans so that B.C. workers, businesses and communities benefit from new innovations in this clean energy economy. It does need to link more closely to what that green economy looks like. It does need to have some thought put into how we manage jobs and business, how we move to the green economy that everybody talks about.

But there is no discussion going on — certainly no discussion in this Legislature — no platform or forum for that discussion about how we begin to in fact get that clean energy economy that everybody is looking for and that will be essential if we're going to succeed in reducing our emissions. It needs to take some practical steps at the outset.

For example, this tax, we would argue, should exempt coloured gas for agricultural production. It's not an alternative that many of our farmers have — to not be able to use that fuel. It's being taxed at a time when farmers are being challenged. We say that's an exemption that would be fair. We would have moved that amendment, but we're not going to get there, because this debate will be two hours in its entirety for what is arguably the signature piece of legislation for this government in this session.

We need to ensure that local and public services are not eroded by this tax. It's not about exempting them from the tax, but it's about ensuring that they are not hurt in a way that actually reduces services, whether it's in our schools, our local government or our health care system or, for that matter, our non-profit social services.

We need to ensure from the outset that the credits to low- and middle-income households — but primarily low-income households — are there to ensure that they are not hurt by this, to ensure that revenue neutrality, as the minister talks about, actually is also about a neutrality of impact on people at the low-income levels.

We need to help increase conservation and green energy production. Measures are needed to increase green energy and conservation. They include a number of items that I'd like to suggest we should be talking about here. They should be matters of debate here. They should be a discussion for the legislative committee that we've called for.

We need comprehensive home and small business retrofit programs that encourage the replacement of old furnaces and hot water systems, the installation of solar panels and other technologies that will conserve energy. If we want people to change their behaviour, we need to give them the opportunities to do that in much better ways than are being suggested here.

We need real assistance for local government and other public services to increase energy efficiency. Local governments are being told that by 2012, they're to be carbon-neutral. But we see nothing — absolutely nothing — here, only a couple of years away, that suggests how this government is going to assist local governments in doing this.

What we see instead are matters like this fuel tax, with no consultation with local governments and with an increasing fear on their part that the download after download that they have seen from the B.C. Liberals are only going to accelerate. More and more demands are put on local government as this government sheds its responsibility on these matters — more and more downloads. We need real assistance and real support for local government to be able to meet the challenge and, in all likelihood, provide the real leadership in many ways on the question of greenhouse gas emissions.

We need to mandate B.C. Hydro to develop a real green energy plan — one that serves the public interest rather than private profits and encourages local energy plans that involve local governments and first nations. We know that this government, through its private power strategy, has eroded and eroded B.C. Hydro's role and continues to do that. It is only through the public reaction that you have seen any halting or slowing of that process, as the government gets concerned as thousands upon thousands of British Columbians around this province raise serious concerns about this government's privatization strategy for B.C. Hydro.

Thousands and thousands of British Columbians come forward to say that B.C. Hydro is an important part of our heritage, that it is a critical tool in a green energy strategy and that it should be the leader in developing that strategy. It shouldn't be pushed to the back burner. It shouldn't be eroded or compromised.

We believe that too. We believe B.C. Hydro has a key role to play in the success of climate change initiatives in British Columbia, in the success of green energy initiatives. But we do not believe that that can be accomplished while their role continues to be eroded through the conduct of this government.

Transportation. We need transportation solutions. We know that almost 40 percent of emissions can be linked to transportation matters and can be connected in some way to transportation. We need to increase the investment in transit now, and we would argue that we should roll back the last fare increase.

We know that in this last year, in this budget, we have seen a massive budget, in excess of $800 million, for roads and bridges, and a relatively miniscule budget around increased transit. The question becomes: what is the priority? What is the priority when the budget for roads and bridges is more than ten times the size of the commitment that we see for transit?

At a time when we have a government that has talked about a transit plan, yet they have not put the dollars on the table…. When we look out over the next three years, we don't see the dollars on the table to make that plan a reality or to start to move it towards being a reality. We have to question the sincerity of that plan when there is no money attached to it. We have here a government that we have seen with rhetoric after rhetoric on these issues.

We need enhanced tools like tax increment financing for local governments to fund much-needed transportation projects. They have to have other ways to get at this funding. It can't be done with property taxes; it can't be

done with fare increases. There have to be other ways to get at that if we're serious, but we don't see those efforts being made on the part of this government to find innovative ideas.

It's time for a real road-to-rail strategy in British Columbia for rural B.C. that invests in rail to move goods in and out of communities. It's time for rail-to-bus linkages that provide transportation alternatives to put more people on trains and fewer trucks on the road and for a B.C. diesel strategy that would encourage heavy-duty truck fleets and passenger vehicles to move to biodiesel that is produced from waste materials.

We want to be clear there. We believe there is a strategy to produce biodiesel based on the use of waste materials, and we would support that. We believe that that is the way to go, but that's not what's being talked about with the biofuels bill here. That's not the discussion here at all.

We need to look at local land use planning and resource management issues. Local governments and first nations will be key partners in the climate change fight, and they must be at the table from the outset. They must have the tools and resources needed to ensure that their communities have the ability to adapt to the real impacts of climate change and to support that fight.

That means that at the start we should be repealing the Significant Projects Streamlining Act and other pieces of legislation, like the clauses in Bill 30. Those are pieces that the Premier put in place that significantly reduce local government authority, planning and control, on planning matters primarily. We certainly know that local government does a significantly better job of planning than the B.C. Liberal government.

We need to provide provincial incentives and regulations to promote compact communities as a positive alternative to sprawl. We know that our local communities have to have increased capacity to build compact communities, to design neighbourhood centres, to protect the ALR, to be able to ensure that we are putting more people in communities that increase the capacity and the demand for transit, so that we can begin to provide bus systems in the communities that don't have them today.

We've got the population levels there that, in fact, will ensure a ridership that makes it economical. But you don't have that if you don't design the communities, and you don't get the communities without the transit. That requires a degree of thoughtfulness and planning that hasn't necessarily been evident with the government across the way.

We need to, as I said, provide better protection for our agricultural land through the ALR. We need to protect agricultural land from development at a time when we know that food security is a key issue. We need to ensure the integrity of the ALR, and we need to ensure the integrity of the ALR is protected in an open and transparent way. There are serious questions about whether that is or has been occurring in this province.

We need to make sure first nations are at the table. We now know…. We have seen the concern as the new relationship begins to unravel for the government because of the lack of meaningful consultation on a range of issues. We are now increasingly seeing senior first nations leaders in the province raising serious concerns about the collapse of the new relationship and what that will mean. What we need to ensure on this issue around climate change is that we redouble our efforts to ensure the first nations have a meaningful and substantive place at the table to be able to help us deal with these issues of climate change.

We need to create a sustainable society and economy. One of the things that becomes clearer, as I learn more and more about this issue, is that it isn't, of course, just a challenge but that there are great economic opportunities around climate change. We know that markets are being created and that people will get wealthy out of markets on things like cap-and-trade systems. We know that there's speculation now related to climate change initiatives. We know that there are businesses popping up to deal with questions, to create offset opportunities — some of them very credible and legitimate, some of them less so. There are just a growing number of opportunities being created.

We've seen the biofuels debate, which moved from an idea that most people said looked like a very good idea to one that's now raising serious concerns about the future of food security on the globe. But what they do, clearly, is create opportunities.

So how do we deal with that? What should we be doing? Well, we should be developing a green industrial policy — one with climate-friendly tax credits that looks at ways to encourage people into the new green economy, one that leverages federal dollars in green directions, expands funding for the development of clean energy technology. We need to provide transition support and strategies for industries and workers at risk, including long-term sustainability plans for forestry.

Our forest sector is in serious trouble. We know that. We have had that discussion day in and day out over the last number of weeks in this place. We are not seeing the plans that are necessary to begin to revitalize our forest sector. We need to do that. We need to develop that revitalization strategy, with climate change in mind, with adaptation strategies in mind and begin to move forward there.

We need to reinvest in the public service, to ensure proper monitoring, research and enforcement. There are an awful lot of programs and initiatives that we've seen enunciated in legislation over this session, not the least of which is Bill 37, the carbon tax. Those programs will require staff. They'll require expertise. They'll require people to be able to do inspections, to audit, to monitor, to do assessment, to do analysis. Those are new tasks, new responsibilities over and above what government already has on its plate, and we need to ensure that the resources are there and prioritized there to make sure that we, in fact, can get at those issues.

We need to implement a curriculum that teaches future adults how to adapt and flourish as citizens for our climate. When we talk about changes in behaviour,

I can't think of any tool that would be more effective than to begin the discussion of sustainability at a very early age in school and to continue that discussion throughout high school so that we have kids coming out of high school having a whole different view of what sustainability is, what their responsibilities are, what society's responsibilities are, what government's responsibilities are. That will begin the shift.

If we started that today, in a decade we would have a group of young adults, many of them hopefully leading to leadership positions, who would have a fundamentally different view of what sustainability was, a fundamentally different understanding and appreciation of it and, I believe, a much greater commitment to beginning to make the changes and sustaining the changes that are necessary for us to shift this world in a way that needs to happen and for us in British Columbia to do our part in a meaningful way.

We need to talk about leadership and accountability. We know that bold action is needed, but we know that this action has to be grounded in leadership, and it must be undertaken in ways that are transparent and accountable to the people of B.C. We can't go it alone in this province. Whether it be this tax, whether it be cap-and-trade, whether it be vehicle emissions reductions, we don't have the capacity in British Columbia to do this on our own.

We need to step up and be a leader in this country in more ways than simply press releases and rhetoric. We need to be a leader in moving the federal government and moving our other provincial counterparts to a different place. That's the leadership that needs to be shown.

It's unfortunate. I found it disappointing that at the time when the Premiers met in British Columbia…. Our Premier chaired one of those sessions that related to the issues of climate change. We saw the Premier of Alberta essentially not find it important enough to stay for that session. We've seen the federal government be incredibly resistant to climate initiatives. What British Columbia has done is stay essentially silent instead of encouraging both Alberta and the federal government to step up and play a more important role and play a more substantive role. We haven't seen that from our Premier, and that's a role that leadership says he should play.

Leadership is about, as I've said before, openness and transparency. We need to be open with British Columbians. We need to be transparent. We need to engage British Columbians in these issues. And leadership is about consistency. It has to be about consistency, and there is a lack of consistency in the policy program of this government between its talk on climate change and, in fact, its actions in a whole range of other policy areas.

Those are the kinds of pieces that we believe need to be encompassed in a framework discussion with British Columbians to find the solutions we need. We know that the solutions that are being proposed here, most of them, develop over a period of years.

I'm sure the Minister of Finance would be the first person to say that she has no expectations of this tax significantly changing people's behaviour in the short term. She might argue that in the second cycle, if there is a second cycle, it starts to work. We know that many of the experts in this would tell you that the numbers have to get much greater before you have an impact.

We also know that at this particular juncture, this particular time, when fuel prices are going through the roof, when there is no end in sight, when the projections are that by 2012 or so we'll be looking at $2.50 gas or something close to that…. You have to ask the question about whether this tax will be effective in accomplishing any of the objectives or having any impact on how people use and consume fuel that is not going to be had by these other realities of fuel increase costs.

We need to meet the challenge of climate change. We need to do it now. We need to do it in a way that is open. We need to do it in a way that engages British Columbians in that discussion, whether they be in Quesnel, Campbell River, Surrey, Victoria, Nelson or Vancouver. It doesn't matter. They need to have an opportunity to be engaged. They don't have that opportunity.

This side of the House can't support the secrecy of this government's actions. On this side of the House we cannot support the disconnected nature of how this government grapples with this issue — arguably, looking more like it wants to greenwash itself through next May than deal with these serious questions.

We cannot support the government that has put forward proposals that will clearly be ineffective for the foreseeable future. We cannot support a government that will not make some connection between its policies, initiatives and aspirations in a whole range of areas — like oil and gas, like coalbed methane, like offshore oil and gas — and its policies around climate change.

As we begin to look at this, as we begin to talk about this, we have a bill that is not fair to all British Columbians and does not treat everybody the same. We have a bill that is not fair to low-income people. We have a bill that excludes a significant amount of emissions, where we don't see how they get picked up elsewhere at this time. We have a bill that is not going to be effective in reducing our emissions by any substantive amount.

So the question has to be: why this bill? There is no reason for this bill right now. What there is reason for is a substantive, bipartisan discussion of this issue of climate change. What there is reason for is to go out and open that discussion, with a very short time frame, with all British Columbians. What there is, is a reason to bring people to the table to have the kind of summit discussion that's necessary to bring all of the good ideas and the thinkers to one place to talk about this issue. There is reason for a practical, fair and democratic plan of action. Bill 37 is not that plan.

Bill 37 does not deserve the support of British Columbians. A majority of British Columbians know that and oppose this bill. They oppose it for good reasons. A number of British Columbians, a majority of British Columbians, are opposed to Bill 37 because they know it's not fair. They know they weren't consulted. They know it won't accomplish the objectives. They are right on this issue; the government is wrong.

We will stand with the British Columbians who have a more thoughtful approach to this. We will stand with British Columbians in saying no to Bill 37. We will do the work on this side to bring forward fair, effective and democratic climate change initiatives in British Columbia, and we will do that with or without the government.

B. Ralston: In beginning my remarks on this bill, I think it's useful to look at the legislative history of this session, briefly, and reflect upon what it means to the government's professed commitment to climate change initiatives and the pricing of carbon.

The budget was tabled here on February 19, and a commitment was made to introduce this legislation. But very unusually, this legislation was substantially delayed in its introduction. We have only come to a debate at what is called second reading, as we're doing now, which is debate in principle — and it's only part of the legislative process — today, on May 22. So over three months after the budget promising this bill, we are engaged in a brief discussion of it.

Ordinarily, a bill would proceed from this stage, after discussion by as many members as wanted to address this important issue, to what's called committee stage, where the opportunity is there to have the minister respond on a clause-by-clause basis and offer a defence or an explanation of the bill.

Given the way in which the government has bungled and mismanaged its legislative agenda this session, we are being permitted by the House Leader on the other side, because it's the government that has the discretion as to when to call the bill for debate or not…. We're being given two hours to debate this bill — two hours only. The bill is one of the bills that the House Leader has put forward before the House as those that will be subject to closure — that is, a guillotine which will limit debate.

We're on a Thursday here. We're sitting tomorrow, and then there are four days next week. So with six days to go, including today, the government finally initiates a discussion of this piece of legislation. There will not be sufficient time to debate it in the usual way that legislatures across the country debate legislation and engage in the kind of constructive debate that people expect and desire in a democratic process.

It says something about the government's commitment to this legislation and to the agenda that they claim they're advancing — that it's coming forward in this way. In my view, that's a significant factor in assessing the government's sincerity about their commitment to this particular policy.

The legislation that has been introduced, as my colleague has pointed out, has a number of flaws. The goal of the legislation — and the goal that those in the public and on this side of the House and in the view of the government…. Their professed objective is to introduce legislation that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

However, this piece of legislation, in the manner in which it seeks to achieve those objectives, is neither fair nor effective. In other words, it does not have the kind of public support that it should have for such an important measure. That's very clear, and I'll deal with the views of numerous mayors and municipalities throughout the province who have expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the manner in which this legislation has come forward.

It's very clear that even on the government's own accounting, it will not be effective. It will have very little, if any, impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions out to the 2020 reduction in their own numbers of only 2 percent. Part of the problem with the legislation results from the manner in which it was developed.

Despite the stated objective of the Premier prior to 2001 of being the most open and accountable government in the history of the province — that was his objective — time and time again, we have seen that the government's inclination and the direction of the Premier is to develop policy in secret and then spring it on the public.

Much of this important debate has taken place behind closed doors, contrary to what's happening in other jurisdictions. Certainly the western climate change initiative, where other Canadian provinces and states in the United States are engaged in this debate, shows a marked difference from the approach of British Columbia.

Here the climate change secretariat, nominally in the Ministry of Environment but under the effective direction and control of the Premier's office, has developed much of its policy — if not all of it — in complete secrecy. There's a problem with secrecy. It just doesn't lead to the kind of effective and open public debate that results in good ideas and also the kind of broad public acceptance that one wishes for in a democracy.

In other words, to have good policy, it's important to bring people in and to not hide behind closed doors, have that discussion, air differences and develop the kind of policy that's required. This piece of legislation has the hallmarks, has the sticky fingers of the Premier all over it, and it suffers because of it.

That's the reason why there has been such a reaction against this legislation from very, very diverse parts of the province. Whether it's economic sectors or whether it's regions in the province or whether it's political parties, this piece of legislation has endured a round of condemnation that really speaks to the unfairness of the legislation and its ineffectiveness.

It's clearly regionally unfair. Northern mayors — although I don't know whether Williams Lake is really truly north, but it's certainly north of the Lower Mainland and north of this part of the lower Island — have very strikingly set out an intention. I'm speaking of the mayor of Williams Lake, Scott Nelson, who is leading a charge by northern municipalities to refuse to pay the tax on municipal fuel purchases.

Mr. Nelson says, and I'm quoting from an article in the Globe and Mail on May 17, 2008…. He's a member of the Liberal Party; he's not a New Democrat. He says: "I've worked on the Premier's campaign. I worked for the B.C. Liberal Party. I am a supporter of government. But because you're a supporter doesn't necessitate that

you should be handcuffed and duct-taped not to protect your taxpayers and your municipality."

So here's a professed Liberal supporter, a supporter of the Premier. He uses a very vivid metaphor — being handcuffed and duct-taped by the provincial government and by the Premier — in an attempt to silence him about his opposition to this particular tax. To lead that kind of a revolt is surely a measure of just how deep the dissatisfaction with this goes.

Even more recently than that, the mayor of Williams Lake, the same mayor that I'm speaking of, says that "his council will be looking at withholding payment of the carbon tax on municipal fuel purchases and directing the money into a savings fund until the province proves that the tax will be revenue-neutral for municipalities."

The very essence of government is to obtain the consent of the governed. Here's a significant high-profile municipal leader in the Cariboo — not only a Liberal supporter but a member of the Liberal Party, a supporter of the Premier who has worked for the Premier — who is saying: "Look, we're not going to pay this tax." Is there any attempt to engage Mr. Nelson, to have members on the other side speak to this? Will the Minister of Finance attempt to justify this? I doubt it. We have barely 30 minutes remaining in all the debate that we will have in this Legislature this session on this important bill.

It's no wonder that people express that kind of frustration. Other mayors have written to the Minister of Finance. I've got a letter here from Mayor Angela Brand-Danuser, the mayor of the district of Stewart. She expresses the concern about this tax, and I'm going to quote from her letter: "People in the north do not have access to extensive public transportation options, and many remote northern communities do not have any public transportation." The "do not have any" is underlined in her letter in the way in which I have attempted to emphasize it verbally.

She gives an example: "In Stewart, for example, if you need to see a dentist, you have to drive 350 kilometres one way. That is true for any service other than general medical visits — eye doctors, pharmacists, chiropractors. People living in remote communities understand we do not have the same amenities as people in urban centres. However, we should not be penalized for circumstances that are beyond our control."

There's another mayor expressing her concern about the effect of this tax, the lack of any consultation, the lack of any realism about the reality of the lives that people in northern communities live — just swept aside by the Minister of Finance, no concern. As the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca has said, people have been told to eat their porridge and like it, and that's it. The response of the government is: "Well, that's tough." As the minister might say, "Boo hoo" — no concern at all, none expressed.

This bill is going through. In two hours it's going to be rammed through this Legislature, and the concerns of those citizens, the duct-taped and handcuffed members of the public — at least that's how they feel, according to the mayor of Williams Lake…. This legislation is just going to be rammed through despite their protests.

Let's look at another letter from another mayor — the village of Massett over on the Queen Charlotte Islands. I'm going to quote a little bit from the letter. This is, again, a letter that's written to the Minister of Finance. Barry Pages, who's the mayor of the village of Massett, says: "Homes and businesses have two choices for heat: oil and electricity. However, all of our electricity is diesel-generated in the first place, so there's no environmental benefit and no cost benefit to switching to electricity." The current price of oil then in Massett was $1.13 while in Prince Rupert, it was $1.05. This was written back on March 13, 2008, and that may be different now.

"The proposed carbon tax will mean a direct increase to home heating costs of at least $55 a year and will rise to over $165 by 2012. Those costs do not take into consideration the compounding effect that will result from increased transportation costs to get that heating oil to the islands." He goes on to talk about the impact of freight rates upon basic commodities such as food. Freight rates range from 80 cents to a dollar per pound. As an example of the impact of freight costs, milk in Massett is $6.69 a gallon and in Prince Rupert is $3.99.

So there's another remote community in British Columbia, the village of Massett, where the mayor is making a very detailed and eloquent plea for some consideration, some recognition, of the reality of that community.

He's been rebuffed by the Minister of Finance. "Eat your porridge. Nothing's going to change. This bill is going through. We're just ramming it through the Legislature. Your concerns — too bad. Tough for you; tough for your community. We don't really care. We developed this legislation in secrecy. We didn't have a chance to consult with you because we didn't want to. We're not going to consult now. We're not going to change the legislation. It's done. It's through, and tough luck." That seems to be the message of the government to those communities.

It's recognized by these mayors, on behalf of their communities, that there are regional differences that a fair tax might seek to accommodate. It's not unknown. Certainly in the federal income tax, there are provisions for northern allowances where people are entitled to, in their personal tax, greater deductions for the additional costs that come from living in northern and remote locations. Those are designated in the federal Income Tax Act, so it's not something that can't be done. It's just something that won't be done because this government is not interested in listening to those citizens or taking any account of their concerns.

The reality for northern British Columbia is colder winters leading to higher heating costs, a longer drive for work and for basic services — as the mayor of the district of Stewart pointed out, 350 kilometres, one way, for all kinds of medical visits, if they're required — and winter driving conditions that require larger and heavier vehicles, which are not as fuel-efficient as other vehicles.

So that's a sense of the regional concerns that have been expressed. Now the other significant area…. Part of the justification for this piece of legislation that's advanced is that it will lead to, in its design, reductions in corporate income tax and personal income tax over the years to come.

But the reality for a lot of businesses is that a reduction in income tax presumes that you're making a profit. For much of the forest industry at the present time, they're not making a profit. They're losing, and the losses are mounting, as is very evident from the number of closures that are taking place. Even those companies that are continuing are suffering financial losses.

So an income tax reduction doesn't apply if you're not making money. However, a carbon tax, a fuel tax on your inputs, does apply. For industries that are in financial trouble, for a variety of reasons which we've talked about here in this House, they will be paying increased costs at a time when their balance sheets are hemorrhaging.

There's no attempt in this legislation, or in any kind of discussion that has taken place since the legislation was introduced, to attempt to design this legislation in a way that might recognize that reality — to introduce some transitional provisions for industries that might need that temporary assistance to transition through this part of the economic cycle. There's nothing.

It's well recognized that some industries — for example, the financial services sector, the banks — will receive the same corporate tax deduction that, in theory, the forest companies are entitled to but probably won't be able to take advantage of because they're not making a profit. They don't have the same requirements.

The corporate tax reduction that's promised will be a financial benefit to them, whereas to the forest industry, it will simply be an increased cost. How is that fair? One can well imagine, as representations have been made by the senior business leaders in the province to the Minister of Finance…. How is that fair? Is that the best way to design a piece of legislation? Is that fair taxation? Certainly, the view of some is that, in many industries, it's not. So there's opposition to this tax in those quarters.

Many industries — some industries, particularly, such as trucking…. One might wish in a policy sense that people transported all their goods by rail, and perhaps in the long run that will take place, but at present, the rail system serves…. Well, it serves many parts of the province. It certainly doesn't serve all parts of the province.

Trucking is an essential part of the economy. Many trucking firms are relatively small firms. They're not big firms, and there are also many independent truckers who earn their living as self-employed individuals. They will be bearing the cost of this tax directly. It will impact on their bottom line. It's the very nature of their business. There's no transitional provisions for them in this legislation. There's nothing to ease the impact.

The message from the government is: "Suck it up. Tough — you've got to do it." If it causes financial impact, causes hardship, particularly for individual independent operators, tough, too bad. That's the way it's going to be.

That's not the way in which good legislation is designed, but that is the hallmark of the government. Design something in secret, cook it up in the cabinet room and then pour it out to the public and simply ignore their protests, ignore their suggestions and ram it through the Legislature, just as this bill is being done.

There are other problems with this piece of legislation that are, again, well known and have been discussed. Although it purports to give a low-income tax credit to people who qualify at the bottom end of the income scale, it will not…. As it's designed, it doesn't increase in years three, four and five. The credit that's projected is not set out in years three, four and five. So while the cost to an individual paying the tax will increase, the cost of the tax credit will not. So the gap and the portion of the tax that an individual will pay personally will increase.

The other problem that's very basic in the design of this low-income tax credit is that it interferes with the cash flow of a low-income person. In other words, you have to pay the tax as you go along and then wait to get the rebate each quarter. While that may seem like a small thing for those more wealthy in the population, for many people that will be a hardship. Although the credit may help them, they'll have to pay it out of their pocket and wait for the return.

I'm not sure whether we'll see the tax discounters, much as we see in the case of income tax, where people sell the right to obtain their income tax return and usually hand over a certain portion of that to a tax discounter. There are businesses that do that. I'm not sure whether we will see a whole new industry in low-income neighbourhoods where people will be handing over their low-income tax credit to tax discounters in the chance to get it immediately rather than wait to receive it in the time schedule that the government has set out. That may very well take place.

So that is a problem with the legislation. Again, that's been the subject of some public discussion, but there's no opportunity, in the time that we have allocated here, to introduce amendments. The minister has very clearly indicated publicly her lack of receptivity to any amendments, any changes. This one's going through. It's like gravel through a sluice. The sluice is all designed, and it's all being rammed through. So we're not going to have that discussion. We're not going to have those amendments. We're not going to respond to those concerns that have been identified. The message from the government is: "Tough. Too bad. It's going through."

I want to touch on another aspect of this bill, part of the discussion that we've engaged in since the Minister of Finance came to the Finance Committee back in September of last year. I asked her what she expected the relationship between a carbon tax and a cap-and-trade system might be. At that time she didn't have a response, which was fair enough.

It's now June, some considerable time later. The climate change secretariat has been working away behind closed doors. What is the mechanism, and what is the relationship between the carbon tax and the cap-and-trade system? We're no closer to an answer after nine

months, despite a few favourable editorials. The very essence of the relationship between those two taxes has not been explained. The cap-and-trade bill, which was brought before the House and debated as a shell of a bill, is all left to regulation. When questioned about these very basic topics, the minister responsible didn't have an answer.

That very basic design flaw speaks to the fact that this legislation is not thought through and will not be effective, because the cap-and-trade system will cover some 30 percent to 40 percent of emissions in the province. It's uncertain when it will be introduced. It's uncertain how it will be integrated with the carbon tax. There are no answers forthcoming.

So I want to…. There are many others who wish to speak in the brief time that is allocated, so I will close briefly — just to say, in conclusion, that this tax isn't fair, and it will not reduce emissions. The Premier has made it very clear that he is not prepared to engage or respond to the valid concerns of British Columbians about this tax. Accordingly, that's why we will not be supporting this piece of legislation.

M. Karagianis: I'm taking this opportunity to stand and speak to this bill, because as the members on this side of the House know, we are, in fact, being denied the opportunity to debate very many bills in this House in this session. This government has chosen to evoke a closure bill on much of the legislation and has not given us our opportunity for full and fair democratic debate on this — or, in the case of this bill this morning, only the most superficial opportunity to debate. We have a few scant hours. We have many members here who want to stand up and speak out on behalf of their constituents.

I'd like to be on the record to say that I do support the concept of a carbon tax. I believe that it is an important aspect of our fight against climate change, but I also know that it has to be something that is fair and equitable across this province and that we need to start with the top, with the worst polluters, with those who are doing the most damage right now in the province of British Columbia. We have to start there in order to make significant and real change. As long as we are going to expect that this will all be borne on the shoulders of the consumers, I think that it is a failure by this government.

I have been hearing daily from my own constituents about their immediate reaction to this unfair gas tax that's being imposed upon them. Unless there are alternatives for consumers, then this is an unfair gas tax and merely that — a gas tax that they have no other options to avoid. So the fact that the government has not seen fit to invest in transit and provide some of those options so that if people want to make a choice and get out of their cars and drive less, that those options are very real and available for them…. Then, this carbon tax is not doing its job. It's not going to change behaviour, because behaviour can't be changed if those options are not in place.

Providing options for those who live in rural British Columbia who are going to be disproportionately affected by this, because they have very few options…. They have to drive for every one of their needs — to work, to get their kids to school, to get to medical appointments. All that's going to happen for them is that it's going to cost them more. The government is going to impose this tax on them without any other options or alternatives for them.

We had a very interesting debate in this House about biofuel, about the options for biodiesel. We, on this side of the House…. In fact, I put forward an amendment asking the government to actually include some sustainability language in their push to promote biofuels, and the government refused to do that. On the one hand, we see the government trying to show, in some superficial way, that they're going to try and address climate change — on the backs of consumers, with an unfair gas tax — and on the other hand, we don't see any kind of incentives being put in place to actually create options for people.

I have seen nothing from this government that offers incentives for things like geothermal heat pumps, for solar installation in your homes.

My own personal experience with this…. I have been looking at installing solar systems in my own house, for my own personal use. It is very, very expensive. It's not something that average working people in this province can afford, and I don't see anything here in the way of fair treatment for working families that would allow them to access some of these options so they can participate fairly in the whole initiative of climate change.

For those of us that live on an island, we don't have many options but to buy goods and services that are shipped to us from afar.

There will be a cumulative effect of this gas tax on every single thing we purchase here on the Island, and we have no options around that. When the Minister of Finance says that this is going to be neutral to the consumer — cost-neutral, revenue-neutral to the consumer — nothing could be further from the truth.

Although the government is doing this sort of trivialized hundred-dollar "buy yourself a pair of running shoes" initiative, the reality is that every single thing we purchase here on Vancouver Island in the future will be affected by this gas tax, from our ferry fares to our food that's brought in, to anything that's brought onto this Island for us to purchase, even our plane fares now to get back and forth off here. We have no options. That gas tax is going to be cumulative on every single thing we do.

There is no neutrality available for us. This hundred dollars to buy a pair of running shoes is going to quickly be eaten up, and real costs are going to be borne every single day by working people here.

I know that we have other speakers here. We're all trying to cram ourselves into these brief little two hours that we're allowed to respond to this bill.

I'm standing here to say no on behalf of my constituents. We are offended by another gas tax, with rising costs of fuel right now anyway, which certainly hasn't changed behaviour. We can already see, you know, that gas is going up at the pump every single day. Has that changed anybody's behaviour? No. How can it? We don't have any other options. Where else are we going to go? How else are you going to get to work, get to your doctor's appointment and get your kids back and forth? No options there. We're just going to pay more every single day. That's not a climate action plan.

Therefore, I cannot support this, my constituents cannot support this, and I'll be voting against it.

G. Robertson: Again, I'll echo the concerns of my colleagues in that we have so little time, only in this morning's session, to start in on this bill and are very much limited in terms of time left on the legislative calendar to address these concerns.

I'll just start on Bill 37 by voicing my strong support for the principle of putting a price on emissions, for a carbon tax, if it's fair and effective but primarily to ensure that polluters pay. All of us pollute in different ways.

The big failing in terms of this bill is that those who pollute the most are getting a free ride. We know that this package of bills that has been brought forward in an effort to achieve the targets which were legislated last year is supposed to amount to a robust strategy.

Unfortunately, what we're seeing here today with this carbon tax bill…. It is a piece of the puzzle that no doubt is an important one, no doubt is critical in terms of addressing climate change. Climate change is the ultimate test of political courage. Unfortunately, we're not seeing a courageous stand being taken here — or really effective, meaningful and equitable solutions being put forward for the people of B.C. to embrace.

People are not being enabled to make the changes. Ultimately, that's the role of government, to enable people to make the changes. With a threat as daunting as climate change is, we have precious little time to take the most effective steps possible. We're seeing an unfortunate, missed opportunity here.

Specifically, the challenges that we have with this bill are not only in terms of its equitability for people around the regions of B.C. — people who do not have options to limit their consumption of fossil fuels right now. The big flaw in this bill, in that it needs to fit with these other climate change bills, is that the big emitters are not being included in terms of a carbon tax, and they're not specifically being identified within the cap-and-trade scheme.

We don't know what the cap-and trade scheme is at this point. It could be many years off before it's implemented. In the meantime, 30 percent to 40 percent of B.C.'s emissions are not priced, are not regulated. In effect, we make no progress with the big emitters.

Now, this is a key piece that is missing. It could have been integrated into this bill proactively and amended in future, at such time as cap-and-trade legislation and regulation comes into effect, to effectively reduce the emissions from the big industrial sectors. At this point, though, that doesn't exist.

We will look to the committee stage of this bill. I will look at committee stage for moving amendments to strengthen this bill to ensure that big emitters do play a role here in terms of toeing the line and paying their share of the costs, their share of the emissions. We need to do that at the outset here and ensure that it's fair for everyone across the province of B.C.

It is infuriating, I think, to many people around the province that this has been constructed in secret and that they have had no voice. Not only is our voice here in the Legislature being constrained by the calendar and by the movement of closure by the government on a number of these very important bills and initiatives, but the people of B.C. have been left out. They are being forced into this carbon tax program without having a voice in it, without having even the ability through the opposition to debate that robustly and to effect change.

My hope is that the government will be open to changes and amendments that strengthen the bill as it's proposed — and the other bills that have come forward in the House as part of the climate change package. I think everyone around the province wants to take meaningful action, but we need to have the right tools, the right instruments. We need to have the right incentives to do that.

These have not been offered up in the budget this year. They are not being facilitated in the legislation that is being moved in this House. There is a real concern that there are loopholes being created here for big industry and a real concern that there has not been broad-based consultation with the people of B.C.

It's important that we debate this openly. It's important that we ensure that the whole package to tackle climate change in B.C. is as strong as possible and that B.C. truly is a leader that sets an example for jurisdictions around the world in fighting climate change.

Noting the time, Mr. Speaker, and reserving my right to continue my remarks on this bill, I move adjournment of debate.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
ENVIRONMENT AND MINISTER
RESPONSIBLE FOR WATER STEWARDSHIP
AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

C. Trevena: I thank the minister. Just to advise him, as we mentioned before we started, the Environment critic is tied up in the big House at the moment discussing the carbon tax. When he comes back, he will be wanting to talk, so the minister's staff is aware…. General ministry issues, climate change, biodiversity, parks, water and environmental assessment are the areas that the member for Vancouver-Hastings will be raising when he gets back.

In the meantime, my colleagues and I have a number of, I think, local questions that we'd like to discuss with you. So if I can hand over to my colleague from Alberni-Qualicum.

I'm going to start with…. There is a local component to the first set of questions, but it's around cave protection. I know that in the Port Alberni region there are significant karst features and some amazing caves, which I've had the opportunity to explore.

It is a bit of a passion of mine, although I don't get to do it very often anymore. Going underground is a unique experience, and there are new life forms being found in these systems. It's quite fascinating in a lot of ways.

I know that the minister was good enough to meet with myself, Paul Griffiths and Reid Robinson, who are cave experts in their own right in the province. I also met with your senior staff. I think it was the regional manager, Mr. Heath.

I don't know if you have everyone you need to talk about an underground economy. No, I won't go into the puns yet, but I guess I already did.

There's a great need for overriding cave protection legislation in British Columbia. It's a gap that's been allowed to occur for decades. I raised this with the minister at that earlier meeting. I'm wondering. Can the minister let me know if we're making any progress on that legislation?

Hon. B. Penner: Just before proceeding to address the member's question, I'd like to make a few introductions of the people that are supporting me here this morning, at least at this point.

Seated to my left, or to your right, is my deputy minister, Joan Hesketh, and to my right, or your left, is my assistant deputy minister, Nancy Wilkin, for the environmental stewardship division of the Ministry of Environment. And then behind me are some very important people, because they keep the eye on the budget for us. Denise Bragg is our assistant deputy minister for corporate services, and Kathy Brereton is our budget manager. She attempts to keep track of our shekels and where they go or don't go.

Just to respond to the member's questions about caves. His interest in caving makes me think that maybe he's a caveman. That's my pun for the day. I've spent some time, also, doing some spelunking. If people can overcome their sense of claustrophobia, which I sometimes am prone to, it's something that's quite exciting.

In British Columbia we are blessed with a number of very unique caving opportunities and underground experiences. As well, as the member notes, there are some unique ecological and environmental aspects to the biology that takes place subsurface.

Within parks and protected areas the Ministry of Environment does have lead responsibility for protecting caves and cave structures and for controlling access, and that's something we do. Outside of the parks and protected areas network I'm advised that the Ministry of Forests is working on policy at the moment. I'm not aware of any specific legislation that's being developed, but I understand that there is policy work being done. That's being led, I am advised, by the Ministry of Forests.

S. Fraser: Thanks to the minister for that. I'm aware of the work that the Ministry of Forests has done. There are karst orders in place in some jurisdictions for protection of karst, but these are guidelines. They're not overarching legislation.

History has shown that, actually, these protections are often not invoked. By far the largest portion of karst and cave systems in British Columbia is on public land, and only a small percentage of those are within the boundaries of parks. So we are way behind the rest of the world as far as protection goes.

I'll note that it was, I think, 1998 that the United States brought in a federal cave protection act to address that. So they're two decades ahead of us. Again, this is on public, federally controlled land. There are very effective models. They may not be perfect, but they are in use now in other jurisdictions as close as the United States.

The fact is that cave management guidelines, including recommended best practices, which are recognized by the ministry but are mostly for protecting paleontological and archaeological research in caves, are often simply ignored, even by people who should know better, and damage occurs.

There is no cave protection, in essence, in the province. Simply, there's no overarching protection at all that's in place dealing with public land — or private land for that matter. But I'll just deal with, keeping it simple, the public land aspect here.

We've got — and I mentioned this to your regional manager when we met earlier — the incident that happened in Ontario, the terrible incident in Walkerton of poisoning. The contaminated water system there travelled underground — out of sight, out of mind — through a karst system. That was not recognized. It wasn't recognized until after the fact.

So where the estimates were that the water was going to be sifting through the ground and eventually making it to the source for access for drinking water…. Actually, the estimates were off by 70 times — not 70 percent, 70 times. The residence time was hours — not, like, 30 days. The water travelled very quickly through a karst system — basically an underground river.

So there is a huge issue here, potentially, for public health and safety. But it's an environmental issue. The minister pointed out that there are many values in the caves, and not just the recreation we cavers or spelunkers…. There are the biological values, there are the ecological values, there are the hydrological values, there are spiritual values, there are cultural values, and there are first nations values.

But dealing with the hydrological, if we're dealing with, as the Ministry of Environment must be, protection of watersheds, to ignore the…. We have great protections in place in some cases for surface water — for rivers and water runoff. But once it's underground, it's no less significant. Yet those protections cease to exist underground.

So I'm urging the minister to consider, as we raised earlier, the need for some sort of overarching protection. The Ministry of Forests…. Even the karst orders that are there which could be used and are sometimes used, but only in certain jurisdictions, only address forestry issues — harvesting, silviculture, roadbuilding. No other uses, whether they are….

Besides forestry, there are a lot of different things that can damage cave systems, which are very sensitive to siltation and that sort of thing. There's no coverage for that, and I don't know any other ministry that could handle the overriding, overarching legislation that would be necessary for that.

Again, it's in place in the United States. They've got cave protection that actually leads also to enhanced karst protection — karst being, of course, the larger, underground limestone systems. Can the minister comment on my lengthy chat here?

Hon. B. Penner: I'm advised that under the Forest and Range Practices Act, the various karst orders that the member refers to have been put in effect by the Ministry of Forests and Range. It's possible that there are additional locations that they could consider. It's certainly something that I can speak to my colleague, the Minister of Forests, about.

My expectation would be that a karst order, if it's sufficient to protect against damage from forestry operations, would have some co-benefits and protect against the damage, perhaps, from other things. I don't know that for a certainty, but that's entirely possible.

I haven't been apprised by the water stewardship division of the Ministry of Environment of any particular concerns that have come to light regarding underground water systems or rivers that the member refers to. Undoubtedly, we do have some in British Columbia, I suspect, but I haven't been advised or apprised of any concerns that have arisen or been brought to the ministry's attention over the years pertaining to the quality of that water or any harmful or deleterious effects.

That's not to say we don't want to keep an eye on things, so we'll certainly have a conversation with my colleague, the Minister of Forests, and look forward to reviewing the legislation that the member says exists — I'm not sure if it's at the federal level or at the state level — in the United States. Maybe he can clarify.

S. Fraser: It's federal cave legislation that was brought in, in 1998, in the United States. There has been cave legislation proposed here. It was in the '70s, I believe, and it has been sort of sitting somewhere collecting dust through consecutive governments. It has been recognized, the importance to protect caves and karst systems. Whether or not anything has been flagged to you specifically as the minister, I'm flagging for you right now on the record.

The E. coli poisonings of many residents, leading to death and injury in Walkerton, were linked directly to a karst system and water systems. I'm not a hydrologist; none of us are in this room, maybe. There are a few, but there are not usually a lot of people putting up their hands for a hydrologist when you ask the question. Many hydrologists do not have training on karst systems, anyway.

But if you were a hydrologist, and you have impact or contamination on the surface that seeps into a karst system, it will travel very quickly. It will not sift through the sand. It will not go through a natural wetland cleansing process. It will come out, basically. As dye tests have shown over and over again with karst systems, water will travel basically unfiltered from one place to another as quickly as a river will go — and faster, in some cases, because we have got some great verticals in cave systems.

So you can go many miles in just a few hours with water. Basically, the same contamination level that happened at the source will be at the end.

If we're looking at trying to protect watersheds, people's drinking water and fisheries values, we cannot do it. There's a physics case here to be made. We cannot do it without addressing the protection of the water systems through karst.

Now, I believe there are a lot of greater reasons and higher reasons to protect karst systems and caves with a proper cave protection act, and the rest of the world seems to think so. We're far behind the rest of the world. I don't like to keep throwing this back at the minister, but I will. The fourth great goal talks about leading the world, and we're not. We're far, far behind on cave protection.

I'd ask the minister, again. The forest karst orders that are in certain districts are not enough. They're not

protecting valuable karst values and cave values in a lot of the province — in most of the province, on provincially controlled land, on public land. So there are all sorts of other potential…. There are agriculture issues. There is potential for pesticide use in areas that could directly go into drinking water or into areas that we don't know.

So being mindful of karst is one thing. Having protection for karst systems for all the right reasons and for overarching cave protection must come, I believe, from the Ministry of the Environment, because the Ministry of Forests has a very narrow mandate in dealing with protection issues. They don't deal with potential agricultural impacts. They don't deal with potential mining impacts. They don't deal with development issues in general.

There are hydro lines that are put in, where Hydro puts them in right through. There is roadbuilding right over karst systems, where they siltate those systems up and where drinking water is drawn from downstream as groundwater. A spring seems like a pure thing. A spring is often coming through a karst system, and a spring will be carrying whatever turbidity or whatever impurities are going to seep through at its source.

Again, I'd ask the minister…. I don't want him to defer this to the Ministry of Forests. I want complete, overarching protection that the rest of the world seems to think is important. I think it's important. I know the minister respects the importance of these systems. He's been in them before. They are a living life form in their own right, and they are ignored because they're underground. Can the minister comment?

Hon. B. Penner: I appreciate the member's passion about this issue. I certainly take his comments under advisement. We'll take a look at that U.S. federal legislation that the member has identified. We'll see if we can access that and see if it would have application potentially here in British Columbia.

S. Fraser: I thank the minister for that. I know I have limited time here, so I can't talk on caves forever, but I appreciate the minister's comments. I'll be getting back to him on that and consulting with him further on that to see where we're going, because I do want to see some sort of legislation brought in place or at least the issue debated. We need to have that. Many of our colleagues do not know anything about the importance of these systems. I think that would be a useful endeavour also.

On the same day that I was meeting with the minister on cave protection, earlier, just prior to that, we met on a sensitive wetland issue — an area owned by Island Timberlands just beside Qualicum Beach known as Hamilton Marsh. It has great ecological values and great hydrological values, and it's part of a sensitive watershed, as I brought to the minister's attention. Certainly, the group I brought — Robin and Carrie, who came all the way from Qualicum Beach to meet with you — put it best, but this is something that's of huge public interest: protecting these sensitive wetlands.

I know there are precedents where the ministry has stepped in and acquired these in the interests of protecting hydrological values or biological values. This has a huge amount of species of birds and aquatic animals, and again, it's an integral part of the watershed in the Qualicum Beach area.

Has the minister got anywhere on…? He recognized at the meeting, I believe, the importance of these wetlands and, certainly, acknowledged that Hamilton Marsh was on his radar screen. Can the minister comment on where we've got since then?

Hon. B. Penner: The member is correct. We did have a meeting with a number of his, I think, constituents as people who had contacted the member. We met here at the Legislature and talked about that issue, as well as the cave protection issue.

In terms of the concern around Hamilton Marsh, I did have a chance to look at the photographs that the member provided, and I have had a chance to follow up with ministry staff since then.

In addition, I had a meeting with representatives of Island Timberlands following that meeting and expressed to them our general interest in that particular area. Island Timberlands, in turn, conveyed to me that they're doing a review of a number of their properties on Vancouver Island and that they're not yet in a position to determine the disposition of that particular piece of land. If I remember the conversation correctly, they're still working through some kind of internal process or internal transition or something.

The Ministry of Environment every year has a priority list that comes up from the regions or across the province about potential lands for acquisition and ultimate inclusion in our protected-areas network. The different proposals have to be assessed against the ministry's criteria for what is top priority, and those considerations include whether or not similar ecosystems are protected already or are adequately represented in our network of protected areas.

Just where this particular proposal lands, I'm not entirely sure. It is on our regional list, but I don't know exactly where it ranks in terms of other competing ideas. There are other areas on Vancouver Island where I get letters from people saying: "This is the most important area. This one, right near where I live, is the one that should be protected first, before something else."

That's not to say Hamilton Marsh wouldn't be, but we are looking at a range of different proposals for Vancouver Island for the coming year. Island Timberlands has said that they'll be happy to get back to us in a while. I don't know exactly how long. They're still doing some kind of internal review about the future of some of their lands.

S. Fraser: Hamilton Marsh. There are not just a few letters from a few people. There have been many petitions that I have submitted to the Legislature. Mayor Teunis Westbroek and Coun. Barry Avis, both from Qualicum Beach…. The community is behind it officially,

through the municipal government. The regional district is behind the acquisition of this land. Ducks Unlimited has been working on this, and Islands Trust has been working on this.

This is not just a small sort of grass-roots group. There is that too, but it is officially the municipal government's position and the regional district's position — again, working with groups like Ducks Unlimited and Islands Trust, which we've seen all come together to acquire the land, including offers to purchase.

They were at the eleventh hour of those negotiations with Island Timberlands, when suddenly Island Timberlands stopped and said that they were reassessing their inventory. I understand that, but that was happening about the same time that they were moving their forest assets offshore to Bermuda. They're now in a tax haven, and they've been able to do that to avoid some Canadian taxes, I guess, and also to avoid some civil suit that could happen.

I'm concerned about that level of control being lost from the public here in B.C. — another issue.

S. Fraser: Yeah, they're the owners of the…. It's the same time frame that they pulled out of the negotiations. I would like to remind the minister that all these groups — the local, the community, the city council, the municipal government, the regional district, Ducks Unlimited — came together to acquire this land with money in hand. They've got a huge amount of support financially from individuals, but also these groups have acquired it.

A partnership with the ministry would be a no-brainer, because they've already done a lot of this work in negotiating, and they've already come up with substantial resources to actually come to the table and offer money here.

But when Island Timberlands pulled out of that negotiation, was it the same time frame when they were assessing their inventory? They were assessing inventory, I suggest, because Brookfield Asset Management, which owns Island Timberlands, was moving its forest assets in B.C. offshore. They were not physically moving it offshore, although certainly some of the logs are going offshore. Well, that's another issue.

That portion of the company was being moved, basically, through an investment vehicle out of Bermuda, I believe, or a Caribbean tax haven — another concern. If there were ever a priority, I would hope that the minister would look at the level of public support for protecting this valuable, sensitive part of the watershed and the water supply system for Qualicum Beach and, for that matter, potentially for Parksville, too, and the regional district.

With that level of support and partnership, not just from individuals — certainly those — but also from local governments, regional district governments and other groups such as Ducks Unlimited, I would suggest that this one could be moved higher in the priority list, especially since they've already put together the resources necessary to acquire the land. It could be a fairly simple and, I think, a worthwhile watershed to move up on the priority list.

The Chair: Could I remind all members to direct their comments through the Chair.

Hon. B. Penner: I appreciate the member's interest in this issue. The member referred to a number of groups that, potentially, could form a partnership in this endeavour. In fact, the ministry does partner with many of those groups that he's just identified in acquiring additional lands every year. In fact, last August I had the opportunity to join my colleague from Nanaimo-Parksville on a beautiful day to go and plant the B.C. flag on the shore of…

Hon. B. Penner: …Gerald Island, a piece of property we were able to acquire on behalf of the province of British Columbia, with the help of a number of partner groups. By leveraging funds that other groups can bring to the table, we can do more than if we're simply acting on our own, so we do like to collaborate and work with other groups.

In terms of this particular item that the member identifies, Hamilton Marsh, the member is correct. The lands are owned by Island Timberlands. Since they are privately held, it would require a willing seller in order for those lands to change hands.

A couple of other things, just for the member's interest. The factors that we look at and that I attempted to enunciate earlier include the ecological considerations or values of the proposed lands; the recreational benefits or opportunities that those lands may provide to the public, because one of the interests of B.C. Parks is encouraging public recreation and use of the outdoors; as well as public interest, as expressed through various partner groups.

To the extent that the member says that there are groups out there willing to help fund the acquisition, that certainly goes towards that particular consideration — whether there's significant support for that acquisition. To the extent that there is support from partner groups, it makes it easier for the government to move forward with those priorities, but ultimately, we would still require a willing seller.

S. Fraser: I'll try to go through the Chair. I just get carried away sometimes.

Thanks to the minister for that and for all those…. The ecological values, the hydrological values have been well established for Hamilton Marsh. They're a water sink for…. Certainly, as the dry season comes in, that helps provide the groundwater for the whole water system in the area. That has already been established.

Recreationally, I'd like to invite the minister again, if he…. I know he has a busy schedule. It is well used. There are trail systems through there. Island Timberlands, to their credit, have allowed the public to access this. There is a dock system. There is a bit of a blind system for bird-watching. It's magnificent. So all the values are there, including the partnerships.

If that's what it needs to get it raised a level, that's good. I understand that it's a private company, Island Timberlands. However, recent revelations have shown that the major shareholder, a 25 percent owner of Island Timberlands, is the government. It's BCIMC. So maybe there's some push that you can have there as a major shareholder to tell them to go back to the negotiating table and actually allow the acquisition of this. It would be a great PR piece, I think, for Island Timberlands.

Just moving on quickly to antifreeze protection. I am wondering if there has been any movement there. I will apprise the minister that there has been no slowdown in the level of support for bringing in legislation to protect the environment, to protect watersheds and to protect wildlife and companion animals from the dangers of poisonous antifreeze.

As the minister knows, since there is a viable, relatively safe alternative that's not a poison and not an attractant, as the current antifreeze is…. It is its own attractant, and a very small amount is lethal, whether it's a cat, a dog, a raccoon, a duck, a deer or a California condor, one of the most endangered species in the world. All have succumbed to a painful death by ingesting antifreeze — a very, very small amount. I won't go into the details with children, but it's a significant risk also.

We've got support to bring in legislation to make B.C. a first jurisdiction to be a safe antifreeze region. I understand it would be a carrot, maybe not a stick initially, but any movement that could be used towards making people change over…. There is a safe alternative, as I mentioned. I would ask the minister: have we made any progress in that regard?

I should comment that the minister has said…. Also, the Minister of Agriculture, when I questioned him in the House earlier about the animal cruelty legislation that was being brought in for the SPCA, indicated that work was being done through your ministry to actually bring in legislation. And as the minister knows, I had a private member's bill that was called out of order in second reading last year on this.

The support is Sierra, Western Canada Wilderness, David Suzuki, Pacific guide dog association, BCSPCA — a number of groups. If you put them together with the tens of thousands of individuals that have taken time to write a letter to the minister, to the Premier and to myself and to sign petitions, I would suggest that there is overwhelming support for such legislation. Can the minister comment?

Hon. B. Penner: I appreciate the member raising this issue, as well, some time ago. The ministry has been working on this issue.

Generally speaking, I could say that the ministry is committed to reducing contamination from toxins and wastes efficiently and effectively to minimize impacts to water, air, health and safety for humans as well as for wildlife and for animals. We've done a number of things, including contacting my federal colleague, the federal Minister of Health. As you know, the federal government has responsibility for regulating hazardous products across the country.

We didn't receive a whole lot of interest from them in terms of taking additional steps with respect to antifreeze, so we're again looking at what we could do here in the province. Some consultations have taken place between ministry staff and various industry stakeholders to let them know that we are interested in taking a step here in British Columbia. That work is still not yet concluded in terms of some of the internal work that the ministry has done, but that work has included canvassing other jurisdictions — including California, Oregon and other states in the U.S. — to see what they have put in place.

S. Fraser: Thanks to the minister for that. I appreciate him taking it seriously. I wouldn't hold your breath — I mean, for the federal authorities on this. If we're going to take the lead and be the lead jurisdiction in environmental protection, then we have to do it by ourselves.

Federally, they still allow 2,4-D as a herbicide, which is a known cancer-causer. Jurisdictions like Quebec have taken the bull by the horns, despite the assent of federal authorities to allow these products that are a danger to all of us to go ahead. They've been bold, and they've taken steps to ban certain substances that are still allowed federally. So I would hope that the fact that the federal government is lacking in this regard will not be any deterrent towards taking a bold step here.

I can apprise the minister and his staff that other jurisdictions haven't gone far on this. There's a significant lobby through industry. However, propylene glycol–based antifreeze is made by some of the same companies. I don't think there is as large a profit margin. We should be looking at taxation systems. Any kind of system that will allow the use of propylene glycol–based antifreeze into the province is much more palatable — no pun intended — and also much more cost-effective. So we can use taxation methods. We can do a lot of things.

The use of Bitrex, which has been done in some jurisdictions, according to the American SPCA is a bit of a problem. There is a company in the Lower Mainland that recycles antifreeze. This is the ethylene glycol–based. This is the dangerous type. But they do the recycling, which is good. It's the only place that I know of that does it. They actually, since the introduction of my private member's bill, started introducing Bitrex. It takes the sweet flavour away.

This is, again, something that the American SPCA has already dealt with. There is a problem with this. It doesn't change the toxicity of it. The underlying flavour of ethylene glycol is still very sweet. There's no evidence

from the American SPCA, which has done the most work on this, that it will actually deter….

I've had lots of dogs and cats. Dogs will eat just about anything if it has an underlying good flavour, no matter how you try to cover it. I know for a fact that they are eating stuff sometimes that can't taste very good.

Besides that, it breaks down in heat. So as soon as it goes in…. It provides a level of safety while it's in the plastic bottle. Dogs will chew that right off to get at the flavour. Kids will see the colour and be attracted to it that way. If they taste it, it tastes like candy, and they will drink enough to ingest and either cause physical damage or kill them. So it's okay when it's in there. There's a bitter flavour.

If it goes into the radiator, which of course is where it's going to go and where it will likely leak out or in an accident be discharged, it can cause problems. It breaks down in heat, so the Bitrex flavour, the flavouring that was put in there, will not work once it's been in the car. That's a problem. What we need to do is look towards safe alternatives. It's $13 at Canadian Tire for the dangerous stuff and $17 for the safe stuff. I suggest that we don't have to look too far to figure out where we want to go with this.

Lastly, just finishing off. We've touched on this — pesticide and herbicide use. There are other jurisdictions that have made much bolder steps than we are making in the province to try to reduce their use, and we've met with a number of groups. I know that the minister and I, both sides of the House, met with groups lobbying us to prevent and reduce the use of herbicides and pesticides. We have jurisdictions — municipal governments, city governments — that are taking those bold steps.

Will the minister consider some overarching provincial legislation that will bring in protections to move people towards alternatives to using pesticides and herbicides?

Hon. B. Penner: We have already introduced legislation here in British Columbia — I think it was in 2004, the new Integrated Pest Management Act and regulations pursuant to the act — which certainly took B.C. further down the road in terms of protection against the harmful effects of certain types of pesticides and herbicides. Now, I appreciate that the member may feel that it doesn't go as far as he would like it to go, but it certainly was something that took us further down the road than British Columbia had been under previous governments.

Specifically, the legislation establishes requirements for the use of integrated pest management products, including the promotion of alternatives to pesticides where possible. We have been working with Health Canada, as well, for a national approach, and we've had correspondence and meetings at the staff level with federal officials, specifically identifying the issues around the use of cosmetic pesticides and whether the federal government thinks that there should be some kind of a federal standard or restriction.

The member is correct that a number of provinces have taken some steps. I met with representatives of the Canadian Cancer Society maybe a month ago, when they visited Victoria. They did talk at some length about the experience in Quebec, which they felt hadn't been completely satisfactory, and they did alert us to proposed legislation in Ontario.

Since that time, that legislation has been introduced but, to my knowledge, not yet passed. I believe it's largely enabling, leaving much of the detail to regulations. So I'm not entirely sure exactly what the ultimate result would be from Ontario's legislative initiatives, but I've asked my staff in the Ministry of Environment and particularly the environmental protection division….

I'm joined now by my assistant deputy minister Lynn Bailey from the environmental protection division.

I have asked them to make sure they are in contact with both Quebec and Ontario to learn what they're doing, because I think that to the extent that we can adopt more of a united front, similar to what we're doing on the climate change front, we can be more successful in terms of reducing the availability of these products.

I'm not unaware of the fact that we share borders with Washington State and Alberta and that products frequently get purchased and cross those jurisdictional lines. That apparently was one of the problems that Quebec experienced with their attempt to limit the use of products. People were simply continuing to purchase them elsewhere, because they were still interested in having them for their use on their lawns or gardens. So we're looking at whether we can adopt a broader approach.

S. Fraser: This is my last time up here, but I'm stealing extra time. I appreciate the minister's comments.

The Integrated Pest Management Act has some big downsides to it. It took away the ability of the public to appeal decisions made regarding their uses. Specifically, it removed the ability of the public to do that. I think that was wrong.

With the E&N Railway line proposal to use things like 2,4-D, Garlon 4 and Roundup to control the weeds along the E&N Railway as a new thing…. This hadn't been done before, so this as a new thing.

The integrated pest management plan. The little ads they put in the papers to ask for submissions were actually read and responded to by every jurisdiction along the E&N Railway. Every municipal government and the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities all said no. They do not believe that it warrants the risk of spraying these things along sensitive watersheds.

I raised this with the minister repeatedly. We managed to seem to hold off the spraying for a year. It was done, though. I think Roundup and Garlon 4 were

used. Roundup is associated with reproductive disorders in farmworkers. It's not safe. It's made by Monsanto for a specific use. It sounds innocuous. It is not.

Garlon 4 kills lots of things — amphibians, non-target things and animals — and has unknown health effects. It's a poison. It's lauded because it breaks down quickly. It does not break down quickly if it goes subterranean. All the studies I've read say that once it goes out of direct sunlight, it stays at full toxicity. The longest study I saw done was for nine months. At nine months it had not diluted.

These things are not safe. The pubic does not believe they are safe. The minister said that they would not be sprayed where there are sensitive watersheds. I got sanctioned by the Chair on that day because I said something that was unparliamentary. I was referring to urinating in a swimming pool and trying to stop that from going from one area to another.

The sensitive watersheds that the minister said would not be sprayed in…. Since then, Malaspina has come up with a research proposal — which has been funded, I think, by the provincial government in part — to find out where sensitive watersheds end and start. That's after the minister allowed the spraying of this stuff, saying that it wouldn't be sprayed in sensitive watersheds.

The integrated pest management plan is not the answer. It's not sufficient. Maybe it's a piece of it, but it has to be amended in a way that…. I think other legislation needs to come into place to prevent the sale of dangerous substances to the public. Certainly, the province has to take a lead when they're responsible for spraying these things. If they're doing it, why should the public not do it?

I suggest that the minister should relook at that act, the Integrated Pest Management Act, and look at legislation. Quebec's got problems with stuff being smuggled across the border. So what? The idea is that you're moving people away. It's the same thing with antifreeze. Say: "Well, somebody can drive in from across the border with dangerous antifreeze, so it won't work." It will work. It's a start.

C. Trevena: I have a number of areas that I'll be asking the minister questions on, some of which we have discussed in the past. I would like to start off on the issue of some provincial parks on Quadra Island that have not been completed yet. There are still gaps in them. I have had discussions with the minister about this. I wanted some updates on Wyatt Bay, Small Inlet and what's happening there and if there is any move at all on Main Lakes Chain, on the gaps there.

Hon. B. Penner: Just a point of clarification from the member. Is she referring to the properties owned by Merrill-Ring?

C. Trevena: Yes, I'm referring to the piece of land between Wyatt Bay and Small Inlet that is owned by Merrill-Ring. We had discussion about the exchange of these lands and the possibility of finding exchange land. This has been going on for at least ten years now. I'm hoping we can find some resolution before Merrill-Ring decides to do something with those lands.

Hon. B. Penner: My understanding is that that is not completely dissimilar to the situation with Island Timberlands that we talked about a few moments ago with the previous member who was asking questions about potential acquisitions for B.C. Parks. Over the last year there was some holdup or an interruption in discussions, I'm told, due to some staffing issues with Merrill-Ring or some internal considerations that they had. But the latest word that we have now is that those discussions are back on track and have resumed.

C. Trevena: That's very heartening. I wonder if the minister could give any indication of at what pace these discussions are going, because this has been outstanding for a number of years. I know that they started work, and then Merrill-Ring went into a reorganization, and it all dropped off the agenda. So I just wondered if there was any indication on that.

Hon. B. Penner: It's on the active list for consideration and discussion. But as we talked about earlier, there are a number of competing items. The member from Port Alberni, who was here a moment ago, may take the view that Hamilton Marsh should take priority.

I haven't taken a position on that versus this particular item that the member is discussing. I leave it to regional staff to make those determinations about where we're going to move forward first, based on the various criteria that I enunciated earlier — ecological considerations, recreational opportunities for the public and public support as expressed through the willingness of various partner groups to help us conduct the transaction.

C. Trevena: I know that my colleague from Alberni-Qualicum did suggest that he would happily take the minister to the marsh to show him around. I would happily take the minister to the parks on Quadra Island.

The other area where there is a hole is a property that's in private hands. On the Main Lakes Chain Park there is a block of land that is in private hands, and I wondered if the minister's staff has been looking at that as a potential acquisition or not.

C. Trevena: It's on Quadra — the Main Lakes Chain Park. There's a block of private land. It's been up for sale for ages.

Hon. B. Penner: We will endeavour to get some information for the member on that particular item. It's not something we have at our fingertips here, but we'll get something.

C. Trevena: That would be very kind. I'd be happy to sit down with the minister and his staff to look at the maps on that one, as we did on the other parks.

One question that I have, just on provincial parks generally…. There is, obviously, the close proximity between the parks and various commercial applications, whether it is shellfish aquaculture or finfish aquaculture, and the development now, or the possibility, of tidal power projects. I wondered if there was any regulation about how close these new projects can be to a provincial park.

Hon. B. Penner: My understanding is that the boundary of the park is the boundary. Certain things are not permitted within a class A park, for example, but outside the park they may be permitted. I know there has been discussion north of Kamloops — the park is Wells Gray — about someone wanting to establish some cabins outside the park. Some people are saying that shouldn't be permitted either.

Under the law in British Columbia, there are certain limited uses within a park. Outside the park there is a different set of rules.

C. Trevena: If I might ask the minister a bit more specifically…. I'm thinking particularly of where we have parks that are adjacent to water. If there are applications for expansion of finfish aquaculture or shellfish aquaculture close to the park or if there is a plan for tidal power, for instance…. Again, between Campbell River and Quadra Island there are proposals for tidal power around the narrows which might be adjacent to parks. I wondered whether there is any regulation there about how close plans for commercial development in the water can be to the park.

C. Trevena: I wanted to move on to another area that I've canvassed with the minister in the past, and I've had meetings with the minister in the past. That is the hunting of wolves.

Specifically, the minister very graciously had a meeting with constituents of mine about wolf-hunting on Quadra Island. We brought together woodlot owners and others who were very concerned about the hunting of wolves on Quadra. I wondered if the minister had come to any conclusions or had discussions with his conservation officers about what the best route would be for that.

Hon. B. Penner: As the member is aware, this is a contentious issue with a variety of perspectives. I had asked ministry staff in the region to undertake some consultations with a variety of different groups. That did take place, and we got a variety of responses.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the B.C. Wildlife Federation is opposed to any change in our management regime that would deviate from the ministry's long-held practice of making decisions around hunting based on the biological science, about whether a population can sustain a harvest. We have also had discussions with first nations and have had a range of views expressed. So there's not unanimity on that front.

More recently the ministry has been receiving correspondence and been contacted by people from Quadra Island expressing complaints about the number of wolves on the island, complaining that there are too many. We've had six complaints received in February and another seven received in March about a wolf pack that I assume has recently swum across. Is it swam or swum? Anyway, they made their way to the island — perhaps on a ferry — and apparently have been preying on people's pets, etc. Some people believe the wolves are not showing very much fear of humans.

So there is a range of views. The ministry will make a change in terms of what takes place. We're going to be requiring a mandatory reporting process for any harvest that does take place in terms of wolves on the island, but I'm not aware of any hunting that's actually taken place, I think, for two years or so. I think the last reported wolf kill on Quadra Island was somewhere in 2006, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't been alerted to any active hunting this year, despite the number of wolves that apparently have now made their way to Quadra Island.

C. Trevena: I just would like to clarify with the minister: I'm not sure whether the wolves actually have swum to Quadra or are residents that are on Quadra. I believe there are residents on Quadra. I think this is one of the issues, that nobody knows how many wolves there are.

There is some knowledge of their movement, the way they do move around the island from Heriot ridge and down the south end of the island and back up. The minister is quite right. There has been more awareness of the wolves this spring than in other seasons, I think.

But I just wanted to take it a bit broader, to whether the minister sees the wolf, because it is a very special species, as an integral part of a healthy ecosystem.

Hon. B. Penner: Yes, wolves are part of our wildlife inventory in British Columbia, and they certainly are native to British Columbia. They're one of the species that are covered by the Wildlife Act in British Columbia because they are native to British Columbia.

There have been some fairly recent newspaper stories, particularly in The Vancouver Sun by Larry Pynn, suggesting that the wolf population in British Columbia is increasing. I don't know if that's a new phenomenon or if that's exactly true, but certainly, anecdotally, we are receiving more reports about sightings of wolves than we have in the past. It's entirely possible that the wolf population is seeing something of an increase.

It could be due to the number of ungulates having increased. The populations tend to track each other over time. If there's more food available, then over time the population of wolves, and perhaps cougars as well, tends to increase. If the ungulate population decreases,

C. Trevena: Because the wolves are part of the ecosystem and part of a healthy ecosystem — we saw what happened in Yellowstone when wolves were reintroduced — is there any move within the ministry to try to do some sort of wolf count, either locally…? I know that there has been a request from the Sierra Club of Quadra specifically on that. I'm sure other wildlife groups around the province are interested in trying to track some sort of count of how many wolves there are and to see whether they are growing or whether it is just that people are moving closer into the wolf habitat areas.

Hon. B. Penner: We have added some additional resources over the last four years to help us do wildlife inventory work. It should be noted that counting wolves is challenging. They tend to be rather elusive, and certainly on the coast they are living in pretty densely forested area. It's not a matter of chartering a helicopter for an afternoon and seeing what you can identify from the air. You're not going to see wolves from the air. The chances are you just won't.

The wolves are pretty hard to spot, which is why there usually isn't much hunting activity associated with wolves either. They're pretty hard to track down. People don't often deliberately set out to go hunting for wolves. But with that said, we don't have any…. Our information suggests strongly that the population of wolves is not at risk, and that we have a sustainable and healthy population of wolves in British Columbia.

C. Trevena: I thank the minister. I think the concern is that while there is still uncertainty. It's speculation that there's a sustainable number of wolves. While there is an uncertainty, there is concern that hunting does continue, particularly since hunting wolves is likely to be — I won't say solely — trophy hunting. People don't eat wolf — or not that I've heard that people eat wolf. People can eat cougar, but wolf isn't one of those being hunted for food. So it would be for trophy or, obviously, for safety, but wolves are also very shy creatures, generally.

So the issue of safety, particularly for people, not necessarily for animals, is one that again raises speculation. Why is there a need to allow wolf hunting and have that as an accepted way forward? I wonder if the minister could address that. My second part of that question is that I believe that in federal parks, in our national parks, there isn't any possibility for hunting of wolves. Is there the availability for hunting in the provincial parks? I just want a clarification on that.

Hon. B. Penner: It depends on the park management plan for the specific park in question.

C. Trevena: Would it be possible to look at the park management plans to get them in line with national parks so there would be no hunting in either park? I'm intrigued that we could have, say, no hunting of wolves in one park, and in a neighbouring park you can have hunting of wolves.

I believe that in…. Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park allows hunting, but Banff and Kootenay national parks don't, and they're close together. Likewise, Height of the Rockies Provincial Park allows some hunting, whereas Banff doesn't. They're quite close together. I wondered if it's being considered to have the provincial park management guidelines be aligned with the national ones so that the wildlife knows that it can range freely and not be hunted in one park and not another.

Hon. B. Penner: Again, it depends on which provincial park you're talking about, as the member has noted. That depends on what the objectives were when the park was established initially, as well as what the park management plan is that's been developed for that particular park.

Typically, when park management plans are put in place, there's consultation that takes place with a variety of groups that live in the vicinity of the area or have had traditional use of certain resources in that area. All those factors are taken into consideration as we develop park management plans. We now have 704 park management plans in place, so we still have a couple hundred to go. We have more than 900 protected areas in British Columbia, but we now have 704 park management plans in place. Last year we were at about 679, so we're making progress.

C. Trevena: Well, I can understand the need to consult with various groups and develop park management plans. It's an impressive number of park management plans that staff have been working on, obviously.

It just seems odd, for an animal that doesn't know it's leaving one park and entering another park, that it's going to be okay in one area and not in another. It's ranging through the areas, and it could be hunted in one and not the other.

The other question I have, specifically about wolf-hunting, is whether wolves are being hunted to any great extent or not. They are allowed to be hunted during the season that they are pupping, that they are raising their pups. About March 15 through to May 15 is when they're raising their young, and they are able to be hunted during that period. I wonder if the minister could comment on that and whether there would be any plans to tighten up that loophole.

Hon. B. Penner: We don't have the hunting regulations here with us, but we can check into that and see if that is a concern. As I said earlier, the information that we have suggests that the wolf population is healthy and, if not stable, is actually growing in British Columbia.

C. Trevena: I'd appreciate if the minister could check into that and get back to me, because that is something that has been raised as a concern.

I'm very aware that we don't have that much time. I'd like to move on to another subject, which is the Robson Bight marine park — in case you need to change staff — and the plans to pull up the trucks that are down after the barge went down last summer.

I know his ministry has issued an RFP for companies to come forward to say that they can do the work. Unfortunately, it seems that the timing is very tight, with the RFP not closing for some time — until early June, I believe. It's going to make it almost…. Well, it will make it impossible to get the RFPs back, assess them, award the contract, get the company ready to do the work and get the work done before the orcas come at the end of June, beginning of July.

I wondered whether the minister would look at making a direct award. I know that there is within the guidelines the possibility, in the case of an urgent situation, to bypass the bid process to ensure that this can happen. There is huge concern, with the orcas coming back in the beginning of July, that this material will still be on the ocean floor and, potentially, leaking.

Hon. B. Penner: We are able to direct-award in situations where there's an urgency or an emergency taking place.

In this case, as the member knows, video surveillance suggests that there is no additional leakage taking place. We did get some experts to review the video and to assess the condition of the fuel tanks, particularly the truck that could contain up to 10,000 litres of diesel fuel. The response that we got back from the analysis indicates that we could expect at least 18 months to go by before significant corrosion would start to take place.

That does give us some time to try to make sure that we conduct this operation securely and safely and also receive competitive bids. So that is the basis upon which we have proceeded, along with our partner the federal government.

We have issued a call for proposals. Before doing that we've also had significant input and advice from a consultant that we've retained, based in the United Kingdom, that has experience with deep-sea recovery operations to make sure that as we design the bidding process, we're doing so in a way that will capture all the potential benefits that we want to see in terms of doing the job quickly, safely and, hopefully, in a way that also respects the interests of taxpayers.

C. Trevena: Well, I am obviously very aware that the minister wants to do this responsibly and make sure that as many companies have the opportunity to bid on this as possible.

Is the minister aware that by putting this out in this way — say, with the RFP open until June 4, and it's obviously going to take a while for the staff to assess this — this is going to put any recovery into at least the fall, and the orcas are often around until October, which means recovery could be in November or then next spring?

The minister says that what he's heard is that there won't be any significant corrosion, but we just don't know what's going to happen under there. So I just wanted the minister to really…. If he could say how he feels comfortable that this is going to be the best way forward when we do have a truck with who knows how much oil in there that could be leaking sometime between now and next spring, if we leave it. We're talking at least a year.

Hon. B. Penner: The ministry staff have moved as quickly as they can on this, while protecting the interests of taxpayers. I do understand that there is one particular recovery company in B.C. that would like to have a direct award. However, I'm not sure that that would be in the best interests of taxpayers, because then, essentially, government has to pay whatever is demanded by the single entity.

I have to balance that concern for taxpayers against the concern for the environment. If it were a matter where the best available information suggested that that fuel that's likely still in the diesel truck at the bottom of the ocean were to cause a problem soon, then I think we could perhaps justify spending taxpayers' money in a way where we have no idea what it's going to end up costing us and where, essentially, the province could be held for ransom.

On the other hand, in this case the information suggests that we do have some time to devise a competitive bidding process and, hopefully, keep the costs down for taxpayers. Now, I appreciate the fact that the federal government has offered to partner with us in the funding, and I appreciate them responding favourably to our request in that regard. But still, it's taxpayers' money that we're talking about, whether it's from the federal government or the provincial government. I don't want to simply write a blank cheque.

I do want to make sure that we get this done as quickly as we can. The RFP does ask the proponents, as they devise their bids and submit them, to include an option for getting this work done in June, if that's possible. If not, then the RFP says to devise plans for an October recovery.

There aren't just killer whales in that area. I'm aware that there is the Dall's porpoise and other marine mammals and sea life that traverse the area. Perhaps there's even a variety of sea birds and things — for example, the oystercatcher and other types of waterfowl.

The important thing to note at this point is that the analysis of the video that was taken suggests that there is no ongoing leakage, that the likelihood of corrosion is not significant for about 18 months and that, to date, despite ongoing surveillance by the Ministry of Environment personnel and B.C. Parks staff, we have not found any evidence of any harmed wildlife or sea life as a result of what took place.

It doesn't mean that I'm happy about what took place. We would far rather that that hadn't happened, but it did. So now we're moving as carefully as we can to make sure we land in the right spot in terms of the recovery effort.

C. Trevena: I'm heartened to hear that there is the push in the RFP to get the work done in June, because as I mentioned, the orcas are often still around in October, if we're looking to October, and then the weather gets bad.

A final question on this section of my questions: if the work can't be done in June, will the ministry be looking at having procedures ready in case there is a leak? I know that that's an "if," but if there is a leak…. You know, nobody expected the barge to go down. There are a lot of lessons learned from that experience, about how that was dealt with. Some of it was a good experience; some of it was a bad experience. I've talked with your ministry and others about that. But will there be procedures ready in case the tanker starts leaking and we start seeing oil on the surface when the orcas are in the area?

Hon. B. Penner: I don't have the details of the RFP with me. I don't have the actual document. But if it's not contained as a requirement in the call for proposals, then certainly the ministry would expect that there would be a contingency plan, that any successful bidder would have to have crews or equipment on standby, whether it's Burrard Clean, which is the standing agent for these types of things on the coast, or whether the proponent had to have their own staff and equipment available.

It would be my expectation that there would be a contingency plan for when the work takes place. That's when the risk will be greatest. When you start to actually move the equipment and bring it to the surface, the pressures will change. The water pressure changes. So that's when I expect there will be some stress on the equipment, and the structural integrity of the vehicles at the bottom of the ocean will be of utmost concern.

C. Trevena: I just want to know: is there a contingency plan in place if there is a leakage before work starts on moving the tankers? If we get an RFP that can't move it before October, then that gets put back to next June, and we start getting a leak before then, does the ministry have a contingency plan in place to do a cleanup?

Hon. B. Penner: We continue to monitor the area. To date we haven't seen any sign of upwelling, which is good, and no sign of any harm to wildlife or sea life. If that situation were to change, then we would respond accordingly.

C. Trevena: I have one single question, I hope, and then a couple more. I know colleagues have questions, so I'll try to be quick.

I'm sure the minister is very well aware of the concern among the friends of Strathcona Park about the possibility of horses in the Bedwell valley, and I wondered if the minister could comment on what he is doing to ensure that there is either equity of access for people or that the valley is kept clear.

Hon. B. Penner: I understand that this is another issue where there are different views being expressed and people on different sides of this particular issue about whether or not some form of recreation using horses should be permitted in a part of Strathcona Park. I had a visit from the Ahousaht First Nation some time ago, and they strongly support the proposal, as does the Clayoquot Sound central region board and the Wilderness Tourism Association. On the other hand, the Friends of Strathcona Park have indicated they do not support the proposal.

The park management plan that exists for Strathcona Park is silent about this part of the park, this particular region of the park. The Strathcona Park Public Advisory Committee has advised the ministry that a park use permit for horse use should not be issued without an amendment to the Strathcona Park master plan. The ministry is actually working on that idea about a potential amendment to the park management plan, to clarify what type of use would be permitted in this region of Strathcona Provincial Park.

R. Chouhan: I have just a couple of questions while my colleague is putting her information together. It's about business credits — if they're available for clean technology to establish companies here in B.C.

We have a resident who is working for an Ontario-based solar company that wants to build its first commercial factory in Portland, Oregon. He doesn't want to move there, but Oregon has made it extremely enticing for solar companies to locate there. In other words, a company expecting to lose money when they're establishing in the first couple of years before turning profitable can immediately sell their credits to keep their balance sheet stronger until they break even.

My question is to the minister. What credits are available for clean tech companies who would like to locate in B.C.?

Hon. B. Penner: That question may be better answered by the Minister of Finance in terms of what specific tax credits may or may not exist. I can say that B.C. has one of the lowest corporate income taxes in Canada, and that is being assisted by the revenue-neutral carbon tax, which our party supports. It allows us to do some tax-shifting — to tax the things we don't like, such as pollution affecting the atmosphere, by putting a cost on carbon and to decrease taxes on things we want to encourage, such as business investment, job growth and income.

We're reducing personal and business income taxes, and we're reducing disincentives in terms of capital investment in British Columbia. We know that without capital investment, you do not get job creation. While we've had remarkable job growth over the last seven

years — more than 400,000 jobs created, and leading the country in job growth — we don't want to take that for granted.

We're constantly in competition with other jurisdictions who are trying to woo investors. That's why we think that in the long run our revenue-neutral carbon tax will make us even more competitive, because we'll be able to reduce other taxes as we get revenue from the revenue-neutral carbon tax. We can continue to remain competitive in terms of our business taxes as well as our personal income taxes and can compete successfully on the world stage for the investment that we'll need to continue our strong job growth here in the province.

R. Chouhan: In addition to that information just cited by the minister, this resident is also interested in finding out about the carbon tax system. What kinds of credits can this kind of company have here in B.C. for them to stay in B.C. rather than going to Portland, Oregon? If the minister can comment on that.

Hon. B. Penner: I don't know what specific technology the company that you're familiar with is promoting or working to develop. But by putting a cost on carbon here through the revenue-neutral carbon tax, it could be the company will have a competitive advantage compared to trying to establish a beachhead for their products in a place like Oregon, for example, where they do not have a carbon tax in place.

They are discussing with us and other partners in the western climate initiative the potential for setting a cap-and-trade system. But in terms of who's first out of the gate, British Columbia is in terms of putting a price on carbon specifically through the revenue-neutral carbon tax.

There is one other potential source of encouragement for that company that you're familiar with. It could be that they could make a proposal to the innovative clean energy fund, which we established last year through legislation. It's a $25 million fund.

It's specifically designed to help address challenges or problems that we're trying to resolve here in British Columbia by telling businesses: "If you think you have a solution to a problem that we've identified" — and I don't have the exact terms of reference here, but the government has enumerated a number of things we'd like to try and solve in B.C. — "then bring forward your idea. It's possible you could get some funding out of this $25 million innovative clean energy fund, to help us address those concerns."

It's not intended to be a subsidy. It's intended to provide financial incentives to address problems that we otherwise would have to fix anyway in British Columbia.

C. Trevena: If we can move back to Klinaklini conservancy. I understand there are plans for an IPP, a power project that's going to be built crossing West Thurlow from the conservancy area.

I wondered if the minister could please clarify which conservancies are going to be impacted and how this project — I believe it's quite a large one that includes 18 kilometres of tunnel or weir, which is going to be 30 metres in height, 150 kilometres of power line — is going to fit in the vision that the minister obviously has for conservancies for vast areas of B.C.

Hon. B. Penner: The member will be aware that Bill 38 is currently before the House. It has just passed second reading. All members of the Legislature supported it except for the member for Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows, who vacated his seat for some reason when the vote was called and made some interesting comments to the effect that the bill would somehow green-light the projects that the member refers to.

In fact, it's just the opposite. If you look at the definition of what's permitted within a conservancy, it says that small-scale — I believe that's how it's worded — hydroelectric projects are permitted if they're to serve a need within a conservancy or to help communities meet their local needs without being connected to the grid.

What was contemplated there were communities such as Hartley Bay, which I've had a chance to visit, where traditionally they've had to rely on diesel generators. They have to barge expensive diesel fuel to that location, and those diesel generators don't work forever. They break down a lot sooner than small hydro project generators tend to. Yet right above their village I've seen a large roaring creek and a waterfall.

Hartley Bay is now working with B.C. Hydro and the B.C. government — the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, I believe — to see if they can capture some of the energy in that falling water above their village and meet their needs for reliable energy, specifically electricity, and at the same time say goodbye to the noisy, expensive and sometimes unreliable diesel generator that they've had to rely on for several decades.

In terms of what's permitted in a conservancy, that's defined in the legislation that we passed two years ago when we first established 24 conservancies, I think it was. Last year we added a further 41, and there are another 50 conservancies proposed in the legislation that's before the House and awaiting committee stage debate now, in Bill 38.

C. Trevena: I thank the minister, and I believe that this isn't part of Bill 38. I'm talking about the Stafford Estuary Conservancy and the Wahkash Point Conservancy — the line bordering that. It is the conservancy that includes the Klinaklini River.

While the minister is talking about small-scale hydro, this project is actually looking at 700 megawatts of hydro during peak periods, which I would say is definitely not small-scale and would more than serve the needs of a community such as Hartley Bay.

I would really like to know from the minister a few more details on just a couple of issues, because my colleagues have some questions. What is going to be done to ensure protection of the salmon runs through Knight Inlet? And what will be done to protect the oolichan in the ponds at the head of Knight Inlet? It's one of the best oolichan runs on the coast.

Hon. B. Penner: Speaking generally for a moment about run-of-the-river projects, they are subject to environmental scrutiny before a water licence is issued. For example, the water stewardship division of the Ministry of Environment conducts and requires the proponent to conduct biological studies and assessments to determine whether or not there are fish present in the watercourse and, if so, what type, and what other type of habitat or aquatic impacts might result.

I think there have been something in the order of 18 projects developed since 2001 in British Columbia, and there were about 16 or so of these types of projects prior to 2001. Our side of the House thinks that they continue to present an opportunity to meet British Columbia's growing needs for electricity in an environmentally responsible way, if they're properly sited and properly assessed.

Somewhere in the order of 50 or so different approvals are required before a project of this nature is permitted. That is a pretty tall order, but we believe that close scrutiny is warranted, and that's what we require.

A number of first nations have partnered in run-of-the-river projects in B.C., notably on Vancouver Island, but also on the mainland. They are strong advocates for economic opportunities for their people as well as for doing something that they believe is responsible in terms of the land base. Again, it comes down to proper assessment, proper engineering, and there will be times and places where projects will not be permitted because of their location. That's speaking generally.

About the specific question that the member has, I can just point out that in the conservancy legislation that was first passed two years ago, in 2006, making amendments to the parks and protected areas legislation in British Columbia….

In section 9 there's a definition of local run-of-the-river projects. It says as follows: "…in relation to a conservancy, means run-of-the-river projects supplying power for use only (a) in the conservancy, or (b) by communities, including first nation communities, that do not otherwise have access to hydro electric power."

Those are the limitations that are put in place for projects that first nations or other groups may want to pursue within a conservancy.

C. Wyse: I had corresponded with you earlier with regards to a constituent of mine with regards to a renewal of a fish culture licence in the Lone Butte area. The licence had been given to this individual in 1996, and when it came up for renewal, the staff in the Williams Lake office saw fit not to renew this licence.

As you said you would do, your staff did investigate, did give me a more detailed response for their rejection of the renewal. When I look at their response, they quote regulations underneath the appropriate acts — Wildlife Act permit regulation subsection (2) — and then they go into subsection 2.1(1) for the rationale.

It would seem to me that there is some interpretation on the nature of the pond. My understanding is that this is a self-contained pond. There are no streams in or out of it. It's a matter of whether it fits underneath the regulations.

Now that I have the response from your staff, and looking for a renewal of a licence that exists, I would request that the minister himself now would look at this particular item and give his response on it. If it's agreeable with the minister, I will provide him with the name, the client number and the licence number to assist with that investigation.

Hon. B. Penner: I'd ask the member to share that specific information with us — the name and the number — so that our staff can follow up. Before making a commitment whether or not to approve such a licence, I'd like to know what my staff have to say about it. They'll let me know once they have a chance to look at the details, if you could provide those.

I see that our Chair appears to be giving us some rather strong hints, so at this point I would move that the committee rise, report progress and seek leave to sit again.

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