2010 Legislative Session: Second 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)

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 17, Number 5

[ Page 5313 ]

THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2010

The House met at 1:36 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

N. Macdonald: On behalf of the member for Kootenay West, it's a pleasure to introduce a longtime servant of the constituents of Kootenay West, Elaine Whitehead. She's proud to be here with her grandchildren, Seth and Reece Whitehead. So please join me in making them welcome.

T. Lake: I have two separate delegations here to introduce today, and coincidentally, both are from Ottawa. Sometimes visitors from our nation's capital are viewed with a sense of wonder and curiosity, and today's guests will fall into that category. I mean, if nothing else, why would anyone choose to live in a city that has eight months of winter and four months of poor sledding when they could live a capital city like Victoria that enjoys green grass year-round? Not to mention that our visitors from Ontario are enjoying the NHL hockey they're watching here in B.C. and hope that one day they'll have a team of their own.

Joining us today is a senior staff member from the office of the federal Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, here for the 90th annual general meeting of the Canadian Meat Council. Will the House welcome today Meagan Murdock and her guest, Petra Tens.

Also, I have the great pleasure of welcoming for the first time into this House a very special person to me, my middle daughter, Stephanie Lake, visiting from the University of Ottawa where she is on the road to a veterinary career. I'd like to have the House please welcome my beautiful daughter Stephanie.

H. Lali: I have the pleasure of introducing some guests here who have been doing great work on behalf of the district of Lillooet and also the T'it'q'et Indian band. They're here meeting with ministers as well as ministry staff. They are Mayor Dennis Bontron; Coun. Kevin Anderson; Coun. Pat St. Dennis; Grant Loyer, who is the CAO; as well as retiring chief Bill Machell and the current incoming chief, Kevin Whitney. They're sitting in the members' gallery to my left. Would the House please give them a big warm Victoria welcome.

D. Hayer: It gives me great pleasure to introduce 60 grade 5 students visiting the Legislative Assembly. They are outside somewhere. They're visiting from Ellendale Elementary School, one of the best schools in Surrey, in my riding of Surrey-Tynehead. Joining them are their teachers, Michael Ewen and Ms. Melanie McGillivray, and many parent volunteers who have taken time out of their busy schedule to bring the students here to learn about the government and how everything works in Victoria. Would the House please make them very welcome.

R. Austin: Joining us in the gallery today is Conor Rogan. Conor is a local singer and songwriter from here in British Columbia. He's currently a participant in the Peak Performance project. He has travelled all over the world, throughout Asia and Australia, performing. He is a liberal arts transfer student at Douglas College, but he's more interested in learning lots about B.C. politics. This is his first visit to the Legislature, no doubt encouraged by his friend Angela Giuliano, who is one of our legislative assistants. Will everyone please join me in giving him a most warm welcome.

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M. Dalton: In the gallery today is my wife, Marlene. I want to thank her for all her love and support. We've been married 25 years this year, and she's been a very patient and merciful woman — yes. My son, Justin, is also visiting us for the first time. He's in between terms at SFU where he's finishing a degree in economics. He also works at the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addictions. Would the House please make them feel welcome.

N. Letnick: Just to announce that this morning when I got to work, I was met by Carly Gilmore, a wonderful young lady from back in my home riding. It was a great surprise. I gave her a tour of the House. The two places she liked the most, Mr. Speaker, were the library and sitting in your chair. Thank you very much for that honour.

Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

MAY DAY PARADE IN PORT COQUITLAM

M. Farnworth: Everyone knows how wonderful my community of Port Coquitlam is, but there are occasionally rumblings from both sides of the House that when it comes to arts and culture, it may not be in the same league as Vancouver or Victoria.

Interjections.

M. Farnworth: See, hon. Speaker. See my point?

Anyway, the point is that I want to take this opportunity to inform this House that this Saturday, May 8, Port Coquitlam will be the focus of arts and culture in
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the province of British Columbia as we celebrate our 87th May Day Parade and festival in the city of Port Coquitlam.

The May Day Parade has been a tradition in Port Coquitlam for 87 years. We will have maypole dancing. We will have the crowning of a May queen. We will celebrate our history and our heritage, and at the same time we will also celebrate where we are today. As I said, we will be crowning a May queen, but in keeping with the times, as of about ten years ago, we also now have a May ambassador. It's an opportunity, as I said, to celebrate our history and where we are now, but also to celebrate the young people in our community and celebrate our future.

May Day is a tradition around which our whole community gathers. We will have the May Day Parade, which goes down under Shaughnessy Street through the downtown — 5,000 to 6,000 people there. There was a time in our community when we would close off the Lougheed Highway, and traffic would stop for two hours as the parade would go across. Unfortunately, we are not able to do that. We haven't been able to do that since about 1972.

The one thing that is always the same — it is a time for families. It is a time for kids, it's a time for fun, and it's when we're going to celebrate our community. I ask everyone to come to Port Coquitlam on May 8 to celebrate May Day.

GIRL GUIDES OF CANADA

L. Reid: It gives me great pleasure today to rise and honour 100 years of guiding in Canada. Each province in Canada will be celebrating on May 15, 2010, as part of a national rally.

Historically, many of you will know that Lord Baden-Powell was leading the scouting movement in the United Kingdom and was holding a rally. Imagine. Of all things, young women came and said: "We're coming in." So he put his sister Agnes and his wife to work to begin the guiding movement across the land. That was basically a hundred years ago — the year before, in 1909.

The very next year it came to Canada and thus began a lifetime commitment to building leadership across the globe. The movement reached Canada in 1910, and every province had a unit by 1912. Many of Canada's most forward-thinking women gathered together to create the Canadian council of guiding. It was incorporated by an act of parliament in the year 1917. The first national camp was held in Victoria in 1927.

Since 1910 Girl Guides have blazed a trail of opportunities for girls and women to help them discover and develop new interests and life skills. Whether it was Agnes Baden-Powell teaching girls to bandage wounds during World War I or girls today working on anti-bullying challenges, guiding continually changes with the times.

B.C. Girl Guides are planning a gigantic camp-over at the Pacific Coliseum on May 15 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of guiding in Canada. Imagine celebrating this milestone with thousands of other members of guiding. Some 8,000 adult and girl members are expected, and more are welcome. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate the rich history of guiding in Canada.

As a small child, I was a Brownie with the 126th Vancouver Brownie pack. I went on to be a Guide and a Ranger, and then I was the Brown Owl of the 126th Vancouver Brownies. It still makes me smile to this day when 35-year-old women leap to their feet and say: "Good afternoon, Brown Owl."

The organization continues to grow — amazing leaders across the land. I would ask the House to join me in celebrating 100 years.

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MAYWELL WICKHEIM

J. Horgan: It gives me great pleasure to rise today in this House and speak of one of Sooke's finest residents, Maywell Wickheim, who has been active in countless organizations up and down Vancouver Island and has spent most of his life contributing to the welfare of others and to his community. He has been nominated for the Order of B.C. and, in my opinion, is a most deserving recipient of that award.

Born in 1925, Maywell was the oldest of six children born to a Norwegian homesteading family with a family income of about $34 in the 1930s. Maywell has memories of milking cows, knitting socks and repairing his own leather boots, all before the age of ten. Though he only completed 5½ years of school, Maywell is a voracious reader, and he takes great pleasure in reading such things as the World Book of Knowledge and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

He spent his working life in the woods, as a foreman on construction sites and eventually as the owner of a Sooke shipyard serving the growing fishing fleet and the tugboats along the coast of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Accustomed to hundred-hour workweeks in his youth, he's cut back to about 40 hours a week now that he's in his eighth decade. A faller, a farmer, a foreman, a shipbuilder, a machinist, a scuba diver — there's not much that Maywell has not done.

In the back country his kinship with the plants and animals of the Sooke Hills is legendary, but his passion is doing community work. An experienced outdoorsman, Maywell is affectionately called the Big Tree Guy as he searches the Island for the biggest and oldest trees he can find.

He helped establish the San Juan Ridge hiking trail and installed extensive boardwalk systems throughout the Sooke Hills. He leads search and rescue operations
[ Page 5315 ]
in his 85th year, and he also conducts many guiding tours up the rivers of the Sooke Hills and into the ocean of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

He has a deep connection with the T'Sou-ke Nation and has worked with them building canoes and paddles and participating in many tribal journeys. He's active at the Sooke Fine Arts Show, the regional museum, the Sooke fire department and the Sooke Cooperative Association of Service Agencies. He's been happily married to Betty for 60 years. Maywell lives by the creed "Give what you can, and only take what you need."

mining industry

J. Rustad: Everybody wants to create a green economy that will drive investments and jobs and protect our environment. But whether you're talking about electricity, green cars or everything else, there's one component whose importance is often forgotten. Without minerals, there would be no electric cars, running water, lights or computers, and quite frankly, we would not recognize society today.

In light of this, we should reflect on the fact that May 9 through 15 is Mining Week in B.C. It's a great opportunity for everybody to talk about mining and to support our industry. Mining is a growing industry, and despite the economic challenges during 2009, B.C. saw the sixth-highest total for exploration spending at $154 million. We all should celebrate this and look for opportunities to support the industry with policies like the flow-through share tax credit extension that makes it easier to raise capital, and the HST, which will reduce approximately $55 million in costs per year.

Some 28,000 people earn an average of $112,800 a year and are directly employed in this industry. In my riding Endako Mines has been operating for 45 years. The people in Fraser Lake know the value and quality of life this mine has brought to them.

In addition, Endako is currently going through a $500 million expansion. Huckleberry Mines has brought stability and diversity to Houston for almost 20 years. In the future the Mount Milligan project, TTM's Chu property, Pacific Booker's gold project and others could create more than 5,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Whether it's coal, base or precious metals, mining has helped to build every corner of this province and touched every life. I ask everyone in this House and across the province to join me in celebrating Mining Week and to thank the industry for the benefits it has brought to us.

faith in action initiative

S. Simpson: On April 28, Faith in Action, a multi-denominational group, gathered on the steps of the Legislature to present Begging for Justice, where reverends, pastors and rabbis spoke about our collective responsibility to our most vulnerable citizens. They spoke of the need for housing, increased income, dignity and respect.

They offered up a begging bowl, and person after person who were gathered on the steps wrote down their own begs and put them in the bowl — 207 in total. Calling on all of us in this place to respond, they spoke of the minimum wage, affordable housing, poverty reduction, the disabled, seniors, children, our health care and education systems.

[1350]

In all cases they asked the 85 of us sitting in this place to come together to make the lives of the most vulnerable citizens in society better, to step up and reach out to those in British Columbia who most need our help.

I was honoured and humbled to have accepted the begging bowl on April 28. The challenge that Faith in Action has placed before us is an important and daunting one. It is a challenge that deserves all of our attention, and it is a challenge that can best be met by setting our partisanship aside. I would be happy, certainly, to make the begs available for any member who wants to look at them.

The faith leaders called on all of us — not as Liberals, New Democrats or independents but as British Columbia's leaders — to make the challenges facing our most vulnerable a priority. They called on us to work together to improve the lives of the men and women, children and seniors, the disabled, and those suffering from addictions and mental health issues.

Every day in this place we open our deliberations with a member reading a prayer. Most often it calls for us to have the strength, wisdom and compassion to do what is best for the people of our province. On April 28 those on the steps of the Legislature made that same ask in their prayers and comments.

There are many challenges facing us today in British Columbia. There are priorities to be set. Let us make the commitment that we will all heed the prayers and aspirations of the faith leaders who visited us in April as we make those choices.

CHILD AND YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH

N. Letnick: Today my colleagues in the House have joined me in wearing these green ribbons to help bring awareness to child and youth mental health.

Mental illness surpasses all other child health problems in terms of the number of children affected and degree of impairment. One in seven children and youth, or an estimated 140,000 in British Columbia alone, experiences mental disorders serious enough to cause significant distress and impair their functioning at home, at school, with peers and in the community.

Tomorrow, May 7, is Child and Youth Mental Health Day in British Columbia, a time to not only raise awareness of
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this very serious and far-reaching issue but also recognize the vital importance of supporting children, youth and families who need assistance with mental health challenges.

It is essential to the health and wellness of our youngest citizens that we speak openly about this issue and that we work together to create an environment that is supportive, open and compassionate where children, youth and their families are comfortable asking for help and have earlier access to appropriate mental health supports and services. This is important in everyday conversation and in settings such in schools, where programs like Friends for Life help give children and parents the tools they need to help them talk about and manage their emotions throughout their lives.

We all recognize the importance of mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention as an investment in our future. As a province we have taken a leadership role by establishing the first child and youth mental health plan of its kind in Canada. Today almost 20,000 children and youth receive mental health services each year in British Columbia.

We all have a role to play, and I ask all British Columbians to recognize Child and Youth Mental Health Day and the importance of supporting those with mental health challenges in their families, their schools, their neighbourhoods and their communities.

Introductions by Members

D. McRae: I see that during the two-minute statements, the grade 5 classes from Huband Park Elementary in the Comox Valley have come to join us today. I would like the members to make them feel welcome, please.

Oral Questions

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR in investigation
of FORMER SOLICITOR GENERAL

L. Krog: Members of that side of the House would have us believe that no one in the B.C. Liberal Party — no one — knew that a law firm that had donated literally tens of thousands of dollars to the B.C. Liberal Party was also charged with investigating a B.C. Liberal dirty tricks scandal. It turns out that the same law firm also did millions of dollars of work for the former Solicitor General's ministry.

The question is very simple. How is it that no one on that side of the House noticed or bothered to report this?

Hon. M. de Jong: The member will know or should know that the appointment of the special prosecutor took place in January of this year — the special prosecutor to which he has referred in his question. The fact of that appointment did not become known to the government or to myself until the first week of April. In fact, I believe that the member became aware of it at approximately the same time that I did.

[1355]

To suggest, as I think the member is, that I or others in government had knowledge of that fact, of what the member is suggesting, is simply incorrect.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

L. Krog: There is a responsibility in government….

Interjection.

Mr. Speaker: Minister.

L. Krog: We know that Harper Grey, since 2001, has done more than $7 million worth of work with ICBC. ICBC reports to the Solicitor General.

Now, I know the B.C. Liberals wanted to pretend that they've been victimized by this process. But will the Deputy Premier admit that the real victims here are British Columbians, who have been victimized by B.C. Liberal sleaze and incompetence?

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, I'm saddened by the question and the nature by which the member brings it to this House. I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect that the law firm the member has referred to performed work for the Insurance Corporation in the past when other parties, even his own, were….

I don't have those facts at my disposal, but to suggest, as he has, that there is collusion or impropriety here…. What there was — and I will say this again for the benefit of the House — was a failure of the process by which special prosecutors are appointed and carry out their work. That's why we're prepared to look at some changes.

Maybe in light of what we have discovered here, maybe in light of the fact that there are fundamental rights that people have to participate in the democratic process, we are left with a situation where we need to look beyond the jurisdiction of British Columbia to involve people in this process. If that's necessary, then the government is prepared to do that.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a further supplemental.

L. Krog: Everybody gets it. The process to hire the special prosecutor is independent, and once hired, that is reported to the Deputy Attorney General. But the fact is that this is no licence to keep quiet when political friends are hired to investigate the B.C. Liberal sleaze.

Again to the Deputy Premier. Somebody at some point became aware of this. Somebody had a duty to speak up. It was public knowledge. It's been public knowledge since the first part of April. Can the Deputy Premier explain to
[ Page 5317 ]
this House and explain to British Columbians why there appears to be a don't-ask, don't-tell policy on that side?

Hon. M. de Jong: The member knows the answer to the first part of his question, because I gave it to him yesterday. I gave it to the entire House. I told this House precisely when we became aware of the situation, as revealed by the special prosecutor. If the member doesn't believe me, then he should say that. But I provided this House yesterday with the facts as they relate to how that information became known to the government.

I've also indicated the government's willingness to examine the changes that may have to be made, and we're prepared to do that. But the facts upon which this issue arose were publicly available to the opposition. The donor list is public. So to suggest that there was some conspiracy of silence is absurd in the extreme. The member would have known at the same time that the appointment became public early in April.

S. Simpson: The Attorney General suggests with his last answer that the responsibility rests with everybody else to have identified the $50,000 plus that Harper Grey donated to his party. The responsibility lies with the government. It lies with the party that is being implicated in some ways in this question about the matter of this brochure.

[1400]

The question for the Attorney General is: how come he didn't see fit to know about these donations, and how come he didn't see fit to ensure that the criminal justice branch was aware of this connection between Harper Grey and his party?

Hon. M. de Jong: The member's suggestion, as I understand it, is that the Attorney General should be made aware in all circumstances when a special prosecutor has been appointed, should conduct an individual and specific and separate vetting process. The member's suggestion is that the office of the Attorney General should become directly involved in the process by which special prosecutors are appointed.

That is not what Mr. Owen had in mind when he recommended this process in the first place. It's interesting to hear, though, the extent to which this member and his party are advocating direct political involvement in the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

S. Simpson: What this side is suggesting is that some transparency and accountability on the part of the government would be a benefit. The Attorney General told us earlier in this question period that he became aware….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

S. Simpson: The Attorney General told us earlier that he became aware of the special prosecutor in early April. That's when he became aware.

The Attorney General would probably know better than this side who's giving money to his party, or certainly, folks in his party would. So the question is: when the Attorney General became aware of the appointment — $50,000 plus of donations from that lawyer's firm, the special prosecutor's firm — why did the Attorney General or somebody on that side not raise that flag with the criminal justice branch?

Hon. M. de Jong: I hope the member from Hastings will forgive me. I've learned to take some of what or much of what he says in this chamber with a grain of salt because it seems to undergo a magical metamorphosis when he walks through the doors over to the right, as it did yesterday.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members. The Attorney has the floor, please.

Hon. M. de Jong: If the member took the time or cared to consult the Crown Counsel Act, he would know that there are strict limitations on the contact that the Attorney General has and the involvement that the Attorney General has in the special prosecutor process. Now, it may be that in the aftermath of what has taken place, that needs to change. I dare say the change being advocated by this member is not one that I am favourably disposed to accept.

INVESTIGATION of election campaign
For fORMER SOLICITOR GENERAL

M. Farnworth: The bottom line is: we've had a tainted election, and we've had a tainted investigation, which is clearly going to be very expensive. So my question to the Attorney General is: will he assure this House that not one penny of taxpayers' money will go to pay for this botched investigation?

[1405]

Hon. M. de Jong: I actually share the frustration about what took place with respect to the work of this special prosecutor. I'm not in a position to provide the assurance that the member is seeking, very simply because of the independence by which this process is governed.

But I can say again, for the benefit of all members of the House, that examining the means by which special prosecutors are appointed, examining the means by which the pool of qualified candidates is developed and
[ Page 5318 ]
examining the jurisdiction from which that pool is derived are all very much questions that the government and I are prepared to consider.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

M. Farnworth: I find it appalling that members on that side, including the Minister of Health, somehow think that it's a laughing matter that we've had a special prosecutor that has resigned, resulting in a huge amount of expense in an investigation, and that the likelihood is that we're going to have to have a new special prosecutor to go back and look at everything all over again. It's going to cost a lot of money.

I would have thought that it would have been entirely appropriate to ask the question. Given the fact that the special prosecutor resigned because of the conflict, that a whole bunch of money has been wasted and that we're going to have to spend it all over again, it would be in the government's interest and the taxpayers' interests to ensure that we do everything possible so that not one penny of taxpayers' money is wasted on that botched investigation.

Hon. M. de Jong: If I have to say it again, I will. I believe that the public did not receive the service to which they are entitled by virtue of this process in this instance. We're prepared to examine — and I've listed a number of ways that we are prepared to examine — changes that might be brought about to ensure that the public does and can have the measure of confidence that….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. M. de Jong: The public can and needs to have the measure of confidence, required confidence, in a very specific process and a very unique process, and that is: situations in which it is deemed necessary to reach outside of the professional core of prosecutors that work within the Attorney General's ministry. That, in and of itself, is unique. Developing a process by which we can, with confidence, secure the services of people free and clear of any conflict or perceived conflict is very much a priority.

K. Corrigan: Well, the minister has just said it. These are services that were not rendered, and what we're asking is: do we have a commitment from this government that the taxpayers of this province will not have to pay for some services that were never rendered?

Hon. M. de Jong: I take it from her question that the member, in the intervening 24 hours, has not taken the opportunity to consult the Crown Counsel Act.

If she had, she would know that the agreement by which the services are retained in the instance of a special prosecutor, in this case and every other — and you know there are members on the opposition side who have found themselves involved in this exercise as well — is one that exists and occurs exclusively between the head of the criminal justice branch legislatively, statutorily, requiring that individual and the person occupying that post not only to engage the special prosecutor but only inform the deputy and/or the Attorney General when he or she deems it appropriate to do so.

That is the extent of the independence that guards this process, and that may be politically inconvenient for the member to acknowledge, but it is a fact. It is the law right now, and we will abide by that law.

[1410]

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

K. Corrigan: Yes, I have read the legislation in the entirety.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

K. Corrigan: The truth is that what the minister is conveniently forgetting is that this all started and all ties back to tainted ties with the Liberal Party. My question again to the minister: will the minister ensure that because these services have not been properly rendered, the taxpayers of B.C. will not have to pay this bill?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. M. de Jong: I'm interested to hear more about the member's allegation around tainted ties. Since she has come to the end of her supplementary, she may want to step outside and share that information free and clear of the kind of privilege that protects people here.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Just take your seat, Attorney.

Continue, Attorney.

Hon. M. de Jong: Notwithstanding that comment, it's interesting that the process the member and her colleagues seem to be advocating is that the Attorney General seize control of remunerating those that are retained to provide special prosecutor service. Can you imagine the howls of outrage that would derive from the opposition benches if it were discovered at some point
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that the Attorney General was controlling the purse strings associated with the payment of special prosecutors, Mr. Speaker?

REAPPOINTMENT OF SOLICITOR GENERAL

N. Macdonald: What the people of British Columbia are advocating is an election that's untainted and an investigation process that's untainted. That's what we're after here.

Let's go to what the minister talked about yesterday. At 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday the Ministry of Attorney General learned that the special prosecutor appointed to look into the dirty tricks campaign had resigned. That took place at 4:30. Two hours later the Attorney General spoke with the Premier, and the Premier decided to let the swearing in of the now former Solicitor General go ahead — clearly, a case of very poor judgment.

The question I have for the Attorney General is: did he tell the Premier to not go ahead with the swearing in?

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, the member asks a similar question that was asked yesterday, and I will provide the same answer. In providing the chronology of events, I made it clear to the member…. Again, if he doesn't believe me — I'm a big boy — tell me he doesn't believe me. If he thinks I'm misleading the House, then stand here and suggest that I'm misleading the House, because I….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. M. de Jong: As I said to the member and his colleagues yesterday, the instrument by which the reinstatement of the then Solicitor General, the member from Fraserview, had already taken place.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

N. Macdonald: We ask again today because the answer yesterday and today is ridiculous. The premise that you cannot stop a swearing in is absolutely ridiculous. It is a tainted investigation of a tainted election. It is obviously untenable for the Solicitor General to continue. It must have been obvious to the Attorney General when he spoke to the Premier. The question is: did he advise the Premier to go against and not swear in the Solicitor General?

It's a simple question. What advice did you give to the Premier?

[1415]

Hon. M. de Jong: The member may choose to ignore the chronology of events that I provided to him last time.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Continue, Attorney.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member may choose to ignore the speed with which events descended upon us. The member may choose to ignore the fact that one of the key individuals involved in the reappointment process was nine time zones away representing the province. But those were all factors that played into the chronology of events.

Mr. Speaker, it's interesting that the member, by virtue of their question, chooses to ignore the fact that the member from Fraserview — having taken what I would suggest to the House was a reasonable period of time to consider the events that had taken place — came back the very next day and tendered his resignation and stepped aside from his post.

J. Kwan: What I'm hearing from the Attorney General is that the sorry excuse he's putting forward is that the Premier is tired, and so he made the wrong decision. Let me just get this straight. The people of Vancouver-Fraserview are cheated of a fair election.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Continue, Member.

J. Kwan: The people of Vancouver-Fraserview are cheated of a fair election. In return, British Columbians get a tainted prosecution investigation. For that effort, British Columbians are going to be stuck with the bill. The Attorney General learned of the resignation of the special prosecutor for the case four hours in advance of the swearing-in ceremony.

My question is this: did the Attorney General at any point in time tell the Premier that it was simply wrong to push ahead with the reappointment?

Hon. M. de Jong: The member's facts are wrong. Her chronology is wrong, and quite frankly, the speed with which she chooses to ignore an ongoing judicial process and draw her own conclusions and render her own verdict is disappointing and inappropriate for a member of this assembly.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

J. Kwan: The Attorney General knew about the tainted prosecution process at 4:30. He spoke to the Premier at 6:30, two hours in advance of the actual swearing-in ceremony. So don't tell me, Mr. Speaker, that the Attorney General could not stop the OIC. Did he even try to stop the OIC and tell the Premier that it is simply
[ Page 5320 ]
wrong to go through with the reappointment and call on the Premier to cancel the swearing-in ceremony?

Hon. M. de Jong: Again, the member chooses to ignore one very important fact. The legal instrument by which the reappointment had taken place had been signed, had been executed, and that was done….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, Attorney.

Hon. M. de Jong: It's interesting that the members, in circumstances where an individual, a member of this House, has been confronted by a set of circumstances, has resigned…. There has been a special prosecutor conducting an investigation.

[1420]

A report has been tabled, that report purporting to clear the individual of any wrongdoing. Then the presentation of a set of facts that cause all of us great concern. He has taken the appropriate step of stepping aside again to ensure that for the office of Solicitor General, the highest standards are upheld for that office.

J. Horgan: My question is to the Attorney General. I'm curious. If a corridor order was used, an order-in-council signed after business hours, to appoint the Solicitor General, surely to goodness, two members is all I imagine you need from executive council to rescind that order. How long does it take for two members of cabinet to come together and rescind an order? I'd say about two minutes.

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, I appreciate that armed with the weapon of hindsight, the member has charted out the ideal means by which to respond to circumstances that were by any description unique, very different.

What they choose to ignore, of course, is the fact that having had a very reasonable opportunity to consider in its entirety the significance of the developments that took place almost contemporaneous to the reinstatement, the member for Vancouver-Fraserview made the right decision and stepped aside from his post. That was the right thing to do, and he did it without hesitation.

D. Black: The Attorney General spoke to the Premier at 6:30. The Solicitor General was not sworn in until several hours later. It is ridiculous for anyone to expect the people of British Columbia or members of this side of the House to think that the Premier could not stop the swearing in of a new Solicitor General with several hours to spare.

We have asked repeatedly: what advice did the Attorney General give to the Premier, and why did the Premier not stop the swearing in of the Solicitor General?

Hon. M. de Jong: I told members yesterday that we found ourselves in a position where we were assessing the significance of what had taken place, that we found ourselves….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. M. de Jong: The members ask the questions and then don't want to hear the answers, Mr. Speaker. I'm sorry about that, but I'll try to give the answers as best I can.

We found ourselves in an extraordinarily unusual situation where at the same time a reinstatement was taking place, something very unusual landed in everyone's lap. In fact, it landed in our lap around about the same time it landed in the lap of the opposition, and the member for Nanaimo, in particular.

The government made decisions. The member for Vancouver-Fraserview made decisions. And I will say this: in circumstances that were difficult, that were unusual, that required a time to consider appropriately, the member for Fraserview made the appropriate decision and put the status of the office of Solicitor General ahead of his own interests, notwithstanding his desire to serve the people of British Columbia.

[End of question period.]

S. Fraser: I seek leave to present a petition.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Petitions

S. Fraser: I have a petition from over 200 Port Alberni residents asking the government to halt the HST.

[1425]

Reports from Committees

S. Cadieux: I have the honour to present the report of the Special Committee to Appoint an Information and Privacy Commissioner.

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

Motion approved.

S. Cadieux: I ask leave of the House to suspend the rules to permit the moving of a motion to adopt the report.

Leave granted.

S. Cadieux: I move that the report be adopted.
[ Page 5321 ]

This report constitutes the committee's unanimous recommendation for the appointment of the third Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia. The committee is very pleased to recommend Ms. Elizabeth Denham to the House.

Ms. Denham was born and raised in British Columbia and has vast experience at senior levels with information and privacy matters.

Motion approved.

S. Cadieux: I ask leave of the House to permit the moving of a motion requesting the Lieutenant-Governor to appoint Ms. Elizabeth Denham Information and Privacy Commissioner for the province of British Columbia.

Leave granted.

Motion approved.

Petitions

J. Kwan: I rise to table a petition. I have a big stack of petitions here from the people of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, the Mount Pleasant parent advisory council, calling on the provincial government to fully fund the funding shortfall that the Vancouver school district faces.

Reports from Committees

N. Letnick: I have the honour to present the report of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills.

I move that the report be read and received.

Motion approved.

Law Clerk:

May 6, 2010

Mr. Speaker:

Your Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills begs leave to report as follows: (1) that the preamble to Bill Pr401 intituled Horizons Unbound Rehabilitation and Training Society (Corporate Restoration) Act, 2010, has been proved, and the committee recommends to the House that the bill proceed to second reading; (2) that the preamble to Bill Pr402 intituled Vancouver Foundation Amendment Act, 2010, has been proved, and the committee recommends to the House that the bill proceed to second reading.

All of which is respectfully submitted,

Norm Letnick, Chairman.

N. Letnick: I ask leave of the House to permit the moving of a motion to adopt the report.

Leave granted.

N. Letnick: I move that the report be adopted.

Motion approved.

Bill Pr401 and Bill Pr402 ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Motions Without Notice

APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE
TO APPOINT A CHIEF ELECTORAL OFFICER

Hon. M. de Jong: With leave, I move:

[That a Special Committee be appointed to select and unanimously recommend to the Legislative Assembly, the appointment of a Chief Electoral Officer for the Province of British Columbia, pursuant to section 4 of the Election Act, and that the Special Committee so appointed shall have the powers of a Select Standing Committee and is also 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;

(d) to retain such 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.

The said Special Committee is to be composed of Messrs. van Dongen (Convener) and Lake, Ms. Cadieux, Mr. Ralston and Ms. Hammell.]

I have provided a copy of the motion which sets out through subparagraphs (a) to (d) the empowerments and that the committee 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 report with the Clerk.

With leave, I so move.

Leave granted.

Motion approved.

D. Routley: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

[1430]

Introductions by Members

D. Routley: I'd like the House to help me welcome my lovely partner, Leanne Finlayson, who joined us today
[ Page 5322 ]
for the MLA motorcycle ride sponsored by the B.C. Coalition of Motorcyclists. Can the House please help me make Leanne welcome.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: In Committee A, Committee of Supply — for the information of members, the estimates of the Ministry of Education — and, in this chamber, continued committee stage debate on Bill 8.

Committee of the Whole House

BIll 8 — ENERGY, MINES AND
PETROLEUM RESOURCES STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2010

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 8; L. Reid in the chair.

The committee met at 2:33 p.m.

On section 56 (continued).

Hon. B. Lekstrom: Just before we begin our discussion at committee stage on Bill 8, I would like to introduce the staff I have with me. Joining me is Barbara Thomson, who is the director of marketing and aboriginal and community relations, as well as Mike Lambert, who is the executive director of the oil and gas division.

J. Horgan: Yesterday we were debating section 56, division 7 clauses. This is the last section. Well, we've got three more divisions before we get to the end, but I don't expect we'll be more than another 15 or 20 minutes, provided the minister is as quick off the mark with his able staff as he was yesterday.

We're into the costs section. Rather than going through clauses 168, 169 and 170, perhaps the minister could address the entire division 7 and lay out for the committee what the intention of these three clauses is and what the cost impacts will be.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: This is certainly one of those provisions again — very good in the benefit to the landowner. This allows the board to award full costs for the landowner that they incur. Where previously it was awarded by the courts, this will now allow for full cost reimbursement to the landowner for the costs they incur.

[1435]

J. Horgan: Could the minister explain the previous scenario so that we better understand what the future looks like? You said: "Previously, this; in the future, that." Can you tell me what the previous was?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: Previously what would take place is that a landowner would be dealing with mediation-arbitration. They would incur costs, and the reimbursement of those costs was only partial costs as determined by the courts.

What this section does — and the two further that we've talked about…. It will allow for the actual costs, which will include actual reasonable legal fees and disbursements, as it's laid out in 168 as you read through that. So a positive step for the landowner. Rather than receiving partial costs as would be determined by a court, the board now has the ability to actually award full costs back to the landowner.

J. Horgan: In clause 168 it says: "(d) an amount on account of the reasonable time spent by a party in preparing for and attending a board proceeding." Who determines what the reasonable time is and what the value of that time is?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: The board ultimately makes that determination.

J. Horgan: What will guide the board in coming to those decisions? Will that be set in regulation? Will it be best practices from other jurisdictions?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: It would be determined based on evidence supplied by the party.

J. Horgan: I get that. You're going to have to show your taxi receipt or…. I understand that. But in terms of time spent, that's the nebulous area. Who's determining the value of time? To me, it might be worth more than to someone younger than me, and so on.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: Ultimately, the board makes that determination based on reasonableness. So the landowner, for instance, would supply everything, and if it is reasonable based on the determination of the board, they would award those costs.

J. Horgan: Yes, and the Chair will agree. Beyond the member for Peace River South, there's no one more reasonable than the member for Juan de Fuca, so it's difficult….

Interjections.

J. Horgan: Oh, I'm getting a…. Division, says the member for Shuswap. But I hear no bells, so I'll carry on.

The Chair: Thank you for your help, Members.

J. Horgan: Yeah. Again, I don't dispute that the board will set that. But if you're an aging farmer who's had to
[ Page 5323 ]
come into town to participate, to make the case, your reasonable costs may be different from someone who lives around the corner.

I know that this section is designed to give latitude to the board, but I think, just in the interest of certainty, we should have some parameters on how much you value someone's time based on…. Is it on their vocation? Is it on their age? Is it on their distance from the location of the meeting?

[1440]

Hon. B. Lekstrom: Before I formally answer, the aging farmers in my area are very strong and diligent hard workers, and I think are certainly worth their weight in gold, to be honest with you.

But the way it would work is this. Somebody that was involved in this process would file what their determination was, as the landowner. They would file if they had to leave work, for example, what their wage rates were — all of that. The board would then take that into the full consideration for full costs.

Certainly, the reasonableness comes in, but the men and women at the board are professionals. The people that will submit that evidence — I can tell you I can speak for farmers probably right across this country — are a pretty honest lot. They will submit what they think is due and right.

J. Horgan: Just before I move on, the minister will be aware that if someone reviews Hansard to determine intent here, I'm sure the minister didn't want to suggest that heavier farmers would be worth more than lighter farmers in terms of weight in gold. With that, I'll move past…. Unless the minister wants to have that on the record that the heavier the farmer, the more costs will be returned. I'll give you a chance to slide back on that one in a minute.

Moving to division 8, "Provisions Relating to Board Orders," that would be clauses 171 through 177. Again, I just lump those together within this division in the interests of allowing staff to provide the minister with some sense of how these clauses will affect orders relating to the board.

[1445]

Hon. B. Lekstrom: There are three differences in these sections, and I will go through them — sections 175, 176 and 177.

Section 175 allows the landowner to file the board order with the Supreme Court of British Columbia. If they haven't received the money that is owed to them as a result of that, then the debt collection process is enabled. That was section 175.

Section 176. They can go back to the board, and the board can then suspend the right of entry for the company until the money is paid. Section 177 is simply saying that they have to comply with the board's order. Those are the three changes in the sections he's raised here.

J. Horgan: I know the minister and I are both guilty now. It's clause, not section.

Interjection.

J. Horgan: We're so reasonable, Member for Shuswap, that we'll just fly right by that.

Within clause 176, though, the failure to pay in section 1(a), (b), (c) and (d)…. Again, prior to the introduction of these amendments, what scenario would have existed should a permit holder fail to meet their compensation obligations to the surface rights holder? I'm assuming, as I read this, that this is an improvement, but maybe you could burrow down and focus in on what the improvements are so that the record reflects that.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: The significant difference here and the significant benefit put forward is it now allows the board to suspend the right of entry, which is a significant clause.

I just want to also read 177. Something that is extremely important, I know, to the member who has asked the question and to the people I represent in the northeast is compliance with orders. In an extreme situation, this would allow the commission to refuse to issue a permit to a company with a poor track record in complying with requirements related to surface access on private land — again, something the landowners have asked for, for some time. Very happy to be able to deliver it here.

J. Horgan: Moving to division 9, which will be clauses 178 through 180, "Surface Lease Information." Submission of surface lease information and administrative penalty are identified, and suspension of right of entry. Again, I assume these are clauses that were recommended by NEEMAC, supported by the community. Or do these come fully borne through the Oil and Gas Commission?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: These were developed, correctly, with NEEMAC as well as ministry staff.

J. Horgan: You'll remember the sadness of my amendment not passing yesterday, hon. Chair. It rocked me for the rest of the day. But it was one of the issues that had been brought forward through NEEMAC, which was rejected in the creation of this bill.

Is the minister aware of any other suggestions that would have fulfilled the desire of surface rights holders through the NEEMAC process and the Oil and Gas Commission that are not contained here? Is there anything he knows of that was left off the table?

[1450]
[ Page 5324 ]

Hon. B. Lekstrom: I'm not aware of any that the member is asking about. The surface leases must now be filed with the board. Previously the board could not release that information to the public. They will now be allowed to under these terms. Of course, confidentiality and all of that would have to be maintained through FOI.

J. Horgan: The last clause of section 56 is "Regulations," clause 181. As we've gone through the bill amending the Oil and Gas Activities Act and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act, we've had numerous sections that have spoken to Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council's ability to make regulation.

I just wonder…. Here we are, very close — the penultimate page. This is yet another opportunity to further clarify the power of cabinet. Is there a reason for that, or is it just a convenient place to put down one more opportunity to assert the supreme power of cabinet?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: This is to continue and add new regulation authority to cabinet, as he's pointed out. This is a drafting requirement because they would not go back to section 133, as you indicated, where there were previous powers. They have to follow what takes place the way it is written as a drafting requirement.

Sections 56 to 58 inclusive approved.

On section 59.

J. Horgan: This is the last section of the act. This is the commencement, which will be section 59, which will become the act. We have "the provisions of this Act referred to in column 1 of the following table come into force" at certain times.

[1455]

I just want to clarify when there's an anticipated coming into force. As the member knows from our previous debate, the previous bill was passed by closure with no opportunity to do the due diligence that the minister and his able staff and I have been able to do on this bill. It was denied this Legislature and denied the people of B.C.

As we are now anticipating a commencement and a coming into force, I'm wondering if the minister could specify, beyond the date of royal assent, when we can see sections 1 through 14, sections 49 through 56, which is by regulation of the L-G-in-C, or the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council…. Does the minister have a ballpark figure on when the community can expect these sections to come into force?

The Chair: Hon. Member, your question refers to section 60.

Section 59 approved.

On section 60.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: I believe that earlier we had talked about this, and I said it would be my hope that we would ensure that this was implemented in 2010 for sure. There's transition. There's training. There are regulations. I know the member is aware of how this works.

I'm an optimist, and I believe we're going to be able to do this by the fall of this year. This is a very important bill. I think the member would agree. I think it really transitions a lot of the things the landowners in the Peace have talked about for a number of years to help bring back the balance that certainly, it was felt, wasn't there.

I know our staff are going to do everything they can to bring this, but as the member knows, I can't give him a specific date as the transition and training takes place — it is my hope — as quickly as possible. I'm going to follow through on that, and the member can certainly speak to me at any point to find out where we're at.

J. Horgan: I just want to take the opportunity to thank Ms. Thomson and Mr. Lambert for their patience, and the ministry staff who worked so hard on this, and also the citizens in the minister's region who have waited patiently for these changes to improve their situation with respect to what has become a dominant industry in the region — in fact, in the province.

Always we need to be mindful, as the minister has articulated — and certainly we on this side of the House agree — that landowners should have protection in law. I believe we've taken some fairly positive steps in the right direction with this legislation.

Section 60 approved.

Title approved.

Hon. B. Lekstrom: I would move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 2:59 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

[1500]

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

Bill 8 — energy, mines and
petroleum resources statutes
amendment act, 2010

Bill 8, Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Statutes Amendment Act, 2010, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.
[ Page 5325 ]

Hon. G. Abbott: I call continuing committee stage debate on Bill 5, the Zero Net Deforestation Act.

Committee of the Whole House

BIll 5 — Zero Net Deforestation Act

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 5; L. Reid in the chair.

The committee met at 3:02 p.m.

On section 4 (continued).

N. Macdonald: The last part of the act, then, is this section 4, which goes through and basically gives a whole list of powers to the cabinet to make decisions in terms of defining exactly how this is going to work. Now, we did raise the concern about that, and the minister's explanation is that as the market for carbon credits and that starts to emerge, there's a need for flexibility. Nevertheless, the ability to be diligent and to fully understand what's going on here is obviously tempered by when that takes place.

I guess, to come back to where we left off, just a question. The minister seemed to indicate that they really don't have a clear idea on the methodology. I would just ask: given that this has been in progress for about two years, why is there not a more complete description of the methodology that the minister is going to use to make this work?

Hon. P. Bell: I didn't, I guess, mean to suggest there hadn't been lots of work done on this in terms of the types of incentives that could be brought to bear. In fact, there are examples of work that has gone on historically. An example of that would be Tree Canada, who currently have the opportunity to issue tax receipts. Donations are limited to 75 percent of income for the year, but unused amounts can be carried forward. Individuals get a tax credit for $40 for the first $200 in donations and 43.7 percent of donations in excess of $200. That would be an example of something that has been ongoing but used in different ways.

The member earlier asked about Pacific Western Brewing in Prince George and whether or not that would be considered part of the objectives around zero net deforestation. While that work is being done in areas that are not currently considered deforested, in the future it could be that Tree Canada or companies like Pacific Western Brewing would like to utilize that opportunity to afforest lands.

[1505]

So while it is a new piece of legislation and really world-leading in terms of the work that we're trying to do here, it's very hard to know what level of incentive will be required to encourage the zero net level of behaviour. We will meter out those incentives in a way to achieve that objective.

That's also why we measure every two years as opposed to every five years — so that we can monitor the level of activity that's going on to determine whether the incentive levels are appropriate given the objective of zero net deforestation.

N. Macdonald: I'm pretty sure this is not how it works, but perhaps I've missed something. If, for instance, a large outlet store is going to set up a parking lot — let's say in Prince George — and remove forested land, there's no obligation for them as a business, by participating in a program, to deal with another area being afforested.

Am I clear on that? There's no thinking that they would participate? Or is the intention that eventually they would be somehow part of finding a new area to afforest?

Hon. P. Bell: The member is correct. There's no obligation on the company that deforests or an individual that deforests to afforest somewhere else. That opportunity is open to that company or individual as well as any other company or individual that wishes to participate in the program.

N. Macdonald: This will, essentially, be publicly funded, then, if it is through tax breaks or through carbon offsets. A main part of it the minister sees as being publicly funded?

Hon. P. Bell: That's hard to know at this point. We kind of went down this path a little bit earlier on in terms of asking what costs would be associated with it. The commitment is to get to a zero net deforestation — so not a positive afforestation or a negative afforestation but a neutral volume of ground planted that has been deforested in the province through non-timber-type activities. We will meter out the level of incentives based on that.

We have a number of examples, as I said — Tree Canada, Pacific Western Brewing: companies where there would be no incremental level of incentive offered. There are already some incentives out there. I do think that, clearly, there will need to be some incentives and probably some education that will need to take place in order to meet the objective.

It would be hard for me to suggest that it would be either strictly or significantly supported by governments. I won't know that until we actually get into the program and see the results.

N. Macdonald: In speaking to the various House Leaders…. The House Leaders, I think, are saying that
[ Page 5326 ]
there's an opportunity for the member to be expansive in his answers, as I think that there will be some coordination issues that will come up. I think that there's still…. I have a number of questions to go forward, but I think there's also a time frame of about 15 to 20 minutes that the two House Leaders are talking about. I know that the member has in estimates and in other places been very to the point in his answers. I just leave that with you as an opportunity.

The next question is…. As I've said before, there's the possibility of the exercise being one where people will want to have insight, and we have canvassed this somewhat before. Does the minister see a role for the Forest Practices Board in terms of looking at what's taking place and providing a degree of accountability?

Hon. P. Bell: I have to say that my colleague the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure suggested that this is the first time that the Minister of Forests and Range has ever been asked to give longer as opposed to shorter answers. I appreciate that opportunity.

[1510]

Interjections.

Hon. P. Bell: Now I'm getting heckled by my own team. Isn't that amazing how that works?

I think there is an opportunity to consider other entities, whether it's the Forest Practices Board…. I also firmly believe in the model of third-party certification that has taken place in this province over the last number of years. I've spoken extensively about the issue of third-party certification. Whether it's CSA, SFI or FSC, all three models certainly are models that have grown.

I think the member earlier on referred to and talked about the notion of carbon credits and how that might evolve, or carbon offsets and how that might evolve. I think that's another good example of an opportunity for a third-party certifier or for an audited, accountable, transparent mechanism by which carbon will be accounted for. Those are examples of ways that the public can feel comfortable that the objective is being met, that we are fulfilling the responsibilities of the act.

There are a number of ways of getting at this, a number of different bodies. I think that will evolve over time. Certainly, it's in the province's best interest, regardless of who is government, to have that solid third-party-certifier support. I do believe that the globe will require that over time, especially with regards to carbon credits.

We talked earlier about the notion of carbon offsets and carbon credits and how that might work. I talked about how there is a wide variety of values associated with carbon credits ranging from what some people call junk credits that are worth a dime or less per tonne to higher-value credits. There are a number of organizations that do that work. The ones that are successful, and we're trying to model the Pacific Carbon Trust after this, are the ones where it is very clear that in fact that incremental carbon is being sequestered and that the work being done is achieving results.

I think this is a very exciting area of public policy, one that will continue to evolve. While the Zero Net Deforestation Act by itself does not drive this agenda, I do think it creates opportunities to move forward.

Coming back and tying my comments specifically to section 4 of the act, since that's where we are right now, the ability to make regulations in a wide variety of areas is really key to the success of the act over time.

If we are constrained in a very narrow definition of how we measure net zero deforestation — what different sorts of activities can account for afforestation, which lands are available for afforestation — I think it can create challenges over the long term as things change, as the low-carbon economy starts to evolve and develop, and as companies look to ways to move forward on afforestation.

I'd also add that I think there's a significant role for First Nations in this. I spoke yesterday up in Nanaimo at a First Nations economic conference and talked specifically about the opportunities around afforestation. We have 203 First Nations around the province. Another piece of legislation that we'll be talking about and I'm looking forward to working with the member opposite on is with regards to a new form of First Nations tenures. I do hope we have the opportunity to get to that one before the end of session. I hope there's an agreement amongst the House Leaders to get that work done.

I think that one is very interesting and also brings in the possibility of afforestation in these tenures. In fact, as we go forward, it will be very interesting to see what kind of values do come as a result of carbon credits. We could easily get to a point in time in the next few years where there is real value to the process of growing trees, active forms of incremental silviculture that bring values such as carbon credits. It is possible, in my view, where companies and/or First Nations will actively be pursuing area-based tenures in areas where significant deforestation has occurred, and it has an opportunity to get that incremental value.

I think it's important to have a wide variety of regulatory-making authority. I know that if I was in opposition, I'd prefer that it all be in legislation as opposed to regulation. I understand why that would be. But when you're dealing with a brand-new area of public policy like this, something that really hasn't been touched on in other jurisdictions certainly in North America, I think it is appropriate to have a wider range of opportunity around regulatory-making ability.

[1515]

N. Macdonald: The thinking right now is that it would be similar to some of the existing third parties that validate forestry work. It would be something similar to that.
[ Page 5327 ]

I asked about the Forest Practices Board. Is there consideration of the Auditor General in having a role in this, especially if it's dealing with public funds and private entities?

Hon. P. Bell: While it is possible for a ministry or government to request the Auditor General's work to be done in a specific area, it's not one that I'd contemplated. I actually think probably the Forest Practices Board would be better suited to do that type of work. We have a new chair in the Forest Practices Board. Al Gorley was recently reappointed. I had an opportunity to meet with him earlier on this week. I think Al will do a great job on the Forest Practices Board.

We didn't actually canvass this specific area, but it's the type of area that the Forest Practices Board typically does good work in, and I think they would be better suited as an entity. But the Auditor General will do what the Auditor General wants to do, as we all know. I'm sure if he sees fit or she sees fit, depending on who it is into the future, they would feel more than comfortable looking at this particular level of activity.

But at this point, as we move into the first round of measurement, we'll see what third-party certifiers are interested in looking at and see what the Forest Practices Board is looking at, and we'll likely work with one of those organizations.

N. Macdonald: One more question, just about the public bodies. Is there any thinking that they would be incented to participate in this? Is there any thinking of how you could include municipalities or hospital districts or school boards to participate in some program like this?

Hon. P. Bell: The quick answer to that is yes. I know that we're looking to not necessarily get a quick answer right now, so we'll get the slower answer as well. But very much so municipalities, I think, will be ideally suited to take advantage of this opportunity, particularly around brownfield sites, old industrial sites. I think there's a tremendous opportunity for them to play an active role. But the stakeholder groups that we are looking to engage with in the short term are certainly all the universities — UBC, UNBC, Royal Roads, UVic and some of the specialty institutions.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Lands will be working with utilities, because there's a huge opportunity in dealing with utilities around this afforestation in some of the large corridors that we have. The B.C. Institute of Agrologists; groups like the B.C. Cattlemen; the B.C. Ag Council; the Private Managed Forest Land folks, another key group that I think could be utilized here; clearly, through UBCM, local government, but all sorts of government organizations; the different beetle action coalitions.

The Urban Development Institute would be another one that we would want to be talking to, the Real Estate Foundation of B.C., the B.C. Road Builders, the Association of B.C. Land Surveyors, the Planning Institute of British Columbia. The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists would clearly be another opportunity with regards to minesites and reclamation of minesites.

I see my colleague the Minister of State for Mining has announced again that mining is leading the way in B.C.'s economic recovery. We'll have a glass of wine and talk about that a little later on this evening. I'd argue that with lumber prices where they are, we're making some significant headway these days as well.

Obviously, the Council of Forest Industries, Coast Forest Products Association, and the Interior Lumber Manufacturers, the Truck Loggers Association or companies like TimberWest…. The Association of B.C. Forest Professionals clearly would be another organization that we would want to use. The Community Forest Association, another strong organization that could play a key role.

[1520]

Another certainly significant group, of course, would be the WSCA, the Western Silvicultural Contractors Association — John Betts and the crew — and a very important group, the B.C. Forestry Climate Change Working Group; the College of Applied Biology.

In the mining sector there are a number of different areas, like the Coal Association of Canada, that would be interested. There are large areas of deforestation that work could be done on. Even smaller groups like the Kamloops Exploration Group and Smithers Exploration Group are on our list to talk to, and the Placer Miners Association.

In the energy sector, I mentioned B.C. Hydro already as a major player — large lineal corridors that account for areas of deforestation — and B.C. Transmission Corp, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Association of Geophysical Contractors, Independent Power B.C., the Canadian Wind Energy Association.

Then when you get into the tourism associations, there are a significant number of groups — COTA, of course; the Outdoor Recreation Council; B.C. Snowmobile Federation; ATV riders; Canada West Ski Areas Association.

Then when we get into the environmental organizations, clearly all of those organizations need to be part of it. Sierra Club; Pembina Institute; Land Conservancy; the conservation trust; Nature Trust; Wildsight; David Suzuki Foundation; Greenpeace, of course; and ForestEthics would all need to be involved.

Then there are lots of individual associations and groups as well.

As I mentioned earlier, we'll be involved with extensive public consultation and meetings. If this House sees fit
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to pass this legislation in the next little bit here, we'll be engaging right away with the public and working on developing the regulations, as we've spoken of before.

B. Routley: On section 4, I understand there's quite a bit of latitude with the power to make regulations. One of my concerns is that with all of this activity, certainly there's going to be someone, I would imagine — I guess this is the question — that would be delegated this authority.

Are we going to have some kind of net deforestation boss running around the Ministry of Forests? Are they going to have their own separate department with separate funding? Is that what's envisioned with all of this separate regulation?

Hon. P. Bell: Currently the delegated authority does rest with the chief forester's office. That's the appropriate place for it, given that the chief forester's office typically is the organization that does the bulk of the measurement; deals with the mapping technology; and has the level of information, as I mentioned earlier to the member opposite, that we'll be basing our measurement and statistics on.

There is some thinking in the ministry that that could transfer over to the competitiveness and innovation division. That is only because, as the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke pointed out, carbon credits are likely to play a role in this, depending on how those carbon credits develop.

If in fact they do, then over time it could be that this would rest with competitiveness and innovation. But time will tell on that one. At this point it rests with the chief forester's office, and no, there won't be a new division created or a net zero czar or anything like that.

B. Routley: Thank you, Minister. I noticed that there's this clause in (3)(c). It's kind of, I guess, a policy-maker's dream — kind of the dream-team clause, if you like.

It says may "make different regulations for different persons, places, things or transactions." This one really has my interest. Could the minister please explain the purpose of such a clause, and if he has some examples of how this might be utilized?

Hon. P. Bell: The member quite correctly has pointed out this is a catch-all regulatory-making-ability provision that's here. It's not unheard of here. It does get used from time to time, this specific phrase.

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If he checks with the member for Nanaimo, the Attorney General critic, I'm sure he'll be able to confirm that.

It is there because this is new. It is cutting edge. It's not something that we are repeating from another jurisdiction. It's important to have the ability to develop regulations as necessary as we go along with this project. If it was simply a carbon copy from another jurisdiction that we were bringing over, that likely wouldn't be there. We wouldn't feel that it was necessary. But because this is relatively new, and likely other jurisdictions will follow, we need to have that regulatory-making ability.

B. Routley: Thank you, Minister. In (d) it talks about adopting provisions of a publication or adopting them "as they are amended from time to time." What kind of publication, exactly, are we talking about? Are there a variety of publications? One publication? Is this the Ministry of Forests publication? What exactly is this publication all about, and could we have some specifics of that?

Hon. P. Bell: This particular provision is used when there is a foreign publication, oftentimes, or a publication from another jurisdiction within Canada that we simply want to adopt and bring into place in British Columbia as part of the regulatory environment. It is used under those circumstances.

B. Routley: I forgot to ask the question under "(c) respecting the methodology by which deforestation and afforestation are to be calculated." It sounds like there's some flexibility in that.

I understood about the satellites flying overhead, and we're going to have some method. I assume it would be by hectares. I don't know whether this is talking about hectares or cubic metres or some other method of calculation. Could you expand on what the other possible meanings of "calculations" under this act could be, other than the two that I just mentioned?

Hon. P. Bell: The principle behind this regulatory-making ability would allow us to specifically define the sampling process required in order to measure the amount of deforestation or afforestation that was taking place in any given year. It would then prescribe that measurement by regulation.

Coming back to the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke, who spoke earlier about the importance of the integrity of a measurement system and that the public have confidence in that measurement system, by having regulatory powers to make a process required through regulation, we think we'll give people that confidence.

N. Macdonald: On behalf of the co-critic and myself, I'd just like to thank staff and the minister for the process. With that, I think we can move along.

Sections 4 and 5 approved.

Title approved.
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Hon. P. Bell: I move that we rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 3:29 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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Report and
Third Reading of Bills

Bill 5 — Zero Net Deforestation Act

Bill 5, Zero Net Deforestation Act, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

Hon. G. Abbott: I call second reading of Bill 18, the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act.

Second Reading of Bills

Bill 18 — Haida Gwaii
Reconciliation Act

Hon. G. Abbott: I want to provide my comments here at second reading with respect to the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act. It's a great honour to rise and move second reading of this important piece of legislation.

[C. Trevena in the chair.]

The legislation enables the government to meet its commitment in the Kunst'aa Guu–Kunst'aayah reconciliation protocol. Specifically, this legislation will provide us with the legal basis for joint decision-making with Haida in relation to land and natural resource management on Haida Gwaii.

But this agreement is more than just legal tools. This agreement is unlike anything we have negotiated in the province before. It is a protocol that's based on reconciliation, on mutual trust and on mutual understanding with the Haida Nation. It moves us beyond decades of uncertainty into a new era of reconciliation with the Haida people, an era that will see new strength in Haida communities by providing equal opportunities on the land base and increasing economic and social capacity.

The protocol now is an important step by the Haida Nation and British Columbia towards a comprehensive reconciliation between the Haida Nation, British Columbia and Canada. In the meantime, this agreement gives us immediate tools to establish a unique government-to-government relationship that enhances certainty on the land base.

The preamble of the Haida constitution offers a profound introduction to the Haida people. "Our culture, our heritage is the child of respect and intimacy with the land and the sea. Like the forest, the roots of our people are intertwined such that the greatest troubles cannot overcome us. We owe our existence to Haida Gwaii."

Haida Gwaii has for many, many years been the home of the Haida people, the eagle and the raven clans, for as long as history and the archaeology have recorded occupation of the islands. The Haida Nation are world renowned for their cultural diversity, including art, carving, weaving and the rich heritage which is bound by the sea, land, sky and the spirit world.

As current Council of the Haida Nation President Guujaaw describes: "All that we say is ours is of Haida Gwaii. That is our lot, our heritage, our life…and one of the world's great cultures." Indeed, one of the world's great cultures, a culture that has endured many setbacks.

At the time of contact with Europeans around 1774, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Haida people lived in more than two dozen villages throughout the islands. By 1885 after waves of smallpox and measles a Hudson's Bay Company census counted only 800 Haida. By 1915 the population had dropped further, to less than 600 people.

In spite of these epidemics, the ban of the potlatch and the cultural devastation of the residential school system, today the Haida population is 4,000 and growing. About 2,500 Haida members live in Haida Gwaii. Many others live in Vancouver, Prince Rupert and around the world.

Madam Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, this legislation will also restore the name Haida Gwaii, replacing the name Queen Charlotte Islands. Known to the Haida as "islands of the people," Haida Gwaii is a stunning, biologically rich archipelago of more than 150 islands on the northwest coast of the province. Restoring the name Haida Gwaii to these islands is a significant act of reconciliation, one that recognizes that the Haida people have lived on these islands for thousands of years and continue to live there today.

This change will be reflected in the language of navigation, on maps, letters and official government correspondence. As well, this name restoration will begin a cultural transformation, one that honours Haida history. Babies born on these islands will say they were born on Haida Gwaii.

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Geographic names reflect human occupancy and play an important role in our lives, both culturally and politically. Indeed, by restoring the name Haida Gwaii to the islands, we are seeing reconciliation at work.

The measurement of success in reconciliation is the impact our efforts have on people's lives. We know that when communities have control over their economic and social prospects, they are healthier, happier and more prosperous.

This government has long recognized the need for reconciliation with aboriginal people in this province.
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We believe it is essential to have the voice and participation of aboriginal people in decisions that may impact their rights, and we believe today that through this agreement with the Haida, we are embracing the new relationship principles of mutual respect, reconciliation and recognition.

In the past governments and the Haida were more likely to meet at a blockade or in a courtroom than at the negotiating table. The efforts of negotiators on both sides of the table to come to this unique agreement have been extraordinary. The journey, I know, has been a challenging one, but at the same time exhilarating for those fortunate enough to have been on it.

This agreement represents significant change in how we work together, an agreement that I am confident will prove that peace is productive. Indeed, when we signed this agreement in December, Guujaaw commented that "We're running out of things to fight about." I believe that's true.

In conclusion, I just want to say, first of all, thank you to the Haida leaders and the Haida people without whose strength, fortitude, persistence and patience this agreement would not have been possible. I want to thank negotiators both from the Haida Nation and from the government of British Columbia for the intensive and clearly effective work which they undertook. Although the team was large, I particularly want to thank Trevor Proverbs from the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Lindsay Jones from the ILMB, who worked together very effectively as leads of the team for the province of British Columbia.

I look forward in the years ahead to seeing all of the success that this reconciliation protocol will help bring to the Haida people and to Haida Gwaii, and I look forward to hearing the comments of my fellow legislators in this chamber in respect of second reading of this bill.

B. Simpson: I would like to echo some of the minister's words, and I have a few things to say about this agreement, both in the specific case and in some general comments. But first and foremost, we on this side of the House applaud the work of the government; applaud, as the minister has indicated, the Haida Gwaii National Government, the elders, the hereditary chiefs, the negotiators who have worked on this.

As the minister has characterized it, it is an alternate approach to addressing the issues that are confronting the people of Haida Gwaii, the First Nations in particular. When the president of the Council of the Haida Nation gave his talk in the Legislature, the minister and I were joking that he made sure he cuffed both the government and ourselves on both ends of his speech.

He put HST aside in order to make the speech, and then at the end of the speech indicated that this was progress that was made. He wasn't quite sure why his people kept voting in an NDP MLA because of what happened in the 1990s. Both governments and the Socred government before have struggled to find a relationship with First Nations that doesn't do what I think Guujaaw was referring to about the 1990s: build hope, build expectations and then fail to realize those.

In the case of the Treaty Commission during the 1990s, there was the feeling that there was a more rapid logging and resource extraction throughout the Queen Charlottes in advance of some kind of settlement occurring, and I believe that's what Guujaaw was referring to.

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Here, what we have in front of us, is a bill that actually enables more comprehensive agreement sitting in behind that bill.

I want to thank the minister and his staff for spending some time with the opposition members when the reconciliation agreement was first announced. The minister was kind enough to make sure I got a briefing on the phone, and then we sat with some of our members, including the member for the North Coast, to get a more fulsome briefing of what the implications of the legislation are relative to the actual agreement, which sits outside of this legislation. We've put the minister on note that we've got some questions about the actual legislation itself — some of the details — but on balance, we believe that this is an appropriate way to go about things.

I had the luxury of having dinner with some friends who came down from Quesnel here last night. We've been together for almost 27 years. Our kids have grown up together and so on, and we were talking about the fact that we now have a little bit of freedom to begin travelling together again.

At the dinner table, we were asking where people would like to go. By happenstance, one of my friends said: "There's only one place I would love to go, and I don't need to travel very far to get there: that's the Queen Charlottes." We had a conversation about the fact that it is now Haida Gwaii, and it is a place of incredible beauty.

I was there first as a young lad in the navy. We were up there doing some work with the young officers that we had. We actually did a rescue off of Masset and came into Masset with a fisherman that had done some damage to himself, and I got to know Masset from that perspective. I then had the luxury of travelling there as an MLA with the MLA for North Coast.

We sat down and had a long conversation with President Guujaaw, and we really got a better sense — I did, at least — of the potential that still exists in that region. As the minister pointed out, the renaming of the Queen Charlottes to Haida Gwaii is part of this bill, and it is definitely appropriate that that area be renamed.

It is one of the few areas in the province of British Columbia where there is effectively an unchallenged claim by a group, the Haida Gwaii, that have a historical record
[ Page 5331 ]
there dating back at least 7,000 years. In the Haida's legend, it's from time immemorial, but archaeological records go back 7,000-10,000 years.

The naming of that region by the discoverers from the settler community…. Basically, it was named after a boat. It was the lead boat in the group of boats that was over there, so I think it's appropriate that it be renamed back. I look forward to seeing the names appear on the navigation charts, etc., to confirm that decision.

One of the things I think that the Haida hoped for…. I know it's an ongoing issue we have within First Nations, and that is the number of First Nations people that now move into urban settings. Approximately two-thirds of Haida actually do not live in the Haida Gwaii islands. They live predominantly down in the Vancouver area.

There is a hope among the Haida people that both the renaming of their place that they live in and a management agreement like this, where resources are being made available, where the Haida can participate in the economy, where the Haida can actually make decisions about the future of that region — not just for present generations to participate in the economy but for future generations — will attract more of the Haida back.

As we've seen recently, the plight of urban aboriginals is something that all governments must turn their attention to. But on the flip side of that plight, a report came out recently that a lot of First Nations are beginning to make progress in urban centres. They are becoming better-educated. They're integrating into society better, but one of the fundamental questions about that is: at what expense to their culture, language? What are we losing as a province and a nation as First Nations assimilate themselves into the urban settings?

[1545]

There is a hope that as part of a result of this management agreement and the reconciliation agreement there will be an opportunity for First Nations from the Haida to come back to where they came from and to be full participants in the economy of that region.

I was in a bit of a panic to get back over here today because I was at the Fraser Institute luncheon this afternoon, where Tom Flanagan was talking about his most recent book where he and a number of authors are proposing to the federal government a way to address the issue of the Indian Act and the failure of the Indian Act to allow private property rights within First Nations reserves.

It was interesting listening to Mr. Flanagan speak because one of the things that he pointed out…. As critic for Aboriginal Relations, I've been trying to understand what some of our options are in the province of British Columbia, where we can go with First Nations rights and title, what we can do in the absence of rights and title, how we can engage First Nations in a different way.

One of the things that Mr. Flanagan pointed out is that under the Indian Act, we have absolutely structured First Nations and our relationships with First Nations to exclude them from our economy. They are actually not full participants in the economy because we don't allow rights of private ownership and we don't attract investment into reserves and all of those things.

It struck me, as I was flying back over, that that's really the attempt of this bill and what the agreement that sits behind this bill is trying to do. It's actually trying to fulfil the promise of the Premier of a new relationship with First Nations. That new relationship is predicated on shared decision-making on a government-to-government basis, predicated on revenue- and resource-sharing and, also, on the fact that First Nations have the right — without necessarily having the legal definition of that — to have a say in what happens over the resources in their traditional territories. I believe that this reconciliation agreement does that.

It would be nice if I could say that the new relationship, of course, was translating across the board throughout the province in that fashion. But without question, as I meet with First Nations all around the province, they tell me they believe that the new relationship is more words than substance. The most recent example of that, of course, is Site C and the response of the treaty 8, the Carrier-Sekani and others who are asking where the new relationship is. When you make an announcement like Site C and you're not at the table with those First Nations in a meaningful way, in a government-to-government relationship, they get caught off guard that that project is somehow going to proceed, and they feel like an afterthought as a result.

With respect to this arrangement, as we understand it, there will be a very unique arrangement to facilitate government-to-government dialogue, and that's the management team that will be established. It's a management council made up of two individuals from the House of Assembly for the Council of Haida Nations and two members representing the provincial government.

I think it's unique, and it's interesting. I'll be canvassing the minister more about the structure of this as we get into third reading. But the fact that it's a balance of two and two…. There is an appointed chair, but the chair is only appointed as a default where the two members of the provincial government and two members of the Haida government can't reach agreement among themselves. I think that's a unique and interesting way to make decisions.

The ability of the Haida, of course, to make this work will be based on whether or not the government is actually able to finish the remainder of the negotiations. As we know, there are a lot of details that still remain to be hammered out. There is money up front. One of the things that I like is the fact that the Haida are being enabled to not only purchase some licences directly — I believe we'll have willing sellers in that area — but they're also going to get a 120,000-cubic-metre forest licence.
[ Page 5332 ]

Again, it remains to be seen where that volume is going to be and all of the details, but that's the level at which First Nations should actually be engaged with their land base — 120,000 cubic metres as opposed to what we've seen in forest range agreements, forest range opportunities where they're as small as 6,000 cubic metres. They're not economically viable. They're simply a way to give First Nations some money up front with no real attempt to allow First Nations back onto the land base in a meaningful way.

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This agreement seems to address that with large volumes of timber and the ability to actually purchase licences from willing sellers. I look forward to seeing what happens with that as it evolves and as the Haida actually are equipped to be able to meaningfully manage the land base that they have on the islands.

The other very interesting aspect to this in our discussion with the minister, of course, is the whole carbon question. Both the reconciliation agreements recognize for the first time this fledgling carbon economy. I'm not quite sure how that will work its way out in the actual reconciliation agreement and how it will work out in details, but the fact that there is the carbon in there is interesting. I think it's got foresight to it, and I look forward to seeing that evolve.

I congratulate the negotiators and the First Nations who made it possible to look forward and say: "Where is the future economy?" We need to make sure that the future economy is recognized in these agreements, because this bill that we have in front of us is actually enabling the minister to make amendments as we go through a transition period to make sure that we start aligning up the Forest Act and the Land Act and other things as we understand better what the reconciliation agreement means relative to the existing provincial legislation.

The other aspect of this that's crystal-clear — and I think people need to understand it — is that this is the provincial government sitting down with the Haida government. The federal government is not party to this, and the treaty process is still the umbrella discussions and negotiations that are occurring over top of this.

That's why it's unique and interesting that the provincial government is coming with what is within their purview — land and resources — and trying to make arrangements with the Haida that they have some control over those lands and resources as the higher-level discussion with the federal government over the eventual reconciliation — the recognition of Haida rights and title over the area that they designate as their traditional territory — still unfolds.

One of the things that we're curious about here is: can we use this approach as a model in other places? Of course, that's more complicated because in other places there's not as clear or uncontested rights and title as there is in the Haida situation. I know in my area — for example, the northern Shuswap — we're moving down the path of an offer from government. They were looking at that offer, and the Nazko to the north put in an overlapping claim late in the day because they have some contested areas that they want resolved.

That's not the case with Haida, and that's why the reconciliation agreement is possible while the treaty process continues. However, I believe that there are other opportunities for us to look at this because the coast First Nations, midcoast, have a reconciliation agreement that they're working out.

Is it possible to look at tribal councils, other national governments, to sit with them and say: "Okay, one of the things that you need to do as a national government, as a tribal council, is resolve some of your internal disputes, because we would like to sit and, in lieu of an immediate treaty, look at this reconciliation approach to see if we can facilitate having more control over the land base, more control over the decisions that are occurring, and see if this is actually a way to put the new relationship into practice in a very meaningful way." We'd certainly be interested in engaging in those discussions.

With that, I have one final comment, and it comes from what I just had to say. There's an interesting clause in this bill. This is Bill 18, Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act. At the end of the preamble and the whereases, the final statement in the whereas preamble is: "Therefore Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of British Columbia, enacts as follows…."

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Madam Speaker, after five years at this, I sure would like it if that was actually taken more to heart, that the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, every member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, actually had the ability to give advice and consent for legislation — particularly legislation as important as this, but all legislation. It's interesting to watch the federal parliament and the Speaker of the federal parliament assert the supremacy of parliament over the Prime Minister's Office in that case.

I would like to put a challenge to the minister. We've done it before. It's not a surprise. We do have standing committees of the Legislature. We have a standing committee for aboriginal relations. It would have actually been very nice, on this good news of the reconciliation agreement with the Haida or midcoast or whatever, if we actually used the tools of the Legislature, if a standing committee of the Legislature so designated as aboriginal relations — it's part of our standing committees — actually was engaged in the formulation of legislation like this, was engaged in trying to see if there are other opportunities for us.

I believe British Columbians believe that when they elect a member to the Legislative Assembly, they're supposed to be engaged and involved in the governing of
[ Page 5333 ]
this province. We have to find a way to do that so that we don't find out by press release or that we don't find out when a bill comes into the House, what the mind of the government is.

I think we need to figure out a way to move beyond electioneering. We need to figure out a way to move beyond the nonsense that passes for question period in here — which seems to be our only focus because we're mired in electioneering — to actually work together as legislators and as lawmakers on a day-to-day basis, to figure out ways that we can actually participate in making arrangements like this better and making arrangements like this go further around the province and to resolve, in particular, our First Nations issues around this province.

As the Treaty Commission pointed out, British Columbia has lost opportunities because our failure — year over year, decade over decade, administration over administration, political party over political party — to address the First Nations rights and title issue in a meaningful way, to bring them into our society and economy in a meaningful way, is a failure for all British Columbians because it does not allow us to maximize the potential that is there. As the PricewaterhouseCoopers report pointed out for the Treaty Commission, $10 billion over the next 15 years will be lost because of our failure to address this very issue.

I know in my area the Prosperity mine hearings finished on Monday. I met with some of the First Nations leaders and Council of Canadians. I've met with Taseko Mines. That process divides us; it divides that community.

My question is: is there a way that we can work together as legislators to go and figure out different ways so that our communities are not divided over the land base, they're not divided over rights and title, and they're not divided over economic development. We actually have the ability to provide, as this preamble states, "advice and consent" by the Legislative Assembly on resolutions to the things that matter to British Columbians.

So I applaud the government on this. It would have been nice if there had been opportunities for us to be involved in it. I make the offer to the minister and to the Premier. We would like to look at opportunities to see if this is a model that can in fact be expanded. We understand the special nature of Haida Gwaii, but are there opportunities for us to work through some of the First Nations' existing organizations to do these kinds of things?

I look forward to some of the more detailed questions and, in particular, the questions about how this will be communicated as the details are fleshed out. As the Haida go through the transition period, how is it going to be communicated? How will people know how this is evolving? That will be the nature of most of my questions as we get into third reading.

Hon. P. Bell: I am very pleased to stand up in support of the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act. I have a strong personal tie that's developed over the last 4½ or so years with Guujaaw and with the people of Haida Gwaii, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal.

[1600]

I just fully see this as an exciting time on Haida Gwaii, an area that has not had the level of economic success that many other parts of the province have seen over the last decade or so, but an area that has incredible potential.

I'll share it with you, Madam Speaker, my first opportunity to visit Haida Gwaii. This goes back a few years ago. Although the date evades me at the moment, it is one that is remembered throughout British Columbia, because it was the day that the windstorms came through Stanley Park and blew over all of the big trees. I'm sure someone will be able to look that date up and recall, the member for Vancouver–West End…. December 2006, was it?

An Hon. Member: Yes, it was.

Hon. P. Bell: December 2006. It was my first opportunity to visit the islands, and I spent about three hours or so on that blustery, windy day, when we saw such devastation on the Lower Mainland, in a helicopter flying around the islands with Guujaaw. It was quite a lesson, first of all, in how to make sure that you didn't get airsick because it was very rough, but also a bit of a lesson in humanity too, I think.

Guujaaw is an incredible leader. He is an individual who has never forgotten his responsibility to his elders, to his youth, to all of the citizens of Haida Gwaii — not just aboriginal but non-aboriginal as well. The passion that he brings to his leadership is exemplary. He is an individual. Certainly, in this role we have an opportunity to deal with many individuals, and you don't always get the sense that they are in it for the good of the larger group of people. Guujaaw is definitely one of those individuals whose interest and passion is in supporting the islands, the economy of the islands, the healthy communities of the islands.

For all of those reasons I think this is a tremendous step forward to really work in a new way, to reconcile our differences with the Haida. I remember when I first touched this file about five years ago. I think many believed that we would not be in a position to reconcile our differences with the Haida, that it would wind its way through the court cases, that there would continue to be blockades and challenging times.

I remember the first meeting I had with Guujaaw, which happened somewhat by accident, although I'm not entirely sure. It might have been by accident on my part; I don't think it was by accident on Guujaaw's part. I think he had predetermined that this was an opportunity to meet with me and try to advance some of his agendas.
[ Page 5334 ]

I remember us discussing the need to build agreement slowly. I remember expressing to him that I believed that we needed to build the muscle of agreement; that that muscle of agreement — much like your leg muscles and your heart and your lungs, if you're going to run a marathon — is something you had to build over time; and that we hadn't had a strong relationship.

We hadn't had the kind of relationship that allowed us to really trust each other, to look each other in the eyes and say, when we shook each other's hand, that it was a meaningful agreement, that we'd honour that agreement and that we'd move forward together. That was built for all kinds of reasons, I'm sure, on both sides of the equation. That trust didn't exist.

What I said at the time to Guujaaw was that we needed to start building on small agreements. We needed to find little points of agreement where we would both believe that we could find a resolution to specific issues, that we'd be able to then build on that agreement — much like an individual who wanted to go out and run a marathon would start out by perhaps going for a long walk on the first day, and then after a while, start to jog a little bit and build those muscles that will allow that individual to go and run a marathon.

If we were going to run a marathon…. And for me, a reconciliation agreement is likely a sub-2½-hour marathon, an incredible feat for almost any individual. Although I know the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation did his half-marathon in slightly under two hours, and that was remarkable for him as well.

In order to achieve that kind of a standard, you needed to build the muscle of agreement over time. That first meeting was in Richmond. That was followed by the visit when I went up to Haida Gwaii, because I said that if we're really going to start building that muscle of agreement, we needed to do it on the islands. We couldn't do it in Victoria or Vancouver or Prince George, for that matter, or anywhere else. We had to do it on the islands to really start building that agreement.

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So I went up and spent that day on Haida Gwaii, and I think it changed my view, probably forever, of what we needed to do to build new relationships with aboriginal peoples across this province. That eight or so hours I spent with Guujaaw completely changed my perspective.

That day we agreed to work on three priority areas. They were relatively small priority areas. They weren't ones that really, in my view or in Guujaaw's view, should be hard to accomplish, but I encouraged Guujaaw and Arnie Bellis, who was the other key leader in Haida Gwaii and still is a resident of Haida Gwaii, to stay focused on those three relatively simple accomplishments.

I mandated Lindsay Jones, who's been mentioned in this House already, a key staff member for the integrated land management bureau, to try and start building to those agreements.

We provided a 30-day mandate. I said to Guujaaw: "I'll come back in 30 days. My hope is that we can find agreement on these three issues in 30 days and sign off on those agreements, and then we'll continue to build that muscle of agreement as we go forward on bigger and better areas, until we do run the sub-2½-hour marathon that we're seeing here today."

Sure enough, after 31 days Guujaaw and Lindsay and Arnie had exceeded all expectations, had actually gone much further than anyone could have ever possibly expected and had got to a place where not only had we found agreement on those three issues, but we'd largely developed the skeleton of a land use plan that really is the spirit of a new model of reconciliation on the islands. I think we learned from that that we could do things together and that it was possible to find agreement.

I have to say that so often people focus on what they disagree on. Yet you know, by and large, the vast majority of the issues that we deal with in this House and outside this House…. Whether it's opposition members or government members, we agree on 90 percent of the things that are in front of us. If we would just focus on areas of agreement, I think we'd run out of time long before we'd run out of agreement. Think about what we could accomplish.

This is an example of exactly that. That's where a strong leader from the Haida Nation said, "It's time to put our differences aside. It's time for us to figure out how we can have better lives for our people, take down the roadblocks and start working with government," and a strong individual like Lindsay Jones was able to start building on that agreement.

Although I didn't make it back on the 30th day to Haida Gwaii, I did get back…. I think it was the 32nd day I got back to Haida Gwaii, because of schedules, and we did move forward.

That built a land use agreement that was signed off about three years ago that really was historic and moved forward to a new model of practices on Haida Gwaii. It started to bring the aboriginal peoples in and the non-aboriginal peoples in, but that wasn't enough, because we needed to move beyond that and get to where we are today, to a reconciliation agreement.

I would describe that initial land use plan as a good, solid 10K, since we're using running analogies today — a difficult and challenging feat but not an impossible one. We moved on and built on that, and my colleague the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation took over the file and started moving it forward to that marathon.

You know, I think the early days of agreement, the ability for us to focus on things that we could agree on as opposed to just the things that we disagree on, really allowed for that to continue to build and develop.
[ Page 5335 ]

That's a lesson for all of us to learn, in this House and outside this House and with First Nations people across the province. If we'd focus our attention on the good things that we can work on collaboratively, where our interests align, it's amazing what we can accomplish. I think this particular act and this bill is a real testament to that.

You know, it's an interesting place, the islands of Haida Gwaii, because you have a number of small communities. One of the things that I saw early on was that those communities really did not have their views aligned, and they weren't working collaboratively on the achievement of goals and objectives.

One of the unique things that's occurred…. I remember the meeting very, very well. It occurred in the Birch Room in these buildings about three and a half years ago. It was when the Council of the Haida Nation, the chiefs from Skidegate and Old Massett and also the mayors of the three communities and the regional district reps came together with a request to move forward on the land use agreement at the time, with the belief that the land use agreement for Haida Gwaii would build a better economy and a better way of life for all the peoples of the Queen Charlotte Islands, at the time, now called Haida Gwaii.

[1610]

To see that alignment for the first time, to see everyone coming together and saying, "We want to work together to start building an economy," I think was very exciting and spells nothing but good things for the communities.

As we move forward in the debate of this bill in this House, I know that it will be broadly supported from both sides of the House, but I think we need to take the lessons learned from this reconciliation act and start bridging our differences with other First Nations peoples across the province. You know, leaders like Guujaaw don't come along every day, but he's an individual that I think we should all turn to for advice to help direct us in the change in the relationship that we're looking for, for First Nations.

This has been, I think, a very positive period, and the Premier often says that it's amazing how little changes in two years but how much changes in ten years. When I think back over the last 4½ years or so that I've been involved in this file, I'd agree with him. There wasn't much changed in the first two years, but now that we're into 4½ years, we're starting to see significant change and growth. I'm confident that when we turn and look at this file 5½ years from now and see what's been accomplished over the last ten years, it's something that we can all be proud of.

As I close my comments, I would like to again pass on my congratulations to Trevor Proverbs, to Lindsay Jones, to Guujaaw and to the people of Haida Gwaii. This is a tremendous accomplishment. It is a model for us to all look at and understand and learn from and build on, and it is, for me, a very important day in this House, in the history of the province of British Columbia.

S. Chandra Herbert: I rise today to support the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act. It brings me great delight to be able to rise in this House and offer my support. One would wonder, from the West End — urban riding, south of the province, pretty far away from Haida Gwaii — why this would be important to me and my constituents. Well, I think naming is important. I think being able to identify a place for what it is with an appropriate name, which comes from the people who live there, is very important.

Shakespeare said: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Certainly, I've been to Haida Gwaii, and if I didn't know what the name was, where the place was, it certainly would still remain an amazing, incredible place, but to pretend that a name is not important…. I know Romeo and Juliet was a very different story, but in this case would not be appropriate, because we need to remember that this place is the land of the people. It's Haida Gwaii and a strong nation of Haida people with a rich history that we can learn so much from.

I thank the Minister of Forests, who spoke earlier about the need to understand and look at this act, the idea of reconciliation — the idea that we can sit together, learn from each other and work together. I thank him for those comments because that is one of the frustrations I have with this place. We do not do that enough. Opposition and government do not sit enough through committees and places like that to work out differences.

I know there are a number of committees named in this House, but very rarely do they actually meet to do what the Minister of Forests was suggesting we should do more often. So we need to learn from governments, from nations like the Haida, that you can work things through if you actually sit down and respect each other.

I'm very excited to be able to support the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act, because it's an important step in bridging the difference, learning about the history of what went on in Haida Gwaii. I've never called it the Queen Charlottes, because I never quite understood why that name was attached there in the first place.

Interjection.

S. Chandra Herbert: I'm not old enough, says the Minister of Forests. Well, maybe that's a good thing. I think that is a good thing. He offers it as a compliment.

I think learning through the history there…. We learn a lot about ourselves and a lot about how our governments of all parties through our time have operated in this province. It has not always been — actually, in many cases, has quite rarely been — a government of respect, of understanding and working together.

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We are still stuck in a paradigm of "might is right." "I've got the stick, so I'm the leader" — I guess that could be the mace in this very place — "and if you do not have the power, I can do whatever I want to you or to the people that you work with."

We need to shift the paradigm, and I believe that our First Nations folks and the people in Haida Gwaii have a lot to teach us. The Haida Heritage Centre…. I spent some time there while I was visiting on a tourism, arts and culture tour. It's an incredible place and something that I would hope every British Columbian gets an opportunity to visit.

However, I know that because of the challenges both socially and economically in our province, many people will never get a chance to visit Haida Gwaii, but to know that it is there, that a people who have faced such hardship have come back and have such strong cultural and economic ideas and solutions to offer us all is truly something that we all should be proud of and supportive of.

I won't go on too much longer on this, aside from saying that Haida Gwaii is a very special place and it means a lot to me, even having spent just a little over a week there. It's a spiritual place and a place where the connection between our earth and people, the people that live there, is still very strong, and that must be something we all learn.

So thank you, hon. Speaker. I'm proud to speak in support of the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the minister closes debate.

Hon. G. Abbott: I want to thank members on both sides of the House for their very thoughtful comments in respect of the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act. Those are much appreciated, and I herewith move second reading of the bill.

Motion approved.

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

Bill 18, Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. G. Abbott: I call second reading debate of Bill 7, the Forests and Range Statutes Amendment Act.

Bill 7 — Forests and Range Statutes
Amendment Act, 2010

Hon. P. Bell: I move Bill 7 be read a second time now.

Bill 7 supports the forest industry in British Columbia that continues to add new customers both in terms of growing products and new communities across this province, North America and around the world.

Customers at home and overseas are choosing B.C. products more and more because of our global position as an economic leader, as a key driver of the industry and as a producer of sustainable forest products.

From British Columbia to Beijing, wood is growing in popularity as a building material for residences, commercial buildings and six-storey apartment buildings. In fact, I believe there's in the neighbourhood of 20 six-storey wood-frame buildings either under construction or in the proposal stages in British Columbia right now. Wood is being sought as a renewable carbon-friendly energy source at home here in British Columbia, in Europe and in Asia.

Bill 7 encourages the use of wood waste and low-grade timber for bioenergy products with new creative flexible scaling options. This, I think, is really key to the development of a bioenergy industry. The critic and other members opposite and I share the view that we need to minimize what is currently called waste — but I think we should eliminate that word from our vocabulary and call it valuable wood that is left behind in our forest — into the new forms of bioenergy but also, potentially, other uses.

This is, I think, a very interesting time for people working in the forest sector, because it is a significant policy change. Some might call it a review of tenure or tenure reform. That word hasn't been used a lot, actually, but when you think about the opportunities that arise as a result of the utilization of this fifth band of timber, this incremental volume of timber that exists across British Columbia, it truly is a new opportunity — not one that has probably been brought forward for, certainly, the last 40 or so years since the development of the pulp sector.

[1620]

At that point in time, as members opposite may recall…. Not the member from West End, I know; he wasn't there at that point. But for most members opposite, they'll recall that at that point in time, it wasn't uncommon for large slab piles to be burned every two or three weeks as a material that was seen as waste. Of course, in today's marketplace, chip-and-saw technology allows us to utilize that material for very a high-value product in pulp and paper.

That industry has served us very, very well in the Interior and on the coast since the early 1960s. But it's time for change, and that change means that we need to find ways of extracting more value out of the forests that we grow very effectively in this province.

This new model that encourages the use of low-value wood in terms of bioenergy and for other purposes through this bill creates flexible scaling opportunities and eliminates some of the work that adds incremental
[ Page 5337 ]
cost and really makes it inefficient to utilize low-grade materials for these energy products.

We've typically imposed the same types of regulations to utilize and scale this material that we would put on a sawlog operator, but it's much harder to scale this material. This new regulation creates flexibility, allows us to actually scale this material in the bush or sell it on the stump and capture the value to the province that way, and it encourages full utilization.

Again, as I've said on a number of occasions, the bioenergy industry is one that I believe has a huge opportunity in the coming years, and some of that may be in electricity generation. I don't know that. I'm sure some of it will be. A lot of it is already in the pellet industry. We know that's working well, but there are opportunities around new biochemicals that can be produced from wood products.

Many people don't know that Neucel on Vancouver Island produces products. Although it is a pulp mill, and I think it's in the hon. Speaker's riding, that particular pulp mill produces products that are not the traditional pulp product at all. In fact, it's material that people wear as clothes, things like cigarette filters — not that that's necessarily a good thing, but I suppose it's necessary. It also produces products for the U.S. military, I understand, and all kinds of very interesting, high-value products.

I think that's also the future of the pulp industry — to extrapolate more value not just out of the fibre that comes from the tree but also from the lignins and from the black liquor that comes as an associated product. Traditionally, black liquor has just been burned off to create some heat that's utilized in the mill, but as companies have been more aggressive, they've started to produce electricity, create higher values that way.

I think, really, the next step forward with this is biorefining. It would not surprise me at all in the next ten or so years, or perhaps even less than that, to see companies adding biorefineries on to the sides of pulp mills where they're extracting high-value chemicals, different energy products, liquid fuels for motor vehicles, all those sorts of things, from the black liquor product they're currently producing. So part of Bill 7 creates the flexibility for us to have new scaling processes that encourage the utilization of biomass.

Another key element that I want to touch on is the changes to the Wildfire Act that are contained in this bill. Bill 7 makes some amendments that change the timelines for fire investigations, and it extends the period of prosecution for human-caused fires from two to three years.

People — members in the Legislature and people throughout this province — will remember last year's fire season. Although some have suggested that it wasn't a successful fire season, I certainly reject that. I think it was a remarkably successful fire season, given the nature of the weather patterns that we were facing. If there was one part of last year's wildfire season, perhaps, that people didn't like, it would be the $403 million that was spent protecting people's lives and their homes and the ecosystems across this province.

However, that said, there were only seven buildings lost in last year's wildfire season. That compares to about 350 structures lost in the 2003 fire season, and much of that means that we need to have the ability to better investigate the fires that take place in this province. Last year only 23 percent of the fires were human-caused, and that, as well, is a success story, I believe. Typically, in an average year, about 45 percent of fires are human-caused fires, and those are the fires that are very challenging for us.

[1625]

The new fire centre in Kamloops that I hope to be opening next week has incredible technology that allows us to identify exactly, in real time, where every lightning strike is that takes place in the province. We have the ability to move aircraft out to look at those lightning strikes very quickly to find out if we have any smokers or not, and if we do, we can send teams out to address those.

Human-caused wildfires are a completely different kettle of fish altogether because we never know where they're going to start until they get reported. The only way that we do know if there's a start is when they get reported. There's a magical two-hectare element to fires. If a fire is under two hectares, it's relatively easy to control. We have a tremendous success rate. If it has the opportunity to grow beyond two hectares, it can become very, very challenging to manage and control, and the costs of that fire move up exponentially as that fire grows.

Those are typically the fires that are human-caused, where we don't know that the fire started until someone reports it. From the time the report comes in until we can send out the team to look at it, it can grow very quickly. Certainly, the Glenrosa fire showed that to us last year. Bill 7 amends the Wildfire Act and extends the time frame for fire investigations. Certainly, I think that's a positive thing.

In addition, Bill 7 makes several other changes to the Forest Act. One of those is to the innovative forest practices agreements that take place in the province. There are a number of these agreements across the province, and many of them were sunsetted this year. So the forest practices agreement would cease at the end of this year.

Many individuals in the province suggested that we needed to extend those, that we needed to create more flexibility, that IFPAs were working quite well. They were getting positive results. These IFPAs are when all the different licensees in an area come together to jointly manage a timber supply area.

What we've seen in many of these timber supply areas is the ability to actually grow the annual allowable cut in those areas through better levels of silviculture, better
[ Page 5338 ]
levels of information around inventory and better management practices. So the extension of the IFPAs, I think, is a positive thing, and that also is contained in the bill.

It also clarifies a mechanism for partitioning of annual allowable cuts. That is taking a segment of the cut. Typically this might be dead mountain pine beetle trees, but it may be other forms of timber as well. It allows the chief forester to assign a specific portion of the cut to each of the different timber types in a timber supply area, and that is also amended.

These amendments build on the very strong forest practices that we have in this province already. It creates additional flexibility. It allows us to create stronger economic opportunities around bioenergy. It helps to fill the gap in our annual allowable cut created by the mountain pine beetle through extensions of the innovative forest practices agreement. I'm sure we will have fruitful and productive debate when this bill moves forward to the committee stage.

Hon. K. Falcon: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. K. Falcon: Today in the precinct we are joined by a group of 50 grade 5 students from Surrey Centre Elementary School, which is a great elementary school in my riding. They are also joined by their very capable teacher, Ms. Jenine Walker, along with about 15 parents who have accompanied the kids here today.

I had the opportunity to have a wonderful question-and-answer session with the kids, and I can tell you that they are in very capable hands with Ms. Walker. I do ask the House to please make them all welcome.

Debate Continued

N. Macdonald: As always, it's a pleasure to stand in this House and to speak, and today we have an opportunity to look at Bill 7, which is the Forests and Range Statutes Amendment Act. Now, since this is an amendment act, an act that tinkers with or changes existing legislation, it's very difficult to really go against the principles or speak against the idea of changing with an act, especially since many, many of the changes that we're talking about here are quite technical in nature.

[1630]

The minister has described to a certain extent, as reading the bill also sort of allows you to understand, the direction that the government is going and some of the problems that the minister is trying to address with the changes we see here in Bill 7.

During third reading we are going to be looking at the innovative forest agreements and the changes that are proposed there. To a certain extent, the minister has given an explanation for why those changes would be made. We're also going to be looking at the changes to scaling and to stumpage rates.

There are also interesting things about the extension of the maximum terms for many of these things and the move, as well, to pull decision-making away from district managers and from the chief forester and put it into the hands of the Minister of Forests. Certainly a lot of opportunity to get into the detail, the meat of this bill, and just see the direction that the government is going.

Overall, I think the bill is still an example of tinkering with the direction that the government has gone since 2003, I believe it was, when the forest revitalization changes were actually made. The philosophy that the government is working with has not fundamentally changed since then.

What I have argued many times in the past and continue to argue is that the challenges in front of forest communities that forest workers need to deal with — that the public lands have in front of them as challenges — really need a far bolder approach and a fundamental change in direction away from some of the continuing strategies that this government has.

Just to bring people back to 2003, the B.C. Liberals moved away from a strategy that had been in place, really, for decades and decades. The ideas went back to Social Credit time where you would encourage development and connect the land to communities — the real concentration, I would say, that previous governments had in making sure that the resource was there for the wider good and would, as far as possible, create jobs.

When you go back and look at governments that had that as a focus — and here again, for much of this time, it was the Social Credit that was in charge — you have examples of ministers pushing industry to do things that they didn't want to do or that they said couldn't be done. But when forced to do it, you did end up with, for instance, in the Interior, a strong pulp industry.

Times change, and strategies need to change. But as we look at this bill and look at the fact that we are essentially tinkering with a strategy that has been in place since 2003, I think we need to recognize that that strategy has not worked very well. I think that's very clear, and it hasn't worked in a wide range of ways.

In particular, it hasn't worked for forest workers and forest communities. But beyond that, something that should concern all of us is that it really hasn't worked to address and look after the most valuable asset that we control publicly, which is the public lands.

[1635]

In 2003 it wasn't just the removal of appurtenance; it was also the removal of a whole number of tools that the government used to have. It used to be the case that if there was going to be a change in ownership, there would be ministerial approval. There were automatic 5
[ Page 5339 ]
percent takebacks. There were all sorts of tools in place that would allow the minister to deal with the impacts of changes on communities and to make sure there wasn't a concentration of ownership that we've seen, with all the implications of that concentration.

I want to talk about the record. It's something that British Columbians constantly talk about as issues that they want to have addressed. I think that when you look at a bill like this, a bill that tinkers with but doesn't fundamentally change the direction that forestry in British Columbia is going, it sort of invites looking at what has taken place over the past seven years. It demands that something more fundamentally changes in the way that we do forestry.

Although markets are starting to pick up, and we hope the price of the product that we produce here in British Columbia continues to grow, the fact is that over the past seven or eight years we have lost 30,000 family-supporting jobs. That has had tremendous impact on the communities of rural British Columbia — incredible impact. It represents over 71 mills that have gone down, and that's a fundamental failure.

The initiatives put in place in 2003 were put in place with the stated intention of creating jobs, and that hasn't happened. I think we need to remember that as we look at legislation that tinkers with that basic strategy, it is a strategy that has not produced the results we wanted and has not produced the results that the government was very clear that it would. So that argues for a different approach.

I think the other thing we need to keep in mind is that the most important resource we have has not been used in any way that is an optimum use.

This bill again tries to address a problem that is real and needs addressing. But I think people need to remember that it is a problem that was largely created by the B.C. Liberals when they made changes to forest policy back in 2003, and that's around the issue of the amount of waste we have in the forest.

There are changes here that attempt to address the fact that so much waste is being left in our public forest when harvesting takes place. Just to remind people of the scope of that waste, if you took all of the waste that has been left over the past five years, you would be able to put it on trucks and take those trucks and line them end to end, and have that train of waste go all the way from Vancouver to Halifax and a good way back. An incredible amount of waste, and that waste represents lost jobs. It represents wasted opportunity.

Here we're not talking about what you need to leave on the land. You need to leave branches. You need to leave fibre for the health of the area so that it can again regenerate forests. We're talking about logs that were identified and paid for by companies and then left. This is only the waste that has been identified. The regulatory change that the B.C. Liberals made was called pay and leave, and it was a decision to allow companies to leave the waste in the woods.

Now, with this legislation, there is an attempt to make the companies bring out that waste and utilize it. I think that's something that, of course, we want to see happen.

[1640]

In the end the optimum method you would have is just one pass through and having all of the wood brought out at one time. In the past that was required. Prior to 2003 the wood had to be brought out. Then there would be certain products that the company that brought it out wouldn't want, and that would be available for other users to use. When that changed, there were many products that the major licensees didn't want to bring out. They only wanted to bring out the wood that they needed, so they left the rest there.

Now we have businesses that we want to encourage to go out and use that product, but it is not economical for them to go out and get it themselves. Clearly, there is a problem. Clearly, there's an opportunity that has been lost over these many, many years. This is an attempt within this legislation to deal with that, but it was a problem created by this government. We'll examine it in the committee stage debate that we have. I suspect there are problems with what has been put forward here. So we'll go through that and see if that is indeed the case.

The other issue that needs to be dealt with and that British Columbians really need to get their heads around and fully understand is that we have a massive, massive forest health problem. I don't think that's a surprise, but we will not deal with it successfully if we're not willing to make investments in public lands.

The direction of this government — and I don't think it's a direction that the minister responsible would be in any way happy with — has been to deinvest, to put less money into a ministry that needs to be actually doing far more if we're going to address the forest health issue.

What the public needs to understand is that the public lands are our most valuable public asset. If we are talking about just the forest, just the wood that's on public lands, we're talking about around a quarter of a trillion dollars in value — a quarter of a trillion dollars. When you have an asset that's that valuable, you cannot expect to extract value from it year after year without making sizeable investments in keeping it healthy, and we have not done that.

If I was going to be completely fair, I would say that it didn't start with this government. It is a history that goes back decades and decades, where the resources that need to be put into the public land have simply not been at the scale that's needed.

The public needs to understand. It is a quarter-trillion-dollar asset that is there. It is an asset that has been devastated by pine beetle, and pine beetle is just one of a whole host of pests and disease. There are things that can be done, and there are things that should be done, but it is not currently happening.
[ Page 5340 ]

I would just refer members of the Legislature to what we know about the amount of land that is not satisfactorily restocked. If the only value that we saw in the forest was as a source of fibre, if that's all we thought the public lands were about — and of course, we know that's not the case — there should be tremendous concern about that fact that there are 1.4 million hectares of public lands that should be forested and that aren't, either because of wildfire or because of disease. They sit with the prospects for forests there in the future incredibly diminished because we have not done the work to get the forest back into a healthy place.

These aren't company obligations. Companies are obliged to go and deal with the issues that come from them harvesting on the land. They go and do that, but what we haven't addressed is the beetle areas and the fire areas. That is an additional approximately 700,000 hectares of B.C.'s public lands, and it has to be dealt with.

[1645]

So we have in front of us a piece of legislation. It's one of four pieces of legislation. But it does not fundamentally deal with the issue of waste, although it's an attempt to, and it does not deal with a massive forest health issue.

We are planting less. We are cutting people that study the forests. We are getting rid of people who do research on the types of trees that need to be planted. We are reducing our ability to understand what's happening. Those challenges for the public lands are only going to get more intense.

What the minister has said and what other members here have said again and again is that there's no question that we're dealing with climate change. There is no question that that will fundamentally impact the public lands and the public forests. We need to understand that. We need to try to understand what we can do to mitigate the impact of climate change, and we need to make investments in forest health.

With the direction that we logically would go in, many of them I have talked about. A few of them the minister has alluded to. I think all of us here understand the forest health issue and realize that if we were going to be responsible and give future generations the opportunities that we've had, we would be investing in forest health and would make it a priority. We aren't. With this legislation we are not dealing with that issue in the serious way that it needs to be dealt with.

Secondly, there are some small attempts with this piece of legislation, and I think a future piece of legislation that's coming as well, to do some tenure reform. I think there's clearly a need for a far more fundamental look at tenure and how we organize ourselves on the public land and to have a serious conversation about fundamental change to the tenure system. That's a discussion that is long overdue.

The minister also talked about ideas out there that people have around innovation and around the new ideas, the opportunities out there in the forests that we need to cultivate and create, to find the entrepreneurs to put those in place. The minister talked a little bit about bioenergy but I think more excitingly about the opportunities around biomass and around products that are a further evolution of the sort of products that we make now.

I think what we need to avoid is going to a place where we are just producing the cheapest, most basic product. What you hear everywhere you travel in the province is a concern from people in rural areas that that's where we're headed. To travel on the Island here and go to communities on the Island, you cannot go to a community where people are not concerned about the fact that the wood product that seems to be most prevalent off Vancouver Island is simply a raw log.

That's a complicated issue. That's not something that's going to end overnight. But you cannot speak to the public and have them accept that that is the best we can do. So there is need for innovation. There is a need to create products that create employment and are far more sophisticated than simply taking a log and shipping it to some other jurisdiction for them to do work on.

As well, you have other products that seem to be very, very basic. There was a time when tremendous emphasis was put on other types of value added. But over the past six and seven years any government emphasis on those value-added jobs seems to have slipped away — so fundamental changes on forest health, a change to how we look at tenure and a change to how we look at innovation.

[1650]

What I'd add to that is that what we have not done well over the past seven years and still needs to be addressed by this House is the just transition that comes as communities continue to go through the impacts of changes.

With this legislation, there's an opportunity. We'll come to look at the details of it. There'll be an opportunity to go through and try to understand the direction that the government is going. As I say, overall it is an element of tinkering that I think is really not going to produce the dramatic results we need.

The final thing I want to talk about is something that was alluded to just in the previous debate. I think the minister, as well, in speaking to Bill 18, which was on the Haida Gwaii, spoke about something that this House, in the time I have been here, does not do very well, which is to bring the knowledge that sits in each of our communities to a place where it shows itself as public policy.

What my predecessor, as the critic, and I have said again and again is that there is a crisis that we need to recognize in forestry — in forest health, in a crisis for workers, in a crisis in terms of the products that we have. That is serious and needs to be addressed.

The most effective way to do that would be to put in place a committee of this Legislature. I am convinced
[ Page 5341 ]
that that would be an extremely useful body of work that could be done by legislators. As I've said in the past, I know, just in talking to individuals on both sides of the House, there is tremendous interest in that.

There are solutions. There is expertise in each and every community in rural British Columbia — ideas around how forest health should be managed, ideas around the wide values that are there in our forest lands that aren't fully recognized, ideas around how you would move forward an innovative business. But we need to tap into them.

One of the advantages the minister has is that he gets to move around as an individual and meet these people. There are others as individuals that do that. The benefits of having a committee that would actually go and do that work, I think, is something that we ignore to our detriment and truly do a disservice to the people that depend upon us as legislators putting in place a framework that's going to work for families and for communities.

I know we have only a relatively short period of time, and there are others that would like to comment. I'm going to provide that opportunity. As always with these bills, the devil is in the detail. That's something we will fully explore and try to understand where the government is going with some of these initiatives and then test whether they have fully thought through the initiative in the way that they need to.

B. Simpson: What I have to say will echo much of what our Forests critic has stated with respect to this, but I also want to spend quite a bit of time speaking about what some of the other options and opportunities are that are available to the government.

As the opposition critic pointed out, this is yet another set of amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act, the Wildfire Act, etc. As the former Forests critic, I have to say that the current Forests critic is getting off lightly because mine were much thicker than this in '05 and '06. This is a series of amendments that nonetheless have some significant implications as it continues to play around with the tenure system.

[1655]

Fundamentally, we believe that it's time to stop tinkering with the tenure system. I want to basically go through what I understand this government was attempting to do when it made the changes in 2002-2003, what has actually transpired, the fact that they failed to achieve the intent, and then what some of the options are available to us as well as some of the concerns we have about what's in this bill.

First off, I'd have to say that the government in 2002-2003 and the Premier when he was opposition leader made clear that they were going to come into government with a very aggressive forestry agenda. You just need to go back and look at the speeches to the truck loggers convention, which was always a set piece for the Premier to talk about the need for fundamental reform of forestry in this province.

At the time, in the late 1990s during the NDP's time, there were attempts under a program called Forest Renewal B.C. to do some of that fundamental restructuring. But at the same time there was a new forest act. It was a very prescriptive forest act that actually had lots of regulations and took the position that the provincial government was the one that had to stipulate what happened on the land base.

Why is that, Madam Speaker? Because fundamentally — and I think it's one of the fundamental differences between the two sides in this House just now — the premise was that it is a public resource and that it therefore needed to be managed not only for the present day but for future generations of British Columbians. It had to be managed in a way that truly was sustainable and was beyond reproach in terms of the management that was applied to it, and that it would return benefits to British Columbians.

One of the interesting aspects of the forest renewal process was what was called superstumpage. That was to put a stumpage rate on top of the normal stumpage. Stumpage — for those who are paying attention to this and don't understand tenure, stumpage, etc., — is what the government gets as value from each piece of timber that's removed from the land base. It's a public resource; the public gets some return from that.

In subsequent rewritings of history, Forest Renewal B.C., that prescriptive forest act, superstumpage, have all been made out to be the worst things that ever happened to British Columbia. I'd say there are pockets of people who actually believed that and drove that agenda.

For the most part, it was the coast that was pushing back. The Coast Forest Association was pushing back against the prescriptive code applied to the coast. The Interior folks were mostly adjusting to it.

The superstumpage was somehow the brainchild of the NDP and was just a way of gouging the industry. In fact, it was actually the industry that came up with the idea of superstumpage, of charging a surcharge in order to do some of the things that the member for Columbia River–Revelstoke has pointed out need to be done now — to fund significant investment in the public land base on the backs of the industry itself, not going out to the public and taxing the public, but putting it on to the industry. If you've got a healthy forest, that industry is healthy long-term. If the forest is unhealthy, that industry, therefore, has no platform or foundation from which to work.

It was actually CEOs in the industry that said: "Here's one way that we can go about and do that." So the rewriting of history that somehow that was only the government is actually unfortunate, because industry was a partner to that.

The third piece of that, Forest Renewal B.C. and the attempt, in particular again on the coast, to put people
[ Page 5342 ]
who were losing their jobs as mills closed…. Again, the mills closed on the coast because, quite frankly — I'm not the only one to say this; people who worked for MacMillan Bloedel, who worked for Fletcher Challenge and others all point this out — the coast industry failed fundamentally to take advantage of the early 1990s boom time to invest and reinvent themselves for the future market. They did not reinvest in their mills. They did not bring themselves up to date for the current market conditions.

A single event in 1997 crashed the coast market, and that single event was an earthquake in Japan, particularly in Kobe, Japan, that caused all kinds of grief for the industry, caused cancellations of orders and caused that industry to be in serious trouble.

[1700]

So the failure to invest by the industry, the failure to reposition itself made it vulnerable to a collapse in 1997, which this government likes to blame on government policy. If that's the case, then they should take full blame for the collapse of the industry from 2001 on, because this province has never seen a collapse like it. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The reality is that it's a combination of public policy, market forces and decisions made by shareholders that created the situation we have in British Columbia.

Post-1997 an initiative was arrived at called Forest Renewal B.C. I have to laugh when I go back and actually read some of the critique of this. Government members there, who were opposition members, railed about make-work projects, railed about trail-building and making picnic tables and putting logging contractors and millworkers to work as silviculture experts.

Quite frankly, it's been the only response that this government has had at a minuscule level through the community development trust, using federal money to actually fund putting workers to exactly the kinds of things that we used to do through Forest Renewal B.C.

Again, there's a parallel to what both governments attempted to do, and neither one of them is right, and neither one is wrong. It's just that we're trying to figure out how to take a workforce that's aged, a workforce that in many cases does not have high levels of literacy, a workforce that doesn't have a new skills set and put them to meaningful work while you try and figure out what's happening with the industry. That's what Forest Renewal was about. That's what community development trust is about now.

I dare anyone to do a parallel of the two. They'll find the fundamental differences. In the 1990s it was funded by stumpage and by the provincial government. In this decade it was funded by the federal government, without a penny…. Well, recently they've put a little bit of money — the provincial government has — into it just now. So there's a parallel there.

There was push-back when the Premier would go and stand and make his grand announcements at the truck loggers convention. There was an alternate vision presented to what was predominantly the coast industry in the room. It was this promise of getting away from regulating the forest industry, telling companies what it is they had to do on the land base and promising them that they would get a deregulated industry.

Now, I've talked to a lot of folks who were involved in those discussions in early 2001-2002. This government actually attempted to go out and consult with the public about the implications of effectively privatizing the public land base. They hired a professor from the University of British Columbia to go out and do those public consultations.

They were reasonably transparent about the kinds of things that they wanted to do: to take apart the Forest Practices Code, to take apart the regulation on the land base, to effectively privatize the tenure systems and make it more open for companies to consolidate and buy tenure from each other.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

In that early public consultation process, to a person, the public said: "Wait a second. We don't think this is the direction that we want to take." So that university professor was patted on the back, and they said: "Thank you very much. We don't need you to continue to do that work."

What happened, which resulted in the changes in 2002-2003 that this amendment act continues to tinker with, was an agreement with the CEOs of the major corporations at the time on what the agenda was for forestry — that agenda was writ large, starting in 2002 — and a fundamental shift in forest policy in 2003, which, again, the amendment act we have in front of us will continue.

What was the nature of the philosophy or ideology behind those changes? First and foremost, it was the industry wanting what they called freedom to operate. They wanted the ability not only to be able to determine what they were doing on the land base…. To be fair, lots of foresters felt that they could be on the land base. They could make professional decisions on the land base, and they could attempt to achieve the government's objectives without a list and a prescriptive approach. Fair enough. That dialogue needed to happen, and I think there was a compromise position.

[1705]

Instead, what we got is the results-based code in which the government basically said, "We're going to depend on professional reliance," which to this day still has not been clearly defined or explored, and the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals continues to have internal dialogue about that. "But we're going to take the Forest Practices Code, and we're going to gut it. We're not going to be prescriptive. We're going to give the companies the freedom to operate on the land base."
[ Page 5343 ]

In conjunction with that, there are also fundamental changes made to the forest acts about tenure. Tenure is how private entities — individuals, companies, large corporations — get access by permission of the government to the public forests. So 94 percent of the province of British Columbia is held in trust by this assembly for the benefit of present and future generations of British Columbians.

What the government said is that the tenure system as it stands just now — how we issue licences, how we get people on the land base — is simply too onerous because it doesn't allow companies to actually make decisions without coming to the government, without coming to the minister and getting permission. They bought that argument from the companies that that needed to change.

But in getting permission from the government, it meant that the traps that the current minister and the former Forests Minister found for themselves did not occur — where you'd get caught by surprise when a mill closes down and a community is devastated, when you get caught by surprise that a company is about to sell its tenure and you don't find out until after the announcement has been made.

What happened is the government actually took away all of the public oversight into what the disposition was of the tenures, which meant that communities started to get hurt. Mills started to close down. That's where we've seen the meltdown in the industry, because the companies have all consolidated.

Nowhere is there a more tragic incidence of that than on the coast again. On the coast there was a sell job done by the three amigos. That's what they're called on the coast. It's not me that calls them that. They call it the three amigos tour. In 2002 the three CEOs of the then major forest products companies on the coast — TimberWest, Weyerhaeuser and Interfor — did a tour of all of the communities on the coast.

They went around and made this promise: "If you allow the government to give us freedom to operate, if you get them to stop prescribing to us how we manage the forest, if you get them to allow us to have a tenure, a licence over the public forest as if it's a private holding that we can trade and flip and subdivide and sell like a private asset, we promise you that we will resurrect the coast industry."

They actually promised it in writing. The document still exists. There's one available in the Legislative Library. It's available on the webpage. They promised $1 billion in investment, and to be fair to the government, I think they bought that hook, line and sinker. They bought hook, line and sinker from the Interior industry that there would be massive investment in the Interior as well, and I'll speak about the Interior in a moment.

But on the coast, an actual document exists where those three CEOs said: "Here's what we want. Here's what we need from all of the communities and all of the people. Here's what we need from Steelworkers and CEP and the unions. Here's what we need from the logging contractors. And if we get that, we will invest a billion dollars on the coast. That billion dollars will open new mills."

Explicit promise made. "That billion dollars will begin a whole value-added manufacturing sector, the likes of which the coast has never seen. We will put people to work. We will provide community benefit. We will do all those things if we get the privatization agenda that we want from this government."

Unfortunately, history shows that TimberWest — go read their shareholder statements — are log developers. Sorry — land developers and log exporters. Would that they were log developers, because it would mean more investment on the land base. But they're land developers and log exporters. They have more vice-presidents of marketing and real estate than they do vice-presidents of forestry.

No amount of money from them in investment in mills. They closed down their last mill. In fact, they closed Elk Falls because they starved it. They wouldn't allow any public wood to be assigned to that mill and make it palatable for somebody to come and buy it.

[1710]

Interfor is gone, pretty much, from the coast. They sold as cash value most of their holdings on the coast, mostly to First Nations — I congratulate the First Nations that picked up those licences and are benefiting from it — but not one penny of investment. In fact, I was on a panel with the CEO of that company, with the Association of B.C. Forest Professionals, where that CEO had the audacity — three or four years after they had gotten everything they wanted from government, and they hadn't invested one penny on the coast — to challenge the foresters for yet another round of deregulation, yet another round of privatization.

His last slide on his slide show was an "or else." He said: "I have $120 million in my pocket. We're a cash-rich company. We have $120 million to invest." He went click, and he said, "Here's where we're investing," and he showed one of his new mills just across the border in the United States.

I grew up in the slums of Glasgow. I have a terrible time sometimes controlling my anger as a result, because I'm a little man with a big voice and sometimes get myself in trouble. I have to say that that speech I gave afterwards was my little Scottish slum boy speech, because I tore a strip off of that CEO for the audacity that he had to stand in that room full of foresters and demand, yet again, more of the same that caused them to abandon the coast, that caused them not to invest one penny in the coast and to threaten them that he would invest across the United States.

Interfor, to their credit, has bought down in the Kootenays. They bought the Pope and Talbot for sale
[ Page 5344 ]
down there. We're still monitoring that to see if that is going to return benefit to the people of the Kootenays or not. It still remains to be seen, and we'll continue to watch that.

The third company, Weyerhaeuser, which took the lead on the coast promise, no longer exists on the coast. In fact, they have one operation left in British Columbia. One of the things on the minister's desk, and one of the things that this amendment actually speaks to and will explore, is that when these companies put up their licences for sale or want to consolidate them or whatever, we believe that this amendment is going to give them even more freedom.

Yet the minister knows that when Weyerhaeuser sold its Kamloops licence, the people of Kamloops got caught off guard, because it was embedded in the announcement for a mill closure. It was the final paragraph that said: "Oh, by the way, we've also sold the forest licence to West Fraser, which is also subdividing it for Interfor." Guess where the wood is going to go — not Kamloops; north and south of Kamloops.

The Kamloops Indian band and the people of Kamloops — the former mayor, sitting in this room — were all caught off guard because no notification requirement exists in the act. This bill, we believe, this amendment act will actually make that even worse now. So it's more tinkering on the tenure system.

That's what happened on the coast. The coast now basically is in full meltdown. There are a few people that are logging for log exports. There are a few cedar operators operating. Of course, the perpetual concern on the coast is that we are logging the last remaining old growth on the coast for less and less benefit to the public of British Columbia, who are the shareholders of the forest. For less and less benefit to the communities of the coast, we are logging off the last remaining premium logs on the coast.

What we're ending up with is this second-growth forest that nobody really knows what to do with. This government, under the previous Forests Minister, came up with a plan called the coast recovery plan. I wonder if anybody on the other side even remembers it.

We waited for it for a long time. There were all kinds of promises made. We got, I think it was, seven or eight pages of bumf — that's a technical term; I'll give Hansard the spelling — of not very much substance, and a promise to spend, I think, $27 million over three years to figure out how to sell a hemlock 2-by-4.

We're now, I think, four years from that, and I don't know what we got out of it. They actually had in there that they were going to do some restrictions on log exports. They didn't even enact that.

The argument was that somehow they couldn't do anything on log exports because they were afraid of the softwood lumber agreement. I'm not quite sure what the relationship is between logs and lumber and the softwood lumber agreement, but that's what the argument was from the minister — that they couldn't enact even the minuscule restrictions on log exports that were promised in that.

This government has no plan for the coast. They've effectively abandoned the coast. When they talk about biomass, biomass is an Interior thing. The coast actually needs that because it's one way of resolving the hemlock issue, but they don't have a plan for the coast.

[1715]

Here's what we've said. I had a discussion with a whole roomful of foresters in Campbell River who didn't like what I was saying about old growth and the fact that we need to be very careful that we're not extinguishing the last remaining old growth on Vancouver Island and on the coast in general.

I got a phone call from one of the environmentalists who said: "Don't forget the Interior rain forest that's also threatened as well — the old-growth rain forest in the Interior belt."

What I said to these foresters is: "Okay, riddle me this" — in the vein of one of our MLAs. "If we're managing old growth so well, why do we have a second-growth problem?" If we're managing old growth so great, why don't we still have continuous old growth on Vancouver Island? Why do we have a second-growth problem? Why is it that we don't even log the majority of the profile on Vancouver Island because we can't figure out what to do with the second growth?

So we've said this. We've said that if this government is serious about turning the coast around, there's a simple move that the minister can make, and it's not in this bill. This bill actually can give them the ability to do it. That move is to do what we've called partition the cut.

Partitioning the cut is simply the chief forester saying: "Here are the operating rules for how you're going to operate on the public land base." Most of the dialogue around partitioning the cut has to do with forcing people to log the dead mountain pine beetle stands in the Interior, but we've said: "Partition the cut on the coast, and assign an annual allowable cut to the old growth and a different annual allowable cut to the second growth."

We can then assign an annual allowable cut that's only for old growth, that's managed over a 300- or 400-year cycle, and then a separate cut for the second growth. If people don't cut that second growth, you take the licence away from them, and you find somebody who will. You find somebody who can, and you find somebody who will create jobs from that.

Right now the whole coast cut is applied across the coast as if old growth and second growth are the same, and they're not. Much of that cut is being applied to old growth, and as a consequence, I think the people on Vancouver Island who are concerned about old growth have a very, very valid concern.

Under this government the coast industry has collapsed to log exports and collapsed to land development.
[ Page 5345 ]
The land development, as the member before me spoke about and as I'm sure the member who will follow me will speak more about, is a result of this government releasing private land from tree farm licences, on Vancouver Island in particular.

Again, we have the Auditor General's report. For anybody who is listening to this and wants to find out what we're talking about, go onto the Auditor General's website, and look for the report on private land releases. Look for this minister's response to the Auditor General, and decide for yourself whether that's an appropriate response to what was an abandonment of the public trust.

This government, under the previous minister, failed the public trust by releasing lands from tree farm licences without compensation to the Crown, consultation with the people involved and, in particular, consultation with First Nations. Not our words alone. We've been champions for that, but not our words alone. The words of the Auditor General of this province as well — an independent officer of this province.

Under this government, did we achieve the promised results at truck loggers' convention after truck loggers' convention? No, we did not. The coast industry is still in free fall. The people who are working are working simply, for the most part, for log exports or a little bit of cedar, and there are not a whole lot of people working in that once-proud industry.

I spoke at the truck loggers convention a couple of years ago. I spoke after the Premier had spoken, and I suggested to the truck loggers that they needed to find a different feedback mechanism for the Premier because for three years in a row the Premier had nothing to offer them in his speech, yet they continued to give him standing ovations. I suggested that standing ovations for nothing meant that next year they were going to get nothing again.

We need a plan for the coast. A set of amendments to the existing Forest Act does not do that.

With respect to the Interior, where I think a lot of this amendment is speaking to — and I look forward to getting into the details and listening to our Forests critic take this apart — we have a significant issue, and not just with the mountain pine beetle.

[1720]

I know I've said this time and time again. The mountain pine beetle is simply the canary in the coalmine. It is the leading-edge pest as a result of climate change. We just canvassed this in estimates debate.

The mountain pine beetle is the largest single pest, but all pests and diseases are rising in the forests, and we continue to manage the forests for fire as if fire is not a management tool for us. We continue to put it out. We need to use that as a management tool, but also, as the Forests critic indicated, we need a massive investment.

Our interior forests are in significant trouble because, on the manufacturing side, this government actually made a bet on the forestry industry back in 2002-2003. That bet was that they were going to put everything into one play, and that was large dimension lumber producers for the U.S. housing market.

They were going to ride the bubble. They bought into the same line that the folks bought into with the sub-prime mortgages, everything else — that housing prices would always and forever go up, that the housing market would always be hot, that there would always be houses to build.

This government took the entire Forest Act and changed it to favour a couple of companies that were going to build large dimension lumber mills. We had a funny back-and-forth in this House when Corky Evans was here, when he tripped over the term "oligopoly." There was some fun to be had with that, but the reality is that under this government, we've created a monopoly on the coast over public tenure, and we've created this thing called an oligopoly, a few major companies controlling the land base.

The minister embarked on a sort of consultation process on silviculture before the last election. It still remains to be seen what the minister will do with it. None of it seems to be coming into the bill we have in front of us. But in a submission on that, the First Nations Forestry Council issued a document called A New Framework For Silviculture: The Need To Move From a Volume-Based Timber Supply Focus To a Values-Based Model.

So it's not just the opposition saying that we have a problem. Here's what the First Nations said:

"The state of the forest industry today exemplifies concerns raised 19 years ago by Druskha…regarding the concentration of control of timber harvesting rights to a few large companies and the economic collapse of the forest industry because of the failure of the system to invest in the silvicultural capacity to sustain itself. Little has been done by the province to prevent this crisis or situation."

I would suggest much has been done to create it.

Let me close — I am always amazed at how quickly time goes — with the fact that it was actually B.C.'s first chief forester, MacMillan Bloedel, who warned all future governments that we would rue the day when a few companies controlled the public resource. We are realizing that day.

The amendment act that we have today…. I believe we will find out in third reading that it's going to make that corporate concentration even greater, it's going to reduce public oversight even more, and it's going to create a situation in British Columbia which I believe is untenable because it will not return benefit to the people who own the forests of British Columbia, and that's the citizens of this province.

I look forward to the debate on this to see if we're right, or pleasantly surprised if we're proved to be wrong.

D. Routley: It gives me not so much pleasure, but it's certainly an honour anytime to rise in this House
[ Page 5346 ]
to speak to proposed legislation. In this case we have what's been described — I think, appropriately — as the tinkering with an old approach. This is a "more of the same will bring more of the same" approach from a government that has, I think, quite soundly failed the forest industry of British Columbia. In failing the forest industry of British Columbia, they have failed the people of British Columbia and the future of this province.

Previous governments, through the history of British Columbia — Socred governments and the previous NDP government — operated from an entirely different premise from that of this government, and that was that the public lands of this province and the public forests of this province were indeed a public resource, meant to bring public benefit.

[1725]

It's been described how the governments of the past have taken an assertive role in managing that resource and that asset for British Columbians, that that premise has been fundamentally changed and altered by the approach of this current government. We have seen, essentially, a loss of benefit and a loss of equity for the citizens of British Columbia, and this bill does nothing to bring the substantive change that's required for British Columbians to have faith and confidence that their interests have been restored.

The changes in the bill are technical and minor. Some of the problems that are being addressed — that the government is attempting to address — we recognize, but again, more of the same will bring more of the same. The problems that we see addressed somewhat by this bill were problems created by this very approach from this government since 2002-2003.

We've seen a dismantling of a once-proud industry, particularly on the coast, where we had, essentially, a culture built on the forest industry, communities founded on the forest industry, and now floundering in its loss, looking for the next option to rescue their economies and the lives of the people who have depended on those forests. This bill really does very little to address those imperative needs.

We can see that the agreements, when it comes to tenure on the land base, need change, but they don't need minor change. We need a fundamental change, and the fundamental change to tenure that's required on the coast of British Columbia does not lead to more monopoly, as this bill will inevitably lead us to.

What we need, in fact, is a broad discussion, a broad consultation with the people of B.C., with local governments, with First Nations, with all those affected by the forest industry, and essentially that is every British Columbian. We need that discussion, and we need it to be open-ended. The requirement for tenure reform needs to be just that: an open-ended discussion of what is best in the public interest.

The changes proposed to scaling and stumpage calculation, the removal of decision-making powers from regional authorities, regional managers within the Forests Ministry, is yet another move towards the dismantling and fragmentation of an industry that was once so integrated that it was like a closed cycle — the forest providing jobs in logging, then in sawmills, and then by-products producing jobs in pulp mills and other ancillary industries.

But the changes that were brought by the government, which promised a new age of reinvestment in all of those very sectors, has brought the entirely opposite situation, where we've seen the loss of over 30,000 jobs and dozens upon dozens of mills, most of those mills and most of those jobs lost during a housing boom in the United States. So while the government has taken credit for a housing bubble, they are slow to take credit for the loss of this industry at the same time.

Without a more bold approach to the management of our forests, without a more assertive approach from government in protecting the public interest, in guiding the industry in the harvesting of this essential resource towards more benefit for communities, more jobs for British Columbians, more green products and green industry…. British Columbia is facing a very dismal future without that boldness of approach. This bill is more of the same and will deliver more of the same.

[1730]

In 2003 we saw the government move away from this traditional approach of ensuring that the resources of our forests would provide broad benefit to our communities. It was not just appurtenancy that caused that failure but a general privatizing drive that robbed our communities of the opportunity to benefit from the forests. The very measures that were pleaded for by the three amigos — the CEOs of Interfor, TimberWest and Weyerhaeuser — were those same measures that allowed those companies to leave wood in our forests that could have provided jobs and industry for British Columbians.

I've been out there. I've seen the giant sawlogs that have been left to rot because they didn't suit the requirement of one of these companies at that particular time. We've seen the pulp logs, the mountains of waste wood that have been left to rot, thereby contributing carbon to the atmosphere rather than sequestering it in products that could have been developed.

This is an absolute failure of the people of B.C., of our forests, but even of the globe. Our forests, when healthy and when products are harvested from them, are essentially the lungs of the planet. They're an answer to the problems that confront us as a globe. Without the bold approach, the broad planning and the inclusive consultation that this side of the House has been asking for and proposing, we will continue to fail not only ourselves but all the people of this planet by failing to maintain healthy, productive forests.

As we saw markets change, circumstances change, the context shift, obviously policies needed to shift with those
[ Page 5347 ]
changes. But once it became apparent that the policies that were espoused by those three amigos on the coast and the privatization policies and dismantling that this government brought to the forests…. Once it became clear that those policies were failing us, that was when there should have been an abrupt halt and a reassessment.

Instead, this government keeps banging its head against the same wall, and the same result is coming. Even now, with a slight regeneration of activity on the coast, what is that activity? That activity is truckload after truckload of logs being exported.

On a trip within my constituency from Gabriola to Nanaimo, riding the ferry, I looked out, and I saw a freighter being loaded with raw logs. The freighter had pulled up to a dock, and it was pulling out of the water load after load of raw logs, probably destined for China, some far-off place where jobs might be created with our resource. The dock that was used to load that freighter was the dock of a closed sawmill in Nanaimo, a sawmill that closed during the housing boom in the United States.

So whatever way the government chooses to slice that bread, to British Columbians, to the people of Nanaimo, to the people of the coast, that site is a crime. That site is an atrocious failure to bring public benefit from the public resource and an abject failure to protect the public interest.

We've seen that failure extend to the lives of our workers and to the health of our communities. We saw the changes to stumpage and changes to ownership of tenure that required minimal or no approval from the ministry in order to be traded like shells in a game. We've seen the results of that.

We've seen the truckloads after truckloads of logs leaving our communities. It hurts people to witness that — the workers of the Cowichan Valley, former forest workers who sat for months upon months counting daily the number of truckloads that were leaving our community and without benefit to our community.

That was a tragic scenario, a tragic scene for once-proud communities to be reduced to counting the number of loads of their wealth that was leaving their communities — of their potential and their opportunity, leaving, flowing out of their communities.

[1735]

The former Forest Act, both of the previous NDP government and governments before it, was constructed to avoid obvious tendencies in the marketplace — the tendency towards monopolization, the tendency towards waste.

These measures that were in place attempted to balance the interests of those companies that were harvesting the resource from our woods and the interests of our communities that were providing that resource. There was a delicate and oftentimes off-balance approach, but there was a true effort to protect the public interest and ensure that the harvesting of resources was done sustainably and with benefit to communities.

If this government had only been able to step back and admit to itself and to British Columbians that the steps it took in 2002 and 2003 had failed us; if they had even for a moment stepped back and called on the bright people of B.C., on those people who are ready to provide the ideas and ingenuity and energy to revive this industry, then I think British Columbians could have had some faith — and I think they would still have some faith — in this government's capacity to manage this essential resource and asset.

But they failed. They failed because they were, in my opinion, too arrogant to admit that mistakes had been made. It was, "Soldier on," and here we have in this bill more of the same, which will deliver only more of the same results, the same failures.

Our communities face a different reality than that which was promised in 2002-2003. Over the past seven years since that time we've seen the loss of over 30,000 jobs in the forest industry. In the years preceding those days those same companies failed to reinvest in the technology, in developing products and markets that would have been required to sustain this industry.

In 2002-2003 this government participated in an effort — led by TimberWest, Interfor and Weyerhaeuser CEOs, who are disaffectionately referred to on the coast as the three amigos — to convince British Columbians that if they were only allowed what they called the freedom to operate, if they were only allowed the goals of deregulation and disintegration that they so coveted…. They promised in writing to the people of the coast that there would be a billion dollars of investment in new mills and new products.

None of that happened. Instead, we lost mill after mill. Instead, we lost job after job after job. People are paying the price for that. The people who we represent in this House, the people who are our primary interest, have been failed by the policies that are now essentially regurgitated and repeated by Bill 7. You repeat a failed experiment; you should expect another failure. That's what the government is doing. They're tinkering at the edges of a policy that is essentially wrong.

We saw on the coast the loss of our forest lands. The Auditor General referred to that directly as a failure to protect the public interest.

Those are the issues that should be dealt with by this government. Those are the issues that this bill fails to address. In fact, this bill will make that situation even worse. We will see even longer tenure offered to those who have no interest and no obligation to provide benefit to communities. We will see even looser requirements for self-reporting.

[1740]

Rick Doman, the former CEO of Western Forest Products — when he was trying to communicate what the government's self-regulating moves meant to our communities, our forests and our industry — asked members of the opposition caucus: "How many of you would
[ Page 5348 ]
write your own speeding ticket?" And it essentially sums up exactly what the government has asked forest companies to do. How many forest companies out there are writing their own speeding ticket for those mountains of waste, for the poor practices that are leading to damage to our watersheds and the loss of a healthy industry?

What British Columbians want, broadly, what's understood by those who are connected to the forest industry and those who are remote from it — as remote as any British Columbian could be — is an approach that adds value to the resource, that does not extinguish our old-growth forests at a rate that is sickening to the people of B.C., an approach that would provide benefit to communities, new opportunities to entrepreneurs in British Columbia to produce products from the fibre that is now monopolized by the companies that this government serves.

Those are the imperative principles and values that British Columbians want applied to the resource that we see in our forests. It was mentioned by the current Forests critic that we are looking at one-quarter-trillion dollars' worth of value. One-quarter-trillion dollars' worth of value is the asset value just of the trees on the public lands of B.C.

People in this province have a sense of pride and a sense of equity in that one-quarter-trillion dollars' worth of trees, and they see that sense of pride and equity being watered and wasted by policies brought by this government that have failed to take best advantage of that asset.

These problems were created by this government. These problems were so obvious, even to those who camp in the backwoods of British Columbia, who would come back after the first few years of these policies and talk about how terrible it was to witness the amount of waste and degradation of the land base brought on by these policies.

We're not just talking here about the typical waste that was always a part of the logging industry. We're talking about logs that were suitable for sawlogs in sawmills, that were certainly suitable for pulp mills and all the mills that we saw shutting down because they were starved of fibre — not because of poor markets, but because they were starved of fibre.

This decision in 2003 to eliminate those prescriptive elements of the Forest Act, the Forest Practices Code, was the very reason that all of these problems have been created. Now Bill 7 just fails one more time to address those problems that this government has created for us.

It has been referred to in the House today. We've heard it referred to as a massive forest health crisis. It's obvious. It's obvious to people who live in communities, who see the failure to reforest. We saw in the '90s reforestation rates of $160 million, $165 million per year of public investment. That fell under this government to a low of below $10 million.

At a time when climate change and the very forest practices that I'm talking about had decimated the health of our forests and had logged land at an unsustainable rate, we saw a disinvestment in the land base. Every British Columbian, whether they're connected to the industry or not, understands the need to add value, but they also understand the need to maintain the health and invest in the health of our forests, and that has been an abject failure of this government.

If this government hopes to regain the faith of British Columbians in their capacity to manage our land and our forests, we need to see this government ensure a broad and deep and large investment in our land base, in the reforestation of our vacant lands and a recommitment to managing the health of the forests.

[1745]

We've heard that the amount of land not restocked in this province totals more than 1.4 million hectares right now. What a shame. The work has not been done. The work that every British Columbian understands is essential to the future of the province — the future for support of our vital public programs and the future of their equity stake in the public, common wealth — is not being done by this government. Again, the government fails in Bill 7 to make that recommitment.

This is such a broad-based failure in the management of the public interest of the province that it can barely be described; its terms are so great and so wide. This bill does not deal with that massive forest health issue. It is, in fact, contributing to an ongoing move to disassemble the Forests Ministry, to allow the expertise and the experience that resides in our Forests Ministry to be gone.

Those people who would know, who would measure and who would watch our forests are the ones who are being lost to the Forests Ministry. Again, this is a failure by the government to protect the public interest of British Columbia, a failure that is ongoing and only augmented and added to by Bill 7.

This bill does nothing to assist the families and the communities that have been affected by the downturn in the forest industry. It does nothing to provide hope to families who need to see an investment in retraining, who need to see an investment in the transition of their communities towards new economies, new forest-based economies. This bill fails those communities. This bill fails to make that investment or that commitment to those families and those workers.

In a downturn, that is the time when we must upskill our workforce. The executive director of Literacy B.C. has said that a 1 percent gain in literacy rates in B.C. would equate to a $1.6 billion increase in the GDP of this province. We can target very clearly those industries, sectors and communities that need help. That help would lead to a new capacity in our workforce to be able to deliver and to participate in a new economy based on our forest resource. This bill does nothing to address that failure.

This move to privatize our land base, to dismantle the Forest Practices Code and to deregulate has clearly
[ Page 5349 ]
failed. The promises made by the three amigos of Interfor, TimberWest and Weyerhaeuser were vacant. What we have seen is continued expansion of log exports and a total lack, a total failure to invest. The coast is now decimated. We see the last old-growth stands of Douglas fir on British Columbia's Vancouver Island east coast imperilled.

We see community groups coming and banding together in an effort to protect those forests, and this government has done nothing to help that effort. In fact, what we're seeing is an increase and acceleration of that logging. What we need from this government for the people of B.C. is a plan — not promises, but a plan for the coast of B.C.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

What we need is more than just vacant promises. What we need is a plan that would limit log exports and that would provide the jobs that British Columbians have come to expect from their resource. In the end, Bill 7 is just a continuation — more of the same.

[1750]

It will deliver more of the same, more failure from a government that has failed our forest industry. In the words of the Auditor General — that the Forest Minister so brutally attacked when they were issued — "a failure to protect the public interest." This is a continuation of that failure.

So with that, and noting the hour, I move adjournment of debate.

D. Routley moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

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

Hon. I. Chong moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. on May 17.

The House adjourned at 5:51 p.m.

PROCEEDINGS IN THE
DOUGLAS FIR ROOM

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

(continued)

The House in Committee of Supply (Section A); H. Bloy in the chair.

The committee met at 2:33 p.m.

On Vote 27: ministry operations, $5,164,904,000 (continued).

The Chair: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Douglas Fir Room. Committee A is meeting on the budget estimates for the Ministry of Education.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: We finished the session this morning with some comments from the member opposite and a question. I did want to spend some time responding to some of the comments first. There is, I think, a misunderstanding on the part of the member opposite about what the class-size legislation actually says.

Here's what it says. There are firm limits of 22 students for kindergarten and 24 students for grades 1 to 3. No classes between kindergarten and grade 3 can exceed those limits. There are maximum district averages of 19 for kindergarten, 21 for grades 1 to 3, 28 for grades 4 to 7, and 30 for grades 8 to 12. No district average in the province is exceeded, and this can be confirmed by looking at the class-size report on the government website.

In addition, a class in grades 4 to 7 may only exceed 30 when a teacher has given consent for that circumstance. There are no classes that exceed 30 in grades 4 to 7 where that consent has not been provided. If any class does exceed 30, the principal must consult with the teacher regarding that class and confirm that learning conditions are satisfactory. The rationale for the class must be reported publicly.

There's no limit on the number of students with special needs in a class. In fact, in some cases students with special needs are grouped in classes, and that's a decision made at the district level if they think that that's going to better reflect the needs of those students. Whenever there are more than three students with special needs in a class, the principal must consult with the teacher and confirm that the learning situation for all students is appropriate.

[1435]

Each year we have the size of each class in the province reported, and the number of students with special needs in each class is reported. The public can look at this information on the ministry website.

Finally, when the class size report for each district is completed in October, the superintendent of schools must confirm that the organization of classes is appropriate for student learning and that the district is fully complying with the legislation.

As I mentioned before, the flexibility that's built in — the ability for the principal to consult with teachers and for a school to compose classes within that school — was something that our partners asked for very pointedly. In fact, at times they ask us for more flexibility than currently is the case. But certainly parents, principals
[ Page 5350 ]
and vice-principals and superintendents have all asked for this flexibility and have given examples as to why it is helpful to them to have this built in. I wanted to clarify that.

Now, to the other question that the member was asking about — assessment. We know that this is a challenge in some cases for school districts. In particular, there is a challenge of accessing people who have the psychometric training currently in British Columbia in order to actually do these assessments.

A couple of things have happened. The AELMD we call it, the Advanced Education and Labour Market Development Ministry, is actually working with post-secondary institutions so that more such people can be trained. There's also a student loan forgiveness program so that once the training has been obtained, if students who have graduated are willing to go to some underserviced parts of the province, they can have student loan forgiveness.

R. Austin: I'd just like to for one minute go back to my earlier questions around BCeSIS and just ask, very quickly: what is the total sum of money that has been spent by the ministry developing the BCeSIS system?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Thanks for the question. We will get that information and provide it for you — probably shortly.

R. Austin: I'd just like to ask a couple of questions around the CommunityLINK funding. I see from the budget document that support for school systems, CommunityLINK, was budgeted 2009-10 at $86½ million, and then for fiscal year 2010-11, $131 million and change — so an increase of $44 million. My question is: what is this $44-million increase in funding allocated to?

[1440]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The CommunityLINK funding has been provided by various ministries over the years. Just last year the funding was partially provided from gaming grants. This year it's all back with our ministry, but the funding level has actually not changed. Last year it was something over $51 million as the total funding for CommunityLINK, and that's the same this year. I'm not too sure about the numbers that the member opposite has, but it's $51 million. That's the amount that was provided last year. It will be again this year, but this year the funding is all coming from the ministry.

R. Austin: I understand that. The program is not only being run out of the Ministry of Education, but all the money is actually within the Ministry of Education budget — correct? Then I don't understand this document that I have here that, again, came out of the budget lockup. Maybe I could pass it to the deputy minister.

It has, under LINK funding, restated estimates to $86 million for '09-10 and $131 million in 2010-11 — a variance of $44 million. I'm just still at a loss to explain how come this shows such a huge increase to LINK funding when the minister says that it's staying at the $51 million range.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: We are on the same page now. The line item that the member refers to is "Support for school systems," and that actually includes not only CommunityLINK funding but also PRPs, PLNet and some other things. There are various items that are included in that funding, and the reason for the difference is the CommunityLINK funding, which was in another ministry and has come back.

R. Austin: If that money has now come from gaming back into the Education budget, does that mean that the ministry, then, has to reduce expenditures in other areas of the Education budget in order to account for that money coming back?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: It didn't have any impact on the block. The funding came, in total, back to the ministry and hasn't caused any reductions in any other area.

R. Austin: Lastly, the formula about which CommunityLINK funding is disbursed throughout the province, I know, is a very complicated formula and has to do with levels of unemployment and social deprivation, etc. Are there any plans within the ministry to change the funding formula for LINK funding?

[1445]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: CommunityLINK funding dates back…. As I've mentioned, not only the funding but actually the responsibility started out with another ministry. The history of the program is really interesting. It's a very valued program, but the needs around the province and the demographics around the province have changed over time, without question.

What it's being spent on, as of a year ago…. Thirty-five percent of the funding goes to support workers, such as child and youth workers; 26 percent goes to nutrition programs — breakfast, lunch and snack programs; 18 percent goes to inner-city and community schools; and 21 percent on other targeted school-based initiatives — for example, cost-shared mental health clinicians and literacy initiatives aimed at vulnerable populations.

Currently there are 50 school districts that use CommunityLINK to support school meal programs. There's a wide variation. The school districts, in every case, have the autonomy to decide how they will use their CommunityLINK funding.

Among many other areas across the ministry, this is one of the areas where we do consult with the field, and we certainly are looking at this and considering how we
[ Page 5351 ]
might possibly make changes to the CommunityLINK program and perhaps flow the funding out in a different way.

We're consulting with the field, and in particular, the Technical Review Committee is providing us assistance on this. The Technical Review Committee consists of ministry staff, but also, school districts appoint three superintendents and three secretary-treasurers, who are part of that committee.

D. Thorne: I would like now to turn to the full-day kindergarten issue and ask the minister a few questions.

The ministry's Early Childhood Learning Agency report from April 2009 said that expanding early learning "would require the construction of new classrooms" and that full-day kindergarten would cost an estimated $130 million a year when fully implemented.

[1450]

Now, I know that $58 million has been allocated this year, and we're going into what's considered, I guess, a half program for this year. I have a few questions around that. I'm wondering if the ministry has determined what facilities will actually be needed over the next two years.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: First, just speaking about the funding for operations for full-day kindergarten, in the fall of this year, September 2010, full-day kindergarten is going to be available, actually, for something more than half. It'll be about 58 percent of British Columbia's eligible children. This is because we already had some children that were in full-day kindergarten. We'll have about 21,000 students in public schools and up to about 3,000 in independent schools. By 2011 this program will be available for all students in British Columbia.

As far as the operations funding, there's $151 million for the first two years. That's $44 million for the first year and $107 million for the second year. Those are budget years, as opposed to school years, lest I cause any confusion about funding. Then for the third year we've got another $129 million. Over the three years, for operations, we have $280 million set aside for full-day kindergarten.

In terms of the space requirements, for the first year — and this is partly why we did it in a two-year implementation — we're using existing space. School districts have looked, and they are absolutely able to…. In some cases they're changing some upper-year classrooms to kindergarten classrooms, so there's a bit of work that needed to be done, but the space was already available in existing schools.

For the next year we know that we do actually need to do some work, and we need to make some space available. We've been consulting with school districts now for several months, with a target date, obviously, of September 2011. We will shortly be coming forward with an announcement about a capital plan, but there is some new space that has to be developed for when the full implementation comes into place a year from this fall.

D. Thorne: Well, you've sort of answered a little of my next question. I was wondering how many new classrooms were going to be constructed. Mostly that will be for the second year, as you're saying.

[1455]

I'm also wondering how much funding is being provided now to prepare the classrooms for this coming September with materials that will be needed for a play-based program.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: When we make our capital announcement — which will be fairly soon, I believe — we'll actually be including in that announcement the funding that's going to be provided this year for the furniture that's required and for other equipment that will be required for the classrooms for this fall. I don't have those details here now, but they will be available shortly.

[N. Letnick in the chair.]

D. Thorne: We'll get that information. Okay. Thank you very much.

Many school districts — actually, our numbers are around 33 — whose enrolments are expected to decline in this coming budget year have their funding for next year set at the same total dollar value as the current year. Yet supposedly, they are receiving funding for additional full-day kindergarten students. With all the other costs that have been downloaded, districts end up cutting back on other areas.

We're wondering if the minister can offer a solution to school districts, to the particular districts that are facing this problem.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The member opposite has pointed out that there are a number of districts that are experiencing declining enrolment, yet their funding has not gone down. They're receiving the same funding. That's something the ministry has been doing for several years now. Acknowledging that it's difficult, when enrolment is declining, to immediately respond to that, the ministry has been providing the same amount of funding.

The other option, of course, with our per-pupil funding model would be to have reduced the funding for those districts, and we haven't done that. When there is declining enrolment, there are obviously less students and there is some reduction in costs. We know that there's some reduction in costs. They're not linear per student, but there is reduction in cost.

[1500]

The solution that we found for this is that we are providing the funding protection, but we did not provide
[ Page 5352 ]
additional funding above and beyond that. We did continue with funding protection, which I know many of those districts weren't certain the ministry was going to be able to do, given the financial situation and the deficit that government is currently experiencing. We've continued with that, so even the districts that have had significant enrolment decline have been protected to some degree with funding protection.

D. Thorne: Perhaps I just don't understand, but I'm not sure how that helps with the full-day kindergarten problem or issue in those particular districts. Are they getting extra funding on top of what you just described in order to implement — the schools that are implementing the full-day kindergarten? Or are they expected to do that from this funding that you've told us about?

What will they have to cut? How will they manage without cutting something in order to implement the all-day kindergarten? Or are they getting extra funding on top of that?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: What we have done with these districts with declining enrolment, as I've said, is that we haven't reduced their funding. They have fewer students, and with a per-student model for funding, the way that model would work would be that if you don't have as many students, you reduce funding.

What we have done is provided the same funding as they've had the year before, so they have more funding than they would on a pure per-pupil basis. That extra funding that they have, which is what we call funding protection, to buffer them from changes and declining enrolment is being used for different programs. Certainly, one of them would be the full-day kindergarten.

Again, talking with districts, this program has been really welcomed by them. They realize the educational opportunities, and it's viewed very positively by parents and by districts.

R. Austin: I just wanted to go back to something that the minister mentioned in her previous answer. That is the recognition that when a school district loses students, the saving is not linear to the per-pupil student funding.

My question is: does the ministry have any analysis or figures as to the percentage of per-pupil student funding that isn't saved when a school district loses, say, a hundred students? Obviously, it doesn't lose a hundred times the per-pupil student funding. It doesn't save that amount of money.

What's the average that the ministry recognizes is actually attainable as a cost saving, and what costs are still there within the system that the school district has to absorb, even though it's lost a whole bunch of students?

[1505]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: We've consulted widely amongst ourselves, and it's not going to surprise you that we've agreed amongst ourselves that it's not a question that we really can answer. The province is so amazingly diverse in terms of the school districts, and you would know that. The region in which the member lives is a great example of the differences around the province.

The things that would make a difference would be how much empty space there is in schools — things like the dispersion of the students. In some school districts schools are very close together, and in others they're extraordinarily widely dispersed. It's just not possible to quantify it, and it would be very different amongst the 60 school districts we have.

Certainly, it's acknowledged that when a student leaves, the entire cost does not go away. That is one of the reasons that government has made a decision over the years to provide various different kinds of supports for districts with rapidly declining enrolment.

R. Austin: I'd like to ask a question around enrolment estimates and the total operating budget. As I mentioned in one of my earlier questions, the declining enrolment in 2009 and 2010 was around half of what was expected at the beginning of the school year. In September 2009 there were 3,595 more students enrolled in public schools than the number initially estimated by the ministry at the beginning of the year for the 2009-2010 operating grants estimates.

Of course, as I also said earlier, that money was then basically allocated…. The formula was changed. Per-pupil student funding was changed and divided by the number of students who were actually there. So my question is this: what happens when the holdback for unanticipated enrolment changes during the school year is not enough to cover increased costs?

[1510]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: With respect to the enrolment estimates, I wanted to clarify for the member opposite that it's not the ministry that makes those estimates. It's the school districts. They do the best they can to estimate how many students will come into their district, and they give us those numbers. You're also correct that last year the number was off by a few thousand students, actually, but it was the school district estimates where those numbers came from.

To be really clear, the per-pupil funding was not changed, and in the last eight years it hasn't been changed. What happens is that once students start attending school in the fall, there's a recount, and we find out how many students are actually there in September. More money will flow to districts, and then there's another count again in February.

The districts actually are funded for the students they really have, as opposed to funding based on the estimates. That
[ Page 5353 ]
additional funding comes from the holdback. In the last eight years the holdback has always been adequate, so we have not had to deal with the situation the member opposite describes, where it isn't adequate. It always has been.

R. Austin: Am I not right in saying, though, that last year was an exception, in the sense that the holdback money was retained by the ministry due to the fiscal situation of the province, that the holdback funds were not released to the schools at the end of the year?

Sorry, I see someone nodding. I must be wrong, then. Let the minister answer the question.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The holdback funds did flow out to districts last year. They were not retained by the ministry. They did flow out, and for each student that appeared in a school, the appropriate amount of funding was flowed to that district.

R. Austin: Can the ministry provide a document that shows exactly how much of the holdback for each school year was allocated to school districts? The reason I'm asking is that the recalculated grant shows only a portion of the allocation of the holdback.

[1515]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The recalculated numbers you have may refer to recalculations that are done in November-December. The school districts inform the ministry of the students that they have on their actual count of number of students in the fall, and that money flows in November-December. It would last year have been about $45 million.

There's still some money in the holdback, and what that is for is another count in February, where additional students come into the system. Also, the greater part of the money remaining in the holdback is actually for distributed learning — for the on-line learning that is happening around the district. Those counts are done in March, May and June, and again, funds would flow. So by the end of June the entire $70 million of the holdback had actually gone to districts. It was no longer with us.

R. Austin: I realize that the full accounts won't be made public until July, but I was wondering if the ministry could inform us at this point, if they have the information, as to what the total is that was spent on education last year.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: As I understand the question, it was a question about the total amount that was spent. We actually won't know that until we receive the statements from the schools, which will be at the end of June. What I can tell you is that the operating grants, what we call the block, were $4.551 billion last year. There's a legislative requirement that was fulfilled, which is that that money all went out to school districts.

I think I probably haven't answered your question, if what you're wondering about is the total amount spent. We will not know that exact number.

R. Austin: On March 15 the ministry sent out a media release that showed student enrolment increasing from 541,917 to 544,223, for an increase of 2,306 students. That's largely attributed to the implementation of full-day kindergarten.

However, the budget and fiscal plan that came out in March 2010 shows student enrolment increasing from 555,345 FTEs in 2009-10 to 561,734 students in 2010-11, which represents a total increase of 6,389 students. Now, this is due to the additional kindergarten students when full-day kindergarten is implemented in September and to an increase in distributed learning.

It appears that the ministry has presented figures in the media release that are lower than those in the budget and fiscal plan by using figures from last September's enrolment and by excluding the distributed learning students counted in February and May as well as some smaller student groups such as newcomer refugees, ESL and special needs February enrolment.

[1520]

My question is this: why is the ministry using such a low figure for enrolment changes when the government's own fiscal reports, using data prepared by the ministry, suggest the enrolment change is much higher and is due to more than the increase in additional all-day K students?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The issue of enrolment and how we get the numbers is complex. The press release, we believe, most likely was based on school districts' forecasts. Their forecasts are often conservative, because they certainly don't want to get into a situation where they overestimate how many students they have and then are going to get less money. That's not a good situation to be in.

The anticipation for next year, according to the boards, is that the grades 1 to 12 enrolment will be down by about 6,000 students, but the full-day kindergarten presence would increase FTEs by about 7,700. So those numbers are what the grants are based on.

The other numbers would have been numbers that the Ministry of Finance used. And you're right. I think, most likely, the difference is that they include things like summer learning and distributed learning. So it's a different number.

The most important thing to note is that we fund the students that show up — so whatever number of students actually appears in school districts. It is difficult for them to predict with how mobile a population we have and just the ebbs and flows of people. Sometimes surprises turn up in the fall in schools around the province.

[1525]
[ Page 5354 ]

The numbers can be quite different, but the per-pupil funding model provides that if a student comes to their school, they can do the recount, and we will provide that funding.

R. Austin: I take it, then, that the total operating grant that's allocated for 2010-11, which is intended to fund the 561,734 students listed in the budget and fiscal plan or the 544,223 students listed in the bottom of the funding tables and the ministry's March media release…. Am I correct in saying, then, that irrespective of which of these two figures turns up, the school districts receive $112 million no matter what? Or are they given more, depending if there are more students that show up?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: This year the operating block funding is $4.663 billion, which includes the $112 million that the member opposite referenced. That funding will be fully granted to boards, the same as in previous years. They have their initial counts, and the initial funding will go out according to that. But they'll do their recounts, and if they have more students present, they'll receive the per-pupil funding for those students.

R. Austin: Again, going back to that March 15 ministry media release. It claims that "each school district will receive at least as much funding in 2010-11 as they did last year." When the ministry makes such statements, does it take into account annual changes in inflation? Of course, stagnation in funding is essentially a cut when inflation is causing costs to rise. I'm just wondering whether the ministry takes that into account when it makes those kinds of statements.

[1530]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: When we speak to the districts about what funding protection means for them, we're talking about actual dollars. No district received fewer dollars than they did in the previous year. This is in spite of the fact that, as you have mentioned, between grade 1 and grade 12 there are expected to be approximately 6,000 fewer students in districts around the province. But the actual dollars will not have gone down for any of the districts.

R. Austin: A report into school funding that was compiled by CUPE and the BCTF in the period leading up to March 15 put an estimate of current funding shortfalls in the range of several hundred million dollars. The report that came out from the secretary-treasurers group also suggested that there was a large funding shortfall.

My question to the minister is: what effect does the minister believe the March 15 announcement will have on this shortfall? Like, how will it improve things?

[1535]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The secretary-treasurers association, back before Christmas, made a series of assumptions about funding, and we certainly heard this from districts, as well, when I met with school districts over the course of the time prior to the budget coming down. What they were concerned about is that they would not be receiving any annual facilities grant, that they would not be receiving funding for full-day kindergarten and that they would not be receiving funding for the negotiated salary increases. Those all together added up to considerable cost pressures. When the budget came down, they realized that none of those pressures were there.

Certainly, when we reflect on funding, I am not receptive to the notion that we have an underfunded education system. This is a system that over the last ten years has 56,000 fewer students in it and has an additional $1.3 billion in it. We know that on a per-pupil basis the funding has actually increased by 33 percent. I believe that the solution to every problem is not increased funding, but this is a system that has had significant increases in funding, including a funding increase again this year.

D. Thorne: I'd like to delve into the English-as-a-second-language area and ask some questions. It's a bit of a departure from the last questions, a little break for everybody.

We know that the number of ESL students that have been designated for special support has climbed from 9.6 percent of public school students in the year '99-2000 to 10.6 percent in '08-09. It's obviously a continuing increase, and I'm sure it's probably even higher now today.

The number of students who report a language other than English spoken in their home, which is 127,577 — well, approximately 127,000 — students in 2008-09 is about twice the number of students actually enrolled in designated ESL programs, which in '08-09 was approximately 61,000. Now, this is quite a discrepancy, because they've been identified, but they're not in a program.

I'm wondering what the ministry is doing to ensure that no student is falling between the cracks and not receiving ESL services that they require to succeed in the education system.

[1540]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Just looking at the numbers that we have, the provincial ESL enrolment of FTEs back in 2005 was 57,585. It's now 57,796, so the percentage of the overall student population went from 10.3 up to 10.8. The funding allocation is actually increasing. The ESL funding is increasing this year. It's going from $1,174 to $1,340.

The responsibility for identifying the students and then letting us know about the requirement for the additional funding is something that happens at the school
[ Page 5355 ]
district level. I've discussed this with my colleagues, and they're not aware of difficulties identifying the students. Once the students are identified, the funding is made available for ESL students.

D. Thorne: I think what I was getting at was more around, I wouldn't say like in special needs testing necessarily, but being sure that we're finding all of the students who need ESL. It seems a bit of an anomaly that only half — actually a little less than half, because your numbers are a little less than the numbers I had — whose language at home is not English…. That kind of indicates that we could be missing some children who need ESL that we don't have.

I guess I'm wondering more: how are they identified? It's much like testing with special needs. Are there adequate resources or attention being paid to identifying students that actually need some help with ESL, particularly in certain districts? My district would be one of those, and Vancouver. I guess the more urban districts as a rule, although some of the northern districts have ESD. I think they're identified very well.

So I'm wondering: is there any correlation between the way those students are identified and the ESL in other districts?

[1545]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: In terms of resources, the member opposite may be aware that there are settlement workers who work with families that are new to Canada, and that would be one route to access resources such as ESL. Then, when students register for school, that would be another time that they're identified. But if there were problems in the classroom, if somehow they'd been missed, we believe that they would actually be identified and provided the support.

In terms of the discrepancy, we're trying to think of why that might possibly be there. One of the things that happens with the students is that they're provided with five years of ESL support, and then the support ends. A person who has had the five years of support still comes from a family where English is a second language, but they're no longer receiving the supports. But when the students are assessed, they actually are outperforming their peers who were not ESL students.

The five years appears to be very adequate for students, and that's why the support continues for that long. So that might explain the difference in numbers in terms of the families versus the students.

D. Thorne: Yes, and I was going to ask you, actually, about that five-year time limit. I'm wondering: what studies or research has the ministry conducted to come to the conclusion that five years is the appropriate time frame? Also, is there any procedure in place to ensure that a student who is still in need of ESL designation after that five-year period receives services? I guess that's two questions in one, really.

[1550]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: We have received some additional information. The average length of service is actually three years. Most students need three years and don't need longer than that. The support is available for up to five years, and the decision to stop at that point was made based on assessment of students and finding that they were actually outperforming their peers who were not ESL students.

It has been pointed out to me that districts certainly have the option to continue to provide services for as long as they wish to, so if services continue to be required, they could certainly keep on doing that. Districts do have a lot of flexibility to provide the services they think are required.

D. Thorne: That's interesting about the three-year average. If somebody needed seven years, the district could, of course, provide the service, but they wouldn't get any extra funding for that. They would have to find it in their budget from other programs, I guess.

I've worked in the education system a little bit, and I've worked in community social services. I've actually dealt with a lot of these immigrant families and children that are in ESL programs. I remember, you know, in the past hearing from them and hearing from other people that some of these parents and students are hesitant to be identified as ESL.

When a student gets designated in a school as being in an ESL program…. I know that they have a lot of concerns about that, both sociological and also fearing that they might receive a different kind of education, that the substance would be different in some way. I don't know that there are any factors within the school system or within the community that make people have that feeling.

I'm just wondering if any efforts are taking place or have ever taken place within the ministry to ensure that this fear is not valid and to assuage these fears. Has this come up, and if it has, are you dealing with it in any way? If you're not, why would that be?

[1555]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I certainly agree with the member opposite that it would be a concern if families believed that somehow the ESL program was substandard. The ministry sets policy, but the responsibility for delivering programs is at the school district level. The responsibility for identifying students who actually need the ESL assistance, as well, is their responsibility.

We believe that school districts are doing a good job with this. Certainly, the programs that they're offering…. They would be able to provide reassurance that the programs
[ Page 5356 ]
were equivalent. I think one of the things that probably pretty powerfully demonstrates that is the fact that when the students are assessed against their peers, they're actually outperforming them after having access to the resources and the learning.

One of the other things I wanted to mention is that the school districts pay particular attention to students from refugee families, students who may actually never have had access to school or very little access to school. That may be a huge change for them, and particular attention and effort is made with those families to make sure that they get the supports they need — the ESL, but other supports as well — so that the transition into attending school is as easy as it possibly can be.

D. Thorne: Thank you for that. I think I was more concerned that the families would be concerned more about the substance of the rest of the education they were getting — that somehow they would lose out on something. I wasn't meaning to indicate in any way that I thought the ESL program was substandard or thought of as so in the community.

Okay, in that same vein…. It's my last question in this particular area. I'm just wondering if you've conducted any studies or looked at all at the impacts of increased class size on the ability of ESL students to succeed at different levels of English comprehension.

[1600]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: In terms of research available specifically about ESL students and class size, we're not aware of any, but there actually is research generally about the impact of class size on learning. Of all the parameters that were looked at most specifically, including things like teachers, the effect of class size on learning is actually relatively minor compared with a number of other factors. But specifically for ESL, we don't really have that information.

I wanted to just mention that when I answered the last question, I wasn't trying to suggest that you were suggesting there was a problem. Rather, what I got from your question was that perhaps the families might think there was something not quite right. I just wanted to acknowledge that that would be a concern and that at the school level, actually, that would be something we would really want to try to overcome.

I also wanted to give just a little bit more information about the settlement workers, because I have a bit more information. In 2009-10 there was actually $9.2 million provided for boards responsible for significant numbers of newcomer students, newcomers to Canada.

The other thing that happened was that two years ago, the Ministry of Education began to provide midyear funding for refugee students — students who came after the September count happened. They missed being counted, and therefore the school district wouldn't receive funding for them. So we began to actually provide funding for students who enrolled later.

I thought you might be interested that for school district 40, the settlement worker program provided $601,000. I think it's a good program and obviously a good investment.

D. Thorne: My last question. I'm wondering if the minister can comment on the prevalence in the ministry of ESL staff who also work as support staff for special needs students.

[J. McIntyre in the chair.]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The services for the students with special needs and ESL students are actually not directly provided by the ministry. They are provided by school districts. Determinations about who will provide services and where they'll be located are all made at a district level.

R. Austin: Madam Chair, welcome. You'll be happy to hear that the questions and the answers are flowing freely — no speechifying today. It's wonderful.

I'd like to ask a number of questions with regards to distributed learning. In March of 2009 the basic allocation for enrolment-based funding for each school-aged FTE student was $5,851. This was for every eligible school-aged FTE student reported and enrolled in regular, continuing education, alternate and distributed-learning schools.

[1605]

In March 2010, however, the basic allocation for every eligible school-aged FTE student in distributed learning from kindergarten to grade 9 changed to $2,926. Only FTE students enrolled in distributed learning from grades 10 to 12 received the previous basic allocation of $5,851.

My question to the minister is: why, as of March 2010, did FTE students in distributed learning from kindergarten to grade 9 receive half the funding that they previously did and half the funding that those in distributed learning from grade 10 to 12 currently receive?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The funding for the distributed learning was not reduced. It's still $5,851 for all students. The only thing we're wondering is whether it could possibly be related to a student that came halfway through the year, so that it was half of the funding for that reason. But the funding for distributed learning hasn't been reduced.

R. Austin: I'd like to speak to some questions with regards to the service plan. The recent Ministry of Education service plan states as its second goal to have "responsive K-to-12 education." My question is: responsive to what?

[1610]
[ Page 5357 ]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Responsive to the needs of students and to parents.

R. Austin: Sorry I had to rush out with a question there from a different category.

Let's go back to distributed learning, because I've got my sheet here as to where I got that figure that I asked my first question on, on distributive learning. It's a Ministry of Education document. It's even got the "best place on earth" logo.

It says here that basic allocation for each eligible school-aged full-time-equivalent is $2,926. That's for kindergarten to grade 9. Grades 10 to 12 — $5,851. So I'm not quite sure what the minister means when she tells me that it isn't half the allocation for distributed learning in the different grades. I don't get that.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The only explanation we can think of is that it reflects students who newly enrol in February for distributed learning, so for half the year. But if you wouldn't mind providing us with the paper, we will find out exactly the explanation.

R. Austin: I'm going to pass the paper through to the minister so she can have a look at that.

Again, going back to the service plan. Why does the service plan only use forecasted numbers or results in its progress measurements, rather than using current data on previous years in addition to forecasts to provide a more substantial understanding of the progress measurement goals and the rate of improvement?

[1615]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The service plan is prepared in December and January, and we use the previous numbers because it's too early to have the complete numbers for that year. I think the problem is that when we're preparing the report, along with the rest of government, it just doesn't line up very well with the school year cycle and when counts are done. I think it's not something we can really change. We get the numbers too late, so we have to use the numbers we have.

R. Austin: Again, related to the Ministry of Education service plan. The performance measure 1, school readiness, in the service plan is measured by "the percentage of children who enter kindergarten developmentally ready to learn," based on data from the human early learning partnership. The 2009-2010 forecast is that only 72 percent of children entering kindergarten meet this measurement. The question is: what demographic information is available pertaining to which children in B.C. are more likely to meet this measurement than others?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The issue of vulnerable students and the EDI is complex. I'm sure probably whole shelves of books have been written about it. We certainly find vulnerable students in every school district from every walk of life. The vulnerable students are found everywhere. One of the things we know is that the investments we're making in early learning are absolutely the best way to improve the current numbers, to have fewer vulnerable students than we currently do. That has been demonstrated to help students from every walk of life as well.

We are not only investing in early learning, starting with full-day kindergarten, but we've also invested in the StrongStart B.C. centres. These are places where the vulnerable early learner can really benefit. We know that more and more students are using these centres. We have over 310 of them now across all the districts in B.C.

[1620]

R. Austin: Earlier the minister said that the ministry is looking at perhaps changing the formula for LINK funding or finding a different way in which to give those dollars out.

Would it be fair to say, then — given the response that I just got from the minister with regard to the EDI — that one of the things the ministry might be looking at is upping the weighting within the formula that's used to distribute funds for LINK funding to take into account those areas of the province?

I understand that there are vulnerable children everywhere in B.C. But presumably, using EDI, there must be pockets or places or specific school districts that have a much higher vulnerable population than others, just from socioeconomic needs or whatever. Would it be fair to say that the ministry would look at using the EDI statistics to alter the funding formula for LINK funding in order to help those districts or communities that have a higher degree of vulnerable children entering the school system?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: With respect to the most vulnerable students, certainly when we were planning for full-day kindergarten, one of the things we asked districts to look at in the first year, when we're only flowing it out to half the students, was to look at things like where in their district their most vulnerable students were, using the EDI data. Now, that wasn't always possible for districts to do. They partly had to plan based on available space as well, because the capital work won't be done till the following year. But that might answer part of your question.

With respect to the review of CommunityLINK, the formula, as we've acknowledged, is very complicated. The ways that boards currently use CommunityLINK funding are also quite different from board to board in terms of where they've decided to put their resources.

We will take into consideration when we're consulting, including with the technical review committee,
[ Page 5358 ]
things that we know contribute to vulnerability — in some cases, things like socioeconomic status and single parents. Our aboriginal children, in some cases, are more vulnerable. There's a whole host of factors that we're considering as part of the review, and it is definitely complex with respect to how we can best use CommunityLINK funding.

[1625]

R. Austin: While we're on the topic of vulnerable children — the minister has already mentioned StrongStart programs — my question is this. Are the ministry's StrongStart programs doing anything specific to meet the school readiness needs of students from low-socioeconomic-status homes or other marginalized groups?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: There are a number of ways of accomplishing that goal of reaching out to the students who are vulnerable. First of all, when school districts are planning for the StrongStart B.C. centres, they actually, in many cases, have deliberately put the centre into a school or into another facility where they know, geographically, it's located close to where more of their vulnerable students are. There are a number of partners — for example, public health nurses — that actually almost recruit for the StrongStart B.C. centres.

We have StrongStart outreach, as well, which is actually identifying the parents of the students who are more vulnerable. Of course, the way the programs work is that it's not the child just coming to the StrongStart B.C. centre; they're coming with someone. They're coming with a parent or another care provider, but it is often a parent. It's finding ways to actually bring in those who you would most like to have there.

Then the learning that happens at this centre, of course, is something that the parent or care provider also is learning. They can learn ways of facilitating language development and other things that are happening in this play-based learning and then take them home and practise them. We're actually expecting to see changes in the EDI data, but it's a little early for that.

We have a lot of stories that people tell us. I will only tell one story, which is the story of a family where the care provider was a grandparent who was not literate and who subsequently has become literate. So it's not only a matter of the little person learning and being enriched, but also the provider. You know, there are great stories, but as I said, I'm only going to tell one.

[J. Thornthwaite in the chair.]

R. Austin: Yes, I know. I think these are great programs. I used to work as a community school coordinator in a school with a lot of vulnerable children, so I appreciate it.

I mean, what the minister is saying, essentially, is that yes, this is a program for children, and in a way, it's also a parenting program at the same time, which is great. But of course, the challenge is that due to the requirement that an adult be with the child at StrongStart programs during the normal workday, many students who are most in need of early stimulation are unlikely or unable to participate in these programs.

[1630]

Is the ministry looking into alternatives for these children so that they're not disadvantaged when they get to kindergarten — children whose parents aren't able to come or who don't have a caregiver who can come because they've got to work? Often those children are our most vulnerable children, so what can the ministry do to help those kids?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: One thing I just wanted to mention that I had meant to mention before is that in some of our school districts they're actually running the StrongStart B.C. centres from Tuesday to Saturday. They find that the families that you've described, that are working families, love that Saturday availability.

Now, it's not something the ministry would impose. It's something a district will come up with as a solution, but certainly I'm aware of at least one program where that's the case, and I'm sure that where there's one there would be more.

But you raise a good point. Within the Ministry of Education the thing that we're going to do that I think will make the biggest difference here is when we expand early learning. That's in the throne speech, and we certainly are going to do it. It's not happening tomorrow, but when we get full-day kindergarten up and running the plan is next to offer play-based learning to four-year-olds and potentially some sort of play-based learning to three-year-olds as well.

However, and I'm not knowledgable about this, I know that within the Ministry of Children and Family Development there also are a number of other programs that would target parenting needs and needs for vulnerable children. So there are other things besides the StrongStart B.C. centres which, as you've identified, are not accessible for every child.

R. Austin: Given that the first performance measure in the service plan bases school readiness on the number of children who are developmentally ready to learn when they enter kindergarten, what is the government's plan to improve the number of children who are ready — you know, 77 percent by 2012 — that they aren't doing already?

Full-day kindergarten would not qualify as a means of improving this measurement, as the measurement looks at children before they enter, not after a year of full-day kindergarten. Other programs that previously may have served this role, such as Success By 6…. I mean, Success By 6 is not gone. It was almost gone, but it's teetering.
[ Page 5359 ]
There's funding for this year, but there may not be funding in the future — at least the government portion of it, which would really hurt the program.

How is the government going to replace programs like Success By 6 to give extra help to those kids who are vulnerable?

[1635]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I know that the member opposite is very well aware of how committed we are to early learning. We're expanding at a time when governments are challenged across Canada. We are very committed and have invested a lot in early learning in the previous years, and certainly, in the coming years we plan to continue to do that.

We were just waiting to try to get the data on the number of visits to the StrongStart B.C. centres, and I don't have it yet. But there are many children around the province, and we still are expanding the numbers of StrongStart B.C. centres. We have another program called Ready, Set, Learn, which is school preparedness — a different kind of a program.

I don't know what Success By 6 is going to look like, but the Minister of Children and Family Development does have the intention of providing base funding, and she does not yet know about the degree of funding that will be available. But that program…. The plan is to continue.

I really think the best thing that we are going to do is the full-day learning for four-year-olds. I don't know when we'll be able to start that, because we do have to…. You know, the economy needs to improve somewhat before we start that program, but we do plan to start it as soon as we can. And you know, I can't forecast the future, but my expectation would be that it would be something we would phase in. We really would try to target our most vulnerable children to begin with to start to address the problem that you outline with the EDIs.

[1640]

D. Thorne: I would like to talk about libraries and literacy now for a little while, actually, both inside and outside of the school system. As we know, for a while one of the goals — the five major goals in B.C. — was to make British Columbia the most literate jurisdiction in the world. Looking at the school library programs, there appear to be no targeted funds going to school library programs.

I've got written down here, or typed down here: "A well-stocked library with rich and varied resources directed by a fully trained teacher-librarian is the single greatest indicator of success beyond socioeconomic standards of families."

Why, then, do so many schools in B.C. not have fully trained teacher-librarians? Why are so many school libraries closed or being run by clerks and parent volunteers depending on bake sales and charity to stock their shelves?

I think I'd like to hear the minister's comments on that.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I've got information here about the FTEs for teacher-librarians. It's true that the numbers have gone down somewhat. In 2002 there were 759.4 full-time-equivalents, and that number went down to 704 the next year and then a couple of years later went back up to 741.

In 2009 there were 685.8 full-time-equivalents for teacher-librarians. But you have to remember that during the same time period of relatively small amount of decreases in teacher-librarians the number of students in our school system has dropped by about 56,000. It would be a little less than 56,000 because I'm not going back quite as far, but certainly a substantial enrolment decline — probably a decline of about 50,000 students during that same time.

I'd also like to point out that this is an area over which the school districts have autonomy. So the resources that they place and how they choose to deploy them isn't something that the ministry mandates.

[1645]

They have the per-pupil funding, and then they make decisions around it. So it would be variable from district to district.

D. Thorne: Well, the minister must agree that that's a fact. Obviously, it's a school district decision. But when the school district is faced with limited funds to cover a lot of programs, as my colleague stated earlier in the day, then it's difficult for the school district to make any decisions that aren't going to, in the end, affect students and affect programs.

Even though, as you say, there is an increase yearly to the public education funding, it is not enough. I think we all agree with that because of unfunded and what we like to call downloaded costs onto the school districts. So in fact, they may have cut by choice some teacher-librarians and some other specialized teachers, but I'm sure they didn't do it because they wanted to do it.

It's really too bad, because it doesn't further our goal of becoming the most literate jurisdiction in the world. Just looking at this budget summary that I was given as part of the estimates budget overview, I see here that early learning and literacy has actually been cut by 7.3 percent this year. It's a percentage change.

I'm wondering. It seems to me that the early learning section, which my colleague has just covered quite thoroughly…. It sounds like it would have to have been increased quite a percentage, so that leads me to think that it's the literacy area, then, that has had significant cuts — possibly more than 7.3 percent to literacy.

So my question would be: what is the overall percentage decrease in literacy funding this year — what percentage of the 7.3? Is it less than or more than — or what?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: First of all, with respect to funding, I haven't done the math on the reduction in
[ Page 5360 ]
teacher-librarians. Certainly, over the time period that there's been a 10 percent decline in enrolment around the province, it's significantly less than a 10 percent decline in that particular kind of employee.

[1650]

I would say that during those ten years, while our students have declined by probably about 56,000 — by next fall we're anticipating 60,000 fewer students, which is a 10 percent decline — the increased funding that's been provided is $1.3 billion. Certainly, I know the member opposite has a different view than I do. My view would be that the system has been provided substantial increases in funding over the last decade.

In terms of the StrongStart B.C. centres, I did get the numbers that I wanted to share with you, which is that there were over 14,000 students, children, who attended the centres last year, and there were 275,000 visits to StrongStart B.C. centres.

With respect to the early learning and literacy funding and the change from 2009-10 to 2010-11, the changes are all due to less funding for the StrongStart centres. That is because the earlier years reflected the startup costs. When a new centre was established, there was around $50,000 per centre. Most of the centres are now up and running, so they're still getting their operating costs, but the new startup costs don't need to happen, because they've already happened.

The numbers that I have…. Where there's a change of $1.38 million, that's all due to not having to fund new starts for the StrongStart centres, because they already exist. There has been no movement of funding from early learning to literacy or the other way around.

D. Thorne: I take it, then, that the startup for the StrongStart and those other early learning programs was not capital cost. I mean, this would be operating funding on here — right? It was considered operating funding — the startup money for those early learning centres? I guess that's a question, so I'll sit down.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I don't think, for the record, that we're allowed to nod at you across, but yes, that's correct.

D. Thorne: Well, I'm heartened to hear that there haven't been significant cuts to literacy. A lot of that money, I know, is part of the adult literacy program as well. Goal 3 of the service plan, "Lifelong learning and literacy," highlights as its objective to "guarantee adult learners the basic skills for success."

This is not a new program. I also worked in this program at one time. It sounds like I had a different job every six months through my life. It really wasn't quite that bad. If I got bored, I was gone. This was an area, actually, that I really enjoyed working in, with adult learners. I worked in the West Kootenay school district as a continuing education director for five years, and that was a very fulfilling job. We got a lot of our funding from this budget at that time.

I just have a few comments and a few questions. How can the strategies for a free K-to-12 education in essential courses to all adult students, ministry-approved literacy foundations curriculum for adults with low levels of literacy, neighbourhood learning centres and improved literacy rates among inmates guarantee adult learners basic skills for success?

I'm looking at the strategies and wondering what the performance measure is now for the guarantee of basic skills for success for adult learners. Do we have an answer for that?

[1655]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The measurement to date has been the IALSS, which is the international adult literacy and skills survey. But as the member opposite may be aware, the weakness of that is that it only comes along every nine years, so that's a difficult measuring tool for us to use if we want to monitor our progress more closely.

The responsibility for adult literacy does fall within the Ministry of Education, but there are a lot of other partners, and one of them is the AELMD ministry, the Advanced Education and Labour Market Development Ministry. We're working with them to develop another tool that we could use that would be more responsive. The work's not complete. It's certainly something that we would like to have so that we can measure our progress and, if we're not making the progress we wish to, so that we can change our course.

The other thing that the member is likely aware of is the education guarantee. Under this guarantee adult basic education courses are tuition-free regardless of whether a student has graduated or not. In 2008-09 we invested $3.1 million in this program, and that provided adult education programs for more than 4,600 graduated adult students. For last year the final tally is not in, but we believe that the investment probably increased by about 50 percent to $7.6 million. It may end up being a bit more than that. But it's now serving more than 10,000 students, so certainly an expanding program.

D. Thorne: Well, thank you for that information. I know it's difficult. It is difficult to measure, but certainly looking at graduation rates and those things is one good measure.

I always find it interesting, I guess because of my background, to read the education service plan. I mean, I don't read it in huge depth, but I do. I know that you consult with lots of people when you're doing the service plan. Do you consult with teachers, as well, when you're doing that? I mean, what stakeholder groups do you consult with, and is one of them teachers?

[1700]
[ Page 5361 ]

[H. Bloy in the chair.]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: In the developing of the service plan, there actually isn't formal consultation with any of our partners. Ministry staff, however, consult in many ways on many issues with teachers throughout the year.

There are some formal ways we do that. One is through the Education Advisory Council. The Learning Roundtable is also a place where some consultation can occur, to which teachers are certainly warmly welcomed. These kinds of consultations happen.

Certainly, teachers are involved integrally in the development of curriculum, so that's one of the areas where there would be significant consultation. But for the formation of the plan, it would be discussions that happen throughout the year that would inform it. There isn't a formal consultative process.

D. Thorne: My last question. No discussion of literacy would be complete without some discussion or questions about public libraries, which I see from the same budget summary, will go for four years with no increase in funding. You know, I guess I don't quite know how to phrase this question. I've been wanting to ask it all week.

I've been thinking I have to ask this about libraries after being a city councillor and working with the board, the trustees of the library, and working closely with the libraries. I know how important libraries are, not just for the community and programs like the Books for Babies and things like that which are also suffering from funding cuts and different things, and just in terms of literacy.

I guess my question would be: how can the government, the ministry and the minister justify no funding increase, not even a cost-of-living, to public libraries for four years when more and more people are finding themselves out of work or financially disadvantaged and probably not able to buy books — wanting, needing books and wanting to be able to borrow them? I would think a small increase even. How do we justify that to the public?

[1705]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I certainly agree with the member opposite about the value of public libraries. There's no question that they're a really valuable partner. We've continued to meet with them through the difficult economic times that we've been going through the last couple of years.

It's important to note that the amount of funding that the provincial government has provided to libraries has never accounted for more than…. It's actually always been less than 10 percent of their total funding. Municipal funding is by far and away their largest source of funding.

Although one would always like to be able to do more, we were actually very happy to be able to maintain the core funding to libraries that we did, particularly these last couple of years. We continue to explore how we can work together.

There may be a time in the future when we actually will be able to increase library funding, but what we're waiting for at this point is…. You know, we have other pressures on funding. What we have been happy to be able to do is to provide this core funding on an ongoing basis, recognizing that the main thing we need to do is, of course, provide the funding for our public education system.

It doesn't take away anything from the library system. We continue to really value the work they do, and we make a point of telling them that whenever we meet with them.

R. Austin: I just wanted to return to the issue of the education round table. Perhaps the minister could let us know how many times a year the round table meets, and what are the kinds of issues that are being discussed with the various partner groups around the round table?

[1710]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The Learning Roundtable, since it first came together in November 2005, has met about 13 times, we think. It hasn't actually met…. There was a meeting last fall, but it was cancelled because I was away with a medical problem for a lengthy period of time, which happily resolved. So we do have another Learning Roundtable planned for soon, I think. It's in June, I believe.

The issues that have been discussed to date have mostly been around class size and composition, but it's anticipated that we'll be talking about things like…. Just broad discussions about education policy, student learning — those kinds of issues to be brought forward.

R. Austin: I just wanted to talk for a minute about accountabilities that boards have to the ministry. I'm wondering if the minister could tell me how many achievement contracts there are with boards. What's the accountability mechanism for the achievement contracts with the ministry? Does the ministry go or send staff into various boards to take a look if they see a problem that is occurring, you know, a problem that comes before, say, sending in a special adviser?

Obviously, we're in the current situation where a special adviser has gone into the Vancouver school board, even though one could argue that a lot of the things that the Vancouver school district is looking at are fairly similar decisions to the kinds of decisions that have been made by lots of other school boards.

But I don't really want to specifically dwell on the Vancouver school district. I'm just wondering whether
[ Page 5362 ]
there are mechanisms in place to hold boards accountable so we don't end up getting to the point where we have to send in a special adviser which, of course, might upset people — or not, as the case may be. So if the minister could comment on that, I'd appreciate it.

[1715]

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: There are 60 school districts, and there are 60 achievement contracts with those districts. In December the superintendent of each school district will actually provide a progress report on how they're doing with the achievement contract. Then we have two superintendents of achievement. Each of them will travel and actually meet with the superintendents to monitor the progress. They'll have an annual meeting and talk about the progress that's being made with these contracts.

In some cases…. Well, I shouldn't say in some cases. There's data available so that the superintendent of achievement can actually take specific pieces of data, identify where there's perhaps room for improvement and actually go over those with the superintendent and say: "What are you doing about this area? What are you doing about that area?" It's an interactive process.

R. Austin: Are there any sanctions placed on school districts that aren't meeting their achievement contracts? Beyond having a discussion, is there any sort of — not punishment; that's not the right word — specific actions that the ministry takes if a school district isn't meeting its achievement contract?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: There are no sanctions per se — or punishments, as I think you may have phrased it. What happens is…. You know, we do have 60 very different school districts, and there are some that struggle quite a bit more with achievement than others.

What ends up happening is that the superintendents of achievement will be more present in a district that's having more difficulty, offering more help and suggestions. In some cases they will actually link them with a district that's functioning better so that there's sort of a sharing of ideas and best practices, which will help the district that's struggling more.

There was a case a few years ago where there were great difficulties with achievement, and a board actually requested a special adviser because of it, and one was appointed. That's one thing that can happen, but it's rare that that would happen.

[1720]

R. Austin: I just wanted to ask the minister if the ministry is watching carefully or looking at the situation in the Langley school district around the whole situation of them ending the last school year in June with a supposed small surplus and then a matter of weeks into the summer announcing a substantial deficit and then a few weeks later announcing a bigger deficit. Then an accounting firm came in, and they came back and said that the deficit was actually much bigger than even what the school district had figured out it was.

Does that situation there worry the minister in terms of accountability and whether the managerial expertise is sufficient in that school district? What does she think the ministry should maybe be doing about the situation in Langley?

Their perceived shortfall that they've got to budget for in the next school year…. Even though it's about $14 million, about $8 million or $9 million of that is this sort of, for want of a better term, missing money. The rest of it is other costs that they have to adjust for. But a large portion of their funding shortfall is this money that has apparently gone missing. I'm wondering what the minister and the ministry staff are going to do about that.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The situation in the Langley school district certainly is one that we have been concerned about. It's actually extraordinary, the deficit they have. There are a couple of school districts that have very small deficits, under a million dollars, but this deficit is on a much larger scale. The member opposite is correct. They believed that they were going to have a small operating surplus and suddenly within a matter of a few months found themselves to be in a very large deficit situation.

I want to be really clear, though, that there's not any money missing. What has happened is that they spent beyond what they had. The money has been accounted for, and they actually overspent for a number of reasons. An accounting firm was brought in from the outside to look at it. It was partly accounting errors, and there were also some budgeting errors, which I guess are a different kind of accounting error.

They overestimated some moneys that they thought would come to them. They underestimated some of their expenditures, and a series of errors were made. They didn't have the correct balances and controls in place for spending. Sometimes money was being spent and there wasn't a proper control mechanism in place.

A number of steps have been taken. The staff that were responsible for these errors no longer work in the school district.

[1725]

I personally have met with the board chair, the superintendent and the secretary-treasurer. Ministry staff have met extensively with the district as well. They will be coming forward with a deficit management plan. They came forward with one, but then their deficit was revised, so they'll come forward with another one fairly soon. We'll be monitoring their progress very carefully due to what's happened in the past.

The other thing that they've done is that they've actually requested that the Auditor General come into their
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district and look at the financial controls they've put in place to make sure that they will not have a problem like this again in the future. They've put some things into place, but they've actually asked the Auditor General to come in and do a review.

K. Corrigan: I wanted to ask a couple of questions about a couple of references that were made in the throne speech. There were references to preschools and to the private sector. I've had a number of service providers — people in the school district and so on — asking me if I could ask the minister about what the government intentions are in this area.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: What we know about the full-day learning for four-years-olds is that we are keen to provide it as soon as we possibly can, but we're in the planning stages now. The intent of the throne speech…. What we are doing is consulting with the private sector, because they're already providing many services for children in this age group.

We are looking at different models of service provision — school based and/or community based. I guess it goes without saying, but I'll say it. In order for this to be something that we should be doing, it needs to be high-quality learning followed by high-quality learning in the school system. We want to make sure that we get the best possible model going forward.

[1730]

We're still, as I said, in the planning stages and haven't landed on any decisions about how exactly we're going to implement this.

K. Corrigan: One of the concerns that I've heard expressed from a variety of people is that when reference is made to the private sector, there's a spectre for some people of the possibility of the big-box type of either child care or early learning, depending on exactly how it's presented. I think it would probably bring a lot of comfort to a lot of people if the minister could assure the public that when references are made to the private sector, the ministry is not looking at the big-box type of child care or preschool that has been offered in some jurisdictions.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I'm trying to be very careful with language so as to express what it is that we're trying to do. Our goal — and I hope we'll see it before too long — is play-based learning for young children. We are aware now that this kind of program or service is already provided to families by small businesses in B.C., by child care providers that certainly provide enriched early learning for the children who attend, and that these services are really valued by parents. The conversations we're having are with those providers. The intent is to provide a play-based learning experience for children.

[1735]

K. Corrigan: I appreciate that, and I think the intention is probably…. There are some very well-established child care or day care centres throughout the province that are of excellent quality. Perhaps the question is, then, whether or not you do some of that. Or do you try to do it within the schools? I certainly understand that. I guess just that the little piece that's still of concern is that….

Can I interpret that, then, as the minister saying that the intention was not to look at, for example, large, area-based contracts wherein a large estate of these kinds of services would be put out to bid and would end up attracting multinational corporations to bid on those kinds of contracts to provide a whole bunch of services in one region or one school district?

I don't think that's what the minister is suggesting, but I would like an assurance that that is not the direction that the ministry is looking at.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Although a lot of conversations are being had and a lot of work has been done in this area, it is still very early for us to say what our model is going to look like. What we know is that we really need to get it right, that we need to make sure that we've got a high-quality learning experience, however we provide that.

You know, as the member opposite has said, there are a number of different ways you can do this, including a blend, including just within the school system, just outside of the school system. But before we get to the actual mechanics of where we're going to provide it, we really need to look back at exactly what it is that we want to provide.

You know, we're spending the time that we need in order to do the planning and make sure that we really do have a very high-quality, play-based learning experience for the students that will take advantage of it.

K. Corrigan: Well, I understand that it's early in the stage of the planning, and the minister doesn't want to make commitments about what it would look like and what it wouldn't look like. I would hope that the minister would be able to make a commitment that it's not going to be big box like ABC or something like that, because I know there's a lot of trepidation out there about that kind of model.

Some of the concerns are related to whether or not local school boards lose control of the delivery, whether or not that's the best way to go. I personally don't think that the big-box type of child care is the right way to go at all. I'm sorry that the minister can't give me that assurance.

I'll ask another question. Is it foreseen that these programs would be delivered and funded through the Ministry of Education? Or through MCFD? Or through some combination of the two ministries?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: The Ministry of Education has primary responsibility for this area. We're taking the
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lead, but we're certainly working very closely with MCFD because of the work that they currently do. There always has been a lot of overlap between our two ministries.

[1740]

In terms of funding, it'll be government funding. I mean, currently it would be Ministry of Education. But you know, things can change, and governments do change how they do things. There's no change contemplated right now, but I think it probably makes sense to say that it's government funding. Currently, the Ministry of Education — we do definitively have the lead. We are working very closely with other ministries.

R. Austin: Noting the time, I would move that the committee rise, report progress and ask to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 5:41 p.m.

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