2009 Legislative Session: First Session, 39th 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)

Monday, September 14, 2009

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 2, Number 2

[ Page 325 ]

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

The House met at 1:34 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Hon. I. Chong: I have the privilege today of introducing some of the Team B.C. athletes, coaches and mission staff who have returned from the 2009 Canada Summer Games in Prince Edward Island.

I'd like the House to welcome the following athletes. Sarah Aylard, who is a rower who won two gold medals and a silver medal. Aleisha Cobb, who won a bronze medal in long jump and a silver medal in relay. Craig Dagnall, swimmer with two silver medals. Shalie Dheensaw, a silver medal in women's basketball. Liam Fisher, another rower who won a gold medal and a silver. Maggie Hanlon, a silver in relay.

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Andrea Harvey, who is another rower, also won a silver medal. Courtney Hattie, a diver, won bronze in synchronized diving. Nick Lapointe, a swimmer, also won a bronze medal. Jeff Phillips, a triathlete, two gold medals. Christine Ridenour, a triathalon athlete who won a gold medal. Shea Wakefield, in rugby, a silver medal. Jody Jackson, coach of the B.C. golf team, won two gold medals. And our mission staff members Becky Edwards, Chris Graham, Judy Joseph-Black and Irene Shell.

I hope the House will please welcome them all here and thank them for their amazing success.

M. Karagianis: Today in the House we have a constituent of mine, Mr. Brad Slade, who also happens to be the Victoria organizer for the September 19 Fight the HST rally. Those rallies are taking place right across British Columbia on this day, and I'd like the House to please give him a cordial welcome.

Hon. M. de Jong: We're fortunate today to have in the House four representatives of the British Columbia Law Institute. In the over ten years since its founding, this institute has played a very positive and proactive role in the cause of law reform.

In particular, today I want to draw the House's attention to the contribution that these members and over 30 others have made towards reforming B.C.'s succession and estate law. They are here today in anticipation of the reintroduction of a bill that members of the House saw earlier this spring. Their work has been exemplary and is reflected in the quality of the product that I believe the House will see shortly.

I would like to introduce to the House Mr. Peter Ramsay, QC, vice-chair of the B.C. Law Institute and a law professor at the University of British Columbia and also a partner with the law firm Ramsay Lampman Rhodes in Nanaimo. Fiona Hunter is a partner with Horne Coupar in Victoria. Tino Di Bella is a partner with Jawl and Bundon in Victoria. Margaret Sasges, a partner with the firm of Clay and Co. in Victoria, and Ms. Sasges also serves on the board of the Law Foundation of British Columbia.

I hope all members of the House will make these British Columbians welcome here.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: It is my pleasure today to introduce two people to the House: a longtime friend and a gentleman I've known, Mr. Bill Vanderland, who is president of EnerGreen Power. Accompanying Bill is a friend of his, Marina Rogenveen. Please make them welcome to the House.

Tabling Documents

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I have the honour to present the Elections B.C. Annual Report 2008/09.

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

Bill 4 — Wills, estates and
succession ACT

Hon. M. de Jong presented a message from His Honour the Administrator: a bill intituled Wills, Estates and Succession Act.

Hon. M. de Jong: I move that the bill be introduced and read a first time now.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: I am pleased to introduce the Wills, Estates and Succession Act — in fact, reintroduce this bill, which many members saw this past spring.

The act was prepared with considerable assistance from, as I just mentioned, the B.C. Law Institute. I want to acknowledge the aid of over 30 volunteers and contributors from the legal, academic and notary communities.

This act will modernize the law of wills, estates and succession and replace four existing pieces of legislation. It contains a number of important changes that will simplify the administration of estates and make it more likely that the wishes of a deceased will be upheld.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the bill be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 4, Wills, Estates and Succession Act, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.
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Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

MONUMENT TO SURREY FIREFIGHTERS

S. Cadieux: When firefighters get asked to be models, it's usually for a calendar. But this year 18-year veteran Jim Blom was asked to be the model for a statue commemorating 50 years of valiant service provided by the men and women of the Surrey fire service.

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This past Friday I had the honour of attending, along with other members, the unveiling of this unique statue entitled Protecting the Future — Serving the Present. This monument commemorates the selfless dedication with which the Surrey firefighters have served and continue to serve our community. These important members of our society not only save lives but contribute invaluably to Surrey through charitable work and public education programs.

This statue was commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Surrey Fire Fighters Association and has been placed in Holland Park as a contribution to the Surrey public art program. It is the work of a group of four artists led by Bill Johnson, the owner of Art Form Sculpture Studio. Deputy Chief John Caviglia chose Korean-Canadian Blom to be the model for the statue in order to reflect the multicultural nature of Surrey and the Surrey fire service.

The event was held following a ceremony to honour the fallen firefighters of 9/11 as well as those in Surrey who have lost their lives in the service of saving ours. The statue is a great addition to our community and a constant reminder of the heroism of the Surrey fire service and fire service around B.C.

Fleetwood Festival IN SURREY

J. Brar: Mr. Speaker, I rise to share with you and the members of this House a source of pride we have in the city of Surrey and in my riding of Surrey-Fleetwood. This past weekend the Fleetwood Community Association put on, for the 11th year in a row, the Fleetwood Festival. It was a wonderful volunteer-led, family-focused party. It was an excellent event full of fun and useful information provided by community organizations and municipal interaction among people from our culturally diverse community.

The Fleetwood Festival brought together over 2,000 people to celebrate their community. It was so successful because of the great staff in the city of Surrey, dozens of local businesses in Surrey-Fleetwood and the dedicated team of the Fleetwood Community Association — especially Rick Hart, Jane-Anne Aderson, Johanne Poirier, Joy Hart, Carrol Adams and Deb Hughes.

Our community is strong and better as a direct result of the work and commitment of the Fleetwood Community Association toward the local community. It was in 1930 that the Fleetwood Community Hall was first built. That heritage building is just around the corner from my office, and it now hosts the very popular Greek festival each year.

I was pleased to see the member for Surrey-Tynehead taking part in this festival as well. I urge you and the other members of this House to join me in congratulating them for setting a great example of how to build a strong community.

North Shore
Disability Resource Centre

J. Thornthwaite: On Saturday evening I was proud to attend a fundraising benefit concert performed by the Nylons, held by the North Shore Disability Resource Centre to help enhance the lives of people with disabilities and the various programs and services this valuable community centre has to offer. I'm told that they raised approximately $15,000 in that one evening.

Since 1975 the North Shore Disability Resource Centre has strived towards helping people with disabilities live comfortably in their communities by creating and providing services that they continue to expand upon. The centre was started by a group of parents, professionals and advocates that have worked hard to help people with disabilities actively participate in and contribute to society, and they offer a variety of programs that work towards this goal.

With generous funding from B.C. Housing Management Commission, Community Living B.C., ministry of human resources, Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Vancouver Coastal Health and fundraisers like the one I attended on Saturday evening, these services continue to help people with disabilities remain involved in the North Shore community.

Their vision is: "Communities that value inclusion are committed to creating opportunities for all." They list the following as their values: "We recognize the value of each person. We believe we all have the same rights. We believe family and friends are important. We believe in the value of people working together, and we believe diversity enriches the community." All of these statements work towards the goal of a community that is free of physical, financial and attitudinal barriers.

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I would like to congratulate the North Shore Disability Resource Centre on a successful fundraiser and extend a thank-you to them for all they do for the North Shore community.

CRESTON VALLEY
AGRICULTURE AND FALL FAIR

M. Mungall: Well, it's that time of year again when the gardeners and farmers start to harvest, process and preserve
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their year's work. In celebration of this, many rural communities host fall fairs. This past weekend I had the privilege of taking in Creston Valley's 91st annual fall fair held at the Creston and District Community Complex, right in the heart of beautiful Creston.

Now, I know that there are about 85 of us contenders in this House for the best B.C. community, but I do think that we'd all agree that Creston's beautiful farmland, right in between the Selkirk Mountains on one side and the beautiful Purcells on the other, of course has a very truly unique character that takes your breath away.

Here in this valley farmers not only produce fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, dairy, beef, poultry and pork — pretty much anything you can find on a table — but farmers and entrepreneurs also produce some of the best products and preserves from the food grown in this area. Essentially, we produce a well-rounded local diet for any 100-mile connoisseur.

Along with the local agricultural economy, the fall fair celebrates 100-mile crafts and artisans. Locals display quilts and tuques for those long, cold winter nights, while children contribute their art as displays of essential skill development that enhances our local economy. As locals entertain each other, showing off their musical talents, the whole community comes to celebrate their contributions to this beautiful place.

With this, let me take a moment to celebrate and honour Creston Valley on an excellent and wonderful fall fair, and may our way of life continue to see another 91.

SANDRA WILLIAMS AND
FAMILY HEALTH SUPPORT society

D. McRae: My statement is about a person and an organization that have touched literally thousands of people in my community. In the early 1980s Sandra Williams and her family were living in the Comox Valley when their four-year-old daughter became ill. Their daughter was air-lifted to Children's Hospital in Vancouver and diagnosed with congenital heart failure.

We are indeed fortunate to have a facility like Children's Hospital that can provide specialized training in pediatric health care, which has attracted internationally renowned researchers who are working hard to achieve better health for children and youth. We are truly fortunate to have a world-leading hospital like this in British Columbia.

Like many families who have been in similar situations, the Williams family had to make some challenging sacrifices. Both during and after this ordeal, Sandra met many others who were in the same position as her family. She realized that something had to be done, and she wanted to find a solution that would work for the Comox Valley.

Sandra started YANA, You Are Not Alone, in 1986. It was first based out of her house, and YANA was committed to assisting the families of school district 71 with children between the ages of zero and 19 years old who were receiving medical treatment in another city.

This unique charity has funded thousands of trips for medical treatment in Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, the U.S. and England. The small-town charity made a huge difference to many people.

Sandra was described as a tireless worker motivated beyond all others, a tremendous fundraiser and a great public speaker. For 18 years she served on the board of YANA, long after her family had grown up and left home. When the phone rang in the middle of the night, Sandra Williams and YANA were there to provide support, resources and, when available, keys to one of the four apartments they run near Children's Hospital in Vancouver. Sandra was awarded the Citizen of the Year award by the chamber of commerce, and she did not slow down.

On July 25, 2009, Sandra passed away after suffering from a long-term illness. The measure of a person's life is not how much money you have made or what job you have had. The true measure is the number of people you have touched, and Sandra Williams literally touched thousands. While she has left us, her legacy will live on. I want to say thank you to Sandra Williams.

COWICHAN RIVER CLEANUP

B. Routley: If the salmon and other creatures that depend upon our heritage Cowichan River in the Cowichan Valley could say thank you, they would want to join with me today to thank the Cowichan Stewardship Committee and the 60 to 100 volunteers who last Saturday went to work to clean up the upper reaches of the Cowichan River.

During the summer between 300 and 1,500 tubers and other water craft enjoyed drifting down the Cowichan River. Unfortunately, not everyone took home with them everything that they came with. As a result, the river was filling with bottles and other trash.

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That's when the Cowichan Stewardship Committee was formed, and they stepped up to the plate to help clean up the Cowichan River. I want to acknowledge and thank Mike Waller, Belinda Waller and all those who organized the event. I want to thank the many volunteers and business sponsors and my friends Joe Saysell and Diana Gunderson, who showed us that community spirit is very alive and well in the Cowichan Valley.

They discovered many unusual things — for example, an artificial Christmas tree with some of the decorations still on it. A toy glass fire engine found amongst a whole bunch of other glass won the $100 prize for most unique. There were thousands of bottles and cans, even a wooden wheel, and the kitchen sink was even found and extracted. A lot of junk taken from the river.

I would like to thank all of the sponsors: Country Grocer, Home Hardware, the Gazette, the Cowichan
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Valley Citizen, Sun FM radio, the town of Lake Cowichan, CVRD, the Bargain Shop, Irly Bird, the fire department, Cowichan Fly Tackle, Chain Saw Sally's Chop Shop, the Cow Café, Youbou Bar and Grill, Dermod and Dudley's Irish Pub, Lake Cowichan Adventure Company and the Nanaimo Dive Outfitters.

Oral Questions

FUNDING FOR ATHLETES
AND SCHOOL SPORTS

C. James: Every British Columbian felt great pride when Carol Huynh took home gold in Beijing. It was an extraordinary achievement by a young woman from the small community of Hazelton.

Athletes like Carol rely on athletic competitions being funded through B.C. School Sports. So my question is to the minister responsible. With billions being spent on showcasing our athletes at the Olympics, how can the B.C. Liberals justify taking away money to support current and future Olympic athletes?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I share the member opposite's pride in the accomplishments of our Olympians, without doubt. I'd like to start by saying that we are supporting, this year, school sport and various youth sports with $38 million of funding.

Our support for these important programs could not be clearer. The financial support is there. We also have a number of outstanding programs within our education system — things like Action Schools B.C., which has been funded to the tune of $14.5 million over the last five years.

These programs are important. They're important to British Columbians. They're important to our students, and we, without doubt, will continue to support them in the same way we have in the past. Our support is clear. The Olympics are important, and our athletes' achievements are important.

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

C. James: It's very clear. The minister left out one very important program: B.C. School Sports, which this government is cutting the funding from. We've spoken to Carol's coach. Joe Sullivan told the opposition that without B.C. School Sports funding, Carol's Beijing victory would not happen. That funding was used to give the opportunity to travel to competitions and for Carol to hone her skills.

My question, again, is to the minister responsible. With the Olympics just a few months away, how on earth can this government justify cutting support for B.C.'s athletes?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: In addition to the $38 million which is being provided to youth sports programs, which will allow youth sport programs to continue in schools, programs that are without doubt important…

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

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Hon. M. MacDiarmid: …we continue to provide funding for other vitally important programs within schools — things like Action Schools, things like daily physical activity. We know how critically important this is. That's why our government has been able, in spite of the economic challenges we're currently facing, to increase core funding for education to a record high level.

In spite of the fact that we have declining enrolment in this province, we are providing this year $84 million in additional funding, and part of that funding does go to important programs that support our students in their physical activity.

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

C. James: I'd suggest the minister spend some time talking to the coaches, who can remind her about the importance of the funding for B.C. School Sports for athletes in British Columbia.

Coach Sullivan said that the support of B.C. School Sports was absolutely essential to Carol's development, and she's not the only athlete. There are many other Carol Huynhs in British Columbia — athletes who are doing their best, who are trying their hardest, who are working to make sure that they excel. But they need government to stand with them. They need help to be able to fulfil their dreams.

So again, my question is to the minister. Will the B.C. Liberals do the right thing and put the funding back for B.C. School Sports to support our athletes in British Columbia?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I would like to remind the Leader of the Opposition of the opposition to the Olympics, which we have experienced throughout….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Just take your seat, Minister. Minister, just take your seat for a second.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Here is an opportunity for our province, which is not only a wonderful economic
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opportunity but also an outstanding learning opportunity, which we will fully take advantage of. Students across this province are clear on the importance of physical activity because of programs we have around in the schools.

I'd again like to draw the member opposite's attention to the fact that we have had to make difficult decisions about grants within every ministry. There's no question. But still, $38 million being provided to sporting associations and to sport throughout this province is a significant investment. This is something that we value and that we will continue to fund.

D. Donaldson: I've never heard such patronizing answers and lip service to our athletes in this province. Athletes in the small communities I represent have big dreams too. They work hard day in and day out to be their best. I know Carol Huynh, and she is just the tip of the iceberg. But you can't improve unless you get the chance to compete. That's what the B.C. Liberals are taking away — the chance to compete.

To the Minister of Education: will the B.C. Liberals listen to wrestling coach Sullivan and every athlete in this province who is giving it their all and restore the $130,000 it has taken away from school athletic competitions?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. I. Chong: I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about healthy living and sports here in British Columbia, and I'm glad the member raised the issue of competition, because that $38 million that this government will be spending this year on sports is providing for a number of things.

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Let me just share that with the member — $38 million. These dollars help to support programs that introduce young athletes to new sports such as curling and skating. They help to support grants for children and youth to participate in sport, helping them to overcome financial barriers. They help to train and develop students and young athletes to move from provincial programs on to national development programs and on to national teams.

What's really obvious about this is that the opposition, each and every time when they had a chance to support these programs, voted against them.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

The member has a supplemental.

D. Donaldson: Well, that was quite an answer. It seems like instead of answering, the Minister of Education is being pinned to the mat by her cabinet colleagues.

I know the government thinks that Coach Sullivan should just tell students to dance and play in parks, as the minister was quoted as saying last week. But Carol Huynh would never have won gold with that attitude. She won gold because she worked as hard as she could, and the government provided just a little support.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Member, take your seat.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Continue, Member.

D. Donaldson: Carol Huynh won gold because she worked as hard as she could, and the government provided just a little support. Now that support is gone.

Again to the Minister of Education. Let's hear her defend young athletes, parents and volunteers. How can the B.C. Liberals justify spending half a million dollars promoting Olympics in schools while, at the same time, they're cutting $130,000 from School Sports for B.C.'s future Olympic athletes?

Hon. I. Chong: Well, Carol Huynh won gold because she had the determination, the passion, the commitment to be the best that she could as an athlete. She also won gold because she had the opportunity to participate in the B.C. Summer Games. [Applause.]

I'm glad you're happy with that.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Just take your seat.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. I. Chong: Our B.C. family of games, summer and winter games, provide opportunities for young athletes to compete, who then go on to other championships, national and international levels. I'm happy to say that she is, in fact, an alumni of the B.C. Games Society, the family of games that are provided.

But in addition to providing these examples that I've given to the members opposite, they need places to compete. They need infrastructure, and our government, I'm happy to say, has invested in over $600 million of infrastructure.

K. Corrigan: This is a question of priorities. The B.C. Liberals have three — count them, three — ministers with responsibility for sport. The Minister of Healthy Living and Sport — we've heard from her. The minister responsible for the Olympics and ActNow — maybe we'll hear from her. And the Minister of Education who
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has responsibility for kids' sports — we've heard from her.

Will the minister responsible for Healthy Living and Sport explain why we're paying her a minister's salary when the B.C. Liberals are cutting support for young B.C. athletes?

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Hon. I. Chong: Well, I'm glad that the NDP have finally woken up to the fact that there is an initiative called ActNow B.C. Our ActNow B.C. is all about healthy lifestyles. It is all about making choices easier, to live a healthy lifestyle. Our ActNow B.C. allows people to look at more physical activity, at eating well. It's about reducing things like obesity rates. It's looking at things like reducing tobacco use.

You know, Mr. Speaker, it's a health and wellness initiative provincewide that has received not only national attention but international attention. I hope that the NDP will finally support it.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

K. Corrigan: Apparently, it takes three ministers to cut a program for kids' sports.

Hundreds of millions of dollars for the Olympic Games, hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote the Olympics in schools, three ministers with responsibility for sport costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands more, and now the B.C. Liberals are taking away $130,000 to help young B.C. athletes compete. It's shameful.

Again to the minister. Will she do the right thing and give back this money to young B.C. athletes?

Hon. I. Chong: Well, it seems it takes all of the NDP to oppose an ActNow initiative that supports health and wellness.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Just sit down for a second.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. I. Chong: I'll reiterate for the members opposite: $38 million in support this year for sports participation, $600 million worth of infrastructure that we've invested over the years to provide venues for the youth to participate in and 151 days until the Olympics. I wonder whether they're going to support it then.

S. Simpson: Maybe that minister should go and talk to the Minister of Housing and Social Development, who just announced today that gaming grants for sports will be cut from $29 million to $19 million, a $10 million cut in sports money. That's something for the government to be proud of.

We have cuts there. We have a Minister of Education who thinks infrastructure for sports is public parks instead of schools. It's five months until the Olympics. We talk about legacies. Where are the youth legacies for sports and for fitness? It's clearly not here.

The Minister of Education is giving away half a million dollars for Olympic promotion and cutting $130,000 for essential sports. Where does the minister think those programs should get their money? Where should B.C. school sports go to get that money?

Hon. I. Chong: Well, I'm glad the member raised the issue of infrastructure, because it's $600 million in infrastructure that we've spent. Let me share with him where some of those dollars have been spent. We've spent…

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. I. Chong: …in Kimberley — I think there's a member that represents a riding in Kimberley — at the Paralympics training and development centre, for the construction of a 9,840-square-foot Nordic and alpine Paralympics training and development centre.

We've spent $20 million on the Charles Jago northern sport development centre in Prince George. Here in greater Victoria, where there are five NDP opposition members who would probably like to boast, $25 million for the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

S. Simpson: Maybe that starts to shine a light on where this government ripped off the boards of education for $110 million for school facility upgrades, because they don't care about that infrastructure.

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Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

S. Simpson: Well, the prattle from the other side….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Just take your seat for a second.

Members on both sides of the House.

Continue, Member.

S. Simpson: I'll come back to the question again. The Minister of Housing and Social Development just cut $10 million of gaming funding for sports. This Minister of Education cut $130,000 out of B.C. School Sports.
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Clearly those organizations…. B.C. School Sports presumably can't go to the Minister of Housing and Social Development to find that money.

Will the minister tell us: where does she suggest that that organization go to find the money that pays for programs that create Olympians like Carol Huynh?

Hon. I. Chong: As I've indicated, this government is going to be spending $38 million for sport in this province. That will be throughout the province in every region, throughout the ridings.

These dollars do in fact support grants for children and youth to participate in sport. They do in fact provide for training and development, what members opposite continually talk about in terms of producing very high-performance and elite athletes. It's about providing teaching resources as well as equipment. These are being provided through our $38 million in our sport investment.

At the end of the day they need a venue in which they can compete. The B.C. Games Society, the family of games, provides that opportunity as well as the sports infrastructure — the $600 million worth of sports infrastructure that we have invested in through all parts of this province, which members opposite have taken pride in when they've opened in their areas. I hope they've taken pride.

M. Farnworth: Well, we've heard from the Minister of Education, one of the sports ministers. She's unable to answer the question or make a commitment. We've heard from the second minister for sports in the province of British Columbia. She's unable to answer the question, other than to do a great side shuffle.

So let's go to the third minister responsible for sports in this province, the Minister for ActNow, which is supposed to keep people active and healthy now. Will the Minister for ActNow stand up and commit to those athletes in this province that her ministry will do what the other two can't do and restore the funding for B.C. School Sports in the province of British Columbia?

Hon. M. McNeil: What is it about the Olympics that the members opposite don't like? Is it the $4 billion that will be funnelled back into our province to fund…?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. M. McNeil: Again, what is it about the Olympics that the members of the opposition don't like? Is it the $4 billion that will be funnelled back into our province's economy from the games? Is it that we will have 250,000 visitors coming here with over three billion viewers watching worldwide?

It's about time the members of the other side of the House join our side and the rest of British Columbia and Canada and get ready to cheer our athletes in 151 days.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

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M. Farnworth: The real question is: what is it about school sports that this government doesn't like?

To the Minister for ActNow — that's the other part of your ministry from the Olympics. Will you restore the $137,000 to B.C. School Sports and show that you really do care about school sports in British Columbia?

Interjection.

Mr. Speaker: Just wait. Wait, Minister.

Minister.

Hon. M. McNeil: ActNow B.C. has reached more than 255,000 British Columbians through our Road to Health Community Tour and provided more than $1.3 million to support school fruit and vegetable nutritional programs, provided grants to 2010 Legacies Now for more than $1 million. I just wonder what the members opposite are talking about now, when they have been opposed to ActNow.

FUNDING FOR
PARENT ADVISORY COUNCILS

D. Thorne: Just as parents were taking their children back to school the first day of classes, the Education Minister let slip in the middle of a media scrum that the government would be slashing grants to parent advisory councils in half.

If parent advisory councils had been told to expect cuts, they could have planned accordingly. Instead, this government chose to hide the true state of the province's books until after the election. Now parents, students and school districts are paying the price.

My question is to the Education Minister. How can the minister justify making massive cuts to parent groups, especially on the first day of school, with absolutely no warning?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: We greatly value the contribution that parents make, not only in the parent advisory committees but also in the other roles that we've carved out for them. For example, they are part of the Learning Roundtable. There is now legislation in place that allows parents to volunteer. We realize what important….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Minister.
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Hon. M. MacDiarmid: We recognize what important and invaluable partners they are. There is no one who can be more concerned than a parent for their child in the school system. But I'd like us to think back to the contribution that was made for parent advisory councils back when the opposition was in power. In fact, if we look back at that amount, it was zero, nothing, no contribution.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. We're going to run out of time at this rate.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Again, to emphasize how important these partners are, in my ministry, when it came to making decisions about grants, we did set priorities. Our priorities were our most vulnerable students, our aboriginal students and early learning. Those are the areas.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

D. Thorne: I'm sure that the parent advisory groups across this province are delighted that they have legislation in place that allows them to volunteer.

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Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Continue, Member.

D. Thorne: Now, if only this government would provide enough funding that the volunteers could buy supplies and actually do some work in the schools, that would be wonderful.

This minister says she wants to protect students in the classroom, and then she springs an announcement of cuts…

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue.

D. Thorne: …to funding for parents groups on the first day of school — a cut that will actually mean that students will lose access to much-needed classroom supplies and supports, new library books and safer playgrounds. It's beyond me how this minister thinks that this cut will not impact students in the classroom.

Mr. Speaker: Can you put the question forward.

D. Thorne: I'm asking the minister once again to explain how slashing grants to parents groups in British Columbia fulfils this government's promise to protect education.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I'd like to draw the member opposite's attention to the fact that we have record funding for education this year in British Columbia. In spite of the economic challenges that we're currently operating under, we are providing $4.5 billion. In spite of the fact that enrolment is down again this year, by 7,000 students, we're providing an additional $84 million to student funding. Difficult choices have been made when it has come to grants, but we value the role of parents, and we'll continue to work closely with them this year, as we always have.

[End of question period.]

Petitions

N. Letnick: I rise to present a petition from 400 constituents in the Kelowna area regarding the HST.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: Two things: a reminder to members of the Committee of Selection that we'll reconvene in the Douglas Fir Room immediately after proceedings have commenced, and I call continued debate on the budget.

Budget Debate

(continued)

Hon. S. Thomson: It's a pleasure to rise again and continue my comments on the budget debate.

[1425]

Last week when I got the process started, I talked about the journey and the honour to be here and recognized and thanked some of the people that helped me get here. I want to finish by thanking a couple more people in that process and then move on to some other remarks. There are certainly many people that need to be thanked for the journey and for the success in being able to stand today and make my first presentation in the House.

I want to thank, particularly, my campaign team, chaired by Paul Mitchell, a great, strong leader who had a great supporting cast with friends David Taylor, Doug Manning, Steve Coutts and the tremendous dedication of a group of friends, family and a host of volunteers who committed countless hours to the campaign, many who I met for the first time.
[ Page 333 ]

[L. Reid in the chair.]

It was a team effort. They worked very, very hard, but despite all the pressures of the campaign, they made it a lot of fun. Part of the great joy in working with them was how much we enjoyed it, how much they made it fun through the process. I really want to thank them for all of their efforts.

Just while I'm recognizing Paul's leadership on the campaign team, I want to extend my congratulations to him on his recognition by UBC Alumni Association, Okanagan, as community builder of the year. He has made a great contribution to the community, particularly as a champion for the establishment of UBC Okanagan. He was instrumental in leading the work to bring UBC Okanagan to fruition in Kelowna.

I also want to thank Nan Pellatt and Susan Turner for the great work and the support that they do in my constituency office. They work diligently for all the constituents in our riding. I've already received many e-mails and phone calls thanking them for the work they are doing. Nan Pellatt is a very experienced constituency assistant. She served for a number of years as constituency assistant to Sindi Hawkins. Her experience has been invaluable in ensuring that we got to work right away representing all the constituents of Kelowna-Mission.

You know, most of us could never achieve the things we do without the support of family and friends and colleagues. I am pleased to be able today, and earlier in my comments, to recognize some of those most significant people who have helped me along the way.

I was pleased to be elected as part of our Kelowna team, along with the member for Kelowna–Lake Country and the member for Westside-Kelowna. I'm proud to be part of the team from the Okanagan, with Liberal MLAs from the southern border in Boundary-Similkameen and to the north in the North Okanagan and Shuswap. We will work collectively and together to keep the Okanagan strong.

I look forward to working with our local government representatives, Mayor Sharon Shepherd and her council at the city of Kelowna; and Robert Hobson, chair of the regional district of Central Okanagan, and his directors. They all have a vision to continue to have Kelowna flourish and grow economically and socially, and we will work with them to do that.

All of these people and another 42,000 have the pleasure of living in the riding of Kelowna-Mission. It's a diverse mix of residential areas, business districts along South Pandosy and South Rutland, and the business community of Highway 97 and Springfield Road.

Our riding has a solid agriculture community of tree fruit growers; vineyard and winery operators such as Cedar Creek, St. Hubertus and Summerhill — names that people know well here; horticultural operations; a cheese artisan; small livestock operations; and market gardens that are such an important part of the heritage and economic base of our riding.

Our riding and our region have benefited from the sound financial management of this government, and that's why this budget is so important to our future.

This sound management has led to important investment in our community: a new recreation centre, the Capital News Centre, and our H2O aquatic facility; highway improvements on Highway 97, Highway 33 and Gordon Drive; very, very important investment in Kelowna General Hospital — a new medical school in conjunction with UBC Okanagan, a new critical care tower, a new emergency room and planning for a new cardiac care unit; a $28 million new Centre for Learning at Okanagan College delivered on time, on budget and at LEED gold standard; and investments in affordable housing. This has created over 4,200 jobs in the Thompson-Okanagan. That's a track record that we should all be proud of.

There are many success stories in Kelowna-Mission, but one that warrants the attention of my fellow legislators is that of Okanagan College, the largest part of the campus, which is in my riding. It's an institution that serves the citizens of eight ridings in the southern interior of the province. Under the leadership of the chair, Janet Shaw, and the president, Jim Hamilton, the college's enrolments have grown by 48 percent over the past four years, outstripping expectations, ahead of provincial targets in every year and, most importantly, providing much-needed access to education and training for the region.

[1430]

Innovation and community connections have been hallmarks for the college since its transition from Okanagan University College. Last week, for example, young children walked into a brand-new day care at the Kelowna campus. It was built in part by the college's residential construction students and is being operated by the Kelowna Family Y — an example of productive partnerships that benefit students, staff and area residents.

Then there are the students, particularly the students in the Students in Free Enterprise program — called the SIFE program — who have distinguished themselves locally, nationally and soon internationally. These students — who work with area business leaders and organizations, such as the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce and the economic development commission and K-to-12 students — bring the important messages and experience of entrepreneurialism and ethics to a younger audience and perform valuable services for the businesses in the region.

We recently learned that the college's SIFE team, who distinguished themselves nationally in business competitions with third-place finishes against teams from much larger university business schools, have been chosen to go to Berlin this fall to compete in international business competitions — a tremendous testament to the great work that the business program does at Okanagan College.
[ Page 334 ]

Other business students from Okanagan College boast a record of victories and medals in a host of provincial, national and international business-simulation competitions. My colleague from Kelowna–Lake Country has coached and mentored many of those teams and has helped establish the stellar reputation of Okanagan College's school of business.

There are more examples of the college's success. Now the second-largest trades training institution in British Columbia, Okanagan College's apprentices consistently win medals provincially and nationally in the Canadian Skills Competition.

One of the college's culinary arts students, David Colombe, recently learned that his recipe for fire-roasted tomato gumbo was judged the best of the best by the Florida tomato council in a competition open to apprentice chefs from across U.S. and Canada. As Minister of Agriculture, of course, I have every confidence that David's recipe will taste even better with B.C.'s homegrown tomatoes.

Speaking of agriculture, I was honoured to be named Minister of Agriculture and Lands in Premier Campbell's cabinet. I've spent my career working on behalf of B.C. farmers and ranchers and food processors, and now I'm looking forward to working on their behalf in this capacity and from this position.

We have a strong, diverse agriculture industry with challenges but great strengths and great opportunities. B.C.'s farmers and ranchers are stewards of our critical land and water resources, and we lead the country with our reputation of stewardship, food safety, innovation, productivity and quality of our product.

In response to the member for Saanich South in her opening comments to this House, I want to assure her that my definition of agriculture includes food. I intend to work collaboratively with all parts of the value chain to enhance the economic contribution of this industry to rural economies and B.C. communities in every region of the province.

B.C.'s primary agricultural sector has sales of $2.8 billion, employing 33,000 people, and the agrifood sales and employment rise to $22 billion and 306,000 jobs when processing and food service are included.

Diversity is one of our greatest strengths — more than 225 commodities. This diversity, while it's one of our greatest strengths, is also one of our challenges as we deal with a complex set of programs and policies in the agriculture sector. Making sure that these programs have the flexibility to meet the needs of all producers will continue to be the focus of my efforts.

We need to build on the opportunities and the growing public support and awareness of the importance of local food production while continuing to capitalize on export opportunities that take advantage of our reputation for safety and quality and our proximity to major markets.

The B.C. agriculture industry can also be a solution provider — a solution provider for health outcomes through the provision of healthy, nutritious food and active lifestyle, and a solution provider for our climate action objectives through greenhouse gas reduction, focusing on alternative energy, conversion of waste to energy and many other options that are available for the industry to be a significant solution provider for our climate action initiatives.

This will take strategies and actions aimed at achieving greater profitability and social licence for the industry. Fiscal realities and the complexities of federal-provincial arrangements suggest a more strategic approach is needed. Most importantly, we need to ensure a profitable sector, and that is why key elements of this budget are important to the industry.

[1435]

The implementation of the harmonized sales tax provides a direct benefit to the bottom line of B.C.'s primary producers and food processors. That is why the B.C. Agriculture Council, representing over 12,000 producers, has supported this announcement, and that is why the B.C. Food Processors Association has supported this announcement.

The industry estimates there will be over $16 million in direct benefits to the bottom line for producers, not to mention the reduced costs of farm inputs as embedded PST comes out of the cost of farm inputs, and the reduced costs of compliance.

B.C.'s farmers and ranchers and our food-processing industry will also benefit from the continued reductions in small business taxation rates. We need to create a climate that will bring new people into the industry, attract investment and continue to grow our industry.

To this end, we have worked with farmers and processors to develop the Growing Forward agreement in partnership with the federal government. These agreements were signed in April, and $78 million annually will be invested in B.C. for a number of new programs designed to increase competitiveness and innovation in agriculture.

This budget protects our participation in those programs. Ten million dollars has been provided for environmental farm planning and best management practices to ensure we remain leading environmental stewards. This is good for public confidence in the industry and good for markets.

Three million dollars has been provided for food safety initiatives for small-scale food processors, continuing to contribute to our strong focus on food safety and supporting value-added activities in small agrifood enterprises.

This summer, during my agriculture tour, I was in Dawson Creek with the member for Peace River South, and we were pleased to be able to announce $1½ million over three years for the B.C. wild predator prevention mitigation pilot program. This is in addition to our continuing support for the $10 million mitigation and compensation program for wildlife damage to standing crops and forage. This will
[ Page 335 ]
help the livestock, grains and forage sectors to protect their investment and assist in success for the cattle industry.

We know we have continued challenges in the livestock sector, and we have appointed a Ranching Task Force under the leadership of the Parliamentary Secretary for the Ranching Task Force, the member for Kamloops–North Thompson, who co-chairs this task force along with the president of the B.C. Cattlemen's Association.

We will work collaboratively with this sector to identify ways to improve profitability and long-term sustainability of the industry. On my tour I also had the pleasure to join producers at their Cranberry Field Day and to join the B.C. Blueberry Industry Development Council to celebrate Blueberry Month.

B.C. remains one of North America's top cranberry producers, a growth industry based on market innovation and a healthy product. British Columbia is Canada's number one producer of highbush blueberries and the world's second-largest producer. These are just a couple of examples of the sectors in our industry that we can be very, very proud of.

This budget protects our core programming in business risk management for the industry, providing over 40 years of providing that insurance for B.C. crops. It's a sound investment by government — over $300 million in annual coverage for B.C. producers — and we continue to work with the federal government to bring AgriStability administration back to British Columbia, improving timeliness and service delivery of this program to the producers.

These are all important, key parts of this budget, and the work that we have done ensures and protects those core programming initiatives, despite the challenging fiscal realities that we are facing.

The lands component of the ministry is also very important. In our brownfields renewal program I recently announced over $1 million to support environmental investigations of 12 more sites around the province. The B.C. brownfields renewal strategy helps local economic growth, encourages investment that benefits communities and brings idle sites back into productive use.

We are making programs work for our industry, we are working collaboratively with industry, and we look forward and I look forward to a sustainable and profitable future for the industry. We are really looking forward to the Olympic opportunities to market B.C. food and wine. We have a great story to tell, a great industry and great products to promote. This is a great opportunity for us and one that will be able to showcase this great industry to the world and to the province of B.C.

[1440]

When I decided to run for this position, my wife asked me three questions. Firstly: "Do you want to do it?" And the answer was: "Yes, this is something that I've wanted to do for most of my life." Secondly, she asked: "Will you regret it if you don't take the chance?" "Absolutely." Thirdly, she said: "Are you ready for the consequences?" I said: "What consequences?" She said: "You might just win."

So here I am, excited, honoured with the opportunity and looking forward to making a difference for the province, making a difference for Kelowna-Mission, making a difference for the Okanagan, making a difference for the agriculture industry.

We are in very challenging times, but as the Rolling Stones said: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need." Our tough times mean that we can't get all the things we want in our constituency, all the things we want in our vital agricultural sector.

However, if we really get what I think Mick Jagger was trying to tell us, we must work together on the fundamental requirements to get quickly back on the road to economic recovery, knowing that what we need to thrive — jobs, investment, a competitive tax regime, economic activity — will set us on the road to afford the things we need. That is what we will do. This budget sets out the foundation for that, and I will be proud to support it when the time comes for the vote on this budget.

D. Routley: It gives me pleasure to rise in the House again to speak to this House about the fortunes of British Columbia. But it is very disappointing to rise again in response to a Liberal budget, shortly after the Liberal throne speech, which has amounted to a betrayal of what people consider to be the basic role of government.

As I prepared to address this budget, I was thinking about the numbers and about how they don't add up, how the promises before the election have been broken by this budget and that throne speech that we heard a few weeks ago. I was thinking about how a commitment to protect education has resulted in the cancellation of facilities grants, the cancellation of sports programs, and I asked myself: "Is it really about numbers?" Indeed, it's not. What's behind those numbers are meanings. What's behind those numbers are effects on the people of British Columbia.

This is a speech about principles. Why about principles? Because that's what British Columbians care about. That, indeed, is what has been broken by this budget speech.

Why is this a speech about integrity? It's a speech about integrity because that's what this place should stand for. It's a speech about integrity because that's what people expect of the people they send to this building. This is a speech about values and a speech about priorities because that, in people's lives, is what the budget represents.

The basic role of government, strong government, is to empower the people, to protect the people — protect them from want, protect them from loss. The B.C. Liberals have failed. They've created a weak government that fails to defend the people of British Columbia, which fails to defend the resources of this province and direct them and their benefit to the people.
[ Page 336 ]

Integrity grows when people follow through on words. Integrity grows when people fulfil promises. Cynicism and contempt grow in the space between words unfulfilled by actions. In that place rests the meaning of the B.C. Liberal budget and throne speech. This budget is a collection of Orwellian phrases. We hear basically, just like George Orwell taught us, that less is more. It's like the U.S.A. and their Clean Air Act, which resulted in dirtier skies.

We are told by this government about healthier schools at the same time that school sports programs are cut, at the same time that facilities grants are cut and schools are closed. We hear about run of river, when every British Columbian knows that it equates to ruin of river. Every British Columbian knows that the projects put forward by this government without adequate assessment will ruin our rivers and give away the benefit to their friends.

[1445]

What we have is a set of principles. It's not by mistake that any of this is happening. It's happening because there's an effort in place, a plan in place to move the benefit of this province — shift it upward — to only a few from the many.

We hear about ActNow B.C., and then what do we see? A failure to act to protect the interests of children in schools, to protect school sports. A failure to act to protect British Columbians.

We hear about safe streets at a time when our streets are becoming more and more unsafe. These are Orwellian phrases that mean nothing. In fact, they mean the opposite of what they claim.

Our country and our province were built on caring for one another, respect for one another, responsibility for one another and our province. It was founded and built on the notion of the common wealth. It was built from a determination and a commitment to this province.

The failure to take up the responsibility to protect that legacy leads us to weak government. People send us here with a much higher expectation. What they see is an erosion of the public capacity. What they see is a failure to follow through on words, and a weak government.

So how do we build integrity, Madam Speaker? Well, first of all, we build it by keeping our promises, by following through on those things that we claim. That's what this government did during the election. They promised to protect health care, and what do we see? We see increased wait times, surgery cuts, MRI waits going through the roof so that people are waiting for necessary procedures much longer than they should, much longer than they did. So how is that protecting health care? How is it protecting education when we see the cuts that we've seen?

This speech in reply to the budget has to be about principles and integrity, because it can't be about numbers when the numbers prove to be meaningless. In fact, the numbers that are offered up by the government are exactly the numbers that we can count on not coming through.

We heard the Finance Minister in this House dozens of times stand up and say: "It's $600 million and not a penny more." Every British Columbian heard it over and over again, even in light of security costs of $895 million. So it was clear to every British Columbian that what they were being offered was not true — not true. Cynicism grows in that place between words unfulfilled by action.

We were told that there was a $495 million deficit, maximum, in defiance of all the recommendations and in defiance of what the government, in fact, knew. This is not bungling; it's not by mistake. This is part of a program to shift resources and benefits of this common wealth up into the hands of a very few, and any government that fails to protect the interests of British Columbians and directs those benefits only to the few is a weak government.

People know that circumstances change, that changing context demands a change of policy, but what they all expect is that principles clearly stated would never shift. This Orwellian language, this deceit laid bare before us now after the election leads to contempt, leads to cynicism.

Everyone has a right to hold these viewpoints, this ideology — Fraser Institute–driven — that the government seems trapped in. Everyone has a right to hold those views, and everyone and every party makes mistakes, but it is not okay to hide your intentions. It is not okay to hide what you're going to do, to not tell the truth to be elected. It is not okay to leave people in poverty. It is not okay to disconnect this province from the benefit of its resources. This budget is destroying people's ability to act together.

[1450]

Choices made are removing the resources they need — we need — to care, to protect. This deficit-fighting government that holds the gold and silver for the largest two deficits in the history of this province — followed in third, the bronze, by a former Socred government — is failing this province. They inherited the largest surplus ever in this province. Over 12 years they will have doubled the debt. Over the last eight years GDP growth has averaged 2.8 percent versus 2.9 percent in the '90s, despite the fact that the government then endured the withdrawal of federal transfers, the Asian flu and savings and loan disaster.

This government has managed prosperity for the few. This government took a made-in-North-America housing boom and coupled that with a made-in-B.C. poverty boom.

So how do we address this with our core industries mismanaged into failure, a tax base vaporized by their policies of deregulation in our core industries? How do they expect our children and grandchildren to repay that enormous debt without the assets necessary to do so? B.C. Rail. The privatization of B.C. Ferries.

People expect their common wealth to be used for the common good. Part of a greater plan is what we see here, destroying the public sphere. The disabling and destruction in the name of faith-based economics is leading us down a path of loss.
[ Page 337 ]

In good times we would have expected that this government put away. Weak government is what we are left with.

The United States has moved on. Europe has moved on. Asia has moved on, while B.C. is stuck with the B.C. Liberal privateers' approach — the sights of these privateers fixed firmly on the common wealth of this great province.

All the vessels of opportunity that built this rich, equitable and fair society are targeted by these opportunistic policies — public education, public health care, all of our children starting at the starting line together. This has been Enron-style accounting with off-balance-sheet debt unreported. Not only will we have a $60 billion debt in 2013, but we'll have at least $58 billion in off-balance-sheet debt accumulated through their public-private partnership experimentation.

Hidden debt, hidden taxation, the HST — the ultimate hidden tax. And who pays?

Everyone has a right to hold these ideologies. Everyone has a right to believe that that's the right thing to do, but this government didn't have the right to hide that from the people.

Every person who runs for this House needs to be upfront about their intentions, particularly this government. When people are elected on those Orwellian mistruths, we see terrible consequences. The people of British Columbia…. Now we lead the country in child poverty, with the highest child poverty rates for six years running.

What kind of legacy is this? Not taking up the responsibility entrusted to that government is their failure. Child care, poverty, inequity. This is the new B.C., a B.C. of divided communities, a divided province.

We've seen the dilution of the advantages of this province. This government is failing the twin responsibilities core to government: empowerment and protection. This is a weak government. The values and principles of this government have led us to see the loss of our control over our resources.

Broken promises. Exploitation. Great goals. Meaningless phrases. The new relationship, every bit as abusive and unresponsive as the old relationship.

[1455]

Their commitment to the environment. We see this budget cut the Environment Ministry, cut in half the climate secretariat, cut enforcement. That's the commitment to environment from the B.C. Liberal government.

It's about the arts that have been cut. It's about the services to children and families that have been withdrawn.

We have seen the shifting of resources to their friends, and British Columbians expect more. They know that the role of government is far deeper than simply managing the benefits of a province for their friends. The undermining of democracy that we've seen in this House, the removal of local autonomy from local governments, the hamstringing of the budget estimates process — so many individual pieces, individual attacks on democracy.

This government has gotten rid of the watchdogs that protected our communities and protected our environment. This government has led us to casino capitalism. You have to buy your way into their game.

People expect government to defend their communities in a balanced way. They expect the three legs of the stool to stand together. But this government has severed those links that the community had to its resources and the resources to care for one another. This government has set up the self-interest versus the collective interest. In the end, when people accept this, when there's an acceptance, when there's a resignation to these outcomes, it leads to despair and disengagement.

It doesn't have to be that way. This province can be restored. This province can be returned to the path of protecting its citizens from harm and want.

Using the resources of this province for the common good, we could return this province to the lowest child poverty rates in the country. Second lowest were the child poverty rates in this country in the '90s, and we could do better if we had the right policies that put the people of this province first.

We could restore our parks, the interpreters. We could restore and deliver into the hands of British Columbians the benefit of their resources. We can protect British Columbia from want. We can return to those low poverty rates, but not as long as this government's single and soul focus is to hand the resources and the benefit of this province to their friends.

Tommy Douglas used a phrase that's very well known. He said: "Have courage, my friends; it's not too late to build a better world." People focus on the second part of that phrase: "It's not too late to build a better world." Indeed, it's a hopeful message. But the important part of that message is the first part, "Have courage, my friends" — have courage.

The government should have the courage to speak to the people clearly. The government should have the courage to tell the people what it's actually going to do. The government should have the courage to stand on its true agenda.

It didn't have that courage. It is a weak government that needs to veil its intentions in order to gain support, and it is a government that has given away the benefits of this province. The basic role that people expect of us in coming here is to protect them, to protect their province, to protect its resources, to protect their stake in their province.

The actions of this government have done exactly the opposite. They have removed our stake in our province. They have removed our control over our public resources. They have removed the benefit of public systems.

We see public school enrolment falling by a little over 10 percent. We see private school enrolment, all of that
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population shifting to private schools. Private schools had 1/10 the enrolment of the public system. So if the public system loses 10 percent, the private system gained 100 percent.

[1500]

It's part of a plan to disarm our province from protecting itself. Those institutions — public health care, public education — that created this great province, which gave to our children the ability to compete fairly and equitably, are the targets of this government.

As we enter a new school year, and as the parents stand outside in the cold morning air and watch the vapour of their breath disappear along with the benefits and the interests of their children, it's up to us on this side of the House to defend them. It's up to us to remind this government about what its mandate truly should be. It did not run on withdrawing the supports from children in this province. It did not run on increasing wait times and cutting surgeries. In fact, it ran on the opposite. It ran on the opposite, and in a deceitful measure, they turned every promise on its head, just like they did with B.C. Rail, just like they did with the HEU contracts, just like they did with the benefits of our resources.

We should expect more, and the people of British Columbia are ready to do more. But they will not line up for the great task in front of them behind a discredited leadership, this B.C. Liberal government. The only way for us to build the credit and integrity it takes to govern is to measure up to the words we speak, and that has been the largest failure of this B.C. Liberal government.

We offer hope to the people of B.C. that their interests can be restored. Who could blame the people of British Columbia for becoming cynical, faced with this many broken promises? Who could blame them for not showing up at the polls when their vote seems to mean nothing to a government that quickly breaks every promise it makes?

But they haven't. They haven't become cynical. They haven't given up. They still expect you to do better, Member. They still expect you to stand for something. They still expect that during the election, what you say is what you will do. What you say is what you will do. To the members aside: cynicism grows in the spaces between words and deeds unfulfilled. Hope and integrity grow out of words and promises fulfilled.

When our first nations people stand at the shore waiting the long wait for the partner they've long waited for, and their hope is met with the disappointment and the unfulfilled words like "new relationship," who could blame them for becoming cynical? Who could? But they haven't. They still wait in good faith for that partner, just as every British Columbian waits for a government that will honour that commitment to protect our children, to protect our environment and to protect our services.

We've seen a loss of interest. We've seen a loss of equity. We've seen growing gaps in our community between the rich and the poor. We see criminal organizations, ten times more than there were eight years ago. We see people living on our streets, more than 300 percent more of those people living on the streets in the Lower Mainland.

In small resource-based communities, we see people living under bridges. What a failure in a province so rich. What a failure in a province that was built on such a dedication to one another. What a loss of the privilege it was to inherit that legacy. We are meant to build on the legacy, not dilute it. We are meant to offer hope to people that their province can be more, that their province can grow, that their province and their interest in it can become more. But what we've seen is that dilution, a dilution of every British Columbian's interest in their own province.

[1505]

So that three-legged stool between the economy and the public and the environment is not standing very steady these days. The one long leg that the Liberals have reinforced has been to hand over the resources of this province to their friends.

Every British Columbian supports entrepreneurs. They would buy a car, but they don't expect to have to buy a road. This Liberal government has moved us from a province that was built on empathy and caring to one that is built on self-interest, greed and the inside track.

If you are a large enough donor, if you offer a way to privatize a public interest — a river, a park, a school, a hospital — you're friends of this government. That's the ideology this government brought to this House and that this budget reinforces.

The advantage of the budget is that it offers numbers to that meaning. We can see the priorities of the B.C. Liberal government. We can see them as they cut, as they withdraw the resources from our arts programs, as they withdraw resources from our schools, as they withdraw resources from environmental stewardship. This is when the priorities are laid bare in front of us, and this time it shows.

It shows the words that painted the Premier green. It shows the words "new relationship." It shows how empty they all have been. It has led us to this place of cynicism where the unfortunate in this province are left behind, where the very institutions that are required to grow us and lift us out of this situation are exactly the ones targeted by this government.

Madam Speaker, how can we rebuild our province when the very resources necessary to do so have been pulled out from under us? Our small communities are waiting. Our school boards are waiting. Hospital patients are waiting. They're waiting for the promises to be fulfilled that those members made during the election campaign. And instead what they're finding have been cuts, the withdrawal of the very services that were promised.

So it wasn't a mismanagement of prosperity. It was a management of prosperity into the hands of the few,
[ Page 339 ]
and the outcome is a terrible consequence for British Columbia and its future.

I will be voting against this budget and in favour of a British Columbia that, again, would be founded on empathy, determination and courage.

D. Barnett: It is with pride that I stand here today in British Columbia's Legislature to speak about Budget 2009.

I would like to start off by thanking all those that supported me in the Cariboo-Chilcotin and for electing me as your member of this Legislative Assembly. It is a great honour to be representing this region that is so close to my heart.

I would like to give special thanks to Walt Cobb, Gillian Pledge, Karen Roberts, Bill Carruthers and Dorothy Hartshorne, just to mention a few. There were so many, I could be here for days.

It is a responsibility that I take very seriously, and I am excited to work very hard for the people in our communities, both in my role as MLA and as Parliamentary Secretary for Pine Beetle Community Recovery.

We all recognize the significance of the global recession and the downturn in our resource industries. These key industries of forestry, mining, manufacturing and agriculture are the backbone of our province's economy and are the creators of real jobs and revenue in both my constituency of the Cariboo-Chilcotin and throughout the province of British Columbia.

We are dedicated to helping those in our communities who are in need, building on our social commitment to health care and education, as well as doing all we can to protect the health of our environment for the well-being of all British Columbians.

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In order to build the society that British Columbians have asked for, a place where everyone has the ability to live their dreams and fulfil their potential, our government must provide the dollars required for health care, education, recreation, child care and seniors care. To accomplish this task, we must have a vibrant economy. A vibrant economy can only be created by jobs. These come from our resource communities — forestry, mining, oil and gas, agriculture — and tourism.

British Columbia is a big province, and while much of our population is in the urban centres, the foundation of our economy lies in our rural communities, in regions like the Cariboo-Chilcotin.

We must do all we can to support and encourage new investment, assist existing business and industry, and continue to support unemployed forest workers through our Ministry of Community and Rural Development working in partnership with our federal government. By working collaboratively with all levels of government, we have been able to help many get back to work providing for families, along with single young men and women, to keep our communities vibrant and thriving.

Our government's infrastructure program has put many workers on the job in 2009 in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. From Cache Creek to Prince George, the Cariboo connector has seen $1.5 million to improve our transportation corridor, improving safety and creating jobs.

In addition to our transportation infrastructure, we have been investing in libraries, care facilities and schools. In 100 Mile House a new library is being built, thanks to a partnership with local government, provincial and federal dollars. With the partnership of the provincial government and the Cariboo regional hospital district, a new addition to Fischer Place, a long-term care facility, is also on stream.

A new capital commitment from this government for a new Neighbourhoods of Learning school in Williams Lake is in the planning stages with the capital dollars, ready to put the shovel in the ground when the planning is done.

The private sector has faith in this government, even in a time of global recession, that it is showing with new investment in our communities. An 101,800-square-foot Wal-Mart is soon to open in Williams Lake. There are new housing starts throughout the Cariboo-Chilcotin and a new state-of-the-art car dealership. Central Chevrolet GMC Pontiac Buick dealership just opened in 100 Mile House in a time when we all know where the car industry is.

This is confidence in our future. Our future — that is what this budget is about. Some will disagree, and that is normal, but those on this side of the House know the future can only be bright and prosperous with a good, solid financial plan and the ability to be adaptable. We have to respond to the realities of the marketplace by creating effective policy that really addresses the needs of our communities and not be limited by dogma and ideology.

To stand up and do what is right is not always popular, but it is right for our future — yours, mine and our grandchildren's. I have been in politics for a long time, and I know that it is wonderful to say yes, and it is unpopular to say no. I had the great privilege of working for over 16 years with local politicians, making decisions that for some did not go their way. However, we as a council made our decisions based on good, solid information and what was in the best interests of all.

In my short time in provincial politics I have had the privilege of meeting and listening to politicians and citizens from all walks of life. So far, it has been quite a learning experience, and most hard to believe are some of the comments from my colleagues across the floor.

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My experience in politics stems back to the days of the hon. Alex Fraser, one of the greatest politicians who stood in this House. My mentor, Alex, always told me to be prepared when you hear from the opposition.
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They were born and raised on negativity and believe that industry and business have no place in this province and that dollars for jobs, health care and education are created by governments, somehow separate from investment.

Tremendous opportunities exist in our resource communities. We have forestry, agriculture, tourism, mining in some and opportunities for greater mining in others, opportunities for biomass, green energy. In this province we have the highest environmental standards, the toughest, longest public processes in place before new industries can build on our landscape.

I am surprised and saddened when I continually hear negativity from certain interests when a new mine or other resource industry has an application on our land base and believes in our province as a place to invest dollars, create jobs and contribute to our economy.

I am glad this government has the open-door policy for investment in British Columbia. In the 1990s it was not so. How quickly people forget. In times of a world economy that was strong, when our economy should have been strong…. But because there was no plan, our communities in the province faltered. What was our credit rating then? What is it now? I will let you figure that out.

The budget based on sound fiscal practice and its measures, including the HST, is a plan to bring British Columbia back to the front of the class, a plan that makes our business and industries more competitive on the world scene. This is what will create the real jobs needed to provide all the amenities we so enjoy in our society.

When I continually hear the negativity from the opposition, I know why many people who need the support and encouragement of their elected officials in a positive manner so they will feel good about themselves and their communities do not. The opposition wants jobs in their resource communities. Surely they must realize that to have good jobs in resource communities, you must support resource industries, not continually lead the charge of negativity and say: "Not in my backyard."

We have experts on the environment. We have the most stringent environmental processes, I believe, in the world. We need to disregard the empty dogmatic rhetoric of the opposition and support our experts in land use, resource development and environmental stewardship.

During the election we talked about independent power projects and heard the opposition's fearmongering and mistruths that we were going to sell our rivers, sell B.C. Hydro and on and on. The opposition was asked time and time again in my riding: "Where is your plan for providing community-based, environmentally sustainable power generation to meet our expanding demand?" But like here in the House, they could only give fearmongering answers — no plans.

Let's talk about the forest industry for a minute. In the long term, the industry and communities have pine beetle devastation ahead of them. But due to communities along with first nations leaderships working together and to support from this government, conservationists and industry, we will be strong as communities and industry in the future.

The HST is part of the plan that will help this most valuable industry stay competitive, help the mining industry, agriculture and others. The HST will save business and industry money — money they can reinvest and, yes, pass on to their customers. I believe they will, because business is a competitive, consumer-driven marketplace. They don't want to lose customers.

I am really pleased to tell you that there will be no HST on residential energy. That means no HST on energy used in our homes.

I have many first nations communities in my riding — Shuswap, Carrier, Tsilhqot'in. I have had the privilege over the past many years of working with many on unity rides, community forums, powwows, coalitions and day-to-day relationships. I am committed to continue to work collaboratively with these friends and now my constituents.

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In this budget we have protected health care, education and many core services. Yes, we have had to make some changes, tough decisions for the short term. As common sense hopefully will prevail and as my past mentor would say: "Short-term pain for long-term gain."

D. Black: Madam Speaker, this is the first time I rise to speak in the House, and I would like to take an opportunity to congratulate you on your appointment as Deputy Speaker.

I'm honoured to address this House for the first time, and I'm doubly honoured to speak as the elected representative of New Westminster, a city where I've lived and raised my family for many years. We'll all miss Chuck Puchmayr and the fine job that he did here for his constituents. I want to thank him for his help and his encouragement to me, and wish him and his family well as they face his recovery from what is a very serious illness. But he is doing well. I speak to Chuck regularly, and he's progressing extremely well.

I want to thank the voters of New Westminster and the many volunteers who spent countless hours working on my election. I want to thank my husband Peter, my sons Stuart, Matthew and David, and my daughters-in-law Takako, Joanna and Maya, and my grandchildren Christopher, Ian, Meagan, Lauren, Kate, Maggie and Rebecca.

While my grandchildren were too young to stuff envelopes or deliver flyers during the campaign, they are — like all of our children and then our grandchildren — hostages to the future. Their beautiful faces are a constant reminder
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that the decisions that we make here today will determine the world that they will live in and the opportunities that they will enjoy. It's a daunting task, building the future for these young children and for young people. I'm eager to begin, and there's no place better than to do that from the historic city of New Westminster, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year.

My city was named by Queen Victoria herself back in 1859, when it was selected as the first capital of the new colony of British Columbia. Because of its regal lineage, it was dubbed the Royal City, a moniker it still holds today. I'm proud that New Westminster is the first city in western Canada and indeed was the first city west of the lakehead in Canada.

In 1860 it became the first western city to have a locally elected municipal government. Six years later the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island were united, with New Westminster as its capital. Two years later the capital was moved to Victoria, a political decision designed to prove to the smaller Vancouver Island that it would be an important part of the new province. I know I speak for all of New Westminster when I say: "You're welcome to move the capital back to where it all started in New Westminster."

Well, it's not a large city. Its population is around 55,000, and it encompasses 15 square kilometres. New Westminster has always changed with the times, going from the boom and bust of the gold rush to an economy based on fishing and lumber, then on manufacturing. Then the city became a major retail centre. Today it's a centre for health care and education along with manufacturing and an emerging artistic community.

Our city has fielded championship teams in many sports, including the historic Salmonbellies lacrosse team, who were narrowly defeated on Saturday evening in game seven in overtime at Queen's Park arena. The city is in mourning over their loss.

New Westminster is home to the award-winning Hyack football team, along with the Hyack Swim Club and the city's powerful high school teams. Our city is home to the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame, which draws visitors from all across Canada.

While New Westminster has a naturally beautiful setting on a hillside overlooking the mighty Fraser, what I like best are its neighbourhoods. Queensborough is going through a metamorphosis from a working-class fishing community to a residential area with bright new homes along the banks of the river. Sapperton is also changing, with the former B.C. Pen and the brewery now gone. New shops and families are moving into this historic neighbourhood that is home to the Royal Columbian Hospital. Queen's Park grows more beautiful every day with its wide streets and beautiful heritage homes.

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The uptown and downtown shopping areas continue to grow along with neighbourhoods such as Brunette, Connaught Heights, Kelvin, the West End and Glenbrook.

Tradition is a large part of what holds our city together, traditions like May Day, the Hyack Anvil Battery salute, the Hyack Festival and FraserFest. Traditions from other countries have always taken root in New Westminster as we welcome new citizens from around the world. According to the 2006 census, the highest number of citizens of visible minority in New Westminster are South Asian, followed by Chinese, Filipino, black and Korean. Every ethnic group contributes greatly to our community while supporting each other and celebrating the culture of their ancestral home.

An example of building these partnerships is the upcoming Taste of Community Spirit at Queensborough Community Centre, which will celebrate our diversity with food, local artists and very talented performers. This year's annual multicultural festival held at the Westminster Quay was a huge success, with citizens enjoying and exploring each other's roots. I'll continue to work with all citizens, including our first nations, to support their aspirations for an inclusive community where we all achieve social and economic security.

If you want to experience the vitality of New Westminster, there's no better place to go than to our farmers' market held each Thursday from June to October in Tipperary Park beside city hall. It's a weekly habit for me and for many others to pick up a variety of fresh products, homemade goodies and handmade crafts from over 30 vendors. I want to congratulate Andrew Murray and his volunteer team, who have created a lively and friendly gathering place at the farmers' market.

This community has a long tradition of choosing CCF and New Democrat representatives. New Westminster was the only riding in British Columbia where a Social Credit candidate was never elected. I follow in the footsteps of Rae Eddie, Dennis Cocke, Anita Hagen, Graeme Bowbrick and, of course, Chuck Puchmayr. I will work hard and I hope wisely to fulfil the trust New Westminster residents have placed in me and to honour those who have gone before.

New Westminster is one of the premiere health centres for our province, thanks to the Royal Columbian Hospital and the many specialists who have their offices in our city. We still miss St. Mary's Hospital, and every time I go by that empty site, which is a big hole in the ground still, I ask myself: "What was the point of destroying a well-used and greatly needed facility that could have served our residents for many more years?"

But as we have come to find out, this government does not think before it acts and certainly not before it speaks, especially when it comes to health care. Recall along with me the Premier's promise to protect health care. He said it, his candidates said it, and he said it again in the leaders' debate. I'd certainly like to know how he thinks underfunding the health authorities is protecting health care.
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The Fraser Health Authority, which serves New Westminster, is facing a budget shortfall of $160 million in government funding. As a result, we look forward to thousands of surgeries that will be delayed, emergency room services that will be downgraded, services slashed for mental health and addiction treatment. Diagnostic care will be reduced, and services for seniors are being eliminated.

[C. Trevena in the chair.]

Is cutting transfers to the health authorities by $430 million over the next three years protecting health care? Certainly not. I'm particularly upset that excellent smaller programs are going to be lost, including New Westminster's domestic violence response team that has served as a template for similar teams throughout the province. For a modest annual cost of only $44,000, close to 100 families are assisted each year, mainly women and children.

In partnership with the New Westminster police, a family services worker visits those at highest risk after a domestic violence complaint. While the police work on criminal justice issues, the family services counsellor helps victims access community services and provides support as they deal with the trauma and family upheaval.

Essentially, this low-cost program — very low-cost program — ensures these women and children at high risk of serious injury or death are provided with resources that reduce in very real ways those horrendous possibilities. Slashing a program that has been so successful since 1996 makes no sense at all.

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Without support and assistance from the family support services counsellor, it's likely that these families will experience continuing episodes of domestic violence and that the cost to the health and criminal justice systems will be increased. Such false economy. Such a cavalier attitude towards the safety of women and children at the highest risk of injury or death.

Another excellent, cost-effective program whose funding has been eliminated is the senior peer counselling program which operates out of Century House in New Westminster. This program has trained around a hundred counsellors who, in turn, volunteer their time to assist their fellow seniors. Since 1986 the senior peer counselling program has helped more than 2,300 clients with issues like grief, loneliness, illness, financial strain and moving from a longtime family home into a seniors care facility.

It runs on an annual budget of $15,000. With about $10,000 only coming from Fraser Health, seniors fundraise the additional $5,000 themselves. Jan Greenhow, a volunteer counsellor and former president at Century House, described the positive impact the counsellors have as "kind of like dropping a pebble in a pool. The ripples keep going out and out," she said.

If a senior comes to the peer counselling program with a problem the volunteers can't handle, they're referred then to Vital Connections, a program which is located in the same office at Century House. Operated by Family Services of Greater Vancouver, Vital Connections' funding from Fraser Health is being ended on September 30 of this year. Beryl Petty, the professional counsellor for the program, said: "By intervening early, which is what Vital Connections does, it's more cost-efficient to the health care system." Again, false economy on the part of this government.

These are preventative programs that cost small amounts of money but produce big results for seniors. I will continue to work with all those involved to try to convince Fraser Health and this provincial government that the funding for these services must be continued.

Instead of hearing lip service about how seniors built this province, let's see some action. I want this government to come clean on what's really going to happen in health care. Cut the bafflegab. Tell us what patient services will be cut, precisely what programs will be lost and how this can be justified.

I remind this government that, while we're talking about numbers in this place, what we're really talking about are individuals who need medical care. This government can't seem to understand or to care that there is a human component to these cuts and that real people will suffer.

Recently I was pleased and honoured to be appointed the opposition caucus critic for Advanced Education and Labour Market Development. These are areas that deal with the future, ensuring our children and grandchildren receive the education and skills training necessary to take their place in an increasingly competitive and complicated world.

However, the future is not looking rosy under this government, which has already announced cuts to important post-secondary education programs. The Advanced Education and Labour Market Development budget has been cut by over $66 million. Not only is there a large cut this year, but the budget will continue to drop over the next three years. This is in spite of Liberal election promises to increase funding for advanced education — another broken promise, Madam Speaker.

Trade school, college and university students heading back to classes this month will bear the brunt of this budget and its cuts. My fear is that many students who had planned to continue their education will find themselves on the outside of the classroom looking in. Why? Because they can't afford to go to school — thanks to more than $17 million that has been cut from more than half a dozen student aid programs.

Meanwhile, tuition fees keep going up and up. Since the current government came to power in 2001, tuition fees have increased by over 100 percent, and by 184 percent for graduate students. Shocking. According to
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the UBC Alma Mater Society, since 2002 the tuition fee revenue collected by the provincial government has increased from $454 million to almost $1 billion.

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In fact, this government recently released figures that predict the income it receives from student tuition fees will surpass corporate taxation by 2011. I think British Columbians would be shocked to hear that. Is the Premier proud that his government is filling its coffers at the expense of our young people?

Student employment is at its highest rate in history, and more students are looking to government for help through grants and loans. Instead, they're met with reductions and elimination of funding. The funding for nursing, health care and home support worker–training programs has been reduced. In a Vancouver Sun story, Margaret Dhillon of the B.C. Nurses Union called funding cuts to the nurses education bursary shortsighted and counterintuitive, adding that she couldn't understand why cuts would be considered in a profession that has such a shortage. I couldn't agree more.

The attack on education continues. Students with a permanent disability will no longer be eligible to have their loans forgiven, and the Premier's Excellence Awards for top high school students were eliminated — no notice. That means that B.C.'s best and brightest will look elsewhere for help with university costs — some to the U.S., others to eastern Canada. Will they return to B.C.? An arrogant government doesn't know and apparently doesn't care.

Students chose their programs believing certain kinds of financial help was available, and now suddenly it's not. If that isn't betrayal, I don't know what is. This decision was made only in June, and the students involved were quietly notified by letter or a phone call. If the government and the minister feel that these are the correct steps to take, why didn't they let us all in on it? Students partway through a program will not be able to continue. Some will abandon their educational dream altogether, which is a huge loss for our province.

In the wacky world of this government's thinking, the evils of debt that played such an important part in the throne speech simply don't apply to students. The average student debt in B.C. is $27,000 and growing. Our province is the last in Canada in proportion of student assistance on non-repayable debt. Shamus Reid of the Canadian Federation of Students summed up the bleak situation for many students. "Borrowing beyond your means is never a wise strategy, yet that is precisely what thousands of B.C. families are forced to do every year to afford this government's massive tuition fee increases," he said.

Our universities and colleges are scrambling to offer the courses and give the help their students need in these difficult economic times. This government's assistance was to give post-secondary institutions not an increase in funding in 2008 but a 2.6 percent cut. Post-secondary students are also going to be feeling the hit of the harmonized GST and PST. Their transportation and living costs will increase, along with the cost of meals and school supplies.

The February 2009 throne speech referenced the increase in student spaces, but without matching funds and adequate support for these spaces, many of them have gone unfilled. They are just empty seats. For the record, during the '90s student spaces in B.C. were expanded by over 40,000 seats.

This is beginning to sound all too familiar, but during the election campaign the Liberals promised to institute a provincewide transit U-pass for post-secondary education students. Now the Minister of Transportation refuses to meet with students to start the plan. Students are rightly concerned. The government is set to betray them again. If the minister is serious about fulfilling her promise to bring in a universal transit pass by next September, then she should meet now with students and plan its implementation. This is a complex issue that will take time to set up and adequate funding to succeed.

I find it sad that also missing from the budget was any mention of poverty or a poverty reduction strategy. The government is not focusing on bolstering important social services at precisely the time when they are most needed by the most vulnerable British Columbians. Need I remind this House that B.C. has the highest rate of child poverty in Canada? That's shocking. Once again the Liberals have demonstrated that in their hurry to slash programs and budgets, they are not looking at the bigger picture or looking ahead.

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Perhaps the Liberals don't like the word "poverty." Let's substitute "inequality." James Dunn of the University of Calgary published research in 2003 showing that afflictions such as cancer and heart disease have more to do with job status and income disparity than lifestyle and genetics. Other researchers have found that life expectancy, physical and mental illness, obesity, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, youth suicide, impaired social participation and a host of other social ills are outcomes not primarily of poverty but of inequality — the gap between the rich and everyone else. Think about that.

These social ills show up as expenses in budgets for Health, Education, the Ministry of Children and Families, and the list goes on. But rather than address the root cause — inequality — this government slaps on a few inadequate band-aids.

A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the international body of 30 major free market economies, shows that inequality in Canada is now growing faster than in the majority of OECD countries. This is what we should be talking about here in B.C. — the widening gap between the rich and everyone else, and I don't just mean the poor.
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The gap is hitting the middle class, the working class, students, young people, new Canadians and seniors. They're cutting back on their standard of living while going without, making choices between heating bills and nutritious food, warm winter coats and gas to get to work. When equality fails and the gap widens, we all lose, not just those suffering a diminished lifestyle. We pay more in health care, more for protective services. Children don't do as well in school, seniors struggle to get by, and families disintegrate.

This government has chosen to ignore the growing gap between the well-off and everyone else. Instead they are increasing the burden on the already struggling families in a province with the worst rate of full-time job losses and the second-worst performing economy in Canada, where the number of employment insurance recipients is up 140 percent and temporary income assistance caseloads are up over 56 percent since last summer.

After saying throughout the election campaign that they had no plans to merge the GST and PST, families were hit with the harmonized sales tax, a $1.9 billion tax shift from business to consumers. The costs for dozens of goods and services will rise — everything from housing and transportation to haircuts, school supplies, vitamins and even funerals. And don't forget MSP premiums are going up 6 percent, with further increases in future years. Meanwhile, B.C. Hydro is looking at a 20 percent increase over three years. I ask you, Madam Speaker: how many hits can the average working family take?

I've touched on cuts to health care and education, but that's not all. The total budget for housing has been cut by over $66 million, or 16 percent. Funding for our wonderful public library system is being cut by 22 percent this year and frozen for the next three years. The New Westminster Public Library, B.C.'s first library, which opened over 140 years ago, will be negatively impacted by this cut, as well as by the elimination of funding for the provincewide AskAway virtual reference service.

We have already heard a great deal about this government's shocking cuts to arts, culture, sports and community organizations. The Minister of Housing and Social Development admitted last Thursday that there is almost $60 million less for non-profits and charities in gaming grants this year.

I want to read part of a message from my constituent Colleen Winton, which clearly describes the impact of this decision. She says:

"I'm currently the artistic director of Western Gold Theatre, a small Vancouver professional theatre company that was started ten years ago by the illustrious Joy Coghill. Western Gold seeks to engage senior theatre artists, demonstrating the vitality and value of senior artists in our community. With the support of B.C. Gaming, we present a stage reading series each year that takes professional actors into seniors centres with vibrant plays and musical performances. Of course, with the recent devastating cuts, we will most likely be unable to present our performances at Massey Theatre in New Westminster or indeed anywhere."

She continues:

"Our spring production of a new Canadian play is also in jeopardy, and I fear for the future of Western Gold Theatre entirely. So many small arts groups will disappear as a result of these cuts, impoverishing the cultural life of our entire province."

If the arts, culture, literacy and sports are not important to the Liberals, neither is the environment. The budget chops almost $25 million, or 11½ percent, from that ministry and projects further cuts over the next three years.

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The Sierra Club notes that the ministry's environmental stewardship division, which includes protection of B.C.'s 2,000 species at risk plus fish and wildlife habitat, was sliced by almost $4 million.

"The government says we can't saddle future generations with financial debt, yet this budget creates a dangerous environmental debt that future generations may never be able to repay," warns Sierra Club executive director George Heyman.

Where is the logic in terminating the successful LiveSmart program which encouraged homeowners to renovate their homes to a higher environmental standard? Cancelling this program is causing lost opportunities for responsible public action and lost jobs in the construction sector. Another decision that makes no sense at all.

I hold my values as a social democrat very strongly. I will fight in this House to uphold them. I hope to do so with respect for others, with dignity, with intelligence and with civility. I owe nothing less to my constituents, to my predecessors, to my party and to myself.

R. Cantelon: Madam Speaker, may I offer my congratulations on your appointment as Deputy Speaker, from Vancouver Island. We appreciate all the respect that the Island is due, and we acknowledge your position in the Chair. So thank you very much for being here. I congratulate you.

We've heard a lot today and ongoing in this budget debate about who knew what, when and where. I don't think it's.… It's not an understatement, and a fact, that we are certainly in a new and different economic paradigm. The world that we knew, the world that we could rely on, the world that we could project with comfort and ease and some sort of certainty has all changed.

Much has centred around what you knew, what you didn't know, what you didn't tell us and so on and so forth. I think what is fair to say is the economic advisers to the Minister of Finance are an excellent staff. That's been acknowledged by both sides of the House. We've also heard that they received and relied upon the advice of the Economic Forecast Council and were more conservative than that.

At that point in time of the budget it certainly was the most prudent thing to do to be on the conservative side of the estimates that were provided to the Minister of Finance at that time. Some dissented, yes, and said it might be worse. That was an economist that we've heard several times from the other side of the House, Mr. Pastrick, but even in his assessment he said that it's
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extremely challenging and difficult to assess the economic future in these times.

We've certainly seen that in other jurisdictions, with respect to Alberta, who tabled a budget in late April, I understand, and then suddenly found they were $2 billion short of revenue by the spring. Ontario tabled one in late March with their budget and found that they were some $4 billion short.

So the economic malaise and its effect on provincial revenues and government revenues across Canada and across the world have been devastating and underestimated by all jurisdictions.

Then what we are to do is, I think, move beyond arguing he said, she said, like some sort of soap opera, and move together and face the challenges that we must face together as a province by moving forward and looking to secure our future for our children and our children's children.

That has been the policy of this government. It is certainly by careful, astute fiscal management that we've maintained a triple-A credit rating for seven consecutive years. In fact, we paid down nearly $2 billion of debt in 2004-2005.

Now, I represent the constituency of Parksville-Qualicum, which goes from north Nanaimo all the way to Qualicum Beach. They're very resilient. They're very resourceful and very conservative-minded — in small-c terms, if I may — but also optimistic in a cautious manner.

They see opportunity. They see ways to move forward with it, despite the challenges that they've had in the resource sector — major sawmills; pulp mills, Pope and Talbot being most notable; smaller sawmills; cedar mills in the environment of Parksville and Qualicum. Of course, the tourism industry has been challenged severely in Parksville-Qualicum. But they intend to move forward.

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The headline recently in the paper was "Times of Constraint Call for Tough Decisions." Well, this government recognizes it. This government is prepared to make those tough decisions, and we are making those tough decisions.

But we have priorities, and first, our priorities are health care and education. Both have to remain as top priorities. They're very important to my constituency, and I'd like to talk a minute about how we've responded over these past few years and how we continue to respond to the needs of the community in the central Vancouver Island–Oceanside area.

Now, recently we've heard and in fact continuously hear: "Cuts, cuts, cuts." That's all we hear about.

Interjection.

R. Cantelon: That's what I hear. There we go.

Well, I challenge the opposition. In 2009 the health care budget was increased nearly $1 billion. That will bring the increase to $1½ billion by 2010-2011, and by 2011-2012 it'll be a nearly $2.4 billion increase — 18 percent over the next three years.

What part of that is not an increase? What part of that is a budget cut? I don't know how the math works, but somehow, on that side of the House, that interprets into budget cuts — a $2.4 billion increase over the next four years.

Interjection.

R. Cantelon: Well, I don't think I could follow your mathematics, but that's another story.

Similarly with education, we are at record levels of funding post-secondary education — to over $8,300 per student in K-to-12. It's a steady increase since 2001-2002. Post-secondary education is at record levels as well; $1.887 billion it will rise to by 2009-2010. These are all increases, yet we hear of decreases.

Well, I would say this. We need to make tough choices. Would the other side of the House join us in making these tough choices? What they need to do is face the fact that there are tough choices. "Restore this." "Spend more money here." "Spend more money there." There are two sides to that equation. [Applause.] Yes, we hear that. Thank you for that.

But there are two sides of the equation. The other side is: where does the money come from? I know they relied on our budget projections when they did their estimates in February.

Interjection.

R. Cantelon: You didn't think so at the time. You thought it was a wonderful thing at the time. In fact, the opposition thought: "Not only are your budget numbers so good, we'll add another $600 million to those in revenue, and that will solve the problem. The budget deficit will go away. We can restore cuts."

Well, that's not the real world, unfortunately. The real world is a world that people in my community have faced and are facing with energy, innovation and enterprise — and, may I say, generally from private enterprise.

We are seeing the effects of that optimism already. "Housing Affordability Hits Record Lows," according to the Royal Bank — not seen in five years.

It's interesting, the reaction. The community that I live in has responded tremendously. A year ago the house sales in Nanaimo area were 78. That rebounded to 152 sales in the month of July this year, a nearly 100 percent increase. Yes, there was a dip, but people recognized that this was the time to buy, and they moved that way. In the Parksville-Qualicum area it went from 40 to 87.

So people are reacting in a positive way to the fact that we must carry on. Interest rates are low. This is the time
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to move forward. This is the time, but they're doing more than that. They're also saying, "We're ready to invest in B.C. with our houses" — with the most significant investment that any individual makes, buying your own home.

They feel that the way we're managing the economy is reflected in their decision to buy a house. They're willing to take the largest financial risk they'll probably ever take and say: "This is the time to do it. We'll never see better rates. We'll never see better house prices. We have faith in the way the Liberal government is managing the economy, so we know we will come through this on the other side and come out stronger than other provinces."

The headline in the paper, in the Nanaimo Daily News, was "Times of Constraint Call for Hard Decisions." Decisions mean making choices. The choice can't just be spend more, spend more, spend more, without consequences.

[1555]

In fact, during the interview one of the reporters asked me: "Why don't you just borrow money, borrow money, borrow money?" Well, at some point you lose your credit rating. At some point you have to pay the piper, and you basically shift the debt all the way down the line to our children and our children's children.

So we are managing it in a very responsible, very economical way to minimize what we can by making hard decisions, by setting our priorities on health care, education and secondary education. It's had great benefits.

Again, let me relate to the community where we've managed it. Now, some years ago they built a wonderful new hospital and built a surgical ward. Well, it was supposed to be a surgical ward, but during the '90s the NDP government at the time decided that we don't need to expand the hospital at all, and they left the surgical ward completely unfinished. I'm happy to say that our government has supported and invested in the equipment and the infrastructure to complete 12 surgical units.

We've done more than that in response to community needs in my area. We've responded by adding a brand-new geriatric level-2 service ward — obstetric, pardon me; the other end of the spectrum — so that people with new children, new families, coming in don't have to go to Vancouver for the extra level of care. They can receive it right in mid–Vancouver Island. That's a big difference.

We've expanded the diagnostic capability. We're now renovating. Again, I shrug. I say: "Cuts?" We are committed, and we're going to expand the emergency room. It's a $40 million expenditure, and that is going ahead. So we're pleased to see that the needs are being met in the mid-Island area.

Another important area of mid-Island is the care for seniors. We have added over 500 — it's 545 — government-funded beds, which is over 10 percent of the total of 5,000 for seniors long-term care and assisted living. It's made a huge difference, the impact in our community.

I'm proud to say that I'm backing community efforts, in cooperation with the health authority, to expand a wellness centre in Parksville.

One of the things we need to come to grips with if we're to wrestle the issues facing us with the demographic tsunami, as it's often called, with health care, is to find out how we can care better for people as they age, to keep them closer to their communities, closer to their families and give them the support they need, both medically but also emotionally, so that they can deal with life and live fully as they progress through these now very extensive stages of their life, in a happy way, in a productive way. The community is responding tremendously.

We're also expanding other areas as well. I think one of the critical areas lacking in health care was human resources. There were no nurses trained. I find it hard to believe, but the NDP didn't train any nurses. So we committed to a job for every nurse that was educated at Malaspina — now Vancouver Island University — to get a job at the hospital. It has worked tremendously. They're immediately employed, oriented to several different departments and can find the specialty, the department, that they find most interesting. It has lifted the burden, but more needs to be done.

We recently, just through aggressive marketing, hired four new doctors for Qualicum Beach to replace some of the doctors who were retiring there. So we're moving forward, and more needs to be done.

When I talked about initiatives and innovation, I think there's probably no more striking example than what happened — and it happened recently here in Victoria — with Pope and Talbot. Here was a typical forest company that hadn't invested as much. I would say unfairly cared more about their bottom line than the future of the operation. So it went up to auction.

Now, I was more than a little taken aback when Mr. Krog, during his budget presentation, said: "What are you doing for…?"

Deputy Speaker: Member. Member, no name. Thank you.

R. Cantelon: I'm sorry. I withdraw the name. The member for Nanaimo. Thank you for your direction, Madam Speaker.

The member for Nanaimo said: "What are they doing for the forest industry?" Well, personally, I found it a little offensive, frankly, because I made several trips to appear in the courthouse with the proponents who were trying to buy it, doing whatever I could to influence the Solicitor General or anybody involved in the organization to make their cause. The member didn't.

An Hon. Member: You failed.

R. Cantelon: We succeeded. I'm sorry to say….

Interjections.

R. Cantelon: We succeeded. In fact, what has happened is that they are going to celebrate their annual anniversary
[ Page 347 ]
this October 7 of one year of successful operation. No thanks to you or anybody on your side of the House.

[1600]

Now, he also mentioned: "Why did they spend all the money?" I would have thought that a member who had been in the service of this government for a term longer than mine would know that we can't bring all natural gas lease revenue into our budget in one year. We can only produce ⅛th. He said glibly that we squandered it all. Of course, we can only bring in a portion of the lease revenue in per year.

So the success at Harmac…. I spoke today to the general manager, Levi Sampson, who is really an inspirational leader. They created a new model, a partnership between the employees — who are a union and still are a union and proud of it — and the management. They would work together with new investment, and I would say that this is the kind of response, this is the kind of entrepreneurship that will lead this province, that will take us to new levels of economic opportunity, and they did it again.

Levi did it again. He was asked by the employees of CHEK TV to participate and help to resuscitate and rejuvenate and save that one from the burning coals of oblivion. He did it again, and I credit him. His leadership was able to galvanize investors and galvanize the employees into a new model of ownership, and that is what we need.

I would say that the other part of the equation that the member for Nanaimo missed was: what does the budget do? Well, HST — he obviously isn't aware, as I think most members opposite are — removes a lot of costs from his value-added chain: the cost of acquiring caustic soda, the cost of buying chips. Formerly, of course, they had to just eat that in their costs, bury it, and it affected their profit margin's bottom line.

In total, it's going to be about $140 million of direct saving to the forest industry, and it's going to make a tremendous business, not just now, but in terms of moving forward, in terms of attracting investment. It's going to be absolutely critical.

So as these new models grab hold of opportunities, they're going to be facilitated not only in their operating costs through HST but in investment. So every new piece of equipment that they buy will be exempt from the previous burden of PST.

So that's what we're talking about. But the members opposite just don't get it. It's beyond their ken as far as analyzing economic policy goes. "Let's just spend more." Well, we can't just spend more. We're doing what we can in a very responsible way to maintain our triple-A credit rating, to secure the future of the economy so that when this turns — and there are signs that it's turning already — we'll come out of the gate fast. We'll have a more aggressive stance. We'll be the leaders in innovation and investment and businesses that create wealth, that really create wealth, and that's a critical component of what's happening here at Harmac. And I look forward….

Many, many people said that they'd never make it. "They'll be gone in six months." They're there one year later this October, and they're going to carry on. In fact, they've just opened a second line. Despite comments that they failed, they've opened a second line. I thought that members opposite would have cheered their success. Apparently not. They're opening a second line that will add 40 more employees to their staff, and they are going to succeed.

The other aspect, besides working together…. The fact is that they don't have management looking over their shoulder at some people who are looking more at the bottom line than long-term viability and investment. It attracted new investment — new money, if you want — from Saskatchewan in this case. It's very much welcome. That's the kind of climate we need to rejuvenate the economy on Vancouver Island.

As I mentioned, they're a resilient group on Vancouver Island. They face the choices bravely. They recognize that restraint is needed. They recognize that you can't have everything. You can't spend everything the way you used to during an economy that generated surpluses, but they are willing to tighten their belts, as we are tightening our belts, and to move forward in a positive way.

Despite the member for Nanaimo, who often likes to say how bad and poor it is, the unemployment, actually, between July and August of this year took a little dip. Employment levels rose from July and August. More people were being employed, and the levels of unemployment are below British Columbia's averages.

It is a community that I represent, and I'm proud to represent, that's been faced by and buffeted by many economic reverses as we move from a resource-based industry to a more diversified economy. Some of the diversifications are very interesting. We have a business in Parksville, Camtech Industries, which builds models of fuselages, full-scale mockups of airplane fuselages, so that flight attendants can be trained in safety measures. So they receive their whole training.

[1605]

Now, this gentleman…. They make these in Parksville, believe it or not, and ship them around the world — to Russia, to the Far East, everywhere. But of course, he has to buy his aluminum, his materials, welding supplies. All of the materials he buys he formerly paid PST on, which he had to embed in his costs and then add that to the costs overseas — a competitive advantage that was not his. But those other 130 companies that have value-added tax and who chose to compete with him, of course, wouldn't be paying that tax.

Now his opportunity has improved. He'll be able to invest more in his business, to raise his sales, lower his costs and perhaps expand his product line.

I think this budget is a proper one. It's one in tune with the times. It's one that faces the difficult decisions that we have to make and positions us, with HST and other
[ Page 348 ]
economic measures…. The emphasis is to continue on expanding the services in health care and maintaining educational ability to put us in a good position.

The last thing I'd like to briefly speak on is the investment we're making in the infrastructure on Vancouver Island. Again, the community itself, the port authority on its own initiative and the regional committee to the economic development trust had committed $8½ million to build a new cruise ship terminal in Nanaimo.

That's not only a benefit to them, to Nanaimo, but of course will benefit everyone from Cowichan to Courtenay by bringing more tourists in and millions of dollars of tourists' money. I'm pleased to say that the federal government recently matched that money, and now that community initiative will go ahead.

The airport is expanding, and the airport authority committed their funds to do it. The city of Nanaimo built a new conference centre, which is doing very, very well and is expanding.

I think one of the most notable achievements, though, is the achievement that Vancouver Island University has done since becoming a fully fledged university. They have formed great partnerships with the aboriginal community — in fact, not only in relative terms but in absolute terms, with 1,800 first nations students — leading the way in recognizing the need to build capacity in first nations communities.

They have done great partnerships with the community. I recently attended the announcement of the shellfish centre in Bowser — in a northern constituency but, nevertheless, one that's needed. They formed great partnerships and are receiving funding from the business — shellfish industry — from first nations and from the people involved in the industry. They provide the science, the technology, and this will be a showcase for how shellfish can be nurtured, grown in our coastal waters.

It will be of great benefit to all the coastal communities, especially first nations communities, as we develop these export markets. These are very rich export markets, because the net benefit is virtually 100 percent net revenue to the communities.

The beauty of this industry, too, is that it's very community-based, of course. The local people have the opportunity for employment because it's right in the seabed. It's right out in front of them, so it's a great opportunity. It's a $9 million facility, and the capper is that it will be a culinary place, as well, so it'll feature the greatest in seafood culinary experiences. It'll be a great tourist draw as well.

Vancouver Island University's enrolment is up, and it's so important to get a complete education that you don't have to leave the Island for. You can be educated in multidisciplines to pursue your career whichever way you want to go — for young people. It's catching on. The enrolment's up.

I think this is the kind of investment we need to make that isn't besides infrastructure. It's human resources infrastructure. But with Vancouver Island, we're doing that too.

I was pleased to attend the groundbreaking of the $27 million expansion of Vancouver Island University's campus in Cowichan. So we're committed to providing the infrastructure, the buildings for them to do the programs. Of course, this provides jobs in the immediate run, but in the long run it invests in what the real key infrastructure is, and that's the development of our human potential, of the people of British Columbia. That's what's going to happen, and that's going to be our key to success.

We're doing all that, and we're increasing commitment to secondary education, increasing our commitment to that. We're increasing our commitment to health care.

[1610]

We see that the private sector, with incidents like Harmac and CHEK, is responding. They're responding because we're creating the environment that they feel they can move forward; that they can feel confident to take these risks, to move forward with this — they're risking hearth and home in these investments; that the economy will recover, that we will have the opportunity for British Columbia to prosper and succeed and achieve their economic aspirations.

I enthusiastically support this budget. It does present tough choices. We can't just spend money like water and have everything we want right now. The businessmen I spoke to recognize that, yet they're still willing to move forward. The home purchasers are willing to say: "This is an opportunity. I'll move now." They're responding to the initiatives that this government has taken.

I am pleased to represent them and see that they're moving towards looking to the future and a prosperous, greater British Columbia.

M. Elmore: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

M. Elmore: I'd like to welcome to the House my friends from Vancouver — Edgar Soliano, June Talio and Jed Talio; and also welcome good friends visiting from the Philippines, their first time here in Victoria and to the Legislature building — Peter Tan, Mary Lou Tan, Esperenza Yu and Joel Yu. I ask the House to please give them a warm welcome.

Debate Continued

H. Lali: I stand here to speak on Budget 2009, and I will be voting against the budget.

Before I do that, hon. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you for being named as the Deputy Speaker here in the House. I also want to take
[ Page 349 ]
the opportunity to thank the people of Yale-Lillooet, who elected me three times. The riding is essentially the same, but in the new riding of Fraser-Nicola, I also want to thank all of the voters there for giving me the honour to return to the Legislature for a fourth term.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I'm going to be talking about a couple of individuals who….

Mr. Speaker: Excuse me, Member. There is some House business that we do have to take care of. Before you get into your speech, I think what we have to do is adjourn the budget debate, and then we'll reconvene it in a few minutes. So do you want to adjourn the debate and reserve your right?

H. Lali: Yes, hon. Speaker. I reserve my right to speak again, and I adjourn debate for housekeeping duties here.

H. Lali moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Reports from Committees

Hon. M. de Jong: I'm obliged to the member for accommodating the report from the Special Committee of Selection.

I have the honour to present the first report of the Special Committee of Selection for the first session of the 39th parliament.

I move that the report be taken as read and received.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: I ask leave of the House to permit the moving of a motion to adopt the report.

Leave granted.

Hon. M. de Jong: I move that the report be adopted and, for the benefit of members and those who were not present for the Committee of Selection, we'll read very quickly the names of the various committee assignments for this session of the 39th parliament.

Starting with the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs: convener Don McRae; members Donna Barnett, Dr. Terry Lake, John Slater, John Les, Gordon Hogg, Bob Simpson, Harry Lali, Doug Routley and Scott Fraser.

For the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth: convener Joan McIntyre; members Marc Dalton, Jane Thornthwaite, Stephanie Cadieux, John Rustad, Douglas Horne, Maurine Karagianis, Leonard Krog, Mable Elmore, Nicholas Simons.

[1615]

For the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations: convener Ralph Sultan; members Harry Bloy, Pat Pimm, Joan McIntyre, Rob Howard, Gordon Hogg, John Horgan, Gary Coons, Harry Bains, Vicki Huntington.

Select Standing Committee on Education: convener Gordon Hogg; members Richard T. Lee, Jane Thornthwaite, Marc Dalton, Dave Hayer, Rob Howard, Robin Austin, Diane Thorne, Dawn Black, Michael Sather.

Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services: convener John Les; members John van Dongen, Don McRae, Norm Letnick, John Rustad, Jane Thornthwaite, Doug Donaldson, Bruce Ralston, Michelle Mungall, Bill Routley.

Select Standing Committee on Health: convener Stephanie Cadieux; members Ron Cantelon, Dave Hayer, Don McRae, Dr. Terry Lake, Donna Barnett, Adrian Dix, Sue Hammell, Jagrup Brar, Raj Chouhan.

Select Standing Committee on Legislative Initiatives: convener Dr. Terry Lake; members Eric Foster, Dave Hayer, John Slater, Richard Lee, Pat Pimm, Jenny Kwan, Rob Fleming, Mike Farnworth, Katrine Convoy.

Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills: convener Norm Letnick; members Eric Foster, Harry Bloy, Pat Pimm, Donna Barnett, John Slater, Rob Fleming, Mike Farnworth, Jenny Kwan, Katrine Conroy.

Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts: convener Bruce Ralston; members Douglas Horne, John Les, John Rustad, Norm Letnick, Joan McIntyre, Richard Lee, Ralph Sultan, Rob Howard, Spencer Herbert, Kathy Corrigan, Lana Popham, Shane Simpson, Guy Gentner and Vicki Huntington.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: Mr. Speaker, in addition, I'd seek leave of the House to move a second motion to activate the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for the present session.

Leave granted.

Mr. Speaker: Please proceed.

Motions Without Notice

powers and role of finance
and government services committee

Hon. M. de Jong: The motion appears in the standard format and has been presented to the Opposition House Leader. The most significant feature of the motion is that it calls upon the committee to prepare a report
[ Page 350 ]
no later than November 15, 2009, on the results of the consultations that it is charged with taking pursuant to this motion.

I so move the motion.

[That the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services be empowered:

1. To examine, inquire into and make recommendations with respect to the budget consultation paper prepared by the Minister of Finance in accordance with section 2 of the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act and, in particular, to:

a. Conduct public consultations across British Columbia on proposals and recommendations regarding the provincial budget and fiscal policy for the coming fiscal year by any means the committee considers appropriate, including but not limited to public meetings, telephone and electronic means;

b. Prepare a report no later than November 15, 2009, on the results of those consultations; and

2.

a. To consider and make recommendations on the annual reports, rolling three-year service plans and budgets of the following statutory officers:

i. Auditor General

ii. Chief Electoral Officer

iii. Conflict of Interest Commissioner

iv. Information and Privacy Commissioner

v. Merit Commissioner

vi. Ombudsman

vii. Police Complaint Commissioner

viii. Representative for Children and Youth; and,

b. To examine, inquire into and make recommendations with respect to other matters brought to the Committee's attention by any of the Officers listed in 2(a) above.

3. That the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services be the committee referred to in sections 19, 20, 21 and 23 of the Auditor General Act and that the performance report in section 22 of the Auditor General Act be referred to the committee.

In addition to the powers previously conferred upon the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, the committee shall be empowered:

a. to appoint of their number, one or more subcommittees and to refer to such subcommittees any of the matters referred to the Committee;

b. to sit during a period in which the House is adjourned, during the recess after prorogation until the next following Session and during any sitting of the House;

c. to adjourn from place to place as may be convenient; and

d. to retain personnel as required to assist the Committee,

and shall report to the House as soon as possible, or following any adjournment, or at the next following Session, as the case may be; to deposit the original of its reports with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly during a period of adjournment and upon resumption of the sittings of the House, the Chair shall present all reports to the Legislative Assembly.]

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: Finally, I would seek leave of the House to move a motion to activate the Select Standing Committee on Legislative Initiatives for the present parliament.

Leave granted.

Mr. Speaker: Please proceed.

appointment of select standing
committee on legislative initiatives

Hon. M. de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I am obliged, by the way, to the House.

By leave, I move that a Select Standing Committee on Legislative Initiatives be appointed for the 39th parliament pursuant to section 9 of the Recall and Initiative Act.

[That a Select Standing Committee on Legislative Initiatives be appointed for the 39th Parliament pursuant to Section 9 of the Recall and Initiative Act, R.S.B.C., 1996, c. 398.]

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: I am obliged to the House for accommodating that bit of work and call continued debate on the budget.

Budget Debate

(continued)

H. Lali: I guess I only had a couple of sentences in, so I'll start over.

Thank you, hon. Speaker. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you for being elected as Speaker once again of this House.

I also want to thank the people of Yale-Lillooet, who have elected me three times in the past — and now the new riding is called Fraser-Nicola — for giving me this honour of a fourth term to serve the people of that part of the southern Interior. I'm going to mention some of these individuals in a minute.

With the departure of some folks from this House who have served for a long time, I guess this makes me the longest-serving rural MLA in the present House of the Legislature — and I beat you, Mr. Speaker, by about six months.

I also want to remember a really good and dear friend of mine who served as MLA for almost 14 years, and that was the hon. Corky Evans.

[1620]

[C. Trevena in the chair.]

Hon. Speaker, as you know, it didn't matter what his political leanings were. I think all of the people here at the Legislature would agree that in the last couple of decades, there was no finer orator than Corky Evans was. He always wore his heart on his sleeve and was able to convey all of the views of his constituents and what he believed himself, as well.

There were another couple of people from, basically, outside the Lower Mainland that left this House as well
[ Page 351 ]
at the end of the last parliament. Claude Richmond, my neighbour in Kamloops. He started out as a Social Credit member and then with the B.C. Liberal Party. I think he served about five terms, I believe it was. Also, Stan Hagen, who, as you know, passed away, and we dearly miss him. Both of these fine gentlemen started out as Social Credit way back in the '80s and then on to the Liberal Party.

Also, Dan Jarvis, who's left us. He got elected at the same time I did, in 1991, and it was always a joy and a pleasure to actually have Dan Jarvis here. I know I talked to him a few months before the last parliament was prorogued, at which time I asked him if he was going to run again. He says: "Oh yes, I am. I really like this job." Unfortunately, as we all know, due to health reasons he was not able to continue, but he spent, I think it was, about 18 years in this House.

I know there are others who have left as well, but I just wanted to point out these long-serving members from both sides of the House who did a fantastic job on behalf of their constituents to represent their ridings. [Applause.]

Thank you. Now that some of the niceties are out of the way…. I know the hon. members across the way are waiting with bated breath to hear what the hon. member for Fraser-Nicola has to say.

As I stated previously, I stand here to not only speak against the budget, but I'll be voting against the budget as well — Budget 2009. Some of you will recall that when phase 1 of this budget was brought down before the election…. I think it was sometime at the end of February, early March, at which time I said: "We don't believe these numbers of a $495 million deficit."

I said: "You know what the Premier does, and he's very good at doing — and the Liberal cabinet as well? They write something on a blackboard and then later on, when they don't like it, they take their coat sleeve and go up to the blackboard and kind of smudge it and then write the new numbers in."

I told everybody in the House and anybody who was listening that this is exactly what the Premier and this cabinet were going to do. They were going to smudge it and bring in a new budget if they won the election. That's exactly what they've done, so I was proven right once again. This is nothing short of a smudge-it budget, and the Premier has proven that. The Premier has proven that, and the Finance Minister.

This government is going to bring in a record $3.6 billion deficit. That's an over 700 percent increase from what they initially said it was going to be. Of course, they're trying to lower it down to — what is it? — something like $2.9 billion because they get this write-off of about $758 million from the federal government as a result of some other underhanded initiative that they did and that they didn't talk about before the election. They're trying to say it's less than $3 billion, but it's $3.6 billion.

It's the largest deficit in history, and you know what, hon. Speaker? They managed to beat their own record again, because the largest deficit before that was also a B.C. Liberal deficit, brought down in 2003. It was over $3 billion. It just goes on.

But in any case, when this Liberal Party took over government in 2001, this was a great province to live in. This was a great province to live in for a variety of reasons. Not in any particular order, we had the lowest hydro rates in the country. In this province we had the lowest hydro rates of any jurisdiction. We also had the lowest auto insurance rates, I think, with the exception of Saskatchewan, I believe it was. That was the record in 2001.

We also had the lowest tuition fees in the country. We went from the highest in 1991; 2001 it was the lowest in the country. The lowest poverty rates in the country, too, I might add.

When you keep going, you'll see that we also had the highest rate of post-secondary participation in the country. As the member for New Westminster, my colleague, spoke about an hour earlier, there were over 40,000 new spaces that were created in order to actually make it the highest rate of post-secondary participation for our students.

[1625]

We also had the highest funding per capita for K-to-12 education of any jurisdiction in this entire country. We were able to do that by eliminating hundreds and hundreds of portables — and while we had a population increase of 600,000 and all of these new students that came into the K-to-12 education. But we still had the highest funding per capita and also the smallest class sizes in the entire country.

Also, we had the second highest per-capita funding for health care in the country behind Quebec. Only Quebec was higher than ours. Also at the same time, as I had mentioned, there was an increase of 600,000 people in those ten years, '91 to 2001.

This province had the best job-creation record — 340,000 new full-time jobs were created, and it was the highest job-creation record of any province in the country. That resulted in the second-lowest unemployment rate in the country behind Alberta at the time — 6.4 percent. When we took office in October of 1991 — the New Democratic Party under Michael Harcourt — the unemployment rate in this province was 9.8 percent. It was lowered to 6.4, the second lowest in the country.

We also brought in…. Our last budget was the largest budget surplus in the province's history in 2001. All one has to do is look at the November 2004 Auditor General's report on finances. The Auditor General, under the new rules set by this government…. And it tells you right there: it was the largest surplus in the history of this province. When you look at it, in 1991 we inherited the largest deficit from Social Credit, and it was almost $2 billion. So it was a huge turnaround of about $3.5 billion.
[ Page 352 ]

Then starting in May of 2001, of course, the Liberals got elected, and things started to change not for the better, but actually for the worse.

Before I start detailing that, I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you a story about the Trojan Horse. The Trojan Horse was a tale from the Trojan War, as told in Virgil's Latin epic poem, The Aeneid. The events in this story from the Bronze Age book took place after Homer's Iliad and before Homer's Odyssey. It was the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict.

In the best-known version, after a fruitless ten-year siege of Troy, the Greeks finally realized that they could not break down the walls of Troy and enter the city to destroy it. So the Greeks decided to figure out a way to enter the city by trickery and deception. They built a huge figure of a wooden horse in which a select force of men hid. They packed it as much as they could. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy.

Well, that night, the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates of Troy for the rest of the Greek army, the same army which had sailed back under the cover of night. The Greek army entered and destroyed the city.

A Trojan Horse has come to mean any trick that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or place. And in 2001 the people of British Columbia, like the people of Troy, were deceived and tricked by the B.C. Liberal Party. British Columbians unwittingly believed this Liberal Premier and the B.C. Liberal Party. They unwittingly believed them. They took the Premier at his word, thinking that the B.C. Liberals would actually be a gift to British Columbia, but that was not to be, because there, across the benches on the other side, sits the Trojan Horse.

The Liberal government is the Trojan Horse, and the inhabitants of the seats in the Trojan Horse are the Liberal caucus, which has opened the gates of British Columbia and allowed this great province of ours to be destroyed from within in the last eight years.

I tell you, hon. Speaker, the most detailed and most familiar version is in Virgil's Aeneid, Book 2. It has been translated by John Dryden that anybody wants to actually read up on. Also at the time, the priest, Laocoön — I hope I'm pronouncing that right — guessed the plot and actually tried to warn the people of Troy.

In that famous epic, there's a line, which is [Latin was spoken.] This is not my language. This is dated, and this is the way the language used to be used at the time. This meant: "Do not trust Greeks bearing gifts." But the goddess Athena sent two sea serpents to strangle him and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus before he could be believed.

[1630]

And then King Priam's daughter Cassandra, the soothsayer of Troy, insisted that the horse would be the downfall of the city and its royal family. But she, too, was ignored — hence, their doom and the loss of the war.

[H. Bloy in the chair.]

Like Laocoön, we the NDP have tried to warn British Columbians since 2001 about this modern-day Trojan Horse. "Beware of the B.C. Liberals bearing gifts," we warned. Unfortunately, like Athena, the Liberals' public affairs machinery, well-oiled with millions of dollars from their big corporate buddies and the Premier's own election gag law, has managed to strangle any opposing viewpoints.

How did this happen? How did this all come to be? Well, I've already mentioned that this is a government by deception or stealth or deceit. There are various other words that you can use. There are even a couple that are unparliamentary, which we can't actually mention in this House. I'm not going to do that, but you can imagine what they are.

You know, this Liberal government has perfected the art of saying one thing and actually doing another — or completely the opposite — like promising something before an election like, "We will not privatize the Coquihalla Highway," and then making an announcement to say that they were going to do it. Mind you, they backed off.

"No, we're not going to sell B.C. Rail." The Premier practically swore on a stack of Bibles, saying before the '96 and the 2001 election: "We will not sell B.C. Rail." But we know what happened there, hon. Speaker.

They also changed the freedom-of-information laws and made access to information, the public's own information, more difficult by changing — what is it? — almost six dozen areas of it.

I talked about B.C. Rail — trying to keep the information out of the hands of the public, the thousands of deleted e-mails. Who knows who did it? At least, nobody will cough up to it, but thousands of e-mails have been deleted. They've also perfected the art of withholding information, crucial information that could lose them elections, like what the welfare rolls are going to be in this province. They held that back in the middle of the election.

They have perfected the art of obfuscation or fabrication or making up facts, rewriting history. That's what they're really good at, so I speak against this Budget 2009. They've also perfected the art of blaming others. They never take responsibility for anything.

Deputy Speaker: Member, I'd like you to watch your wording in what you say and wrapped around many other words. And if we'd please show respect for everybody in the House, Member.

H. Lali: I shall. Thank you very much for the reminder, hon. Speaker.
[ Page 353 ]

They never take responsibility. Whenever anything good happens, they all stand up and shout from the rooftops that it happened because of them. But when something bad happens, even though they had their fingerprints all over it: "Oh no, it's not our fault. It's the workers' fault. It's the commodity prices' fault. It's somebody else's fault."

Interjection.

H. Lali: That's what they do. Then the hon. member across the way says it's my fault. He says it's my fault. I can't believe this. You know how they do this? You know the kind of wording that they use? They created this public affairs bureau. There was a time when the communications were done by ministries. Then the Premier decided that he was going to take all the communications people from all of the ministries, and he was going to attach them to his office — PAB as they're called, or pablum for joking's sake.

They're paid big bucks, all of these communications folks. They're paid really good bucks to come up with all sorts of fancy names, to make whatever they're doing a little less scary. They use words like "outsourcing" or "rationalizing" or "streamlining" or "regionalization," but we all know them to mean something completely different. We'll get to that in a minute, but the fact of the matter does remain. No one believes this Premier or the Liberals anymore.

Let's talk about the Trojan Horse for a minute. Who or what was on board the Trojan Horse that this Liberal government…? The Trojan Horse was brought in, into the gates of British Columbia. Firstly, this outsourcing, privatization. If they could get their hands on it, the Liberals privatized it. It didn't matter if it made any business sense or not, for a government that likes to pat itself on the back, saying: "We are business-minded; we're business-friendly."

[1635]

But you know, health care cuts were at the top of their agenda. The food services, the laundry, the janitorial and the seniors care — all of those were ruthlessly privatized without any kind of attention actually given to the needs of the people that would be affected.

Education is another one. They've cut hospitals in this province. They downsized almost every hospital, especially in rural B.C. They've closed well over 200 schools. I know that in the Kamloops school district alone, there's a report that says there's going to be possibly 13 schools that will be closed. One of them is in my riding in Logan Lake.

B.C. Hydro. The billings and the accounting aspect of it were privatized through Accenture. Then you've got this whole thing about IPPs. They like to call it a run of the river, but all it is, is just a giveaway to their corporate buddies.

B.C. Ferries. "Oh yeah, we're going to run it like a business." Well, they're running it into the ground, and they're finding out…. "Oh, we didn't know they were getting all sorts of huge salaries and payouts — the CEOs." For what — incentives? Incentives for running B.C. Ferries into the ground and raising ferry rates? What is it — more than double what it used to be?

MSP premiums — the administration thereof. Maximus has got it. Then their public-private partnerships don't look anything like what they looked like in the '90s. It's just a giveaway to their friends, and they're racking up debt like you wouldn't believe, along with the IPPs that they're giving away — $55 billion of new debt under this government just from that.

Secondly, I want to talk about regionalization. Actually, centralization is the better word for it. We know what's happened with health care. I'm glad the member for Kamloops–North Thompson is joining us right now.

Hon. K. Krueger: South.

H. Lali: South. I can be forgiven, you know. He would've got beat in Kamloops–North Thompson. He hightailed it as fast as he could to get over to the other side so he wouldn't be beat. That's what he did. He was afraid, and they would have kicked him out, like a soccer ball, really fast. But he hightailed it out of there. He did; he sure did. He ran like he was on fire. He hasn't said a word to stand up to these cuts that are being made, and he hasn't said a word about the millions and millions of dollars taken out of the Interior health region. As a matter of fact, he supports the Premier and the cabinet in all of that.

Thirdly, the huge corporate tax cuts that they've given. All the people that are making over $150,000 a year — thank you very much. The B.C. Liberals are looking after them really well. All of those CEOs making millions and all those big corporations that are making profits hand over fist but sending it all outside of B.C. and shipping it off as dividends to the shareholders — thank you very much to the Liberals.

When they first got into office, there was over a billion dollars in tax cuts to corporations. It now totals around $2 billion with the carbon tax credits that they're getting and all of the other stuff that they're just shovelling from the back of a pickup. That's what's happening.

Fourthly, there are the corporate giveaways. We have the hon. member from mid-Island who was speaking before me. He was talking about forestry, how proud he is. Seventy sawmills and pulp mills closed under this Liberal government, which after eight years still doesn't have a forest policy — 35,000 forestry workers, permanent jobs, family-supporting jobs lost. These guys are supposed to be proud of that? That was a part of all their corporate giveaways, not to mention the softwood sellout as well.
[ Page 354 ]

On the eve of a victory in the international courts, this Premier cut a secret deal with Prime Minister Harper, and he sold British Columbia out. And forestry workers in this province…. He sold them out when we were about to win. That's what they did to forestry. They have wholesale abandoned rural towns and families all across this province. They ought to be ashamed over their record.

You know, they only want to look after the rich, but when it comes to the poor or the working poor and the middle class, there are cuts waiting for them.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member.

H. Lali: The fifth point I want to make is the massive tax increases that….

Deputy Speaker: Member, Member.

Would all members please allow the member who has the floor to be able to make his presentation. And can I remind all members that tone of the presentation is as much as anything in respect for this House.

Please continue, Member.

H. Lali: Thank you, hon. Speaker, for quieting down the opposition over on the other side.

[1640]

Fifthly, there were massive increases of taxes for families, right from day one. Hydro rates have doubled since the Liberal government has taken office in 2001. They were the lowest in the country, and now they're the highest. The gas bills and the home heating fuel — those bills are also skyrocketing under these Liberals.

ICBC rates for drivers have gone up 50 percent since the Liberals have taken office. Meanwhile, education programs have been cut. CEOs and those folks in there who are making good money are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives, but those are not passed off as reductions in the premiums for ICBC vehicle owners — 750 fees and licence increases. And they increase them every year.

Tuition fees went from the lowest in the country to the highest. In some institutions they've increased up to 400 percent under this Liberal government.

We've already talked about B.C. ferry rates. They've more than doubled since they've taken office, and they're running B.C. Ferries into the ground.

Sixthly, they made their cuts to services. I've talked about health already. I've talked about education. While we built 196 new schools in the 1990s — that was a new school being built every 17 days — well, the Liberals have done better than that. They've closed over 200 schools. That's one school closing every 14 days under this Liberal government. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Social services, children and families — they've all had cuts.

Agriculture and ranching. It's the lowest amount of support of any province per GDP in the country under this Liberal government. Their traditional friends in the ranching community are abandoning them by the dozens and dozens in every community, because they've given up on them. Just as the Liberals have given up on agriculture and ranching, ranchers and agrifarmers are giving up on the Liberals.

We've already talked about forestry. In the Merritt timber supply area we had 109 people who used to look after our forests. They worked out of the forestry department under the government in 2001. Right now in that TSA there are just a touch over 40 people. That's it. The stewards of our forests. And this is the government that did it.

Environment. For all the pronouncements of the Liberals' green plan and the Premier saying he was going to have the best targets for greenhouse gas reduction, well, look what he's doing, hon. Speaker. Environment has been cut by 20 percent compared to the February 2009 budget. Where is their commitment to the greening of our environment?

Tourism. They've abandoned their friends in tourism. Tourism B.C. has been cut. It's down to about $10.9 million. It's a huge cut from what it used to be.

Seventhly, we're talking about who are the players that were in the Trojan Horse that they've let loose inside to destroy British Columbia. It's pay the piper. The member before me who was speaking, the Liberal member, said something about paying the piper. Well, he should know, and this Liberal caucus should know, because he who pays the piper calls the tunes.

Under this Liberal government every interest group or corporate group that has funded elections of those individuals on the other side of the House has come back to get their just reward from them. So policy in this province is no longer written in rooms like this or in committee rooms. It's written in the boardrooms of the corporate world of this province. That's what's happening under the Liberals. It's the donators to the Liberal Party who dictate policy here in this House. You can look at it.

You know, they wanted to bring dirty coal-fired plants into this province. We find out that $700,000 was given to the Liberal Party by the coal industry. They wanted to privatize liquor stores, and they have — hundreds of them all over the province. We find out that over a million dollars has gone into the bank accounts of the B.C. Liberal Party. They pay the Liberal Party, and they write the policy on their behalf and bring it here into this House. That's what's inside the Trojan Horse. That's the Liberal record.

[1645]

We see these Liberals, one after the other like walruses, getting up and saying they're proud of this budget. They're
[ Page 355 ]
proud of their record. I'll tell you what they're proud of. They like to say: oh yeah, they made B.C. the best place on earth.

Here's their B.C. [Applause.] He won't be clapping after he hears this.

Under a B.C. Liberal government, we have the highest rate of homelessness in this province. It has tripled since the B.C. Liberals took office. In this province we have the highest child poverty rate in the entire country, and we've led the entire country for six years in a row. Is that what that member is proud of?

We now have the lowest minimum wage in the country, now that New Brunswick has raised it. Is that what the member is proud of? I don't hear them clapping now.

We have the worst record of full-time job losses in the last year, almost 100,000 jobs lost right here in this province under the noses of this Liberal government. Is that what that member was clapping about a little earlier? Is that what he's proud of?

We now have the second-highest unemployment rate in the country, after Alberta. When these people took office in 2001, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. It is over 9 percent right now, and they ought to be ashamed about that. Is that what they're proud of? I don't hear them clapping now.

The tuition fees in this province are now the highest in the country. They went from the lowest to the highest under these guys. Is that what they're proud of? I don't hear them clapping now. They also have the second-lowest funding for K-to-12 education, after it was the highest in the country when we were in office and left in 2001.

There are cuts to aboriginal education, ESL classes, special needs. Hospitals closed by this government. Record numbers of schools closed. Forestry is in shambles, and I've talked about the 35,000 jobs that have been lost under the Liberals. Agriculture is being abandoned. Is that what they're proud of? I don't see them clapping now. Is that what they're proud of?

Transportation infrastructure. If you drive through rural B.C., with the exception of three or four pet projects that they have put in place — and some of those had funding coming from the federal government…. Those roads of ours that were first-class roads in 2001 are now turning into goat trails. Is that what they're proud of? I don't think so. They have abandoned rural B.C. Every region of the province has been abandoned.

Then you look at it with the Liberals, and what has been the result? You know, it's incompetence.

Vancouver Convention Centre. It's $500 million over budget. Port Mann bridge. They said it was going to cost $1.3 billion. It's $500 million over budget. Port Mann bridge was supposed to be $1.3 billion. Then it was $2.3 billion. Now it's going to cost us $3.3 billion.

Golden Ears Bridge was supposed to come in at $800 million — $1.6 billion. Sea to Sky Highway is the same thing. Over and over again, all we get is massive deficit and a massive debt under this government.

J. Slater: After that, it's a tough act to follow. I'm afraid I'm going to put everybody to sleep. I, too, had the Trojan Horse in my speech, but I'll take it out. Mine arrived in the '90s, so I don't know what he's talking about.

Anyway, thank you for the opportunity to speak to the budget and present my riding, the new Boundary-Similkameen. The Boundary-Similkameen consists of over 18 communities, all of them under 5,000 in population. But before I talk about the riding, I'd like to do some thanks, since this is my inaugural speech.

I'd like to thank my family and the many people who supported and helped me through the campaign to ensure that I would be standing here before you today. My campaign team consisted of supporters from every part of the riding: Walter Despot covering Keremeos, Olalla, Twin Lake; Duncan Baynes from Cawston; Tom and Lisa Styffe from Kaleden; Bob Thurston and Bruce Volden from Okanagan Falls; Bill Ross, Ron and Tara Hovanes and Linda Larson from Oliver; George Delisle covering Rock Creek, Westbridge, Beaverdell and Carmi; Michael J. Ballingall from Big White.

[1650]

I can take claim to having the highest campaign signs in B.C. They were at the top of the mountain as you came off the lift. As one of the opposition told me this morning, Big White is in Kelowna, but it's actually in Boundary-Similkameen.

Midge and Barry Brandow and Garfield Marshall covering Grand Forks, Midway and Greenwood; Roland Krueger from Christina Lake; Lockie Miles; Ashraf Dhanani; Allan and Carroll Taylor; Derek Noske; Mike and Donna Mortimer; Terry Yusep; Carol Youngberg; Ron Leigh; and Zach Poturica, who's a young B.C. Liberal from Osoyoos. I'd also like to thank Roop Smagh and Jesse Sandhu and the Indo-Canadian community of the Boundary-Similkameen.

I would especially like to thank Rick Thorpe. Without his guidance and support through the campaign, I know I wouldn't have got through. And of course, my CA, Diana Thomas, for holding my feet to the fire.

The Boundary-Similkameen is a very diverse and large riding. As diverse as it is, we all have the same goal: to make it the best place to live, work and play during good and difficult times.

Our riding has suffered some major setbacks, with the closure of the Interfor mill in Midway, the cutbacks in Grand Forks, the closure of the Weyerhaeuser mill in Okanagan Falls. These closures have put many men and women out of work, some moving to other parts of the province to find jobs.

When major issues like this happen, it forces you to look outside the box for solutions. If the market is not there for regular 2-by-4 construction material,
[ Page 356 ]
then there is a need to look further to value-added products.

The Boundary Woodlot Association is doing just that. Their plan is to secure more tenure, which will then give them the ability to provide the larger product for value-added wood products that could be produced at these closed mills. This would create employment in British Columbia and assist us in becoming the leader in creating jobs.

As everything takes time during this transition period, the province, along with the federal government, will be investing $5.2 million into skill training that will offer those individuals affected by these closures the opportunity to acquire the skills they need for transition back into the labour force or further education.

The agriculture sector dominates the economy from tree fruit to vineyards, to ground crops, to growing hay and alfalfa. In the Cawston area there are a large number of growers who have dedicated their operations to organic farming, and their products are packed locally at the Cawston Cold Storage facility. In 2008 they put over 5,200 bins into storage and grossed over $10 million in sales. They are growing in size so fast that they are considering building their own cold storage facility.

There are several commercial greenhouse operations within the riding that make up a good portion of the value of the vegetable crops. These facilities have created many full-time jobs.

The wine industry has grown substantially over the past decade. We have had a lot of orchards convert over to vineyards to meet the demanding market for product. Just in the Oliver-Osoyoos area alone we have over 33 wineries, with growing numbers in the Similkameen Valley and vineyards expanding in the Boundary area.

Some of the wineries have taken their business one step further and created restaurants and accommodations to meet the needs of their clients. Visitors travel from all over the country and all over the world to experience and enjoy the many wine tours.

We have some top wines in the world right here, and we also have the only aboriginally owned winery in North America, Nk'Mip Cellars, which is located on the Osoyoos Indian Band lands. They have been selected as one of the wineries that will be a supplier to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Ranching is a large presence in every part of our riding. In Okanagan Falls they have the cattle auctions, which take place throughout the year. During the campaign I had the opportunity to visit one of the auctions.

In Oliver there is a Southern Plus Feedlot owned by Bill Frieding, who has recently been appointed to the new Ranching Task Force that was created by the province and is headed up by the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson.

[1655]

What is great about the agriculture and ranching communities is that the tradition of holding fairs and rodeos is still very popular. As the member for Nelson-Creston said earlier today, there are fairs all throughout the Interior. Every May long weekend, Keremeos is host to the Keremeos Elks Rodeo. Next year will be their 72nd year. This past weekend I also had the privilege to be at the opening ceremonies for the Grand Forks Fall Fair. Next year will be their 100th anniversary.

This coming weekend, September 19 and 20, I again will have the privilege of being part of the opening ceremonies at the Rock Creek fall fair, which is one of the last true country fairs. It is referred to as the biggest little country fair around.

These rural community events mark the true meaning of community and family. It gives the opportunity for the ranchers, the farmers and the foresters to show and compete for the famous blue ribbon.

Not only does this region have all these attributes, but it is a highly sought-after recreation area. We have 11 golf courses and four ski hills — Big White, Apex, Mount Baldy and Phoenix. We also have four curling clubs and four arenas for figure skating and hockey, not to mention the outdoor ball and soccer fields, rivers, lakes and, of course, hike and bike trails.

During all times of the year there are many tournaments for competitions held throughout the riding. Some of the notable ones are the annual Grand Forks International Baseball Tournament which is held every year at the end of August. This tournament has become very famous, as it's a starting point for a lot of major league baseball players — the likes of Jason Bay, who plays for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Keith Faulky, who plays for the Boston Red Sox and, of course, John Olerud and Larry Walker, who have both achieved the exclusive 2,000 hit club in their major-league careers.

The annual Atom Fiesta hockey tournament has been held in Osoyoos for over 30 years. The likes of Chuck Kobasew from the Boston Bruins, Neil Eisenhut, Scott and Rob Niedermayer and Adam Deadmarsh played in this tournament at the very beginning of their careers.

To promote and encourage our residents on the ActNow B.C. program of healthy living, more funds have been invested into trail development. The regional district of Okanagan-Similkameen plans to connect communities along the old CPR and KVR rights-of-way through a trail network. The city of Grand Forks has received $1.4 million to construct six kilometres of pathways and bike lanes throughout the city.

Coming up in January 2010 is the rail dog sled trail race 200. This will mark the Rail Trail 200 as it celebrates the legacy of steam and grit with a competition that honours an even more elemental means of locomotion, the traditions of the Canadian north combined with the spirit of the boundary. Continuing to introduce, build and promote trails throughout the riding will assist in making British Columbia a model for healthy living and physical fitness.
[ Page 357 ]

I'm very pleased that I have been appointed the Parliamentary Secretary for Water Supply and Allocation. Water supply is the most important limiting factor for growth in many areas of British Columbia. Whether it is growth in agriculture, business, industry or human settlement, the government is working diligently on this issue.

An example is the Okanagan Basin water supply and demand study. This study will determine how much water we have, how much we're using and how much we're going to need in the future. As part of the budget, the province is working with the local governments to produce this study.

When this study is completed, it will be a model that will be able to be used in other jurisdictions in the province. The environment of the Boundary-Similkameen is very special, as we are the only true desert in Canada with very unique and endangered flora and fauna. The Osoyoos Desert Society, through education, research and public awareness, is committed to conserving this unique desert environment for future generations. We are very pleased to receive their second-year grant funding through the B.C. gaming grants in the amount of $45,000 per year.

[1700]

The Nk'Mip Desert Cultural Centre located at the Osoyoos Indian band lands is a state-of-the-art interpretative centre and is an architectural marvel, sensitively constructed into a hillside. The centre was made possible through partnerships of aboriginal business Canada, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Western Economic Diversification Canada, Heritage Canada, Osoyoos Indian band and the province of B.C.

The official opening was held in 2006. Extensive indoor and outdoor exhibit galleries create a fun, interactive learning environment with hands-on displays, education stations and two multimedia theatre experiences. Discover the fascinating stories and share in the rich, living culture of the Okanagan people.

Another unique site — and I've been told there are only two of these in the whole world — is Spotted Lake, which is located between Cawston and Osoyoos. The lake is comprised of minerals and salts which, depending on the water level, show spots on the lake. The first nations and local residents in the early years used to lie in the mud, as it was known to be healing. If you look closely enough at the spots, you will see one that is heart-shaped.

In the near future I will be working with interested parties in discussions around proposed wildlife management areas and future park areas in the riding in identifying use while outlining the protected areas. By continuing to have open discussions involving all users and decision-makers we will lead the world in sustainable environmental management.

The opportunities are endless in the tourism sector. We have large companies and small businesses that have started up to fill the needs of our visitors. Agritourism has grown substantially over the years, from individual orchards offering U-picks to wine tours to the many fruit stands throughout the area — especially in Keremeos, which is known for all the fruit stands that line the highway coming in and out of town.

Every community has their historical backgrounds and their stories to tell through their local museums. Some sites have taken their project to the next step to make it a destination. The Mascot mine and the Snaza'ist Centre, an interpretative centre located in Hedley, have done just that. Hedley, in its heyday, was the hub of the Similkameen Valley, as it had the Mascot goldmine. When the mine closed down, the people left, and today there is a population of 400. In partnership with the Upper Similkameen band and the province, funds were available to refurbish parts of the mine and to rebuild the 500 steps leading down to the site.

To complement the Mascot mine, the interpretative Snaza'ist Centre was opened in 2004. To further develop the centre into where the community can come together to watch and share the experience of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Snaza'ist Centre received $250,000 from the Olympic Live Sites program. I had the honour of presenting the final cheque and toured the facility in August.

In 1877 the Keremeos Grist Mill, in its day, benefited the locals, as they no longer had to travel 170 miles to Colville, Washington, to pick up their flour. Today it is a historic site that is open to the public, and through the year it hosts many special events. Other notable historic sites in Keremeos are the Keremeos Columns and the Red Bridge. The Red Bridge is one of the few remaining covered bridges in North America.

Greenwood is not only the smallest city in Canada but also a great Canadian tourist attraction. This city has an amazing compilation of attractions, ranging from historical sites to the sheer natural beauty of British Columbia. The historical city hall was featured in the movie Snow Falling on Cedars, starring Ethan Hawke.

The Boundary-Similkameen benefited greatly from the film industry. Over the years there have been various commercials and movies filmed in the area, such as series 8 and 9 of Battlestar Galactica and the second-last episode of Stargate Atlantis. I visited, this summer, the site of a movie that will be released this fall that was shot in the Similkameen and had a large economic impact on the South Okanagan and the Similkameen Valley.

Grand Forks's history is closely tied to the mining and railway boom of the 1890s and early 1900s. The original settlers came for a rich farmland and stayed as the industrial area took over, including three railroads, mines, smelters, power plants. The slag piles, remnants of the days of the smelter, can still be seen just a short distance from town.

[1705]
[ Page 358 ]

Currently a local developer is looking at using the slag as a resource product for producing countertops for home construction. This would be a great revenue generator for the community.

The community of Kaleden celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. To commemorate this event they were able to do some upgrades to their Pioneer Park. They received funds to purchase over 600 trees from the Trees for Tomorrow program. They also received funds from the tourism funding grant to construct the Kaleden kiosk, showing the maps of the KVR Trail.

Capitalizing on being the gateway to British Columbia and Canada, the province built a $2 million B.C. visitor centre at Osoyoos, which is one of six in the province located at the crossroads of two major highways, Highway 3 and Highway 97. Osoyoos is a very popular tourist destination and was designated as a resort municipality in 2007, enabling them to access funds for tourism infrastructure.

Over the next three years health care will receive the largest share of funding increases in government spending. By 2011-12 the Ministry of Health Services budget will increase by 18 percent, reaching a total of $15.7 million. These funds can assist greatly in programs and facilities like the Crossing at Keremeos.

The Crossing at Keremeos is the first project of its kind in British Columbia. It is a 42-bed addiction facility that will provide long-term residential treatment for youth that have experienced drug and alcohol addiction. This program is geared for young adults between the ages of 14 and 24.

The facility opened its doors in July, and I was honoured to be present at the official opening, on behalf of the province. The centre is a result of collaboration between the Ministry of Health Services, Fraser Health, Interior Health, Vancouver Coastal Health and community organizations like the Central City Foundation, Grief to Action and the program operator, which is Portage Program for Drug Dependencies. Now youth can stay here in B.C. and learn to live without drugs and alcohol.

Studies show that very soon one in four British Columbians will be over the age of 65. With this size of demographic shift, we need to ensure that we have the facilities and programs in place to take care of them. One such facility, a P3 project, is Mariposa Gardens. It's an assisted-living, long-term care facility located in Osoyoos. It opened up in 2008. It's part of the 5,000 beds that the Liberal government has put in.

These added 70 new beds were very needed in the area. These types of facilities are extremely important in rural communities, as they allow the aging parents or partners to still live in the same communities as their families and friends.

The province is ensuring that British Columbia is the best-educated, most literate place in North America. This year the adult literacy program is expected to assist over 7,000 adults with an investment of $2.4 million into the program.

The K-to-12 budget protects the core K-to-12 education by maintaining per-pupil funding at over $8,200. A project like the Southern Okanagan Secondary School was granted $23 million for upgrades, which was one of 480 projects worth $3.4 billion. Projects of this nature will create many needed jobs in the Boundary-Similkameen.

In closing, I would just like to quote Wayne Gretzky. He said: "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." That is what we are doing. Through these tough economic times, we are focusing on where we want to be and doing what we've had to do, which is making very tough decisions.

We need to focus on spending our dollars wisely, as you would in your own household. We want to ensure that our children and grandchildren will not be paying our debt. This B.C. government has a record of sound fiscal management, and that's what will get us through these tough times.

[1710]

Deputy Speaker: Member for Burnaby-Douglas.

R. Chouhan: Mr. Speaker, I think I'll stay in Burnaby-Edmonds, thank you very much. I also want to congratulate you on your appointment, and it's good to see you in the Chair.

It's a great honour to stand here again to speak in the House and have this opportunity to speak about this budget, which I'll be opposing. I'll provide the reasons later on.

Before I do that, I want to thank the voters of Burnaby-Edmonds for their trust and their support in re-electing me a second time on May 12 this year. Hundreds of volunteers and supporters came and worked on the campaign. They spent I don't know how many hours every day. I really want to say thank-you from the bottom of my heart — and to my family: my wife Inder Chouhan; our daughters, Anu Chouhan and Amrita Sanford; our son-in-law Jamie Sanford; and our granddaughter Chloe.

During the campaign — I'm sure all the members had wonderful staff — my staff was extraordinary. Cherene Groundwater, Cate Jones, Noreen Boudreau, Paul McDonnell, Orion Irvine, Diane Irvine, Michelle Boudreau, Stefan Barrette, Laarni de los Reyes, George Doering, Bob Ages, Katrina Chen and many, many more were there day in and day out, working hard to make sure I got re-elected. With their support I was able to win and increase my margin — actually tripled — in comparison to 2005.

It's a great privilege to represent Burnaby-Edmonds. I'm blessed, like thousands of other people who choose to live in Burnaby. Burnaby is a very diverse community. As you know, we have over a hundred different languages spoken in Burnaby. People from all parts of the world come and choose to live there. They find the support network that they need when they try to settle into a new country. All the community helps each other, and they made us proud.
[ Page 359 ]

Mr. Speaker, as you very well know, Maclean's magazine has declared Burnaby as the best-run city in Canada. Congratulations to the mayor, the councillors, the staff and all the citizens of Burnaby for their efforts to keep Burnaby greener and beautiful.

Interjection.

R. Chouhan: Yes, he is. Derek Corrigan is an NDPer.

Mr. Speaker, I'm sure you will be equally proud as I am that from July 31 to August 9 Burnaby hosted the largest-ever World Police and Fire Games, and 10,577 athletes from 56 different countries participated in those games. I want to congratulate and thank all the organizers and volunteers for having the wonderful games, which brought so much enthusiasm and activities to Burnaby. Business, all the hotels, the restaurants — everybody was so happy to see all those people coming from different parts of the world to participate in those games.

During the summer, while the B.C. Liberals were lying on the beaches and enjoying their summer, I as Labour critic, along with my colleagues on this side, went around and met with different groups from different communities to find out about their issues and concerns.

[1715]

What did they tell us and tell me? That they were so frustrated and fed up with the betrayal that they had seen on May 12. Many people who are not NDP types that I met with believed that the Liberals will do a good job if they re-elect them, and they supported them. But what they found out after May 12 was not true — what they were told before the election.

When we are on the sea and the foghorn goes, it's to alert people for their safety. I think when the Liberal foghorn goes, it is to tell you that there is a speeding train coming and that destruction is going to be all over the place.

Like everywhere else in British Columbia, we have our share of poverty in Burnaby-Edmonds — child poverty, lack of housing, the lowest minimum wage and all those challenges that our people face. They're frustrated with it.

We have a large population of seniors in Burnaby-Edmonds. Those seniors have worked all their life to make our city, our province, our country a wonderful place, and now when the time has come for them to enjoy their life, their retirement, they expect from this government, from society, that we will take care of them. In fact, what they have seen in return is that they're totally feeling neglected.

Many of the programs that we had in place before this election, which were very helpful to the seniors, have lost their funding, are losing funding. The seniors wellness program in Burnaby used to receive $35,000 every year to help those seniors. All the retired medical doctors would meet with those seniors to provide guidance and, you know, do all kind of preventative checkups on those seniors to help them. They were told that that funding will no longer continue.

After the pressure from the community Fraser Health finally decided to give them not $35,000 but $30,000. It's not on a permanent basis; it's temporary. That's just one example.

Burnaby-Edmonds, as I have mentioned, has a very high ethnic diversity. We have a high immigrant population. Those people, when they are invited to Canada, expect that the government of the province will help them to settle. They need those programs, but in fact, what they have seen is that they are struggling to find programs, to get training in ESL. Housing and all those basic fundamental things that anybody would need are not there.

Instead of providing help to these people, the B.C. Liberals are showering the British Columbians with cuts to everything, making their lives more difficult.

Interjection.

R. Chouhan: Well, definitely not the same as the Liberals have done. You know, we would tell them the truth.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Members, please direct all your comments through the Chair.

Thank you, Member. Please continue.

R. Chouhan: Yes, we promise that we will tell the truth. We will not betray the voters like the B.C. Liberals have done. We will not cut funding to much-needed social programs, as the Liberals have done. We will take care of seniors health. We will take care of education for children and university students, unlike the Liberals.

[1720]

You know, when you don't have affordable child care, what does that mean? It means that one parent has to stay home with the child. It means less income for the family. It means more poverty.

The Liberals have shown that they have not considered the long-term benefits of these programs. All they cared about was to make sure that their budget looks less — you know, with less amount of deficit and all that — because they wanted to win the election by hook and by crook. They just wanted to win the election, that's all.

Let's talk about health care, how it's affecting others and British Columbians in the way that we have seen. The B.C. Liberals claimed that they would protect critical health services, but the fact is that the B.C. Liberals are cutting thousands of medically necessary surgeries and
[ Page 360 ]
reducing access to MRIs and other diagnostic services. British Columbians who did not vote for cuts to health care will suffer in pain longer as a result.

Collectively, the B.C. health authorities are facing shortfalls of $360 million. So what does that mean? It means longer waiting lists, longer waiting time in the emergency rooms. People will be left suffering with pain. Those who need hip surgeries and other surgeries have to wait even longer.

The Fraser Health Authority alone has a $160 million shortfall and has been forced to downgrade its Mission Memorial emergency ward to an urgent care centre, to cut seniors day programs by 25 percent, to reduce outpatient clinics by 20 percent, to cut vital counselling and treatment programs for victims of abuse and addiction and to cut medically necessary surgeries by 10 percent. That's a shameful record. The B.C. Liberals should be ashamed of what they have done.

It's not only the ordinary people talking about effect, the negative impact of these cuts in health care, but even the doctors are talking about it.

Let me read you one portion of the e-mail that I received from Dr. Baldev Sanghera in Burnaby. He sent me an e-mail. It reads:

"It was great to meet with you last week. I have been getting a lot of feedback from patients regarding how they feel about the pending cuts to front-line services in FHA, the Fraser Health Authority. Some cuts just feel petty, like cutting the counselling services for people with addictions and mental health issues. Short-term savings will cause long-term problems that we as a society will pay for in the long term."

These are the doctors who are talking about it.

Then the people who have experienced the negative impact of these cuts. Let me read another e-mail that I received from my constituent.

"My husband has been waiting for surgery since May 7, 2009, to repair his soup-bowl-sized hernia. He was told that the wait time at that time was four to six weeks. His surgery date was yesterday, August 27, 2009.

"We showed up at St. Paul's Hospital at 9:15 a.m. He was medicated, prepped; the surgeon's plan of action was inked on his stomach; and he was put to bed for four hours. After 2 p.m. he was told that the surgery was cancelled due to an emergency.

"Now his next date in September is September 30, 2009. His surgeon's receptionist says that all the other days in September are taken up with cancer patients."

These are some of the examples people are experiencing because of these cuts in health care.

My constituent, Liz Efting, when she called their family doctor about this, that they had to come back home from the hospital…. This is what the second e-mail reads.

[1725]

"We left a message on Thursday for our family doctor to let him know what happened at St. Paul's Hospital. The doctor, who has been my husband's doctor since 1974, called back on Friday and said for Arnold to come in and see him. He took a look at the hernia and told Arnold to get to VGH emergency as soon as possible. He would call ahead and let them know Arnold was coming in.

"So our son drove me downtown from South Burnaby. Our daughter took time off work and met her dad shortly after he arrived at the VGH. We all arrived at about 4 p.m., and we sat and sat and sat and sat. At 10:30 we were told to go home — 6½ hours later — because the wait time for emergency surgery was several days. He would not get a bed. He would have to wait in the waiting room for these several days, so we came home."

These are some of the examples that my constituents are experiencing because of these cuts to the health care.

If that's not enough, Fraser Health has now sent a memorandum, which is dated August 27, 2009, to all the physicians in that area advising them that imaging administration "…is writing to advise you that ultrasound services at Surrey Memorial Hospital are experiencing severe operational challenges in accommodating the increased volume of elective out-patient requests for ultrasound services. During these challenging times we would ask you to consider redirecting your ultrasound referrals to one of the other Fraser Health imaging departments."

With those kinds of services not available, it would cause more pain and suffering for these people who need, urgently, attention at these hospitals. And their doctors are feeling helpless that they cannot help these people.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Madam Speaker, welcome. Congratulations on your appointment.

Before the election the Liberals made all kind of promises, and they knew they were not going to keep them. Of course, if you bury your head in the sand, you know, you won't see them. But the reality is, and everybody knows in British Columbia, that the Liberals are really good at breaking promises. They deceived British Columbians.

As I mentioned earlier, they wanted to win the election, no matter how they did it. They wanted to do it. They made all the promises in the world.

Now, the same goes for education, what they have done there. Let me read it to you. "School boards across B.C. are facing severe budget shortfalls. Vancouver is facing a $7 million shortfall, Surrey a $9.5 million shortfall and Prince George a $2 million shortfall." These are just some of the shortfalls that I have listed here. Kamloops school board is considering a proposal to close 11 schools in order to close its $4.3 million funding gap.

Interjection.

R. Chouhan: Yeah, right, make all the excuses. Liberals are so good at making excuses, and that's what we are hearing from this member.

Student aid funding is being cut across B.C. by approximately $16 million. The following programs are being cancelled: the permanent disability benefit program, the debt reduction in repayment program, the B.C. loan reduction for residential care aide and home support worker program, nurses education bursary, health care bursary, early childhood educator loan assistance
[ Page 361 ]
program and the Premier's Excellence Awards program. These are just a few of the cuts that we have seen in the education area.

[1730]

In addition to all the cuts announced recently, the Liberals also continue to break their own class-size requirements with more than 11,000 classrooms overcrowded. So rather than working with teachers to find solutions, the Liberals have decided to have just across-the-board cuts and ignore the teachers' suggestions that they have made. It's just not going to work, what they are doing.

And what about the mother of all promises? Before the election, the Liberals said there would be no HST. It was not on the radar. What a crock of blah, blah, blah. So let me read you this.

"As we know, on July 23 the B.C. Liberal government pulled an about-face and announced it will be merging the PST with the GST. By doing so, they're going to hurt every single individual living in British Columbia. It will cost families more. Many of the items previously exempt from PST will no longer be exempted.

"The B.C. Liberal government says that the HST will lower prices and will increase investment. They claim this is what happened in the Maritimes. Both of these claims are incorrect. In the Maritimes, where the HST has already been introduced, prices on vital commodities such as housing and clothing have gone up, and any change in investment was temporary. As we have seen, the HST will particularly hurt service-based businesses like restaurants, which provide the vast majority of jobs in B.C."

The HST, as everybody now knows, is a $1.9 billion tax shift from the big businesses to consumers. On average, every British Columbian will pay an estimated $430 more sales tax per year. Over 60,000 people have already signed a petition against the HST. I have yet to meet with anyone who supports this tax grab. I have been doing door-knocking in my constituency. I have been meeting with people. Each and every person that I met with expressed their anger and disgust with the way it was done by the Liberal government.

Again, let me read from Dr. Sanghera's e-mail that he sent me, just telling me how the HST will affect medical services. In his e-mail, he says — he's talking about his patients:

"They're also upset about the proposed HST. If the public had known about this prior to the election, then I think the NDP would have won the election with a landslide.

"Please keep this issue to the forefront because it is even affecting our ability to recruit family physicians. The new candidates are seeing an increase in overhead coming in the form of increased tax on management fees, lease rent and supplies.

"Other businesses will be able to pass the extra cost on to the consumer or receive input tax credit, but we physicians are not able to do either. We cannot charge our patients tax on services we provide or charge extra for services covered under MSP. This, in turn, means that we can't claim input tax credits for tax paid by us.

"A lot of new graduates are opting to go to Alberta where they will not have to pay these taxes. Burnaby-Edmonds is an underserved area medically. We need to be able to recruit more easily. This just holds us back."

This is a doctor talking.

[1735]

On September 9 last week I organized a town hall meeting in Burnaby-Edmonds. More than 200 people came there. Many of those who came were not card-carrying members of the NDP party. They were seniors. They were women. They were single mothers. They all expressed their anger and disgust in how they were betrayed by this government.

Those people who came there were signing the petition. Not only did they sign it there; they took those petitions with them. They promised they will be going door to door in their neighbourhood to get those signatures on the petitions, because they want to send that message out — to create that awareness, to talk with their friends and neighbours so they can share their disgust, their anger, with other people.

Also this budget, when it was tabled…. Actually, before the election we were told that the budget deficit will not be more than $495 million — not a penny more. That's what we were told. We heard it time and time again.

Now we have $3.6 billion, many times more than was announced before the election. It is the biggest deficit in the history of British Columbia. If the HST was not enough, the government has now announced an increase in the MSP of 6 percent. It's attached, I guess, to the cost of providing health care. That means that every year it would be increased by many more percentages.

We have also seen cuts in other areas, like housing and social development. Funding for Vancouver's WISH society service for sex trade workers will not be renewed — a huge loss to the vulnerable women working on the DTES. The loan program for owners of leaky condos has been scrapped. So the list goes on and on and on.

Then how about forestry and others? For example, funding for B.C. Parks has been cut by $24 million, reducing access to 60 of B.C.'s provincial camping grounds. The Ministry of Environment's total budget will be cut by 11 percent over three years, resulting in a loss of 20 to 40 jobs this year alone.

The Ministry of Forests' total budget will be cut by 12 percent this year, resulting in a loss of 234 jobs. This is in addition to thousands and thousands of jobs that the forestry workers have lost already and, I guess, over 70 mills closed permanently. There's no help promised in the budget at all.

Madam Speaker, what about the workers? In the budget, people were hoping that the minimum wage would be increased. In fact, what we have seen now is that British Columbia has the lowest minimum wage in Canada. We have seen also in the throne speech and in the budget that no new funding will be available for public sector wage increases.

It says, I guess, in the throne speech that rising public sector wage and benefit costs only put more pressure on the government to find savings through layoffs and other workforce reductions. We're asking all the public sector workers to work more, but we are promising that we are going to pay you less.

[1740]
[ Page 362 ]

Before I was elected in 2005, I came from the Hospital Employees Union, where I worked for 18 years as director of….

Deputy Speaker: Thank you, Member.

R. Chouhan: It's already done? Thank you very much.

Hon. R. Coleman: Since, other than question period, it's my first opportunity to rise and speak in the House, I have a couple of things I'd like to say, not related to the budget but related to our time in this House.

I particularly rise in this House mourning the loss of my friend Stan Hagen, who was a great colleague in this House with me for many years, and a mentor. This is the first opportunity since the election that I've been able to send out my thoughts and prayers to his family on the loss of Stan.

I also look back on some pretty good friends that we've had in this House over the years, like my friend Rick Thorpe, who was a minister from the Okanagan and a member representing Penticton from 1996 until the election. Rick and I arrived here at the same time. I had some nicknames for him that I won't share with the House, some because they are nicknames that may not be repeated in this House.

He is my golfing partner in an annual little competition we have with a couple of other members of the House, and I understand he's working on his game so that we will be able to regain our trophy that we lost last year, substantially, to the other two members of the House who played us.

Claude Richmond was here for a number of years. Ironically, I met Claude for the first time back when I was in the private sector. I was over here because there was a Kinsmen organization in my community that actually wanted to do a social housing project. Claude was the minister at the time, and my friend Dan Peterson was the party Whip. Don't ever underestimate the strength or power of the party Whip, who gets you into an appointment with the minister.

I was able to meet with Claude and explain to him why we thought it was important that that project would come to a community of mine in Aldergrove — for 50 units of social housing for families. That project was built for the cost of $5 million in 1991 or '92 and has served the families in Aldergrove well since, because of the contribution that Claude made when he was the minister. Of course, I also miss his wit. He was one of the funniest men I've ever known and one of the greatest little trumpet players you'll ever see. We miss him too.

Dan Jarvis was here from 1991 to this last election. I used to call him Grandpa or Dad. He was sort of like that kind of figure within our caucus — a friend, and someone who would always have that piece of integrity that we all need, to remind ourselves from time to time of why we're here as hon. members in this House, why we don't get personal and why we actually get on with business.

John Nuraney — who was not successful in the last election — and I became good friends from 2001 to the election. John was a man of great integrity and still is, and I miss him in this House.

Of course, I can never think of being in this House from 1996 to today without thinking about Sindi Hawkins and the battle that she's gone through for a number of years and of how important it is that we keep her in our thoughts and prayers.

As I stand here today, also, I've got to remind myself and remind the House, after the loss of another Canadian soldier yesterday in Afghanistan, how important our freedom and peace are to this country.

As a father of a son who served in Afghanistan and has done a tour of duty, and having met many of the young men that have gone over there — some of them friends of my son — and another young man who I actually have had under my wing since he was 19 when his mother passed away — and how they have served their country, in his case both in Bosnia and in Afghanistan, I believe that those are true Canadian heroes. They're over there making a difference.

Hundreds of thousands of women, particularly in Afghanistan, are today learning to read and write. You cannot fool a population once they can read and have literacy. They will never be fooled again by warlords and people like that who want to browbeat them down. I think that's very important.

As I look to the fourth term in this House — I never thought I would do two, so four is a long time — I do have to thank some people for being here. I had a great campaign manager in John Cameron and a great team of people in my community, obviously, to run my campaign. I have a great family in my wife, Michele, my son Adam and daughter-in-law Jodi, and my daughter Jacqueline and her husband Greg. They're great people.

[1745]

Obviously, the newest member of the family, Gabriel, my grandson, is probably the biggest joy and the biggest reason to do this job on any given day. It doesn't matter what's going on. If you actually get a smile from your grandson when you come home, it's wonderful. I also think that the one bumper sticker that's out there that makes sense to me is the one that says: "If I knew grandchildren were going to be this much fun, I would have had them first."

I didn't want to stand up and do this as sort of like an introduction during question period, but at the end of August my mother, Rosa Coleman — the mother of the six Coleman children, five boys and one girl — turned 90 years old. She still lives in her home in Penticton. The following day, which was August 31, was my wife's — my love of my life, Michele — and my 35th wedding
[ Page 363 ]
anniversary. So we had two milestones on the same weekend, and it was a pretty special gathering we had in Penticton.

I represent a constituency that takes over a large piece of the township of Langley. The other piece of the township of Langley is represented by the member for Langley. We like this constituency. We like the people. We like the volunteers. We like the support we get, and we like the fact that that area of our constituency votes in the high mid-60 percent for B.C. Liberals. We appreciate that every time we go to the polls. But the important thing in my constituency is how it works together, how it actually stands up and does some interesting things for people.

One example would be…. There are communities all across British Columbia that have public hearings where people show up and scream and yell and shout about: "We don't want those people living in our back yard. We don't want a shelter. We don't want supportive housing. We don't want them here. They should be able to go somewhere else." People line up at the microphone with every excuse in the world why they shouldn't help those less advantaged.

That's not how they do it in Langley. They decided to find a spot in the city of Langley where there was a piece of property that was given by the city. The township of Langley decided to put a million dollars into that project. It's called the Gateway of Hope. It's a Salvation Army project. It's connected with Kwantlen University College and Trinity Western University. Both of those facilities are going to put in training for people that are homeless, and supportive housing in that facility.

Instead of having the big, ugly public hearing, the local Rotary clubs got together and had a fundraiser, with a celebration for the Gateway of Hope. Instead of 300 or 400 or 500 people showing up at a public hearing and actually putting down the people that need it the most in this community, they showed up and spent $150 a plate and bought auction items and raised a few hundred thousand dollars for the project. That, to me, describes my community as well as anything that I can do.

As I look at them, over and above that, I also drive down 200th Street in my riding…. I welcome any of you to do so. I'd like you to drive by the Langley Events Centre, because you will see a truly iconic building that's probably the one multipurpose facility that exists in western Canada.

You'll notice this about it: huge, massive structural beams of wood — huge wood beams. The remarkable architectural feel that it gives to the building, both inside and out, when you see the beams inside the building will let you remember how important wood is to British Columbia.

But the neat thing about this building is that it's another partnership. It's a partnership with the province of British Columbia, which put in a $15 million grant. It was a partnership with the Minister of Education at the time plus the school district in my riding. Instead of building a new gymnasium across the field at the high school, they put $3 million from the gymnasium into the Langley Events Centre. There are now three gymnasiums in the events centre.

There's a partnership with Trinity Western University where they will play their basketball and volleyball games in that triple gymnasium, which has sliding bleachers for 2,000. So the centre floor will have a game with 2,000 people in the stands. They will play their volleyball and basketball, and they have contributed to the facilities.

The Langley gymnastics association has built within this facility Canada's premier training facility for gymnastics, with thousands of kids as members of their organization. You should come and see this, because it is absolutely remarkable. I'm sure that someday a person will become an Olympian or something else successful out of that type of facility.

In addition to that, there's a fitness centre that will be home to Tourism B.C. There is an adventure playground outside, a water park for your grandchildren or children to go play in and numerous all-weather fields around the facility — with enough parking, by the way, to handle 1,600 parking spots.

I want to talk about the budget. Obviously, you can't break down every single ministry and talk about every single piece of the budget, so I want to talk about some of the passions that I believe are important within a budget to look at with regards to your community, your province and the people you serve.

[1750]

The first thing I'd like you to look at is this. Today British Columbia has the highest policing budget in British Columbia's history. It's not talked about a lot because usually everybody spends time on health care and education.

But I want to talk about policing for a minute in my remarks. Not only are they the highest dollars in history, but we have a remarkable structure of policing in B.C. that is governed by a number of police agencies, municipal police forces and the RCMP alike. The RCMP is our provincial police force and, in many cases, our municipal police forces, as well as the other municipal forces we have.

What they have done since 2001 are some things that are pretty remarkable. First of all, they integrated. They said: "Okay, we don't care what uniform you're wearing. We'll have an integrated homicide team." That team is available in any jurisdiction that's having to deal with a murder. That team will come in with all the specialists, the investigators, the ident people. They'll hit the investigation on the ground, and they will obtain all the integrated information together on these files. It has one of the highest solve rates of any unit of its kind in North America.

That integrated homicide team set in motion a number of things in law enforcement in B.C. that people should
[ Page 364 ]
think about. For instance, in British Columbia today there is a computer system in every single police car. It's in real time, and it's in every car. It's actually talking to every other police car in British Columbia. It is the only jurisdiction in North America where every police officer in B.C. is integrated on a computer database.

Now, the remarkable thing about that is that it means you can move and use intelligence-based policing to be able to police your communities better, get better results and have better information management to solve crime. If, for instance, we'd had something like PRIME in police cars in the 1990s when people went missing off the Downtown Eastside — particularly women in the sex trade business who were over in Coquitlam at some parties checked by police at a place that had later become very infamous in British Columbia — maybe the connection could have been made sooner to save someone's life.

If, for instance, when we had a murder in British Columbia, where a person who had a court order against them that they weren't allowed in a community was checked by a police officer on the highway…. Just a routine check. No information in front of the police officer. He lets the person go. Two hours later he kills his estranged wife. The police officer had no way of knowing that information. But today, through a system like PRIME, for the most part, that police officer would have that information, and we could maybe save some lives.

So as we go through this, we have to think about what we've done in policing and what this budget means to those police officers. Not only is it about homicides, integrated homicide units, it's also about things like major crimes, fighting organized crime, integrated gang task forces. All of those teams get funded through a budget that is higher than it ever has been in history.

It also includes things like an ISPOT team that tracks serious sexual predators of children, pedophiles, before they can actually hurt another child, when they come out of jail so they can find them and catch them if they breach their probation or their parole, and they can be rearrested, and that can be dealt with.

It also has a team that deals with Internet luring so that people that want to get on the Internet and actually damage our children can be there, because there's a special unit in policing for that too. It's also about the fact that all of this integration filters down to the rank-and-file police officers on our streets across the province of British Columbia.

Each day in our province thousands of these people go to work. They go out on our streets, and we expect them to protect our communities. They're good people. Nothing irritates me more than when somebody takes the broad brush to law enforcement — with any brush that's negative in British Columbia, because broad brushes are not fair.

But I can tell you this. One of them tonight may have to make a snap decision, a decision to either lose their life or save their life or protect the life of another person. They'll make that decision in a split second because that's the job they have to do. They'll be expected to analyze the mental health of the person, how violent they are, whether they're a danger to other people, and they'll have to make a decision. We get the luxury in our society for the next six months or a year of second-guessing that decision.

[1755]

The next time you want to do that, try and stand in their shoes first, because in British Columbia we have people that are committed to us who actually do their job. When you dial 911, you know there's a professional police officer coming to help you. You should be proud of that in this province, because they go through some very, very difficult things on a daily basis, and we should respect them.

Now I want to talk about health care. First of all, for anybody that doesn't know it, I'll tell you. We have an aging society. If you want to see Mr. Baxter's demographics sometime, go look at the graphs. You'll see what the bubble is coming through. You'll know that there's going to be significant pressure on health care for quite a time to come. Knowing that, you have to decide to make investments in health care.

Look at this. Since 2001 to today the health care budget in the province of British Columbia has doubled. It's gone from about $8-point-some billion to over $15 billion. Because this is so important to us, we've taken, out of every additional dollar being put into the budget in British Columbia…. Eighty to 90 percent of that money is going to health care — 6 percent a year for each of the next three years; $2.4 billion of new money, additional money, going into health care over the next three years.

That doesn't actually, in addition to that, bring into account the capital cost of health care — $3 billion being spent in capital in British Columbia right now in health care. It's a cancer centre in Kamloops, so some friend like my friend Sindi Hawkins doesn't have to come to Vancouver for her treatment, if she actually has to go there again.

It's a cancer centre for the young woman I just heard about yesterday, a young woman who I saw grow up who'd just been diagnosed with breast cancer. It's a cancer centre for people. It's not about the bricks and mortar. It's about the investment for the future of the health of our citizens to be there in this province.

It's a cardiac centre of excellence in Kelowna, where people with heart disease and issues with regards even to things like open-heart surgery in the Okanagan and in the interior of B.C. will have a centre of excellence in cardiac surgery. That's pretty remarkable.

It's about the fact that we're going to put a six-storey building on the site for acute care beds, with a 30 percent increase in acute care beds in Surrey. An improvement
[ Page 365 ]
and a huge investment in the emergency ward in Surrey. In addition to that, a sobering centre. People coming from places like mental health and addictions will have it, right beside the Phoenix house in Surrey, so they'll be able to go from sobering to supportive housing and back into society, where we can help them have a life that they deserve. That's important in health care.

It's the Fort St. John Hospital, presently under construction. Go up to Fort St. John sometime. By the way, they've got an arena in Fort St. John that is as nice, if not nicer maybe, than the Langley Events Centre. They have some beautiful wood on the exterior and the interior of that building. I would like to think that the citizens of Langley actually inspired Fort St. John to build such a wonderful building, because theirs is under construction right now.

It is a community that's growing. They need an improvement to their facilities in that area of the province of B.C., and we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to do that.

It's also about Langley pediatrics and the new maternity ward in our community and a project that I get to open in my own community called the Cottages, which is assisted living for seniors right on that hospital site. The nice thing about the Cottages is that it is actually going on the site and is called the Cottages because the original Langley Memorial Hospital was really some old shells of buildings left over from the war, which started the building. It was actually called the cottage hospital on the hill. That's why this is called the Cottages.

When we think about that, it's pretty remarkable — $2.4 billion in additional money and $3 billion in capital. I think that when you set priorities, you have to make sure you concentrate on that.

My community has also got another different thing happening in it — to some communities. We know there've been 60,000 less students in classrooms in British Columbia since 2001. That's a lot of kids. That's a lot of classrooms.

[1800]

When I first became the MLA for Fort Langley–Aldergrove, in 1996, we were concerned that a high school called Mountain Secondary in an area of the riding would have to close because it was losing students at such a pace that we didn't think it was sustainable for kids. We had a high school in Walnut Grove that needed expansion, just across the freeway to the north. It got expanded twice to expand its number of students.

At the same time, we needed to build a whole new elementary school in Aldergrove because there were so many portables at Parkside Elementary and at Aldergrove Elementary School that half the population of the students in the community were in portables. So we built Betty Gilbert Elementary School in Aldergrove, and we populated it with elementary school kids.

Then we sort of kept R.E. Mountain sustainable by actually having some transfer of kids across boundaries so that we could keep that high school in its space. We were concerned, because we actually had to close an elementary school in that area of the community at that time, and that was back in the NDP era. It was actually something, because of the number of students, that was justifiable, and we lived with it.

What does it look like today? In Aldergrove there were four elementary schools. Today there are two. Betty Gilbert, which was built when I first became an MLA, is now a middle school in order to actually sustain the high school in the community, because there are not enough kids coming into elementary school in that community to sustain the education in that area of the riding.

Walnut Grove has actually stabilized, because it's become a more mature community over the last 13 years, where there are fewer young families moving in, because at that time it was new construction. Today it has changed. Where R E. Mountain is, on the hillside in Willoughby, there's an explosion taking place of population and housing. So what we face today there…. We actually could tomorrow, just on kindergarten alone, it looks like, within a year, fill an entire other elementary school in the same area we had to close a school not that many years ago back in the 1990s.

You see, what I know about education is this: it moves around. All I have to do is look at my riding to know that. But there are great things to talk about in education. I said to a group of 700 people at my barbecue yesterday, on Sunday: "You know, if you're a grandfather or a grandmother or a mother or a father, what you want to know is that tomorrow morning" — which is today — "when I send my child to school, they're going to get a good education."

I can tell you that they are. I can tell you that you don't have to go into some union rhetoric to understand this. You just have to talk to teachers in the classroom. They love their kids. They believe in their future. They are all into their profession, and they really believe in the job they're doing on behalf of the families in their community, and they're great teachers. They're great people in education, and they actually don't let us down when our kids arrive at school.

It's actually a wonderful story to think about how they can go and become what they want to be — whether it's a generation of students of my children that came through the school system, where they became mechanics or doctors or teachers or lawyers, even tradesmen, nurses, all within a cohort of children that I knew through friends…. All of those trades were covered by kids that went through the public school system in Fort Langley–Aldergrove and Langley.

They all got a great education, and they got a great education because of the teachers. It's a great education because of the teacher in the classroom's commitment to children. Let's never forget that. We like to talk about the bricks and mortar, and we can always get into the
[ Page 366 ]
rhetoric that would come from some organized labour body, but go talk directly to a teacher, one that's in the classroom and doing this every day, and you'll get a whole different feeling about how important they feel their job is and how important that job is and how they want to be able to do it without oddball interference from other people.

Obviously, as the Minister of Housing and Social Development, I do want to talk about housing for a minute, but I don't want to talk about it just from the perspective of statistics, which I'm happy to share with the House, but more from the perspective of the people that I get to see and the lives I see getting changed.

[1805]

This morning I was in Vancouver. There was a building in Vancouver that the government bought about a year and a half ago called the Backpackers Inn. I went and looked at it when we bought it. It was one of the worst buildings, if not the worst building, I ever walked into. It was grungy. It stunk of urine and vomit. It had rats. It had other bugs and vermin. It was a place you'd never, ever think another human being should have to live.

It was also the worst place for the number of police calls in the whole Downtown Eastside of Vancouver — this one building with 40 rooms. It also had a room in it where there was actually a locked room and a safe on the ground and a pulley system down into the basement where the sign said: "If you're not buying, get out." And it wasn't talking about buying food. It was drugs. It was a place where people would go to buy their drugs, and then they'd hit up in the lobby and on the streets outside and destroy people's lives.

When I walked out of that building, I thought to myself: "Boy, we've really bought a dog on this one." I did not think, to be honest with you, that we could actually renovate it to the level where it could be habitable again and safe for people. I actually thought it would be one we'd have to tear down.

But we've learned a lot on the 45 buildings we bought, particularly the 23 SROs we bought in Vancouver. We've learned a lot about renovation, restoration, structural improvements and what we need to put in them for livability.

We've also learned some interesting other things. Do you know, Madam Speaker, that there's algae that you can put in between the walls of a home — in this case in the walls of an SRO? Now this algae is actually….

Our guys are remarkable people when it comes to finding solutions to problems. One of the biggest problems we do have is with bed bugs and that type of thing within some of these facilities. So you can put this algae in the walls. It's actually microscopically thin, razor sharp, and when a bug goes in the wall, it actually cuts itself up. So bugs do not survive in these facilities. That's a huge step forward for the people in the Downtown Eastside, because they know now in that facility they're going to be safe from that type of infestation.

It could still happen, but it's never going to happen to the level it could. When we opened up the walls in some of these facilities, they were full of things like bed bugs.

We've gone through these buildings, almost 2,000 units of housing, and renovated them. As we renovated, we brought in great organizations — whether it be the Salvation Army, the Portland Hotel Society, the Lookout shelter society, Covenant House and others — as partners. They bring into these buildings the heart that nobody can put into it. They actually bring a heart and soul into the building because they care about the people that are going to move in there.

Today we met in Vancouver a gentleman who's been on the streets for two years. He's been living in one of our shelters. Yesterday he moved into a home. He said: "This makes all the difference to me, all the difference for my life." I couldn't say it any better. I couldn't even emote it as well as he did to the cameras as we toured this place today. He's over the moon.

If you look at housing in British Columbia, in the last few years we've bought 45 units, with 24 single-room-occupancy hotels in Vancouver alone. And you know what? We have changed life upon life upon life as a result of that. We put the money into people and into the budget so that we can do that.

So when you're voting about this budget, when you're thinking about it, think whether you're going to vote for the police officer on the street. Think whether you're going to vote for the two-point-some-billion dollars more in health care. Think whether you're going to vote for kids in school and the teachers that teach them. Think if you're going to vote for the thousands of people whose lives have been changed by the housing portfolio in this province, not just those in the Downtown Eastside, but the 8,000 families who get rent assistance, the 15,000 seniors that get assistance. All of those folks are getting a little cheque every month to offset their rent.

Think about the reality of what you're voting for, and what you're voting for or against is this. Whether it's the small motel we bought in Quesnel or the one down in Osoyoos, it's all about helping people with mental health issues and addiction and changing their lives and making communities better. That's what this budget is about, and that's why I support the budget.

[1810]

B. Simpson: Madam Speaker, by the rules of the House, I'll get started on my speech tonight and see how far I get, and then we may have to take a break and continue on tomorrow.

As I stand here, I reflect on a classroom talk that I gave one time where a student asked me if I get nervous before giving a speech in the House. I reflected on it, and I thought: "Yeah, every time." It doesn't matter. You just
[ Page 367 ]
get the butterflies. You get wound up, and you get ready to go. He says: "Well, what's it like?" I said to him: "It's kind of like having to deliver a play to an audience you already know is hostile, and that drives the nervousness even deeper."

My congratulations to all of the new MLAs who have stood in this House and delivered their maiden speeches with professionalism and who spoke on behalf of their communities. I congratulate you all, on both sides of the House.

The other thing I reflected on as I was getting ready to speak to the budget is that there are some markings of time that we can't ignore. I had a shock in here. I know I've been struggling. I used to be a competitive athlete before I became a politician. I still eat like a competitive athlete, and that's not good for the weight. So I've made a commitment this term that I'm going to manage my lemon meringue pies in the afternoons and French fries and try and keep that down. That I can do. Loss of hair I can't deal with.

The one thing that shocked me is that when I first stood up in question period this term, I realized I'd printed out the questions I had in front of me in the font size that I used to be able to read, and now I can't. So I will have to wear glasses now when I give speeches, because you can't always change the font on some of the things that we print out.

The reason for raising that is that I'm going to miss my good friend Corky Evans. I commit to the House that when I fling my glasses around, they won't leave my hand — at least I hope not — and hit somebody on the head, as Corky was wont to do. But I think we'll miss that voice in the Legislature. I think it was an important voice. To my good friend Corky: we'll miss you, and hopefully, don't be a stranger.

The other person I want to recognize, and I recognized him briefly before in one of the private member statements, is my good friend Charlie Wyse. Politics aside, Charlie put his heart and soul into representing the people of the former Cariboo South. That riding has now changed.

I know that my partner in crime is still watching and still paying attention to what goes on, and I commit to him that we will do our best to continue to represent the interests of the entire Cariboo-Chilcotin, as he and I did for the last four years, and to work with the new member from that area, who now sits on the government side.

Of course, I'm standing here to speak to the budget. I've listened over the last little while to the tit-for-tat that passes for debate in this House over this thing called the budget.

I guess what I struggle with — and I've had a bit of a difficult time since the May 12 election trying to decide what I want, personally, this term to look like for me and for the constituents I represent — is that I do believe that those who are still engaged in electoral politics, who actually show up and mark a ballot, still do so in the hope they get the kind of representation they desire.

I really think that every one of us, as MLAs in here, needs to find the mechanisms to elevate the nature of the debate that occurs in this House, to make it much more constructive than it is, to make it much more than rhetoric and ideology, because as I will say in the few moments that I have, we have such great challenges before us that as politicians and as political leaders in our communities, we do a disservice to our constituents to simply devolve to petty partisan politics and to use this House for that purpose. We have an obligation to current and future generations to do more than that.

One of the things that I struggle with is that this global economic collapse has occurred at a time when we're getting a pause from the consumer society that we've built and that is actually consuming the resources of the planet at an unsustainable pace. We have a pause to step back and actually begin to question the very fundamental beliefs that have underpinned this society for so long.

[1815]

The belief is that somehow competitiveness is the only thing that governments are supposed to manage for. The belief is that somehow unfettered consumption is the only thing you can build an economy on. The belief is that somehow governments are supposed to get out of the way and allow the free market system to work in an unregulated fashion and to benefit everything else. If anything has happened over the last 18 months to two years, it should give us ample evidence that that simply does not hold.

Yet when we come in here to have the debates, we don't get the opportunity to debate that. Instead, what we talk about is a promised $495 million deficit versus the one that we get. That's important, and I'm going to speak to why that's important. I'm going to speak to how my constituents see that. But it is only one of the things that we must debate. I want to speak about some of the others in my budget speech, because people on both sides of the House have spoken eloquently about the situation with the current budget versus the one we got in the spring.

What stimulated this for me was listening to the federal Conservative government's Finance Minister in a television interview last week. It was when the minister announced that their deficits would go two years longer, out into 2015, and that this year's deficit was not going to be $20 billion, as they had originally suggested, but $55 billion. Without a blink, with a straight face — oops — it's going to be $55 billion. The overall deficit federally in 2015 will be $164 billion.

I warrant that there are not many people in our society who know what a billion dollars is, so to say $5 billion or $164 billion has become meaningless. It doesn't hold meaning. I think one of the things that we need to do as
[ Page 368 ]
political leaders is to do a better job of educating people about what those numbers mean and what the implications are for us delivering goods and services now to the citizens of today and our capacity to deliver those services into the future.

But what was intriguing about what the federal Finance Minister said in the interview is that…. The interviewer said to him: "Are you as a government going to have to go back and look at the revenue side of the balance sheet?" Minister Flaherty said, "No, we're a tax-cutting government. That's what we do," and that we have to worry more about competitiveness. In 2015, when we're back to balanced budgets, we want to have a competitive environment that we can get people back to work in.

As I listened to that, I thought that here is a situation in which — and we've heard it in this House on the budget debate — there's an ideology underpinning the debate that is untested. It's untested by the commentator. She never asked any other questions. She just went: "Oh, that's good." Yet in that dialogue, $164 billion was suddenly going to evaporate by 2015.

There was no legacy to future generations or anything, and there was no need to actually say what the government was going to do about that. We now have become so illiterate in our ability to handle financial numbers and to handle democratic debate that we just let things like that slide by.

I guess, in my ideal, it would be great to come into this House and talk about the substance of the debate that we have just now around the budget. That's really going to be done in estimates more than anything else. But why can't we have a debate now about what the global crisis and the recession tell us about taxes, about government, about government being the shareholder of last resort for corporate managers who run their companies into the ground and then get bailed out by government?

Why can't we have those debates in this House, which are much more meaningful for people and that may help us to restructure what it is we're doing in this chamber and for government? Really, what we're living with is a legacy of the 1970s — Reagan and Thatcher. Get taxes down and make government small.

I have lots of constituents who come into my office, and they want better government services. They want to have better health care, better roads, better schools. I say to them: "What do you think about taxes?" "Oh, we pay too many taxes." We have the ability in our heads now, as a result of some of the illiteracy that's deepened in our society, to hold two opposing thoughts in our head: (1) we don't like taxes, and (2) we want more government services. We have to reconcile that, and I believe that as political leaders we have an obligation to reconcile that for people.

[1820]

I think that governments that run on "We'll make this the lowest tax regime" or "We'll make this the most competitive regime" have an obligation to say to people: "But that means this." The "this" is smaller government, smaller dependency on government. If that's what you're running on, we need people to be explicit to the general population about that and not hide it anymore.

That's why I think that in question period in this House or debate around the budget, again we do a disservice when we try and pretend that we can still keep government afloat, offer all robust services and somehow post a large deficit and still cut taxes. It doesn't make sense. We need to reconcile that for British Columbians so that they actually engage in the debate.

At the root of all of this, I think that is really why we're experiencing the democratic deficit that we're experiencing.

What I want to spend most of my talk on the budget on is the other deficits. There is the financial deficit. It does have to be dealt with. We need a strategy to deal with it. We have opposing strategies, but we have other deficits we need to deal with. We need to deal with them very rapidly because there are challenges confronting us now.

First and foremost, it's the democratic deficit that we saw in our own election as only 50 percent of the population voted — 10 percent, almost, walked away from the polls. Why is that? Again, I think it comes back to some of the things we do in this House and what passes as political debate in the press. It's all about people nattering at each other. It's not about people dealing with the real issues and embracing the real issues.

I think the reason for that is that we're becoming quickly irrelevant. If you look at polls about politicians, we've fallen way below lawyers now, which says a lot about how people respect our so-called profession or avocation that we have.

With the little bit of time I have left, I want to talk about the first deficit. I believe the population wants us to talk about an address, and then I'll hold the other ones over for tomorrow.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

That first one, and the primary one, is the global environmental deficit. We are extinguishing the planet's resources at a rate that is unsustainable. Flat out. That's just the way it is. In 1987 we were given warning in the report called Our Common Future. It went unheeded. In 1992 the Rio summit was the largest gathering of environmental leaders and politicians in the world. There was hope. I covered it as a freelance writer. There was hope that something would come out of that, and again it has gone unheeded. And then the Kyoto summit, etc.

But the one that I want to speak to is the one that's come out more recently. It's from the UN Millennium project, and it's called Living Beyond Our Means. The introduction states that we're running down the account. I just want to read this into the record and speak more about it tomorrow. This is from 1,300 experts that have
[ Page 369 ]
looked at the planetary ecosystems, and this is what they have to say to us as political leaders about that environmental deficit. Quoting from the report:

"At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning. Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.

"Above all, protection of our natural assets can no longer be seen as an optional extra to be considered once more pressing concerns such as wealth creation or national security have been dealt with. This assessment shows that healthy ecosystems are central to the aspirations of humankind."

I know that during the May 12 election and the previous election, I met with lots of people who wanted us to speak about this issue in a deeper way. To run an election, as former President Bill Clinton did, on "It's the economy, stupid"…. They want an election run on "It's the environment, stupid."

If we don't have healthy ecosystems, if we don't deal with the natural deficits that we have in ecosystems, we are in serious trouble, and that underpins everything else that we do.

With that, noting the time, I move adjournment of debate, and I reserve my right to conclude my remarks at the next sitting.

B. Simpson moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. I. Chong moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 6:25 p.m.

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