2011 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 39th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of


Debates of the Legislative Assembly


(hansard)


Monday, November 14, 2011


Afternoon Sitting


Volume 27, Number 9

[ Page 8707 ]

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2011


The House met at 1:33 p.m.


[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]


Routine Business


Introductions by Members


J. Yap: I have three introductions to make. First of all, I have in the public gallery today Brenda Plant. Brenda is the executive director of Turning Point Recovery Society, a non-profit provider of residential addiction services in the Lower Mainland for over 29 years, currently in the process of opening shortly a new women-only addiction facility in my riding of Richmond-Steveston.


Brenda is the force behind Turning Point's annual Making Recovery a Reality fundraising gala held in the spring of each year to raise money for their addiction programs. But perhaps most importantly, she is the auntie to research officer extraordinaire Graham Plant, who is part of our caucus staff. Would the House please give a warm welcome to Brenda Plant.


My next introductions, Mr. Speaker. With Brenda today are Jack Clerkson and his wife, Patty. Jack is a principal of CPA Development Consultants, who are instrumental in the building of Austin Harris seniors facility in my riding and also the Gilmore Gardens seniors residence and Gilmore Park United Church, also in my constituency. Would the House please give a warm welcome to Jack Clerkson and his wife, Patty.


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G. Coons: In the gallery today are some special guests, Jim and Julie Elliot from Oyama in Lake Country. For those people that don't know where it is, it's between Vernon and Kelowna. Julie Elliot is a contemporary Canadian artist — a painter and printmaker. Jim Elliot is my brother-in-law. He's an orchardist and chair of B.C. Tree Fruits and the Okanagan Tree Fruit Co-operative.


They are accompanied by two exchange students from Germany, Sophie Schuerholz and Fritzi Porrmann, who are in Victoria seeing the sights and experiencing a bit of British Columbian politics.


Also in the gallery is Jim's sister Lois Elliot, my wonderful spouse of 30 years.


Please make them welcome.


N. Letnick: In the gallery today we have people that you don't want to see professionally, but when you need them, you're certainly happy they are there. That's the members of the Ambulance Paramedics of British Columbia. We have with us today president Bronwyn Barter, vice-president Sherman Hillier and paramedic Sophia Georges. Would the House please make them feel welcome.


L. Popham: I'd like to introduce Niki Ashton, the youngest veteran of the federal opposition. She was elected in 2008 and is in her second term as MP. She is the former Chair of the parliament committee for the status of women. Would the House please make her welcome.


D. Horne: It's with great pleasure that I introduce my daughter, Victoria Horne, who is joining me here today in Victoria, although I have to note that I'm not certain she's actually here in the gallery at this point. For some reason, she doesn't believe that the next hour is the most advantageous use of our time.


Hon. S. Bond: I wish to acknowledge some very special guests who have volunteered countless hours to share their expertise in the development of the family law act that I intend to introduce shortly. We are grateful for their insight and their advice in this process. We warmly welcome each of them to the House today, and I know that my colleagues will want to welcome them.


First of all, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is the Representative for Children and Youth. She offered advice and recommendations to the ministry in the development of the family law act. Tracy Porteous is executive director of the Ending Violence Association.


I would also like to introduce a number of lawyers who were on an advisory committee to the ministry in the development of the family law act: David Dundee, a family lawyer from Kamloops and representative of the Canadian Bar Association, B.C. branch; John-Paul Boyd, a family lawyer in Vancouver and representative of the Parenting Coordinators Roster Society; Patricia Bond, who is a representative of the B.C. Trial Lawyers Association and a bencher of the Law Society; Mary Mouat; Georgialee Lang; Trudi Brown, QC; Eugene Raponi, QC; Richard Stewart, QC, bencher of the Law Society; and Kathryn Berge, QC, bencher of the Law Society.


Last but certainly not least, there are some staff from the ministry who have been responsible for the development of the family law act: Jerry McHale, QC, former assistant deputy minister; Jill Dempster; Michelle Kinney; Darryl Hrenyk; and Aisha Lagalli.


Thank you to each one of these who have contributed. We want to welcome all of them to the gallery today.


G. Gentner: I just want to help the member from Saanich with her introduction. She excluded one important fact. Niki Ashton is also a candidate for the leadership of the federal NDP. If all things go according to plan, she'll be the youngest Prime Minister, at the age of 33.


Hon. N. Yamamoto: Joining us in the House today are staff from the Ministry of Advanced Education who collectively — and we've added this up — have 225 years of public service. The service that they provide is invaluable and very much appreciated.

[ Page 8708 ]

They are, with 40 years of service, Bob Canham; with 30 years, Ron Warden and Bill Parker; with 25 years, Wendy Stevenot, Sharon Stuart, Kathy Fountain, Ann Smith and Thomas Wall. Again, thank you very much for all those years of service. Would the House please make them welcome.


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Hon. D. McRae: It's my pleasure today to introduce the chair of the Agricultural Land Commission, Mr. Richard Bullock. Richard is a Kelowna agriculturalist with significant knowledge of orchard and agritourism operations. He also has extensive experience in international consulting, including the production and processing of agricultural crops.


In his capacity as the ALC chair, Richard has always had the welfare of farmers and the preservation of farmland in the forefront. I want to thank Richard for all the hard work he has done and continues to do in assisting the reformation of the ALC, including the posting of his report on the ministry website sometime today. Would the House please make him welcome.


M. Coell: We're honoured today to have military officers from across Canada joining us in the Legislature. They're part of a group studying political science as part of the officer professional military education program. They come here most years. Would the House please make them welcome.


Tributes


Peggy Mathisen


Hon. M. McNeil: I'd like to just take a brief moment to comment on someone who is very dear to me, who just recently passed. Peggy Gratton was born in Toronto on May 25, 1919. She did her schooling at the University of Toronto and then moved to Montreal, where she met a young intern who was at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Arne and Peggy then were married in Victoria in May 1943 when Arne was a surgeon-lieutenant with a station here in Esquimalt.


After the war Arne and Peggy moved to their home on Angus Drive in Vancouver in October 1946 with two young daughters. In the '50s and '60s they added five more children to their family, of which I was one.


Peggy Mathisen passed away on November 1 at the age of 92. I am so pleased she got the longstanding wish to die in her home of 65 years. Peggy leaves behind her seven children, 26 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren with two more on the way, one within days.


In addition to caring for her large family, my mother was often referred to as the grandmother of the Crescent Beach Swim Club for the past three decades. It is with that that I would like to introduce some people joining us in the gallery today who, for me, represent the Crescent Beach Swim Club as well.


Established in 1918, it was just a year older than my mother. It is the oldest swim club in the province. Joining us today are Jim Carwana, past president of the CBSC; his wife, Krista Carwana, and their son Peter; Blake and Kelly Armstrong and their son Kevin; as well as Dave and Barb Brandon. Would the House please make them feel welcome.


Introduction and
First Reading of Bills


Bill M204 — Emergency Intervention
Disclosure Act, 2011


N. Letnick presented a bill intituled Emergency Intervention Disclosure Act, 2011.


N. Letnick: I move that the bill be read a first time now.


Motion approved.


N. Letnick: The bill allows individuals under certain specified circumstances to apply for a testing order if they suspect that they have been exposed to a communicable disease and a sample has not been obtained voluntarily from a source individual.


Currently emergency workers and victims of crime who suspect they have been exposed to serious illness cannot determine their exposure until many months later, often past the window of preventative treatments. Because of this doubt, suspected exposed people usually ingest a concoction of prophylactic drugs, and they, with their families, carry the mental burden of uncertainty.


This bill allows those individuals to ask the authorities to compel source individuals to get a blood test in a timely manner and, if a communicable disease is determined, to have the source individual's doctor communicate the results in confidence to the applicant's doctor.


Respecting personal privacy is important, and the provisions of this bill do that by ensuring that all testing information is communicated through physicians only. Results are never made public and may not be used outside the scope of the intended bill.


I would like to thank all those involved with the bill but especially the many firefighters, paramedics and police officers from throughout British Columbia who over August and September welcomed me into their halls.


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


Bill M204, Emergency Intervention Disclosure Act, 2011, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be
[ Page 8709 ]
placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.


Bill 16 — family law act


Hon. S. Bond presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Family Law Act.


[1345]

Hon. S. Bond: I move that the bill be introduced and read a first time now.


Motion approved.


Hon. S. Bond: I am very pleased to introduce the Family Law Act. This new legislation will update family law in British Columbia by putting children first when making decisions involving the child, expressly stating that the best interests of the child must be the only consideration.


It will help keep family disputes out of court by supporting ways for parents to resolve disputes, such as through making agreements, mediation, parenting coordination and arbitration, and to use the courts only when necessary. It will create tools to address family violence with a new protection order to help the courts more effectively deal with family violence situations. Breaching an order will be a criminal offence.


It will help ensure that children have time with their parents by creating a range of remedies and tools for non-compliance with parenting time, and it will also ensure parents receive the follow-through necessary on parenting time that they are given. This bill will clarify how property is divided to improve fairness when couples break up.


I am very pleased to introduce this bill in the House, particularly with the guests we have here in the gallery, many of whom have spent years bringing this work to the Legislature today.


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


Bill 16, Family Law Act, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.


Bill 19 — Miscellaneous Statutes
Amendment Act (No. 3), 2011


Hon. S. Bond presented a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2011.


Hon. S. Bond: I move that Bill 19 be introduced and read a first time now.


Motion approved.


Hon. S. Bond: I am pleased to introduce Bill 19, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2011. This bill will amend the following statutes: Agricultural Land Commission Act, Mines Act, Protected Areas of British Columbia Act, Wildlife Act, Public Service Labour Relations Act, Special Accounts Appropriation and Control Act, Motor Vehicle Act and Public Sector Employers Act. The bill also makes consequential amendments to two statutes and includes two validating provisions.


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


Bill 19, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 3), 2011, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.


Statements
(Standing Order 25B)


DIABETES AWARENESS AND EDUCATION


D. Hayer: Diabetes and obesity are reaching epidemic proportions, affecting families and placing unprecedented demands on the health care system. In fact, a report from the Canadian Diabetes Association shows that the number of British Columbians with the disease will rise from 338,000 in 2010 to 548,000 by 2020. B.C. also has areas of its population whose risk of developing diabetes is higher than the national average. This includes South Asians, Chinese and aboriginal people.


With that in mind, the province is proclaiming today, November 14, as World Diabetes Day, and as a part of this day, our government is providing $475,000 to the Canadian Diabetes Association. This funding will go to a program that helps families gain knowledge of basic nutrition and gain confidence in the kitchen to make sound meals, snacks and beverage choices.


The Food Skills for Families program consists of six hands-on cooking sessions to teach people how to make these healthier selections. The Canadian Diabetes Association works in partnership with many community agencies throughout British Columbia to deliver this program. The organization also reaches out to aboriginals, South Asians, new immigrants and low-income families because many are at risk for or live with chronic disease, including diabetes.


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This announcement is part of healthy families B.C. It supports British Columbians in managing their own health, reducing chronic disease and ensuring that support programs target the most vulnerable. It also encourages
[ Page 8710 ]
families to help make the healthy choices the easy choice. Helping families to make informed decisions about what they eat will equip them in the fight against diabetes. We are all concerned about the health of our families, and choosing and preparing healthy food is essential to healthy living.


MULTICULTURALISM AND
DIVERSITY IN LEADERSHIP


M. Elmore: This week B.C. is celebrating Multiculturalism Week, and Canada became the first country to declare multiculturalism as an official state policy in 1971. In British Columbia we recognize over 200 First Nation bands with 34 distinct languages, and together that's a rich cultural fabric that we enjoy, really promoting diversity in British Columbia.


Across the province communities are joining in celebrations and activities to recognize the multicultural nature in our society and also to promote multiculturalism, eliminate racism and eliminate barriers to full participation.


We are, as my friend Alden Habacon comments, emerging into multiculturalism 2.0 or a changing definition of multiculturalism. It has evolved from not necessarily just a Canadian ethnocultural mosaic where you are defined by your ethnicity but from the complexities of our current world, recognizing cultural navigators that value the inclusion of diversity in leadership in all aspects of our society.


There's a recent report, DiverseCity Counts report, that looked at the number of visible minorities in senior leadership and executive positions in Metro Vancouver in a number of sectors. It conducted a survey of 1.5 million people or 70 percent of Metro Vancouver's population where the visible minority population accounted for 51 percent. The results were in public sector executives, 7 percent; corporate sector, 10 percent; voluntary sector and education, 13 percent; government agencies, 11 percent; total leaders, 12 percent; and government officials, 26 percent.


We are seeing a lack of representation in leadership levels in British Columbia, the need for the support and the inclusion of people from all backgrounds in all areas to ensure that we have the full participation in ethnicity in our social, political and cultural fabric. I encourage everybody to get out to enjoy the activities and celebrate multiculturalism across B.C.


TOURISM IN RICHMOND


J. Yap: The impact of tourism on Richmond is significant, thanks to the many great options we offer visitors and to the great work of people like Tourism Richmond's CEO Tracy Lakeman and director of visitor and partner services Ed Gavsie and their great team.


A recent study estimates that tourism directly added $350 million to Richmond's GDP in 2010-2011. One of the great draws of Richmond is the wide range of accommodation options — everything from five-star hotels to B and Bs. Richmond also offers visitors many options when it comes to attractions — golf courses, great restaurants, the Richmond Oval and, of course, the charm and beauty of the historic village of Steveston in my riding.


Beginning as a small fishing village about 140 years ago, Steveston today is home to more than 600 fishing boats, Canada's largest fleet. Visitors can learn about the history of salmon canning at the Gulf of Georgia national historic site. Another place visitors can learn about our seafaring past is B.C.'s oldest shipyard at Brittania national historic site. Then there is the Steveston Museum in the old post office building surrounded by a turn-of-the-century boardwalk. This heritage building takes visitors back to the early days of Steveston.


If visitors want to get outdoors, we also have a vibrant whale-watching industry. In fact, we're becoming known as the "Gateway to the Orcas." All of this and much more is in Steveston alone, which gives an idea of the wealth of options that the city of Richmond as a whole offers. It's easy to see why more and more people choose to visit Richmond every year.


Mr. Speaker, fellow MLAs, please join me in congratulating all the people who work to make tourism such a vibrant and important economic driver in my community in the city of Richmond.


VOLUNTEER CONTRIBUTIONS
OF RETIRED TEACHERS


D. Black: I met recently with New Westminster residents Joanne and Dale Lauber, who are active members of the British Columbia Retired Teachers Association.


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They told me about a survey conducted this spring to examine the volunteer role of retired educators and the impact of their work in communities. The survey discovered that retired educators devote an average of 31 hours of volunteer time each month to many endeavours in a broad range of activities. This amount of time is more than double that donated by so-called top volunteers described in a 2007 national survey on volunteering by Canadians. If the volunteer work of the survey respondents is applied to all retired educators in the province and calculated at only $10 an hour, the contribution would be well over $100 million to our province. This is a phenomenal contribution to the welfare of B.C. communities.


In New Westminster I'm aware of many retired teachers who volunteer their time to assist worthwhile community organizations and causes. One of these is Janine Reid, who founded and still leads the Royal
[ Page 8711 ]
City Gogos, a group of grandmothers raising funds for African grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren orphaned by HIV/AIDS.


Alison Kirkley is active in the arts community. She serves on the executive of the New Westminster Arts Council and on other cultural organizations. Delora Harper taught in Surrey for many years and now raises money for Japanese earthquake relief and African grandmothers too. John Wallace, a young 92-year-old, participates in community issues and passes his knowledge on to younger citizens to encourage them to become politically and socially engaged in their community.


I'm sure that all members of this House join me in thanking all B.C. retired teachers for the contributions they make to our province.


GATEWAY BUILDING AT BCIT


R. Lee: Last Wednesday was the official opening of BCIT's $39 million Gateway building, an exciting milestone for the BCIT community and the entire city of Burnaby. Established in 1964, BCIT is now one of the largest post-secondary institutions in our province with more than 48,000 students. This new facility, built to LEED gold standards, and other renovated structures are a result of a joint provincial and federal government partnership.


What is important about the infrastructure investments, especially when it comes to post-secondary institutions, is the long-term impact on our communities. Not only will current students, staff and faculty benefit from all the programs offered in these renewed and expanded facilities, but thousands of future students will have better access as well.


This new building will help, besides teaching more students, with entry-to-practice credentials, helping to increase B.C.'s productivity and competitiveness. When the province began promoting wood export to China nine years ago, BCIT was there to provide technical knowledge and skill training. It's part of the reason for the tenfold increase of lumber exports to China.


In the future, technologies in energy management will become more and more important. I'm pleased to see BCIT is part of the intelligent microgrid project, which will help integrate hydro or natural gas power with alternative energies such as solar, wind and biomass. In fact, this Gateway building is controlled by a smart microgrid.


BCIT will help British Columbians secure the kind of jobs needed to support their families and help B.C. compete successfully in the global economy. This building was built at the right time in the right place and for the right people.


DELTA AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY


V. Huntington: Today I want to recognize the venerable Delta Agricultural Society, an organization that has improved Delta's farming character and strengthened the heart of our community for well over 110 years. Since its first meeting, chaired by William Ladner in 1888, the society has been part of the development of Delta.


The original mission of the agricultural society was to foster progress in soil cultivation, horse breeding and the household arts. It now tends to a wide range of initiatives that benefit not only our agricultural community but Delta as a whole.


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As the society matured, it became an important part of the broader community. Its members have provided millions of dollars to Delta's community groups and projects, including the Delta Hospital and the Delta Museum and Archives.


The agricultural society assisted the municipality with the purchase of historic Paterson Park, which in years past was the centre of harness racing in British Columbia. It participates in the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust winter cover crop stewardship program, which helps covers farmers' costs for seeding crops that protect farmland from erosion, that support the Pacific migratory bird flyway and that lure birds away from forage crops. The society also funds DFWT's laser levelling program, a key component of modern drainage techniques.


Several years ago the historic East Delta Hall burned to the ground. The original building had been constructed by the society and for decades was the core of the East Delta farming community. The society volunteers rebuilt that building, and it is used by the community to this day.


The Delta Agricultural Society plays a leading role in land stewardship and community building. It is a legacy that has lasted 110 years, and one that we trust will be part of Delta's heritage for the next century.


Oral Questions


PAYMENT OF LEGAL FEES
IN B.C. RAIL COURT CASE
AND INDEMNITY POLICY REVIEW


J. Horgan: It's just over a year ago today that the B.C. Liberal government broke with a longstanding policy of only providing an indemnity to public servants who were found not guilty. Over a year ago the B.C. Liberals paid the legal cost to two B.C. Liberal insiders to the tune of $6 million. Last week we learned that Dr. Stephen Toope, in completing his review on the policy, did not explicitly look into the payoff to David Basi and Bobby Virk, and of course, the public was appropriately outraged at the time.


The opposition raised questions. We were told to just wait. The former Attorney General from Chilliwack-
[ Page 8712 ]
Hope said: "Wait for the Toope report." The current Minister of Health said: "Wait for the Toope report."


We even had outrage on the open-line talk shows. If I could just quote from one of the radio talk show hosts: "Why did the Crown offer the plea deal in the first place, and why did they feel that they needed to throw in the $6 million indemnity in order to get the accused to sign it?" Of course, that was the member for Vancouver–Point Grey.


My question is to the Attorney General. Mr. Toope has completed his review — inconclusive. No answers as to why the public had to pay $6 million for convicted B.C. Liberal insiders. Here's your opportunity, hon. Attorney. What's the answer?


Hon. S. Bond: Well, in fact, Professor Toope did exactly what Professor Toope was asked to do. In fact, he provided….


Interjections.


Mr. Speaker: Members.


Continue, Attorney.


Hon. S. Bond: In fact, Professor Toope provided government with a series of recommendations, all of which have been received, and all of them will be implemented by the government.


Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.


J. Horgan: Again, I'm trying to keep track of the number of Attorneys General who said that we were going to get to the bottom of this; just wait and see. Just wait and see, hon. Speaker.


Again, not good enough. Not good enough for the opposition, not good enough for the public and apparently not good enough for the Premier, who said: "Was the Crown worried that they couldn't get a conviction otherwise, that they could only get a conviction, they could only get these guys to agree that what they'd done was criminal if they threw $6 million to sweeten the pot?"


That was the question from the now member from Point Grey, the Premier of British Columbia. I ask, on her behalf, the Attorney General: why did the people of British Columbia have to fork out $6 million for convicted B.C. Liberals?


Hon. S. Bond: Professor Toope has provided government with a comprehensive set of recommendations that do include a new set of principles upon which decisions to pursue assets will be followed. But the member opposite should actually go back and do his homework. Let's just take a look at a statement issued by the Deputy Attorney General on October 20, 2010.


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Before the member stands in this House and casts aspersions, maybe he'd want to go back and take a look at what the Deputy Attorney General laid out clearly and released to the public. He released to the public the process.


"Legal services branch referred the matter to me" — the Deputy Attorney General — "and to the Deputy Minister of Finance." And let's get to the paragraph that clearly points it out. "No one outside the legal services branch, myself," being the Deputy Attorney General, "and the Deputy Minister of Finance had any knowledge of this or any involvement" — statement, October 2010.


Interjections.


Mr. Speaker: Members.


The member has a further supplemental.


J. Horgan: I'm grateful for the Attorney to read me back the answers to questions that came from this side of the House in estimates in 2010. What we were trying to get at then, what we're trying to get at now and what the Premier, when she was talking to Joe on line 1, was trying to get to was: why in the heck are the people of British Columbia out $6 million for B.C. Liberal insiders?


What happened is that there was an indemnity policy in place prior to the raid on the Legislature in 2003. That policy had served British Columbians very well. Public servants going to court, found innocent — costs paid. Public servants going to court, found guilty — costs not paid.


My question again, following on the good work of the member for Vancouver–Point Grey, the now Premier, and Joe on line 1: why the heck are we out six million bucks and B.C. Liberals are at home with ankle bracelets on?


Hon. S. Bond: Obviously, the member opposite didn't hear where the statement came from. The statement came from the Deputy Attorney General. If the members on the other side of the House would like to continue to impugn the reputation of the Deputy Attorney General, they're welcome to. I will not be doing that.


Let me just read the other paragraph of the publicly released statement by the Deputy Attorney General. Based on the recommendations from legal services, "in our respective capacities the Deputy Minister of Finance" and the Deputy Attorney General "decided to release Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk from their liability to repay. I communicated that decision to the Attorney General on October 8, 2010."


That was the process. It was made public. Stephen Toope has given us recommendations for moving forward. All of those will be adopted by this government.

[ Page 8713 ]

M. Karagianis: Well, the Attorney General should know that the first rule of all of government is that the buck stops there, not with the bureaucrats.


In the spring the Premier was quite adamant that all things would be revealed when the Toope review was released. She said: "As I've said a number of times already, the issues" that the members are raising "are not excluded from Dr. Toope's review." Well, except Mr. Toope's review didn't have that as part of the mandate, so no questions were revealed in the deal, not at the time that the deal was done and not now.


Again to the Attorney General: explain why the government broke their own rules to pay off the legal fees for two convicted Liberal insiders.


Hon. S. Bond: Well, Mr. Speaker, what an absolutely irresponsible question by the member opposite. Let's just look at the information.


Interjections.


Mr. Speaker: Members.


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Hon. S. Bond: Let's remind the member opposite that the modus operandi over there is: let's not let facts get in the way of any other information.


Let's be clear about this. From the statement made by the Deputy Attorney General on October 20, let me once again read the facts that were outlined publicly. The Deputy Attorney General made the comments. In fact, here is what he said: "No one outside the legal services branch, myself and the Deputy Minister of Finance had any knowledge of this or any involvement." I'm not sure how much more clearly that could be articulated.


Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.


M. Karagianis: Well, let's look at some facts. The government commissioned this review of their indemnity policy to try and make this story go away. That's the bottom line. The $6 million payoff of legal fees for convicted Liberal insiders is something that, frankly, stinks to most British Columbians — stinks to high heaven. You know what? It actually seemed to have struck the Premier the same way when she was on talk radio.


Interjections.


Mr. Speaker: Member, just take your seat.


Members. Members.


Continue, Member.


M. Karagianis: The Premier seemed to feel the same way when she was on talk radio. Let's look at some of the questions she posed on air. Were they concerned that the remaining list of witnesses would further damage their case? Did they think it was already so shaky that the rest of the witnesses getting up on the stand would only have harmed them and made a conviction even less likely?


Dr. Toope was never asked to answer the fundamental and pressing question that British Columbians want to know about the B.C. Rail corruption trial. Will the Attorney General answer this: why did the Liberals break their own rules and pay off the legal bills for two convicted B.C. Liberal insiders — why?


Hon. S. Bond: The answer we'll provide, actually, is based on the facts. Let's review it one more time for the member opposite. Legal services goes to speak to the Deputy Finance Minister, the Deputy Attorney General, and they happen to be statutory decision-makers. So which is it? Would you like the Attorney General to interfere in a process with statutory decision-makers?


The recommendation was given to the Deputy Minister of Finance, the Deputy Attorney General. They made the decision, and in the Deputy Attorney General's statement he said: "No one outside legal services branch, myself and the Deputy Minister of Finance had any knowledge or involvement."


H. Lali: The largest corruption scandal in the history of Canada, involving a billion-dollar rail sale — under this Liberal government. After the Premier hurriedly left politics in 2005 to become a radio talk show host, she had a lot of questions that she was asking.


Interjections.


Mr. Speaker: Members.


H. Lali: I'd like to quote the Premier when she was a radio talk show host. "Those are among the questions that I and, I'm sure, many of you would like to ask" — and then names the former Attorney General. "Unfortunately, we will not get that chance today, although I will entertain your calls. What's on your list of questions for the government? Let's start now. Let's start building our list of questions that we would like to put to the government if they ever decide to come out of hiding and answer."


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Hon. Speaker, will you please ask this Liberal government to come out of hiding? Could you ask the Attorney General to tell this House why the B.C. Liberals broke their own policy and paid $6 million in legal fees to two convicted B.C. Liberal insiders when they were this close to spilling the beans on the B.C. Liberals' corruption scandal?


Hon. S. Bond: Of course the Premier was concerned. That's why she asked us to have Prof. Stephen Toope do the report. And in fact….

[ Page 8714 ]

Interjections.


Hon. S. Bond: As inconvenient as it might be for the member opposite to actually concentrate on the facts, the statement from the Deputy Attorney General speaks for itself. Unless the member would like to impugn the reputation of the Deputy Attorney General, which apparently is being implied, let's be clear.


Legal services branch came to the Deputy Attorney General, to the Deputy Minister of Finance, as was the practice, is the practice. In fact, the Deputy Attorney General in his statement in October made it clear. "Based on the above" — and the information that was provided — "in our respective capacities…we decided to release Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk from their liability to repay. I communicated that decision to the Attorney General…. No one outside legal services branch, myself and the Deputy Minister of Finance had any knowledge…."


TSILHQOT’IN NATION CONSULTATION
ON PROSPERITY MINE PROPOSAL


B. Simpson: Will the Minister of Aboriginal Relations please tell this House what the government is going to do to address the issue that the Tsilhqot'in National Government have flatly rejected Prosperity mine in any form?


Hon. R. Coleman: I have been in extensive conversations with the Tsilhqot'in over the last number of months. Over that period of time we've been dealing with their issues and looking at their long-term economic opportunities. Many of them affect not just mineral exploration in their particular area of British Columbia but also opportunities in power and in mills and opportunities with them being involved in IPP and those types of opportunities.


As we've come through those discussions, we've helped them sort of focus on what their long-term economic goals are. That work is ongoing. I've met with them after an extensive report was done with them to look at all the opportunities in the Chilcotin. We're going to continue to do that.


At the same time, we are working with the mining company and with the First Nation to try and solve this issue one way or the other as we go forward. But at the same time, we should recognize that the Tsilhqot'in are interested in economic activity in their area in a respectful way that would have dealings with companies and people that would come in and work with them. We're going to try and continue to build that relationship with regards to Prosperity.


Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.


B. Simpson: The province approved the draining of Fish Lake and continues to permit the draining of Fish Lake despite the fact that the Harper government rejected that proposal. The province has no process to deal with the new Prosperity proposal in a public manner, yet the federal government is undertaking another annual public review of this process. The province continues to act as if this mine is going to go ahead, to the point that the Tsilhqot'in Government has now taken this province, despite the minister's efforts, to court to get them to stop acting as if this is a done deal.


My question to whatever minister has got responsibility for this is: will the provincial government commit today to a joint panel review this time, with the federal government, and use this year to consult with the public properly, and will they convene a government-to-government table explicitly on the Prosperity project with the Tsilhqot'in National Government?


[1420]

Hon. R. Coleman: I recognize that the member for Cariboo North is not interested in any economic activity that might improve the economy of Cariboo North or Cariboo South.


Over the last six months I have personally begun to build a relationship with the Tsilhqot'in and a one-on-one relationship with the chiefs and the elders in that particular region of the province. I've met with them on weekends by flying into remote areas of their communities to sit down and go over what they think is the need for the future of their people.


I actually have faith in the Tsilhqot'in people that they will work with us to look for the long-term benefits for their people. It may or may not include a specific mine, but I can tell you what it will include: a respectful relationship between myself and the rest of this government with the Tsilhqot'in Nation as we build for the future of that community.


NEGOTIATIONS FOR RCMP SERVICES AND
ACTION ON ALLEGATIONS AGAINST RCMP


K. Corrigan: Mr. Speaker, we have more and more RCMP officers coming forward with very serious allegations of harassment. The minister has said that she's concerned about public credibility and that she expects the RCMP to utilize the process that's in place to ensure there is a fair and rigorous look at these allegations. But right now we are in the middle of RCMP contract negotiations.


My question to the minister is: what steps is the minister taking, as part of RCMP contract negotiations, to address the serious credibility and human resources issues facing the RCMP in British Columbia?


Hon. S. Bond: I think one of the things that we need to recognize is that we've had ongoing and continuous discussions with municipalities across the province. We
[ Page 8715 ]
are at the table negotiating on their behalf, and, virtually to a municipality, they have said to us: "We want to retain the RCMP in British Columbia if at all possible." So we are working very hard to carry the concerns of municipalities to the negotiating table.


I'm very pleased to report that there have been a very positive number of days back at the table. One of the key issues that we've been taking to the table since day one has been the issue of accountability and contract management, the ability to have conversations about issues like this one. We need management tools in place at the provincial level, and both the municipalities and the provincial government are working hard to see those kinds of things achieved in a new contract if that's possible.


Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.


K. Corrigan: Well, we have very serious credibility issues with the RCMP right now. What I think the people of British Columbia want to know is that these issues are going to be addressed in the contract negotiations.


Will the minister stand up to the federal government, to the pressures of the deadline, and take the time needed to settle a contract that addresses the serious and perhaps systemic issues that are apparently widespread in the RCMP?


Hon. S. Bond: To the member opposite, anytime there are allegations of this nature, of course we take them seriously. I've conveyed my concerns about the issues that have been made. But let's be clear. Today those are allegations. There needs to be a thorough process, and they are allegations to date.


Our work at the negotiating table, Mr. Speaker, is about building a more transparent and accountable process, but I can assure you that the municipalities in British Columbia have said to us: "We would like to retain the RCMP if at all possible." We are working hard to gain management tools. We're looking at a contract management committee, where issues like this could be addressed.


But let's be clear. This is a federal human resources issue, and I don't think the member opposite should have any doubt that this government has been very clear about its position with RCMP contract negotiations in British Columbia.


B. Ralston: There are indeed a number of serious allegations of sexual harassment within the RCMP in British Columbia. Part of the problem is that there's a backlog of grievances, the process to deal with these allegations. The RCMP Commissioner in July 2011 said that the backlog was a serious one. It was systemic and affected morale and the ability of the RCMP to operate effectively in British Columbia.


[1425]

Surely at this point when there are negotiations…. British Columbia is contemplating signing on for another 20 years of RCMP service. Surely this is the point at which to get the assurances that the public is demanding. So will the minister assure the public that during the course of these negotiations, it won't be simply asked about or talked about — that one of the conclusions of the negotiations will be to get definite assurances that these issues will be addressed and fixed?


Hon. S. Bond: As I said to the previous question, we take all of these allegations seriously. But the member opposite should rightly know that this is a matter of the federal bill — it is federal legislation — and we've clearly indicated that this matter needs to be seriously considered. There needs to be a process in place to ensure that these allegations are investigated and reviewed.


We have been very clear with our goals in terms of our negotiating approach at the table, and in fact, municipalities in British Columbia have helped shape our approach. We are looking for contract management tools, and we are going to look for ways that we can better manage a 20-year contract in partnership with municipalities.


But let's be clear about this. While there are allegations in place and while there are serious issues to deal with, this side of the House recognizes that the vast majority of police officers in British Columbia serve with honour and with integrity and put their lives on the line every single day for British Columbians.


Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.


B. Ralston: Well, clearly, the RCMP is obviously a federal force, but the British Columbia government is in negotiations to contract with them to provide police services here in British Columbia, in many municipalities, for another 20 years. Approximately 20 percent of the RCMP force here in British Columbia are women, and these allegations have rocked the public's trust in the RCMP. Has the minister considered — and this is an issue in the negotiations: what impact will this have on future recruitment of women to the RCMP?


Hon. S. Bond: I've said repeatedly that anytime there is an allegation of this nature, all of us are concerned. I've made it clear that the RCMP needs to ensure that there is an appropriate process in place to review the allegations, and to date they are allegations. At the bargaining table we continue to look at the 20-year contract and the implications for British Columbia, and our primary concern since day one has been ensuring that we have more contract management ability so that we can bring these kinds of issues to the table.


Let's be clear. This is a federal act. It is a federal organization, and we are working hard to ensure that
[ Page 8716 ]
municipalities and the province get the best deal possible before we consider signing off the contract.


ANNOUNCEMENT BY PREMIER AND
FIRST NATIONS CONSULTATION ON
NORTHEAST B.C. COAL MINE PROPOSAL


S. Fraser: Consistent with the Premier's ready-fire-aim approach, she made an announcement last week in China that amounts to nothing. The Premier reannounced the Gething coal mine project that has been on the books since 2006 and has been opposed by local First Nations for just as long. I can't put it better than West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Willson. The Premier has "no clue about what's going on." Her blatant pronouncements in China are "a blatant slap in the face" for not just the West Moberly but all First Nations in British Columbia.


To the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation: can she explain how her boss can promote a project overseas that completely misrepresents the requirements of the province to consult with First Nations?


Interjections.


Mr. Speaker: Go ahead, Minister.


Hon. R. Coleman: The Premier's announcement was actually an announcement of a company in China that was prepared to invest hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in the province of British Columbia.


[1430]

When I met with some of the proponents of this particular company, I made it very clear that as they came to British Columbia looking for opportunities, there were issues that they had to satisfy with First Nations, and I made them aware of those types of issues in British Columbia. I also made them aware of our high environmental standards, and they felt that they could come into British Columbia and work with British Columbians, including First Nations, to look for opportunities. They thought they could invest in British Columbia and create thousands of jobs for people in B.C.


NORTHEAST B.C. COAL MINE PROPOSAL
AND MINING INDUSTRY JOBS


D. Donaldson: Well, it's not only First Nations who have grave concerns about this proposed northeast coal project and have concerns about the ineptitude of this government's mismanagement of the mining issues, ineptitude on First Nations consultation, ineptitude on the EA process, ineptitude on Prosperity, ineptitude on the Boss Power deal.


People are looking for work in the regions, in this region and elsewhere, and they're wondering about this government's faltering commitment to B.C. resources for B.C. jobs. One of the companies involved in the investment consortium has said they plan to bring Chinese workers to fill their labour requirements in the proposed underground coal mine.


To the Minister of Mines: will he commit today that B.C. natural resources need to create B.C. jobs, or does he agree with the Premier that the B.C. Liberals' so-called jobs plan means jobs for those living outside the province?


Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I am wondering what economic activity the NDP actually supports in the province of British Columbia.


Interjection.


Hon. R. Coleman: That's an old movie, Member. That's an old movie. I've already had that discussion with the company about B.C. jobs for British Columbians and what was on and wasn't on, and if you want to go back and rewind some tape for six or eight months or a year, go ahead. I've already spoken to them about that.


Let me tell you this. I welcome investment in British Columbia. I welcome jobs that pay over $100,000 for British Columbians.


I welcome the opportunity that people will work together, including First Nations, to build the economy of British Columbia, which evidently you guys oppose.


[End of question period.]


Orders of the Day


Hon. R. Coleman: Going back to my normal, quiet, calm demeanour, I will now talk to you about the orders of the day. This afternoon we will start second reading of Bill 8, intituled Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act, 2011. Then we will move on to continue second reading of the Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act and then, if time, to Bill 5, intituled the Personal Property Security Amendment Act, 2011; and, if time, Bill 7 and Bill 17.


Second Reading of Bills


Bill 8 — Community, Sport and
Cultural Development Statutes
Amendment Act, 2011


Hon. I. Chong: I move that Bill 8, intituled the Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act, 2011, be read for a second time now.


I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak about Bill 8. This piece of legislation is important….

[ Page 8717 ]

Interjections.


Mr. Speaker: Minister, just take your seat for a second.


Members who have got other duties, if you can keep a little bit of quiet in the chamber.


Continue, Minister.


Hon. I. Chong: As I was saying, this piece of legislation, Bill 8, is important to all British Columbians because it supports them and their elected local governments in making their communities the best possible places to live. I'm confident that the amendments included in Bill 8 will help support that goal.


[L. Reid in the chair.]


The Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act, 2011, implements recommendations of a farm assessment review panel. For the benefit of the members, I will remind them that in February 2008 the province appointed a farm assessment review panel to conduct a provincewide review of existing regulations and policies to ensure that the farm property assessment process is fair, is equitable and is streamlined.


[1435]

The panel was co-chaired by Frank Leonard, mayor of Saanich, and by the member for Nechako Lakes. It included local government representatives, a cross-section of B.C.'s agriculture community and the B.C. Assessment board.


The farm assessment review panel submitted its report and recommendations to government on July 31, 2009. The province has already implemented two of the panel's recommendations for the 2010 assessment roll to clarify the rules for split classification of agricultural land reserve and non-ALR farm properties.


Specifically, the two recommendations that were implemented in 2010 were: firstly, for parcels farmed within the ALR, eliminating split classifications so that the entire parcel is classed as farmland, except for any portions used for non-farm-associated purposes; and secondly, for farmed parcels not in the ALR, eliminating split classification of those parcels if at least 50 percent of the non-ALR land is in agricultural production or is contributing to production and meets the regulated income threshold for that parcel and the non-farmed portion has no other use, or where 25 percent of the non-ALR land is in production and meets the higher income threshold of $10,000.


Again, those were two recommendations implemented in 2010.


Bill 8 will implement two further recommendations of the farm assessment review panel. Firstly, the bill will provide an incentive for family farms to expand their operations by changing the property tax exemption on farm outbuildings to the greater of 87.5 percent or $50,000 of the assessed value.


Secondly, the bill will provide property tax relief for retired farmers, making it easier for them to continue living on their farm property. Also, I would like to note that two additional recommendations of the farm assessment review panel will be implemented through regulatory amendments and policy changes that will reduce administrative paperwork for farmers by changing the farm income reporting period to be consistent with the Canada Revenue Agency income tax reporting period, which is on a calendar basis.


As well, it will provide more flexibility to meet requirements to maintain farm status by expanding the list of primary agricultural production, which is commonly known as PAP. So those are the two implementations of the regulatory amendments.


Combined with the regulatory amendments and policy changes noted, Bill 8 will give British Columbia's hard-working farm families some much-deserved support. Bill 8 will provide and help encourage the development of more intensive farming operations in British Columbia by improving and expanding farm infrastructure.


Intensive farming operations today — such as dairy, greenhouse and mushrooms — can require capital investments of several million dollars. The current maximum of $50,000 applies to all farms, regardless of the value of improvement, and it has not been changed for many years. The 87.5 percent factor will apply to all farm improvements, and there is no maximum.


British Columbia's agriculture industry is a keystone of our economy, as was noted in our B.C. jobs plan. Agriculture sustains jobs and helps support local economies in communities across British Columbia. Agriculture produces the food that sustains families and citizens every day throughout our province.


Bill 8 is welcome news for farm families. It supports the B.C. agriculture plan and strengthens the sustainability of a family farm in British Columbia.


Bill 8 also includes some minor housekeeping and streamlining amendments in relation to local government legislation. Specifically, the amendments will clarify the provisions in the Local Government Act regarding regional district service review and withdrawal processes. It will also correct minor errors in the Community Charter and the Local Government Act regarding provincial regulation-making authorities.


The regional district service review and service withdrawal process can be complex, it can be time-consuming, and certainly, it can be costly. These amendments remove barriers to the effective review of, and removal from, regional district services and support more cost-effective dispute resolution processes between service participants.

[ Page 8718 ]

So I am asking that all members lend their support to this legislation. I look forward to other members' participation in second reading.


[1440]

H. Lali: I want to thank the Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development. I just want to state, right up at the top, that our NDP caucus will be supporting this bill. I want to thank the minister for the work that she has done and also for her staff having provided some briefing to our Agriculture critic. Unfortunately, I was on leave that day and was unable to be part of that briefing, but staff were.


Just having an initial look at the bill, we will be actually putting up some questions during committee stage. I know there are a number of sections here — 17 sections to this. What this bill does, obviously, is it amends a number of the acts that are involved, such as the Assessment Act, the Community Charter, the Local Government Act, as well as the Municipal Finance Authority Act, the Vancouver Charter, the School Act, the Taxation (Rural Area) Act, as well as the Local Government Act transition. It allows for some of these changes to take place.


As the minister has stated, there are a couple of large categories under which this falls. The first one actually came up as a result of some of the recommendations in July 2009 by the farm assessment review panel. They address two sections. Specifically, one is allowing retired farmers to actually maintain tax benefits, and obviously, the other one is increasing the exemption for farm improvements.


The second category is a set of amendments that deal with municipal service reviews and withdrawals that actually stem from a UBCM task force appointed in 2008.


At this point I want to commend the panel. It was chaired by the mayor of Saanich, Frank Leonard, and also my colleague the MLA from Nechako Lakes, who is here making copious notes. I want to actually thank both of these members that I named for the work that they put into this.


During committee stage, my colleague the member for Saanich South, who is the Agriculture critic, will basically be posing the bulk of the questions on the farm assessment review panel, whereas I will be on the UBCM task force appointed in 2008.


I just want to put on the record that there are a number of sections here. Section 1, obviously, adds the definition of the "agricultural land reserve" and "spouse."


The agricultural land reserve is very, very important for farming, agriculture and ranching in this province. It is also very, very important for supplying our food products for us here in British Columbia and also for export. So anything that would actually strengthen the agricultural land reserve would most definitely have the support of the NDP caucus — and of myself, in particular.


As you know, it is very, very important that we — who have only, I think, less than 5 percent of the land base of this province that could sustain any kind of agriculture — be able to preserve that land for future generations so that we can have a domestic supply of food for our own domestic use.


Also, I know there is the hundred-mile diet that I know both sides of the House support. It is very essential for that to actually have agricultural land upon which we can sustain agriculture.


Interjection.


H. Lali: I know the member opposite here from Chilliwack wants to get in on the discussion. Obviously, it's their bill. He can stand up at any time and get on the record rather than sitting there trying to heckle me.


[1445]

Also, under section 2 it allows retired farmers to maintain their farm tax status if they remain living on the property. Again, this was a recommendation of the FARP. This is good thing. We want to promote agriculture, and if people can stay on the farm and own their ranch as long as they possibly can before they pass it on to succeeding generations, it is a good thing, and it allows for certain tax status for folks who want to be able to do that.


I'm not going to go through this section by section. We'll do that at committee stage. But there are also tax benefits that are actually also going to be extended to retired farmers. There are not a lot of benefits that they get from upper levels of government to begin with, but any time we can support farming and ranching and farmers and ranchers in this province, it's a good thing, to keep the continuity and keep our agriculture industry alive and going.


As you know, several members of this House on different occasions and on both sides of the House have stood in their places in this Legislature to speak about their support for agriculture in this province and how the supports for agriculture — in other places they call them subsidies — whether it's funding through the Ministry of Agriculture, from the federal or provincial level…. I mean, those supports have been actually diminishing or going down drastically ever since 1975. We were at a high as a percent of the GDP, close to 19. I think it was just a little touch over 19. I think 19.2 percent is what it was back then.


Ever since then successive governments — be they Social Credit, New Democrat or Liberal — have actually whittled away at the supports for agriculture during that time, and similar things have happened from the federal level as well. I know about a decade ago it was still hovering around 10 percent, just a touch beside 10 percent, and now is down to just above 3 percent. That's the percentage of the GDP.

[ Page 8719 ]

That doesn't bode very well for farming and agriculture in this province. I think, obviously, we need to support our farmers and ranchers and all of the folks that are involved in agriculture if we're going to have a viable agricultural industry in this province to sustain not only our local needs but also the hundred-mile diet that we want to all promote and any other programs. That is essential.


So if you could actually, under this bill, have some benefits to retired farmers, that is a good thing. Obviously, on our side of the House we support that.


In one of the sections, section 10, there is an amendment that actually specifies that regulations in this section, 813.19, may be different between different regional districts and different circumstances. Again, this looks after…. It's based on the recommendations put forward by FARP as well. This takes into consideration how large our province is, how diverse it is, not only culturally, but also geographically and the kind of farming that takes place.


If you look at the Peace, obviously, they deal with a lot of wheat farming up in that area. If you're looking at the Fraser Valley, you've got vegetables and ground fruits that are growing in abundance. If you look at the Okanagan, you've got tree fruits. You look at the Cariboo and my riding, Fraser-Nicola, and there's a lot of ranching that takes place. You look at it all throughout the province. On the Island, again, they have a nice mix of family farms and some small ranches there as well.


This section, obviously, recognizes the regional differences, and regional districts are often responsible in those areas having to deal with agriculture and agriculturalists. I'm glad that this section is here. We'll be looking forward to seeing specifically how the government will deal with that when we get to the committee stage.


I just want to also talk about section 11 here, which is under the Local Government Act, section 814. This amendment clarifies the application of the Community Charter and the Local Government Act with regards to reserve funds established for services and transfers between reserve funds.


[1450]

I'm not saying we oppose this section at all, just that we have some concerns. I'm sure the minister and her staff in committee stage, where we will pose some questions, hopefully will be able to alleviate some of those concerns.


Obviously, you have municipalities and regional districts that build up reserves for future expenditures for special projects that they want to deliver for their constituents, come the need in the future. We just want to make sure that there isn't too huge a deviation from when the funds actually went into the reserves to begin with, and all of a sudden changes are going to allow a wholesale change or a transfer of some of these funds between the various reserves. That would be a concern.


That would not only be a concern, obviously, to members opposite; I think it might be a concern to some of my colleagues on the Liberal back bench, as well, many of whom actually are from small communities — I'm from Merritt — and other communities in the Thompson-Nicola regional district where I am situated. I know it would be of concern to folks at the municipal and the regional district level from whom the funds are raised by municipal and regional districts.


We will pose some questions under this section and hopefully get some clarification and comfort from the minister during committee stage.


There is a section under the Municipal Finance Authority Act, section 5, and this actually — section 12 of this bill — allows the Municipal Finance Authority to move their office within the capital regional district rather than only within the city of Victoria, as they are looking for new space and may find a better deal in Saanich — which again would be a good thing, if they can save some money by relocating the office. That is obviously a good thing and shows accountability to the taxpayers, and we would definitely support that change as well.


Section 15, Taxation (Rural Area) Act, under this amendment exempts an owner's dwelling on farmland, as specified by the amendments to the Assessment Act in section 2. Again, we would be seeking clarification from the minister on that at committee stage as to what this exactly entails.


I'm just going to go back under one of the sections. The farm assessment review panel supported a number of recommendations that came forward. There was a consultation process. Of course, the farming encouraged by some of these changes encourages the increase, actually, of the exemption limits on farm improvements. It's specifically regarding high-cost industrial farming, such as large-scale greenhouse installations.


Within agriculture in British Columbia, the greenhouse sector is a growing sector and has been growing, actually, over the last 25 years, incrementally every year. A lot of our local food needs in British Columbia are supplied from our greenhouse sector. It is a thriving sector. It's a sector that we, on our side, definitely support, and I know members opposite do as well.


I think, in terms of supplying more food for us in the future, it's a sector that needs to be supported. If these changes encourage the growth of production in the greenhouses in British Columbia, again, that is also a good thing, and this is something we would support on our side of the House as well.


Anyway, we will have more to say, and we will have more questions to ask. I'm going to take my seat and just again reiterate our support on our side of the House for this bill.


J. Rustad: It is a pleasure to stand today in support of Bill 8. I'm glad to hear that the opposition members are
[ Page 8720 ]
going to be supporting it as well. This was a project that started off and that I was asked to join and be a part of in terms of the farm assessment review panel, which fed into the recommendations coming forward here.


[1455]

I'd like to just take a moment to recognize and thank the members of the panel. Of course, my co-chair was Frank Leonard. We also had Gray Blattner, Garnet Etsell, Heloise Dixon-Warren, Karen Goodings, Keith Skidmore, Brent Warner, Malcolm Brodie, Don Lancaster, Ernie Willis and Shawn McLaughlin.


All of those people dedicated a lot of time to the committee. We toured around the province. We met with literally thousands of people — standing-room-only meetings in many places around the province — to review issues associated with B.C. Assessment, in particular how things are dealt with, with farm assessment. It was a great process. It was a good opportunity for input.


I'll share a little story. When we submitted the report, back in July of 2009, and it was made public in August, I had a conversation with my co-chair, Frank Leonard, about this. We both said: "Why has it gone quiet?" There was no information. Nobody was coming forward. There was no input or anything coming forward, and we couldn't quite figure it out. Then finally, Frank suggested, "I guess we must have got it right," which is nice. It's rare to be able to do that sort of thing.


Having said that, when we went through here, many of the things that we heard, in particular from farmers…. Seniors were concerned that because of taxation levels they would end up having to give up the property, give up the farm and move off. So we looked, and we really strove for a way to be able to try to correct that problem, and it wasn't an easy issue to deal with.


Some of the other issues which we had, of course, were…. People would come forward and say: "How come my product is not considered an agricultural product for purposes of meeting the income threshold of farm assessment?" We said: "Well, what do you mean?" And they said, "Well, if I grow berries and try and sell the berries, it's considered an agricultural product. But for some reason, if I can't sell the berries, if I take them home and turn them into jam and I sell the jam, the jam is not an agricultural product," which didn't make sense to us.


That was one of the things we recommended. Should we go forward and recommend that the Minister of Agriculture have a look at those product lists, agricultural lists, that we have in the province and what is considered allowable for the farm income threshold? I am very pleased that that will be going forward in terms of the work yet to come.


One of the other big factors that we were tasked with as a committee was to look at how we enhance agriculture. What is it we can we do through the property assessment process that can actually try to encourage agricultural activity?


One of the things that the committee felt very strongly on is that we wanted to try to create a culture in the province that actually supports agriculture, a culture where it's not so much the highest property value, the highest taxation levels, that are important but the fact that land was actually being used for producing agricultural products.


That was one of reasons why we brought forward the recommendations around the split classification, so that anything that was in the agricultural land reserve that was being farmed that met our farm threshold would not be considered for split classification. Anything that was outside of it, if more than 50 percent of the land was being utilized for agricultural products, would not be considered for split classification.


It was one of those sorts of things: how do you deal with a very thorny issue? Ultimately, what we strove to do was to say: "We want to respect and we want to promote agricultural activity in the province." That's how that came forward.


The same came forward with regards to being able to try to have more outbuildings, more of the farm buildings actually happening on properties to try to encourage that value-added sector. The $50,000 threshold which was brought in, I think, in the 1970s, was way too low for many of the agricultural buildings across the province, and so we decided to take a look at what was happening in other jurisdictions across Canada and in the States and how that was dealt with. We found that through a variety of processes in Ontario they actually had about an 87½ percent credit that would go towards the value of these buildings in terms of assessment.


We recommended that get brought forward here as a way to be able to encourage that value-added sector, to be able to recognize the investment for things like a dairy farm or various other types of agricultural activities where there is significant capital investment that is done upfront and that's done in terms of the buildings, so that taxation wasn't something that would end up creating a hindrance for the ability of people to be able to produce agricultural products.


[1500]

I'm very pleased that this bill addresses these issues, particularly being able to keep the senior farmers on the land base, to be able to try to encourage that extra activity and also to be able to look at that primary agricultural products list and how that will be reflected.


One of the other things that we heard very clearly from ranchers was all of the paperwork that was involved in property assessment. They would have to continually submit all information that they'd already given to the federal government and resubmit that to the provincial government. We had a deadline of the end of October that they had to put this thing through.
[ Page 8721 ]
Many of the ranchers, particularly in the cow-calf operations, end up selling their product in November, which was just outside of that. The end of October was just not a great deadline for them.


So I'm pleased that we're able to actually change that deadline to however they report to the CRA. If they report in March or if they report in July or if they report at the end of the calendar year at the end of December, they'll be able to do that now, as well, as part of this. That'll help them get through that process.


Unfortunately, we weren't able to quite get there in terms of being able to reduce the paperwork side and being able to do the matching with the federal government, but having looked at some of the issues associated with that, I understand why we weren't able to get there.


I think I just want to close with making one last comment, which is that it's not often you get a chance to be able to work on some issues that are near and dear to so many people's hearts, particularly agriculture and the agricultural community. They are a group of people that are down to earth. They're the salt of the earth. They really contribute to the fabric of our society here in B.C.


I'm pleased to have been able to have an opportunity to be involved in this. I really want to thank the panel members for the work they did and the dedication. I think that in going through this and bringing forward these recommendations, we've actually had a chance to make a real difference — in a small way, I think — for the agriculture industry and the products.


With that, I look forward to hearing the other comments.


L. Popham: I appreciate the comments from the other side. To be clear at the beginning of this, I will be supporting this as well.


I'd like to backtrack a little bit further than the member who spoke before me, back to why this B.C. Assessment project came about. He entered the process while the panel was being established, but I entered the process the day the B.C. Assessment car drove down my driveway while I was working in my vineyard. The officer got out and told me that I needed to immediately stop what I was doing, put down my tools and walk her around my farm, because my farm was going to be split. I had no idea what the officer was talking about.


So I did. I toured her around my farm. She said that because I wasn't in the agricultural land reserve, only the working areas of my farm would qualify for farm tax status — and of that point, the rest of it would be qualified as highest and best use and would be taxed at residential rates.


My farm is in the agricultural land reserve. The maps that were initially being used were incorrect.


These visits had taken place all through Saanich — it was being called the project — because Saanich was the first municipality that B.C. Assessment started to reassess. All of my neighbours — some of them in the agricultural land reserve and some of them outside of the agricultural land reserve — who were farmers, who were contributing to our Saanich food system and had been for years, were getting visits by officers telling them that they were no longer farmers but that they were people trying to get away with something.


Obviously, that caused a lot of heartache in our community. So I always go back to that first day, when the car drove down my driveway. It was probably the worst driveway to start the project on, because at that point I organized all of the farmers in Saanich to come to a public meeting. We had the member from Saanich North up here. We had the mayor of Saanich. We had the MLA for Saanich South of the day, David Cubberley, and we had a panel of farmers. We had about 300 audience members who were very, very upset with the way that this had started.


[1505]

There didn't seem to be any leeway in the way that the assessments were happening, and there was no guarantee that we could reverse this. In fact, as the reassessments started to come and the people who had been farming, who had had farm tax status for years, saw their property taxes increase by thousands of dollars, we ended up appealing those assessments and going to a little church in Saanich, where B.C. Assessment set up their appeal board and every farmer that had been split basically went on trial.


It was extremely devastating for these people. These were people who were told that they were beekeepers, but the only thing that qualified them for farm tax status was the two-foot-by-two-foot spot that their beehives were on. The rest of their farm would be highest and best use residential tax.


For the free-range-chicken farmer who allowed their chickens to go out into the woods during the day and came back in and spent most of their time in their coop because of dangers of racoons and eagles — only that chicken coop would be qualifying them for farm tax status.


Over and over again, all of these examples happened. And no matter what these farmers told B.C. Assessment, the answer was: "No, you're trying to get away with something. You're only farming this particular spot. If you want to qualify for farm tax status, what you need to do is log your natural areas and put a fence around them. That will get you farm tax status."


So that started to happen. We have farms now that were logged and fenced simply to qualify for farm tax status — for the same thing they were doing before they logged and fenced their farm.


One of the things that happened is that I came down to the Legislature, and I met with the former minister,
[ Page 8722 ]
Rick Thorpe. I said: "I understand that you are going to be creating a panel to see how we can try and fix this situation and try and stop any projects like this from happening in other parts of B.C."


And I said: "You know, I am a farmer. My farm didn't get affected by this change because I'm inside the agricultural land reserve. I'm farming most of my farm, so I'm not affected. But I'm really passionate about this issue, and I know the issue really well because I've been there right from the very start."


The former minister said: "No, I'm sorry. You can't be on the panel. You're a little bit too close to the situation." He also said that maybe I was hanging out with the wrong party.


If anybody wants to know why I sit on this side of the House…. I was so disgusted by the partisanship of that comment when I was really coming in as a farmer who wanted to make sure that farming was stronger in British Columbia. That was my agenda. There was nothing else there. But that didn't qualify to be on a B.C. Assessment farm assessment review panel.


At that point, of course, I decided I needed to come in and work from the inside out, since I couldn't work from the outside in. So here I am on this side of the House, making sure that farming is stronger.


The panel was established, and the mayor of Saanich was on that panel. I know that it took a lot of work for everybody to do and a lot of hours, and that's appreciated. But the problem is that this happened in 2007, and the report was put out in 2009, but there hasn't been any reporting back. There hasn't been a meeting that went back to the project in Saanich and told these farms what's going on.


We did get word that there would be no split farms. There had been damage that had been done already. The farms had been sold. People had stopped farming. But there hasn't been any official reporting back. So I am supporting the recommendations that are coming forward. But it's quite discouraging to know that this has been almost…. We're going to go into year 5, and the fixes that would have helped these small-lot farmers…. That is what we have in Saanich — small to medium-scale farming. I don't see those fixes here.


[1510]

One of the things that I know the panel heard that would be very, very important for smaller-scale farmers is to have the value-added list changed — to have what qualifies for your farm income changed. I know that that's coming, but that should be done now.


The intent of this is to strengthen farming and to support farmers, but it really needs to move along a lot quicker. This is too slow. I know there's been a change of ministers residing over this, but really, I don't think that that would be too hard to fix. I think that could have been reviewed last year and changed.


We're also looking at maybe a possible change in threshold for what qualifies as farm income, going from $2,500 up to $3,500 and, in some cases, $10,000. Well, if you have been a farmer or you're in the farming community, you know that farming takes planning. To know that far in advance that you would need to increase your threshold by a thousand dollars is actually quite a big deal. It takes a lot of planning, crop planning. It takes seed ordering. It takes market creation. That's not just something you can change right away. So I would appreciate it if that would be reported back to the project in Saanich and all of those farmers so that they know they're going have to change their income levels on their farms.


One of the interesting comments I heard with the B.C. Assessment appeals that went on was farmers were told: "You're only making $2,500. You're right on the threshold — only making $2,500." But that was the threshold that was decided by B.C. Assessment, so of course people would aim to make $2,500 if that was the goal. A lot of them were making more than that, but farmers were made to feel guilty, like they were getting away with something.


Another thing that I think should be addressed sooner than later is the fact that you can't use wild-gathered products towards your farm income. So if you have a natural stand of forest on your farm, as I do, one of the things that you have the advantage of is having mushrooms, wild-gathered mushrooms. You can't collect those in your natural stand of forest and sell them and put it towards your farm income.


That goes the same for blackberries or any wild berries that you have on your farm. I have a huge blackberry stand on my farm, and most farms do around their fences. You can't pick those, harvest them and sell them at your roadside stand and have them qualify for your farm income, because they're not in cultivated rows. That's something that could possibly be changed as well, because that's part of our income. And on Vancouver Island, actually, blackberries make a delicious port in a lot of wineries, and that is something we harvest. I think that's fair to include that.


I am going to support these recommendations but urge the government to bring in the other changes as quickly as possible and to have a lot more feedback and communication with the people that would be affected. I think the main change that would encourage more intensive farming, allowing greenhouses to be built, is very good for a certain size of farm, but we need to really consider the small- to medium-scale farms when we're looking at this as well, because they're going to be the ones that…. You know, they have an income off their farm, but if we don't encourage those guys to keep going, we aren't going to have those types of farms anymore — if we continually encourage the larger-scale, industrial model farms. We need to treat all farms as equal and of equal importance.


I think that's all I have to say for now. I'll let the other speakers continue. But as I said, I support these
[ Page 8723 ]
recommendations going forward, but I urge you to also have some importance on the other recommendations that are following.


M. Sather: It's my pleasure to rise to speak to Bill 8, the Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act, 2011. As other speakers have before me, I'll be referring to the agricultural components of this bill. I want to thank the minister for her comments, the member for Nechako Lakes for his and the work he's done, and for the very thorough history of the genesis, in many respects, of this bill from the member for Saanich South.


[1515]

Agriculture is obviously very important in British Columbia and in Canada, and we need to do everything we can to support it. My background in agriculture is growing up on a grain farm in the Peace River country, and my family still farms there. Now since 1985, when I moved to Maple Ridge, I've gotten very familiar with agriculture in my area, which is very different than it is in the Peace River country and, I think, benefits particularly from legislation like Bill 8, which I definitely support.


We have kind of two sides to agriculture in Maple Ridge in terms of the physicality of it. In Pitt Meadows and in northwest Maple Ridge we have fairly large farms. Some of them are medium-sized, and some are quite large. There are a couple of landowners in particular that hold very large portions, and then the rest of Maple Ridge, in particular — and Pitt Meadows, to some degree — is, largely, small farms. Many of them are a couple acres in size or even smaller, and they could run up to ten acres or perhaps more in some cases.


The work that the farm assessment review panel did, I think, has been very good work. I heartily recommend what they've done. I know they started some time ago and that the government…. I'm looking at a news release that the government put out in November of 2009, two years ago, with comments by the Community and Rural Development Minister, now the member for Kootenay East. He said: "Supporting family farms at a time when they're facing the challenges of financial uncertainty, high overhead and a changing climate is essential to preserving one of our most valued industries."


I couldn't agree more with that, Madam Speaker, and it's good to see that both sides of the House are looking at that. The news release later on talks about the province "significantly reducing the tax burden on farm properties by eliminating the split classification of farm properties" — and the minister referred to this — "on the agricultural land reserve that are not used for other purposes, and eliminating the split classification for non-ALR properties where at least 50 percent of the property is in or contributes to production." So this will help farms in my constituency, in my community and neighbouring Maple Ridge–Mission as well, and that is a good thing.


We're on that rural-urban interface in Maple Ridge, particularly. There are myriad challenges that come with farming in Maple Ridge — and in Pitt Meadows, because there are more blueberries there. You get more of the blueberry cannons, which upset some of the folks in nearby residential areas and, of course, smells, in some cases, from farming practices. All of these lead to some conflicts, so farming is definitely challenging.


The land price is probably the largest challenge in my area — farmland that farmers would like to acquire. I've talked to a number of them, and it's just very difficult to acquire farmland at the price that it's at. It's largely that expensive because of the threat of urban development on those lands, which leads to the speculation, which leads to the higher prices, which makes it challenging for farming. So anything we can do, like Bill 8 provides for, is certainly welcome news in my constituency.


We definitely have the problem, too, that some land is being held for speculation purposes. That takes it out of production. I've heard of landowners actually threatening others that had an interest in the same property not to put any agricultural products on the property. These multiple challenges make it difficult to farm, as I say, so this is a good development.


[1520]

I just wanted to read a short note I got just today from two of my constituents who are farmers in Pitt Meadows, which brings out another challenge that they have and how supports can be of great advantage to them. They say:


"Dear Mr. Sather:


"Our names are John and Yvonne Murdoch, and we are the owners of Hammingview Farms in Pitt Meadows. We would like to voice our extreme concern regarding the latest developments in the Pacific cooperative summit in Honolulu between Prime Minister Harper and President Barack Obama, using the supply management system as a tool to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.


"I hope that you support supply management and the fellow dairy farmers in your constituency. The press only mentions the 20,000 farmers that it will affect, but that doesn't include the thousands of support people and businesses that help keep our operations running and in turn provide stability to our economy. Support your local farmers before we become extinct.


"Thank you,


"The Murdoch family"


So there are many challenges that farmers are facing — that being one of them. I certainly know that in the Peace River country our farmers will have had concerns about that. I'm sure the minister, who is from Peace River South, has talked to his farmers and his constituents about that as well. It all adds up to a difficult time for farming.


Of course, farming is always challenging because the price goes up and down. All too often it's down. I don't think most city dwellers could comprehend that the price of wheat…. I don't know what the current price
[ Page 8724 ]
is, but I know that it has been for decades upon decades largely unchanged. Yet they are managing to sell their product, making a lot of changes that…. Sometimes there is larger production with some of the inputs with fertilizers and pesticides that aren't necessarily good for the environment, but they feel obligated to do in order to be able to make a living.


With that, I just want to say that I am very pleased with this legislation, and I understand there are a couple more changes. What we've got here, specifically the incentive for outbuildings, construction of outbuildings on a farm, can be very important. The relief for retired families — now, that's a big one, where folks retire and their tax status can change and can lead to loss of farms.


The minister mentioned two more changes coming up: changing the reporting period and the one with regard to expanding a list of primary agricultural production. The member for Nechako Lakes talked about the difficulty, inconsistency, whatever, of blueberries being an agricultural crop, but if you make blueberry jam out of it, it's not. I hope the government will move on those kinds of changes to again make it more viable for our farmers to exist and to thrive.


So thank you very much. I'll take my seat if there are any further members that wish to address this bill.


B. Simpson: I just have a few comments to add to what's already been said. As the minister indicated, this is an outcome of a farm assessment review process. I do think that the government is making some headway on some of the issues that came out of the process.


I sat in one of those hearings, in Quesnel, and it was interesting to hear the comments of the farmers about what was not on the table for discussion. As other members have indicated, there is a lot more to farm assessment, farm operations, farm taxation, farm income that the government is not addressing in a substantive way or with the kind of rapidity that people in the agriculture sector would like to see happen.


I'll speak to just two aspects of that. One is the retired farmer conundrum. There is some relief in this bill. This bill defines "retired farmer," recognizes "retired farmer" and recognizes certain aspects of the issue of taxation on farmland when an individual wishes to retire from farming.


[1525]

But the real trap for our farming community is that it is aging. It is aging dramatically. There are a lot of people who have land in production in the agricultural land reserve who are looking to stop farming and to truly retire.


They find themselves in a trap, because if they get below a certain farm income status, then their assessment regime changes and their taxation regime changes. They will argue that they are still bound by the fact that a large portion of the land is in that land reserve, not available for them to develop and therefore be able to go into retirement not farming — and cashing out what is their major asset, which is the land.


This bill makes some steps in the direction of resolving some of these issues, but I think we need a provincewide strategy in conjunction with the farming community, the Agriculture Council and other organizations to really address that issue of how we attract young people into agriculture, how we facilitate the transition of these individuals who want to retire out in a way that recognizes the value of their land, a way that recognizes the value of their contribution to the province in a meaningful way and that isn't punitive to them. That's a strategy I think the government needs to use something like a parliamentary committee of the Legislature to go out and to take a look at it.


It is a real issue. It's an imminent issue, and it's an issue that I think we would do good service to British Columbians if we embraced it and went and worked with the sector to try and figure out what that transition looks like. As the agricultural commission in British Columbia will point out, we have a situation in which, as the world begins to understand the implications of limited fossil fuels, as the world begins to understand the implications more and more….


We just had a report out last week. We are looking at catastrophic climate change. It looks like we will not be able to avoid that. Then the issue of how you grow your food close to home becomes that more dramatic for us to address. We have to figure out how to feed ourselves. We have to figure out how to drive a community economics through agriculture, and we have to know how we can maximize our agricultural land. Again, recognizing a retired farmer and all of the things associated with that just simply doesn't go far enough to address what the real issue is.


The second thing that I just will speak to briefly is the whole issue of farm income. Others have raised that. We really need to update our idea of what farm income is. I have a number of very progressive farmers and agriculturalists in my area that are attempting to maximize the productivity of their land base. One farm in particular, Moose Meadows Farm, talk about farming the seasons. What they do is look for every economic opportunity on their land base — it's a very small land base — and maximize it.


They produce birch syrup. They have a massive wreath construction facility that has become an economic driver for them. They harvest their dandelions and make dandelion tea for sale. They harvest their hibiscus and make hibiscus products for sale. All of those things, however, are not farm income. It just seems ludicrous that the government can't sort of address that issue of modernizing our concept of what farm income is and, therefore, rewarding these individuals who are looking to maximize the productivity of their land base.

[ Page 8725 ]

That's the flip side of what the government is doing in this bill. They're making some changes on land assessment. Those changes, as others have said, are meaningful. Maybe not rapid enough, maybe not as dramatic enough, but they are meaningful and do need to be done. The flip side of that is we have to address the issue of what constitutes farm income, what products ought to be recognized as farming products in the 21st century, and bring it into the 21st century.


I believe that rewarding individuals who are interested in non-traditional approaches to farming is one of the ways to resolve the first issue I raised, and that is: how do you bring young people into play?


[1530]

Young people aren't necessarily interested in just being ranchers or just producing hay or just producing blueberries or whatever the case may be. They are interested, however, in going back to the land and figuring out how to maximize the productivity of the land in a way that feels, to them, as if they are reconnecting with nature in a more meaningful fashion. If we don't address the issue of how we warrant that activity with respect to the revenue that's generated from it and recognize that revenue as farm income, then I think that we are not doing a service to some of these people who want to get into agriculture.


Finally, I just want to reiterate what the B.C. Agriculture Council has told members of this chamber individually and collectively, and that is that the government's jobs strategy must elevate the status of agriculture within that strategy. More resources must be put into agriculture.


Agriculture must be seen as both a solution to climate change and as an opportunity for the government to begin to work towards achieving its climate change goals, as well as addressing the issue of the economics of the province and job creation here in British Columbia, and then finally, as a way for British Columbia to be ahead of the curve in terms of addressing the food security issue.


[D. Horne in the chair.]


With that, I'll take my chair. I think the government is doing the right thing here. It's just simply not dramatic enough and doesn't address more holistically the issues associated with assessment, with revenue and with this changing demographic in our agriculture community.


B. Routley: Certainly, coming from the Cowichan Valley, I want to rise to support this legislation. Clearly, any move in improving the rights of farmers — and, certainly, retiring farmers — is a great thing.


You know, I grew up in the Cowichan Valley, and we had a small farm. We had the usual chickens and all the different berries, and we grew corn and turnips and all kinds of different radishes and tomatoes and all of that stuff. It was a wonderful childhood. I remember all of those farm experiences and having the root cellar that we could always count on through the winter — to go out there and find our canned fruit and vegetables. It was really something.


I know that agriculture is not an easy life at all. It's a difficult life. It's something that is harder to get young people involved in. I think about my own experience. When I was 13, growing up in the Cowichan Valley, I finally got the opportunity to go out to the old family farm in Rosetown, Saskatchewan. My grandfather had homesteaded. In fact, he had to wait until he was 21 so that he could homestead, back in those days. When he was able to homestead, he very much had an enjoyable life. I remember all of the stories when I was a kid listening to my grandfather.


Going out there at 13, I thought: "Wow. This is the life." I was so excited about farming — first of all, going and getting to chase the jackrabbits around and seeing my first bull up close and personal. In fact, that fence couldn't come fast enough, when I went running for the fence. And my cousins showed me how to use a bull whip and all of those kinds of things. I thought that farming was going to be really great.


I can tell you that when I got home, I went to the auction with my brother. We bought a cow, and I thought: "Well, this'll be the start of my whole new career in farming." By the very fact that I'm in here, you can tell that that didn't work out so good. I called that cow Red because she was kind of a reddish-brown colour. In hindsight — pardon the pun — if I had known what was going to come out of that cow, I should have called it jiggery-pokery for sure. At the end of the day, I found shovelling a lot of that wasn't my cup of tea.


[1535]

More and more, my brother and father and other family members found themselves doing their fair share of the work. One day I came home, and there was no more Red. But the pot roast was really special that weekend. Little did I know.


Anyway, the issue about taxation also strikes home to me, because my mother used to talk about her dad, who I never got to meet. He died in the '30s, before I actually had the opportunity to meet him. But my grandmother on my mother's side went through the experience in the Dirty '30s. They lost the family farm. It was taxation. Like with so many others, taxation took the farm away.


My grandfather used to tell the story, and I was always impressed when he told how his brother Fred, who was involved as a doctor in eastern Canada…. When he was working with the Red Cross in eastern Canada, he helped bail out my grandfather because — and get this, hon. Speaker — $5,000 paid off $50,000 worth of debt. And how did a farmer from Saskatchewan have $50,000 worth of debt? Well, my grandfather was one of the first Massey Ferguson tractor salesmen in Rosetown, Saskatchewan.
[ Page 8726 ]
As well, he sold cars and other implements for the farm. So for five cents on the dollar he was able to pay off his debt and hang on to the family farm.


That family farm is now just a small quarter section. What is that nowadays? It's almost nothing in terms of the big farms. It got swallowed up by one of the big farmers.


But I see in the Cowichan Valley the issues of retirement, of people getting into a situation where they want to be able to retire. They don't want to lose the family farm. In a number of cases I've had people come into my office and talk about those kinds of challenges, trying to find a family member willing to take over the family farm. That's more and more a difficult thing.


So this bill and sitting down with the farm assessment review panel and listening to their concerns and actually bringing forward this legislation to help deal with farmers' issues, both to maintain tax benefits and to provide for exemptions for certain farm improvements, is a step in the right direction.


I just want to say in closing that again, the farmers throughout the Cowichan Valley know there needs to be a whole lot of changes, and this is just one small step. I know that if you sat down with farmers from the Cowichan Valley, they would come up with a whole host of recommendations on legislative changes that could take place to help farmers, particularly in the transition in their senior years and to find opportunities. But this is a step in the right direction. I'm pleased to see that the government has brought this forward, and I'm pleased to support this legislation.


V. Huntington: As so many other members have said, I'm in complete support with Bill 8. The farm assessment review panel process has been an important one. While the issue is complex and this bill doesn't deal with all of the complexities we would like to see it represent, it is a step in the right direction, as other members have said, and I will be supporting it.


However, when the bill was introduced, I phoned our municipal director of finance, who answered my question of whether he was familiar with Bill 8 with dead silence. He was not aware that the bill was being introduced. He had not been briefed on the bill. As many members of this House may know, this bill has significant impacts on three municipalities, particularly, in the Lower Mainland — Abbotsford, Delta and Langley.


[1540]

The fact that he was not aware of this, the fact that he had no sense or idea of what the impact of this legislation would be on the municipal purse, came as a surprise to me. Staff within the ministry had advised that, well, it was only a $14,000 hit on one municipality, to use the word, and a $10 hit on the average property tax payer. But in another instance, the Minister of Agriculture advised me that it was $200,000 for one municipality, which was nothing, in the grand scheme of things. However, for any municipal representative, $200,000 is a direct impact to the tax rate.


It is extremely concerning to me that there wasn't sufficient consultation with these three primarily affected municipalities so that they could understand and have some element of contribution to the bill itself.


The ministry staff advised that they left all consultation with the municipalities to the Union of B.C. Municipalities. However, the UBCM was briefed in 2009. It was again corresponded with in 2010 and had no knowledge that the bill was coming down at this point and had not yet briefed its membership. The ministry staff then advised me that they would be telling the municipalities after committee stage what the implications of the bill are.


I would suggest that that is not good enough, and I do think that the minister should consider having her staff approach at least those three municipalities at this time to discuss the implications of this bill on the municipal purse.


Further, the lack of consultation — at least advice — to the agricultural community that this was coming was also interesting, because when the agricultural council was here two weeks ago and met with the government caucuses and various members in the opposition caucus and the two independents, it was this independent who asked them if they had a copy of Bill 8, which they had no idea had just been introduced. So there is a gap out there in recognition of the fact that this bill exists and what the implications were.


Now, I was only able, in my halting fashion, following my own briefing with the ministry, to tell the agricultural council what the bill was all about, but again, I think the ministry needs to step into the breach and let its stakeholders understand what has just happened here. They're all pleased — at least the municipalities are pleased that implementation won't be till 2013 — but they should be stepping in and starting that consultation process now.


Why I say that is that it's very difficult to continually be supporting one industry over others and at the expense of the residential property — the taxpayer. It's increasingly hard on that taxpayer and on the municipalities, and the province makes no mention anywhere within this bill that they will make the municipalities whole. In this particular case, for those intensive agricultural operations, the government is fully aware that the carbon tax is having an enormous impact on their competitiveness.


In my opinion, the province could have looked toward exempting some of these intensive agricultural activities from the carbon tax and left the municipalities whole in the process, instead of this constant downloading trickle on to the backs of the municipalities.


So while I've been supportive of anything that we can do to help intensive farm practices on the high-value
[ Page 8727 ]
land of the Lower Mainland and elsewhere in the province, I do feel that there could have been other avenues that the province might have explored instead of just the municipal tax base.


I congratulate the minister for bringing forward the legislation, but again, I do suggest that she move quickly to speak with those municipalities that will be most heavily impacted.


D. Donaldson: I'm happy to stand and address Bill 8, the Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act, here in second reading. I'm happy to note that it's addressing the farm assessment review panel's recommendation. I'm going to speak in support of this bill, and I'd like to discuss some of the agriculture topics that it's addressing.


[1545]

The exemption for farm improvements has come to the Finance Committee, which I'm Deputy Chair of. In my first two years as Deputy Chair that issue was brought forward by presenters and was debated among the members of the Finance Committee in 2009 and 2010. The exemption was eloquently advocated for by the MLA for Abbotsford South in our discussions.


As well, I wanted to acknowledge the work done by the MLA for Nechako Lakes on the review panel's recommendations. I'm happy to see the tax exemptions, especially, make their way into legislation after hearing about it for over two years on the Finance Committee.


Since we're talking about second reading, it's a general sense around the bill and its amendments that, generally, this bill's amendments deal with support of agriculture and recognizing the importance of agriculture in the province. It addresses retired farmers maintaining their tax benefits as well as increasing the exemption for farm improvements, as I've talked about already.


But there are many other topics that need to be addressed that Bill 8 and other bills could address from the farm assessment review panel's recommendations and other recommendations by the agriculture sector.


For instance, Bill 8 could address these topics or other legislation. The branding program that is advocated for by many in the agriculture sector. There used to be a Buy B.C. branding program. Many people in the province may recall that and how great a success it was. It was discontinued by this government. Many in the agriculture sector have advocated for a return to that. In fact, it was supported by a previous and the current Agriculture Minister to reinstate that program. Although we've seen it in front of the Finance Committee, that's not addressed in this bill or in any other legislation that we've seen tabled so far.


Buy B.C. is, of course, in support of agriculture, trying to increase local consumption of local products. Farmers markets are another way to do this, which have not received the recognition and support in Bill 8, or in other bills, that they deserve. We know that farmers markets do a tremendous job in promoting local agriculture and the consumption of local produce and, therefore, create jobs in agriculture and address some of the issues that Bill 8 is attempting to get at.


Market creation and promotion is something that needs to be addressed. As I've said, it's not just me saying this but others in the agriculture sector. We have a local example from where I live, the Northwest Premium Meat Co-op. It was a co-op established four years ago — I think it is now — or perhaps a bit longer. But they've struggled because of the marketing of the co-op and of the marketing process around local meat.


That's another example of how, if we're looking at Bill 8 and the intent of Bill 8 — which is around support and promotion of agriculture and making it easier for farmers to not only maintain what they're doing right now but grow, and making it easier for younger people to get into agriculture as well — we could see the need for the government to address market creation in areas like the Northwest Premium Meat Co-op.


The B.C. school fruit and vegetable program was discontinued under this government. Again, we had representations over the years and, specifically, this year to the Finance Committee about the need for that program from fruit growers around B.C. It makes sense not only to support farmers, as Bill 8 is attempting to do, but also from the aspect of a healthy lifestyle. More consumption of fruit and vegetables will lead to, perhaps, decreased stress on our medical system and our health system.


That particular topic has dual meaning to farmers, as Bill 8 is trying to address: the feasibility and the viability of farming. While the B.C. school fruit and vegetable program…. I agree with presenters to the Finance Committee who say that's something that needs to be reinstated by the government and has multiple spinoff benefits in farming and in health.


[1550]

Invasive plants. We've heard over the years numerous times…. I know that the member for Abbotsford South knows this issue very well. Invasive plant species cause really, really significant problems to the agriculture sector, where we have plants that are basically taking over rangeland and making it useless for range animals because these are invasives that have no natural consumers. The ungulates that we have in the province don't consume them, and they take over because they have no natural competitors from plants. In fact, I've got samples of hawkweed in my pasture lands that have made my pasture lands not fit for the animals I keep there.


Invasive plant species is another topic. Bill 8 tries to address support for farmers and support for agriculture. But what we could also see is some support for the issue of invasive plant species. The Ministry of Environment does not fund any treatment around invasive plants. That is left to other ministries. We know the land just
[ Page 8728 ]
doesn't stop at boundaries created by us around ministries. We need to see more support in that. That's also what we've heard from the Finance Committee presentations over the last few years.


Although Bill 8 does attempt to address the viability of farm operations, another area that isn't addressed is agricultural land reserve exemptions. Between April 1, 2002, and March 31, 2005, the Agricultural Land Commission approved the exclusion of 70.5 percent of the hectares in the ALR land that were proposed for exclusion. So 70.5 percent of the lands proposed for exclusion were excluded by the Agricultural Land Commission during that three-year period.


It wasn't just in areas that one would expect, perhaps, the agricultural land not being viable. No, 89.1 percent of these exclusions were on Vancouver Island, 83.6 percent were in the Kootenays and 82.5 percent were in the Okanagan, of all places. So if we're going to talk in Bill 8 about being supportive of farming and agriculture, then we have to look at this disturbing trend under this government of exclusions from the agricultural land reserve.


The argument the government poses is that the amount of the total land base in the agricultural land reserve has been kept fairly consistent by replacing those excluded agricultural lands that I just talked about in southern British Columbia with lands in northern British Columbia. What we're seeing now, though, is that that's really inhibiting the decisions in land in northern British Columbia because, as was presented to the Finance Committee this year….


We heard submissions about advocating for removals of farmland in northern British Columbia, but if this government has already approved removals in southern British Columbia, justifying it by saying, "Well, there's land being added in northern British Columbia," how can the northern British Columbians make a case about removals from northern British Columbia?


That kind of strategy has really tied the hands of people in northern British Columbia. It's nothing that should be advocated for — removals from the ALR — if you really are concerned about supporting agriculture. Bill 8 is essentially dealing with the support of agriculture.


I also wanted to point out that B.C. has the lowest proportional spending in support of agriculture in Canada, and the B.C. Fruit Growers, in submissions to the Finance Committee this fall, pointed that out. This really has an impact around services to farmers, services to those farmers who perhaps will be able to stay in agriculture because of Bill 8 and the exemptions and the tax exclusions we're talking about. I know that the member from Abbotsford South has been a very strong advocate in this regard, around extension services to farmers so that farmers can rely on government research investment and research in crops and expertise.


[1555]

You know, it's not actually asking for grants or aid. It's just asking for some supportive expertise in the Ministry of Agriculture so farmers can depend on them for some queries and decision-making.


Again, Bill 8 attempts to address the viability of agriculture, but what we've seen with this government are budget cuts in the Ministry of Agriculture. In 2009 the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands budget was cut by 25.4 percent, and in 2010-11 the three-year fiscal plan included a 4 percent cut to the ministry each year, so there's another 12 percent overall. This is not helpful. This is not supportive of what we see the intent of in Bill 8, to try to support and create a viable agriculture industry in the province.


No mention of agriculture in the jobs plan, and that was a tremendous oversight as far as trying to look at it from a very, very…. A fundamental part of the jobs plan should be about agriculture, and again, there was no mention in the throne speech and a very insignificant mention in the jobs plan.


In the end Bill 8…. I understand that some members who are voicing their concerns are concerned about jobs, and that's why I'm sure they will agree with me on some of the points I've mentioned here about agriculture being an important part of jobs for the future of B.C. Although Bill 8 attempts to address a couple of those points, overall the record on the opposite side has been less than stellar on supporting agriculture and the agriculture industry in the province.


Bill 8 does address a couple of the important aspects, but the serious list of topics that needs to be addressed in the agriculture sector is long and has grown under this government. And although I'm happy to support Bill 8, I really look forward to this government and the Minister of Agriculture taking agriculture seriously in the province and introducing further legislation that addresses the points I've outlined.


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


Hon. I. Chong: I want to begin by thanking members opposite for participating in the debate this afternoon, as well as the co-chair of the farm assessment review panel, the MLA for Nechako Lakes. I do want, as well, to say I'm very heartened to hear that the members are intending to support this legislation. But I will also take the time to make some remarks or respond to remarks made by members opposite.


First and foremost, perhaps some confusion may exist with members in the fact that this Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act is dealing with local governments and not specifically with agriculture. I heard many remarks that dealt with the agriculture industry in general, but the reason why this ministry is bringing forward these amendments is
[ Page 8729 ]
because the B.C. Assessment Authority is a piece of legislation that now belongs to the Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development. It was under this area of responsibility in this ministry back, I believe, in January of 2009.


I want to make it very clear that we are dealing with the assessment and, therefore, the assessment of a particular class, being that of the farms, as a result of the good work that was done in the farm assessment review panel.


[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]


I do also want to say that the concerns, as I say, were noted for agriculture in general, were made. I'm presuming ministry staff in the Ministry of Agriculture will take heed of those remarks and respond accordingly if necessary. However, at the end of the day I have heard the concerns that members have raised. I know we'll go through it in committee stage, section by section. I appreciate that.


With that, I want to now move second reading.


Motion approved.


Hon. I. Chong: I move that Bill 8 be placed on orders of the day for committee stage of the Whole House for the next sitting after today.


Bill 8, Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act, 2011, 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. I. Chong: I call second reading of Bill 13, the Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act.


[1600]

BILL 13 — METAL DEALERS AND
RECYCLERS ACT


(continued)


G. Gentner: I rise to talk briefly about Bill 13, relative to, of course, the Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act.


[D. Horne in the chair.]


I have to say that we know scrap metal has drastically increased in price over the years. In 2001 it sold for $77 a tonne. It increased to $300 a tonne by 2004, in 2008 it hit nearly $500 a tonne, and now it's even beyond that.


There's a market for scrap metal in this world, and I have to tell you that in my constituency you can see it on the streets every day. What's happening on the streets is, primarily…. When you see the shopping carts being wheeled by, let's say, particularly and traditionally, drug addicts — I've talked to them on the street — these are metal thefts by those who are in need, and they'll go to all means and efforts to steal metal to fund their addictions.


I know this bill doesn't deal with that aspect, but it's a sad commentary, indeed, when people are risking their lives for their addiction when it comes to removing wire and conduits that serve even substations in our cities. Some officials believe that most of these drug-related thefts are caused by meth users. However, this varies by location. The metal, which, of course, is stolen…. Many are also now stealing it in order to just get by, who are not necessarily drug addicts. It's now becoming part of our organized crime culture.


We hear and see often the pickup truck late at night. They have the large wire cutters able to rip off conduit, and I think it's, again, a situation at hand that's showing where we are in British Columbia. It's showing that there is a middle class that's deteriorating, and we're seeing more and more poor people on the streets just trying to find a way or carve their ways to survive.


But you know, there is a demand for it. It's primarily found in the market for metal, metal that's being recycled, scrap metal. There's a great demand for it in places like China, India, South Korea, Bangladesh, an ever-fuelling demand for it. I know the Premier is in those countries or in Asia talking about the need for us to sell our natural resources, and yet here today we're dealing with a market that is furthering that type of scrap metal industry and economy into those markets.


I have to begin by referring a little bit to what the member from Nanaimo said a week Thursday in the House. It was an interesting discourse the member brought forward. He actually went into a little detail of the bill itself, which, of course, I want to talk about when we talk about part 2.


"A metal dealer or recycler must not purchase regulated metal unless, at the time of the transaction, the metal dealer or recycler (a) assigns a customer code to the transaction, and (b) records the following information: (i) a description of the regulated metal…; (ii) the date and time of transaction; (iii) the total value of the transaction; (iv) the full name of the individual who conducts the transaction on behalf of the metal dealer…; (v) the customer code assigned under paragraph (a); (vi) any other prescribed information."


and


"(a) the full name, current address and telephone number of the person selling the metal; (b) a description…."


It goes on and on. It's interesting that we're dealing with this before we deal with Bill 7, the Regulatory Reporting Act. You know, here's a bill. We're going to start dealing with the deregulation, and this is a government that's noted to be on the side of deregulation. We're finding in this bill…. I see a list here, part 2 and part 3. There are sections where it has a mile-long description on putting together a composite list of the do's and don'ts in order to sell.


[1605]
[ Page 8730 ]

You know, this is a government that has believed in no — less — regulation. It believes in the virtues of free enterprise and let the market bear, and yet we're seeing all this type of regulation. Now, I'm not against it, but I just find it quite interesting that this government is going after those who are stealing scrap metal, yet many of those, of course, are drug addicts that need more specific help with their addictions.


The other part about it that's interesting, with this type of onerous regulation…. This government, or the former Premier, fell on a notion of introducing a bill with the HST, which was supposed to eliminate all that regulation, eliminate all those forms, make it easier in order to tax people, particularly for small business. Here we have small businesses, particularly those in the recycling industry, that have got to keep quite a list of all the transactions going on.


It's quite hypocritical, where on one side this government will say no to regulation, but on the other side it certainly is for it. It chooses. It chooses at will. It's a reactive type of government. It reacts; it's not very proactive. I want to talk about what being proactive is, because I was expecting much more, much more in this bill than what we're seeing here today.


I mean, criminal recycling is not new. Reports of thieves selling suspicious scraps of metal go back many, many years. What are new are the increasing prices for copper, aluminum and other metals, which have caused the practice to skyrocket. The U.S. Energy Department estimates that metal theft costs U.S. business around $1 billion a year — $1 billion a year.


We know that the recycling thieves are very creative, and they're also very desperate. The criminals, many of whom are thought to be or are drug addicts, like I've said…. Many are very inventive. They're taking everything from the brass vases off cemetery graves to steel baking sheets from bakeries to the lids off of culverts. Even stadium bleachers and highway guardrails are no longer safe. It's made of metal, and it's fair game out there. That's what's driving this bill. But you know, let's talk about the recycling end of it, which I was hopeful we'd see more of.


I was hopeful that we would see an act that would not only deal with metal dealers and recycling but would address the whole notion of scrap metal, because Bill 13 doesn't deal with it. Let's talk about the scrap metal industry.


You know, the scrap metal balers — when the metal is put in — are all made in China. They're hydraulic scrap metal balers. There, of course, China is looking for coal, mineralogical coal, which makes steel, nickel, copper. All this stuff is sent raw, sort of like what we do with raw logs. It's shipped, for example, to China. Components are made up, parts are made up. Production — things are produced. They find they're back to British Columbia and they become once again part of the waste stream, and then we send it back to China.


I was hoping this Bill 13 would talk about the recycling notion, a larger position, look at the carbon footprint that's caused by it, but Bill 13 completely evades that issue. It's going after the symptoms. It's not going to the cause. It's dealing with the criminal aspect, which I agree with, but this government has not looked at the reasons behind the criminal theft. You know, really, we have a market to steal out there.


Interjection.


G. Gentner: I'll give you an example of what's happening with what the member mentioned is a conspiracy. I mean, talk about conspiracy. If you look at Marvel — I think it was a Marvel comic strip, years ago — an interesting part there was a plot, a conspiracy, to rip all the conduit out. Unfortunately, it stopped the electricity that fed the spotlight to put the bat symbol out in the air at Gotham City. There's no Batman. I know this government here would be very, very disappointed if enough conduit was stolen and the batlight, the spotlight wasn't shining all over Gotham City.


[1610]

That's a conspiracy in Gotham City, and I don't want to talk about Gotham City. I don't want to talk about Batman. I want to talk about what's happening here in the province of British Columbia.


We can talk about conspiracy all you want, but let's talk about the market for scrap metal. Guan Aiguo, the chair of the China Resource Recycling Association, said that people steal for the market. As the price of the metal goes down, the Chinese are currently stockpiling. That is the market we're dealing with. After all, millions of jobs in China are at stake, and a lot of it's fed by scrap metal.


You know, forget our jobs, forget about value-added jobs for the unemployed and for those who are stealing copper for a living. We are seeing here a Premier that is in China who is dealing more with the needs of China and not necessarily the needs here in British Columbia, and that's creating proper value-added industries. That is related to, of course, proper recycling legislation. That's not seen in Bill 13.


A steel worker in Tangshan makes over 10,000 yuan, while Community Living B.C. has been trying to shut down metal recycling facilities here in B.C. It's interesting where the protection and where the market is being driven. Ten thousand yuan in a recycling refabricating factory, which compares to only 1,000 yuan for a graduate student in China. That's the market.


Scrap metal is in big demand in China. This is a government that's not dealing with value added. It's here to go after the perpetrators who are stealing it, which I think is a good thing. But this bill is not large enough and does not deal with the larger issue. If we had a proper recycling society and, as a society and as a government, we looked at the landfills….

[ Page 8731 ]

The largest landfill west of Toronto is in Delta, called the Burns Bog garbage dump. Five percent of that garbage dump is full of metal. Metal — 5 percent. Can you imagine the recovery of that metal and how we could give people jobs, where people may not have to steal metal? We can give them a job.


This is a government that rants and raves about the need for jobs. But really, what is it doing when it comes to value-added jobs in the province of British Columbia? Absolutely nothing. It's doing nothing.


Here we have a bill that should be deriding itself. We're looking at a bill that's looking at a vibrant recycling economy, but it's ignoring it, and we're looking at recycling in China.


I want to talk briefly that in the United States, the No. 1 export to China and in large part in North America is waste paper. It's newspaper. The second one is scrap metal. Scrap metal — the No. 2 export to China. Think about it. What a shame that we are not recycling and creating a bill here today that looks at value added and looks at means to recycle our metal.


In the U.S. $8 billion of scrap metal is exported to China every year, and it's no wonder that that country is in a trade deficit. It's interesting that China is the number one supplier of components for the operation of the U.S. defence system.


I just wanted to bring that to your attention, because as the thieving is going on and as we are dealing with, of course, this increasingly horrible economy in the province of British Columbia, this government, I believe, has totally turned its back on what is necessary, and that's value-added industry in British Columbia and, above all, a proper and viable recyclers act.


D. Barnett: I'm here today to support Bill 13, and I'm proud to do so. This act basically is an act for safety and other things, but the main issue is that we have to protect public safety. The primary purpose is to protect public safety, and by helping us to deter and catch metal thieves, this law will protect the 911 service that we all rely on in emergencies.


[1615]

Not only that, it will also protect police communications, prevent theft-related power outages and the disruption of public transportation systems and reduce electrification risks for innocent bystanders and for thieves alike. It is about safety.


It is also about prevention of theft, which is important. We just heard my colleague from across the way talk about recycling. This is not about recycling. This is about safety, and it is about theft, which is illegal and against the law.


Bill 13 is designed to deter and prosecute metal thieves, minimize regulatory costs for the recycling industry and protect the personal information of those who sell metal to scrap dealers. It will require scrap dealers to register with the province. Yes, there will be some paperwork, but not a huge bureaucracy, believe you me. It will help, this legislation. It will also help, sharing these details on a daily basis with local police. Dealers will be required to keep records, which is so important. Dealers will also be required to record the seller's personal information, including full name, current address, telephone number, date of birth, as well as vehicle or pickup address details.


This is not about who the thief is. This is about a criminal act that must be put into perspective and help the safety of our workers, our residents and those who choose to become a thief. We must protect them all. It is not about recycling to sell to a country many, many miles away across the ocean. We have trade with other countries. We are proud of other countries, and we are proud of our trading partners. This is not what this is about.


The law has important economic benefits. The first is to prevent thefts that cost utilities, municipalities and taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. Estimated losses by utilities due to metal theft have surpassed $50 million in British Columbia. It has nothing to do with selling recyclable pieces of material. Even though the price of copper has declined in the past few weeks, metal theft is still a recurrent problem, and the price is high.


Before I close, I will say that this is a good bill. This is about public safety. It is about caring for our citizens. I am proud to be a part of and proud of the minister that brought this bill forward.


B. Routley: I want to give a little bit of a historical perspective to this, at least from my own experience. I still remember sort of an odd situation back in the 1970s. We had a worker leaving the Youbou sawmill, and he collapsed just right outside the company gate. The first aid was called, and they rushed over. They noticed that he had his coveralls on, but they rolled him over. He was short of breath. He looked like he was in real trouble.


They started to try to work on him, and that was when they realized they had a more serious problem. This fellow had a pair of coveralls on. They had to take the coveralls off because he had literally wrapped himself from head to toe with wire. I mean, he could have died. It is funny because, I mean, who would have thought that a guy would….


Interjection.


B. Routley: Yeah, he did live, fortunately. He was fired, but he lived. At the end of the day, that was not a good situation.


I am about to relate some other of those kinds of desperate moves by desperate people. It is sad that we have to move, in this Legislature, in this day and age, to try to protect some people from themselves, from their own
[ Page 8732 ]
actions. But we support this bill as a step in the right direction in dealing with the problem and, certainly, supporting those first responders that are out in the field trying to deal with this ongoing problem of theft.


[1620]

I remember there was a foreman who found himself terminated. He had a load. Everybody thought it was a load of hog on the back of his pickup truck, but a security man looked a little deeper and went and poked around in the load of hog, and it turned out that there was a whole roll of electrical wire buried in that. The supervisor lost his job as well. It wasn't just working people; it was supervisors, as well, that found themselves fired as a result of that kind of action.


More recently…. I want to quote from an edition of the B.C. Broker in 2007. They were talking about how in the last year B.C. Transmission Corporation were hit 120 times by metal thieves. "In many cases, the thieves risked their lives for as little as $3." The police claim that some drug addicts were suspects in the latest crime spree to hit the Lower Mainland. "In 2006 two people died and another received…significant injury while attempting such metal theft capers. The easy rewards gained by selling non-ferrous scrap metal are too hard," unfortunately, for some not to respond to the call.


Also in 2006 there were "340 homes west of the Cowichan Valley that lost their phone service thanks to…metal theft. The criminal stole 200 metres' worth of copper cable that had been strung along a busy section of the Island Highway." Some of these were really quite brazen in their actions.


Just in the last four months alone, I took a smattering of what's been happening in the Cowichan Valley, so I wanted to share from the Cowichan Valley Citizen, August 17 — four months ago.


"Police say a man was fortunate to escape with his life after using a chainsaw" — if you can imagine this — "to cut down a hydro pole on August 11.


"RCMP responded to a call. A passerby came across a man unconscious in the street.


"Described as about six-feet tall, 180 pounds, bald, sporting tattoos on both arms, the man was bleeding from the mouth, the witness told police.


"A frantic woman had been helping the injured man, but she" quickly drove away in a green truck.


"The victim came to, stood up and also tried to walk away….


"'It was later discovered that the lines had been dismantled and that the unknown male had used a chainsaw to cut down the B.C. Hydro pole to get at the copper wiring. The pole fell in the wrong direction and' — get this — 'electrocuted him….


"'How this individual managed to survive is beyond belief,'" said the Ladysmith staff sergeant of the RCMP.


"Both the man and woman were able to flee before the police arrived," if you can imagine after almost being electrocuted.


"The Hydro spokesman…said: 'The thief probably got hit with about 25,000 volts,' and 'It's unbelievable what lengths people will go to."


The RCMP actually suggested that this man go and seek medical attention. I'll have to do a little further research to find out the answer to that story. I'm interested now. I'm going to have to go and talk to somebody at the RCMP and find out if they ever found this character.


Then August 24. Volunteers in the Cowichan Valley who work at Cowichan…. They have an area association in the old school, a school that had been shut down for some time.


The Cowichan News Leader reported that it looked like a scene from the end of the world, essentially. The doors and handles are missing. Paint had been thrown carelessly about the old classrooms of the Cowichan Station School. There are remnants of the old Cowichan Station School….


"'Someone had gone through and taken all of the plumbing, removed the fixtures and taken all the copper pipe out of the ceiling.'


"Anything copper or brass was stripped and taken.


"In their place the thieves left a hammer and a single cigarette butt crushed on the table-turned-ashtray.


"'Everything's gone — heating fixtures, the old oil lines. Anything they could take, they have taken.'


[1625]

"'They had knocked the sinks off the wall, went into the ceiling and removed pipe through the entire school. The thieves went to great lengths to get at what they wanted.'"


The RCMP say that this was clearly the work of copper thieves who were very active in our region, looking for copper.


The association that suffered this loss said that it was looking at $20,000 alone, just to repair the plumbing. Never mind the wiring — just the plumbing. This volunteer group was just about to move into there. It was a detrimental blow to the community group that had worked so hard to be able to move into that site. They got hit by thieves just before they moved in. That was August.


September 29. Copper thieves have been at work again. According to the RCMP, they


"'went out of their way to cut and remove locks to two sets of gates and then entered a residence as well as outbuildings,' on a private property in the 3000 block of Highway 18.


"'Thieves made away with a quantity of copper pipe, tools, a set of binoculars and video equipment….


"The day before, Ladysmith police were alerted to a similar occurrence. 'An individual on Chemainus Road reported the theft of over 500 feet of copper wire….


"'Several copper grounding rods were also taken. These are three-foot-long, 3/8-inch copper rods used to ground an antenna.'"


The RCMP were looking for help.


More in October. On October 3 the headline is: "Police Investigate Sixth Copper Wire Theft" in just a short period of time. So the Cowichan Valley has been hit again, the sixth investigation by North Cowichan RCMP. "The police have reported that thieves made off with 500 feet of copper pipe from a residence on Highway 18. …'there's a coordinated effort, actually, Vancouver Island–wide, as to the investigations regarding copper theft.'"


And November. This was just November 2, so that's right current. We've had one every month for the last four months. The headline in the Lake Cowichan Gazette is:
[ Page 8733 ]
"Metal Thieves Attack Wired World." Police say it's not just phone and power lines being targeted. Now they're taking aluminum ladders, billboards, grave markers, street signs and even manhole covers. "Construction sites are targeted for plumbing and wiring." Also, phone and electric grids are vulnerable, as well as 911 services.


These are key issues, and I certainly support those that say that some kind of action had to be taken. This is an issue that's been accelerated, obviously, with the rising costs of metals worldwide. It's certainly had an impact, but it's still inexcusable to read these stories that impact communities and put people at risk.


This TELUS executive says that in 2011, it's been a particularly bad year, with 325 wire thefts so far. The Saanich deputy chief said that thieves recently took all the drainage gates from a five-kilometre stretch on Highway 17 between Victoria and the ferry terminal, leaving a dangerous situation for cyclists and drivers.


Again, this Bill 13 is a step in the right direction. It makes sense to bring forward legislation to work with all of the scrap dealers and recyclers to ensure that there's some reporting. I don't know; you do wonder. I've talked to people who say that some recyclers have turned people away when they're suspicious about the products, and somehow those products find their way into a market, in any case.


So you do have to be concerned about this. I don't think it's going to be completely solved as a result of this legislation, but again, it's a step that we can support with the caution that, as others have said, there needs to be regulation.


[1630]

You know, it's interesting. We're happy to support government looking at regulation and legislation that's going to deal with an important matter, a matter that's critical to public safety and certainly even to the individuals' safety that are involved in this activity.


With that, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this important debate.


P. Pimm: I'm happy to take my turn at speaking to Bill 13, the Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act. Certainly, it's nice to stand in this facility and know that each and every speaker has got the same thing on their mind — to try and make a better place for all of our residents, for our communities and for all of us combined.


The primary goal of this bill is, as the members have stated, to protect the public's safety. You know, it really amazes me. I have a background in the electrical business, and it amazes me that we haven't had more serious accidents as a result of some of the actions that have been taken in regards to copper theft and to hydro theft and that sort of thing.


Some communities have already instigated plans that work at trying to eliminate some of these activities, and some of the municipalities are already down that road. I think it's good that the province is taking the initiative so that we can get consistent and do the job properly across the entire province.


[D. Black in the chair.]


Some of the incidents are just absolutely amazing. The member for Cowichan Valley has mentioned that there is an incident every month in his constituency. It's no different in any area of the province. I can talk about my area of the province and a company that I was with before I came down here.


We had an electrical company, and we put up street lights — street lights for an example, something as simple as that. It goes to the safety of the residents and the safety of the community, but these folks get very strategic. It's not only just the needy that are doing these jobs. There are some organized guys that are doing this stuff. They're going to my community, and then they're going to the one beside my community, then to Dawson Creek and then on down, and then maybe they take a whole stack of stuff and sell it off in Prince George. So they do a whole round of the north.


The sad part about it is they get three bucks a pound for this copper. They have to melt it down, and it takes an awful lot of work to get this done. I mean, I'd hire these guys to come and work for my company and pull the wire in, because it's a hard job. It really is a hard job getting this wire pulled in. The cost of it….


To get it pulled into the system, you pay an astronomical amount of money for this wire upfront. You pay like $3 a metre for this wire, and they go and steal. They get 100 metres, and they might get $3 back. That's the price they're getting. So the costs they are costing the municipalities is astronomical for what they are actually getting back. It really is sad — and the danger they get involved in.


We found that a lot of things that were happening in our community…. They were actually going in, and they were cutting the street light power out first, but then they didn't steal the wire right away. They cut the power out. They're really smart. Then they turn around, vandalize and steal all of the stuff out of the back of everybody's yards. Then they come back, and they actually have the nerve then to take the time and steal the wire out of the light standards to boot.


They've got the quads, they've got the riverboats, and now they've got the wire on top of that — and usually a trailer somewhere that they steal so they can get the wire into the trailer and haul it off down somewhere to sell it.


It's pretty interesting. I don't know if you know how it goes when you're putting up a set of street light conduits, but I'll quickly tell you how that works. You install a concrete base into the ground and then install another concrete base. You might install ten in a subdivision
[ Page 8734 ]
or whatever. Then you run conduits in between these things. Then you run your wire in. You pull your wire in, and then for whatever reason, you may or may not be able to stand your street lights or maybe the parts didn't come in or whatever.


[1635]

It used to be that you could put that wire in there, and you'd come back two weeks or three weeks later and stand your poles on there, and everybody would be happy and away you go. Well, you can't do that now. Now they're watching so closely that you put your wire into your bases, and in a matter of two days, if you don't have your lights stood up there, they've come along and pulled all the wire out, stolen it all and taken it, and away you go.


Now you come to a point that it changes the way you have to do business. Now you can't put the stuff in. It disrupts your actions. It disrupts how all of your folks do their jobs. Then you come back. Now we put the stuff in. Just to show you the extra costs the communities actually face and put it in a real perspective for you. Now you pull all of your wires in. You stand your pole and get your fixtures on. You turn the system on. Now you've got lights, and now you've got safety in the community.


That's not far enough. Now you've got to have a fancy new little type of bolt so that they don't have a wrench that can take the bolt out in an easy way. But even now that's not far enough, because they can jerry-rig or whatever to get some sort of tool to get that off.


So now what they do in the community of Fort St. John, where I'm at, is that once they've got them all in, it's happening so often up there that they now weld the little doors shut on the poles so that you can't actually get in there.


You can imagine the kind of nightmare that is for the maintenance crew afterwards, when something goes wrong with the light standard down the road and they have to come by and fix it. Well, it's nearly impossible. Now you've got to have a welding machine in the back of your truck, and you've got to have cutters and a cutting torch. You know, it's just incredible what these guys have done to the system. It really is pretty sad.


When you talk about TELUS…. TELUS is a real funny wire. You can get a wire that's maybe a couple of inches in diameter. That's a TELUS wire. They call that a 1200-pair. It is a hugely expensive wire to put in. When they talk about their $50,000 a time to fix a TELUS line, they're not kidding you. That wire is so expensive to put in. But what the guys are getting in return for this wire is next to nothing. I don't know if you've ever hooked up a telephone. The wire is not even a millimetre in diameter.


A 1200-pair TELUS line has 1,200 of these wires inside of it. So when they cut that wire, that takes out 1,200 TELUS lines. That's your whole community that doesn't have TELUS now. You have no 911 service. You have nothing whatsoever to communicate — except for cell phones. I mean, everybody's got cell phones now, happily. That's a good thing. It really is a huge problem.


I'm happy to sit here today and actually be able to…. It's good that we're putting something together. The dealership registrations — I know that it's going to be a little bit of work for some of the dealers and some of them are not going to be real happy about it. But at the end of the day, it's a thing that has to happen.


I'm so happy to see that we're actually going to have some sort of link program so that you'll have some identifications tag so that each one of the dealers will be able to…. If somebody comes into the dealership, you'll be able to spot it down the road from another dealership. If they make their calls to the police, it's going to be identified that sort of way. It's good to see that's happening. And to have the names associated with this thing, I think, is paramount in the whole program.


I think I've ranted long enough. That's more than my normal rant. I can't quite compete with my Cowichan Valley friend here.


N. Simons: I'd just like to add my perspective on this piece of legislation, which will restrict or control the sale of metal and copper and other valuables — an electrifying discussion. The issue at hand is one that's serious and potentially one that can impact on our public safety. I understand the importance of providing some regulatory oversight for this particular sector.


I do have some concerns about it. Obviously, I would support it without having my concerns necessarily addressed. But I look forward to being able to do so in the next stage of this debate.


[1640]

My concerns have to do with the organized thieves who may simply put it in a truck and drive it to Alberta. Perhaps the discussion around interprovincial cooperation and regulation might provide some extra support to this legislation to actually give it some more credibility.


I think we also have to contemplate the ease at which people have been smuggling stolen cars out of this country, sold on the black market overseas. We have to consider…. Whenever we introduce new legislation, we should assess and continue to assess its efficacy in terms of achieving a stated goal. I'm not sure how we're going to be able to measure it. I do know that many dealers and sellers are probably going to find it difficult — or somehow, not difficult as much as complicated and burdensome — to be reporting on a daily basis to the local police department.


I'm wondering if there is some ability to, in effect, achieve the same outcome without the perhaps undue burden on those sellers. I think that in some ways, it looks to me like we have an assumption that dealers in precious or expensive metals, unless this were in place, would be engaged in
[ Page 8735 ]
the buying and selling of stolen material. I think we should just be careful and say clearly that we do not think that businesses in this province are breaking the law on purpose. Anyone who knowingly purchases stolen material, or even with willful blindness purchases stolen material, is subject to criminal offence provisions of the Criminal Code. In effect, this law exists already.


Now we have a regulatory system that will keep track, as much as possible, of transactions relating to these precious metals. But I do caution that, perhaps, in some cases, legislation is tabled in order to bring attention to a specific issue and to raise public concern to a degree where there can be better oversight by the public on what is happening in front of them. It's similar to the case of pawnshops when they became more regulated. Clearly, there was less opportunity for offence, but many pawnshops simply provide service to those who are desperate and who legally need to find money and ways of getting money.


I think of legislation that has been passed in Canada in various jurisdictions. When historians review laws through time, they will know that when this law was enacted, the price of metals was higher than it had been in a long time. They will do an assessment, a sociological or anthropological assessment, to see that, in fact, metals are very expensive, and there are very desperate people who are finding ways of getting money and people who are taking advantage of others.


In New France I remember the law where it was made illegal to talk louder than the priests in church, and I thought: "Well, that says something about that particular period in time." You look back, and you wonder what kind of a community required the law to be put in force, where men were not allowed to speak louder than the priests and they weren't allowed to smoke during the sermon.


Anyway, I'm not comparing this completely with that act. I think this has great merit and does reflect, in fact, the circumstances we exist in. We have expensive material that is potentially easy to steal, so we need to make it more difficult to sell. If we can plug the loopholes where you can throw it in the back of a pickup truck and bring to it Alberta and get off without any problem…. I think we need to find ways of plugging those holes.


When you can throw it into a container and ship it across overseas or down south because other jurisdictions don't have the similar restrictions or registration system, then we have a problem with the law. I do worry about laws that are difficult to police and laws that are difficult to uphold. When they are not upheld, it brings the whole criminal justice system into disrepute.


[1645]

In this particular case, I think that with careful cooperation with other jurisdictions, and there is no reason to suspect that wouldn't be possible, we might be able to have an effective law, one that does protect our community and one that does deter offenders from participating in this type of crime better than the laws that currently exist.


I do remind the House that we do have laws against theft, and we do have laws against the selling and the purchasing of stolen materials. This is one particular aspect, one particular sector that needs specific attention, and I'm sure that when another commodity becomes the prize of criminal enterprise, new laws will be made to address those specific incidents as they come into the public view.


With that, Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to add my support to Bill 13, Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act, and I look forward to further comments from my colleagues.


B. Ralston: I rise to join the debate on Bill 13, Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act. This is an issue of some concern locally, in Surrey. There are in my riding a number of metal recyclers, and while most of them are legitimate businesses, there certainly have been complaints in recent years that the scrutiny that's given to prospective sellers is something less than desirable and has helped fuel a market that is not entirely legitimate. So the municipality has attempted to deal with this. The police have attempted to deal with this. This is, I think, an appropriate further legislative step that will attempt to deal with this problem.


Clearly, it's something that does require regulation. The previous law…. My colleague just speaking before me has mentioned the criminal law. Obviously, it's illegal to steal metal and it's illegal to sell stolen property, but given the range of duties and responsibilities and investigations that the police are in charge of, it's very difficult to sometimes successfully investigate these things such as they come to a conclusion where there's sufficient evidence to prosecute.


This is an attempt to take away the market for these stolen goods and regulate the market for it and thereby reduce the opportunity and the likelihood that people will attempt to steal it, because they won't be able to sell it.


Obviously, this is fuelled, in some cases, by people who are stealing small amounts to finance a drug addiction. At the higher level there seems to be a more sophisticated enterprise that's engaged in stealing wholesale from power lines and other industrial installations on a bigger scale. But without a market to sell the product of these thefts, this enterprise will be discouraged at the very least — perhaps not eliminated but at least discouraged.


It does appear to follow the model of regulation of pawnbrokers who, one can well imagine, are sometimes visited by people with the goods that they've recently stolen. There's a registration system, a very detailed one, which requires them to report details of their identity,
[ Page 8736 ]
and the police are in constant contact with pawnbrokers in order to ascertain whether they are operating legitimately. I think in most cases that's the case. Certainly, that regulation works, so this seems to follow that model.


Others have mentioned, and certainly this is a problem, that some of the perhaps less — I don't know — safety-minded thieves have also risked injury to themselves or to others by the way in which they steal these materials. In addition, there's a public safety hazard when telephone lines or hydro installations are damaged as a result of metal theft.


So it's a growing problem, and I'm pleased that the government has decided to take this step, recognizing that some problems require government regulation and not all government regulation is bad. This seems to be a very effective and economical legislative measure that will, I think, yield real results.


[1650]

It's a measure that the Union of B.C. Municipalities has called for. In their recent convention they asked the government to implement a system to license and regulate the scrap metal economy.


In addition, TELUS — understandably, given the number of wires and installations they have throughout the province — has welcomed this legislation. I'm just quoting from Kenneth Haertling, TELUS vice-president: "We welcome this tough approach to regulating scrap metal sales throughout B.C., which will help protect our customers' access to critical communications infrastructure. Thieves have cut live TELUS cables 325 times this year, and when they do, they are cutting our customers' access to 911, putting their very lives at risk. It needs to stop, and this legislation will help."


It's not going to solve everything, but it is a good step forward, and I think it builds on the work of certain municipalities. Rather than creating a legislative patchwork, depending on different municipal variations, there's a consistent approach throughout the province.


I want to support the legislation that's before the House and recognize that there has been advocacy, both from affected municipalities, from the business sector and, I think, even from B.C. Liberal leadership candidates who've advocated this as part of their platform, once again proving that not all regulation is unnecessary and some will serve the public good.


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


Hon. S. Bond: I'm very pleased to make just a few comments, and I want to thank the member for Surrey-Whalley, because in essence, he captured the important and key points of the bill.


I think what's been interesting is to have listened, today and in the previous discussion that we had, to the at times very colourful descriptions of the scenarios that many members in this House have actually had occur in their ridings related to metal theft. This is a very serious issue in British Columbia.


My primary concern is public safety, which is why this bill focuses very specifically on making sure that we do two things. We remove anonymity so that if you decide you are going to attempt to sell something you've stolen, we're going to make sure that there is a process in place that figures out who you are.


[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]


It's been interesting, also, to have the members opposite spend probably more time than I've ever heard them talking about deregulation. We're actually a government that does believe in deregulation. In fact, we've deregulated by 42 percent since 2001.


The fact of matter is that we're not going to be apologists for dealing with regulation that actually looks at issues of health, the environment and public safety. There is absolutely a need for this type of regulation in order to close down the market and remove anonymity. So in fact, we very much intend for there to be a paper trail.


Yes, we're going to regulate, because we want to give the police every single opportunity to match up the person who has stolen the metal with the crime that takes place. So we're not going to apologize for regulating when it's appropriate. There is a place for government regulation; this bill is one of those bills.


We also know there has been a call for this type of legislation, as was pointed out by the member for Surrey-Whalley, by the Union of B.C. Municipalities. There have been several municipalities who have worked very hard to put a regulatory regime in place, and we recognize there has been inconsistency. If you can't sell it in one particular area, you just go next door and try over there. So in fact, this is an encompassing law that will look at how we reduce that ability to move from one part of the Lower Mainland, in particular, and sell your metal somewhere else.


The heart of this bill is about making sure that when someone needs emergency services and they dial 911, that in fact they have the ability to do that. We have seen millions of dollars in damage. We have seen potential risk to lives by the fact 911 service goes down and emergency responders can't be in communication.


This is inherently about public safety. We're going to make sure that there is an appropriate level of regulation in place to make sure we cut back the market and that we remove anonymity.


[1655]

We should also point out, finally, that we're actually taking national leadership. We've had discussion. I'm always amazed by the fact that we stand in the House and talk about how we all agree to the bill, and then we take two days to actually figure out what it is in the bill we're
[ Page 8737 ]
not quite crazy about. The bottom line is that we are taking national leadership.


We are tackling a significant public safety issue, and we're going to make sure that we curb the loss of critical services in British Columbia. We are going to start in British Columbia, but we're going to ask, as we move forward, other jurisdictions to contemplate. We've had comments about: "Well, they'll just go to Alberta." That's right, but we're the government of British Columbia. We're going to make sure we have proper regulatory regime here, and then we're going to work with our colleagues across the country, as we have with many other initiatives, to say: how can we make sure that we also stop that at the border?


This is the beginning of the work. I'm very proud of the fact that we are going to regulate. We're going to make sure that we are taking away the market, removing anonymity. We are the first province to take this very serious public safety issue and move forward with a bill of this sort.


With that, I move second reading of Bill 13.


Motion approved.


Hon. S. Bond: Mr. Speaker, I move the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.


Bill 13, Metal Dealers and Recyclers 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. T. Lake: I call second reading of Bill 5, intituled Personal Property Security Amendment Act, 2011.


Bill 5 — Personal Property Security
Amendment Act, 2011


Hon. K. Falcon: I move that Bill 5, the Personal Property Security Amendment Act, 2011, be read a second time.


This amendment to the Personal Property Security Act is necessary to enable B.C. businesses to use licences as collateral for loans. The act's narrow definition of "licence" is causing uncertainty, resulting in increased legal costs for both B.C. lenders and borrowers. The Personal Property Security Act provides a modern legal code for the use of personal property as security for loans. The law is substantially harmonized across North America to provide certainty to lenders and borrowers in both the consumer and business sectors.


[D. Black in the chair.]


This is brought about in part as a result of a 2008 Supreme Court of Canada decision that determined that personal property security legislation applies generally to licences. But the narrow definition of the term "licence" in B.C.'s act prevents the court decision from applying, because "licence" is defined exclusively to mean timber harvesting licence, as issued under the Forest Act.


This bill will expand the definition of "licence" in the act so that all transferable licences regarding personal property may be used as collateral in British Columbia — such as milk production quotas or fishing licences, to name just a couple. I believe that the legal certainty on this issue will reduce legal fees for arranging loans and thus lower the cost of credit. In addition, it is likely to reduce the risk of litigation.


It may also improve access to credit in some sectors, such as the commercial fishery. Often a fishing licence is the only major asset a fishing business has in which to guarantee a loan. By making credit transactions less expensive, less risky and less time-consuming, this bill will remove impediments to economic growth in this province and keep British Columbia on a level playing field with other provinces as a place to do business.


I move second reading of Bill 5.


B. Ralston: I rise to speak to Bill 5, Personal Property Security Amendment Act. Indeed, as the minister said, this does arise from a Supreme Court of Canada decision from 2008 entitled Benoit Joseph Saulnier and Bingo Queen Fisheries Ltd. and the Royal Bank of Canada.


[1700]

What happened in the case was that Mr. Saulnier was a fisherman, and his boat is named the Bingo Queen. He assigned into bankruptcy, and the issue arose as to whether his fishing licence was something that the Royal Bank could execute upon. In other words, did it form part of the assets of his estate in bankruptcy that the bank could seize? This case went up to the Supreme Court of Canada for an interpretation of the Bankruptcy Act, which is federal legislation, but also the Personal Property Security Act, the equivalent of the act that we are dealing with here in British Columbia.


There are some interesting nuances to the decision, in the sense that the genesis of this particular interpretation is probably not entirely clear. What the court did conclude is that for the narrow purposes of this act, the licence was property such that it would fall within the jurisdiction of the Personal Property Security Act. Not every licence is property, and the genesis of a fishing licence relates back to an ability to take a profit à prendre, a right to take assets as part of a harvest, somewhat analogous to a timber licence.


The result, though, that the minister mentions is that these licences…. It's not clear, the scope of the legislation itself. Some have been mentioned — milk production, for example — expressly. Other licences are not enumerated in this, but the potential scope of this could be very broad, and it will be up to commercial lenders, I
[ Page 8738 ]
suppose, to evaluate their ability and their comfort in lending on other licences. One might consider a taxi licence. One might consider other forms, even a licensed domain name on the Internet. Is that something that falls into this very broadly defined category of licence that might be something that could be an asset such that it could be lent upon?


I suppose the flip side of this is that while an asset then becomes something that can be taken to the bank and money borrowed against it, when times are tough, it also becomes an asset that the bank or the credit union can seize from you and you're in danger of losing it as part of the financial arrangement that you have with the financial institution.


Some have expressed a concern of what the effect might be of further capitalization in certain industries. In the fishing industry, for example, if there's a great rush of further capital in there, it's not clear what the impact will be. It may help develop a market for licences. It may inhibit others from putting up their licence as collateral, for risk of losing it. As it is now, if it doesn't fall within the definition, you can't borrow on it. But on the other hand, you're exempt from losing it as part of a bankruptcy proceeding.


What the bill does in its relatively narrow scope here is it expands the definition of "licence" in subsection 1(1). It means a right, whether exclusive or not, "that may be transferred by the holder with or without restriction or the consent of the grantor and that entitles the holder to do any of the following: (a) manufacture, produce, sell, transport, grow, harvest or otherwise deal with personal property; (b) provide services; (c) acquire personal property; (d) harvest timber, or grow and harvest Christmas trees," under section 12 of the Forest Act.


[1705]

That's a very expansive definition. Should we get to committee stage, what I'll be asking the minister to do, perhaps with some advice from the staff resources available to him…. There is some commentary on this that I've been able to dig out. But what will be the scope of this? I think it probably falls more to lenders to decide what they're prepared to do on an individual case, rather than the government or the minister to give direction to commercial institutions.


The other issue here is just the mechanism by which a seizure might be effected. It gives a mechanism which requires sending a "notice of seizure by registered mail addressed to the minister responsible for the administration of the Act at that minister's office in Victoria; (ii) in any other case, giving a copy of the notice of seizure to the grantor of the licence, or if there is a successor to the grantor, to the successor." So it makes the mechanism of notice of seizure certainly clearer and, therefore, I think more effective and less open to dispute.


Really, that's what this bill does, and its scope follows the Supreme Court of Canada decision. I think the minister is correct in the sense that really there's little choice for the government but to clarify that based on what the Supreme Court of Canada has said, and this bill does do that, and the implications will be worked out by the market.


With those remarks, those are all the comments that I have on the bill at second reading.


M. Stilwell: I'm pleased to rise to support the amendments of the Personal Property Security Amendment Act. As has been mentioned already, the amendments modernize the act and are meant to make credit transactions less expensive, essentially less risky and less time-consuming.


Imagine owning a home or another building and not being able to borrow against its value for renovations, for example. I think that members on both sides of the House can agree that this is not reasonable. However, this scenario is a reality for licence owners of milk production quotas, fishing licences and in many other sectors, as you've heard.


The proposed amendments are important because they remove impediments for economic growth for many small business people in the province and, secondly, keep B.C. on a level playing field with other jurisdictions in North America.


In B.C. the only licences that have clearly been capable of registration in the personal property registry are timber-harvesting licences under the Forest Act. The need for these amendments, as has also been mentioned already, was triggered by a 2008 Supreme Court of Canada decision regarding commercial fishing licences in Nova Scotia. B.C. law in this area is unclear and has resulted in uncertainty, higher legal costs and lack of access to credit, all of which we regularly hear the importance of from small business proprietors.


Licences are valuable assets to their owners. For instance, I'm sure people realize that very often a fishing licence is the only major asset that a fisherman owns, yet he cannot use it as security for a loan. This bill rectifies the problem and eases access to credit to help licence owners build their businesses and hopefully create jobs. Access to credit is essential to a growing business, and if you ask any small business owner, they will tell you the same thing.


This amendment will expand the definition of "licence" in the Personal Property Security Act and clarify that all transferable licences regarding personal property may be used in British Columbia as collateral for a loan. Examples of transferable licences that would fall under the new definition include commercial licences, fishing licences, liquor licences, agricultural marketing quotas, quotas like agrimilk production licences, security business licences and guide-outfitter licences. I see that medical licences are not included.

[ Page 8739 ]

It is important to note that forest agreements will still be included in the Personal Property Security Act, as was the case before. The amendment also protects licences from falling into the hands of unauthorized individuals. Provisions included in the amendment require notice of transfer be given to the grantor when a licence is seized for whatever reason. Furthermore, lenders wishing to sell a licence may only do so in accordance with the terms and conditions of the licence and any other provisions that apply to the licence by law or by contract.


This is very important, as individual qualifications, restrictions on the use and legislative provisions affecting disposition will remain in effect after the licence is transferred. For instance, a criminal record check for a liquor licence will be required, agricultural marketing board conditions must be followed on agricultural quotas, and road permits under the Forest Act may only be disposed of in conjunction with the disposition of the agreement to which it pertains. B.C. will be creating a level playing field with the rest of Canada by making these changes.


[1710]

The government believes that by ensuring credit transactions are less burdensome and less time-consuming, we will encourage the creation of more jobs here in British Columbia.


D. Hayer: This amendment act is yet another proposed action that our government has taken that I completely support. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of my constituents.


The Personal Property Security Amendment Act, 2011, is not only good for B.C. business, but it brings our province into line with the rest of the country and provides opportunity for security of investment. Additionally, it creates value for business investment beyond the asset because it allows the investment to be used as collateral for even further investment. That means more jobs, more personal security and more protection for families.


Along our coast it permits commercial fishermen to use their licences to support their businesses, to grow their businesses through loans supported by the value of those licences and to create more jobs.


[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]


In the Fraser Valley it allows our farmers who hold a quota licence in poultry, eggs and dairy products to use the value of their licence holdings to expand their businesses and allows them to borrow money to grow and to look after their families and their workers.


Until this amendment only timber licences were able to be used as collateral. Adoption of this amendment will change that. It will level the playing field for many businesses and industries. It will modernize the legal code for the use of personal property and validate the value of property for loan security.


As anyone in business knows, expansion can only come through increased investment. This amendment now makes that investment potential even better. That means more prosperity, more jobs and more security.


Across Canada all other provinces and territories allow transferable licences to be used as collateral for loans. This act will bring equality to British Columbia businesses, improve their ability to compete and increase their opportunity to expand.


This is a long-awaited amendment and undoubtedly will be applauded by businesses and licence holders across the province. With only one word, finally the government has done it.


This is another one of those acts, one of those amendments, that must make sense to everyone in this House and everyone who holds property, because it makes British Columbia equal to everyone else in this great country of ours.


This isn't just an act that benefits some business stakeholders. It is actually an act of equality, an act of fairness and an act that makes indisputable sense. It is a good act and the right act in our time. It opens up the doors to opportunity for so many who have invested so much but have been unable, until this act is passed, to take advantage of the investment and the success. Now they have opportunities to grow and be more successful.


This act is good news for the business community. This is a fair act, and it brings justice and equality to business and makes it an equal playing field across the country for all businesses.


In closing, I support this act. On behalf of my constituents, I want to thank the government and the minister for doing this.


Mr. Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier closes debate.


Hon. K. Falcon: I look forward to the opportunity in committee stage to address some of the issues that were raised. Clearly, as the member from north Surrey pointed out, this is an issue that is driven in part by a court decision and ensuring that we are aligning ourselves appropriately with the decision but also dealing with a very practical issue that affects lots of people in lots of ways. As I say, and as I pointed out in my second reading notes, it refers to all transferable licences that would be governed under the Personal Property Security Act.


I do think it's an important amendment, and I look forward to completion. On that I move second reading of Bill 5.


Motion approved.


Hon. K. Falcon: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

[ Page 8740 ]

Bill 5, Personal Property Security Amendment Act, 2011, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.


[1715]

Hon. T. Lake: I now call second reading of Bill 7, the Regulatory Reporting Act.


Bill 7 — Regulatory
reporting act


Hon. K. Falcon: I'm pleased today to have the opportunity to speak to Bill 7, which introduces a commitment by the government to ensure that progress in our regulatory activities is made public each and every year.


[D. Black in the chair.]


Now, I have some history with this particular file. Back in 2001 my first job for the first few years that I had the opportunity and honour to serve in government was to act as Minister of State for Deregulation. In the position of Minister of State for Deregulation, I was responsible for ensuring that we as a government met a commitment to reduce the regulatory burden on British Columbians by one-third within our first three years.


That was a pretty bold commitment that we made as a government. I have to say that as I began researching what it would take to meet that commitment and how we would go about it, one of the first things I discovered is that there had been no success anywhere in the world, that I was able to identify, of a government that had successfully actually marched down the regulatory burden in a manner that was verifiable by the public or anyone independent to see whether, in fact, progress had been made.


That was always the challenge and the illusion that governments had when it came to dealing with red tape and regulatory burden — that they could say, "Oh, we're reducing red tape," but people would say, "Well, prove it," and they would be unable to actually demonstrate how they've done that.


What we did is put in place a system that required government to, first of all, measure and record what the existing regulatory burden was on British Columbians. So for the first time ever that was actually identified across government — regulatory requirements being whenever government is requiring a member of the public to fill out a form, complete information, do the kinds of things that involve time and effort and sometimes, often, money.


By doing that, we were able to establish a base. If my memory serves me correct, it was about 382,000-odd regulations that were in the province of British Columbia. Now having a base, we were able to work across government to ensure that we marched that down, while recognizing from the outset that we were not going to deal with regulations that had an impact on health, safety or environmental outcomes that British Columbians value.


I can tell you, Madam Speaker, it was an extraordinarily positive experience to have to go through, because regulation is so insidious. It affects so many British Columbians in so many different ways that we don't even think about.


So someone trying to enrol their son or daughter into a daycare program finds that there are over a dozen documents that are required by government to be filled out in order to do so. That was an example of where government said: "Well, do we really need that many? Could we not simplify this process?" And government did radically and measurably improve that to try and make life easier for individuals that are trying to access government.


What has changed? Why are we introducing this legislation, and what does this legislation do differently? Well, the key thing about this legislation is that it will institutionalize accountability and transparency of regulatory reform activities and demonstrate government's ongoing commitment to reduce the red-tape burden imposed on citizens and small business.


As I think we've pointed out…. You've heard different people in different contexts talk about the regulatory burden, but the fact that it has been reduced by over 42 percent and exceeded our original target of 33 percent is, I think, something that we can be justifiably proud of.


What the small business community in particular really feels strongly about is that we need to institutionalize that public reporting-out portion of regulatory reform — the progress or lack of progress — on an annual basis.


Why do they feel that's important? Well, we already report out. People can go to the website. They can see detailed, ministry-by-ministry breakdowns of what regulatory progress or lack of progress has been made across government and what that means in terms of the overall targets that we've set. But the importance of being required to report out publicly, I think, is an important requirement. As I say, it is an approach that has been long championed by the small business sector.


[1720]

The small business sector, led by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, views this bill as the next logical step in a process that will cement British Columbia's leadership in regulatory reform right across this country. It will act as an example for other provinces that wish to move down the road of seeing real, measurable, justifiable results in reducing regulatory red tape and burden. So the public requirement is important, because in Bill 7 it will impose that requirement on the public to produce an annual report of its regulatory
[ Page 8741 ]
reform activities each fiscal year. It will require that report to be made public no later than June 30 of each year, it will require the report to cover the 12-month period ending on March 31 of the fiscal year in which the report is published, and it will require the report to include content that will be specified by regulation.


This is a really key principle for the small business community, because they want to make sure any government — our government, hopefully, in the future for many, many years to come will be that government, but whatever government is there — is required to make out that public reporting. Perhaps down the road there could be the possibility of some other government that is not quite as responsive on this particular issue. Certainly, they will have to report or go to the Legislature and repeal the requirement and therefore say publicly to British Columbians that this is not important enough to them as a government to have a public reporting-out process involved.


Reducing unnecessary burden on citizens of unnecessary regulation and red tape. Small business believes, correctly, those are key steps to ensuring that British Columbia's economic competitiveness will be maintained and improved — and make sure that we provide all citizens with easy, understandable access to government programs and services.


Regulatory reform, we know, reduces the cost and the time of doing business with the province, with the public's government. It's also something that can allow small businesses, in particular, to reinvest that time, to reinvest those costs into actually improving the business they're trying to run and ensuring that they can better compete with their competitors — whether they're in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, the United States, Europe or around the world.


British Columbia today — we must not forget — is globally acknowledged as a leader in the field of regulatory reform. If passed, Bill 7 will preserve British Columbia's leadership in regulatory reform and, in fact, will have us leading the world, no question, in virtually every aspect of regulatory reform. I would hope that every member of this House would join me here today in support of Bill 7, in support of our small business sector as we continue to build a British Columbia that will create jobs, that will create prosperity, that will create opportunity and that will create confidence at a time when there is a distinct lack of confidence and opportunity in so many jurisdictions of the world outside of Canada.


B. Ralston: Well, we are treated to a rather exquisite irony here. The minister, on behalf of reducing regulation, is using the full mechanisms of the Legislature with a bill introduction, second reading and committee stage — presumably, if we get to that — just to pass a bill with four clauses, one of which is: "This Act comes into force on the date of Royal Assent."


So a very brief bill, and the mandate of the bill is to publish a report. Now, one would have thought that it was not necessary to use this mechanism — this regulation, if we can put it that way, this process — to simply have the minister publish a report. Certainly, the minister has other avenues of publishing a report. In fact, as he says, it's already published. So I'm not quite sure…. It suggests to me that the legislative agenda on the other side is very, very thin if this is required to be a bill before this House.


Now, the minister says he's going to publish a report. That's great. He says he has some history on the file. He also says that the process he's engaged in…. He supports regulation for the purposes of health, safety and environmental measures.


[1725]

Indeed, we just had second reading on a bill that does just that, Metal Dealers and Recyclers Act, recognizing the failure of the criminal law, which is proposing to regulate the market in illegal metal and recyclable material because it poses a public safety threat. But that wasn't always the case when this minister, back in the first term…. Certainly not the record of this government at all, because despite the claim that's made that nothing would damage health or safety or environmental measures, in fact, there were a number of measures that did just that and continue to do just that.


Perhaps the most, I suppose, egregious, or one of the most egregious, was the Ministry of Children and Family Development. They were obliged, during the halcyon days of the first term, to reorganize and redesign services and cut their budget, such that the minister responsible, now the Premier, won the Deregulation Sprint Award from the deregulation and regulatory reform office for being the first minister to achieve a one-third reduction. This is in the Ministry of Children and Families.


One of the consequences of that was that the independent Children's Commission was dismantled.


[L. Reid in the chair.]


In the new act that was introduced, the Office for Children and Youth Act, they stipulated that the coroner "may" complete child death reviews transferred from the commission instead of "must." That was the great regulatory transformation that the minister presided over — changing "must" to "may." As a result, 955 child death reviews were shelved in a warehouse for more than 6½ years.


It was only as a result of pressure here in the Legislature from our then leader, the member for Victoria–Beacon Hill, and the member for Vancouver-Kingsway that led to an independent review by Mr. Hughes and the re-establishment of now Ms. Turpel-Lafond's office.


What had happened as a result of that so-called regulatory review was real damage — real damage to children
[ Page 8742 ]
in care in this province — and it was shameful. So the profession by the members opposite and by the minister, on behalf of the government, that these measures had nothing to do with health, safety or environmental concerns is plainly not supported by the facts.


In addition, there are a number of other areas which I want to review briefly. One of the other areas was forest fatalities. The government dramatically cut compliance and enforcement procedures, including a 45 percent reduction of workplace inspections, a 49 percent decrease in written orders. Employer penalties were driven down. It was only as a result of a coroner's inquiry, of which some of my colleagues will speak more in detail, and the death of a forest worker named Ted Gramlich….


As a result of the so-called reduction of regulatory burden, Mr. Gramlich was working in the woods and was injured. As a result of the monitoring that no longer existed — there was no notification required of the injury — he bled to death while waiting for a helicopter to get him out of there.


He placed himself under a tree, which he had partially felled, and began working in a high-hazard zone and attempted to finish the job. He was crushed when the tree fell but lived for another hour and a half, comforted by his falling partner, waiting for a medical evacuation helicopter that was never coming.


The landowner, TimberWest, had left it up to the contractor, who ran his own single-employee company, to manage and supervise all safety on the site without questioning his ability to do so. The coroner's jury, as a result of this death, had a number of recommendations related to safety provisions on the site, and particularly safety provisions and further WCB regulation.


[1730]

For the minister to say that the ambit of the deregulatory initiative back in the first term was not to touch health, safety or environmental measures is clearly not borne out in that case. As a result of that, the changes were made, and deaths in the forests did decline.


Another area where we saw deregulation affecting public safety was in the decision by the B.C. Liberal government to no longer regulate recovery houses, removing licensing requirements for most recovery and drug rehab homes.


The mayor of Surrey, Dianne Watts, expressed concern about this back in December 2001. "Municipal councils are not in the health field, and we don't have any expertise in it. We're back to the same old problems, with unregulated boarding houses, drug overdoses and, sometimes, staff abuses."


Certainly, representing a riding in Surrey, as I know the minister does as well, that's a complaint that comes into my office even now — that although it has abated somewhat in recent years, there are unregulated so-called rehabilitation houses in neighbourhoods, where the unscrupulous owner is simply taking welfare cheques from people and providing no rehabilitation.


The resulting criminal activity in the neighbourhood is something that is deplored widely by constituents of mine and, I'm sure, constituents of the minister. That has a real impact on public safety. So once again, the idea that this deregulatory initiative had no impact on public safety is just not borne out.


A further area of the so-called impact of deregulation was in the Employment Standards Act. Prof. Mark Thompson, a professor in the faculty of commerce at UBC…. There were federal-provincial teams that did random inspection of farms. When there was a tragic highway accident near Abbotsford that killed three farmworkers, that issue came to light.


As a result of that, the inspections diminished. Unfortunately, once again some people suffered as a result, because there was no sense that inspections would disclose failure to comply with the basic safety regulations. So that, again, has been changed after some painful experiences and fatal accidents which have transformed many lives here in the province.


Further issues of safety have been raised. This is another example of the impact of the deregulatory process: Bill 75, which is the Significant Projects Streamlining Act — although it has never been used, to my understanding. It was a measure that proposed to override municipal and regional district decisions in an effort to expedite certain development projects. That's a measure of the temper of the times.


Now, the minister mentions the regulations that he speaks of. He mentioned a figure. He was quoted back in 2003 as saying that there was a total of almost 4,404. A year later he announced, with not a lot of proof, that the number of unnecessary regulations now stood at over 60,000.


He had claimed that the number of regulations that he cut went from 440,000 down to 382,000, and then he still had the target of reducing it another 127,000 regulations. So this was a moving target. The method by which these regulations were supposedly reduced was never clear.


[1735]

There is a proliferation of figures from his successor, the Deregulation Minister, Rick Thorpe, who also said that the government had cut the red tape by 42.8 percent, or 164,000 regulations. On January 11 the Finance Minister — not this Finance Minister but the previous one — issued a news release that claimed regulations had been cut by 42 percent, down 360 to a precise 206,345.


I think the point here is that there is a very loose, if that is the way to put it, calculation of regulatory requirements. Just what they are is not entirely clear. The method by which they were made to disappear is not clear and, certainly, a real disparity between even ministers as to how many there were and how many were
[ Page 8743 ]
reduced, which speaks, I think, to the essentially political purpose of this — simply to throw a big number out there and claim that you have reduced it in the aid of a political project, rather than measuring any real impact upon people or communities.


These issues of the impact of reductions in forest safety, in recovery houses, on the Ministry of Children and Families winning the deregulation award, were real events that took place, weren't simply statistical blips, and they had a real impact on British Columbians. So when the minister claims that this is simply about instituting a report, I think he really does gloss over the history of what this particular approach has been used to justify here in the province of British Columbia.


No one begrudges…. Certainly, sometimes the popular image is created of regulation being filling out too many forms. No one here or, I think, anywhere would want to impose unnecessary forms upon citizens when they deal with government. But what happened during the process was that real regulations that impacted upon safety, health and environmental concerns were stripped away. That wasn't good for anyone, and that is contrary to what is now claimed.


I suppose the minister understandably wants to ignore that, gloss over it and not deal with it, but that is the reality. The approach of identifying regulation as simply too many forms is not one that I think really withstands any scrutiny. There's quite a bit more that went on over the course of the last ten years than just getting rid of a few forms. I suppose the forms were counted as a regulatory requirement.


I'm told that one of the ways of counting regulatory requirements was if, on a form, there was a requirement for name, address and perhaps age. Then, in the computer screen, that was merged into one field, and those three so-called regulatory requirements would become one. That was a way of reducing the count. It was a bit of a shell game when it came to actually engaging in reducing the numbers, and there wasn't a lot of transparency about what was taking place, in any event.


The minister comes to us and says: "This is important work. I want authority here to publish a report." He has that authority. He can publish a report at any time. He has the power of a minister of the Crown. He can direct that a report be published. There is no requirement that there be legislation.


I suppose it's interesting that just recently, in one of the on-line magazines, there was a note about the information and privacy act, where there is a requirement to publish a report under section 68. Apparently, a report hasn't been published for at least ten years, so the fact that in legislation there is now a requirement to publish a report doesn't mean it will be necessarily adhered to.


That's certainly not the case in the information and privacy act — an annual report. But all kinds of agencies or boards…. The proliferation of government agencies publish annual reports without a strict piece of legislation requiring them to do so.


[1740]

This is a good example of unnecessary regulation — the idea that this report requires the full force of legislation in order to get it done. The minister, I suppose, doesn't really want to appreciate the irony of that, but that's certainly how I see it. It's hard to oppose the publication of a report, so I certainly don't oppose that, but I just don't see why legislation is necessary to do it.


Madam Speaker, there are other speakers who will follow me. There is some interest on this side to focus on the minister's claim that regulation was not changed or altered in a way that affected health, safety and environmental standards here in the province. That just isn't the case, and there will be other speakers who will follow me, who will make that point in subsequent speeches.


With that, I end my comments.


C. James: I rise to speak to Bill 7, second reading, the bill that requires, as the member before me has said, the minister to annually publish a report respecting the government's regulatory reform initiatives.


I want to just start there, for a moment, to speak about how extraordinary it is that we have a piece of legislation to require a minister to publish a report. I think our previous speaker mentioned the fact that it may speak volumes about the government's lack of an agenda for the Legislature.


I think that may be true, but perhaps it also speaks to the lack of trust that the public has in the government that the minister and the government actually feel they have to bring forward legislation to require them to do something on behalf of the public. That may have more to do with the fact that the public just doesn't trust them to get things done than it does anything else.


I think it's quite extraordinary to see our time and a full legislative piece brought forward simply for something that the minister could do anyway. I think it's also interesting that this is the priority that the B.C. Liberals have decided to bring forward for a piece of legislation, when you think of all of the priorities that are out there.


Now, I believe it's important for us to take a look at reducing red tape. I've certainly had discussions in my community with small business owners and others who have talked about the challenges of running a small business and the difficulties of being a small business owner and having to meet a number of different regulations, not all from the provincial level — in fact, many of them municipal requirements, federal requirements, provincial requirements. So I'm a believer in taking a look at how we streamline the process for our small business partners and others who keep our economy going.


Is simply publishing a report based on the count of regulations going to do that? I don't think so. I don't think simply publishing a report is going to accomplish
[ Page 8744 ]
what we should be looking at, which is how we make it easier for people in British Columbia to be able to operate — many of our small business owners, who have family businesses, who don't have a lot of employees and who are caught up in having to get all the paperwork and other things done. I think there are ways of doing that without simply counting regulations, putting a report forward and saying: "We've now taken care of it."


I mentioned the other areas. I heard the minister say he felt it was important to bring in this legislation because it would make a statement that other governments, if they happened to come in, would have to undo to be able to take away — that it would make a very clear statement. Well, I find it interesting that this is the area the B.C. Liberals have picked, when you think of all of the areas we could look at bringing legislation in, to require current governments and future governments to do.


I certainly think that if we were looking at legislation in this Legislature, wouldn't it be wonderful if we saw legislation brought in to eliminate poverty? Wouldn't that be amazing legislation? And wouldn't it be wonderful to see that as a non-partisan issue? So it wouldn't matter if government changed and you actually had a government in place that would be required to withdraw legislation to say that they didn't want to eliminate child poverty. Well, that would have been a piece of legislation to cheer in this Legislature.


[1745]

I look back on previous legislation around child care that has been actually passed in this Legislature and was taken away by the B.C. Liberals. There's another piece of legislation that could have been looked at to be brought in, in this Legislature, which actually would have said that child care was something that was important and should be looked at in the Legislature. I can think of a long list of things to hand over to the minister, if he was looking at legislation to bring in that would be important and time that could have been taken on that, when this could simply have been a report — an important report, a progress report to the public every year — that could have happened anyway.


I also want to speak for a moment on the issue of fair, sensible regulations, commonsense regulations. I think that's the real worry and the real crux of concerns around simply counting regulations as a way of trying to show that you've reduced red tape and reduced regulations.


As the previous speaker said — and I'm going to go into a few of those areas — we've seen the B.C. Liberals use reducing regulations in the wrong way. We've seen the impact right here in our province of using reducing regulations in the wrong way.


If you take a look at the issue of employment and health and safety, I think the issue that will always stand out for me, which had one of the most devastating impacts in British Columbia, was the reduction of regulations for farmworkers in our province — farmworkers who are vulnerable, some who may have language issues.


Because of deregulation and reducing red tape and reducing regulations, part of the count that the B.C. Liberals brought forward was taking away hours of work for farmworkers; taking away overtime; taking away statutory holidays; and taking away safety checks on vans, a reduction in regulation that proved fatal and that was an awful incident, an awful piece of history in British Columbia.


That's one of the worst examples of what can happen when you simply count regulations and red tape and start reducing them. That's not the kind of reduction in regulations that I believe British Columbians want. In fact, they want to make sure that the health and safety of workers are there.


Having met with some of those families and some of the injured workers, I can tell you that those families expected that when their loved ones went to work that day, they would return home that night. Those are the kinds of regulations we need to have in place. Those aren't the kinds of regulations I want to see as part of a count in a one-year report that comes at the end of the year.


There are a whole number of workers' issues — and I know some of our other speakers, as well, will speak to that — whether it's the forest industry or construction industry or others, where you need those regulations in place to be able to keep workers safe. Those regulations also, then, spur things like health and safety training. Having those regulations in place means the employer is responsible for health and safety training for the employees. That's a critical piece that we can't lose.


The whole issue of child labour is a whole other issue of deregulation, where we used to have very clear regulations in place when a child was working — there were exceptions, always, for children who were working in the film industry or otherwise — about getting permission from the school to be able to take time off to be able to go to work, permission from their parents. There were clear regulations in place. There were requirements to protect the child — to protect the health and safety and the education and the well-being of the child.


Well, the government deregulated that. They made it easier for children to go to work. We now have one of the worst child labour laws in the country here in British Columbia because of deregulation. And I'm sure it was one of the counts that the minister talked about earlier. When he talked about counting regulations, I'm sure it was added in, in the count, but I don't believe most British Columbians see that as a positive step in British Columbia. That's a regulation that would have mattered, that could have been kept and should have been kept and in place.


Then there's the whole area of environmental regulations. This is another area where there are grave concerns about the government simply looking at a count as a way
[ Page 8745 ]
of dealing with regulations. We have a number of areas that should be worked on right now — things like cosmetic pesticides, where there is a committee in place.


[1750]

There's a committee that's looking at cosmetic pesticides and what to do in our province. The public is behind this issue, saying they want a ban. In fact, many municipalities across the province have already banned cosmetic pesticides. Well, that committee would probably come forward with regulations that would protect the health and safety and the environment in our communities.


Surely we wouldn't want to see, simply because of a piece of legislation that requires a report in this bill, that you wouldn't bring forward sensible regulations, like cosmetic pesticides, that would actually address the challenges the public wants addressed.


Similarly with endangered species. We on this side of the House have been pushing for legislation around endangered species, an endangered species act. That would require regulations — regulations that would ensure we protected endangered species in British Columbia. Surely that would be a direction where you would want to make sure those regulations were in place and that you wouldn't see it as simply a count, as part of the report that you see in Bill 7.


The other piece would be the protection of watersheds — things that happen during forest practices, mining practices. We saw a lot, through deregulation, where the government simply handed over the responsibility to the companies and said: "You take care of it. It's up to you. You look after the environment when it comes to forest practices and mining practices."


Well, in some cases that worked, and in other cases there were real challenges, particularly without anyone from government and ministry keeping an eye on what was going on, without the regulations that gave them the ability to go out in the field and keep track of protecting our watersheds and protecting our environment. That's a huge concern.


The other area is the area of children and families. The previous speaker spoke about the issue of the Children's Commission and the challenge there and also the issue of drug and alcohol facilities, rehab facilities that are unregulated. Those are concerns.


The member raised the concerns that have come from the mayor of Surrey, but we've heard those concerns around the province — that without some kind of regulation, all kinds of abuse has potential for happening, without some kind of check and balance, which is what regulations are. They provide that check and balance. It raises all kinds of worries and concerns.


The other culture that ends up being created by looking at deregulation for the sake of deregulation. It creates a culture of: "Let's not look at monitoring because it would mean adding a regulation." We saw that in the issue of children and families, where Child in the Home of a Relative was a program that was in place. The B.C. Liberals decided they didn't need to monitor those homes. They didn't need to check on those homes before children were put in those homes.


I'm certain that when you look at a culture of deregulation and you don't want to add to your numbers that might be in a report at the end of the year, you think: "Well, maybe we don't need to check. Maybe we didn't need to look at those homes." Again, that's an issue that the government was forced to reverse on because of the push out there and because of the worry from people that you would in fact see tragedies occur without those checks and balances, without the monitoring. Commonsense, straightforward regulations are necessary to make sure we protect the most vulnerable in our province.


The other area is education. We have seen post-secondary education, private institutions, deregulated, not required to be able to be regulated. What has that meant? It's meant that we've seen students who have been vulnerable to private post-secondary institutions closing their doors and walking away, with the students left holding the bag, with no education and owing money to the institution. That's what deregulation has ended up bringing in, and that's a huge concern.


Just the last piece I want to touch on before I turn it over to my colleagues is what I think of as kind of the worst of deregulation, or the combination of deregulation, that happened under the B.C. Liberals. That is the Significant Projects Streamlining Act that was brought in by the B.C. Liberals.


This was an act that basically gave the right to government to override any other bill and law and bylaw that might be in place provincially or municipally. If the government, the B.C. Liberals, decided a project was important, they had the right to run roughshod over every other piece of legislation that was in place.


[1755]

Municipalities spoke out. Mayors and councils and citizens spoke out to try and ensure that their right to set a regulation and put it in place to be able to protect their community and the community they had…. It was completely ignored by this government when they brought in that legislation.


The minister of the day said: "We're not going to let process and red tape get in the way." Well, sometimes process is important. Sometimes regulation is important. When it comes to the health and safety and well-being of British Columbians, of children and the most vulnerable, I'll take a regulation any day. I'll take a regulation any day for the health and safety of our citizens in British Columbia.


While this piece of legislation comes forward — and we're certainly not going to dispute the right for the minister to bring in a report; he could do it anyway,
[ Page 8746 ]
whether the legislation was there or not — I think the bigger piece for us to watch and for British Columbians to pay attention to is: what does government mean when they're looking at reducing red tape and regulation? Let's not see further tragedies, as we've seen under the last ten years of the B.C. Liberals through their drive to get rid of regulations for the sake of getting rid of regulations, instead of looking at protecting British Columbians.


D. Routley: I'm pleased to be able to stand up and speak to this bill, which would seek to make it mandatory to report on the progress, if we wish to call it progress, in deregulating the province of British Columbia.


As previous speakers have pointed out, there in fact is nothing that stops the minister from currently doing just that — to report regularly, annually or however often the minister might choose, on his progress towards deregulation of the province. The minister himself has said that the focus of this bill is essentially to guarantee that future governments would have a more difficult time in reversing that course. And that makes a very big assumption. It makes the assumption that all deregulation is good deregulation. The history of the B.C. Liberals, when it comes to deregulation, is one that's painted with the blood of workers. It is a tragedy in the history of British Columbia.


Having been a small business owner, I dealt with the frustrations of importing and exporting products across international boundaries, from Asia and across into the U.S. And yes, there were regulations that seemed rather pointless and were troublesome to me. I would like to have seen some of those removed. The problem is that a wholesale move to rip at the guts of regulations in a jurisdiction like British Columbia without due consideration is one that is bound not only for failure but to result in tragedy. That is in fact exactly what we saw in this province.


In this province, where so much of our economy is based on heavy industry, undertaking this kind of broad-scale tearing of regulatory regimes is guaranteed to create a disruption in workplaces that will result in tragedy. And it did. It did. Without understanding the real-world effect of the deregulations that this government made when they first came to office, they were able, with their conscience intact, to say that they were just simply going to reduce regulation by 30 percent, an arbitrary number that was followed up by arbitrary actions that resulted in tragedy for B.C. workers.


I worked for some time in the forest industry, and I know that it's an industry that is fraught with peril for workers, where the workers are routinely put in positions of extreme hazard as a matter of course every working day. When a logger works with a tree, we're talking about thousands and thousands of tonnes of material being moved by the force of its own gravity with the limited control of a human being, aided by machinery. That is a recipe for disaster without a culture of safety, and a culture of safety had evolved in this province over generations.


[1800]

The pressure that would drive workers into dangerous situations comes from both sides of the equation. The obvious pressure from the employer is to make more profit, to drive production higher, to cut corners, to speed up production at any cost. The pressure from the worker's side is to be the fastest, to be the bravest, to be proud. There's bravado, particularly in the logging industry.


I worked as a logger. I set chokers for some time, and I remember one situation in particular. When I was fairly greenhorn at the job, I was asked to set a choker around a very big tree. I was downhill from that tree and digging under the tree to find the bead of the choker. That's the ball end of the choker that wraps around the tree and cinches up onto the log. When the log is dragged down the hill by a machine, it's an incredible force that will devastate anything in its path. I found myself with my arm under that log, digging for that ball at the end of the cable, with my cheek against the tree, and I can still remember the feeling of the bark and the smell of the moss on that tree. It shifted. It began to move.


I was lucky. I stand here, because it stopped. Had it not stopped, I likely would have been killed. I took a chance. I was downhill of a tree that wasn't secure. I had people around me, experienced workers, who warned me. I was brought into a culture of safety. But when the B.C. Liberals ripped at the guts of the regulations in the forest industry, they tore out the essential connections between workers and employers.


They created a contracted-out scenario where most fallers, in particular, worked as single-person companies. There was no longer that culture of safety, the joint health and safety committees, where workers and employers sat at the table equally and discussed how they could correct this culture and bring safety to the workplace. Those were gone. A culture of safety that was developed over decades and decades, over generations, was ripped apart by the actions of this government, and people died. People died as a result of it.


The Finance Minister and Deputy Premier who brought this forward is the same minister who, when I in question period asked questions about logger safety, replied with a boo-hoo. That was his attitude. That was his dismissiveness to what he was doing. It was disgraceful.


As the previous speaker, the member from Beacon Hill, pointed out, there are so many other issues much more important than this that could be brought forward for legislative debate in this chamber today. Instead, this minister is trying to make a statement, a political statement, by bringing into legislation something that he's clearly able to do without that measure. It shows that very little has been learned.

[ Page 8747 ]

With those pressures — profit, on the side of the employer, the understandable pressure that needs to be managed; the pressure to succeed and to fit in and to be brave on the job of a logger…. Well, those two pressures released…. Without those controlling and capturing factors of a culture of safety, they were released, and people died as a result.


The onus was transferred from employers onto employees for the outcomes of safety. Companies became self-reporting. Rick Doman, the former CEO of Western Forest Products, asked our caucus, when he was talking about this issue: "How many of you would issue your own speeding tickets?" It's a good question. How many people would issue their own speeding tickets? That's what this government asked industry to do. That's kind of a humorous way to phrase it, but it was far beyond humour. The outcome was far beyond humour.


My partner, Leanne Finlayson, and several other people who were related to people working in the forest industry formed a group called the Vancouver Island Loggers Safety Support Group that lobbied this government for changes to bring back the regulations that would protect their loved ones.


[1805]

Logging truck drivers were forced into situations where they drove unsafe vehicles, where they had to misreport their driver logs in order to compete, in order to stay in business. The pressure was extraordinary, and people paid with their lives. The deregulation of forest roads so they no longer needed to be engineered; culvert standards were dispensed with. Logging truck drivers paid with their lives for that deregulation.


That is the result. That is the real-world result of a government action that is taken without due consideration, without understanding the real effect on the ground. That self-reporting and that deregulation resulted in a 45 percent reduction in workplace inspections. What would be the obvious outcome of that in an industry that is dealing with such extraordinary forces, such extraordinary dangers? Well, it resulted in an extraordinary increase in worker deaths and injuries.


The government members don't have to take my word for it. They can take the word of the coroner's inquest into the death of faller Ted Gramlich. I sat through all five days of that inquest, and I heard all of the people who were present when Ted Gramlich died. I heard from the experts who talked about how deregulation had impacted that fateful day. I heard from his wife, who told the coroner how her experience had been in this terrible tragedy. They don't need to take my word for it. They can take the coroner's word for it.


Ted Gramlich was under pressure to perform. Ted Gramlich made a mistake. Ted Gramlich placed himself in a position of risk. But what Ted Gramlich didn't know was that at the beginning of the day there had been a notice go out that helicopters, air ambulance, couldn't fly.


Now, before deregulation, before each faller was in a separate company, the company would be responsible for ensuring that all of its workers knew that help was not on the way. Ted didn't know that. His partner didn't know that. They attempted to radio for help, but their radios weren't communicating properly. His partner had to walk several kilometres to a pickup truck to find first-aid equipment. In the meantime Ted was under a tree, bleeding, for an hour and a half before he died.


People in that coroner's inquest who were asked to give expert testimony said that he could well have survived had he been tended to within the golden hour, that extraordinarily important hour after a traumatic injury. But Ted wasn't taken care of, and Ted died. No one checked.


The cruel irony in this was that, based on the deregulation that the Liberals brought in, in terms of worker safety, Ted Gramlich, as a one-person company, was in effect responsible to investigate his own death, if the regulations as they existed after the dismantling were fully followed through, which of course is a ridiculous irony.


I think the government needs to check itself. I think that this is something that the minister could obviously do without legislation, but he's chosen to make a statement, just like the statement that they would tear way 30 percent of the regulations.


Radio talk show host Rafe Mair, when he was talking about probability, was talking about the probability of the fish dying as a result of the Kemano 2 completion project that had been proposed. He said that the company said there was a 1-in-5,000 chance that there would be a release of overly heated water into the river at a time when the fish were spawning, and that that would kill off the salmon run. So that was an acceptable risk.


Well, Rafe Mair pointed out that probability is only certainty unproven. If you're playing Russian roulette with a gun with six chambers or a gun with 5,000 chambers, it matters not. It only may determine the length of time until you find the bullet.


[1810]

His argument was that if we engage in a practice that carries with it a probability of harm, a risk, we need to be responsible for that decision — that the B.C. Liberal decision to tear away a regulatory regime in heavy industry carried with it a probable outcome.


[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]


Mr. Speaker: Sorry to interrupt you, Member, but the Lieutenant-Governor is in the House, so if you'd take your seat.


D. Routley moved adjournment of debate.


Motion approved.

[ Page 8748 ]

Mr. Speaker: Now we'll wait for the arrival of the Lieutenant-Governor.


His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor entered the chamber and took his seat on the throne.


Royal Assent to Bills


Deputy Clerk:


Flathead Watershed Area Conservation Act


Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2011


Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Statutes Amendment Act, 2011


Natural Resource Compliance Act


Greater Vancouver Transit Enhancement Act


Teachers Act


In Her Majesty's name, His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor doth assent to these acts.


His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor retired from the chamber.


[1815]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]


Hon. R. Coleman moved adjournment of the House.


Motion approved.


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


The House adjourned at 6:16 p.m.

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