2009 Legislative Session: Fifth Session, 38th Parliament
HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 38, Number 4

[ Page 13775 ]

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2009

The House met at 1:37 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Prayers.

Introductions by Members

D. Chudnovsky: I have a number of introductions today. Mr. Speaker, as you know — because I've reminded you on a number of occasions — the best high schools in British Columbia are in Vancouver-Kensington. You remember that, don't you?

Mr. Speaker: I do remember.

D. Chudnovsky: I want to introduce to the House a number of students who are….

Interjections.

D. Chudnovsky: The heckling comes later.

I want to introduce to the House a group of students from Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School who are here today with their teachers and supervisors. Could the House please make them welcome.

As well, two dear friends of our family are here visiting from Hamilton, Ontario. I'd like to introduce Ruth and Yaacov Goldberg. Ruth is the keeper of my wife's family history. She organizes the family tree. It goes back to 1722. It's a full-time job. We want to thank her for doing that and welcome her and Yaacov to the House.

Hon. J. McIntyre: Today in the members' gallery we have a very special guest representing his country of Greece. We have Mr. Georgios Ayfantis, the newly appointed consul general at Vancouver. He's making his first official visit to Victoria. We had a very instructive meeting this morning, just learning more about his interests here in British Columbia. I ask the House to please make him feel very welcome.

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D. Thorne: I have the honour today to introduce the grade 11 honours social studies class and teachers from Gleneagle Secondary School in my riding. They're all sitting up in the best seats in the House. We did a tour, and they're having a wonderful time. Would you all please make them very welcome.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: I am pleased to introduce a number of visitors from around the country. We have today possibly the largest-ever gathering of the Mount Allison University alumni here in the B.C. Legislature.

In addition to two staff that work in the buildings — Matt MacInnis, my executive assistant, as well as Katy Fairley, my former legislative assistant — joining us among the Mount A grads are Henry Skey from Victoria; Dave Rathbun from Cheverie, Nova Scotia; Randy Rose from Riverview, New Brunswick; and Daniel "Fuzzy" Koivisto from Calgary. Will the House please make them all welcome.

B. Ralston: It's my pleasure to introduce today several guests from the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, local 378: Andy Ross, president; Gwenne Farrell, who's a vice-president and also the national secretary-treasurer of the national organization; and Mike Bruce, director of communications. Would the House please make them welcome.

D. Hayer: We have in the House some very special delegates and guests from a variety of organizations, including Indian Buddha Society, the Chetna Association of Canada and Shri Guru Ravidass Sabha in Burnaby. This sabha propagates the teaching of a guru, Sat Guru Ravidass, who was a visionary in 15th-century India. He openly fought against man-made inequalities such as caste, creed and discrimination against all individuals, while promoting universal love, peace and tolerance.

Next month the sabha will be celebrating the 632nd birthday anniversary of Sat Guru Ravidass, and they will be spreading Nagar Kirtan to the community.

The society is represented here today by its president, Bill Basra, along with 20 other delegates and volunteers, including Santokh Jassal, Lamber Rao, Jai Birdi, Ram Saroop Chandharah and Chandra Bodalia, one of the top photographers from our communities. They have been volunteering their time to help the community.

They met with the opposition and the government side today. Would the House please make them very welcome and thank them for all the hard work they're doing.

C. Trevena: I hope the House will make welcome two women I met earlier today: Susan Murphy, who is the president of the B.C. Council of the Canadian Federation of University Women, and Kathy Torhjelm from the Nanaimo branch. I hope the House will make them very welcome.

J. Nuraney: I, too, would like to add my welcome to the group from the Guru Ravidass Sabha who are here with us today. It is a group who are loyal and dedicated people who are serving not only their community but a community at large in Burnaby, and I am very proud that they are all here today to be with us in this House.

I would like to make a particular mention of President Bill Basra and Jai Birdi, who are with them today, who are really the backbone and the core of this group and have worked so very hard for the community in the past and now, as I speak.
[ Page 13776 ]

I would also like to acknowledge the presence of Chandra Bodolia, a very well-known and a very well-liked person in our community. So please, would the House join me in welcoming this group who are here upstairs in the gallery.

N. Simons: I'd like to welcome today to the House Laney Bryenton and Cindy Chapman of the B.C. Association for Community Living, who I know are working tirelessly with both sides of the House to ensure that the voice of people with developmental disabilities and their families are heard. Will the House please make them welcome.

Hon. I. Black: I want to add my welcome to the students from Gleneagle, many of whom are constituents of mine. Nice to see you guys here.

I also want to acknowledge something that some of you don't probably know, which is that May 12 is a very, very important day, not just because we get to see what's going to happen electorally, but because it's my son's tenth birthday. He happens to be here today. So I want you to help me make him feel welcome, and I've assured him we're all going to be very well-behaved.

[1345]

R. Chouhan: Today in the gallery we have about 36 members of a delegation who have joined us today. They are Bill Basra, Santokh Jassal, Ram Saroop Chandharah, Paramjit Singh Kainth, Hukam Chand, Giani Pooran Singh, Lamber Rao, Jai Birdi, Nachattar Benji, Shinda Ahir, Kamal Jassi, Surinder Sandhu, Surjit Bains, Raj Kumar Mehmi, Jai Ram Bains, Chaman Banga, Mohinder Sidhu, Paramjit Mehmi, Kishan Lal Sidhu, Rashpal Bhardwaj, Surinder Ranga, Sutey Parkash Ahir, Chandra Bodalia, Harmesh Chumber, Michael Ghira, Hardev Saroa, Gurbax Dhanda, Davinder Dhami, Malkiat Sohpal, Paramjit Lakha, Malkiat Puar, Kamaljit Lakha, Dilbagh Rai, Amrik Kalsi, Prem Sund, Gurmukh Sidhu and GD Guddu. Please join me to welcome them all.

J. Horgan: I just want to inform members of the House that today marks my 25th wedding anniversary, and I know members will want to offer their sympathies to my beloved spouse and my reason for living, Ellie.

C. Evans: As you know, it takes a very special kind of person to represent the South Okanagan, and I've been looking here…. A former member of the territory, Jim Beattie, is somewhere loose in the buildings, but it would appear that there are so many people that have come today to watch the opposition eviscerate the budget that there's no room for Jim. I just want to close by saying that he used to be a lonely MLA, but he is now elevated to the highest career level you can get. He's farming in Ontario.

Tabling Documents

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I have the honour to present the Auditor General's report No. 15, 2008-2009, Wireless Networking and Security in Victoria Government Offices: Gaps in the Defensive Line.

Statements (Standing Order 25b)

JOS KONST AND SMITHERS SKI HILL

D. MacKay: Just a short 50 years ago — as we get older, the years pass very quickly, but 50 years ago is a short time — a young fellow by the name of Jos Konst lay in a hospital bed in the Bulkley Valley District Hospital in Smithers, looking at the Smithers ski hill with a pair of binoculars. You can do the math yourself. I'm not going to tell you how old Jos was, but he was 11 years old 50 years ago. So he was looking at the ski hill — which, by the way, is the best ski hill in British Columbia bar none. He dreamed of connecting the town of Smithers to the ski hill.

A few short years ago Jos actually approached the Smithers Rotary Club and asked them if they wanted to take on a dream that he had 50 years ago. And do you know what? The rotary club said yes. They gave him $5,000 immediately, and they went out, and they started fundraising. I can tell you the fundraising through the community was tremendous. Everywhere they went, they got money to help build this project.

Today that dream is a reality. You can now ski from the top of the Panorama ski run in Smithers to the downtown valley where Smithers is located. It's a vertical drop of 3,775 feet, and there's nothing nicer than whizzing down that ski run and having the air flow through your hair.

Remember if you can dream it, you can do it. Jos Konst did it, and Smithers is better place for it.

ALL-NATIVE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

G. Coons: I'd like to take this opportunity to once again acknowledge a very important event that occurs yearly in Prince Rupert on Tsimshian traditional territory, the All-Native Basketball Tournament. Last week it was the 50th anniversary.

[1350]

This week-long tournament, which occurs at the beginning of February, has a long and prestigious history. What started out with a small number of teams has flourished to 68 teams from all over British Columbia, including our American neighbours to the north. Over 900 athletes came to town in droves to take home the glory.

This is one of the largest annual sporting events in Canada. This was truly an international spectacle, as we allowed the Hydaburg, Alaska, teams to take home the
[ Page 13777 ]
masters and seniors titles and the Metlakatla, Alaska, the women's title.

North Shore, from the Lower Mainland, captured the intermediate in a hard-fought battle with their local friendship house team. Special thanks must go to the many sponsors and to the all-native tournament society, especially Clarence Martin and Peter Hogan.

Also included at this year's 50th was a cultural day with over 300 singers, dancers and drummers from nine different nations, who performed individually and as a group. This showcase of talent and culture is the real spirit of British Columbia.

My good friend Sam Bryant must be acknowledged for his tenacity in the organization of this magnificent event. The organizing committee realized that this was not just a basketball tournament but a potlatch, where people from many nations come together to revive acquaintances and establish new relationships. It was a culture fest for nine straight days.

Michael Curnes from the city of Prince Rupert also organized the first annual native film festival that showed 13 films and documentaries in the newly converted film facility. In addition, Brian Robinson put together the first annual native music fest, featuring ten great regional musicians and groups. My favourite was the Nassville Five, from the Nass Valley — a great hit.

Hon. Speaker and those in the House today, I encourage you all to book for the 51st All-Native Basketball Tournament and culture week next February in Prince Rupert.

GROUSE MOUNTAIN

R. Sultan: With acknowledgment of my friend from Smithers, I would like to tell the House about another jewel of our province: Grouse Mountain. In its 82nd year of operation, this landmark not only provides a beautiful backdrop for all those beautiful photographs of Vancouver; it attracts over a million visitors a year. They jog, climb or gondola to the top. There they find the best B.C. has to offer: spectacular scenery, hiking, skiing, B.C. food and beverages in a gourmet restaurant.

One night last weekend downhill skiers lit their red flares in single file and made S-curves down the cut — a spectacular display seen from all over the city of Vancouver, marking the beginning of the 365-day countdown for the 2010 games. Grouse Mountain stayed open 24 hours straight for that entire weekend as a test event for their plan to open 24-7 throughout every day of the entire winter games.

Grouse Mountain continues to invest in its recreational infrastructure — this year alone, $12 million. They opened the season with two new chairlifts and a brand-new attraction, the mountain zip line. Later this year they'll be erecting B.C.'s first urban wind turbine to generate green power, and they continue to improve the famous Grouse Grind, contributing to the fitness levels on the North Shore.

Grouse Mountain is an important economic engine — the largest youth employer we have on the North Shore. Tens of thousands of youth find their first job there. When the world arrives for the winter games, Grouse Mountain will showcase the best our province has to offer.

GURU RAVIDASS SABHA

R. Chouhan: Earlier today, along with many other members and the leader of the official opposition, I had the privilege and honour to receive and host a reception for the delegation from Guru Ravidass Sabha, also known as the Gilley temple in Burnaby.

Under the leadership of the president, Mr. Bill Basra, and trustee Mr. Hukam Chand, the 36-member delegation is here from all over the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island and India to celebrate the 632nd birthday of Shri Guru Ravidass.

Guru Ravidass taught spirituality in the 14th century in India, based on emancipation from the oppression of the Indian caste system. He was born in an oppressed community considered untouchable. From childhood itself, Guru Ravidass Shri had spiritual traits and soon came to be known as a highly enlightened saint. He started preaching these spiritual ideas to the rich and poor alike.

[1355]

His popularity increased day by day, and soon kings and queens of different princely states became his disciples. He stood for equality for everyone. He raised his voice against racism. He taught the oneness and omnipresence of God and that the only way to moksha is to free the mind from duality.

To pay a true homage to Guru Ravidass, we need to celebrate his birthday every day so that his message of love and equality reaches out to everyone. Once again, please join with me to welcome the members of the Guru Ravidass Sabha and the Gilley temple to this temple of democracy.

SQUAMISH NATION WATERFRONT GREENWAY

K. Whittred: This last Sunday was a beautiful day, and my husband and I went out and enjoyed a walk along what is the new Squamish greenway in my community. A few weeks ago the city of North Vancouver and the Squamish Nation together officially celebrated the completion of the Squamish Nation Waterfront Greenway, and this is part of a North Shore trail which will eventually link Horseshoe Bay with Deep Cove.

This particular portion will link the city's waterfront park along the waterfront to King's Mill Walk, which is a little bit further to the west. As you enter this portion of
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the Squamish trail, you go through a wonderful gateway that is an impressive piece of public art created by local first nation artist Wade Baker. It's called Gateway to Ancient Wisdom, and it's a stainless steel and red cedar sculpture greeting visitors to the Squamish Nation and inviting them to enjoy the trail.

It's through this relationship-building between the city of North Vancouver and the Squamish First Nation that has made this waterfront pathway a reality. In fact, through its work on this trail, the city of North Vancouver has received national acclaim. Last year the city had the honour of receiving an award of merit in the urban design category at the 2008 Design Exchange Awards for its portion of the trail. This is a highly prestigious award which recognizes the values of design and partnerships across the country.

I welcome all of you, the next time you come to the North Shore, to take this breathtaking walk along the Squamish Nation trail, and I particularly invite you to admire the amazing work of renowned Squamish artist Wade Baker.

ADVOCACY FOR RENTERS

S. Herbert: I rise today to speak about standing up for renters. In my community of the west end of Vancouver we know something about renting and renters. Over 80 percent of my constituents in the West End rent, myself included.

My community has been facing challenges which it hasn't seen for many years. Large property management companies like Hollyburn Properties and smaller companies like Gordon Nelson Investments have been buying up massive numbers of buildings and have proceeded to evict, threaten to evict or proposed to increase rents by up to 73 percent to good tenants who have always paid their rent and their yearly rent increases for many years.

This crisis has now started to spread to many other communities including Victoria, Kamloops, Kelowna and Comox, to name a few. You know things are bad when people who were once housed are ending up on the street or paying such high rents that they can't afford to eat.

But there are those standing up for change — volunteer groups like Renters at Risk and non-profits like Tenants Resource and Advisory Centre, groups without a lot of resources but with a passion for creating a balanced landlord-tenant relationship. They've worked with those struggling with the language, struggling with the forms. They've worked with landlords to make sure that they know their rights. They've worked with many to ensure that they can stay in their homes.

In troubled economic times we must be doing more to keep people housed. People need to know that their government is watching out for them so that they can have stability and confidence for their future. They are calling on us to change the Residential Tenancy Act. We can, and I believe we must, act now. I thank them for their activism on behalf of the renters of British Columbia.

Oral Questions

BUDGET PROVISIONS FOR PUBLIC SAFETY

C. James: Gang warfare has been escalating in B.C. for the last two years. Last week we saw the Premier hold a press conference in Vancouver. He said he was going to finally start addressing the challenge. Then yesterday his Finance Minister turned around and tabled a budget that cuts anti-crime programs.

[1400]

My question is to the Attorney General. Why should British Columbians trust this government to address crime, when the budget contains cuts to courts, prosecutors and Corrections?

Hon. J. van Dongen: Our government remains committed to the agenda that was laid out by the Premier. As we indicated, we were working on a number of issues that we have worked through, including 168 additional police officers that will all be devoted to fighting organized crime, fighting gun violence.

That money was negotiated with the federal government, and additional dollars were also achieved through our provincial RCMP agreement. Those are all new dollars, all additional dollars, in addition to all of the traffic fine revenue that we are putting to local governments and that they use to hire additional police officers.

Mr. Speaker: Leader of the Opposition has a supplemental.

C. James: Unbelievable. Unbelievable, when we see another killing yesterday. This government has words and no action, once again.

The facts are in the budget. Page 137 — the budget for protection of persons and property cut by $35 million since 2007-2008. And this is even more shocking: it will be cut by another $84 million in the next two years.

The minister can try and explain: "We're partnering with this, and we've got the dollars somewhere else."

The facts are clear. The numbers are not there. This budget has been cut. When is this government going to stand up and tell the truth to the public? They're doing nothing to fight gang crime.

Hon. J. van Dongen: I talked about additional police officers to the specialized integrated teams. The Premier also announced additional prosecutors — ten specialized prosecutors, senior prosecutors, to support the 16 specialized prosecutors…

Interjections.
[ Page 13779 ]

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. J. van Dongen: …working with the police. We also confirmed the $185 million of capital spending on new prisons.

I haven't heard the Leader of the Opposition…. I haven't heard her make a decision. Take action. Take action, Member. Take action on the issue of the Willingdon pretrial facility, because it is your NDP mayor that now talks about retroactively changing zoning. What is your opinion about that, hon. Member?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Leader of the Opposition has a further supplemental.

C. James: We all know that action speaks louder than words. This budget cuts support for crime and safety — cuts support. Twenty-three killings last year alone, 13 shootings in this year alone, and what are the government's priorities in yesterday's budget? Cuts to courts. Cuts to prosecutors. Cuts to Corrections. Resources to protect British Columbians are down next year and the year after that.

No matter which way anyone on this side tries to explain it, the numbers are clear. There are cuts in community safety.

So I'd like to ask anyone on that side of the House: will you stand up and say to the public how you can say you're supporting community safety when you've cut the budget this year and next?

Hon. J. van Dongen: I suggest that the member talk to the police. And what do the police say? What do they say?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Solicitor General.

[1405]

Hon. J. van Dongen: I'm going to tell you what the police say. What the police say is that they need amendments in the Criminal Code. They need amendments with respect to disclosure, and they need amendments with respect to wiretapping. I'm asking the member opposite if she's made the necessary phone calls to support those changes.

But what else do the police say? I'll tell you what else the police say. They say — and I quote Cpl. Peter Thiessen: "Frankly, we don't think it's a resource problem. It's a problem of how quickly we need to do our job. We have to work within a set of rules that, for lack of a better term, is handcuffing us in many ways to move quickly when we have information."

That's what he says. "The provincial government has provided us with a number of new tools that they announced last Friday that is going provincewide. That has been a huge help."

That is what the police say.

S. Simpson: Clearly, this minister has learned well from his political master. He doesn't show the political courage to stand up, be accountable when he gets caught up in numbers that don't add up. Instead, just like the Premier, he points his finger at everybody else. Well, British Columbians have had enough. They have had enough.

Now that B.C. is the gang capital of Canada, as we've heard — over 30 killings in the last couple of years, a woman murdered in front of her four-year-old child yesterday — who knows what tomorrow brings?

Now the Premier and this Finance Minister are cutting the budgets for the courts, for prosecutors and for Corrections. When will the grandstanding end? When will you finally stand up and own up to the fact? It's a political problem for you. You don't care about the problem of safety in our community.

Hon. J. van Dongen: I want to, on behalf of the government, again express our concern for the families of victims — of all victims. I want to reiterate the message of the Premier that this government will do whatever it takes, whatever is necessary. We have made major increases in policing over the term of our government. We continue to do that. We continue to focus additional resources, such as Crown prosecutors and jails for offenders. We will do whatever it takes.

If anyone is guilty of grandstanding, it is the members on the other side of the House who can't even support a simple decision such as a prison properly located on Willingdon in Burnaby.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

S. Simpson: This situation with gangs and gun violence has been spiralling out of control in this province for months and months and months. It didn't start last Friday. The Premier has made commitments that are rhetorical only, that there's no substance behind. The first substantive thing that we see from this government in relation to this is this budget.

And what do we see in the budget? We see cuts for courts, cuts to prosecutors, cuts to essential services. That's the reality when you look where the money is.

My question to the minister is this. At what point is this government going to bring forward a real program with real resources, stop misleading the people of this
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province as a government and move on? It's time to do something about gang violence.

Hon. J. van Dongen: I can't believe what I just heard from that member. When you look at the number of increases and the substantial dollars of increases in policing — 950 additional police officers since 2002; $128 million of new money in provincial policing…

[1410]

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. J. van Dongen: …an 89 percent increase since 2001; $66 million into integrated policing in this province; $53 million of additional federal money that the province negotiated with the federal government; another $17 million on top of that in our provincial RCMP agreement; additional prosecutors on the organized crime file…. And this member has the nerve to say that this agenda started last Friday.

The fact is, Member, we've been working on these issues for considerable periods of time while you've been talking about it.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members, before we continue….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. People get a chance to ask the question; people get a chance to answer the question. Let's take a little bit of time and think about that.

M. Farnworth: Grandstanding is the minister, the Attorney General and the Premier standing at a press conference, saying they've got a plan and knowing full well it's not funded in this budget. That is grandstanding. So my question to the….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Sit down for a second, Member.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Member, continue.

M. Farnworth: The member over there thinks holding the budget is a prop. Well, guess what. After I've seen what this government is prepared to spend on public safety, yeah, it is a prop. That's all it is.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Member.

M. Farnworth: So my question….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Member.

M. Farnworth: My question to the Solicitor General is this. He said he wants to do everything possible. Then why is that not reflected in this budget? Why is it that only cuts are reflected in this budget?

Hon. J. van Dongen: Our budget supports our agenda to fight crime — organized crime — and gun violence in this province. There's $185 million in capital investment — in new, modern, safe facilities for prisoners. If the member opposite wants to demonstrate his commitment to public safety, he might want to convey to the mayor of Burnaby — the NDP mayor of Burnaby — the safety record of the North Fraser pretrial facility and the good work of the professional corrections staff in that facility.

He knows of the safety record. It's in his community, and I'm wondering when he is going to stand up to the NIMBYism, the political opportunism that's going on in Burnaby right now. When is he going to stand up to say: "You know, this isn't in the public interest"? When is he going to do that?

Mr. Speaker: Member has a supplemental.

M. Farnworth: Your Solicitor General, your Attorney General, your Premier and government failed in a budget to address the serious issue of public safety and court services in this province. So my question….

[1415]

Interjections.

M. Farnworth: Hon. Speaker, we're not getting an answer from the Solicitor General, so let's try the Attorney General. How do cuts to court services and prosecutors in this budget result in better public safety for the people of British Columbia?

Hon. W. Oppal: The member for Vancouver-Hastings quite dramatically said that the gang problems have been escalating for the last three or four months or number of months. I have news for him. They've been with us for decades. They were with us in the 1970s when the Big Circle Boys established themselves here. They were here….
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Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Attorney.

Hon. W. Oppal: I'm quite prepared to run out question period if they want to do that.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members, Members.

Continue, Attorney.

Hon. W. Oppal: I was there in the '80s, and I was there in the '90s. We had some of the worst gang warfare in the 1990s. That was the height of Indo-Canadian gang violence. That was when the Dosanjh brothers were gunned down in broad daylight. That's when Mr. Olson, an innocent victim walking his dog, was shot.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. W. Oppal: Where were you then? Where were your bright ideas at that time? And you want to bring up the question of prosecutors? Let me….

Mr. Speaker: Thank you, Attorney.

Next question.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

ECONOMIC FORECASTS
AND BUDGET PROCESS

B. Ralston: I think the Attorney General forgot in his wandering down memory lane that the criminologist Mr. Plecas from the University College of the Fraser Valley said that the number of gangs in British Columbia has gone from under ten at the beginning of this century up to over a hundred. The Attorney General seems to have forgotten that fact.

My question is to the Minister of Finance. The budget is based on forecast numbers from January 9. Back then the Finance Minister was predicting no deficit in this fiscal year. Why would the Minister of Finance expect anyone to believe his budget when it's based on a forecast that's clearly out of date?

Hon. C. Hansen: This year, as we do every year, we engage with our Economic Forecast Council in the months leading up to the budget. What the Economic Forecast Council was telling us as of the middle of January was that we should expect, in British Columbia, GDP growth in 2009 of zero percent on average.

That is why, in building the budget, we do what we do every year, and that's build in extra levels of prudence. We actually built the budget based on economic forecasts of 0.9 percent reduction in the economy compared to the zero percent that the Economic Forecast Council had indicated as recently as the middle of January.

But I can tell you that the way we build budgets today is a pretty dramatic shift from what we saw in the 1990s. We rely on our independent, outside advice. We don't make up numbers and project revenues that don't exist like they did in the 1990s.

Mr. Speaker: Member has a supplemental.

[1420]

B. Ralston: Back in the middle of January the minister was predicting no deficit in this fiscal year. The Economic Forecast Council asked to meet with the minister again prior to his tabling the budget.

Why wouldn't the minister meet with those experts and table a budget that's realistic, based on economic reality today, not upon his fantasies?

Hon. C. Hansen: I met with the Economic Forecast Council on December 5, which is their tradition every year — that the Finance Minister will engage with the Economic Forecast Council. This Economic Forecast Council is made up of 12 of Canada's leading economists from all across Canada.

At the time that I met with them on December 5 we indicated to them that we would entertain changes to their forecast up to the middle of January. We did that this year, and we took their forecast. We built the extra level of prudence into it by not using the zero number that they had indicated to us on average as of the middle of January, but in fact lowered the GDP expectation to minus 0.9 percent. That is what we have built this budget on.

R. Fleming: Can the minister explain how personal income tax revenue can go up in this budget as thousands of people are losing their jobs? The economy is in the midst of a recession. We lost 68,000 full-time positions in January alone in British Columbia.

Is the minister and his budget telling us that when the economy goes down, personal income tax revenue goes up? Or is he banking on a September surprise — a new budget that's actually based on the cold reality going on in the economy?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Minister, just take your seat.
[ Page 13782 ]

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. C. Hansen: Actually, this brings back memories of when I first became a member of this Legislative Assembly in 1996 when a government was re-elected based on a manipulated budget, based on political revenue projections that did not exist, that could not be substantiated.

I remember in 1996 a Minister of Finance of an NDP government that came in and asked for a little wiggle room and brought in a new budget that was totally different from the fudge-it budget that Glen Clark and the NDP tabled going into the 1996 election.

We base our revenue projections on the best independent advice that we can get. The revenue projections that are contained in this budget are based on the economic analysis by independent sources and based on the expert and independent advice of some of the finest public servants that have served this province, that work in the Ministry of Finance.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

R. Fleming: Well, I can't wait to see that Finance Minister wiggle out of a budget that doesn't even increase moneys for Olympic Games security when his federal counterpart says we need a billion.

Let's look at another assumption in this budget. The minister likes to talk about confidence, but British Columbia right now has the lowest consumer confidence in Canada, and one of the hardest hit areas in our economy is retail sales. Can the minister explain how he expects sales tax revenue to go up in his budget when sales and retail confidence are tanking?

[1425]

Hon. C. Hansen: As I've travelled around British Columbia over the last number of months at times when we have seen the global economic crisis getting worse day by day and week by week, what I have found in every corner of British Columbia is British Columbians who do have confidence in this province, who actually believe that we are on a sound, solid economic footing as a result of the work that we've done over the last eight years.

British Columbians know that we are going to weather this economic challenge better than just about any other jurisdiction in North America. British Columbians will be asked the question in a few months' time as to which leadership they have more confidence in as we go into the next decade.

B.C. HYDRO RevenueS and RATES

J. Horgan: Here's some more fictional fun with figures for the Minister of Finance. Yesterday B.C. Hydro announced their third quarterly revenues were down $29 million. That's third-quarter revenues down $29 million. Yet in the budget the minister's depending on Hydro dividends increasing by 27 percent.

So where are you getting your expert advice on this one — the Wizard of Oz? Either you're going to raise rates, or you're going to be using pixie dust. That's the only way this is going to add up.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Well, we're really going to wait for silence now. Members.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: I thank the member for the question. B.C. Hydro works diligently on all of our behalf, and I think you would share that vision about a Crown corporation that is second to none. Their revenue that they bring in on behalf of every British Columbian is based on the projections that they put forward and through their filings with the BCUC. I'm sure the member is aware of what they have put forward in their documents before the BCUC this year.

The ability for them to generate revenue on behalf of each and every one of us, not just in this Legislature but in this province, benefits each and every one of us as ratepayers of B.C. Hydro. I'm confident that, although you feel that the numbers are not there to suffice what you believe you'd like to spend, we believe they are.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

The member has a supplemental.

J. Horgan: I do, although I'm now brimming with confidence after hearing that answer from the Minister of Energy. I'm still not clear how it is that you could have a reduction in revenue in the third quarter and a 27 percent increase in dividend the next year.

But since the Minister of Energy is on his feet, perhaps he can riddle me this. The budget says that the average cost of electricity is going to be $55 a megawatt hour next year. But by policy, this government is mandating that Hydro buy its energy from independent power projects for anywhere between $75 and $100 a megawatt hour. Is that more wizardry?

To the Minister of Energy: how do you reconcile prices up here for private power, prices down here at the market?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: Again, thank you to the member for the question. How do we reconcile it? I mean, I can tell you…. I know you've read about the heritage contracts that we have with B.C. Hydro. The new power that comes on line, whether it be through the IPPs — which
[ Page 13783 ]
I know you would like to put a moratorium on, put over 1,100 people out of work….

[1430]

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Minister, just take your seat.

Members.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. We're just going to wait for a second.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: We do want to talk about this, as I said. For the opposition to cheer shutting down over 1,100 jobs in rural British Columbia is shameful. To take away $4.5 billion worth of investment going on in British Columbia, mostly northern and rural British Columbia, is appalling.

You wonder why the people of British Columbia don't trust you. All you have to do is listen to the questions you ask.

But let's be clear on something. There are 46 independent power projects operating in this province today. Roughly half of those projects were begun under the leadership of the NDP in the 1990s. So don't be too hypocritical, ladies and gentlemen. These are good projects. They're good jobs for rural British Columbians and all British Columbians, and they're good projects that we're going to support on this side. You can shut them down if you want.

[End of question period.]

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

D. Chudnovsky: I have a petition to present.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Petitions

D. Chudnovsky: The petition is signed by constituents calling on the government to protect the residents of British Columbia from the health hazards, pollution, nuisance and interruption to normal daily life from all residential wood-burning smoke and odour.

S. Hawkins: I present a petition on behalf of myself and the member from Lake Country — 11 citizens of Kelowna who are concerned about the privatization of B.C. Hydro.

Hon. I. Chong: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Introductions by Members

Hon. I. Chong: I see a number of guests have just arrived in the gallery. I have visiting from Glenlyon Norfolk School, a junior school in my riding, 44 grade 5 students and five adults. They've just missed question period, but I'm sure they're very interested in the debate that's about to follow. I would ask the House to please make them all very welcome.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: Of course, question period is replayed at 11 o'clock tonight on local channels, Mr. Speaker.

I call continued second reading debate on the budget.

Budget Debate

(continued)

B. Ralston: It's my privilege to resume debate on the budget, carrying on from where I left off yesterday. I want to begin by talking about the third quarterly report, because that is a document that's tabled with the budget and gives an indication of recent activity in the economy and how it's had an impact on government finances and government projected revenue.

During the fall just past, the Minister of Finance was pressed by myself, among others, to come forward, given the extraordinary financial events that had taken place both in the United States and around the world and the impact of the financial crisis in September as it began to work its way into the real economy — that impact on government revenue here in British Columbia.

[1435]

[K. Whittred in the chair.]

The minister did make a minor concession by tabling the second quarterly report, ordinarily tabled in early December, on November 24 last year — 2008. In that quarterly report, that chronicles economic activity from the perspective of the government up to the end of September of last year.

What this budget is about is the credibility of the economic forecast that the minister is using in the budget that he just tabled yesterday, and this quarterly report gives some indication of just what the real activity in the economy is. It's interesting to note that the projected surplus before a forecast allowance at the end of the first quarterly, three months prior to the end of September, was $1.77 billion, and then with a forecast allowance reducing that to just over a billion dollars.
[ Page 13784 ]

At the end of the first quarterly, at the end of the first three months after the budget was tabled, the government was projecting a billion-dollar surplus. At the end of the second quarterly, given the changes that had gone on, obviously there were drastic downward revisions. The surplus before the forecast allowance fell $800 million from $1.77 billion to $950 million, with a forecast allowance of $500 million, making for a surplus projected to year-end of $450 million.

As one can surmise by simply listening to those figures, that's a very precipitous drop. It's a big drop in projected government revenue. Obviously, forecasting is difficult in this environment and the subject of much comment as people, particularly in the financial industry, look back on just how wrong forecasts were. Indeed, there's some debate in the financial industry about how effective some of the quantitative forecasts have been or have not been, given the predictive power that they claim for themselves and the actual result in the sense that they completely missed and failed to anticipate the collapse of the markets in September.

Obviously, forecasting has its challenges, and certainly conventional forecasting has been severely tested and its credibility shaken. Nonetheless, there are relatively traditional sources or streams of revenue for the provincial government that are easily identified and are traditionally composed together in a forward-looking outlook to make a forecast as to what projected revenue might be in this fiscal year.

With the budget, the third quarterly was tabled, not prior to the debate we had last week in the previous session, when the minister suddenly decided mid-January…. Apparently there was a day — we're still not given any specifics; still not shared with the public — where projected revenue dropped $300 million. It's left to talking points for government members and cabinet ministers. It's repeated but never explained. No documents are provided about just how that epiphany came about, but apparently that's what is claimed.

At that point the minister revised his public stance. Up till then he was saying publicly and stating publicly that he did not expect to deliver a deficit budget in the new fiscal year. That's the budget he just tabled. In mid-January that changed, necessitating the debate that we had last week.

[1440]

But the figures for the third quarter were not shared with the public or with members of the Legislature. There's no special insight that we're permitted to have. We simply received the documents with the budget yesterday, along with everyone else.

What is striking about the third quarterly report is the degree to which government revenue projections have tumbled again. If in the previous quarter projected government revenue declined $800 million, the projected revenue decline in the last quarter is $900 million, leaving a projected surplus to year-end of $50 million. That's on a budget of almost $39 billion — so a very, very small percentage. There's no forecast allowance included in that — in other words, no margin for error.

Ordinarily as you approach the end of the fiscal year, the forecast allowance diminishes. Obviously you have history behind you instead of prospective revenue, and that's a traditional reduction of the forecast allowance. But it is striking here that there's no forecast allowance at all. Indeed, this theme of not using a forecast allowance at all is a theme that is expanded in the budget that's just been tabled. So I might divert slightly from my discussion of the third quarterly.

It's significant that the deputy minister, who is statutorily required to place his cautions on the budget at the very front of the budget, in a document says: "Unlike previous years…."

I'm reading from what he says, and this is a significant change to practice. It's a significant change to some of the strong claims that have been made by the government to prudent financial management. It's a significant change, significant enough that the Deputy Minister of Finance, in the front of the budget, feels obliged to note it.

He says: "Unlike recent years, there are no forecast allowances included in the fiscal plan, and the government will be managing risks to the fiscal plan through expenditure management and use of the contingency vote."

The whole point of the forecast allowance was to build in a cushion, if you will, or a margin of error, some flexibility, recognizing the difficulty in making economic predictions and particularly predictions over a full budget year. So the use of the forecast allowance, much touted and much ballyhooed as a prudent way to demonstrate a measure of caution in estimating government revenue and to give the government some leeway in achieving its targets, has been abolished. It's not present in this budget.

That's very clear when one sees what's been tabled here in the budget — for the reason that that particular forecast allowance is no longer convenient to the government in the fiscal story that it chooses to tell at this time in the electoral cycle, a couple of months before the election.

If it were included, which ordinarily it would…. The minister himself, when he closes debate, will explain — or perhaps some enterprising journalist will ask him — why that is the case. There's nothing in the budget itself other than the stark comment of the deputy minister, the senior public official responsible for preparing the budget, that there has been this change made — a change to past practice of all the budgets of this century.

It's not clear why that is done. But if the $750 million forecast allowance were added, obviously that would increase the projected deficit by some considerable amount.

[1445]
[ Page 13785 ]

I think it follows — although some commentators, government supporters, have said otherwise — that there is a risk. Indeed, the document that's also tabled with the budget — the fiscal and economic review, which is an analytical survey of the province's economy in many respects — and prepared by public officials suggests that the risks to the forecast are more on the down side than they are on the up side. I think that's a prudent caution.

Just as one can overshoot — in the sense of underestimate — the potential surplus that one might accumulate in a good year, it's also prudent…. It follows, I think, fairly straightforwardly that one could also underestimate the degree to which government revenue might turn down further.

While one — certainly from the perspective from the Finance Minister or the perspective of a finance critic — might indeed wish that the recession is short, that it's shallow and that we build out of it as a province, because the impact of the recession on people throughout the province will be tough…. If the prediction is not a good one — and recent events show that it's very, very difficult to make accurate predictions…. If events turn downward, it would seem there is no forecast allowance built into that budget that at least acknowledges that the prediction that's made is one that might not be accurate.

If we were to add the $750 million forecast allowance to the $495 million deficit that's forecast in this budget — and I'll get to the likelihood and the veracity, as I see it, of that number — it would obviously be a deficit of over a billion dollars. It would be $1.245 billion.

Perhaps the minister is wary of the political effect of saying that the deficit is going to be over a billion dollars. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why these principles that have been touted so often — cautious and prudent budgeting with a provision for a forecast allowance — have been pushed aside at this time in the electoral cycle, although I think the public might have an idea.

To return to the third quarterly. The third quarterly predicts a simple surplus of $50 million. That is fine budgeting indeed. In fact, that's projecting to the end of March. So the final months of the budget that will compose the remaining three months are obviously January, February and March.

We've heard from the minister, from other ministers, from the Premier, from the member for Kamloops in an interview — and I think other members who've got the talking points — that government revenue shifted downwards in January — not captured by the third quarterly report, but shifted downwards in January by $300 million.

We've seen a decline of revenue projections in the second quarter, down $800 million in the third quarterly, down $900 million — a shift in January that's spoken of but not documented of $300 million in a single day.

Is it not reasonable to assume, to guess — from my position, not having access to the if not daily summaries of government revenue from different sources available to the minister, certainly weekly briefings from senior staff as to what is going on in the economy and its impact on government revenue…. It's difficult to imagine that given all that's taking place in the economy, this number will be borne out by the end of March.

Unfortunately for the public — in order to assist the public in making this judgment — the reality of the cycle is that the public accounts of the province, including the final numbers for the budgetary year ending March 31, won't be tabled until the end of June — that is, after the election.

But my prediction is that in this budget year, this fiscal year to March 31, there will be an actual deficit. Contrary to what the minister says, contrary to the prediction that's contained in the third quarterly report, there will be an actual deficit.

[1450]

When you look at other corroborating economic evidence, the last quarter in the United States — October, November, December — saw a close to 4 percent decline in real GDP. The Japanese economy, the second-biggest economy in the world and one of our major trading partners — indeed, our first trading partner in the Asia-Pacific — saw a decline of 3.3 percent in the last quarter — annualized, a decline in GDP of 12 percent.

I looked at the Wall Street Journal on line this morning prior to preparing this speech. The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Department of Commerce are predicting an over 4 percent decline in the first quarter — that is, the quarter we're now in: January, February and March of this year — in the United States. A 4 percent decline in GDP — that's obviously very, very troubling.

For the minister to table the kind of budget that he does seems to me to at least challenge an emerging economic orthodoxy of commentators, experts, economists and business people not only here but around the world about what's taking place in the real economy.

I can well understand why members of the Economic Forecast Council wanted to meet with the minister again prior to the budget being tabled, because between January 9 and yesterday…. It's a long time in the world of international finance and the economy these days, and as everyone points out, things are very, very volatile. So the minister, I would say, does not serve the public well by refusing to engage in that kind of realistic discussion.

I fervently hope, as I say, for a short recession and a quick recovery, as I'm sure he does. But that may not be the case. That may not be the case, and the job at hand, the task at hand, is to prepare for the possibility — and that possibility seems to be growing — of a sharper and deeper downturn than might have been expected only several months ago and even at the beginning of January, just a month and a half ago.

This is the topic of discussion among finance ministers in the G7 and other government leaders around the world. The OECD, the Organization for Economic
[ Page 13786 ]
Cooperation and Development, has 30 members. Canada is a member of that. They recorded the biggest decline in output since they started reporting records in 1960, for just the previous quarter. That was reported just yesterday.

They go on to say that leading indicators for non-members of the OECD…. China is an important and certainly emerging economy, an economic powerhouse and, as will become clearer as we head further into this century, one of the leading economies in the world, if not destined to be perhaps the leading economy by the end of the century. But China, India, Russia and Brazil….

What the OECD says is that the outlook has significantly deteriorated in major non-OECD member economies that are also facing strong slowdowns. They go on to say that more action is required to restore confidence in the global financial system, and they chronicled some of that at their recent meeting of G7 finance ministers in Rome.

[1455]

Some of our traditional customers…. Some of our traditional links with Great Britain, although perhaps not as important as it was historically for what is, of course, British Columbia…. The Confederation of British Industry — that's the major employers, the equivalent of the Business Council of British Columbia — in an article on Monday predicted the biggest drop in output since the war and a drastic increase in unemployment. They're predicting a drastic contraction of the economy there.

They're "revising its forecasts down sharply…." I'm reading from an article in The Guardian newspaper: "The CBI is revising its forecast down sharply and now expects the economy to contract by 3.3 percent this year, down from its previous forecast in November of a 1.7 percent decline as the global economic downturn continues to worsen. It expects GDP growth to flatten out at zero percent in 2010."

That's just some of the grimmer news from some of our major economic partners, our traditional allies. As the minister has stressed, that's not quite as confident in B.C.'s relative economic autonomy and independence from global economic trends.

Those are our major trading partners — whether it's the United States, whether it's Asia-Pacific or whether it's Europe. Those are the economic influences on the economy here in British Columbia. Their forecasts are changing rapidly, and there's a greater risk on the downside.

Indeed, the Deputy Minister of Finance talks about the risks to the predictions in the budget. So this is not something that I have devised myself.

I'm going to simply quote the three-year fiscal plan on page 43, which talks about risks to the fiscal plan. These risks don't seem to have been fully accounted for in the budget that the minister has tabled. So if I might — and I'm quoting:

"The major risks to the fiscal plan stem from changes in factors the government does not directly control. These include assumptions underlying revenue and Crown corporation and agency forecasts such as economic factors, commodity prices and weather conditions; the outcome of litigation, arbitrations and negotiations with third parties; potential changes to federal transfer allocations, cost-sharing agreements with the federal government and impacts of the provincial income tax bases arising from federal tax policy and budget changes; and" — significantly — "utilization rates for government services such as health care, family and child services, and income assistance."

There's a table over the page which talks about the impact of some of those changes on…. They call it "key variables on the surplus." However, I don't know whether that's something that wasn't edited. Perhaps it would be key variables on the deficit at this point.

It looks at key fiscal sensitivities. If there's an increase in nominal GDP, the annual fiscal impact here in British Columbia is $150 million to $250 million. So the reverse is true, obviously. If the GDP declines 1 percent, that has an impact in the upper end of the range of $250 million.

The impact of lumber prices on the government budget is there. Natural gas prices, an increase of a dollar. A decrease is a $275 million to $325 million impact on the bottom line of the government.

Interest rates. An increase of one percentage point reduces the fiscal impact on the government of $80 million, so a decrease in interest rates would have a positive effect.

Debt. An increase of $500 million has an annual impact of minus $18 million.

These are the risks that are set out by the ministry, by the deputy minister, in composing this budget. Have they been fully accounted for either in the projection to the year-end that's contained in the third quarterly or in the numbers that have been tabled here with the budget yesterday?

[1500]

I say not. For that reason the budget itself is not and cannot be taken at face value and accepted as a realistic appraisal, a realistic document, about government revenue and government expenditure in the fiscal years to come.

Significantly, the deputy minister…. It is important to look at what the deputy minister has done, because the deputy minister sometimes has spoken in news media. Certainly, qualifications on the budget placed there by a deputy minister in pursuit of his or her statutory duties are something that are very important to pay attention to, to understand what the budget is really all about. It's a question of the deputy minister exercising their proper jurisdiction, their proper independence and their statutory obligation to step forward and say: "Here is where this budget has some qualifications."

One has to only think back to…. These can be the sign of things to come in the sense of problems that will result in the fiscal management or arrangements that the government has chosen to pursue. One can recall that Deputy Minister of Finance Tamara Vrooman, who has now left government service, put a significant quali-
[ Page 13787 ]
fication on the budget several years ago about the budget of several health authorities. Those budgets, she said at the outset of the budget, had not been finalized.

So when it came to presenting the budget, the budget had not been finalized in several key health authorities, comprising a huge percentage of the health budget, which of course is a big percentage of the overall provincial budget.

Indeed, that note and that relationship of difficulty in finalizing the budget so that those health authorities…. The running of a deficit by those health authorities has continued to be an issue, has continued to dog the government and continued to dog the Minister of Health, indeed leading to extraordinary expenditure this year to attempt to help those health authorities close the deficit, at least temporarily, although that's not carried forward into the new fiscal year that's projected in the budget.

Just to close on that point, what the Deputy Minister of Finance is pointing to is significant aspects of the budget where there are real reservations about the fullness of the disclosure and the degree to which the budget reflects what's really going on with government finances.

This deputy has filed in the letter that's with it a number of qualifications and comments on the budget. I want to talk about those, because I think they're certainly worth looking at, and I think they also point, when you consider them individually and certainly when you consider them collectively, to a budget that doesn't reflect the fiscal reality of the province and that doesn't reflect the reality of what's going on in various areas of government expenditure.

For example, and I'm reading from the document:

"The Port Mann bridge has not been included in the fiscal plan as final agreement has not been reached with Connect B.C. Development, and accounting treatment has not been finalized. The implications are discussed further in the topic box on the Port Mann bridge found on page 52 of the Budget and Fiscal Plan."

There's a more detailed consideration.

So the impact of that deal, which is not concluded, on the province's finances is not included in the budget. The deal hasn't been concluded. The Deputy Minister of Finance says that you've got to take that and set it aside, because it isn't included in the budget. So what are the implications for the budget year or next budget year? Not clear. Not clear. Accounting treatment, as he says, hasn't been finalized.

[1505]

Next, again, this is Mr. Trumpy. This is the Deputy Minister of Finance, and I'm going to read again from the budget document. "The province is assumed to reach an agreement with the federal government over the funding of the Olympic security, part of which will require a one-time payment to the federal government before the end of 2008-09."

What the Deputy Minister of Finance — not me, not the NDP, not anyone else — is saying is that this budget will require a one-time payment to the federal government before the end of the fiscal year. It's not in the budget but will have to be accounted for and paid within this fiscal year.

The minister is, of course, privy to any ongoing negotiations — which seem, I'm sure from his perspective, interminable — but we were promised that in the budget. Apparently, that agreement has not been concluded. The number hasn't been included in the budget, but relatively reliable sources — federal ministers; Canadian Senators; senior officials from the last games in, I think, Salt Lake City; Olympic officials; security experts; people familiar with the changed security environment post-9/11 — have all said that the security bill for the Olympics is, in the present context, likely to be over a billion dollars.

Of that and the cost-shared agreement, the province would have to come up with half. What the deputy minister is saying is that that number, those dollars, will have to be expended within the fiscal year 2008-2009.

Let's assume, just for the sake of argument — and I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption; I think it's pretty grounded in reality and pretty grounded in all the opinions of all the people that have examined this question and continue to debate it — that there will be another $500 million required to pay for Olympic security costs in this budget year. Now, it's not clear what the accounting treatment of that will be, but it seems from what Mr. Trumpy says here that that will come from the operating budget of the government. So that's another $500 million.

We have a projected deficit of $495 million. We don't have a forecast allowance, but we certainly have another expenditure that's likely to be — certainly as they said on the convention centre — in the range of $500 million, perhaps more, that's going to be required in this fiscal year. So how is this budget a budget that realistically sets out the financial reality that faces the government when that payment has to be made in this fiscal year?

Mr. Trumpy, the deputy minister and secretary to the Treasury Board, goes on to say: "Unlike recent years, there are no forecast allowances included in the fiscal plan, and government will be managing risks to the fiscal plan through expenditure management and the use of the contingency vote."

It's significant that the contingency itself, separate from the forecast allowance, which is now abolished…. There is a contingency, as there is in most budgets. Even the people who run non-profit associations or sports organizations or…. It's fairly basic accounting that you include a small contingency for those things you can't predict which might be expenditures that come up during the year that you need to pay for. That's going to be there. The contingency has been slightly reduced, and through expenditure management.

The Leader of the Opposition, in her economic statement in October, made a number of suggestions
[ Page 13788 ]
about expenditure management, whether that was a reduction in government advertising, a reduction in contractors, a reduction in travel. Some of those seem to have…. I think they're fairly obvious measures, but the government certainly didn't include those in their economic statement in October. Many of those policies have been put in place, but at a certain point there's a point of no return in terms of grinding out any reductions through that.

[1510]

Perhaps I might pause. I understand there's a member that wishes to make an introduction, if I could briefly allow that member to interrupt.

Introductions by Members

M. Karagianis: I appreciate the member for Surrey-Whalley giving me this opportunity. I see today in the gallery two friends of mine, and I'd like to introduce them to the House: Mark Bridges and Kody Bell. I hope the House will make them very welcome.

Debate Continued

B. Ralston: I appreciate the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin giving me that opportunity to take a brief break. I'm not so confident that the break that comes from the other side might be the same as the generous one offered by the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin, but I might be wrong.

Again, looking at what the deputy minister has to say about expenditure management. It's striking that he goes on to say in another line in these qualifications on the budget: "Further" — not my spin, not my interpretation; these are the exact words of the deputy minister — "savings of $250 million are to be identified and achieved by 2011-2012."

There's a reference to expenditure management and using contingencies, but there are further savings which are as yet unidentified. So what we heard from the Minister of Finance and the Premier was that directives went out prior to the end of this fiscal year — I think in December, if I'm not mistaken. All those traditional measures of expenditure control — looking at discretionary expenditure, consultants, travel, managed use of all of those tools…. The traditional ability sometimes of a minister to move funds from one STOB — what are called STOBs, standard points of the budget — to the other…. In other words, if a portion of the budget had not been expended, sometimes it's moved to another portion of the budget within the overall budget prior to the end of the fiscal year. That practice was prohibited, again, to grind down on costs, supposedly.

All of those practices are in place — at least, according to what we've heard from the minister and the government. Those practices presumably have yielded what savings can be yielded from that practice, yet the Deputy Minister of Finance feels obligated to note, in a very unusual note, that further savings of $250 million are to be identified and achieved by 2011-2012. We don't know where we're going to cut. We don't know when we're going to cut, but we're going to cut another quarter of a billion dollars from the budget.

That, obviously, has implications, but traditionally, in budgeting, those…. A budget is a road map of intentions of the government in broad terms. While not categorizing every specific expenditure, it sets out, in broad terms, the direction of the government and where they hope to make expenditures and where they hope to achieve savings.

Yet the deputy minister here is saying and noting in this very unusual comment: "Well, they say they're going to make further savings, but they haven't been identified." That's a very unusual comment, and I think it's one that again suggests that the budget that's presented to us does not reflect the true intentions of the government beyond May 12. It doesn't reflect the reality of the economic situation and is something to approach with caution when examining some of the statements that the Minister of Finance and the Premier have made about the budget.

[1515]

The next comment that the Deputy Minister of Finance makes about the budget is: "The report on the advice received from the minister's Economic Forecast Council, which was last updated on January 9, on the economic growth outlook for British Columbia, includes the range of forecasts for 2009 and 2010."

I think I've commented on that rather fully, but it's worth emphasizing that that's something that the deputy minister felt necessary to bring to the attention of the reader, the public and anyone who chose to rely on some of the assertions made in the budget document.

In addition, the minister notes…. It's a bit of an echo of the qualification that the previous deputy minister made on health budgets. Again, I'm quoting from the document.

"Three-year aggregate financial plans for health authorities, school districts and universities and colleges have been compiled by the Ministries of Health Services, Education, and Advanced Education and Labour Market Development based on funding included in respective ministry budgets. Individual plans for health authorities and post-secondary institutions, including strategies for managing spending pressures, will be subsequently developed and reflected in the updated fiscal plan in the first Quarterly Report."

What the deputy minister feels obliged to point out to the public here is that the individual plans for health authorities — very reminiscent of what happened several years ago when previous Deputy Minister Tamara Vrooman felt obliged to point out — and post-secondary institutions won't become public until the first quarterly report, which is not tabled until after the election, in late June or early July.
[ Page 13789 ]

Once again, this budget is incomplete and unreliable in a very significant aspect of expenditure. It's all set out here, all in the words of the deputy minister. Health authorities, universities…. If there are university students or university teachers, college instructors, teachers at trade schools, prospective students — the individual plans for those institutions…. It says in the somewhat Delphic language of deputy ministers: "including strategies for managing spending pressures."

What that means, in my interpretation, is that if there's a need perceived to cut costs to those institutions, to cut government revenue or government subsidies to those institutions, that will be all revealed — not now, not in this budget, not before this Legislature, not before the election but only after the election.

If you're in Dawson Creek and attending Northern Lights College, if you're in Terrace and attending Northwest College, if you're in Prince George attending the University of Northern British Columbia or Caledonia College, if you're in Kamloops attending David Thompson University, you should be wary of what the government says about protecting education and education services in this economic climate.

What the Deputy Minister of Finance says is that you aren't being told what the strategies for managing spending pressures are, and you won't be told until after the election. The plan is not to tell you before, and that's clear. That will be an update to the budgetary process.

The deputy minister also sets out some comments about the capital plan. "The capital plan includes $2 billion for accelerated infrastructure projects." The word of qualification is: "based on the assumption that the federal government will contribute $1 billion from federal infrastructure programs announced in the January 27 federal budget."

[1520]

So there is a number that is put out publicly. The government talks about $2 billion over three years. But of that, the part they aren't quite as forthcoming about, although I don't think they would deny it, given that the Deputy Minister of Finance has it here in black and white, is that half of that money — fully half of that money — comes from the federal government in the federal budget of January 27, just weeks ago, and is not something that forms part of the provincial budget.

One assumes and expects that that program will get rolling, but many mayors — whether it's the mayor of my city, Mayor Dianne Watts or whether it's the new mayor of Vancouver, new Mayor Gregor Robertson…. Other mayors have expressed a concern that when it comes to rolling out these infrastructure projects, the federal response in these matters is very slow where individual municipalities often, in the case of the city of Surrey, have compiled lists of projects that they see as worthy additions to civic infrastructure, valuable public projects that are through the zoning, through the preplanning stage, sometimes with engineering complete, ready to go.

I met with the mayor of Westside not too long ago, now West Kelowna. There are infrastructure projects in that community, for example, that are ready to proceed. The mayor is anxious that there be, obviously, not only provincial participation but that there be federal participation.

There is a concern at the Union of B.C. Municipalities level, at the level of leadership in the towns and cities of the province, that that federal money will not flow as quickly as it should. Nonetheless, there is that federal commitment. I'm sure that members not only on that side of the House but on this side will pressure individual federal Members of Parliament to advance those projects as quickly as they can.

While one looks at infrastructure — and there has been much discussion in many quarters about infrastructure certainly in recent times…. I think it's important to look on infrastructure as more than simply make-work or an addition or an empty addition or sometimes not a valuable addition to what's being done by government in the economy, and the importance of infrastructure and the attitude with which it's approached.

Indeed, because there has been so much recent discussion in the United States leading up to the adoption of the stimulus package — and there has been some partisan debate about the relative value of tax cuts and infrastructure spending…. What the American Congress appears to have landed on in passing the infrastructure package that they did is that there's a heavy component of infrastructure that comprises the stimulus package.

Mr. Felix Rohatyn a former investment banker who I think is best known for having guided New York City through its financial troubles some decades ago — very distinguished investment banker, former American Ambassador to France — spoke recently in an article in one of the American business magazines about viewing infrastructure as an investment, as an important investment and as a way to advance many of the shortcomings of whether there are transportation systems or other infrastructure requirements…. He's obviously speaking of the United States.

He speaks of the necessity to establish…. This is an American investment banker, and I'm not necessarily advocating that, but the degree to which he says it's an important aspect of a recovery plan in the United States…. He's strongly of the view that infrastructure spending is required as the first order of the day, rather than what he calls tax cuts. That's a partisan debate in the United States, where Republicans tend to advocate tax cuts and rebates.

[1525]

He says: "Rebates may be saved in a time of uncertainty, much as the first round of rebates were. Moreover, passing too many 'special' tax credits and 'incentives'
[ Page 13790 ]
has created a pinball tax system that is peppered with targeted tax exceptions and different treatments for different types of incomes." That is "a system that breeds evasion, resentment, and that has cruelly become centred on the wages and salaries of the American middle class. There will be time enough in the next Congress to fix that system. Let's hold off on any changes, including rebates, until then."

What he says is that he advocates, as a first priority, what he calls a national infrastructure bank that would enter into partnerships on a project-by-project basis with state and local governments, private capital and infrastructure users. There's a program that he sets out. He talks about many of the things that have been part of the debate in Canada, whether it's seismic upgrading of schools, whether it's reviving the transportation network…. He advocates that as a way forward.

I think that the only response, really, to the infrastructure program that the government has tabled is: is it sufficient? Does it meet the demand that's there? And relative to some of what G20 nations have said, is that infrastructure recommended?

Obviously, it varies from province to province or from country to country, but as a rough rule of thumb, the G20 nations have advocated 2 percent of GDP. The federal government stimulus package in terms of infrastructure is about 1.6 percent of GDP. The stimulus package, if it can be called that in terms of the infrastructure, in this government's proposal, is far less than that. Given the circumstances of British Columbia, that may be adequate.

We'll have to assess that as we go forward, and that's why up-to-date and accurate assessment of where we're at in the economy and whether the recession is a shallow one or not is important. If the recession is deeper than is anticipated, certainly by the projections that are contained in this budget, it might be necessary to shift emphasis in that direction. Certainly that's the view of people like Mr. Rohatyn, a distinguished investment banker, and many others who have joined in on this issue of public infrastructure.

But the stimulus that public infrastructure brings is acknowledged, particularly in British Columbia, where much of the recent boom was construction-led. There is a core of skilled construction workers. There's expertise, whether it's in housing or whether it's in other kinds of public infrastructure. Those people are there; they're willing to work.

The economy is clearly turning down. The 68,000 full-time jobs lost according to Stats Canada in January indicate the rapidity with which that change is occurring, so a shift to infrastructure is important. People are waiting for announcements. They're waiting for the government to get going. There seem to have been some announcements, but even the funds that are promised and were announced prior to the budget — which are now contained in the budget — don't seem to have been rolled out very rapidly.

Although the government is perhaps quick to make those announcements, in terms of any actual work being undertaken or getting started, there's not a lot been done yet. I know that people are waiting for that. Certainly in my community of Surrey, the mayor and the council have a very detailed list of good projects that could benefit from an infusion of public infrastructure money right now.

[1530]

The other thing that one looks at, and these were canvassed somewhat in question period, although perhaps not, given the brevity that's necessary in question period. There are other assumptions that are made in the budget which don't seem to accord with the economic reality of the present situation of the province.

When one looks at retail sales, there's a projection in the budget of an expectation that retail sales will increase 1.3 percent in 2009 and climb by 4.4 percent for the next four years. Given the decline in the last quarter — October, November and December just passed — of 3.1 percent downward, it seems unrealistic to some that that projection of an increase…. In a year in which everyone agrees there's going to be — at least 2009 — a recession, that may be simply unrealistic.

[S. Hammell in the chair.]

This is significant not because one doesn't have sympathy with retailers but…. One of the major sources of government revenue in any given year is the retail sales tax, the Social Service Tax Act, and the budget estimate for 2009-10 is $5.087 billion. That's an increase over — just below — a revised downward forecast of $4.998 billion. So the revenue that's predicted in the budget is based on an assumption that doesn't appear to be borne out by projection of retail sales.

In other words, if retail sales are going to decline, given that the retail sales tax is a function of the dollar value of sales, it seems unlikely that the return from retail sales tax would increase. So that doesn't seem to be realistic, and I question that assumption.

I hope I'm wrong, for the sake of retailers in the province, but I think the Christmas sales, the traditional bump at Christmas that retailers experienced, weren't there in the same force and measure that people expected. That doesn't bode well for the retail sales in the new year. That assumption — and it's a big source of government revenue — doesn't seem to be supported by economic reality.

A couple of other projections that are included in the budget. Personal income tax — there is a budget estimate of $6.562 billion, up from a revised forecast of $6.219 billion. Again, it's an expected increase in personal income tax. Obviously, that comes from employment income
[ Page 13791 ]
for the most part. At a time when unemployment is rising and people are losing their jobs, their ability to pay income tax on their income ends at the point — certainly is reduced drastically — when they lose their job.

Is it realistic to make that kind of projection, given that projection of increased unemployment and its likely impact upon personal income tax returns to the province in its budget? Again, that's an important aspect of provincial revenue. The biggest single heading of taxation revenue for the province is personal income tax.

It's understandable why the Minister of Finance didn't want to meet with the forecast council after January 9, because it's very likely that based on the stream of economic data that's flowing in from all over — from every source of the economy — they would want to revise those predictions downward. The budget would change in many ways that the minister chooses or would care not to acknowledge.

[1535]

On sales tax, I say that the budget is unrealistic. On personal income tax projections, I say that the budget is unrealistic.

The member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca canvassed, in the question period just past, the issue of B.C. Hydro revenue. What is the fact, aside from the rhetoric of the minister who failed to answer the question, is that the third-quarter profit in 2008 is $29 million less than its 2007 third-quarter profit.

Yet in the budget the government predicts that overall revenue for B.C. Hydro will be increased and the dividend that B.C. Hydro will pay to the Crown will go up. I say — and I'm supported solidly by the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca — that this projection is unrealistic.

The degree to which this budget overestimates likely revenue, in major headings, is very, very clear. I'm expecting that in the speeches that follow, different members on this side of the House in their respective critic areas will examine more precisely the projected revenue ministry by ministry, and we'll get a fuller picture of the budget as a whole.

Certainly, what is clear is that this budget can't be relied upon as a reliable and accurate gauge of the economic activity in the province. Given that, the commitments that the government claims to make on the basis of the budget can't be relied upon either.

One other area that the government likes to talk about — and doesn't talk about very much but recently has talked about perhaps a bit more — is the debt-to-GDP ratio.

Debt-to-GDP is a measure on government books of the ability of the government to pay back debt that's accumulated based on the relative strength of the economy. If it goes up, it indicates a greater percentage of debt relative to the size of the economy. Generally speaking, the lower the debt-to-GDP ratio, the better off one is in the sense of the capacity of the economy to enable the government to repay debt.

One thing that the government doesn't talk about is the rapid growth in what are called contractual obligations, which are now disclosed in the public accounts. They aren't a debt, but they are future obligations of the government which are bound in legal language and require the government to continue to pay over lengthy periods of time.

Those are traditionally associated with public-private partnerships or privatized infrastructure and are the agreements that go with…. After the construction of the public asset, there are agreements that require the private operator to maintain the facility over a number of years. In the case of the Abbotsford Hospital, it's over 35 years and, in the case of some of the other public-private partnerships, lengthy periods of time but typically 30 to 35 years.

The OECD, in a consideration of these kinds of infrastructure, has pointed out the difficulty that comes when you bind government to those kinds of obligations over the long term.

[1540]

As of July 2008 the total accumulated obligation on behalf of the government, in these kinds of contractual obligations, is $54.7 million. In the last three years these obligations have skyrocketed. In the public accounts for 2005-06, contractual obligations were $27.6 million, so a virtual doubling in just under three years.

These are hard costs that it's impossible for the government to escape. Indeed, in this OECD document, which is a neutral rendering of it, what they point out is that when you make that commitment to a service or a maintenance contract over that length of time, unless you have very, very strong clauses that enable the government to reopen and renegotiate, you may be locked into providing service in a way that forbids you or bars you from taking advantage of future technological change or better ways of delivering the service.

It's easy to imagine over a period of 25 or 30 years, whether you're engaged in hospital maintenance or preparing food, that there might be better ways — and perhaps cheaper, more efficient ways — of achieving the same result. Yet when you're locked into a contract for that length of time, unless there is a very, very strong provision for renegotiation, the government will be bound to pay a higher cost on behalf of the taxpayers for many, many years.

Obviously, one of the advantages of a change in direction in the government is that the government can change its priorities and choose to fund other methods of service delivery. Once you've signed one of these agreements and locked it in for 25, 30 or 35 years, it's very, very difficult to escape from that.

It ties the hands of future governments. It bars the way to innovation and change. It means that you have
[ Page 13792 ]
to continue paying what may become, in the fullness of time, a very uneconomic rate for the provision of services. Yet there's no escape from the contract short of buying the whole thing out and paying for it again — in other words, paying for it twice.

The government touts the advantages of these kinds of agreements, but objective observers point out these potential problems. These are problems that the government certainly never talks about in its discussion about public infrastructure.

Certainly in the case of things like the Port Mann bridge, the tolling structure is not a document that has been released publicly. The minister has made some assurances, but until we see the documents, we don't know what the toll will be and what the ability of the government to block future toll increases will be.

I personally, given the acceleration of the cost of the project, very much doubt that the toll on opening day will be $3. Maybe it'll be a special on opening day, but it will rapidly go up thereafter.

I think people will find, if and when that structure is open in four years, that the cost will have gone up from the estimated $3.3 billion — it always does — and the tolls will not be the tolls that the Premier speaks of now. Nor will the tolls be the tolls that the minister speaks of now. They will be much more expensive.

But in that area, as in so many other areas, the government is more concerned about making these kinds of financial arrangements with major international infrastructure firms than worrying about the impact on the daily lives of citizens, whether it's through fees increases in any number of areas in their everyday life.

British Columbians have experienced that increase and the impact on their standard of living, drastically, over the last eight years. Whether it's medicare premiums, hydro rates, ICBC rates or ferry fares, there's a long list where fees and charges to individuals and individual families have increased much faster than people's average wages have increased.

[1545]

Indeed, average wages, according to Statistics Canada, have been more or less static. The top 15 percent of the population, according to Statistics Canada, has increased their average income over the last ten years, but average people — average incomes — have not. They've been virtually static for the last ten years.

With that, Madam Speaker, I'm going to draw to a close. It's clear that this budget does not reflect economic reality. The promises that are contained in this budget cannot be relied upon. The budget that's put forward, in every area that I've set out and qualified by the deputy minister, can't be relied upon. The promises that it contains are shallow and not to be trusted.

The question that remains for British Columbians when they go to polls on May 12 is: do they wish to return a government that didn't take care of them, taxed ordinary people with fees and gouged them during good times, and can they be trusted to take care of them in bad times?

I'm confident that the answer will be a resounding no. The people will reject this arrogant and out-of-touch government.

Interjections.

B. Ralston: We're nearing the time when the members opposite are finally paying attention because they might have to get up and defend themselves. I look forward to that opportunity to hear them say something rather than simply braying like cattle across the floor.

D. Jarvis: I rise today as I have many times before, some 18-plus times. I represent some 60,000 people in the North Shore riding of North Vancouver–Seymour, and I wish to thank them for their continual support. They have been very kind to me in the past.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Also, I wanted to mention my past and present riding association and all my campaign supporters over the last four elections anyway. They know, I think, that I do appreciate all the help that they've given me. I also thank them for the support at my nominating meeting last Thursday.

I want to thank, once again, my constituency assistant Jennifer Anderson — she's been with me since 1995; that was a vintage year — and also all my legislative assistants that I've had over the years, some 20-plus of them. My latest one is Stacie Dley. It's not that I've been hard on my legislative assistants. It's just that I've trained them too well, and they've all been yanked up into higher posts throughout the system. Actually, one of my legislative assistants ended up as the Minister of Education. Few of you realize that.

This has been a tremendous province for me. I was born here four or five generations ago, and it has a very deep history. Over the last 150 years since 1858, beautiful B.C. has had some 37 different governments.

If you were to look at those plaques out on the exterior doors on the wall as you enter this chamber, you'll see a list of all the MLAs that have been elected in the past across this diverse province. Just under 900 MLAs have actually been elected, as you're probably aware, since we first became a government. We all should be very proud that we have joined that select group of people. Considering that millions of people have passed through this province, there are very few of us who can say that they were MLAs.

[1550]

The plaques are a history in themselves, and the present members should take the time to read them. There's a B.C. story in every one of those plaques, believe me.
[ Page 13793 ]

For example, in the election of 1924, member John McKie, duly elected from the Creston area, was killed on his way to the legislative opening when the train he was riding on was blown up by the Sons of Freedom sect. The words "crime" and "terrorism" really mean nothing in B.C. in view of our past history. Every decade something new comes along to consider as a dangerous happening.

Nevertheless, I believe we are beyond those fractured days of the past. Today we are perhaps a little bit — perhaps, I should say, a bit — more sensible, within reason, with each other. I'm pleased to see this week that all of you have arrived at this Legislature safe and sound. B.C. has an interesting and historical background, and it remains so even today.

I had the opportunity to listen for almost two hours to the Finance critic of the NDP, and I find it very difficult that he wishes B.C. well. He is obviously very disappointed that our budget includes a temporary deficit of only $495 million and not the $3 billion or $4 billion that he actually expected. The Finance critic is unhappy, I guess — so much for due diligence to the taxpayers. That is the reason that B.C. went from No. 1 to No. 10 in the 1990s.

The past seven months have been dark and gloomy, with all the economic predictions of despair due to the worldwide downturn of the banks and the markets. There's been a frenzy of red ink south and east of our borders, somewhat driven by panic and not necessarily all by logic.

Here in B.C. we should be relatively optimistic. This government came through those dark days of the '90s and has built that time into a stable economic base for us to work with — and not slip deep into the abyss, as some of the NDP politicians would suggest or hope. The Leader of the Opposition suggests we should do more without spending more. How, I wonder, does she equate being fiscally responsible with her free-spending attitude?

Both the throne speech and the budget speech emphasize that this government is in the best position, having a strong and viable track record that indicates not only our accomplishments of the past eight years but our focus on a strong, kind, optimistic and fiscally proper economy. That will allow us to continually move forward as the economy improves, and this is a positive attitude. It is not dark and gloomy, as some would have you think.

Over the last eight years we have made great inroads in our trade agreements with the likes of China and India, and we shall continue to do so. When I was coming out of high school, the world population was about 2.6 billion people. Today it's approaching six billion and still growing. So things happen rather quickly in the world. Asia, especially India and China, just won't be going back into the Third World status after their decades of growth.

We in B.C. are therefore positioned to take advantage of this with all our technology, our resources and our heritage as a Pacific country. The world meltdown will smooth itself out, and we shall all recover, believe it or not.

[1555]

We in B.C. should be relatively optimistic, as I said. We are predicting that if the private sectors can't be sustained, the public sectors perhaps should be there to assist. Prudent planning with sound economic policies will be the linchpin of this government. So far there have been some slippages, but a positive attitude and hard work should carry us through.

The government laid out changes to transform this province, which can now be seen on every urban street corner and in every rural landscape. All of us have experienced changes, and since 2001 there has been a change in the quality of our family lives in British Columbia. Prudent planning with sound economic policies has been the linchpin of this government.

Employment was unsurpassed in the last eight years, and we plan to hold that line to the best of our abilities at the present time. But we are facing pressures from across the line in forestry and housing industries — just for example, those two. Having to table a deficit budget is extremely unpalatable to me and to a lot of members of the government caucus. However, we cannot stand on strict ideology if it means further harming those affected by the global downturn.

Education and health care are primary concerns to us — hence Bill 48, which was passed a few days ago. The choices are not always ours. When the U.S. sneezes, we all catch colds. We will have to ensure that this is a short-term problem and get back to a balanced budget as soon as economically feasible. I have no doubt that this government can do so. We have proven to be a very prudent government in the past, which puts us in a good position to weather this present economic turn.

When we first took office in 2001 we were faced with the 9/11 disaster, avian flu, SARS, forest fires and on. We came through these adversities, and we shall come through this economic turmoil as well. We in B.C. now have the lowest cancer mortality, and children being born today have the longest life expectancy. This does not just happen without these kinds of positive outcomes, unless we have a good plan and financing and investment in education and research.

We have the second-lowest mortality when it comes to cardiovascular disease — touch wood — and we're the first in all health outcomes. This is progress from a government who, contrary to the cries that we don't spend enough on health care…. Health care spending since 2001 has gone up every year, from $8.3 billion to over $15 billion, and 90 percent of all budgeted new operational spending in the next three years will go to health care.

This could not have been done had we not been fiscally responsible in the past, and we intend to continue being responsible — fiscally responsible, that is — into the future.
[ Page 13794 ]

We are No. 2 in university education completions. We know that education is a catalyst to bettering our society. In environmental quality we are now No. 1 — first place — in North America and the second-lowest in emissions in North America. We are a government that is a world leader when it comes down to the issues of environmental stewardship.

My electorate in North Vancouver–Seymour need to know that this government does listen to them. They want to hear what is important to their everyday lives. Their children's education and advanced education, such as Capilano University which this government formed last year…. It is important that they know there will be jobs to support their family's needs.

[1600]

Some benefits to North Vancouver–Seymour from this budget will be that we're going to put $1.3 billion to invest across B.C. to replace and renovate expanded K-to-12 schools. So district 44 in North Vancouver will no doubt benefit from this education spending.

This government is planning to spend $1.7 billion. It will be invested across B.C. over three years in post-secondary facilities, including the projects to increase student capacity. Again, we will benefit from that on the North Shore.

Throughout B.C. $2.5 billion in capital spending will be invested in the health sector over three years. These investments support the new construction of hospitals and upgrades, and we know that the Lions Gate will benefit on this.

There is another $2.3 billion for major transportation and capital infrastructure, including improvements for the Sea to Sky Highway.

I even asked the minister this morning if we were going to get anything over there, and he gave me a nice smile. We really don't know what that means, but I assume that the upper levels in the Second Narrows Bridge area will experience some kind thoughts from the minister on that.

I wanted to say that education, along with health care, is one of our primary ministries to this government. Education, since 2001, has increased from $7.6 billion to over $10.7 billion. It is our desire to continue to commit funding to education from K-to-post-secondary.

My constituents want to see economic stability and quick recovery from this present recession. The psychology of this recession seems to be all through the media. If the trend continues with respect to the seniors bubble, and there is no reason to doubt it, a major question won't be: "Where will they live, and how can they ensure that they have proper accommodations to live in?"

This is an immediate concern when you see that 20 percent of the North Shore residents are in that particular classification. The North Shore has a proportionately higher senior population than the rest of the province, and I cannot stress enough that all levels of government need to be concerned and involved. We must look to ensure that our assisted living, our housing and health care supports are in good shape now, as senior numbers are going to be one-half of our population and then two-thirds, and so on. We seniors aren't going away.

To conclude, through good fiscal management this government has established a strong financial foundation upon which to build for the future. The opposition's spending is illogical, and it misses the boat when it comes to family needs. It is education and health care and jobs first, which is a sound approach. Therefore, I would support this budget, and I thank you for my time on the floor.

M. Karagianis: I'm happy to stand and take this opportunity to talk about the budget that was tabled. It's very interesting that we've all watched the phenomena south of the border here with the Obama campaign, and of course, the big slogan that Obama came to victory on was "Yes, we can." It's a slogan that he has continued to carry on as he has begun to rebuild confidence in the U.S.

I think, in sharp contrast, we have here in British Columbia now a "No, we can't" budget. That has set the theme for British Columbia from this government and this Premier — that "No, we can't" — and the list of things that we cannot do has a huge bearing on my constituency.

[1605]

[S. Hammell in the chair.]

It's interesting to me that what we heard from the government was recycled, reused, re-announced, repromised — a hackneyed regurgitation of past ideas that the Liberal government has been running with for many years. In fact, we've seen no new ideas coming out of this government.

What we have seen are ideas that look exactly like their old ideas, which are a heavy reliance on privatization, tax cuts, deregulation, abandoning workers' rights, cuts to services, and downloading, whether it's onto families or onto municipalities. There is nothing fresh here. There is nothing new.

You'd have to ask yourself, as we run into an election campaign period here that's very critical for the province at this point: why would we have a government deliver a budget that says: "No, we can't"? Why would we have a government ready to deliver a budget that's full of old, used ideas that didn't work particularly well in the past? This regurgitation doesn't have a lot of promise for us going into the future.

You know, I talk to my constituents all the time. The things I have heard from my constituents that are the most critical to them are things that this government once again has completely overlooked and neglected —
[ Page 13795 ]
and continues to demonstrate how out of touch they are with the needs of our communities.

In fact, over and over again I have heard on the doorstep in my community that families are looking for affordable housing, that they are looking for child care and that they are concerned about how Olympic cost overruns and dollars spent on privatization schemes will affect the ability for the government to put real investment into the things that matter to them.

Many of my families live from paycheque to paycheque, and they are concerned about their future. When they hear from the government the list of things that can't be done, things that actually will benefit them, that will affect their day-to-day living and their ability to get from payday to payday…. When they hear the government say, "No, we can't. Those are not priorities for us…."

The people in my constituency were looking for this government to remove the gas tax to make life more affordable for them, but what did the Premier say? The Premier of this province said: "No, we can't. We can't make life more affordable for you." That's part of the "No, we can't" budget of the Premier.

The budget speech and the throne speech very clearly outlined that there would be no increase in child care at a time when the families in my community actually need to be able to get both parents out working. As we know, as job losses and cutbacks affect families, their reliance on having two people working in the family is growing more and more critical for their ability to get from payday to payday. Yet we have a government that, when people are waiting for increases in child care opportunities, says no. "No, we can't. We can't give you that."

When we looked at the loss of forest workers' jobs and whether or not the government was going to actually look at finding some solutions to that, what did the government say? "No, we can't." When we looked at the things that concern my constituents around waiting lists in hospitals, did we see anything in this budget that is going to improve that? No, because the government has said: "No, we can't."

My constituents have looked to the government to help provide seniors care for all those people who are looking after parents, concerned about parents, looking for increased home care so that seniors in our communities could live longer, healthier lives at home. What did they hear from the government? "No, we can't." The government cannot provide that for us. That's what we heard from this Liberal government.

When we asked if there would be some relief for post-secondary education, for the young people in my community, what did we hear from the government on their priorities? "No, we can't. We can't provide that for you."

[1610]

Class size and special needs assistance. Have we seen the government step forward and say: "We heard the concerns of communities across this province. We are going to find ways to alleviate the heavy toll that it's taking for enormous class sizes and the lack of special needs care?" Did we see that from this government? No, what we heard from this government is: "Priority. No, we can't do that for you in this budget."

So it concerns me greatly that at a time when we were expecting and hoping that a budget would be delivered that would deliver optimism and some hope for families — some of the things they need most critically and vitally to make their lives easier and better and help invest in their futures — they were turned away by this government and told: "No, we can't. We cannot do those things for you."

What we've seen is a whole number of cuts here to programs — and generally to the needs of communities — that I think are going to be even more devastating in the future. You know, you only have to read the first page here, the opening page of the budget, to see that the government has, in fact, missed the boat on a whole number of areas. Not just on the areas here where they've said to my community: "No, we can't. We can't help you with the things that would actually allow you to get to work or assure you that seniors care and education resources are going to be there for your communities."

In fact, we're looking at a number of things here that indicate that even in their fiscal plan…. And I think it was very clearly and well and thoughtfully laid out by the member for Surrey-Whalley that spoke earlier.

I want to actually draw attention to a couple of the key admissions here in this first page of the budget that I think really tell a lot more. They kind of show the underbelly of this failed budget. It says here right early on, when the government's sort of laying out the materials for their economic plan, that a lot of this is based on an assumption that the federal government will contribute a billion dollars — based on an assumption.

So we have no solid backing here for this. This is based on an assumption, and in fact, when you see how many of the things within this budget are critically dependent on federal dollars that have not been confirmed yet…. We're going into a budget here that will take us into an election campaign with no reliance whatsoever that there are real resources here. This is based on assumptions. There are things excluded from here.

I'm particularly fascinated as the Transportation critic to see that the Port Mann bridge has not been included in the fiscal plan. We know for a fact that well over a billion dollars of taxpayers' money is going to be loaned to a private sector corporation. It would seem to me that that would be pretty critical to have in your budget as part of the overall plan here. If those figures are missing, when would we see the actual amount of dollars that are being committed by taxpayers of this province to a privatization scheme?

I know that these cost overruns and the continual proliferation of privatization schemes that the govern-
[ Page 13796 ]
ment has involved ourselves in…. The public is aware of this. The public is concerned about this. Here is one of the huge projects that they have been promising, and the fiscal plan is missing entirely. How responsible or irresponsible is that — that the government has not included that and will not include that, presumably, in time for us to go into the election and see what the implications will be?

We've talked often in this House, we've asked questions for a long time, and we've asked questions in this current sitting about Olympics cost overruns and things like the security budget. So I think it's no surprise whatsoever that that's not been clarified here in this budget. The government admits this. They lay this out very clearly. They talk about further cost savings up to $250 million to be found in the future.

I'm going to talk in a minute about the number of cuts in this budget and how that will affect communities across this province and certainly my constituents here in Esquimalt-Metchosin.

But this is definitely forecasting that there will be further cuts as well. So while we have a government saying, "We have a budget that is very restrained and at the same time has got some kind of hope for the future," we can see that there's another underlayer here, another underpinning of more cuts to come. When will we hear about those, Madam Speaker? Well, presumably not until after the election.

[1615]

The electorate is about to go to the polls here in less than 90 days without information — without adequate, clear, open and accountable information — on what it is that they are going to get here when they cast their vote on May 12.

I also noted here that there's no forecast allowance included in this. Again, it indicates…. I know that the member for Surrey-Whalley outlined very clearly what the hazards are of this. But I think that people in my constituency will understand that that runs a very, very fine line. That means that there is a very, very fine line over which it's very easy to fall — with no forecast allowance to fall back on. It would seem even just on page 1 of this, outlining the things that have been excluded, assumed — or in some cases, alluded to in the way of a $25 million cut to come further on in the fiscal period here….

It just says to me that, in fact, this budget going into this year is fairly meaningless. There are just far too many things here that are either not included, assumed without any reality, or that say to us that there will be a lot more to come. You know the old saying that one shoe has dropped. The other one will drop here after May 12.

So I would say that it's a lousy budget from that perspective. We're going into a very important process here in the province of British Columbia, and there's no clear accountability around a budget that we're going into this process with.

Let me just talk a little bit more about some of the cuts here, because I think it's very important to look at some of those cuts and think about: what are the real implications here? Because as much as we are uncertain about what the future is going to bring, I know the government has relied very heavily on the idea that in two years the recession will be over, that we'll be out of it and on with the good years again. But the reality is that no one knows that.

You know, the U.S. has been unable to halt or predict where their recession is going. We will be implicated in that whether we like it or not. The global economy at this point is still in a state of chaos. There is no ability at this point for anyone to predict. Lots of guessing. Lots and lots of guessing can go on, but we've seen over the last couple or six months here in North America that even some of the best-trained and most respected economic advisers on the continent have been unable to guess and judge accurately what has happened or what is going to happen in the future.

It would seem to me, going into this period, this assumption somehow that by simply saying it will be over in two years…. It's not only untrue but irresponsible, because we don't know. We don't know, and it would seem to me that our margin of error here has been removed, with no forecast allowance. So we're in fairly, fairly serious jeopardy here going into the future with a budget that has got all kinds of loopholes, pitfalls and sand traps in it.

When I look at the number of things here that the government has either refused to disclose or is outright cutting…. You know, 12 percent cuts to Environment. Forests Ministry cut 13.6 percent. Health dollars looking to drop past 2009. B.C. Housing cut by 15 percent. These are the very essential things that my community has said concern them a great deal — whether or not the government is truly going to invest in the things that are meaningful for them, like affordable housing.

In fact, it would seem to me that if we are at a time of fiscal restraint, the thing we most need is security around affordability issues, and we are getting none of that from government.

School boards. It says here they're going to cut $12 million from their budget, and additional dollars in education are not even going to cover salaries. It's very clear at this point that we're going to see more losses out of education budgets.

A 20 percent cut to treaties funding. Now, that affects very directly my community, because I do have first nations who are in the course of treaty negotiations. So 20 percent cuts to their resources.

[1620]

Justice services cut 14 percent. We've had a huge discussion in this House over the last couple of weeks over issues of crime and safety in the Lower Mainland. There is chaos. There is no question whatsoever that
[ Page 13797 ]
this government is failing absolutely on this crime and safety file, and now they're about to cut justice services at a time when they have promised that they are going to resolve this gang war. But, in fact, we've seen no resources there, and now we see justice services will be cut.

We also see the Ministry of Children and Families. I think the increase in dollars was something like 0.99 percent or 0.09 percent or something similar. So a less than 1 percent increase there, which means no additional children will be protected in the province of British Columbia. Zero growth in MCFD. So hold the line there. Not one more child will be cared for or protected, and no increases whatsoever in the budget for MCFD.

Let's think about the dismal record that this government has shown in eight years during economic boom times. They have continued to under-resource the Children and Families Ministry over and over again to the detriment of this province. It's been a huge scandal that this government has worn, and here we are now going into recessionary times, and they said, "No, we're not going to care for any more children in this province," — despite the fact that a poor economy often has very adverse effects on children.

Let's be frank. We're living in a time when for the fifth year in a row we have the highest level of child poverty in the entire country. Again the government has said: "No increase for children and families in this province." We're not acknowledging in any way or delivering any kind of solutions on this issue of child poverty.

A 50 percent cut to the arts. We live in a city here that is so reliant on arts as being one of the great communities that can take a dollar, stretch it further, make a living on a shoestring. Yet the government is now going to cut that — right? At a time when we have an Olympics event, a worldwide event coming to this province, our artists, our talent does not get a showcase here because this government has cut funding to the arts by 50 percent.

The flip side of this, the anomaly to this, and I think the most bitter pill, is that this is at the same time that we have a government who has had a double cost overrun on the convention centre — almost half a billion dollars squandered there. A new roof is going on to B.C. Place, almost $400 million — right? Where is the justice there?

We are cutting the funding for arts. We are giving no additional money to children and families in this province. We refuse to put any kind of money into affordability solutions for families. But we can still put big, expensive roofs on B.C. Place, and we can run into half billion cost overruns on the convention centre.

I don't even have time in this particular budget debate to go into the squandering of money on privatization schemes that's costing this province double or triple what projects should cost us. Certainly they are job-generating, but at what price? We could be employing many more people and building much more infrastructure and investing a lot more into our communities if we weren't giving huge amounts of money away to private corporations to take money from our taxpayers for 20 and 30 years into the future.

I thought it was very interesting that coming out of the budget…. So the budget was tabled yesterday. You know, always that's the government's best opportunity to get a flurry of kind of good news out of the media. But, in fact, I thought it was very interesting — some of the headlines. I'd like to talk about those. The Vancouver Sun today says: "Budget Eyes Economy with Rose-Coloured Glasses." So there's the first little indication, and it goes on and on with many of these stories.

I think that it's very interesting, and I know that the member for Surrey-Whalley was very thorough and thoughtful and intelligent about laying out the various shortcomings of this budget. It says here that this whole issue of wearing rose-coloured glasses and a government that is either trying to fool themselves, certainly trying to fool the public….

[1625]

It says in here that the forecasts that this government has come up with about where the economy's going have no basis whatsoever. Business investment is expected to climb by 5.1 percent and corporate profits to fall by 24.7 percent in 2009. Both are forecast to rise in 2010 under this government — right? — but for no apparent reason. The government has got no basis in reality for their claims that that is going to happen.

One aspect of the budget that deserves more attention is the growth of provincial debt. Let's talk about that. It's interesting that we didn't get a lot of talk about provincial debt. The document shows total debt rising from $34.6 billion in the current year to $47.2 billion by 2012.

I haven't seen a lot of bragging about the fact that we are…. Once again, this is a government that has had no trouble whatsoever running some of the highest debt in the history of this province, and I can see here clearly that there is some evidence that that could happen again.

I talked earlier about whether or not things had been delivered here that are meaningful to my community in this budget, and clearly they haven't. This is an editorial from the Times Colonist today.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Order, Members.

M. Karagianis: It says: "Little Good News for the Region."

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, order.

M. Karagianis: This is a very good editorial, because I think it does talk very much about the things that are
[ Page 13798 ]
happening here that affect the larger community, that will have a huge bearing on my constituents.

"The budget is disappointing for what it does not include and areas of spending that will be cut or limited. Like support for children and families…. The budget also falls short on introducing effective, pragmatic stimulus for the region."

There's what we get here in the Lower Mainland. We get a budget that is lacking in effective stimulus for the region. Tourist funding is also being cut. "Spending on arts and culture…The lack of any significant investment in long-term stimulus through transportation improvements in this region is unfortunate."

That does speak very strongly to a number of the things that I know my community is very aware of, going into this election process. They're going to look at this budget and say, in fact: "Did it deliver anything that will help us on the lower Island here?" Zero. Big goose egg. In fact, we're probably slipping further and further below, because of the kind of cuts that will have effects on communities here.

I know that the government has talked about health care — 90 percent of the budget is going to health care. Well, you can do a lot of playing around with numbers and make things look much better than they are.

But The Vancouver Sun today says…. So let's talk about the reality. Overall, the Liberals' plan to add $4.8 billion to the health budget by 2011-12…. Let's remember that's not '09; it's not '10; it's 2011 when we actually see some health care. The only new money for the budget — $920 million — is slated for the third year of the government plan.

So in fact, here we are. We have a crisis now. We have a crisis that's been going on for a number of months — years, in fact, several years in the forest industry. We have a crisis that's happening to people right now. The crisis is imminent.

We saw that the Premier himself had an epiphany a couple of weeks ago and said that we might be having a crisis here. Yet what we have are solutions like health care — this government has bragged about the health care portion of this — but in fact, that money's not slated until the third year of the government plan. So that is not even coming immediately.

Again, one of the many failings of this budget is that so many of the things that this government talks about delivering won't happen in 2009, won't happen in 2010, will happen in 2011 or '12. Frankly, lots of people will have had much more hardship long before that begins to occur.

It seems to me that the government once again is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. They managed to do it in 2001 by making a lot of promises that they immediately broke. They managed to do it in 2005 by making a lot of promises that they began to break. But I'm not too sure whether or not the electorate will give them a third run at making a lot of promises that they are going to break.

[1630]

You have to say to yourself, you know, that for the last eight years we've had real good economic times here in British Columbia. The government's taken an enormous amount of credit for that and been overly proud of something that they had very little control over.

That's very evident right now, because certainly when the economy was good, they said: "We're in control here. We're the ones that are creating this." But as the economy has begun to slide because of outside forces, the government has seemed unable to come up with any fresh ideas or even to catch hold of the reality as it began to unfold.

The fact that for months and months we've seen predictions of economic problems…. We saw that as a huge crucial issue going into the American election. We certainly saw it going into the federal election here. It's been no secret, but here in British Columbia somehow we were in such denial about it. It goes back to this issue of the fact that the government took such inordinate claim of good times and now is disavowing itself of any responsibility for bad times.

The reality is that this is a government that, as their record will prove, has been in surplus only four out of eight years. They will have been in deficit half the time that they have been in office. You have to say to yourself: "For all those good years, who benefited from that?"

Communities have seen, for eight years, broken promises. They've seen a decrease in the quality of health care. We have seen the loss of hospitals. We have seen code purples. We have seen privatization contracts that have given us dirty hospitals and bad food. We have seen schools closed. We have seen post-secondary education become unbelievably expensive, and it's a burden for young people coming out of school to hold those debts.

If those were the conditions in eight really good years here in British Columbia, then who profited by the good times? And what will happen to us all in the bad times? Those are the two things that I would also like to explore a little bit before my time runs out.

In fact, who benefited over the last eight years when times were good? If it wasn't our communities, then who was it? Well, it was the Premier's friends. It was supporters of the Liberal Party, and it was huge corporations that now have their claws into us on privatization schemes that we're stuck with for 30 and 40 years.

That has not been an advantage at all to my community. My community has looked to this government for more in the way of resources, going into the future — like light rail, like seniors home care, like some assurance that there would be affordable education for their young people so that they can actually go out and get work as the economy continues to trouble us.

But the government's budget that they have delivered is giving none of those things to my community. It would
[ Page 13799 ]
seem to me that if in the really good years the government cut services, left families living from paycheque to paycheque with no one to stand up for them…. As we go into this election cycle with an economy that is still very troubling, people have to ask themselves: "Who's going to stand up for me in the future?" The government hasn't done it for eight years while times were good. They're very unlikely to do it when times are tough.

[S. Hawkins in the chair.]

They are going to be looking for someone who is pragmatic and caring, who cares about their issues, will stand up and protect their jobs, will stand up and protect health care, will make sure that the investments in this province aren't squandered on expensive privatization projects. In fact, they're going to be looking for a government that will stand up for them. That will be a change of government on May 12.

Hon. M. Polak: Gosh, you know, it's really disappointing. Maybe I should rethink, given the….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Order, Members.

[1635]

Hon. M. Polak: Well, the member opposite, in part of her remarks, referenced her dislike for old ideas. I suppose every once in a while one should consider the comments of the opposition and take them to heart and consider whether or not they are things that one ought to change.

But I have to say that I happen to like old ideas like job creation. I like old ideas like economic investment, and I really like old ideas like fiscal discipline. If those are old ideas, I have to tell you I think I'm going to have a hard time changing from them, especially when we consider what that would mean for British Columbia right now.

There's no question that we're facing tough times. That's the understatement of the decade. Certainly, unless you've been living under a rock somewhere in North America or around the globe, you know what's going on. If you're a family in B.C., if you're a family in North America, you know what's going on, because it's hitting you every day.

I remember, as I grew up, my parents always talking about how they wanted to see government using their taxpayers' money the way that they have to be careful with their own money. Why? Because government doesn't have any of its own money. Every year, and sometimes more often, governments come to your pocket. They take the money out of your pocket, and they use it to support services — some more valuable than others.

But the exercise of determining what kinds of priorities government should have…. That exercise is always one of balance, and it's one of choosing priorities. It becomes even more challenging when times are tough. It means you have to make choices about what to protect.

Today I had the good fortune of being able to meet with the first nations health council. Having responsibility for aboriginal health and wellness, I found it a great pleasure to work with those folks, because they really have some dreams. They really have some goals for opportunities they want to create for their people. What they wanted to know was: were we committed to the tripartite first nations health plan? Were we committed to delivering in spite of tough economic times?

I was very pleased to tell them that when it comes to the commitment of this government, the need to bridge the gaps between the health of aboriginal people and the health outcomes of the rest of British Columbians is something that we are absolutely and fully committed to. It's one of those choices — to say that we're going to tighten our belt somewhere else because there's another priority.

I look at things like health care and education. Those are things I want to protect, and I don't want to do it in a manner that sees us reduce services to kids. I don't want to see it reduce services to those who are most vulnerable.

When I see that we've been able to retain the investment in health care and education — increase it, in education's case, to the highest level it's ever been — that's a choice I want to make. I want to sharpen my pencil and get into my budget. I want other ministers to do it to make sure that we're really making the right choices and then — when it comes to things like health care, education and services for vulnerable people — that we're making those decisions to support those. That's really what it comes down to.

A lot of people…. When they hear us in government talk about balanced budgets, talk about the need for fiscal discipline or even talk about whether or not we run a deficit in a time like this, you often find people scratching their heads and thinking: "Well, why on earth is it even important? Does it even matter? I mean, so what? Government is out there. They print money; they spend money." You know, there's a real disconnect.

Often it's the bottom line that people think we're managing to. "It's really just for the sake of the bottom line. It's the only reason you do it." They can be forgiven for thinking so, because it can often seem like that. But when it comes down to it, managing to that bottom line is about preparing us to move forward into the future. It's about protecting the things we care about. This government made some decisions to do that quite a few years ago.

It's easy to see that we're in an unprecedented economic time. It's easy to see that there's a lot of fear out there, a lot of uncertainty. I think there's a lot of fear and uncertainty even amongst those we're around every day. Nobody escapes from it.
[ Page 13800 ]

But in that fear and uncertainty, I got to thinking about what would have happened if this had occurred at a different time. I mean, right now, this time of unprecedented economic change is happening. It happened to us when British Columbia was in the position of already having reduced the provincial operating debt from $15 billion in '03-04 to $6.4 billion in '08-09. That's 50 percent. This happened to us at a time when government had paid debt down by $1.9 billion, the largest one-year debt paydown in B.C. history.

[1640]

It happened at a time when you had a government in place that had introduced five consecutive balanced budgets. It happened at a time when our economy had generated over 400,000 new jobs since '01. It happened at a time when our employment growth rate was beyond that of every province. It happened at a time when our unemployment rate was at the lowest rate in about 30 years and our youth employment rate was the lowest rate ever.

But what would have happened if this great economic calamity had occurred when B.C. was ranked last in private sector job creation? What would have happened if this had occurred when B.C. suffered the highest unemployment rate of all the western provinces? What would have happened if this crisis had overtaken us at a time when the unemployment rate reached a high of 10.1 percent? What would have happened if this had occurred then?

There are difficult choices to be made in this budget, and the Finance Minister….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Okay, order. Order, please.

Hon. M. Polak: There were difficult choices to be made in the construction of this budget, and the Finance Minister outlined them quite ably. But I think it's safe to say, for any logical person taking a look at the point in time we have found ourselves in, that in dealing with this economic crisis we are in a much better position to deal with it than we would have been had this occurred under a previous government with the kind of statistical economic record that they left behind.

Even in terms of things like education. I remember joining a school board in 1996 and finding that we were in the midst of something that the then NDP government called an efficiency reduction. It was outlined midyear after school districts were already given their budgets, and they were all of a sudden told that they were supposed to find 1.5 percent across their budget and return it. There was no warning. School districts across the province had to do that — an efficiency reduction.

In contrast, we've seen education funding under this government continue to rise. Why? Because that's a choice we make to support something that we value. It's all about those choices.

When we talk about the circumstances in which we found ourselves in creating this budget, it's a little bit like some sport metaphors. My dad doesn't really like hockey. My mom used to love it. She used to listen to the interviews afterwards with the players, and they would talk about: "Well, we did this, and we did that." And sometimes when they lost, they would make an excuse about why it didn't occur, why they didn't win.

She always used to say: "You know what? When it comes down to it, you make your own luck."

I think what that means is that there is no time…. The member opposite talks about the fact that in these volatile economic times, we can't predict what's going to happen tomorrow or the next day or the next day. Well, you know what? When this B.C. Liberal government took office in 2001, nobody could have predicted 9/11. Nobody could have predicted SARS. Nobody could have predicted the massive forest fires.

The fact of the matter is you can never entirely predict what circumstances….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, I'm having trouble hearing the speaker. Can I get some order.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. M. Polak: The fact of the matter is you can never entirely predict what circumstances are going to befall you. So one of the choices you need to make has to do with preparing for eventualities that you cannot predict. It has to do with creating your own luck, to use my mom's phrase. It has to do with setting yourself into a position where, regardless of what unexpected things may occur during the course of a year or two or three, you're in the best position to respond.

That's one of the reasons I'm proud to see that the Finance Minister, instead of stretching to make a balanced budget that lacked credibility, decided that it was better to take a conservative look at forecasting economic growth and actually to look at a tiny decline instead of taking the average of the Economic Forecast Council.

That's a brave move. It would have been a lot easier not to do it, but it's much more likely to put us in a position where we can respond to whatever is out there that's going to happen. It puts us in a position where we can continue to invest in those things that we value.

It means we can provide $110 million in funding for children, for families. It means we can provide $110 million in new funding for income assistance, $73 million in programs and services for adults with developmental disabilities, and another $81 million for economic and regional development. That's going to be key. We have
[ Page 13801 ]
to work with our communities to help them get through these times. They're challenged as well.

[1645]

It means $213 million to support local government and $58 million for community safety. We're seeing investments in areas like education and health that continue to be unprecedented. Ninety percent of all the new spending is going to go to health care, and as we know from the Conversation on Health, that need for health care spending is going to continue to challenge us.

So how are we preparing? We're preparing by sticking with some of those old ideas, like creating jobs. Our $14 billion investment into capital infrastructure — it's estimated that it will produce 88,000 jobs. And it's not just about roads and highways. It's about creating new housing for seniors, for first nations, for disabled people.

I take a look at my own riding. I'm proud when I drive around Langley, and I come around the bypass. You know what I see? I see a brand-new homeless and transition shelter being constructed in Langley, the Gateway of Hope. And you know why? It's because we made the choices to protect those things that are important.

We can't possibly do everything. We can't. No government can. When it comes to the choices we need to make during a time of crisis like this, it really is those things you protect that show what you value. But I think it does bring us back to a lot of old ideas, to remember some of the old sayings like "A stitch in time saves nine" or "A penny saved is a penny earned." You know, a lot of those old ideas aren't so bad.

Certainly if we take a look at simply the record of what's taken place since this government was elected in 2001, it's pretty easy to see that when it comes down to preparing for a negative economic circumstance, preparing for a crisis, there really is a group of people that have the credibility to bring it forward.

You can't see into the future, but you can look at the record. Compared to a government that never met one of its economic targets, we've got a list of promises and commitments we made that we've actually managed to keep. We promised to put more money in people's pockets. As the Finance Minister outlined, you're now going to see that in British Columbia people have the lowest personal income tax rate anywhere in Canada for earnings up to $116,000.

Surprisingly, it took until the B.C. Liberal government was elected to realize that we should probably help poor people by stopping taking money out of their pockets. It took a B.C. Liberal government to say that if you earn less than $15,500, you probably shouldn't pay any income tax. Those are things we're very proud of.

We promised to have good fiscal management. It brings us to that triple-A credit rating. My daughter doesn't really see why a triple-A credit rating would be important. Probably most people don't see what on earth that matters for. I'll tell you why it matters.

Take the comment we had about the loan that's going to be given out to support the construction of the Port Mann bridge. The fact that we're able to borrow at substantially lower rates and loan out at commercial rates is just one example. It means that there's actually a benefit to be gained for government in going through that arrangement. It wouldn't be the case if we didn't have a triple-A credit rating.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Members are reminded that they should speak only from their own seats.

Hon. M. Polak: We promised to bring people back to British Columbia, and we finally saw the first positive net migration into British Columbia in 2007. We led all the provinces. We promised more doctors, and we've actually done that. We've added to the education program for doctors, and we've expanded the places in which they can learn. It used to be you couldn't take your medical training in Prince George or Kelowna and Victoria, and now you can. We're going to double the number of new doctors graduating each year as a result.

We promised more nurses, and we've done that — 3,786 new training spaces for nurses. That's something that was reduced during the 1990s.

We promised more for education, and we've delivered. As I said earlier and as the Finance Minister outlined, now we're going to be providing the most per pupil for education ever. We promised new access to post-secondary education closer to home, and we've created seven new universities since 2001.

Then there's infrastructure — a $14 billion transit plan, a $3 billion Gateway strategy. Ninety-one percent of our active transportation projects are outside of the Lower Mainland, looking after those places that need our help outside of the urban centres.

[1650]

We promised to make sure that we were going to leave positive legacies for our children and our grandchildren. I am so pleased that as we deal with a difficult budget like this, we've got a Finance Minister and a government who are willing to make difficult choices to support those things that we value like health care, like education, like housing for seniors and the disabled. That really is what this is all about. It's about choosing to make sure we protect those things that we value. Because of that, I'm very proud of this budget, and I certainly will be supporting it.

H. Lali: I rise and take my place to speak on the 2009 budget. The folks across the way don't want me to speak too loud in case it wakes them up. I think what they're worried about is losing sleep here, hon. Speaker.

The government introduced this budget, and they're trying to pass it off as the panacea of the ills that are
[ Page 13802 ]
before us in terms of the recession that is taking place. You know, they sure didn't get the kind of response they were looking for from the public of British Columbia, or even the media, for that. You usually line up behind the Liberals.

They're looking at it, and they're kind of doing the yawning routine as well. That's what it has done. The Premier and the cabinet are so out of touch with what's happening in real life, in a real geographic entity called British Columbia, that they just have not responded….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Members, please. I can't hear the speaker, and secondly, comments can be made only from your chairs. So members are reminded of that.

H. Lali: As I continue, this budget does not reflect the reality that is out there. I rise to actually stand here and not only speak against the budget, but I'll also be voting against the budget. I'll let my intention be known quite clearly right up front.

There's just so much in this budget that has been presented. So much of it has been moved around from ministry to ministry to try to hide certain things. Then when the funding goes to that particular ministry, they try to pass it off as some sort of increase. They try to do that. It raises so many questions, just like the throne speech.

This is my 14th year here. As I recall, in all those years when the throne speech was read out by the L-G, we always used to get this nice copy in a blue cover, and stuff like that. I realized it was a photocopied version of something that was actually delivered to our offices or was being handed out in the hallways.

What it tells me is that this government was actually devoid of any kind of vision that reflected reality out there in British Columbia, so they're putting things together at the last minute. It's like: "God, we've been here for eight years. We're running out of ideas. We have no vision. What do we do?" So it's a last-minute kind of thing. That's what they did. It was a last-minute thing.

This budget is the same thing. It was a last-minute thing trying to move ideas around. There are so many unanswered questions, so much left that is actually blurry, so much hidden, moved around — as I said, different ministries. I think one can confidently term this 2009 Liberal budget as something….

You put something on a board. You know, the Premier sitting there, and cabinet, with the blackboard behind him. He takes a white chalk, he writes something on there, and a few minutes later he kind of changes his mind. He goes over there, and he kind of rubs it off and puts up another idea.

It's sort of like: "Let's try a green plan for British Columbia" or "Let's try an open and honest government idea. Put it up on the blackboard." Then he turns around and changes his mind a year or two down the road, when it doesn't work. He goes over there and takes his hand and kind of rubs it off.

In terms of this budget, there are all these different ideas that we've seen from the Premier — back of a napkin, or he goes up to a blackboard and writes it up. He's done this so many times. Then he changes his mind and goes off to something else — goes up, puts it up on the blackboard and rubs it off.

[1655]

There is a word for that. When you put something on a board and then you take your wrist and rub it off, they call it smudging. This budget that the Finance Minister put forward on behalf of the Premier could be termed nothing less than a smudge-it budget, because that's what it is. It's a smudge-it budget put forward by the Premier and the Liberal cabinet, because it does not address the reality in British Columbia and will do nothing to take British Columbia out of a recession.

It's sort of like when they dreamed up, after making all those promises…. The Premier said: "I don't like this Balanced Budget Act that the NDP put forward in 2000, so I'm going to put out my own." He cancels that one. He comes in here and rescinds it.

It wasn't until three years had gone by and he had brought in the largest deficits in the history of the province — three successive deficits, the largest in the history of British Columbia, $3.4 billion — that finally, when the world economic situation and the Canadian economy started turning around and the revenue started coming in and they were able to balance the books, the Premier decides: "I'm going to bring in my own balanced budget act."

"And from now on, forever and ever," the hon. Premier swore, "from here until eternity, we are never going to have a deficit." That's what he promised. He said it was going to be balanced budgets, till now.

And guess what. When the rest of the world at least 12 to 14 months ago could already see that on the other side of the mountain, over the hill, there was going to be a dampening of the economy — perhaps even a recession coming forward — the Premier and the Finance Minister got up and gave assurances all throughout the summer, the fall and the late winter, saying that somehow they were going to have no problems in British Columbia. They were going to be immune to it. That's what they said.

Then all of a sudden the Premier woke up sometime in January and realized: "Oh no. That goal I put on the blackboard in white chalk where it says 'no more deficits from here until eternity….' I'm just going to go up there and say, 'I'm going to smudge it off.'"

That's what happened with Bill 48. They decided. The last people on earth who came in here and said: "You know, I think we're going to run a deficit…." That's what
[ Page 13803 ]
they did. The last person on earth to realize that was the Premier. Then they have the nerve to say that nobody could have possibly predicted this crisis. Only a Liberal could say that with a straight face.

The rest of the world knew about it. All of the economists, leading economists across the world, were talking about it, and the only persons that didn't know were the Premier and his cabinet. Not them. Oh no.

Even in British Columbia for a year there were 43 headlines in newspapers across British Columbia — the main newspapers, not some of the minor ones. Seventeen of them actually had the words "British Columbia" or were referring to British Columbia in terms of the economy going into a tailspin, starting back as far as a year ago, March 2008. The Premier didn't heed the warnings of any one of them. So you had the Premier going up to the blackboard, puts on something and later smudges it.

The throne speech, as I said, was the same thing. It's the same thing with this budget that we see before us.

You know, it's a fake budget. We know what they're trying to do. They're trying to put forward one set of numbers. Then they're thinking that hopefully, when they win the election, they'll come back sometime in September and try to change all that. "Oh, we only have a $495 million deficit." That's what one of the members who spoke previously said up here. "Only $495 million," they're saying. That's what he's saying. But we know that the numbers are faked. We know that they've been doctored.

We know that the Premier is going to appear in September, if he thinks he's going to win the election, and go out and smudge this budget and bring in another one. That's what this is. It's a smudge-it budget.

The Premier now wants British Columbians to trust him. He's saying: "Trust me." Cabinet ministers are saying: "Trust us." The government is saying: "Trust us. We're the best. We're the only ones who can manage the economy. All you have to do, British Columbians, is trust us on May 12. We'll fix everything. Just trust us."

Well, you know, what British Columbians are telling me — what my folks, my constituents are telling me — is that if the Premier could not deliver during the good times, during the big surpluses, why in heck should we trust him now? Why should we trust this Liberal cabinet now? Why should we trust this Liberal government now, when all they've done is create misery all throughout British Columbia?

[1700]

Whether you're looking at health care…. The wait-lists, they keep on increasing. You're looking at the forest industry across this province. It's been devastated by not only the mismanagement by this government but also the deliberate neglect that has taken place.

You look at it all throughout — everywhere, all across British Columbia. Education — schools closed in record numbers all over this province. And the Premier says: "Just trust me now. All you have to do is trust me." Well, let's look at the Premier in 2005 when he said the same thing. Well, actually, in 1996 and also in 2001 he said: "Trust me. B.C. Rail will not be privatized. Just trust me. We're not going to cut the funding for health care, education and social services. All you have to do is trust me."

We know what happened. B.C. Rail was privatized. Health care is being privatized at breakneck speed. Schools have been closed. We have the greatest cuts to health, education and social services in history since this government took over in 2001.

And then in 2005 the Premier again appeared to the electorate, and he says: "Guess what." He said: "If you didn't trust me then, just trust me now, because I've got these five great goals for a golden decade."

Here's what the Premier actually promised on education. He says: "…make B.C. the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction in the world." He actually put it on a board, on a blackboard, in chalk. He puts it up. But we know what he did after he got elected. He went over there, and he smudged it with his hand. He just smudged it, smudged it off. He closed 177 schools in communities all over the province — some 20,000 kids had to travel to schools outside their neighbourhoods; fired 2,600 teachers in the school system; increased the class sizes; also eliminated targeted funding for students with special needs, etc.

We know the reality. That's what he did. Then his second goal — it was health care. Here's what the Premier said. He promised, and he put it on a blackboard with white chalk. He said we will "lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness." And then the Premier also promised "health care when you need it, where you need it." That's what he said in the New Era document. He said that. That's on health care.

But after he got elected, he went up to that blackboard, and he smudged it. He smudged it off. That's what he did. Because we know there were 1,200 acute care beds across the province that were cut, including a 24 percent reduction in the Interior Health Authority, a 20 percent cut to the Northern Health Authority, 10 percent to the Fraser Health Authority, 16 percent to the North Island and 10.5 percent to the central Island.

He closed five hospitals, and he downgraded 42 others across the province. All the hospitals in Yale-Lillooet — my constituency — and the area, including Ashcroft, Princeton, Merritt, Lytton, Lillooet and Hope have had cuts to their acute care beds. He shut down 2,500 long-term care beds and 54 long-term care facilities. It took him — what was it? — two terms to actually start putting some money back into the promise of building 5,000 beds. That's what he did.

Here's what he said about the disadvantaged. This was goal No. 3. The Premier said: "We'll build the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities, special needs, children at risk and seniors." That's what he said. He put it on the blackboard. But after the election
[ Page 13804 ]
he went up there, and he smudged it off. The reality is: he turned his back, actually, on persons with disabilities when he cut welfare rates when he became Premier and also abandoned the existing equity hire provisions that would have provided greater access to employment and educational opportunities in the public sector for all those equity groups in the province.

Then he also — the Premier and his Liberal Party…. They said they supported special needs recipients, but what they did was eliminate targeted funding for special needs. Also, they put children at risk, at greater risk, when they made massive cuts to the Children and Families Ministry.

His fourth goal was on the environment. When he put it up on the blackboard, the Premier said that they would lead the world in sustainable environmental management with the best air and water quality and the best fisheries management — bar none. That's what he put up on the blackboard.

[1705]

But that's not what happened. He went up to the blackboard after the election — did it in '01, did it in '05 again — and smudged it with his hand. Just smudged it right off. What's happened is this Liberal government has gutted the environmental legislation to the point of actually making a mockery — yes, making a mockery — of the air, land and water protection in this province.

Meanwhile, they've allowed our fisheries, especially the catch-and-release program, to become a laughingstock of the world. That's what they've done. Also, the Premier and his cabinet made changes to the Environmental Assessment Act that actually governs major developments such as construction of highways, building bridges, ski hills, hydroelectricity dams, oil and gas projects, and also other housing and construction projects. He severely watered it down to the point where one could actually drive an oil tanker through it, if they wanted to.

The Forest Practices Code — eliminated. The stewardship of our timber resources has been turned over to their friends, the big corporate forestry giants who finance their elections. The Premier has also sanctioned electricity through dirty coal-fired plants. It wasn't until there was an uproar in Similkameen Valley, in my community — this sort of development in sensitive areas like the Similkameen Valley — that he actually decided to hold off on it because there was so much resistance to it.

Then it's goal No. 5, the economy and jobs. He put it up on the board. He said that he would create more jobs per capita than anywhere else in Canada. That's not true. That's not what has happened. The reality is that in an independent survey done in January 2008, when folks were asked if they had benefited from this Canada-wide swing in the economy in the last few years, 52 percent of British Columbians replied that they had not. That's the reality.

Also, the reality is that the rich are getting richer in this province, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is shrinking. That's what's happening. That's the reality. If you look at it, in the forestry industry…. They've allowed this crisis in the forestry industry through deliberate inaction — no forest policy through successive ministers. So 63 sawmills and pulp mills and counting, and 32,000 family-supporting jobs, have been smudged out by this government. Gone up there and just smudged it on the board.

When you look at the minimum wage, they dropped it from $8 to $6 an hour. For eight years now it hasn't been raised. The Premier promised in 2001 when he got elected: "Don't worry. That minimum wage will come back up during the good times." What have we had for the last three or four years? We had good times in this province.

In 2001 when it was supposed go up to $8.15, you know what the Premier said? "Now is not the time to raise the minimum wage" — by merely 15 cents an hour. That's it — 15 cents an hour. Assuming somebody worked eight hours at minimum wage, 15 cents an hour is $1.20. That's it — $1.20 a day. The Premier said: "Now is not the time. We have to wait for the good times."

Well, then the good times came and went. During the height of the good times, the Premier said: "No, I'm not going to raise the minimum wage because now is not the right time." Then in the throne speech the Premier makes this grand announcement: "We are not going to raise the minimum wage." Do you know why? Because, he said: "Now is not the right time."

I would like to ask the Premier, on behalf of my constituents who are earning $6 to $8 an hour minimum wage: when is the right time to raise the minimum wage to the lowest earners in this province? When is it, if it isn't now, yesterday, or seven or eight years ago? When is it? It's just unreal what this Premier has done. It's just unreal.

But the Premier had no problem giving — what is it? — almost $1.5 billion per year in tax breaks, since 2001, to his friends who have their head offices on Wall Street or in Tokyo or elsewhere outside of the nation. He has no problem doing that — not a problem. So we can just say that the Premier put his five goals up on the blackboard, and when he found it convenient not to go ahead with it because the election had come and gone, he went up there, and one by one, he took his wrist, took his hand, and he smudged it off.

[1710]

That's exactly what he has done with this budget. It's a smudge-it budget, because it doesn't deliver for the people in my constituency in rural British Columbia. He has abandoned rural and also average families all throughout the province of British Columbia with all of the cuts.

When you look at the cuts…. It's from their own document, the budget document that was presented. If you look at Aboriginal Relations, the percentage change
[ Page 13805 ]
between the ministry's restated estimate of this year's budget and the '09-10 estimate shows an 18 percent drop in funding with a stated 1.7 percent increase in FTEs to 177. Now, either this is not realistic or there are going to be drastic cuts in other areas.

Despite these budget cuts, the minister actually wants to increase treaties and agreements in the next couple of years. I just don't know how he thinks he's going to be able to achieve that. When you look at the negotiations budget, there's a drop of 21.3 percent, and if you look at the Aboriginal Relations budget, there's a drop of 15.1 percent. No way how you look at it, it amounts to cuts.

In the Attorney General's budget, the Premier sat up here on his stump, and he shouted to the world so all of these movie cameras out here could pass on his message. "We're going to fight gangs. We're going to take you on," he said. "We're going to get you." That's what the Premier said right here in this House. He said: "We're coming after you."

But that's not the reality in the budget, because this promised new focus on more police officers and also more prosecutors to actually deal with some of this specific gang violence…. There's no new money in the budget for additional prosecutors.

Interjection.

H. Lali: That's exactly what he wants them to do.

He wants them to work for free. In fact, 106 FTEs will be cut from prosecution services by '11-12, and court services FTEs are also projected to decline, with a loss of 60 FTEs. That's right. And there's $5.3 million less for court services, and there is also $3.3 million less for prosecution services.

No way how he looks at it. The Premier made a promise last week on the blackboard. He wrote it. What did he do on the budget? He went over there, and he smudged it off. He smudged it off with his fist.

An Hon. Member: Maybe those are minimum wage prosecutors.

H. Lali: Maybe that's what he's looking for.

He has done the same thing on the environment. He had an epiphany. He said he was going to do a whole lot of things on the green plan. But when you look at the total operating budget of the Ministry of Environment, it's cut by just under $27 million over three years. Forests is the same thing. There are 154 FTEs that he's going to be cutting over the next three years. That's how the Premier is responding to forestry. The list just goes on. It doesn't matter what ministry it is. It just goes on and on and on.

We talked about the minimum wage a few minutes ago. The Premier says it's not the right time to give a wage increase to the lowest earners in the province. But he had no problem. It was the right time for the Premier to give anywhere from $65,000 to $103,000 dollars per — his senior Liberal executives. He gave them a raise — his deputies and other senior executives. That's the raise he gave them.

Hon. Speaker, did you know that you as an MLA make less than the increase that the Premier has given his senior executives? Did you know that? But he's got not a penny for low-income earners.

I've already talked about forestry and how it has affected folks in the rural areas. I just want to turn my attention to ranching for a minute, because ranchers in my constituency are just fed up with what the Premier and this Liberal cabinet is doing in terms of the supports that they get.

Canada has some of the lowest supports for agriculture in the G8 nations, and within Canada, it's B.C. that actually provides the lowest support of any province. In 1986 Canada provided 26 percent of agriculture GDP support, compared to British Columbia's 17 percent. What's happening today is that under this Liberal government, while Canada has lowered its support to 14.5 percent, British Columbia has dropped to a measly 4 percent support under this Liberal government.

[1715]

It's the lowest level ever in the history of British Columbia — absolutely. So obviously, this does not bode well for agriculture. It does not bode very well for the ranchers in my constituency.

We know there's a member sitting to my right, the member for Nelson-Creston. When he was the Minister of Agriculture, we had a program called the Buy B.C. program, which was a very effective program. Well, the Premier decided he's going to kill it, and he did. He killed it. He said: "The ranchers don't need help. Farmers across British Columbia don't need help. They can just do pretty well on their own. They don't need help to support their products. Oh heck, no."

But he's got no problem, when he looks south towards Vancouver, putting a new retractable roof, $365 million, when I think something less than $100 million — what was the estimate, about $67 million? — for a regular roof would have sufficed.

Oh no. He wanted the best roof for B.C. Place, and do you know where he's going to get it? He's going to go to Germany to get it. Germany — just like the B.C. ferries that he bought from Germany at overly inflated prices, and they don't even work. I just hope the Premier hopes that the roof will work once he gets it from Germany. That's what he wants. He wants it to work.

Interjection.

H. Lali: The member wants to talk about fast ferries. Let's talk about the Vancouver Convention Centre — $500 million cost overrun. You can build six fast ferries with that one.
[ Page 13806 ]

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Order, Members. Members.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member, please take your seat. Member, please take your seat for a moment.

Members. I'm having a lot of difficulty hearing the speaker.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Order.

Okay, Member, you may continue.

H. Lali: As I was saying, the Vancouver Convention Centre — $500 million cost overrun, and the Minister of Health has the nerve to sit there and actually smile and laugh. Maybe he'd like to come out in my constituency, come up to Ashcroft and Princeton and join me in a public meeting. Maybe the minister would like to do that and see how well he laughs when he's standing in front of a crowd of 500 people ready to throw stones and eggs at that minister because of the great neglect that he has shown as Minister of Health for the people in those small towns.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Order.

H. Lali: Maybe I'd like to see him then smile.

As I was saying, then it's the meat industry regulation. All the big packinghouses of North America want to streamline everything. That's the word that the Liberals like to use. So the federal legislation came down — the MIR, the meat industry regulation. All they had to do was just change a little bit of the wording here in order to save all of the abattoirs in those rural communities where those small farmers or hobby farmers were raising either chickens or pigs or some cows or goats or sheep or whatever it is and having the farm-gate sales.

Well, that's what the Liberal government did. They actually supported the federal government and the meat-packing plants and the slaughterhouses of Toronto and Vancouver. They've killed the farm-gate sales of meat in this province because they refused to actually take on those big slaughterhouses in urban centres. That's how much support this government has given them.

Of course, the gas tax that the hon. Premier has put on there…. What is it — 7.5 cents a litre over three years? He brought in, I think, about 2.5 percent last year. It's going to be doubled to about 5 percent this year. Now, this is during the economic hard times. That's the kind of support that we get from this Minister of Agriculture and from this government on these kinds of issues.

We were talking about health care. I've got communities in my riding such as Princeton and Lytton, Lillooet, Logan Lake and Merritt — and soon to be in the new Fraser-Nicola, it's going to be Ashcroft…. They're waiting for solutions from this minister. They're waiting for this government to actually provide support for seniors 70, 80, 90 years old who have to go to Kamloops or Kelowna or Abbotsford or Vancouver or somewhere else to get their health care needs because this government decided they were going to cut funding for health care. That is the reality that's taking place in British Columbia.

We'll hear a lot from these Liberals. They're saying how they inherited a deficit in 2001. It's wrong. I've got a quote from a document that this Liberal government has presented — the 2004-2005 report from the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia. It's right here. They presented it in the House. It's their report.

[1720]

In it on page 4, exhibit 1 says "Financial information framework, 1997 to 2004." There is a comparison of what the deficits were. In '97 it was $237 million. In '98 it was $635 million. In 1999 it was $945 million. In 2000 there's a surplus of $151 million. In 2001 there's a surplus of almost $1.5 billion. Those were under the NDP, the last term.

Here are the Liberals. In 2002 a deficit over a billion dollars. In 2003 a $3.4 billion deficit — the largest in the history of British Columbia. In 2004 a billion dollars. So what they did was took a surplus — the largest surplus in the history of the British Columbia at $1.5 billion — and turned it into the largest deficit in the history of British Columbia at $3 billion, when you look at the revenue and expense for the year ended March 31 for that year, in 2003. But if you look under the accumulated deficit, in 2003 under this Liberal Premier and government it was $3.74 billion.

Thank you very much, and I'll be voting against this budget.

Hon. B. Bennett: My vote will be negating the former speaker's vote, apparently. I'll be supporting the budget. I want to pick up on a couple of comments that the former speaker made. He said something about the back of a napkin. He seems to like to talk a lot about the Premier of the province, which is actually not a bad thing. If the member and the opposition would like to compare leadership between the Premier of the province and the Leader of the Opposition, I think this side would be happy to do that.

You know, leadership requires strength. It requires intelligence. It requires tremendous….

Interjections.
[ Page 13807 ]

Deputy Speaker: Members.

Minister, just a moment.

Members, please respect the members' right to speak when they're speaking. The Chair is having a hard time hearing the speaker. Thank you.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. B. Bennett: Leadership requires tremendous personal mental and physical stamina, and it requires courage. It requires decision-making capacity. I think that when you look at the record of the Leader of the Opposition, you'll find that she has a very difficult time making decisions, and that's not leadership.

The former speaker asked: "Why should people trust the B.C. Liberals in the context of the current budget?" I can't help but think: "Well, what's our record over the past eight years?" What did we say in 2001 when I was first elected, when I first came to this place? I remember, actually, what we said in the campaign in 2001. We said that we were going to do our best to return the province to hope and prosperity.

When we took over the province, everybody knows that we came out of ten years of high unemployment, a complete loss of investor confidence. In fact, we'd gone from having the strongest economy in the country to having the worst economy in the country in 1998.

The former speaker shouted out here, about an hour ago, that that's not true. That actually is true. This province had the weakest economy in the country in 1998. So that's what we took over in 2001.

I suppose the opposition will claim that we haven't achieved prosperity for every single British Columbian in this province. That's true, without a doubt. What we have done is create more jobs in the province in the past eight years than any other eight-year period in the history of the province. We've got more prosperity for more people in the province today than we've ever had. We've got lower taxes. We've got less regulation, and we've got confidence in this province. We have hope.

When you walk around the streets of your community in this province today, people feel good about British Columbia. I don't know where the opposition goes to find so many discouraged, disconsolate, depressed people. I just don't encounter those people. The people that I encounter in British Columbia are upbeat. They're pretty happy. They're pretty optimistic.

[1725]

We just had a couple of economic forums — one in the great city of Prince George and one in Vancouver. Between the two conferences there were probably well over a thousand people who attended, and I never encountered one person who was discouraged or disconsolate or pessimistic or negative. I encountered people that have confidence in the future, people who take responsibility for their own lives and people who will help us get through this economic downturn.

We had a plan in 2001, and we have a plan today. In my opinion anyways, this budget is an intelligent budget. It's the right budget for this time.

We're obviously heading into unparalleled times economically. I don't think anyone really understands when we're going to come out of this thing and how bad it's going to get. I think there are lots of experts who had it wrong six months ago, and there are probably lots around today who still have it wrong. Government has to be careful, government has to be prudent, and government has to do everything it can to get its own house in order.

We had a choice with the budget. When we decided that we were not going to be able to balance the budget, necessarily, in this next fiscal year, we had a choice. We could have said: "Okay, well, let's just bring in a great big deficit, and we'll just spend the money we need to spend and do what people want us to do. Maybe we'll get elected on that basis."

We could have done that. That might have been the politically expedient thing to do. Other governments in the past have done that.

We decided not to do that. We decided, under the leadership of the Premier, that we needed to find some savings within government. So all the ministers of the Crown in this government spent a little over two months going through their budgets, trying to find savings, and we found $1.9 billion in all the ministries of government.

We took that $1.9 billion and allocated it the priorities of the people of the province. We took that money and allocated it to things like health care, K-to-12 education, advanced education. We allocated it to income assistance. We allocated it to adults with developmental disabilities. We allocated it to children. We allocated it to the things that we think British Columbians feel are the most important.

It wasn't quite enough, so we ended with a deficit of $495 million. We could have taken that $1.9 billion and said: "Let's just add it to the deficit. Let's just have a $2 billion deficit instead of a half-billion-dollar deficit." We didn't do that, because we're responsible. We take this job seriously, and these are tax dollars. They don't belong to us. They belong to the people that send them to us.

When I think about the ordinary British Columbian — and we all, both sides of the House, talk about the ordinary, average British Columbian — I'm not sure who that person really is. But somebody in my town of Cranbrook that falls on hard times…. Maybe the husband or maybe the wife loses a job. They know that they're not going to have as much income. They're faced with a real challenge.

Can they keep their house? Can they keep doing the things with their children that they like to do? Can they keep the young gal in minor hockey? Can they afford for her to travel with the triple-A team? There are all kinds of things that ordinary people encounter when they run into financial problems.
[ Page 13808 ]

What they would do is probably sit down at the kitchen table, and they would figure out: "Where can we find the money in our household budget to allow us to do the things that are most important?" That's what we did. That's what we did as government. I think that the people of the province expect us to do that, and I think that they will respect the fact that that is what we did.

In the budget there were a number of points that I want to raise, some of which are germane, in particular, to my riding of East Kootenay and to other rural areas of the province. I wanted to mention the northern and rural homeowner grant — the $200 break, essentially, on your property taxes that people will start to receive in 2011.

I also wanted to mention the 50 percent school tax reduction on farm property. The former speaker, the member for Yale-Lillooet, talked about the state of ranching in British Columbia. You know, I think he and I probably would agree on the state of ranching in B.C. It's a tough, tough business to be in. It's been a tough business for a long, long time. There are many ranchers who do it more for lifestyle than to make money on the raising and selling of beef. They love it, and we want them to keep doing it. We want them to be able to do it. But it is very, very tough.

[1730]

I met with some ranchers a couple of weeks ago in Cranbrook. There were about 100 of them. I spoke to them formally, and then we all sat down and had a discussion about ranching. I asked them: "What is it? What more can we do as government to help you?" You know, we can't control the price of beef. There are a lot of their inputs that we can't really control. What could we do? They said: "What you can do is lower our taxes — lower our property taxes."

By reducing the school taxes by 50 percent for people who own farm property, I think that's going to make a difference, and I think ranchers are going to respect us for having made that decision.

Another thing I like about the budget is the expression of confidence in the future and the fact that we're sticking to this commitment that we made a number of years ago to train more workers in the province, to provide more apprenticeships.

[H. Bloy in the chair.]

We're going to have 2,000 more training spaces under the Industry Training Authority. That's a commitment that I think is important at times like this.

We all know that when the economy is hot, young people, in particular, like to be out making money, and they don't necessarily go back and take the formal part of their apprenticeship training. They like to make the money when they have the opportunity. They may want to go back to school now and pick up that year or that two years of formal training that they need to get their ticket, and because of the increase in funding to Advanced Education and those extra 2,000 training spaces, they'll be able to do that.

I also like the extension of the flow-through tax credit for the mining exploration industry. I remember that when we first got elected, we spent…. I shouldn't say we. The exploration industry in this province was spending $25 million a year. Last year they spent something in the order of $400 million or $500 million on mining exploration. By continuing this flow-through tax credit, the mining industry will be encouraged to continue to invest in British Columbia and to create jobs.

I like the mention of Highway 37. That's a project that was very important to me when I was Minister of State for Mining. It's a $10 million investment, but it's an investment in the future of the northwest. It's an investment in the future of the Tahltan people and all the other first nations who live in the area. That area has great, great potential for mine development. I know they'll take their time, and I know that they'll do it right. But until we get power up Highway 37, essentially none of that job creation can take place.

I'm proud of the fact, as my colleague said earlier, that we have this triple-A credit rating. I agree with her. Probably most people in the province don't think much about credit ratings, and they probably don't think much even about the interest that the government pays on the provincial debt. But I think that if they apply it to their own lives and think about their interest rate on their mortgage, maybe they would think that the triple-A credit rating is actually a pretty important thing.

The triple-A credit rating is basically an expression of the financial community in the world and their confidence in this government. When we first took over, we had a considerably lower credit rating. We now have the highest credit rating in the country, which is solid evidence that the financial community in the world has a lot of confidence in this province.

I wanted to talk a little bit about my ministry and our portion of the provincial budget. There are a number of exciting opportunities and announcements that will come about as a result of the budget. I'm going to talk a little bit about them. I'm going to start by talking about arts and culture.

I had a very good meeting with the opposition critic last week, a very nice young man who cares a lot about arts and culture, and I think we'll work well together. Perhaps we'll have to wait until after the election until we do a lot of work together. He cares about arts and culture just like I do, and I think all members do. I think most British Columbians appreciate the value of arts and culture in our various communities.

Since 2001, the B.C. Arts Council, which is an agency of government, has distributed over $93½ million. We have invested $50 million in the new Vancouver Art
[ Page 13809 ]
Gallery. That happens to be in the riding of the member who is the Arts and Culture critic for the opposition.

[1735]

We've spent $9 million on the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Last year we created the BC150 cultural fund. We put $150 million into the BC cultural fund for all of the out-years, and depending on the rate of interest, that's going to pay into the arts and culture communities of this province forever.

B.C. Lotteries also spends roughly $18 million to $20 million a year on arts and culture. That's often forgotten when we're talking about what the arts budget is. People will take a look at the B.C. Arts Council and say: "That's the budget." Well, not so. There are various ways that public money gets into arts and culture in this province. One of the ways, of course, is through B.C. Lotteries, and as I say, it's up to $20 million a year.

In this budget the Finance Minister announced two film tax credit changes that are going to be very important to the province, as we move forward and as we grow our film and TV business. Vancouver is the third-largest production centre in North America. We should be proud of that. We have a great film and TV industry.

One of the changes that the Finance Minister announced is that we're going to get rid of the expiry date for the tax credit program. The reason that's particularly important today is that a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting with a large media company from California that wants to build a studio in Vancouver. They like British Columbia. They like our tax policy, they like our regulatory atmosphere in British Columbia, and they really like the educated workers that we have in this province.

They're looking around the world for a place where they can locate this studio. It means several jobs, and it's a multi-million-dollar investment. The one thing they said that they needed us to do was to remove the sunset clause from our tax credit policy for film and television. So we've done that, and I would assume that the opposition will support that.

We've also invested, just in the last little while, $650,000 into the Juno Awards which are being held in Vancouver. That's a great opportunity for us to showcase the province. We've invested $600,000 in B.C. Scene. B.C. Scene was an expression or an illustration of our arts and culture from the province that's taking place in the nation's capital.

We invested $250,000 in the Vancouver Symphony so that they could go to China on a tour and be the first Canadian orchestra ever to perform in Beijing. We have a cultural tourism strategy that's being developed with communities around the province, recognizing that the travellers today will stay longer and spend more money if they have an experience as opposed to just purchasing a product.

I want to just say a couple of words about heritage. Heritage is part of my ministry, and heritage is something that has become quite important to me. The older I get, it seems, the more I think about history, and the more important heritage becomes. I visited a lot of the heritage sites in the province — not all of them. I'd like to go to the rest of them. I think government has to support heritage in a way that allows the rest of the folks who live here — the taxpayers and the travelling public — an opportunity to see what we have in this province, in our heritage sites. It's quite remarkable.

Obviously, I'm responsible for tourism, so I want to say a few words about tourism. I haven't seen much coverage yet on the budget, but I hope that nobody thinks that the tourism marketing budget is cut with this budget, because it isn't. There is a reduction to the ministry, which is based on a reduction of administrative costs and travel costs and a fairly significant reduction for advertising.

But it's not the kind of advertising where you're marketing the province's tourism products. We found that money within the ministry, but we haven't reduced Tourism B.C.'s budget. Tourism B.C., of course, is the agency that's responsible for marketing this beautiful province around the world.

Tourism is now big business in this province. It's made up of a lot of really small businesses — a few bigger businesses, but a lot of really small businesses. There are 18,000 businesses. There are over 120,000 direct jobs and 170,000 indirect jobs. It's a very important industry to the province all by itself, but it's also a very important industry to the province, because it allows us to diversify our economy.

[1740]

We've actually more than doubled the funding from government to the Tourism Ministry. In 2004 we increased Tourism B.C.'s budget from $25 million to $50 million. And then last year we increased Tourism B.C.'s share of the hotel room tax even further.

We've also given $25 million to the Union of B.C. Municipalities for the development of community tourism programs. We gave an extra $12 million in one-time funding to the regional destination marketing organizations, and we've invested $5 million in the creation of an aboriginal tourism plan for the province.

In addition to the direct funding for tourism to support tourism and the growth of tourism, we've also invested in infrastructure. I'll let the Transportation Minister talk about all of the highway and bridge infrastructure that's been built in this province over the past eight years. You can't have a strong tourism industry if you don't have strong transportation infrastructure.

We've also invested in over a dozen airports in the province. You can't have a strong tourism industry unless you have good airports — airports that make it easy for people to come in and to get out after their trip. We've done that, including the airports in Cranbrook, Kamloops, Comox, Nanaimo, Prince George, Kelowna and probably a few I've forgotten about.
[ Page 13810 ]

I think that we will be quite happy to talk about our record for supporting tourism, going forward. Certainly in the election…. It was only four years ago, or a little bit less than four years ago, that the Premier announced we were going to increase the funding for tourism. We were going to increase Tourism B.C.'s share of the hotel tax that's collected.

The Leader of the Opposition at the time…. When she put the opposition's platform out, we found that it didn't include an increase in funding for tourism. So I think that they stand on very, very thin ice if they're critical at all of our government's performance with regard to the promotion of tourism.

The previous speaker mentioned B.C. Place and the convention centre. I'm responsible for both of those projects, and I think that they're both two of the most positive economic generators that we've ever had in this province.

I read an article just last Monday, I think, in The Vancouver Sun where they compared convention centres from around the world, I think mostly in North America. There was one in Boston. There was one in Phoenix. There was one someplace else. I can't remember where it was. Basically, what the journalist ended up concluding was that we're paying exactly what we should pay for the Vancouver Convention Centre, that it cost exactly what it should cost and that, in fact, if we started building it today, it would cost more money.

You see, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to do my best to explain this to the opposition. I know that folks on this side of the House don't have any trouble understanding it, but I know that the folks on the other side do have a great deal of trouble understanding the difference between an investment and just a straight-out cost.

See, a straight-out cost is where you invest a bunch of money and don't get anything in return. That would be your fast ferries. That would be three boats that are wrapped in cellophane that are sitting on the other side of the harbour and have been sitting there now for, I don't know, nine or ten years. That would be a straight cost with nothing in return for the taxpayer — you see?

I know it's difficult. It's really difficult for the NDP to get this, but an investment is when you actually spend money and you get a return on your investment. So the $883.2 million that the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre will cost will actually make a great return to the people of British Columbia.

We have — I don't know if I'll get the numbers exactly right — about 169 conventions booked for the new convention centre. In 2011 it looks like we're going to have the greatest convention year in the history of the province. Over 50 of those conventions would not be coming to British Columbia if it weren't for the expanded convention centre.

[1745]

That business that I just talked about is worth $2 billion, so that's $2 billion of business that's coming to the province because of the new convention centre. Now, let's just think about how much money, how many jobs, how much tax revenue is generated by the fast ferries.

Just give me a minute to think about that. Let's see. No jobs. No tax revenues. No spinoff benefits. Nobody's eating at a restaurant; nobody's staying in a hotel; nobody's taking a cab; nobody's flying in or flying out. Those boats are just bobbing around over there like a rubber ducky in somebody's tub, and they don't do anything. They don't do anything for the province of British Columbia. They do absolutely nothing for the taxpayers.

If the opposition wants to talk about the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre and about B.C. Place…. I hope they do.

Interjections.

Hon. B. Bennett: Ask me a question in question period.

I hope they do. I'm proud of the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre. I've been through it a whole bunch of times, and I'm going through it again on the weekend.

I'm proud of it. You've got B.C. wood inside it. You've got hemlock — miles of hemlock in that facility — cut on the Sunshine Coast, cut on Vancouver Island and milled by a company right here in Victoria. Apparently, the opposition doesn't care about the local jobs for that company here in Victoria.

You know, there are 870 workers, men and women who show up to work every single day at the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre — 870 men and women, highly paid. You go in there and talk to them, as I have, and you know what they'd tell you? "We're really proud of this facility. We're proud to be British Columbian."

"There's no facility, no convention centre anywhere on earth like this convention centre." That's not me saying it. I'm from Cranbrook. I'm a lawyer from Cranbrook. What would I know? But when the convention planners come from around the world and have a look at that trade and convention centre, they say: "There is no more beautiful convention centre on earth. It is going to be a huge success."

In fact, the other day I was on the trade show floor, which is immense at the convention centre. I was doing a tour with some other folks — actually with a federal minister who was very, very impressed with the facility — and I bumped into Mr. Rogge, who is the head of the International Olympic Committee. He had been doing a tour of the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre at the same time that I was doing a tour, and we bumped into each other.

We ended up having a little discussion. This is the head of the IOC. He said to me: "British Columbians are going to be proud of this facility. This is going to be one
[ Page 13811 ]
of the legacies that we're going to be proud of as we go forward." I couldn't help but think about 1986 and Expo 86 in this province.

You think about the legacy infrastructure from 1986 that's left in this province that we use. Coquihalla Highway — does anybody care about that? Has anybody used the Coquihalla Highway in the last 20 years? Hands up. Everybody's used it — right? There's a bridge somewhere in Vancouver. I don't even know the name of it. I'm from Cranbrook. I'm sorry I don't know Vancouver that well. But there was a bridge built in Vancouver as a result of Expo 86.

There are hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure that was created as legacy projects from 1986. The same thing is going to take place in 2010. Only multiply it by four or five times. Our children and our grandchildren are going to be thanking us for having the courage to invest in the 2010 games and invest in all of the infrastructure that we have invested in and, frankly, that we will continue to invest in, as we go forward.

Yeah, there's a recession, and we're going to have to….

Interjection.

Hon. B. Bennett: No, that's okay. It's already been said. Did you not listen to the throne speech? There's a recession, and we'll get through it. British Columbians are a very resilient group of people. We're upbeat, for the most part. There is a certain group of folks that tend to be negative and pessimistic, but most of us are upbeat, so we'll get through it.

I think that we're in better shape than most provinces in the country. We have diversified our economy over the past eight years in particular.

[1750]

We don't depend entirely on the forest industry as we once did. We don't depend entirely on the oil and gas industry, as Alberta does. Those are great industries. We absolutely must have those industries firing on all cylinders whenever possible.

But we have a more diversified economy. We have tourism. We have film and television. We've got digital media. We've got about a billion-dollar industry in digital media in this province. Most people don't know that. It's part of the diversification of the economy.

So we'll get through it, and we'll get through it, as they say, a little bit easier than some of the other provinces in the country — a lot easier than they're going to get through it in the United States. And we'll be stronger on the other side.

We'll have our modest deficit next year and another modest deficit, perhaps, a year after that. And then the economy will turn around at some point in there — nobody knows for sure — and we'll pay that money back, because we've said that we're going to pay that money back. It's operating debt.

I understand there are people on the other side that don't understand what operating debt is. Operating debt is when you go borrow money to buy groceries, when you go to borrow money to go to the movies or to a restaurant. That's operating debt.

We'll pay that off as fast as possible, and in the meantime, we will borrow for capital projects. We'll keep people working as much as we possibly can. We'll get money into the economy to circulate through this infrastructure program, and we'll end up on the other side stronger than we are today.

D. Chudnovsky: I'm here to speak against the budget. I want to begin by mentioning to you…. Mr. Speaker, maybe you've noticed the same thing. I've noticed the last week or so, or ten days, that there's a new phenomenon coming from the other side.

It's this: "Oh, it's just our little province in a sea of problems around the world, and in our little province, we can't control the international financial crisis, because it's just our little province. And we're not…." In fact, I'm quoting from my friend the member for West Vancouver–Capilano, who yesterday said: "It's just our little province."

Now, there's some truth in that, although I'm going to talk a little bit in a minute about the contribution that our little province has made to the international financial crisis. But it's different from the way they've been talking over the last seven or eight years, when they took credit, for instance, for high commodity prices.

It was them who were responsible for the high commodity prices and the low interest rates. It was them. It wasn't our little province for the last seven or eight years. No, no. It was this crew on the other side who were responsible — according to them, if you listen to them — for the international economic situation, which was in fact the cause for the relative good times for some of the people in British Columbia over the last number of years.

I said a minute ago that while there is some truth that the crisis we face is international, this government across the aisle has to take some responsibility for the crisis. And they do, because they were and still are, in fact — we'll talk about that in a minute — the chief cheerleaders for the culture of deregulation and privatization and greed and tax cuts for the rich that were the direct cause of the crisis that we face today around the world.

These guys and gals on the other side are being dragged kicking and screaming into the 1930s. Have you noticed? They're being dragged, out of their love for privatization and deregulation and greed, kicking and screaming into the 1930s.

An Hon. Member: I'm still there.

D. Chudnovsky: A member opposite says that he's still there. Isn't that a lesson for all of us?
[ Page 13812 ]

For 20 years those on the opposite side and others like them argued that tax cuts for the rich and a culture of greed and deregulation and privatization were going to fix everything. And you know what? It turns out that they were wrong, and it turns out that millions and millions of people are suffering today because of that ideology and the failure of that ideology.

[1755]

In fact, my friend, the member for West Vancouver–Capilano, who is one of the more that thoughtful, as we know, members of the government side of the House…. He is often wrong, as I've said to him. But in each of his presentations he takes the time to think through what he's going to say.

Yesterday in this House the member for West Vancouver–Capilano was doing a review of the current economic situation, and he was quoting an economist from the United States who said that an emphasis on tax cuts to pull us out of this economic crisis isn't going to work. In fact, what that economist was saying and what my friend from West Vancouver–Capilano was saying was: "You know, we've got to get at least into the 1930s if we're going to deal seriously with the problems that we face."

I say this directly to my friend across the aisle: "Listen to your guys and gals here." It is going to take you and me and all of us, and the people of the province, a lot of energy to pull them kicking and screaming into the 1930s. They're still talking about tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. They're still talking about privatization. They're still talking about deregulation. They're still drinking the Kool-Aid that got us into this mess in the first place.

Let's look at the budget a little bit and look at some of the elements of the budget — this excuse for a budget — that they've brought to us, and try to unpack some of the propaganda and some of the spin that's been brought to us by various ministers, in particular the Minister of Finance, who stands in the House and says in glowing terms: "This budget protects education."

Well, it took about ten minutes to unpack that one. We know that the deputy minister was telling people in the education community, specifically school boards, at the budget lockup that school boards are going to have to cut $12 million. "We're protecting education," says the Minister of Finance.

Did you know, hon. Speaker — you'll recall, I'm sure — that a couple of years ago this government created the worst crisis in public education in the history of British Columbia, a completely unnecessary crisis that disrupted the education of children across the province for weeks? That was created by this government.

How did they create it? They created it by denying a set of problems that every single other person who knew anything about education in this province knew about. They said over and over again…. We heard the Minister of Education and the Premier saying over and over again: "There is no problem when it comes to class sizes and class-composition rates in the schools and classrooms in British Columbia."

They said it over and over again, while parents, school boards, teachers, communities and students told them that that's not the case, that they created that crisis and denied it and denied it.

Finally, after disrupting the education of tens of thousands of students in this province, the Minister of Education and the Premier saw the light and said: "Oh, we were wrong." Well, they never said they were wrong. That's not something that these fellows and gals on the other side do, but the story changed. The story changed, and it became okay for them to say, "We're going to do something. We're going to do something about the terrible problem of class sizes," which had increased. Why did they increase? The cuts of 2001-2002 are why they increased.

Service for students with special needs. That wasn't there. Why were those services not there? Because of the cuts of 2001-2002. This government. This Premier. But after having created that crisis and after disrupting the education of hundreds of thousands of students in this province, the minister and the Premier finally said: "We better do something about class-size problems and class-composition problems. We'll have a round table, and we will make sure…." They passed a bill — Bill 33, I think it was — at the time, which turned out to be a massive fraud.

[1800]

But they passed a bill, and they called for a round table. They convened that round table, and that round table was going to solve the problems which they had finally woken up to after having created the crisis in the first place.

You know what? It turns out that there are more classes with four or more students with special needs in them today in this province than there were before the round table was convened. Think about that. Think about what that means, and try and put it beside this bogus claim by the Minister of Finance yesterday that they're protecting education.

No, they're not. They are the team that is presiding over a deterioration of the conditions under which some of the most vulnerable children in our system are supposed to learn. It's worse now when it comes to students with special needs than it was before they convened the round table. That's an example of standing up for education and protecting education.

The school boards have been told that they have to find millions of dollars to cut. That's an example of what is meant, by those on the other side, by protecting education.

I want to talk about another area of government policy that could have been the centrepiece of a budget in the midst of the international financial crisis that we face. Let's think about what could have been, because
[ Page 13813 ]
most economists will tell us that what you need to do in the face of this crisis is to stimulate the economy — what they used to call priming the pump of the economy.

That was the 1930s. These guys are being pulled kicking and screaming into the 1930s. They should listen to this.

It used to be said that you could prime the pump of the economy by doing public works. You might ask yourself the question: what are the most important public works that we could do today in British Columbia? We could house the homeless. We live in British Columbia, and it's 2009. We don't live in Guatemala or Bangladesh. It's British Columbia. It's 2009, and there are 15,000 people in our province who are homeless. It is appalling that we face that situation.

We could have had a Minister of Finance who came to us and said that in the face of this crisis and in the face of the wisdom of economists who tell us that we need to prime the pump of the economy, among other things, by building public works…. We could have had a Finance Minister who came to us and said, "We are going to house the homeless in British Columbia" — that we represent decent and caring people who live across this province. They would have had the support of millions of British Columbians. There would have been news in this Legislature instead of ho-hum.

There would have been news. They could have gone to the people of British Columbia and said: "We as a community will not accept that there should be upwards of 15,000 homeless people in our province in 2009. We're going to get to work on it, and by the way, that's going to help the economy." They could have done that, but they chose not to.

You know, I've had the privilege over the last year and a half, a little bit more, to travel the province, to talk to homeless people. I've learned many things. One of them I've talked about already, and that is the appalling depth and breadth of the crisis of homelessness in British Columbia, which this government has chosen not to deal with in any substantial way in this budget. The second thing that I learned, which is of tremendous importance, is that the crisis is provincewide.

[1805]

The minister had an opportunity in this budget not just to deal with the appalling crisis of homelessness but to show people in every community across British Columbia that he knew and understood the situation that they face in their community. In Abbotsford, in Revelstoke, in Smithers, in Prince George, in Victoria and in every city and town across the province there's an appalling crisis of homelessness.

It's not only a big crisis. We have a terrible crisis in Vancouver where I live, and most people think of the crisis of homelessness as a Vancouver problem. But you know, it's a British Columbia problem. What an opportunity not just to do the right thing but to stimulate the economy across the province by doing the right thing, by dealing with the crisis as it exists. But the minister chose not to.

You've got to wonder why it is that the minister would choose that, and I think that we know why the minister chose that. It's because these guys have not yet been dragged into the 1930s, and they still think that trickling down wealth from their rich individual friends and corporate friends is going to somehow get to solve the problems of ordinary people in British Columbia. We know and we can see that that's not the case.

It's not just homeless people, because the housing problems that we face in this province are not just…. There's a spectrum. There's a continuum. At the most elemental level we deal with the problem of homelessness, and among those who are homeless are the street homeless and then all kinds of other people who are homeless as well — people who are using emergency shelters at night, people who are couch-surfing, all kinds of people who are homeless, who aren't in the group, who are street homeless.

Then there's another group of people in our province who are desperate for affordable housing. Over the last 15 years in this province and, in particular, over the last six or seven years, the cost of housing has escalated to the point where it is out of the reach — both rental and real property housing — of thousands and thousands and thousands of people in this province.

I, for instance, want to tell you about some of my constituents who live in two buildings, four or five blocks from our house, neighbours. They're not only constituents; they're my neighbours. They live in two buildings where it's about 125 units of affordable housing. I won't try to romanticize it. The places where they live aren't that beautiful on the outside. Many of them have made their apartments very beautiful.

Because of the marketplace, the marketplace that this lot tell us is going to solve everything, a developer is going to come in and may be able to knock down that 125 units of affordable housing and build housing that those people can't afford. That's happened all across the province. Not just in the big cities but all across the province that's happened.

There's a crisis of affordable housing, and this government could have done something about that. I know that we on this side would have loved to sit with the government and explore ways to help to develop housing that ordinary people in this province could afford, because loads of them can't. But they chose not to do that.

C. Evans: Maybe they're waiting for the invisible hand.

D. Chudnovsky: The invisible hand of the marketplace — yes. The invisible hand of the marketplace is what is depended on by the folks on the other side.
[ Page 13814 ]

There's a social housing community right across the street from my constituency called Little Mountain where there are 200 empty units of housing. The minister responsible for homelessness decided he was going to be a real estate speculator rather than taking care of housing for the people of the province. His plan was: "Well, we're going to take this land in the middle of Vancouver. It's going to be worth a lot of money. We're going to sell it, and we're going to make lots of profit, and we're going to kick the people who live there out, and we'll redo it and have a whole bunch of million-dollar condos, and we'll make a fortune."

That was his plan. Some people told him, "Not a good idea," but he went ahead with it anyway. Those 200 units sit empty, and they've been sitting empty for months. So whatever you think about the minister's plan to be an entrepreneur, to be a real estate speculator, whatever you think about whether that was a smart plan or not such a smart plan, they're empty, and they've been empty for months. People could live there, and that could have been part of the budget.

[1810]

They could have had a plan to go the federal government, which has money for renovations in their budget. They could have done what they could to get some of that money to use to renovate Little Mountain, where people could live. There are 200 empty places there right now, and they could have done it for way, way, way cheaper than building new places. They could move people, in a few weeks — in a few days, actually — into Little Mountain, but they chose not to do that. They could have made this a model budget to deal with the real problems of British Columbians.

In Vancouver we talked about the 12 sites. They've taken on a life of their own, the 12 sites. If you talk to people who are involved in housing and homelessness in Vancouver, they know what you talk about when you say: "The 12 sites."

What are the 12 sites? Well, they are 12 sites owned by the city that the minister responsible for homelessness held a press conference about in November 2007. You know, my memory is good enough that I can still remember what happened in November 2007. I was there.

He announced, to great pomp and circumstance, that these 12 sites that were owned by the city…. The provincial government was going to put in some money for predevelopment costs — which they've done, by the way. Then we were going to find the capital, and we were going to build 12 social housing units, supportive housing projects, in Vancouver.

You know what? There were all kinds of headlines in the paper about that, and everybody was all excited. I said at the time: "Is there capital to build those facilities, those projects? The minister said: "I'll make sure there's capital." You know the minister. You could see him. "I'll make sure there's capital for those sites."

No capital. No capital yet.

Interjection.

D. Chudnovsky: Yes, he's got a deeper voice than me. It's true. I did my best to do an imitation, but you know, some things are possible, and some things aren't.

That minister has re-announced those projects over and over again, and they're desperately needed projects. You know what? The capital for those projects could have been in the budget yesterday. It could have been there. Not there. Not there.

C. Evans: They're shovel-ready.

D. Chudnovsky: They're shovel-ready. "They're going to be ready for the Olympics." "Oh no. Sorry, they're not going to be ready for the Olympics." "Some of them are going to be ready for the Olympics." "Oh no. Sorry, even some of them won't be ready for the Olympics, but we'll get the shovels in the ground by September of 2008." "Oh well. Sorry. It's February 2009, and we haven't done that."

There's nothing in the budget. It could have been a model budget to deal with the real problems of the people of the province. For eight years we were told that the sacrifices that were made in this province were going to guarantee that we were wealthy, that we were well taken care of.

Let's think of some of the sacrifices that were made by people in this province. Certainly not the wealthiest British Columbians — they didn't have to make sacrifices. They got all kinds of tax cuts that they didn't even ask for in budget after budget. Who made the sacrifices in this province?

Well, how about our hospital workers? They made sacrifices. Thousands of them had 15 percent stolen out of their paycheques — thousands of them. You know what? They were the lucky ones, the ones who had the 15 percent stolen from their paycheques.

Thousands of others had their jobs contracted out and privatized. Many of them had their salaries cut in half. You know what? They were the lucky ones, because thousands of others lost their jobs completely. Some of them are the ones — not just in general; I know some of those people — who need the affordable housing, working two and three jobs.

They were told that it was their sacrifice that was going to make sure that our province did well economically. What are we saying to them right now? What's that sacrifice worth right now? What do we say to those people who actually sacrificed to the needs of the ideological extremism of the people across the way? What do we say to those people? What do you say to those people?

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In 2001-2002 we were told by this government that they were going to cut staffing to schools across the province. Why? Well, it was a sacrifice that had to be made to make sure that the economy did well — as if
[ Page 13815 ]
the economy is some kind of disembodied thing that's the end and not the means. The economy is the means to the well-being of people. It's not the end.

The economy serves the population; the population shouldn't be made to serve the economy. This group said to us: "We're going to cut staffing and schools across the province. It'll be a little painful, but it's good for the economy." Thousands of students faced class sizes that were bigger.

I'm a teacher. Give me 18 kids in a class, and as Archimedes said, I will move the world. With 34, 33, 37 or 31, it's much more difficult. It's not that teacher who suffers, although it's harder to do the work, and less productive and less joyous. It's not joyous.

Interjection.

D. Chudnovsky: Hon. Speaker, there's somebody who would like to speak about education in this room. I invite that somebody to stand up and try to speak about education when they don't have the least bit of experience in the classrooms of this province — not the least bit of experience.

Give me 18 kids in a class, and I can move the world. And those different kids — those 12 or 13 or 14 extra kids — they're the ones who had to pay the price of the ideological extremism of this crew over here. They were told: "You know, suffer the pain. Suffer the pain, and things are going to be good for you." What do we say to them now?

And what do we say to the 177 communities who lost their schools? What do we say to them? It appears that the folks on that side of the House want to say to them: "Oh, don't worry. It didn't matter. You didn't notice it." That appears to be what they want to say.

There were enormous cuts to the Ministry of Children and Families. It was a 25 percent cut, and that pain was supposed to pay for an economic situation that they didn't have to suffer from. What do we say to them today?

The Ministry of Environment was slashed, as I understand it's being slashed again. The people who were concerned about the environment were told: "Don't worry. It's good for the economy." What do we say to them now?

I'll tell you what builds a strong economy. What builds a strong economy is health care that takes care of the people in the province. It's good education. It's a social safety net that takes care of people when they're in trouble. It's good wages so that people can take care of their families. It's strong unions so that there could be some balance in the workplace. That's what builds a strong economy, and that's what we need to have in this province.

Now, I almost had to laugh, but it was more tragedy than comedy when the minister yesterday got up and said: "One thing for sure…." What did he say? "One thing for sure, we won't break public sector contracts." One thing for sure — time to worry, wouldn't you say?

I had personal experience with this. In 2001, I was privileged to be the elected leader of the teachers of this province. As part of my job I met with the then Leader of the Opposition prior to the 2001 election in his office in this building. My responsibility was to meet with the then Premier and the then Leader of the Opposition.

You know how these things go. You meet with these folks, and you ask them some questions. They give you some answers and some commitments. I said to the Premier…. Because there were rumours, remember. Remember, at that time there were rumours that if the Liberal Party was going to win that election that came in 2001, public sector contracts were going to be broken.

[1820]

I asked him, the then Leader of the Opposition, the now Premier: "Are you going to…? There are rumours they're going to break open public sector contracts." He said: "No way. They've got nothing to worry about."

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

So when this Minister of Finance says here yesterday, "Don't worry. We're not going to break public sector contracts," do you know what? I say it's time to worry. God forbid that they should say they're not going to privatize ICBC. God forbid that they should do that.

This poor excuse for a budget isn't the real budget, and we know it's not the real budget. If this government is re-elected, there will be a new budget in the fall. It will be a budget that is way, way scarier than this one, and this one has some scary elements to it. In good times for which they were not very responsible, this government couldn't take care of the ordinary folks in this province, the vulnerable people in this province, the kids, the seniors. Imagine what we're going to face if this government is re-elected.

Hon. Speaker, not only am I going to vote against the budget, but I'm going to make sure, and so is everybody else on this side, that that doesn't happen, that this government is not re-elected. We need a government that works for the people of the province. I'm voting against the budget.

D. Chudnovsky moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. B. Penner moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning.

The House adjourned at 6:22 p.m.

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