2013 Legislative Session: Fifth Session, 39th Parliament
HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 43, Number 2

ISSN 0709-1281 (Print)
ISSN 1499-2175 (Online)

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2013

The House met at 1:35 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

L. Reid: I have two wonderful guests in the gallery today. Dr. Andrea Mann, global relations coordinator, Office of the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, has joined us; and Rev. Margaret Cornish, rector of St. Alban. St. Alban is actually a community church in Richmond. It offers the community meal, offers the emergency cold-wet weather beds, and it offers a day program which, frankly, continues to build the city of Richmond. I'd ask the House to please join me in welcoming two wonderful women and two dear friends.

Thank you very much for joining us.

D. Thorne: I would like to introduce Anna McClean to the Legislature. She's a new resident of Victoria. She's working for the well-known environmental group Leadnow. I've known Anna since before she was born, actually. Very good friends of her mom and dad for a long, long time. Would the House please make Anna very welcome.

M. McNeil: I would like to ask the House to help me recognize and welcome Joe Belfontaine, Matthew Mackenzie and Kim Reynhoudt from Canadian Tire, who have joined us today. Joe and Matthew are out visiting us from Toronto, and Kim is a local dealer here in Victoria.

Canadian Tire's 183 locations, including Sport Chek and Mark's in British Columbia, have some 5,500 full- and part-time employees here in the province.

Today is also the third anniversary of the closing of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, and I would like to congratulate Canadian Tire on their recent sponsorship agreement with the Canadian Olympic team and thank them for their support of our athletes.

D. Routley: I'd like to introduce two friends from Parksville. Bernard and June Atkinson are joining us. They grew up in Bedfordshire, England.

In 1956, after World War II, Mr. Atkinson, being a professional engineer, came to Canada, taking a job with Canadair, which is now de Havilland. Interestingly, Mr. Atkinson had a chance to work for Avro at the time and would have worked on the Avro Arrow. They have four children. Mrs. Atkinson was a stay-at-home mom but took every course she could, and she calls herself a jack of all trades. I think a jill of all trades might be more fitting. Can the House please help me make them welcome to the B.C. Legislature.

J. McIntyre: I have a very special guest and friend in the gallery today — a three-term mayor of Pemberton, Jordan Sturdy. Please stand up and take a bow.

Jordan and his wife own a very successful agritourism business in Pemberton, when he's not being the mayor. He was successfully nominated as the B.C. Liberal candidate in the upcoming election for West Vancouver–Sea to Sky, so I'd like to see him down from the gallery and into the House very soon.

Hon. D. McRae: Today in the House we are joined by leaders from the K'ómoks First Nation. I'd like to introduce Chief Rob Everson, Melissa Hardy and Ken Price. Richard Hardy is here as well. We're also joined today by their legal counsel, Mark Stevenson. K'ómoks First Nation, I think, is one of the very most progressive bands in British Columbia, and I'm proud to say they are here today to visit a number of ministers. Would the House please make them welcome.

M. Mungall: I'd like to introduce the House to Jan Porter-Hirsche, who is up in the public gallery. She has presented the last two weeks to the opposition women's caucus the findings from her master's thesis — very, very compelling and very interesting work that she's done. So may the House please make her welcome.

G. Hogg: In the gallery today we are joined by nine distinctively well-dressed, fun-loving women. They are members of the Red Hat Society, whose primary purpose is to have social interaction and positive bonding. Would the House please welcome Lenny Moore, Margaret Goethe, HelanAnne Roston, Janet McAlpine, Michelle Watts, Mary Ann Wickmam, Erma Lees, Linda Morris and fellow Semiahmoo alumnus Fran Jeal.

[1340]

Introduction and
First Reading of Bills

BILL 16 — POOLED REGISTERED PENSION
PLANS ACT

Hon. M. de Jong presented a message from His Honour the Administrator: a bill intituled Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act.

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

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: I am pleased to introduce the Pooled
[ Page 13184 ]
Registered Pension Plans Act. For the past four years British Columbia has been working with the federal government and other provinces to develop changes to the pension system in Canada and to help British Columbians and all Canadians have adequate retirement income.

Last December the federal government brought legislation into force to implement a framework for pooled registered pension plans, or PRPPs. In fact, today in the assembly, Minister of State for Finance Ted Menzies is here, and I know the members join me in welcoming him and thanking him for the work he and his colleagues in the federal government have done to make this possible and begin to create that network.

PRPPs are intended to make well-regulated, large-scale, low-cost pension plans available to millions of Canadians who have no other option to become pension plan members, especially employees of small and medium-sized businesses and the self-employed. This bill will make the PRPP pension option available to B.C. workers in conjunction with the federal government and other jurisdictions.

It will enable national pooling of asset management and administrative functions and large economies of scale, which reduce the cost of pension products, and a cross-Canada product will enable the members to move their pensions with them when they change jobs.

Under this bill the provision of PRPPs by employers will be voluntary. If an employer chooses to offer a PRPP to its employees, they would automatically be enrolled with the option, the right, to opt out. Employer contributions are optional.

We're the first in the country and taking the lead in presenting this additional savings option to British Columbians.

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, Pooled Registered Pension Plans 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 M204 — ELECTION FINANCE
AMENDMENT ACT, 2013

V. Huntington presented a bill intituled Election Finance Amendment Act, 2013.

V. Huntington: I move that the bill be introduced now and read for the first time.

Motion approved.

V. Huntington: I am pleased to introduce the Election Finance Amendment Act in concert with my colleagues from Cariboo North and Abbotsford South. The act is the second pillar in our agenda of democratic reform, and we trust will be of interest to all members of this House. Certainly, it is important to the voters of this province.

The Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court commented: "The integrity of an election to…high…office must be guarded with assiduity." We agree absolutely with that truth.

Yet we also know that the Times Colonist was absolutely correct when it said: "In this province there are no rules to break…. The Wild West approach to campaign donations fuels public cynicism and invites special interest groups with lots of money to buy political influence." That is also the truth, and our voters know it.

British Columbia has the dubious distinction of being the largest Canadian province with no restrictions on who finances our political campaigns. While other jurisdictions have tightened the requirement on buying into the political process, B.C. has yet to act. Unlimited corporate, union and even out-of-province donations remain the norm.

There is a public conviction that money talks, that democracy is increasingly bankrolled by special interests. It is a conviction that undermines not only the very legitimacy of our democracy but also our trust in the institutions of democracy.

This bill reasserts the principles of our democratic values by limiting the right to donate to the very people of British Columbia we report to — the individual voter. The Election Finance Amendment Act is a practical change that will show all British Columbians that we honour their vote, and we will be accountable to them and only to them.

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, Election Finance Amendment Act, 2013, 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)

NEW WESTMINSTER CHAPTER
OF PEO INTERNATIONAL

D. Black: I am pleased to speak about a women's group based in New Westminster which has been helping other women for 100 years.

[1345]

Chapter B of the Philanthropic Educational Organization, more commonly known as the PEO Sisterhood, was formed on June 20, 1913, in New Westminster. They were the second chapter of this international non-profit
[ Page 13185 ]
organization to be established in Canada.

The founding members were demonstrating their commitment to the advancement of women even before they had the right to vote. The PEO promotes the education of women by raising funds for scholarships, grants, awards and loans. Internationally the sisterhood supports Cottey College, an independent liberal arts and sciences women's college in Nevada, Missouri.

For more than 126 years the college has offered young women the opportunity to learn and grow into leaders, role models and confident individuals. Chapter B's local projects reflect the same, as the group provides bursaries for women at both Douglas College and at Kwantlen University. They also provide a bursary for a sight-impaired student at the University of British Columbia, and in 2008 they began sponsoring a $1,000 bursary at the University of Northern B.C. in Prince George.

The group's main fundraiser is an annual fashion show which is being held on April 17 at Morgan Creek Golf Club.

There are 35 chapters of the PEO Sisterhood in B.C., with almost 800 members. All the chapters organize activities year-round to raise funds to support other women, to celebrate their achievements and to promote their education. They focus on leadership development for women and also motivate each other to achieve their highest aspirations.

I ask all members of the House to join me to offer congratulations and thanks to the women of PEO Chapter B on their 100 years of community service in New Westminster.

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

J. Thornthwaite: On March 8 we celebrate International Women's Day. This day has been observed for over 100 years and honours women's advancements in society, while recognizing the many barriers we've had to overcome and continue to encounter. From demanding better pay and voting rights to participating in public office, women's actions are constantly promoting gender equality in our ever-changing society.

As an MLA, I'm proud to have the opportunity to represent my constituency and province alongside my male colleagues. Although we have come a long way from a hundred years, women around the world continue to face many challenges.

Violence against women is also a common problem worldwide, including North America. In B.C. we are addressing the issue by funding programs, such as Stopping the Violence counselling, to address violence in relationships. Also in B.C. we encourage women to enter the trades and pursue the career of their choice, to reach their full potential. These are just a few of the examples of how we are supporting women in the province. And we're not just celebrating women but, also, the men that support women's struggle to achieve equality.

There are many events occurring throughout the province on International Women's Day. I encourage you to join with your community and celebrate together. You can also honour your mom, your friend, sister, wife, daughter and other important women in your life by celebrating their achievements and showing you care.

READY TO RENT B.C. ASSOCIATION
HOUSING EDUCATION PROGRAM

R. Fleming: I'm pleased today to talk about an extremely valuable non-profit society located in my constituency of Victoria–Swan Lake. It's called Ready to Rent B.C., and it's a relatively new non-profit in the capital regional district.

Ready to Rent B.C. started as a collaboration of 11 advocacy agencies in September 2011 and registered as a non-profit society that year. It arose from the concern of many social service, community and housing agencies about families who lack stable housing in our community.

It takes a housing-education approach that offers short curriculum programs for people who need to find housing or assistance in keeping housing. The educational program is two hours a week and runs for six weeks. Topics include: rights and responsibilities of renters, fire safety, budgeting, credit and debt, communication skills and a host of other things.

The course makes these heavy responsibilities fun and informative, and participants identify their own housing problems and are given the support they need to find their own solutions. The desired outcome is to help each person get the best housing situation possible for them. This course is especially useful for people who either have no housing references or who have had housing troubles in their past and need a good reference.

[1350]

Ready to Rent's beginnings nearly four years ago have produced 530 graduates with another 500 people completing individual classes or modules on credit and debt. Most participants are families, primarily single mothers, but many young singles as well. It's my understanding that both the non-profit and for-profit housing providers are involved, and a graduation certificate can be used in lieu of a reference letter.

It's worth noting that all of the landlords that are involved have reported great success with Ready to Rent tenants, and this success has led to other communities now looking at what Victoria is doing about offering Ready to Rent courses in their communities.

I invite all members of this House to join me to thank the staff and volunteers at Ready to Rent for the many hours of vital work they contribute in my community and for the important work they do in their efforts to assist people to secure and maintain safe and affordable housing.
[ Page 13186 ]

COLORECTAL CANCER
AWARENESS AND PREVENTION

R. Lee: March is colorectal cancer month in Canada, and it's a great opportunity for every British Columbian to learn more about preventing, treating and surviving our country's third most common form of cancer. The risk of colorectal cancer rises with age, and it's further increased if there's a family history of colorectal cancer or if there's a history of excessive alcohol consumption, a high-fat diet, smoking or obesity.

This year close to 3,000 British Columbians will be diagnosed with the disease, which is now the second leading cause of death from cancer in men and women. The good news is that it is highly survivable if detected early. In fact, if detected at its earliest stage, the survival rate jumps to about 90 percent.

To get more British Columbians engaged in early detection, the B.C. government has created the colorectal cancer screening program. Set to launch on April 1 of this year, the program will encourage early detection by referring patients between the ages of 50 and 74 for a screening test once every two years. Patients with a family history of the disease will be referred to their original health authority for a colonoscopy and will have access to a coordinator who will ensure that they get the help they need.

This is just one of the many ways we are helping and encouraging British Columbians to take control of their health. Through education and proactive initiatives like the new screening program, we will ensure a healthier future for all British Columbians.

FESTIVAL DU BOIS

D. Thorne: It's that time of year again. It's Festival du Bois time, so it's my pleasure today to talk a little bit about the French festival. I know I've done it many times before, but it never gets old.

Over the years Coquitlam has become a thriving multicultural city, but our roots definitely began in the French-Canadian village of Maillardville. With the help of such well-respected organizations as Société francophone de Maillardville, the francophone culture continues to flourish in Coquitlam. The Festival du Bois is one of Coquitlam's most popular annual events. This year marks the 24th edition of this unique and extraordinary cultural experience.

Thousands of people, residents and visitors alike, will flock to Maillardville to immerse themselves in the history and heritage that make Maillardville so unique. The vibrant music, theatrical presentations, and traditional and delicious French-Canadian food keep people returning year after year.

The Festival du Bois has become a vital and historical celebration, a tradition in and of itself. The visibility of Maillardville increases every year, opening up many new opportunities for tourism and culture in Coquitlam.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to join me in Coquitlam on March 2 and 3 at Mackin Park on Brunette Avenue. The fun is contagious, and you'll soon be tapping your toes to the fiddle music as you dig into tourtière, poutine and maple sugar pie. Our rich history awaits you and your family this Saturday and Sunday, so I hope to see everybody there.

[1355]

PROGRESSIVE INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNITY SERVICES SOCIETY

D. Hayer: What began as a dream 25 years ago has become one of the most successful and effective support agencies in the province, helping immigrants to transition into the new homeland and providing employment assistance, housing and so many other services.

The dream that became reality was developed by Charan Gill, who has steered Progressive Intercultural Community Services Society, PICS into one of B.C.'s largest immigrant service agencies, from a financial startup of just $80 provided by $10 donations by Charan and seven of his friends. From a one-man operation, Charan Gill, PICS now has more than 100 staff members and hundreds of volunteers who provide services to thousands of British Columbians and throughout Canada.

Because of the remarkable assistance to immigrants who have chosen Canada and British Columbia as their new homeland, PICS is now recognized internationally for its great work across all cultural boundaries. There is a program or a course of help for everyone's needs, whether it is housing, finding a job, service for seniors and for families, transition services, translation services, help with passports, financial support or help for domestic abuse victims. The list is endless.

It is all available to everyone, free of charge, through PICS, and it all began in Surrey, realizing the dream of Charan Gill to help others.

I ask all members in the House to please join me in congratulating and thanking PICS CEO Charan Gill, all of the staff and all the volunteer board of directors, as well as president Mohinder Kang, vice-president Roger Elmes, treasurer Paramjit Aulakh, secretary Saran Randhawa, past president Jay Minhas and all of the society's volunteers for over 25 incredible, valuable years of service to the people of British Columbia and to our nation.

Oral Questions

MULTICULTURAL OUTREACH
STRATEGY AND PARTISAN ACTIVITIES
BY GOVERNMENT STAFF

J. Horgan: Yesterday we revealed in this House a Liberal government plan to blur the lines between partisan activity and public service.
[ Page 13187 ]

The opposition has obtained today another set of e-mails from a Mr. Brian Bonney, then the director of communications for multiculturalism, instructing partisan organizers that were hired in September to use back channels when they reported out to their superior in the public service. If you'll indulge me, I'll read from the e-mail from Mr. Bonney to a host of people, including some of the contractors that were hired in the ministry of Multiculturalism.

It says, in bold: "Please do not send them to him" — referring to Mark Seeley, the manager or the director of the multicultural unit — "using the form we sent you!!! You will have to send the info" — brackets — "just the basic info. Do not" — large font, large capitals — "include everything we asked for in e-mails to him. Feel free to use the format you like, but do not use the form we asked you to use " — from Mr. Bonney.

We get a response to one of the contractors from Mr. Seeley on the 18th of September that says the following: "I remind all communications must go through me, not directly to the minister's office. Also note that your contract is with the provincial government and not a political organization."

My question is to the Minister for Multiculturalism. How in the world can you justify having under your employ an individual who is circumventing the Public Service Act and counselling people to avoid their responsibilities to the Crown? How do you justify that?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, I want to read to the members opposite a statement released by the Premier just before question period today.

"I have now had the opportunity to read the draft outreach document, and I want to sincerely apologize to British Columbians. The document did not recognize that there are lines that cannot be crossed in conducting this outreach, and it is unacceptable. The language in this draft document and some of the recommendations are absolutely inappropriate.

"As such, I'm asking my deputy minister to conduct a review to ensure that no government resources were inappropriately used. When that report is complete, it will determine what further actions may be taken.

"Every community in British Columbia contributes to the rich diversity of our province and the very fabric of who we are. We need to embrace and respect that. As a government, we have the responsibility to reach out to every community to ensure that they are engaged and understand the services that are available to them."

The Premier has apologized. My caucus and I also apologize for this particular incident.

Mr. Speaker: The Opposition House Leader has a supplemental.

[1400]

INVESTIGATION INTO PARTISAN
ACTIVITIES RELATING TO
MULTICULTURAL OUTREACH STRATEGY

J. Horgan: I appreciate that the document called for apologies to be quick wins, but we didn't expect them to be in question period. We expected the government to be responsible for the moneys they're spending to prop up a failing government — $11 million for an awards show on the eve of an election, a quick win for a blockbuster event according to the multicultural plan.

The last time the revolving door in the Premier's office involved an investigation, there was no paper. There was no report. There was nothing — zip, nada.

Can the Deputy Premier assure this House and the people of British Columbia that the report he's talking about, the investigation he's talking about, will be thorough, will be written and will be made public?

Hon. R. Coleman: Yes, that is correct. They will be. It will be very quick. It will be fast, and it will be done in an appropriate manner. I also do want to re-emphasize, though, that we really do want to sincerely apologize to British Columbians that this particular incident actually happened, that this document was produced. The language in this draft document and some of the recommendations, as the Premier said, are absolutely inappropriate, and we intend to act on it.

Mr. Speaker: The Opposition House Leader has a further supplemental.

J. Horgan: In the document that the Deputy Premier read from, it says that there will be an investigation. I understand in news reports that the investigation will be conducted by Mr. John Dyble, who I hold in the highest regard.

However, Mr. Dyble was made deputy to the Premier on the arrival of the current Premier into that office. Surely, the Deputy Premier understands that with the gravity of this situation, with the absolute black eye that this action and this behaviour has given not just this government but the public service of British Columbia, surely what's required at this time is an independent investigation — hands away from the Premier's office, not in the bowels of the Premier's office.

Will the Deputy Premier agree with me that Mr. Dyble, although an outstanding individual and a capable public servant, is inappropriate for this task?

Hon. R. Coleman: Both the member opposite and I have known John Dyble in both iterations in government and opposition over the last 17 years. I cannot think of an individual who has more integrity and who has more balance than Mr. Dyble. So I think he is the appropriate person to be able to quickly get on this particular file.

The document did not recognize there are lines of communication, as the Premier said, that cannot be crossed in conducting outreach. We've said it's unacceptable. We apologize. We have apologized through the Premier's document. We have apologized to this House, and I absolutely think that Mr. Dyble is in a particularly
[ Page 13188 ]
appropriate position to conduct this review in a timely manner.

J. Kwan: The problem that I think the government doesn't seem to understand, of course, is that the investigation is actually into the Premier's office as well. It's clear from the leaked document yesterday that the Premier's office is intimately involved in this. Her top staff were intimately involved in this. So there's an issue around the independence of the investigation.

I'd also like to ask the Deputy Premier whether or not the mandate of this investigation will actually include the Premier herself.

Hon. R. Coleman: "As such, I'm asking my deputy minister to conduct a review to ensure that no government resources were inappropriately used. When that report is complete, it will determine what further actions may be taken" is in the Premier's statement. We are disturbed by this particular document. We are moving quickly on it. We are apologizing to British Columbians and to this House. Quite frankly, we intend to very quickly come to a conclusion with regards to this matter.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

J. Kwan: If this sincere, then I would hope the government would act accordingly to ensure that the investigation is, in fact, independent and that it includes the Premier herself.

Let me ask this question. Yesterday we heard the Minister for Multiculturalism say — and he attempted to distance himself from this scandal — that "this is an old document which was prior to the time that I was appointed to the role and when I became the minister responsible." He further said about the plan: "…an old policy document that never hit my desk."

[1405]

I have here a leaked internal memo, and it indicates that the director of multiculturalism had actually sent an e-mail to the publicly funded Liberal partisan outreach staff saying that he had a meeting with the Multiculturalism Minister's office and that the meeting was to go over the details of the contract for the partisan staff. The Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism today is the same minister as in September 2012, when that meeting occurred. Not only did the minister know about that meeting and know about the plan; he was intimately involved in it.

Can the Deputy Premier confirm for this House that the investigation would actually also include the Minister for Multiculturalism?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, please do not doubt our sincerity on this — the sincerity of the Premier, the sincerity of me as an individual and as a member of this House, the members of my caucus and the government. We are very sincerely apologizing to British Columbians for this document. We think it was inappropriate, as we've said. We found it to be unacceptable, as the Premier said. As such, I am absolutely confident that we will conduct a very quick review of this matter and deal with it appropriately.

M. Farnworth: We've seen the government deal with issues like this before. We saw it with Mr. Boessenkool. The government has indicated that they intend to make the report public. The minister has read an apology.

I've been in this House almost 20 years. I don't think I've ever seen a government as humbled or humiliated in this fashion. I think one of the key things that British Columbians have come to learn is that actions speak louder than words.

My question to the minister is this. If this government is sincere, will they table the terms of reference for the investigation in this House today?

Hon. R. Coleman: The member opposite has known me long enough to know that I do have sincerity when I speak about something like this. The sincerity is not just on my behalf but on the Premier's and the government of British Columbia's.

As I've said, we've had the opportunity to read the outreach document, and we want to sincerely apologize to British Columbians. The document did not recognize that there are lines that cannot be crossed in conducting this outreach, and it is unacceptable to us. To that end, we expect to move on it quickly, and that's what we say we're going to do.

I think that one of the things my mother taught me as a young child was when you think there's been a wrong and you discover a wrong, you should own up and apologize, and that's what we've done.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

M. Farnworth: The public wants to know that this matter has been fully investigated. That's why the terms of reference are crucial. If we don't have the terms of reference, then we don't know the full scope of the investigation, and that is critical to ensure public confidence that this investigation is truly thorough.

Once again, I will ask the minister to table the terms of reference in this House so that the public can see the full scope of the investigation that the government says will take place.

Hon. R. Coleman: Our intention is to move quickly. We have already started to conduct the review. We will get it done. We will report out on it as soon as possible. As I said, the document didn't recognize some things and did not reflect who we are. This draft document…. Some of
[ Page 13189 ]
the recommendations, as I said, are absolutely inappropriate. For that we've apologized, and we intend to act.

S. Simpson: I certainly acknowledge the apology of the Deputy Premier and the concern that he's expressed on his behalf, the Premier's behalf and on behalf of the caucus. The challenge here is that we do need…. The actions are critically important.

[1410]

The Deputy Premier has been asked twice now about releasing the terms of reference and about the scope. When we talk about that, we're talking about needing to know. The public needs to know: what are the terms of reference for this investigation? And the public needs to have confidence that it will be broad enough in scope to in fact deal with the minister of state's office, to deal with the Premier's office and that that report, as the Deputy Premier has said, will in fact be released in a timely fashion. All of that, presumably, will be part of those terms of reference.

Will the Premier take the next step in the work that she's done today with this apology and commit to those terms of reference being released today?

Hon. R. Coleman: As I said previously, we are asking our deputy minister, who I have absolute, absolute trust in — John Dyble, whose integrity, I think, is unquestionable — to conduct a review of what went on here and that no government resources were inappropriately used. When that report is complete, it will determine future actions that may be taken.

I would expect that we would have a pretty quick reaction or response with regard to that from Mr. Dyble. I actually put my trust in him. The members opposite who have been around this House long enough would know that that is the appropriate person with integrity to conduct this review.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

S. Simpson: I have no quarrel with the comments of the Deputy Premier on this matter. But the question I have…. The Deputy Premier, for whatever reason, is refusing to make a commitment to release terms of reference on the scope of this investigation that Mr. Dyble will be doing. If the Deputy Premier is not prepared to make the commitment, will he at least tell us why he's not prepared to release those terms of reference?

Hon. R. Coleman: Frankly, we are quite happy to make the report public, and we will have the deputy minister conduct the review.

As I said earlier, this is not a situation that we actually think is good. We've apologized, and it is a sincere apology — that the language in this draft document and some of its recommendations are absolutely inappropriate. We would expect the review to be quick, and we would expect the action to be taken, to be taken as quickly as possible.

DIALYSIS SERVICES IN INVERMERE

N. Macdonald: Kirt Sellers, a resident of Invermere, used to have to drive five minutes for the vital dialysis treatment he needs to stay alive. He has treatment three times a week. Thanks to cuts by the Liberal government, the dialysis unit in Invermere is closed, and Kirt has to drive nearly two hours each way for the same treatment.

The question is: why is the government removing a longstanding service for the Columbia Valley that provides a life-saving treatment for a dialysis patient in Invermere?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Thank you to the member opposite for the question. We've discussed this previously, and I am aware of the situation. Dialysis is a challenging thing for people to cope with, and travelling is as well.

The community ran into a situation where there was only one trained dialysis nurse and only one patient requiring the facility dialysis. Attempts were made to solve this, very diligent attempts by the health authority, but it was not sustainable with only one trained nurse. Any kind of breaks could not be taken care of, and it just was not a sustainable service.

I have spoken with the member opposite. Were there to be further demand for dialysis in this area, absolutely those needs would be looked at again. The majority of people today have home dialysis, either peritoneal dialysis or with a dialysis machine.

I certainly understand how difficult this is. Interior Health has gone to great efforts to address the need here.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

N. Macdonald: This has gone on since January. It's not an issue of staff not willing or able to provide the service. There are staffing options here. Because of the closure of the clinic, at least two more dialysis patients from Invermere have been forced to leave the community. The Invermere clinic also provides services to people visiting from other provinces, either as second-home owners or occasional users. So it's not a money issue either.

[1415]

The fact of the matter is that there is no good explanation that stands up for this closure. The equipment is there. The staff is there. The patients are there. How could the minister support this widely criticized decision to close the dialysis unit in Invermere?

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I may not have been clear in my first answer, so certainly, I'm happy to go over it again.

This is something the health authority has been work-
[ Page 13190 ]
ing at very diligently — understanding the difficulties of travel, understanding the challenges of dialysis. But this was a situation where there was a single nurse who was trained in a very complex area of medicine. Make no mistake. This is a very complex area, and meeting patients' needs has to be done in a safe manner. It was believed by the Interior Health Authority that with one nurse only who had the ability to provide this service, it was not sustainable at this time.

The health authority is certainly looking for solutions. They're prepared to look if there's an increased demand beyond the one patient. But at this point I really do believe the health authority has done the best that they can.

PIPELINE PROJECTS AND
OIL SPILL RESPONSE OPERATIONS

R. Fleming: Earlier this week the Environment Minister ordered a suspension of a controversial 15-kilometre, four-inch-diameter jet fuel pipeline in Richmond. He justified the mid-review suspension because he now agrees with Canada's environment commissioner, who reported three years ago that British Columbia has a completely inadequate fuel spill prevention and response regime. Fair enough.

My question is to the minister. If he's willing to pause a jet fuel pipeline in mid-review for spill safety reasons, why is his government completely unwilling to do the very same for the Enbridge northern gateway for the very same reasons he cited in the Richmond project?

Hon. T. Lake: Well, in fact, we have been extremely clear — unlike the NDP position, which is inconsistent every time they're asked about a position on this oil pipeline or that oil pipeline. The Premier and I have been very clear. We have to have world-class, land-based and marine-based spill prevention and response mechanisms in place for any new heavy-oil pipeline.

We are working hard to get to that level of world-class response regimes. In fact, today we announced the awarding of a study to look at the regime off the coast of British Columbia to ensure that we are able to define "world-class" and then make sure that the federal government is providing a world-class regime.

While that information is coming, we thought it appropriate to wait for that information before making a decision on a project that has raised some concerns in the community. On this side of the House we like to base our decisions on information — not make decisions before any process is done at all, which is the way the NDP like to carry out business.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

R. Fleming: I'm struggling to find the consistency in the Minister of Environment's answers here. He has admitted in this House and outside of this House that B.C. has nothing like a world-class oil spill response.

The Enbridge northern gateway pipeline is now in the final arguments phase of the hearings. British Columbia, under his government, failed to meet the evidence deadline. It's great he's having a symposium on what world-class oil spills are like and what a response regime would be like, but he's failed to meet the evidence deadline, so all of that is immaterial to influencing the outcome of the Enbridge northern gateway.

While his logic in Richmond that he provided for suspending that review holds, why won't he apply it to the Enbridge northern gateway? The Ministry of Environment has one employee in the entire Pacific Northwest of British Columbia for oil spill responses. I don't think that's called world-class.

Will the Minister of Environment follow his own logic in his Richmond decision and take back British Columbia's rights to determine the spill safety, environmental and economic risks that Enbridge proposes to British Columbia and cancel his government's agreement that outsourced decision-making to Ottawa?

[1420]

Hon. T. Lake: Well, it is really, really rich hearing that from the member opposite. Here is the NDP version of environmental assessment. Is it a coal mine? No. Is it a copper mine? No. Is it a resort? No. Is it a pipeline? No. Is it clean energy? No. Without any process at all.

If the member opposite is so sure about this proposed pipeline before the process is finished, why doesn't he have a position on the other proposed pipeline through British Columbia? Why don't they come clean on what their position is on Kinder Morgan?

Inconsistency is on that side of the House. Over here we believe in getting information and making decisions based on science.

FUNDING FOR LITERACY PROGRAMS AND
GOVERNMENT SPENDING PRIORITIES

R. Austin: In 2005 this government set out its five great goals. One of those goals was to make B.C. the most literate jurisdiction on the continent. Here we are, less than two years away from the conclusion of this so-called golden decade, and we see a government that is spending $17 million on partisan pre-election advertisements at a time when they are slashing funding for literacy in British Columbia. Fifty-five communities are losing support for their local literacy task groups because of a $1½ million cut to literacy funding being made by this government.

My question is to the Minister of Education. What's more important — spending tax dollars attempting to fix this government's credibility gap or addressing the literacy gap in 55 communities across this province?
[ Page 13191 ]

Hon. D. McRae: British Columbia is recognized not just in Canada but in the world as being a leader when it comes to literacy training for our young people in this country. That is why I'm proud to say to the members opposite that since 2001, $1.5 billion has been spent on literacy supports by this government. That's $1.5 billion spent on literacy supports to ensure that our young and our old are better able to work with literacy in this province.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

R. Austin: It's a pity that some of that money wasn't actually addressed in Comox, where they saw their program cut from $60,000 to zero.

Anyway, looking at this government's record, you get the impression that they were brought in one day to put families first so they could ignore the real needs of families for the other 364 days of the year.

The tax dollars that this government is spending on partisan advertisements could provide the funding necessary to suspend this cut in literacy programming for more than a decade — more than a decade of literacy services in 55 communities or a handful of desperate political advertisements airing on prime time in the lead-up to an election.

The former Minister of Education recognizes this is unacceptable. Can the Minister of Education explain this crisis in priorities?

Hon. D. McRae: Let's talk supporting literacy. Where were the members opposite when this government brought in all-day K to make sure that young people got more training? My memory is they were against it.

Where were the members opposite when this government brought in StrongStarts that support communities all across British Columbia? There are over 320 StrongStarts across British Columbia, in communities like Prince George and Stikine, the Comox Valley and Cranbrook. All across this province they are helping young people and parents better train their students, their young children, to integrate into society. Where were you when we brought that in? Oh, you were against it.

Also, $10.7 million is being spent this year on K-to-grade-4 literacy training. I'm pleased to say we also have hired a superintendent of reading, Maureen Dockendorf, who is outreaching to communities across this province to make sure our young people are getting more literacy support than they ever have in the history of the province of British Columbia.

[1425]

C. Trevena: What the minister seems to forget is that literacy isn't just for young people. It's for young and for old. Some of the communities losing their funding: 100 Mile, Clinton, Chetwynd, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek. And as my colleague mentioned, the minister's own riding of Comox Valley lost $60,000.

Let me put a face on what this funding really means. To a community in my own riding, Zeballos — $7,000 — population give or take 200, where 43 people participated and eight got their adult Dogwood, including the Chief of the Ehattesaht band. They wouldn't have done that without this sort of support — $7,000.

Could the Minister of Education explain why this government is willing to cut this sort of literacy service to these 55 communities while at the same time spending more than a decade's worth of literacy money on pre-election advertising?

Hon. D. McRae: First of all, I'd like to thank Decoda for the work they've done for communities across the province of British Columbia, the efforts they've made to outreach people who need literacy supports. That's why I was also pleased to say that I actually had a meeting with Decoda. I believe it was last December. They talked about the important services they provide to our communities, large and small, across the province, and I agreed with Decoda. They do phenomenal work.

I also said to Decoda, at the same time, that I would do all within my powers to make sure we could find supports for them, resources for them, as the time goes forward. And you know what? We're still having those conversations as we speak.

I'm also wanting to say this. This year the government has dedicated $37 million for literacy initiatives across this province in small and large communities — $37 million. We're putting our heart on our sleeve.

Furthermore, I just want one more chance to recognize some of the great work being done by the teachers of British Columbia. Just last December PIRLS, an international report that basically looks at 48 countries, ten provinces.... How did British Columbia do? We were No. 7 in the world.

We are doing great work for people in British Columbia on literacy. We'll continue to do great work for literacy in British Columbia, and I'm proud to be the Education Minister and a parent in British Columbia.

[End of question period.]

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

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Introductions by Members

D. Hayer: We have 44 grade 5 students from my constituency today, from Pacific Academy School, one of the best schools in Canada. They are here with their teachers Ms. Sue U-Ming and Mr. Grant Wirtz, accompanied by 21 parent volunteers who have taken time out of their busy schedules to accompany these students. The students are here to learn about how government works.
[ Page 13192 ]
Some of them in the future will be interested in getting involved at either the provincial level or the municipal or federal level, maybe as the Premier or an MLA or MP. Would the House please make them very welcome.

B. Simpson: I rise to present a petition.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Petitions

B. Simpson: I present a petition with 1,001 signatures from residents in Quesnel, asking that seniors in Quesnel have the right to do driving tests in Quesnel either through DriveABLE or direct driving tests in their own cars in their own communities.

K. Conroy: I have a petition.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

K. Conroy: Petition to the Minister of Energy and Mines and the government from 100 residents of the Granby River Valley opposing the granite bulk sampling at two sites in their valley.

Reports from Committees

C. Hansen: I have the honour to present the second report of the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills for the fourth session of the 39th parliament.

On June 20, 2012, the committee undertook the examination of the revision of the Insurance Act pursuant to the Statute Revision Act and recommended to the Lieutenant-Governor that the revision be approved and brought into force. I move that the report be taken as read and received.

Motion approved.

Motions Without Notice

REFERRAL OF REPORTS TO COMMITTEES
AND MEMBERSHIP AND POWERS OF
PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE

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

[1. That the reports of the Auditor General of British Columbia deposited with the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly during the Fifth Session of the Thirty-Ninth parliament be deemed referred to the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, with the exception of the report referred to in section 22 of the Auditor General Act which is referred to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, and in addition that the following reports of the Auditor General of British Columbia be referred to the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts:

Summary Report: Results of Completed Projects (December 2011)

Development Initiative Trusts: An Audit of Legislative Compliance and Public Accountability Practices in the Three Statutory Trusts (April 2012)

Audits of Two P3 Projects in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor (July 2012)

The Status of IT Controls in British Columbia's Public Sector: an analysis of audit findings (July 2012)

Follow-up Report: Updates on the implementation of recommendations from recent reports (October 2012)

Observations on Financial Reporting: Summary Financial Statements 2011/12 (December 2012)

Summary Report: Results of Completed Projects and Other Matters (December 2012)

Securing the Justin System: Access and Security Audit at the Ministry of Justice (January 2013)…]

[1430]

I provide the Opposition House Leader with a copy of the motion, which refers to the reports that are being referred to the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, and I think he is in agreement with that portion of the motion.

The second part of the motion moves:

[…2. That the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts be the committee referred to in sections 6, 10, 13 and 14 of the Auditor General Act.

In addition to the powers previously conferred upon the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the Committee be empowered:

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

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

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

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

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

The said Select Standing Committee is to be composed of Bruce Ralston (Convener), Douglas Horne, Spencer Chandra Herbert, Kathy Corrigan, Eric Foster, Colin Hansen, Randy Hawes, John Horgan, Vicki Huntington, Kevin Krueger, John Les, Joan McIntyre, Lana Popham, John Rustad, and Shane Simpson.]

With leave, I move that motion.

Leave granted.

Motion approved.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: Mr. Speaker, continued debate on the budget.
[ Page 13193 ]

Budget Debate

(continued)

R. Fleming: I'm pleased to continue remarks that I began just before we briefly adjourned, and to speak about the budget. I believe I have a considerable amount of time, because we were just getting going before that occurred.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Let me start with, as I mentioned prior to the break, some of the central failings — the underpinnings of the fiscal sands upon which this budget is based. I think one of those areas that I would like to discuss at some length this afternoon in my remarks is around the rapid sale of land assets in British Columbia, which has been booked in this budget at over $625 million.

There are also many other areas that make this bogus budget's claim to have achieved balance extremely suspect, including over $1 billion in ill-defined administrative savings with no explanation about how they will be achieved. There are also hundreds of millions of dollars of prior-year budget adjustments that are counted in this budget. There's a lot in this budget around the revenue and the expenditure side that is dubious.

As I mentioned earlier in the debate, and my colleagues have mentioned on this side of the House, you have to put this budget in the context of the one we received before the last election, the one that was to be a $495 million maximum deficit which, when we came back after an election, turned out to be some six times greater in scale — a budget deficit that was now in the billions of dollars.

So let's look at the fiscal underpinning just around the revenue counted in this budget to deal with land sales and land asset disposal — $625 million just in this area alone. Why this is suspect is that this is the second time this government has pulled this fiscal con trick on the public. It was part of the budget last year, and it failed to materialize. Now it's back in bigger and better form on the eve of an election again to try and fool the public.

I don't think anybody in British Columbia, other than the few government members on that side who maybe had a hand in crafting this budget, believes that this kind of land sale fiasco, this bonanza, is going to achieve the revenue projections that are part of this budget. But even if they were, there's a problem in the way that this would be done by government, which should concern the public.

[1435]

You don't put hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of parcels of government land on the sale block at one time and achieve maximum value for the taxpayer in dumping that asset. If members on the government side need to understand that, they should talk to those working in commercial real estate who've struggled to get rid of considerable inventories in the private condominium market.

The city of Vancouver was placed in this position with the Olympic village fiasco. They tried to get rid of those units as fast as they could, and they eventually pulled back. They said: "You know what? The city of Vancouver would be wrong in trying to avoid carrying debt and considerable borrowing costs" — with a hedge fund, in this case — "by dumping surplus units all at once. Better to hold onto them and achieve a maximum value. Otherwise, you continue to drop and drop the price."

That's a concern around this wholesale disposal of land assets that we see in this budget. But it represents something else, I think, that is perhaps even more flawed. The language that the Minister of Finance used in introducing this budget was that some of the measures which were at the core of the budget demonstrated that there were sustainable financial principles underpinning the budget.

Well, what is sustainable about taking Crown assets — land and assorted properties that are Crown assets around British Columbia — and selling them once? You can only do that once, although they've tried to count them in at least two budgets. It's a one-trick pony. It's the very opposite and the antithesis of sustainability to sell land like this in lots of hundreds of millions of dollars of so-called revenue when you can't do that again.

It's not sustainable; it's shortsighted. That's what it is. It also limits the options. We don't know enough about what these parcels are like or where they are.

I want to give you an example of what I fear. The one example that government has provided about what might be in the portfolio of properties being sold is a parcel right close to the Legislature. It's a parking lot, in fact, in the legislative precinct. They said: "Why would government want to hang onto a parking lot? Let's get rid of it as fast as we can, and let's count it as money and revenue in this budget before we go to the polls, along with all of the other properties."

Well, I want it contrast that mentality with a parking lot that I'm familiar with from when I was a city councillor, which government indeed sold 15 years ago. They held an asset, which was called Y-lot. It was a large parcel. Government, the province, had that in its portfolio. They decided it was surplus to their needs. That's fine. There should be a test about whether government should hang onto properties.

Nobody would argue that everything the province owns right now should be kept in exactly the same form. They approached the city about it. They looked at their own strategic goals as a province. They had a heritage asset which was decrepit and almost condemned as a building. That is now the beautifully restored St. Ann's Academy, which is housing hundreds of civil servants in the Ministry of Advanced Education and other ministries.

They looked at this Y-lot property, and it was surplus to
[ Page 13194 ]
government's needs. They approached the city about selling it. The province, quite rightly, said: "Well, we'd like to maximize the value of this property we own. Would the city help us rezone this property?" They did so.

Today members will know the Y-lot not by its bizarre acronym, but they'll know it by the Marriott Hotel, where there are two large residential towers that were developed by Concert Properties — the first projects that were undertaken in the city of Victoria by that development consortium.

The province realized tens of millions of dollars of upvalue from rezoning the property, which was then put into a heritage conservation program that it was constrained at the time from funding. Government made good money by stewarding the public's land and being clever about it — identifying what its strategic interests were and not just giving it away, not just selling it in a panic.

I'm afraid there is no such plan like that contained in the budget. This is about putting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property on sale all at once. Well, you're handing leverage over to the buyers. You're not doing it in a careful and considered way. I doubt the due diligence is being done to make sure that a maximum value is being achieved.

It's bad business, the way the government is acting on this. But I don't think they care. The point is to try and shore up a shoddy budget, which shows a slight surplus, with hundreds of millions of dollars that they've already counted and haven't earned yet from land sales. So it's a problem. It's a problem built right into the building.

[1440]

Now, let me go back to one of the parcels that we do know is for sale right here in James Bay — a parking lot next to the Legislature. Again, nobody would argue that government's highest and best use for that land is as a parking lot, a surface, flat parking lot. However, government has been approached about property that it owns in the Inner Harbour for the 12 years that they have been in office. There have been four different commercial ferry operators wanting to redevelop that terminal. It's a terminal that is in poor condition, a lot of deferred maintenance there for decades. It was rezoned by the province in the late 1990s, and nothing has happened since.

This parking lot that's up for sale is literally two blocks away from an international ferry terminal that brings in a million visitors a year and, by the chamber of commerce estimates in Victoria, could bring in two million visitors a year if government took the lead on the property it owns in redeveloping that. Government has said: "Well, we don't have the money." Why would you not connect upzoning this parking lot, capturing tens of millions of dollars worth of potential density and economic value, and link it to a precinct plan and redevelopment of the Belleville international ferry terminal?

This is the south Island's transportation gateway to the United States and to the rest of the province. There was once this thing called a gateway transportation strategy that completely excluded Vancouver Island. Here's an opportunity. If the Liberals have their way in this budget, if they actually flog this property for a value that's well underappreciated, that's an economic opportunity that's squandered, because they want to maintain a budget fiction to try and fool the voters. It is shortsighted, and it would be a very, very unfortunate situation if that's how things go with regard to that piece of land.

Let's look at some other dubious assumptions in this budget. There is a smaller cushion than previous budgets — significantly smaller. There is less forecast allowance, only one fiscal year after the same government — in this House and outside the House, as one of its key talking points — pleaded with the public for an understanding of why they so consistently, over many fiscal corridors, continued to miss targets.

The explanation from the government was to say, "Please understand us. There is revenue volatility like crazy in key areas of the budget. That's why we're not meeting our targets. That's why we're hundreds of millions of dollars off-target" — to the red, not the black.

Then they come in here in February of 2013 and say the situation is less volatile. They're very confident on all these pillars that they put in the budget that are extremely risky. That's just one area where I think people who care to more closely examine a budget that, let's face it, will never get passed, so they can assess for themselves whether that's a good use of their time…. That's one area where I think this government is extremely vulnerable.

The deficit for 2012-2013 is now projected to be $1.2 billion. That's considerably more than the budget that we heard them project a year ago, in this very place, when they passed last fiscal year's budget. So there is no rationale government has given this House for a sudden optimism in lowering the fiscal cushions built into the budget. There is no record in the economy over the last fiscal year of managing revenues and expenses in a way that would justify this sudden rush of optimism.

The government on the one hand claims this budget is about prudence and that they have taken a lower forecast, for example, on GDP growth for the B.C. economy. Yet they throw any fiscal caution away and abandon it when it comes to the key revenues in this budget. Now, I heard the member for North Vancouver–Lonsdale this morning talk about how the budget's priorities were keeping taxes low and stopping the growth of taxes and that there were, in fact, no new taxes in the budget. I wonder if she's read her own government's budget, because one of the things that indeed was in the budget was new tax increase measures.

[1445]

Personal income taxes will go up. The top personal income tax bracket will now be 16.8 percent. That's a lift on 14.7 percent on those who earn incomes more than
[ Page 13195 ]
$150,000. The corporate income tax rate will rise in this budget. There's a trigger mechanism for the corporate general tax rate in British Columbia to grow to 11 percent in this budget. These are tax increases, Madam Speaker.

Now, I'd like to give the Liberals some recognition for this. This is perhaps the most prudent part of their budget and honest part of the budget. There's a recognition here, I think, of the fiscal reality, or at least there's a recognition that the Liberals have done extensive polling and shown incredible acumen about where the public is at. The public knows that times are tough, that resources are slim and that balancing the budget is important. They say to government, obviously — and I think the government extensively polled on this and conducted its own focus groups: "Here are the places where there are new revenues needed. You should go and get it from them."

It's very similar to what the President has been trying to get through Congress in the United States. It's not a love of raising taxes, I think, that informs his government down south. It is a reality that that should be done and that this is where the ability is to balance government spending and government revenues.

In this budget document…. I think all of us were surprised that these two tax increases were contained in the budget the minister tabled. Where do these ideas come from? I think we heard from the Leader of the Opposition that those are policies that he's been advocating for months now, and he's happy to share them.

But we'll hear very soon, I think, from the Liberals how taxes like that and specific tax increases are terrible; they're reckless; they're bad. They will very quickly forget that it was they themselves who introduced them in the Legislature, 11 weeks before a provincial general election.

While imitation may be the highest form of flattery — and in this case, the Liberals are stealing some good ideas from the Leader of the Opposition — I think political memory is going to be incredibly short when it comes to election time and when they come to talking to the public. They will accuse the NDP of doing the very same things they have done themselves in this budget.

Now, let's talk about the unacceptable tax increases that have been put into this budget, because there's more — an MSP increase. Really? Dinging the public again for basic medicare — medical insurance that British Columbians depend on and use? A 4 percent lift on MSP? We are now talking about costs that have increased 92 percent for medical service premiums under this government's time in office — 92 percent.

Don't forget. A lot of times it's small businesses and employers that directly absorb these costs. It makes the cost of doing business higher for them, because they provide that as a benefit to their employees. But for those that don't, the 4 percent hit for a family, for example, is going to bring the rate of just having basic insurance — which all of us are guaranteed to have under the Canada Health Act, which is the very fabric of being a Canadian…. In British Columbia that is going to cost the average family $662 a year.

That's a lot. That's 92 percent higher than when this government started in office. They continue to come to the same well, which is working families' pocketbooks, for basic medical services in B.C. I think that was wrong. They made the wrong choice in doing that.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the cuts in the budget too. While I mentioned the government has projected all kinds of wildly optimistic administrative savings totalling over a billion dollars in this budget, which they can't and will not explain, there were some cuts here that I think, on the economic side, are extremely shortsighted, to say the least.

Let's look at the budget for forest health in B.C. — a $35 million cut to that operation. We know what the chief forester's comments have been about British Columbia. We know what the silviculture industry is saying. We know what the Auditor General has said about the conditions of forestry. They are all saying that this is the last place a government would want to cut. They are saying that if you want jobs and you want that industry to rebound, there cannot be any more cuts to the forest health sector that is administered by government.

[1450]

Let's look at energy conservation programs — again, very modest efforts, but the LiveSmart B.C. program has been discontinued. This government — I don't know how many times they announced it — loves to go to ribbon cuttings saying: "Look at LiveSmart." Now it's toasted, and so is the innovative clean energy fund. It's gone.

The green jobs sector could be maximized in British Columbia by energy conservation investment. The cheapest way to create new energy supply in B.C. — and that's B.C. Hydro's responsibility and the government's responsibility — is to invest in energy retrofits. That creates skilled trade employment for young people. It creates economic activity both in rural areas and in cities. It saves energy. It lowers the carbon footprint of government. It's smart for the climate. It's a good investment, and it was eliminated in this budget — those modest investments.

Now, let's look at the Ministry of Advanced Education. Skills training, jobs for young people — obviously critically important. While other government ministries have received slight increases…. A lot of communications budgets have received increases. We talked about $17 million for a pre-election advertising spending spree — thinly veiled partisan ads. I can't even watch the Vancouver Canucks play without seeing them about 20 times between three periods of hockey. There was no effort to be prudent there, but there is a $46 million cut to the Ministry of Advanced Education.

I thought this government had a so-called jobs plan that was underpinned by skills training, and they are cutting the very ministry that provides skills training in British Columbia. That is not an investment in our fu-
[ Page 13196 ]
ture or in young people or in employment. That is an absolutely shortsighted mistake that I am pleased all of the university and college presidents in British Columbia have roundly condemned. That's unusual for them, to use any language that's directly critical of their main funder, but they've done it.

They've said to the government that this is the wrong place to try and cut. They've pleaded that they need to open more spaces because the demand is there. They are working with regional employers to do economic development and labour market supply, and they can't do that with the way the government has treated that ministry.

I don't think in the history of British Columbia, perhaps, we have seen a throne speech so at odds with a budget document tabled a week later. Now, I know it was a forgettable throne speech, but let's go back there and remember some of the central hoopla of the throne speech.

The same week that Premier Alison Redford had a fireside chat with Albertans to say, "Folks, the good times are coming to an end. We've got to tighten our belts. We've become a petro state and dependent on oil for too long," we had our Premier saying, "There is a golden future out there: $200 billion worth of new super tax royalties on liquefied natural gas" — an industry that doesn't even exist yet in British Columbia.

She was throwing out wild figures in that throne speech, saying: "The debt of the province of British Columbia will be gone by 2028." As if this government will be around to see that, and as if that has any bearing or grounding in reality.

The reality is that liquefied natural gas does present a viable economic opportunity for British Columbia. It also presents an environmental responsibility for us as a province to do it right. But we have to recognize what international energy policy analysts tell us. They say that you can't take LNG to the bank. There's a lot of international competition, and the game is changing quickly.

Let's not forget that five years ago in this House we were talking about becoming an LNG importer. There was a proposal on the books to have a Texada Island LNG import facility — not an export industry. So things have changed very quickly. Yet this throne speech basically outlined a path to Shangri-la based on LNG. In fact, that was the sole obsession and topic in that throne speech.

Fast forward one week. We get to the budget speech. There's a caveat from the Deputy Minister of Finance saying that none of the fiscal assumptions of this budget assume that an LNG plant will be built over the three-year service plan, and there are zero dollars of LNG revenue in the budget. Wow. What a disconnect, Madam Speaker. What a disconnect.

Now, I'll tell you what has been missing in all of the LNG announcements that the Premier and various ministers have been making. It wasn't in the throne speech. It's not in the agenda of the government, and it certainly wasn't in the budget.

[1455]

At one time this government at least had all of the right rhetorical enthusiasm to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, to recognize that we share the same atmosphere globally and that British Columbia must have an ambitious set of climate action targets to reduce GHGs and take on what is the defining problem of our century. They had the right rhetoric.

Now the government talking points forbid any discussion of what those climate targets were, of talking about greenhouse gases, from being mentioned in the same sentence as liquefied natural gas. Well, B.C. produces about 68 megatons of greenhouse gases annually. The 2020 target that this government put in law — and the opposition supported that law — is to get it down to 40 megatons. LNG, simply put, could add 8 to 16 megatons annually. It is going to increase GHGs in B.C.

How can we reduce that number? Let's have an honest discussion, something the government is unwilling to do. Let's talk about what the role of renewable energy is to lower the carbon footprint of a potential new LNG industry. Let's talk about whether Environmental Protection Agency guidelines in the United States can be used here in British Columbia to reduce and capture fugitive emissions that come from drilling and moving and refrigerating natural gas. Those are things that we need to talk about.

Let's talk about a carbon-capture-and-storage technology regime, stuff we see with companies like Spectra gas in Fort Nelson. Those are the kinds of things we should be talking about in the context of whether we build out responsibly an LNG industry, and the government has been absolutely silent on that.

We know this isn't going to be easy. British Columbia's emissions profile is approximately 40 percent from the transportation sector. Twenty-five percent of GHGs come from buildings, and industry has the remaining one-third. If industrial emissions are going to go up from having an LNG industry developed in B.C., then we need to look at how the other two major areas of emissions are going to go down even more than they were scheduled to do.

It is incumbent upon government to actually talk about how the climate action targets that are set in law in British Columbia are going to be squared with this economic opportunity. We'd like to hear more about that. There is nothing in the budget that looks like the government is going to actually pay attention to this. In fact, the tiny little climate action secretariat — I can't even remember where it's housed anymore; it's been punted around three different ministries — in the Ministry of Environment was cut again, significantly.

The smart people we have in our B.C. public service are having a harder time doing their job, even though they're facing bigger problems and bigger challenges. I think that
[ Page 13197 ]
says it all, right there in the budget.

Look, there is another area of revenue that is suspect as well. One needs to look at carbon tax revenues. Over the next three fiscal years this budget actually assumes that carbon tax revenues to the treasury are going to remain constant. But as the Minister of Environment would know, government is required to reduce those greenhouse gases by 18 percent by 2016. Which is it? Are the greenhouse gas targets going to be met, or are we going to go over them and are the revenue targets for the carbon tax going to be met? You can't have it both ways, Madam Speaker.

Now, I finally just want to conclude by talking about the clean tech sector. Instead of putting all of our eggs in one basket, as I think the throne speech did…. The rudderless budget is silent on that, but I think its silence speaks volumes. We need to pursue economic diversification.

I talked about how the Ministry of Advanced Education is the wrong place to cut. University presidents have done the same. The knowledge economy is the future of British Columbia. That's where we can compete. Investing in social capital — British Columbians, young men and women who want to go train and have the skills to compete in the world — that's where the future is. They need some relief.

We should have a student grants program again in British Columbia. There is none of that in this budget. We should lower interest rates. For heaven's sake, we have the highest interest rates for students to borrow, well above prime, here in British Columbia, while other governments are managing to control student loan interest rates and give families and students a break.

That's what we should be investing in. It will pay a social dividend. It will pay an economic dividend in British Columbia for generations to come. University-based research and development is critical to our economy. The Energy critic and I went to visit a clean tech company in British Columbia recently, the largest one in B.C. — $400 million in revenues annually. It's called Westport technologies. It's in South Vancouver — the test facility — and they have a manufacturing facility in Delta.

This is a story of researchers at the University of British Columbia who figured out how to make a valve for an engine that will have clean-burning fuel. They've turned it into a $400 million company. There are many more Westport innovations to be discovered. You can't do it without supporting advanced education and university-based research.

[1500]

M. Dalton: I want to begin my comments by, first of all, thanking my constituents of Maple Ridge and Mission for the honour, for the privilege to be able to serve them for the past several years. They're great communities in a beautiful part of the earth — the mountains just right nearby and lots of places for getting outdoors, right next to the Fraser. It has just been a privilege. I've enjoyed seeing some of the changes and development in the communities over the past number of years. It has been very rewarding.

I also want to express my appreciation to my wife, Marlene, who has stood by my side these years. As all of us here as MLAs can attest, it definitely puts a strain on relationships. I thank her for her support, and also my constituency assistants, Wilson Sieg, Carly Fedyshen and Sharen Parkinson.

When I go in the community, when I go door to door, when I meet people just out and about, I meet many people that express just how we've been able to help them. I've been able to help them, but a lot of the credit goes to my staff that are there working on issues. A lot of that work is not seen. That's one of the most rewarding aspects of this job, this ability to help people on a one-on-one basis when they seem to come up against a wall — to be able to help to navigate through difficult situations and quite often to make positive changes and help.

I stand here in support of Budget 2013. The key thing is it's a balanced budget. It's not a flimsy balanced budget; it's genuine. It's a $197 million surplus. There's a significant contingency fund of $225 million and a forecast allowance of $200 million. So a $622 million cushion.

I know that the previous speaker was criticizing perhaps different ways we were going to get this revenue. Well, it has been looked at carefully.

First of all, we've bounced this off an independent forecast council of 14 members. They've made predictions for the growth of the province, and we have gone half a point lower than that. It's very prudent.

We've also had Dr. Tim O'Neill, an independent economic adviser, examine this budget in terms of revenues, and he said it looks good. He did point out, though, that on the side of the natural gas revenues he felt they were still too high, even though we felt that it was quite prudent. We did take his advice and trimmed $70 million off the surplus.

We believe that this is an honest budget that we're bringing before the public to be passed in this House. It will withstand scrutiny.

Now, I'm hearing the NDP knocking it. They are saying it's not balanced. Why? Why are they doing this? Why are they so, you know…? They're just not pleased at the fact that it's a balanced budget.

I think it's pretty clear that when they do…. I'm assuming that they'll be presenting their plan — we've been waiting for it — and that it will not be a balanced budget. They'll say: "Well, your budget really isn't balanced. We're just being honest. Our budget is so many hundreds of millions of dollars in debt." The fact of the matter is they've said: "Well, we're going to bring a balanced budget over the fiscal cycle of four or five years." Well, tomorrow never comes. Right now we are…. Today
[ Page 13198 ]
is yesterday's tomorrow. We have to plan in advance.

[1505]

It's interesting that these were comments that came from the critic for Finance. I was with him on the Finance Committee as we toured the province in the fall, meeting hundreds of people, hearing presentations. We made a report that was unanimously passed from both sides of the House, including him, recommending a balanced budget.

That's what we have accomplished in this budget. That's what I hope the NDP will present when they come up with their plan — a balanced budget like they have recommended within the Finance Committee.

The NDP has been clear that they want to get rid of balanced-budget legislation, seeing it as a nuisance. It's a challenge. We have balanced-budget legislation, and we do have to come to the House and give an account.

We did not have a balanced budget, since the last recession, but it's been planned to be in balance at this point, and we are on track. With the surplus, we are what we projected three years ago.

The NDP plan of going further in debt is a recipe for impoverishment. It's a recipe to become again a have-not province. It's a recipe for higher taxes. It's a recipe for poorer services. It's a recipe for a made-in-B.C. recession. These are not just words I'm saying. This is the track record. This is what we saw in the 1990s and early 2000-2001, when they were last in government.

They are laying a groundwork for deficit spending, deficit living. That's where Canada was not too long ago. As a matter of fact, one out of three dollars that Canada earned in taxes went towards deficit reduction.

We have been very good at meeting or exceeding our targets. There was an exception — and we do hear it — and that was the 2008-2009 recession, when revenues collapsed in British Columbia.

Now, I can appreciate and understand the criticism if it would have just been in British Columbia, but that was simply not the case. It was in Alberta. It was in Ontario. Canada, in 2008, had projected for 2009 a significant surplus. They went into, I believe, a $55 billion deficit. This collapse at this time was happening all over.

We've been digging our way out of it. It's been very challenging. We've worked hard to get out of this. It's required tremendous discipline, and I do want to thank the public servants for working along with us with this. It's been very challenging. There were zero percent increases for different years, a couple of years. And now we're looking for negotiations that there can be increases but within their budget. So I appreciate that.

But the thing is, by making those choices and by tightening up our belt right now, it will allow us to remain in a good fiscal position. What happens with debt, with interest payments, is that we're essentially taking money, a fistful of money, and just lighting a match and burning it. Right now we have interest payments of $2.2 billion. What could that $2.2 billion buy?

Now, I hear a lot about government advertising from the other side — $17 million — and they're highly critical of that. Not to mention that when they were last in power, they were spending $28 million, or in that ballpark figure, in ads. But let's forget about that. Let's talk about now.

[1510]

So $17 million — well, that's one story. But what about $2.2 billion, or a lot more, as we add to the debt through deficit? What could $2.2 billion buy? Well, how about the Evergreen line? I'm not sure. That's about $800 million, $850 million. That could buy two Evergreen lines and maybe another one — and fully paid in one year.

We built a bridge a few years back, Pitt River Bridge, near Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. We are communities joined at the hip. That bridge was $200 million. Well, that bridge…. We could have bought, actually, with the interest that we paid last year alone, 11 of those bridges, fully paid for in one year, all throughout the province.

That's why we really have to pay attention to interest, the deficit and the debt. We have been adding to it. It is still at a manageable cost. However, we want not to be adding to it, but we want to reduce it through surpluses. We actually did have surpluses for a number of years, and we are again projecting a surplus budget.

I had a friend here yesterday. She helps families facing financial challenges. My wife and I took her out for lunch and asked her: "What are some tips?" I think they're pretty basic. If you are in debt…. Not in debt, but if you're really facing financial trouble as well, a good way to start is: don't depend on your credit cards. Don't use them, matter of fact, if you are in a serious problem, but pay them down.

That's what we need to be doing, because debt can financially strangle families, as it does nations. We shouldn't be asking the general public to be living a certain way, recommending it, when we're not doing the same thing here, in the government.

The U.S.A. has a $1 trillion deficit. There's no plan to pay it down, and this has a tremendous impact. It has an impact upon public servants, upon their pension plans. Layoffs. You read about different places in the States, whether it be the Midwest and Michigan or California, where there are massive layoffs of the public servants because of the costs they're unable to sustain, the debts they're facing. Well, we're not facing this. When you look at Europe….

We've had to make tough choices. We've had to hold the line on pay increases and hiring. The MLAs also — we have not seen an increase for the past number of years, and that was by choice.

Another basic principle is that we need to pay ourselves. Pay yourself first. Put money aside. That's part of the concept, also, with the B.C. prosperity fund. There's a vision. It's mocked by the opposition as pie in the sky. Well, it starts off with a vision. Think of the Olympics. It started off with a vision. At that time, it was pie in the
[ Page 13199 ]
sky, but you had to work towards it. That's three years ago right now, and Vancouver is a better place because of it. There's infrastructure around that we're benefiting from.

The convention centre also was criticized. We're seeing hundreds of millions of dollars come into Vancouver and to British Columbia because of the convention centre. There is the Sea to Sky Highway. There are all sorts of infrastructure improvements. There is the Canada Line.

The prosperity fund is…. We're planning for the future. The future begins now, and it comes very quickly. It's like preparing for retirement: the sooner we prepare, the earlier we prepare, the better it is. We have tremendous opportunities with LNG, liquefied natural gas — tremendous opportunities here. But we need to seize that opportunity quickly.

[1515]

There are many jobs, possible jobs. Actually, there's a lot of activity up north right now, in preparation, that will need highly skilled workers in research, in trades. Tens of thousands of jobs. Opportunities for our young people to get good-paying jobs.

My son works up north, and he's doing very well. He's up in the Northwest Territories. He's doing well there. I talked to one lady as I was going door to door in Mission. She's actually traffic control, as a flag lady, and is making probably better than I'm doing financially. So there are the opportunities, and we are providing these opportunities.

This is really important. Now, I am really concerned about the NDP position with LNG. They say they are for it, but they're not sure about fracking. Well, we've been doing fracking in British Columbia for 50 years now. We're world leaders. Maybe it's more; maybe it's 60 years here — okay. It is kilometres, I believe, a couple of kilometres that we go down, way below the waterline. It prevents the scarring of our landscape with wells. It goes down below, and it goes out.

Now, we need to seize the opportunities because what will happen is if the NDP get in power — if — it will be study, study, examination and delay. Delay means a loss of opportunities, because we have serious competition. There's Qatar, Australia, the U.S.A., China.

We need new markets. The U.S.A., which is our primary source of sales for natural gas, is booming in natural gas production. That price differential between what we can sell right now to the States and what can be sold to the Asia market is billions of dollars a year in revenue. We saw that a few years ago, even here. We enjoyed some very hefty surpluses in our budget, and a lot of that had to do with the sale of natural gas — the prices. We need to get that to a place where we can make that differential again.

The NDP had eight years of deficits. They did balance it once, and why?

Interjection.

M. Dalton: Twice — okay. Well, I stand to be corrected.

A lot of it had to do with what we're talking about here, and that is a big spike in natural gas price. So it's important for British Columbia that we really move forward on this. There is widespread cooperation among First Nations, which is good. We need to seize this opportunity. This is not just speculation; there are major players like Shell and others that are there, that are wanting to make these investments and move forward. We need to move forward.

There are other ways that we need to be thinking ahead. I talked about the prosperity fund, putting the money we receive from that aside. We can use that in the future, whether to pay down the debt or for, perhaps, lowering the sales tax — whatever it may be — helping film. But there are other things.

One thing that was good news inside this budget, which was money that was already put aside, was the B.C. training and education savings grant. That's for children born after December 2006. Families will have to put aside…. Well, basically, just set up an RESP. The money will be transferred to the child by the time they are between five and six years old.

If they invest $10, it will equal $4,000 when the child is ready to go to upper education. Or, if they put in $50, it will equal $12,000. We're trying to cooperate with families, and this is good news. It all adds up. This can help pay for a term, depending on how much they put in, for a term or two or more of education.

[1520]

There's also the B.C. early childhood tax measure, which we are planning to put in effect on April 1, 2015 — $146 million for 180,000 families. That's at $55 a month or $660 per year for a child under six. So $110 if there are two children under six. That's another way of helping.

I really like this plan, this early childhood tax measure, and that is because it really allows choice. It's not saying, "Well, you have to send your child to this daycare," or you have to do this. You can use the money to help in whatever way you want to support the child, even if you're a stay-at-home mom or if you have a child and send that child to the care of a relative, a family member, a grandparent. We believe in choice of child care.

If it was just this amount, then fine, it's not very much. However, when you add that to the other measures that are meant to help with child care, then it really does add up. For someone making $30,000, the B.C. early childhood tax credit would be $1,320. That's the childhood tax credit benefit. There's also a federal universal child care benefit and a federal national child care benefit supplement — a total annual benefit of $9,700. So it's significant. All together from all these different streams of funding, it does add up.

Prior to getting elected I was a public school teacher with the BCTF. I taught high school and elementary school, and I wasn't always supportive of this govern-
[ Page 13200 ]
ment. The reason why I decided to join the B.C. Liberals and to run for them for office boils down to this: fiscal management. As much as the NDP say they are and desire to be supportive of education, of health care, of public service, their economic management and economic policies really undermine their ability to support education, health care. They lose the tax revenues.

I know that when I was teaching during the '90s, our salary increases were many times zero — zero, 0.05, 1 percent. We had significant labour strife, strikes, back-to-work legislation. The past two settlements with the teachers have been negotiated. The last one — yes, it was zero, zero and zero, as were all the public sector unions.

But prior to that, there was an increase of about 15 percent during the contract. Even more so, there was a lowering of the number of steps that a teacher needed to take in order to reach the maximum salary — from 11 to 10. For all these things, there is a cost. And actually, from my perspective, we've done fairly well as teachers, better than what was previously the case.

We're making investments. There's the learning improvement fund that we're investing in. It will add another 500 public school teachers — I think it's about $200 million, $210 million over three years — plus another 400 learning assistant teachers, as well as increasing the number of hours for learning assistance to be able to support kids, because it's a challenge.

[1525]

Teaching is very challenging. In the elementary schools it's not easy, and that support is important. The government does recognize that, and I'm glad that there's this funding that's going into education.

Just in terms of prosperity. There's the acronym for the opposition NDP, and we've heard it before: the "no development party." I think it's a fair criticism.

There's the mining industry. Last year we saw a record amount, I believe, of investment in exploration. It was about $650 million in mining activity, as far as exploration. Compare that to, I believe, about $25 million the last year the NDP was in. That amount that was invested in exploration last year equals the entire term that they were in.

Those are jobs. I know that in the Lower Mainland we can…. The mining industry, the forest industry — that's far away. But it isn't in the sense that the revenues that are generated from the mines, from the workers that are paying income taxes, all flow into our revenues. From that, we pay for all the services that we enjoy: health care, education, infrastructure projects.

Also, there's no development…. We talk about the run of the rivers. It's a very green source of energy. I sometimes scratch my head and wonder: why are they so against the run-of-the-river projects? But it isn't just the run-of-the-river projects. It's also the dams, such as Site C in the Peace — against that.

So we've got mines. We've got run of the rivers. We have just development in general. This is our prosperity. My concern is this. It is a genuine concern, because the opposition has a significant lead in the polls right now. I really do hope that British Columbians will consider very carefully before they cast their ballots what faces them in terms of their own prosperity, their own ability to provide for their families.

Let me give another example. Tax relief — we believe in reducing the burden upon taxpayers. Perhaps there are some people that think they should be paying more. Well, I'd like to extend an invitation to all those people that feel that they can afford to pay more tax. The government of B.C. does accept cheques, I believe. You can make it out to the government of B.C., and they can just donate it.

But I tell you, in general people need the money. Even on a hefty income, at a decent income — $80,000, $100,000 — it's still a challenge in the Lower Mainland and other places of the province because of the cost of housing. It's expensive. So we're concerned about tax relief.

A couple of examples. For someone making $50,000 in 2001, they would have been paying $4,211 in provincial income tax. Now they are paying $2,183. That's the difference for someone at $50,000, which nowadays, if you're raising a family, is still modest. But you're saving an extra $2,000 a year just in tax relief.

With someone making $80,000 — a teacher, for example, at the top of the scale — in 2001 they would have been paying about $8,900. Now they're paying $4,700, which is about $4,200 of savings, of difference, in one year. That's a lot of money, $4,200.

[1530]

Over the course of a term…. We have fixed elections, so we're talking four years. For someone making $80,000, we're talking a $16,000 or $17,000 difference. Just there alone in income tax, that difference was made. That $17,000 pays for a significant part, for a child you may want to send to school.

[D. Black in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: I recognize the member for Burnaby-Edmonds. [Applause.]

R. Chouhan: I've got one fan here.

I'm very pleased to rise and speak about this budget, Budget 2013. Before I do that, go into details, I would like to talk about my constituency, the privilege that I have had since 2005 to serve my constituents. I'm so grateful that they gave me that opportunity when I was first elected in 2005.

Burnaby-Edmonds is a very unique place to live. It's such a diverse community, wonderful people from all walks of life — very rich, very poor, working class, you name it. Everybody lives there. I want to give them my sincere thanks for having this opportunity to represent
[ Page 13201 ]
them here in Victoria.

I also would like to thank my constituency assistants Laarni de los Reyes, Amber Keane, Angela Liu; and my legislative assistant, Shirley-Anne Williams. As we all know, the staff play very crucial, very important roles when it comes to providing services to our constituents.

As elected people we are not always there in the office, but staff is there to meet and greet our constituents and deal with their needs on a daily basis. Many times they have to deal with very difficult issues, and they have to go out of their way to find answers for some of the issues that are really, extremely difficult to deal with, to start with.

My staff is very exceptional. I know that they work not only their regular hours but also even after hours. I know that each and every one of them works in the community, because they are part of the community.

I also want to thank the volunteers. I'm sure every other MLA has the same. We have hundreds of volunteers who are working on a regular basis in the community to help those individuals who cannot get help or don't have a voice. They help them to organize and mobilize and help those people to find answers as well.

Some of those volunteers also sit on my constituency executive. They, again, spend so much time not only to help me as their MLA, but also, in their regular daily lives, they go out and work with the community. They find answers that people are so desperate to find.

At the same time, before I get into the details of this budget, I also want to thank my family. My wife, Inder; my daughters, Anu and Amrita Sanford; my son-in-law Jamie Sanford; and particularly my two little granddaughters, Chloe and Neve.

[1535]

When I go home on Thursday night — we go home quite late, you know — my granddaughters are already sleeping by then, so I can't even talk to them. Then on Friday our schedule is so jam-packed — we have meetings and everything else — and you have very little time to spend time with them when they really need you.

Many times my granddaughters would like me to take them to the park, and I can't even find time to take them to the park. That's the life we have to deal with, and I apologize to my family and my granddaughters that I'm not spending enough time with them. Hopefully, we'll adjust our calendar and do something about it.

Madam Speaker, Burnaby-Edmonds is a very diverse community. I'm going to talk in a minute about the expectations my constituents have had about this budget, what they were hoping for. There's a diverse community that we have in Burnaby-Edmonds, as I mentioned earlier. We have people who are really rich, but at the same time, we have people who are homeless, those who have no means to make a proper living. They have been struggling in their lives for so long, and they are left out. For the last 12 years they were hoping to get an answer from this government so they could better their lives.

We have long-term citizens; we have new immigrants. About a month ago I was able to honour some of those citizens that I'm talking about, the volunteers. We were able to hand out the diamond jubilee awards to some of these recipients. As with all MLAs, I had only four awards to give out. If we had had a chance, I'm sure we could have awarded hundreds of people for their service to their community. Of those four individuals, one of them was Antonia Beck.

Antonia Beck is the founding member of the South Burnaby Neighbourhood House. Since 2001 she has been working as the executive director there. Antonia has overseen the growth of this important community facility to the point that it now engages about 400 volunteers.

They started with a very small budget, and now this community organization is quite large. This year they were hoping that they would get some more funding, like any other organization in the community. They were also left out, although I think they're managing all right.

Another one was a young woman from Afghanistan. She was a student at Byrne Creek Secondary School. Her name is Mahjobeh Badakhsh. Mahjobeh, before she even graduated, became a human rights activist. In her high school she raised $3,000 for an orphanage in Afghanistan and personally delivered it, and she's active in fundraising for North Korean refugees as part of Liberty in North Korea.

Then we have the third recipient, whom many people know. We call him Mr. Burnaby: Paul McDonell. Paul has been a Burnaby resident since 1964. He worked as a professional firefighter until 1999, spent six years on the Burnaby parks board and served on the Burnaby health board. He worked with the United Way and Muscular Dystrophy, and he's now a Burnaby city councillor.

Paul McDonell, in Burnaby, has been involved with almost everything that happens in Burnaby-Edmonds. Be it Edmonds City Fair — you know, the Edmonds Street fair — the Santa Claus parade — you name it, he's there. That's why we call him Mr. Burnaby.

[1540]

Then we have Wanda Mulholland. Wanda has been working tirelessly for many years to help raise awareness about the issues and the problems facing the homeless people and low-income residents of Burnaby. She's a coordinator for the Burnaby Task Force on Homelessness and has been volunteering her time with the task force for many years.

Like other volunteers and other people who are active in their community, she was also hoping that in this budget there would be something for those low-income residents of the Burnaby-Edmonds area. Again, to our disappointment, there was nothing.

Students. It's not only the homeless people who are suffering there. We also have some families in a very difficult situation. We have students who go to elementary schools and secondary schools that go hungry. I have
[ Page 13202 ]
tried to work with some other community organizations to find some money that would allow these kids to have some hot food, hot lunches, but there's a limit to it. We can only do so much.

As a result, some of these kids are still going to school hungry, and then they can't focus on their education. So they're not making the progress that every child should be making in the schools, because there is no food in their stomachs. When we are talking about a hungry child, we are talking about poor families. That's what we are talking about.

In the last many years we have been hoping, and we have raised these concerns here in the Legislature, that there should be some poverty reduction plan. There should be some other plan that should be in place. We were hoping there would be money in the budget — in the previous budget or in this budget. Nothing. So that has left those families behind.

I have seen in many instances that both parents work. They work sometimes double. They do two jobs. In a case I have, I know one person. They try to do three jobs, but those are jobs which are minimum-wage jobs. When you have three or four school-going-age kids at home, the work they do is not providing enough money to feed their family. That's the kind of situation that is in Burnaby-Edmonds. I'm sure other MLAs are facing the same situation in their constituencies as well.

Then we have seniors living in poverty. They were also disappointed, because they saw no answer in this budget regarding building low-cost housing or seniors programs. At Burnaby-Edmonds community centre, where lots of seniors go, the volunteers who work in that centre have done a wonderful job bringing the seniors together for the last 40 years. They just celebrated their 40th anniversary.

The Edmonds seniors community centre provides services to those seniors over 55 — to keep them busy, provide health education. They provide other programs so seniors can go out and visit some facilities to seek help. But again, what I was told was they were not getting any funding for that either.

[1545]

So what we have seen is that instead of helping the seniors, the students, the immigrants, this government has tabled a bogus budget — a budget with half-truths and misleading numbers. Year after year this government has tabled deficit budgets. This budget, when you carefully analyze it, is also a deficit budge. It's not a balanced budget.

But because the provincial election is just around the corner, the B.C. Liberals thought that if they call another deficit budget a balanced budget, they may be able to mislead people. However, British Columbians can no longer be fooled.

They remember what this government said about the pre-election budget in 2009. The Liberals said over and over again that the total deficit in that budget would be just $495 million — not a penny more. As we all know, after the election it turned out to be $1.8 billion. That's why we call it a bogus budget. It's not a balanced budget.

Now the Liberal government is trying to use some imaginary amount of $800 million from the yet-to-be-sold properties to make their deficit budget look like a balanced budget. Everybody knows when you don't have that money in your hand, when you haven't sold those assets and you're just planning to sell them…. How can you use that money in a budget to show it looks like a balanced budget? It's unbelievable. That's why we call it a bogus budget.

Similarly, if that's not enough, the government has also used the sale of Little Mountain property again — as they have done in three consecutive budgets — to falsely balance this budget. It's just unbelievable.

We also know how B.C. Liberals have mismanaged the B.C. Hydro assets. That's another serious issue. This government has driven B.C. Hydro into a huge debt. According to one report, it could grow to a whopping $15.8 billion.

Yet the government is trying to create a perception in people's minds that B.C. Hydro is making a profit, and therefore we can take some of its dividends and put that in the budget in the general revenue account so that we can show our budget is balanced. That's unbelievable. No wonder people are calling it a bogus budget.

Madam Speaker, the B.C. Liberals are asking British Columbians to make some tough choices. When British Columbians are asked to make some tough choices, at the same time, the Liberals have no problem in spending millions and millions of dollars for pre-election propaganda. How can they ask British Columbians to make those tough choices when the Liberals are not doing the same thing? They don't mind spending — or should I say wasting — $16 million on partisan ads.

British Columbians are already in a very tough situation. How many more tough choices can they make when the service fees have been increased on everything, from ICBC rates, ferry rates, driver's licence fees, tolls on bridges — not to mention the MSP premium? They have already made enough tough choices. It's time that this government had its priorities straight. For 12 years this government has been punishing British Columbians.

[1550]

Again, my favourite subject about the $11 million of public money that's being used for manufactured film awards before the next election, rather than pursuing B.C.'s chances to host the International Indian Film Academy awards — more commonly known as the Bollywood Oscars — after the election.

They wanted to have some kind of pageant before the election, rather than waiting until after the election. We now know very clearly from the spokesperson from IIFA — who said when the government met with them
[ Page 13203 ]
that they made it very clear — that IIFA can only host those awards in June or July. That was not good enough for the election purposes of this government. Therefore, they went to another company. They manufactured these awards so they can have something before the election.

According to a leaked document from the Premier's office, the Premier's office staff were directed to use tax dollars and public resources to focus on quick wins. There's no new money in the budget to help new immigrants with their settlement needs. The immigration settlement services that used to be provided here in British Columbia are now moved to Calgary.

At no time…. At least, I haven't seen any evidence that this government stood up to the federal government to save those jobs here, to save those services here in British Columbia. They let the federal government do it. So they took it away, put that in Alberta, and people who need those services now have just a 1-800 number. There is no staff there who can meet with these immigrants on a face-to-face basis to deal with their issues, to help them.

By doing so, this government has not only failed the immigrant community but also failed to protect B.C. jobs. Instead of looking for quick wins, I hope the Minister for Multiculturalism will develop a plan to help immigrants with their settlement services rather than using the public resources to help the doomed Liberal Party.

Speaking of B.C. jobs, another example is the SeaBus. Now the SeaBus will be built in Singapore. Again, we are going to lose B.C. jobs. This budget has no vision, no plan to help British Columbians.

Last year there was another leaked document dealing with the Burnaby Hospital. According to that document, the Liberal operators planned to use Burnaby Hospital for political purposes. They wanted to create a false perception in people's minds in Burnaby that the Liberals had a plan to have a new hospital. The sole purpose of that so-called committee was to win back Burnaby–Deer Lake and to retain or save the other two seats in Burnaby.

Like this bogus budget, that was also a bogus committee. In fact, what we have now found out is that there was no plan for a new hospital. It was just a hoax.

According to the leaked document, it said: "This would keep the issue ours without committing dollars and buy us time to do some polling and confirm this is a winning issue." That's how they're planning. There was no plan. There was no desire to help people in Burnaby or in Vancouver to have a new hospital, because we do need a new hospital. Instead, they were just working on this so-called plan — how to win back some of these seats in Burnaby.

[1555]

Again, there's another issue that this budget hasn't dealt with, and that is the shortage of skilled workers. This budget and the budget before this have both failed to recognize the need for skills training in British Columbia. Everyone knows that in the next few years we will be facing an extreme shortage of skilled tradespeople. More than 60,000 skilled workers will be required and will be needed in B.C. But this budget has allocated no money for training.

If the Liberals are really concerned about the economy of British Columbia, they should have paid very serious attention to this subject alone. The employers are desperate to get trained workers, skilled workers. But instead, what we see is no plan, no vision from the B.C. Liberal government. They are just concerned about getting re-elected.

Since the Premier was elected in the by-election in Point Grey, she has been just busy campaigning. That's all we see. The Premier has paid no serious attention to governing this province. If the Premier and the ministers and the B.C. Liberals in general were concerned about British Columbia's economy, they would have engaged themselves in a very serious consultation, engaging or training workers for future needs. But no. All they're concerned about is to make sure that they get re-elected.

When the Premier is not paying attention to her job, what do we see? The other ministers also don't do that. The prime example of that is the Minister for Multiculturalism, as we have seen in the last couple of days.

This government has the habit to make promises and then break those promises. Who will forget the HST fiasco in 2009? British Columbians were told that there would be no HST. However, after a few months, all of a sudden HST was thrust upon British Columbians, and we were told: "Oh well, things have changed. The economic situation has been changed. Ontario is having it. Therefore, British Columbia must have it."

All kinds of excuses were made to introduce the HST, and that made people angry. Thousands and thousands of those people lined up to sign that petition, and we saw the anger and frustration in every community about that particular issue.

Since then, not only that but so many other promises were made and broken. How can this government now hope that this budget will be accepted as a balanced budget when people know that this government has no credibility? It has absolutely shown itself that it is not capable to govern this province anymore.

One other example before I conclude my remarks. In 2005, when I decided to run, I was working as the director of collective bargaining for the Hospital Employees Union. In 2000, at that time, Gordon Campbell, who was opposition leader, came to our union and met with us, and he told us if he got elected, there would be no change to the collective agreement of the Hospital Employees Union or health care workers in general.

We recorded his interview, and we published that in our paper, called the Guardian. Shortly thereafter he was elected, and we saw Bill 29. Bill 29 contracted out those services and the hospitals' food services — you name it.
[ Page 13204 ]
As a result, 9,000 people lost their jobs. That's when I decided to run for political office.

[1600]

I thought I would be able to come and make a meaningful contribution, but what I have seen for the last eight years is that this government has not learned a single lesson. They just keep betraying people. That's what it is.

Therefore, Madam Speaker, I'm going to vote against this budget, if we have that opportunity. I want to thank the Legislature, this House and all of my constituents for this opportunity to stand up and speak about it.

J. McIntyre: It's my great pleasure to take my place in the budget debate on behalf of West Vancouver–Sea to Sky residents, especially as this will be my last major opportunity to address this House before I leave politics in April. While I'm very much looking forward to reclaiming my personal life, reconnecting with friends and figuring out what this next chapter is going to look like, I have to admit that leaving this role, leaving behind constituents and my colleagues and the Legislature, is bittersweet.

I really appreciate the outpouring of support from those I have come to know over the past eight years, even from strangers who have been coming forward in the past few months to thank me for my service in the riding. As many of you know, this is generally a thankless and a difficult role, so I want to acknowledge and extend thanks to all of you who've made me feel that this has all been more than worthwhile.

It's been a pleasure to serve the people, the elected officials in six different communities, community leaders and organizations like Rotary, because together we've been successful in building and showcasing our region and all it has to offer.

There were many additional pressures in the Sea to Sky corridor, in particular as we prepared to host the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, one of the most — if not the most — successful major events in Canadian history.

The Sea to Sky Highway safety upgrade is a major legacy. It has opened up the corridor for economic development and made a formerly often-treacherous route significantly safer and easier to travel for residents, visitors and commercial traffic alike. We were aiming for a 30 percent reduction in vehicle incidents. We have surpassed that target significantly, at almost 50 percent.

Mentioning the highway, of course, immediately makes me think of my trial by fire over the interchange at Eagleridge Bluffs, both in my first election campaign and the escalation that followed for about 18 months afterwards. I'm sure many of you remember that a select group of residents reared up and demanded that a third of the $600 million budget for the entire 100-plus-kilometre highway be spent in the first 1.4 kilometres for a tunnel.

Well, my skin thickened, and after studying the issues I stuck to my guns in the belief that I represented the majority of opinion, especially in the corridor where they wanted funds spent on safety features such as medians, rumble strips, sound buffering, connectivity across communities and landscaping features. Anyway, we won the day, and now thousands are enjoying a spectacular ride over that overland route.

I'd like to take a moment to describe a number of other legacies in our region, both from the 2010 games and the new amenities from other investments in infrastructure that over time have contributed significantly to enhancing day-to-day life in our communities. I'd like to have this on the record, as we should be very proud of our combined efforts and successes in assisting local governments and community organizations to achieve some of their priorities and goals.

Starting with the 2010 legacies, because we were very blessed. There are a few major highlights here, things like the Callaghan Valley. It puts the whole Whistler region on the international map now for Nordic sports and encourages locals to engage in healthy activities like cross-country skiing.

I have a great anecdote there about a woman artist I met in her, I guess, senior years, who described to me how she'd had sort of aching knees and hadn't done much for her health in the last while. But she got a pass at Callaghan for cross-country skiing, and it absolutely transformed her life. For me, those are the great stories that I will carry with me.

We have a major legacy like the sliding centre up at Whistler, where we're now hosting World Cup events in bobsleigh, skeleton and luge. We have the Olympic plaza, where everybody received their medals in 2010 during the games. It's all been greened over now and is a huge gathering area in the centre of Whistler. They're now hosting free concerts, and it's contributing largely to their tourism strategy.

Cheakamus Crossing, a brand-new neighbourhood for affordable housing, was transformed from the athletes village, so residents now can afford to live in the community in which they work.

[1605]

We have Olympic live sites up in Pemberton and Mount Currie. We have VANOC's $750,000 legacy in Squamish that's now primarily being directed to youth sports. So a number of legacies.

There were a number of legacies from the senior levels of government. I'm just going to go through a little list, because I'd really like them on the record. I'm very proud of what we were able to achieve.

We've got new turf fields in Squamish and West Vancouver; Spirit Squares; the O'Siem Pavilion in Squamish; the Atrium in West Vancouver's new community centre; community centre development in Pemberton and some redevelopment going on in Lions Bay; a skateboard park in Pemberton; upgrades in a variety of provincial parks —
[ Page 13205 ]
Cypress, Alice Lake, Brandywine. And Garibaldi Provincial Park, the jewel in our area, is going through a master plan review now.

Diking. A variety of grants for Squamish and Pemberton, who suffer from flood threats, primarily in the fall, and need our help — need government help in making sure that they can pay for those things, keep the public safe.

We have trails funding, starting in the north with Pemberton up at One Mile Lake. Moving down, we've been able to help with trails in Whistler, Squamish, Lions Bay and then, of course, the Spirit Trail on the North Shore that I so enthusiastically championed to link Horseshoe Bay to Deep Cove. That's actually a work in progress still.

We've had wastewater treatment in Pemberton, Squamish and Bowen Island. Then the Malamute lands. There are ten hectares of lands just on the Sea to Sky Highway, there on the waterfront, that have now been put back into Stawamus Chief Provincial Park, where they naturally belong.

Now, on the social side, playground upgrades in Whistler, Squamish and West Vancouver. A new elementary school in Spring Creek in Whistler.

Capilano College's designation as a university and the addition of their new film centre. Capital grants for child care spaces several years ago in Mount Currie, Pemberton and Squamish. StrongStart Centres in West Vancouver and the corridor that have been enormously successful all over the province. I know that residents in our region have been using them in great numbers and are very grateful.

We've also had a much-needed expansion at the Hilltop seniors centre in Squamish. We've expanded hospital and lab services: for example, the emergency department at Squamish Hospital and pharmacy upgrades for cancer treatment so that people can get their treatment close to home and don't have to travel down to Lions Gate Hospital. We've had some lab improvements up in Pemberton as well.

Another thing that's been very near and dear to my heart is the HOpe centre for psychiatry and education at Lions Gate Hospital, where we're going to be able to enhance the delivery of mental health and addiction services, both in-patient and out-patient. That facility should be completed by year-end and ready to receive patients at the beginning of 2014. As chair of the MLA community liaison committee, I can happily report that it's on time and on budget.

In terms of major infrastructure, I have to admit that I'm still waiting patiently to see what becomes of the oceanfront lands in Squamish that were essentially given by the province to the district of Squamish in the B.C. Rail transaction some number of years ago now. There is still enormous potential for mixed-use development in what I believe is North America's last deep-sea port to be developed. I know it featured largely in my maiden speech.

Anyway, speaking of Squamish, I would like to say how much working with the Squamish Nation and also the Lil'wat Nation has meant to me personally. I was witness to these First Nations in their role as part of the Four Host First Nations as they benefited enormously by our hosting of the 2010 games. They received unprecedented economic and cultural opportunities that had not been available in the 150 years of our joint history. To their credit, they took full advantage of it.

We have a few highlights there as well. First Nations were able to have apprenticeships on the highway upgrade; economic rewards from a gravel yard just south of Pemberton; the Squamish Nation youth ambassador program; and private and public sector funding for the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre in Whistler. And there were several historic land agreements that were related to the accommodation for the highway-widening through their territories.

We were able to layer on some of the First Nations issues and priorities in the historic Sea to Sky land and resource management plan that passed several years ago, after many years of stakeholder debate and input to develop and work on a high-level land use plan.

I would really like to take a moment to compliment the elected officials at the time — led by Mayor Jordan Sturdy in Pemberton, Ken Melamed in Whistler and Greg Gardner in Squamish — for their dedication in ensuring that we hosted successful games in our region and that we worked together with the Lil'wat and Squamish First Nations to everyone's benefit, including seeking new economic development opportunities.

West Vancouver was a host venue city due to the Cypress Mountain events and was also a major stop in the torch relay, adding to the excitement.

[1610]

I have to say that in addition to winning the gold medal in ice hockey, the torch relay was the most memorable and emotional part of the games activities for me personally. The way in which the Canadian and the British Columbian populace embraced the relay was, to me, the unexpected highlight.

Before the West Van celebration I took three days and followed the torch up the corridor for 14 stops, from Lion's Bay to Mount Currie, to support the torchbearers, their families and all of the enthusiastic crowds, as well as to savour the memories of each and every one of those handovers.

I was in Totem Hall in Squamish when the torch arrived for the very first First Nations stop, and I can tell you there was not a dry eye in that room. It was overwhelming, I think — almost overwhelming — when I remember that moment.

As I pass the torch to my successor — hopefully, Mayor Sturdy, who is with us in the gallery — I want
[ Page 13206 ]
to thank you, personally, for the leadership and all the work you've done in the Pemberton area to further the Lil'wat Nation's interests, particularly since that Winds of Change report.

I can happily inform the Legislature that the village of Pemberton now has regular joint council meetings to work closely with the First Nations on mutually beneficial projects, and I think it's very progressive work. I'd like to recognize it.

The year spent ensuring that the district of Squamish has an agreement with the Squamish Nation on how they will communicate and engage on land use issues, as well as identifying mutual priorities, is a testament to the leadership of Chief Gibby Jacob and former mayor Greg Gardner and his council. As well, it's a fine example of where there's a will, there's a way. The new district of Squamish council, led by Mayor Rob Kirkham, endorsed that agreement. I wish them every success in negotiating their service agreement and in building their respective communities together in good faith.

Also, the work with First Nations leads me directly to some comments and reflections on my work as Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth since my re-election in 2009. When I was first appointed by the former Premier, I decided that in the spirit of former Justice Ted Hughes, whose recommendations led to the creation of the committee, we needed to operate in a non-partisan fashion, the way that all legislative committees are supposed to work, theoretically, and take the politics out of our work.

I believe strongly that neither side of the House should be scoring political points at the expense of the most vulnerable in society. I'm proud to say that we have a pretty good track record. In fact, we garnered a compliment from Mr. Hughes on our collaborative approach while we were undertaking the first statutory review of the act that supports the work of the Representative for Children and Youth.

That committee is a touchstone to government for the representative, and it receives her reports, her service plan and annual reports, as well as the periodic updates of the work of her office.

Early on, in May 2010, the committee conducted a day of academic and organization presentations on the subject of child poverty at the Wosk Centre in Vancouver, where the research was clear in terms of steps that governments can undertake to give families assistance and provide children with a healthier start in life.

It identified some key groups in society that, unfortunately, struggle to a greater extent and that we need, as a government, to pay attention to. Sadly, a much higher proportion of children in care in B.C. comes from First Nations families, where we need to continue our efforts to alleviate entrenched poverty and poor housing conditions. We need, more than ever, to continue building on the success we've had over this last decade in actually raising high school graduation rates and incenting studies in higher education and skills training.

Let me congratulate the Sea to Sky school district 48 on their aboriginal education agreement. I firmly believe that educational opportunities should be available and equal for all British Columbians.

Before I leave the subject, I must mention, anecdotally, two very memorable meetings I had the privilege of attending. The first was with the late Dr. Fraser Mustard from Ontario, the acknowledged expert on early human development who, fortunately for B.C., influenced the great work of the late Dr. Clyde Hertzman of UBC. He developed the EDI scores to identify those geographic areas, right down to the neighbourhood level, where youngsters are, unfortunately, not fully prepared as they arrive at the kindergarten door.

Secondly, I had the privilege of attending a lecture at Mulgrave School in West Vancouver that featured Sir Ken Robinson, originally from England, expounding on how in 21st-century learning we need to be assisting all young people to find that critical juncture where your interests meet your talents, so that youth can find their passion and become life-long learners. Both these experts had a very powerful impact.

Another highlight in government was just less than the year I spent as Minister of State Responsible for the Intergovernmental Relations Secretariat in the former Premier's office in 2008-09. I had the opportunity to represent the government to the federal government and other jurisdictions and, additionally, to work with the consular court and with the francophone community in B.C. It was a good fit with my interests and skills, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to serve in that role.

[1615]

My time in IGR followed on the heels of three years as one of the Premier's designates to PNWER, the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region, where we worked on cross-border trade initiatives and programs that would enhance and streamline economic development in what was originally known as Cascadia. I was co-chair of PNWER's environmental working group, where we melded discussions with energy and green energy and worked together on educating legislators on pressing issues related to mitigation and adaptation on climate change.

B.C.'s involvement with the WCI, the Western Climate Initiative, was in part, developing a cap-and-trade system, and that was at the forefront of a lot of the work we were doing at that time.

Several accomplishments during that very brief tenure in IGR were the introduction of B.C.'s enhanced driver's licence for cross-border land travel and the groundwork for the introduction of the second Amtrak train service between Oregon, Washington and Vancouver to enhance tourism, as well as the extension of the agreement with the federal government for services to our francophone
[ Page 13207 ]
community.

Enough reflection on my highlights of the past eight years. On to the main topic of debate, the 2013 balanced budget, the operative term being "balanced," all in an effort to maintain our top triple-A credit rating and avoid taxpayer dollars being spent on interest on debt. One of the main tenets guiding this budget is to avoid leaving our children with debt. We firmly believe that we need to find that balance of providing services with affordability.

With great difficulty and tough choices, I believe this is an earnest attempt by government to reduce spending in some areas, like bending the curve on health care, all the while adding $2.4 billion over the three-year cycle, and at the same time, asking corporations in the more affluent segments — those who earn over $150,000 a year — to pay a little more to help us achieve balance.

Government also went the extra length of hiring a nationally respected economist, Dr. Tim O'Neill, to review our revenue projections, and we adjusted downwards the revenue from oil and gas to meet with his approval. We're planning to keep spending growth at a modest 1.5 percent but still finding some new money for some of the social pressures and initiatives.

One of the main highlights was an interesting way to reposition the $1,000 funds we've been putting aside for each newborn since 2007 for higher education. For those born since then we will now provide a one-time grant of $1,200 towards a B.C. resident child's RESP, a registered education savings plan, after the child turns six. Families can start saving sooner and can add to the plan if they wish to take advantage of compound growth. In this way, the family controls exactly how it grows, and it will provide a meaningful contribution to a child's post–high school education or training, which we know is one of the best ways to ensure our economic future and the well-being of the next generation.

Government is also adding $210 million to the learning improvement fund, which goes right into the classrooms — additional teachers, teacher assistants and professional development. And to make it a little easier on families, we're also expanding the property tax deferral program to all families supporting children in educational institutions and to any who are supporting adult children with disabilities. And we're putting a seniors advocate in place.

Another budget highlight for me was continuing funding for the sports and arts legacy with another $60 million over three years. Post-2010 we wanted to build on the momentum of supporting sports and arts and culture. We put $10 million aside for each over three years. That funding would have expired this year, but government recognized the importance of these legacies in communities all over the province, and we found the funds to extend that program for an additional three years.

On the arts front, this complements the recently announced record-level funding of $24 million for the B.C. Arts Council, which will be taking a major role in the new B.C. Creative Futures initiative that the Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development just announced. Creative Futures has a three-pronged approach to fund new opportunities for youth to foster classroom-to-career creativity. It establishes a consolidated agency to work with private and public sector entities to help creative industries flourish here and will work with stakeholders to build a strategy and vision for the range of creative industries in B.C.

Now, I recognize that many in the film industry currently are under financial pressure, with a variety of other jurisdictions offering very lucrative incentives, combined with the public's as well as the NDP opposition's desire to return to the PST, which, unfortunately, makes us less competitive than places like Ontario. I'm hoping that government, working in collaboration with the film industry, will be able to come up with something creative to support an important sector that provides jobs for 5,000 or 6,000 people on the North Shore alone and is now becoming an increasingly important economic driver in Squamish with regional supplement.

Focus on the arts is increasing in Sea to Sky with some new facilities on the horizon, coupled with the Resort Municipality of Whistler increasing their focus on cultural tourism boosted by the $6 million or $7 million in the RMI funding that we grant.

[1620]

Art patron and West Vancouver resident Mike Audain has generously offered to build a new gallery in the resort to house part of his extensive collection, including First Nations art pieces. Whistler has generously responded with land and other supports. The Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre is now interested in raising capital for infrastructure to physically connect it to the new art gallery, leveraging tourists' growing interest in aboriginal culture.

Whistler is also steadily building an international reputation for melding film and the art of the business of film with their Whistler Film Festival, ably led by Shauna Hardy-Mishaw for more than the past decade. Even Harry Potter visited this year. Maybe I should say Daniel Radcliffe.

West Vancouver is also getting into the act with council's commitment to the new West Vancouver art, architecture and design centre that will be located in Ambleside, headed up by Merla Beckerman, who also serves us well on the B.C. Arts Council.

Now on a different topic, but one also near and dear to me, as I am winding down here. There is a budget commitment for some additional funding for early learning and child care to start to make a difference to the long-time issues of access, affordability and quality, as well as training. I believe it's fundamentally important to be investing in the early years. Not only is it the right thing to do, but the return on investment is substantial. I've
[ Page 13208 ]
heard it's at least $6 or possibly $8 for every dollar spent. Unfortunately, if youth get involved in the justice system, I've heard it can be as high as $16 to $1.

The research points to the need for investment in human capital — our talent, our most precious resource — as well as trade and technology, in order to increase our productivity and keep the economy strong. Martha Piper, the former head of UBC, made a memorable speech some years ago on the importance of investing in each of these three t's — talent, trade and technology. Investments in early learning and health, modernizing the delivery of the K-to-12 education system and then fixing the disconnect between post-secondary training and the demands from industry to mitigate the impending skills shortage will go a long way in B.C. to underpin the economy.

Through these difficult economic times we've been providing capital for infrastructure that can be amortized over time. When the economy improves, my greatest wish is that we're able to invest more heavily in programs for our youngsters, all the way up to the point where they enter the workforce with education and skills that they have a passion for so they can lead independent, productive and healthy lives. I can't think of a better legacy.

Paul Kershaw, who worked with Clyde Hertzman at UBC, whom I referred to earlier, has been elegantly writing about his Generation Squeeze campaign and noting how governments are spending far more on seniors than juniors. In fact, he goes as far as to say that we are widening that generation gap and, in effect, pitting these generations against each other for scarce dollars. It's not a pretty picture, and something that those who serve after me in this revered House I hope will address.

I'll conclude my remarks now with a number of thank yous. There are so many people who have supported me from the outset and, thank heavens, are still with me. Let me start with the legislative staff here. My LAs in the past: Kellie O'Brien, and two who are no longer working with us here in the Leg., Cayley Brown and Katy Fairley, as well as my current LA, Emily Phillips. Thanks for keeping me organized and where I'm supposed to be.

The researchers and caucus communication staff over the years have been very supportive, and I appreciate the pressure they work under. My deep gratitude goes to my long-time constituency assistant Judith Fee, who has been with me all eight years, and before that served my predecessor, Ted Nebbeling. She is dedicated, caring, and handles all our casework efficiently and with sensitivity. I'm going to miss you, Judi.

To my riding president, Donna Mackey, and treasurer and former 2009 campaign manager, Dave Davenport, as well as all of the members of the riding executive, my friends who have supported me through the ups and downs of this roller-coaster job, many, many thanks. Thanks to the special members of that first 2005 campaign team led by Derek Lew, Colin Metcalfe and Rob MacKay-Dunn, who got me nominated and elected. I have great memories.

Last, but most of all, my deepest thanks to my incredible family: my husband, Andrew; my son, Drew, who's on the verge of getting his Red Seal accreditation as an electrician; and my daughter, Leigh, working in London, England. I could never have done this job with any success without your complete support. To my dad, John Gillespie, for his always sage advice and love. I got to follow my passion to represent a diverse and spectacular region of the province with interesting constituents, so thank you all for your trust and the opportunity which very few get to savour. [Applause.]

[1625]

V. Huntington: Before I start my remarks I would like to recognize the member for West Vancouver–Sea to Sky. Her remarks were extremely good ones, and she deserves to walk away from this place feeling proud of the accomplishments she has done for her riding. I want you to know that you are going to be missed here.

I'm pleased to rise on behalf of my constituents in Delta South to speak in response to the 2013-2014 budget — a speech about a piece of legislation that has no hope of passing, was not intended to pass and which, therefore, makes my remarks rather moot. I find it very ironic.

Here we stand, seriously and with dedication, offering our opinions on a document that will never be before us again — a document that is written to leave a good impression before going into an election. And yet, the very fact that it is an election year means that nobody truly trusts the numbers or the promises. Is the budget really balanced? Will it change right after the election? Can a budget be balanced using future sales of assets with only estimates for selling prices or that might not even sell? We don't know.

Is skimming ICBC and B.C. Hydro to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars really balancing the budget? We don't know. Can the budget be balanced on the promise of economic growth? We don't know. Can we examine the details with the minister? No, we can't.

So what is this bubble budget, this vapour that will find its way to the recycle bin the moment we leave this building? It is an election document with no meaning to the functions of government. The only meaningful budget document we shall pass this session is an interim supply bill that will enable government ministries to conduct business in our absence. This is not an exercise in good government. It is, in fact, an exercise that undermines good government and which creates cynicism in the voter.

At its root, this budget underscores in every way the need to move the election date from the spring to the fall. In 2009 the pre-election and post-election budget differed in so many material respects that the public will remain forever skeptical of government promises. I
[ Page 13209 ]
deeply believe that members of this House must take this issue seriously and begin the process to mend one of our democratic deficits.

I urge members to support calls to move our provincial election date to the fall of 2017. If we do that, we can return this House to a normal budget cycle — one that receives the serious attention a provincial budget should be accorded. No document this important to the governing of a democratic state should ever be meaningless, yet that is what we have before us, and that is what we must fix. We must, without question, move the election date to the fall, and we must do it this session.

But speaking to the budget, I would like to make some positive comments on certain elements the budget purports to do. Then I would like to discuss what I personally feel government should be doing in the unstable times that lie ahead. With the extremely important caveat that I'll believe it when I see it, there are a number of things I am pleased about in the budget.

The new funding for the Agricultural Land Commission is very welcome. The commission has been starved of funding for the past decade. Even the Auditor General noted that between 2002 and 2012 the ALC's annual budget fell 44 percent, a shocking admission that the government had all but abandoned the ALC in favour of development. So the $1 million in increased funding for the next fiscal year alone is a welcome sign. But in terms of real dollars, it is still over $600,000 below the 2002-2003 level, and there is a long way to go before the commission can be relied upon to fulfil its mandate.

[1630]

The second piece of good news for agriculture is the grant for carbon tax relief for the greenhouse industry. In May of 2011, I was pleased to arrange a meeting between the Minister of Agriculture and the Greenhouse Growers Association. The discussion centred on the grave impact the carbon tax was having on the horticultural industry. It was fast becoming impossible to compete with imported vegetables. The grant of an 80 percent carbon tax relief is a welcome move and recognizes both the unique needs of greenhouse growers and their contribution to both provincial food security and to our economy.

The Ministry of Agriculture is also receiving a boost in funding of almost $12 million for agricultural science and policy. Anything the government wants to put back into agriculture is on my list of good deeds. But being the bubble that the budget is, we won't be able to go through estimates and determine where this new funding is specifically directed. It's a lot of money to a ministry the government has routinely been starving, and I would like to understand the sudden largesse.

Interjection.

V. Huntington: Talk to the minister? Okay, you've got a date.

But I must say that in recognizing the needs of the greenhouse industry, the government somehow forgot about the cement industry. Since the introduction of the carbon tax, imports of cements have grown to 40 percent — 40 percent — of the domestic market. The industry cannot compete with tax-free imports.

The situation is not sustainable, and B.C. will see critical industries, like Lafarge and Lehigh, leave this province. B.C. will become dependent on foreign cement. Does this government really want the construction industry to use Chinese cement? I can tell you that the people of this province don't want to rely on it.

The irony of the minister's statement — that government will continue to engage with the cement industry — was not lost on the executive director of the Canadian Cement Association, who was personally invited by the minister to attend the budget day announcement. Why invite Mr. McSweeney? Did the minister somehow think that announcing continued discussions would make him go home happy?

It is more than unfortunate the government could not find a way to return the film industry in B.C. to a more level playing field with other jurisdictions. We spend time and effort and money to establish an industry and then abandon it to non-market competitive pressures in other areas of the country. Our film industry in all its forms is a manufacturer we can be proud of, and this government simply must work to find a way to keep the jobs and expertise in B.C.

There are other positive elements in the budget: a drug pricing agreement that will hopefully lower prescription drug costs, the prospect of increased funding for early learning and the potential of tax credits for parents with young children — to name but a few. But again, it's all a bubble drifting on the wind. Pop, and it's gone.

I could go through many items in the budget that are unreliable, like the LNG revenue projections that are a subject of world debate and price manoeuvring at this very moment; or the failure to insist on independent cumulative impact assessments in the northeast sector, a region that stands to be stripped of everything of environmental and agricultural value within a few short years; or the failure to discuss the impact that the return to PST will have on business and whether there is anything that can be done to assist business through this particularly hard transition.

There is another issue the budget brings to mind, an issue I have spoken about before and which deserves to be mentioned again. Both sides of this House desire fundamentally the same things for British Columbians. Both sides want jobs, economic growth, quality health care, a strong education system and a functioning social safety net. In other words, we all strive to deliver prosperity and hope for the future of our citizens.

While I know that members in this place disagree on how best to achieve their common goals, at the end of
[ Page 13210 ]
the day, we all share those same basic values. I point this out for one important reason. I believe the rhetoric that flies across this aisle is distracting us from much larger or compelling issues that face our province and our country.

The budget and the throne speech of elusive hope represent a failure by government to engage the people of British Columbia in a discussion about what really lies ahead — a failure to engage in a discussion about the reality of our future and how it will unfold and about how we protect our values and institutions in the face of a social change so significant that the quality of life we have known may become a thing of the past.

[1635]

The Minister of Finance in Quebec has called this shift a cultural revolution, one that demands a dialogue between the people and their government. It may be the great intellectual issue of our day. As globalization and free trade redistribute the wealth of the industrialized nations, our governments are rabidly searching for new and creative sources of revenue to fill the vacuum.

To put it mildly, massive financial upheaval only aggravates and accelerates the existing financial reality. If we do not care to enable a slow and measured reduction in government support systems, we will be forced to endure the ravages of cold-turkey withdrawals.

As a people we have the mutual desire to protect the commons, our environment, our quality of life and our democratic institutions. We expect government to do everything it can to preserve those values. But the magnitude of the shifting relationship between us and our government can uncover that dangerous underbelly that lingers in all rulers — righteousness, autocratic pronouncements, a move to oligarchy; where corporate influence puts at risk our land, our fish, our wildlife, our water; where propaganda replaces truth and hiding the realities of a budget becomes the order of the day.

I want my government to have the wisdom and intelligence to understand the social revolution that is occurring. I want my government to show the leadership necessary to guide this province through the difficult times ahead, to work with the people of this great province to ensure that the compassion that is part of the fabric of Canadian society is not allowed to waste away. I want a government that will do everything in its power to restore balance to its economic decision-making and to preserve our understanding and belief in how democracy ought to function.

Hon. Speaker, we face two real challenges. One, how do we protect our way of life in the face of a diminishing quantity in life? Two, how do we demand our government protect that way of life as we enter a whole new reality? This is a time when we need bold, determined and dedicated governance if we are to protect the values and institutions we hold dear.

And lest I leave this debate without offering a suggestion that could start this so badly needed dialogue with the people, let me propose to members of this House the following: that government activate a special and non-partisan committee of this House, mandated to explore our coming new reality, that it define the issues facing the people of this land, that it develop a relevant and meaningful list of questions and that it consider how best the members of this place can engage the people, how we can really listen to them and how we can begin to act as the public servants we are in the most important discussion of our generation.

Quo vadis, the fruits of our labour? Quo vadis, democracy?

Hon. M. Polak: I'm pleased to be able to rise in this House today and speak in support of a balanced budget.

Not that long ago I had the privilege of standing in this House and addressing the throne speech. At that time, I pointed out that while our current throne speech outlines some very bold vision — some really imaginative opportunities for British Columbia, things that can spell out our future in an entirely different way — a similar thing had happened a little more than a decade previously, when the government had outlined a strategy to diversify our economy, rely less on U.S. trade and, through that, institute the work and investment in the Pacific gateway and achieve those goals in terms of the diversification of our economy.

Madam Speaker, although at the time those aspirations were met with great skepticism, nevertheless we achieved them. As I look at the plan that the budget supports — we have the throne speech with its aspirations for the future — we have a budget that is the foundation for that. Why is that? Well, as I pointed out in my throne speech comments, you cannot simply wave your hand and arrive at the situation you wish to be in. You have to plan for it.

[1640]

I dare say that had there not been the kind of fiscal management that was required in the last ten or more years, there is no way that we would be producing a balanced budget in this year. It's because of the type of work we have already done. As I proceed with my comments, I'll be able to share why that becomes so important in understanding this budget and in understanding the initiatives that are undertaken within it.

In my own ministry there are some excellent examples. Since 2001 we've invested well over $11 billion in highway improvements across British Columbia. When it came to the Pacific Gateway Alliance, together with industry, $22 billion was committed to expand port, rail, roads and airport facilities. What are the results of that? The result of that is major infrastructure, already completed or in some cases just about to be completed within the coming year, infrastructure that fundamentally changes the patterns of travel, of day-to-day life, of commuters.

But perhaps even more importantly, when we think about growing the economy, it opens up British Columbia
[ Page 13211 ]
to a completely new opportunity in terms of goods movement and the transportation of those across not only the Lower Mainland region but all over the province of British Columbia — taking advantage of the fact that we are three days closer to Asia, taking advantage of the fact that, around the globe, industry is looking for more and better ways to achieve efficiencies and therefore improve their own economic viability.

That was only possible because decisions were made early on to approach budgeting in a certain way, to recognize that whenever one makes a budget as government, you have two choices. You can grow government, or you can grow the economy. I would say that in my view the two are mutually exclusive. If one chooses that growing government is the way to achieve their ends, one might be sincere, but I don't think they will achieve them.

At the end of the day, government doesn't have its own money, and so there are two choices. You get it from the public in terms of taxes, or you can get it from revenues, in terms of economic development around the province.

I don't think anyone would argue that they wish to pay more taxes. Certainly, difficult choices have to be made at times to gather more taxation from the public, but it should always be done with the greatest of hesitation and the greatest deal of caution.

As a result of the careful decisions that have been made and the work that has been done, not just across government but, in reality, across British Columbia…. British Columbians each and every day deal with the results of our decisions here, and it's in partnership with them that we have reached a place that most governments around the globe are envious of today with this budget.

As a result of that, we still will see investment in infrastructure in this province. I'm pleased that when I look at the budget plan, the service plan for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, we're recognizing that even in difficult times, we cannot pull back from the investment in infrastructure that is going to help to continue to grow our economy at a time when other economies around the world are looking at declines in their economic growth. It's a key piece of this budget, and it's a key feature of the work we have been doing in British Columbia over these many years and intend to continue to do with the presentation of this budget.

Let's look at a few of the investments and the importance of them. The Port Mann, Highway 1, South Fraser perimeter road projects — they are due to be complete in December. Those projects are moving ahead. They are already making a significant difference on the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. But they will certainly, when complete, provide an even more comprehensive solution to the traffic issues that are being faced there.

But make no mistake about it. It's not just about Lower Mainland transportation. It's also about the network that allows goods movement, freight movement, all across our province. Investments that are coming, investments that are planned. The Trans-Canada, Highway 1 — widening that from Kamloops to the Alberta border.

[1645]

I'm pleased that we were able to announce the tendering of the next phase of the Pritchard–Hoffman's Bluff project. We're moving ahead with the projects that will allow that four-laning. Overall, we have $650 million allocated over the next ten years.

Again, this brings us back to what the record of achievement is. Back in the day when we first started talking about the widening of Highway 1 and the building of the Port Mann, a ten-year project — skepticism. "Never going to get it done. It's never going to happen." It happened.

In this case, I call to our record when people say: "I don't think you're going to do it." Construction is already beginning on portions, and we will continue to advance that project because we know that it's a key corridor, not just for those local areas and for the safe travel of the public who live there, but also because it's a key goods movement corridor for British Columbia.

The Cariboo connector, the Okanagan Valley corridor, priority rural highway corridors such as 2, 3, 16, 97 North — all are addressed in our capital plan in this budget.

In an overarching way we're investing $518 million over the course of this fiscal plan in road rehab over the next three years. We're investing $150 million to rehabilitate Interior and rural side roads and $92 million to improve roads impacted by the mountain pine beetle harvest. We'll also invest $20 million in each of 2013-14 and 2014-15 for the oil and gas rural road improvements. All of these investments are investments we're able to make because we have been prudent and careful over the years that we have been managing the provincial purse.

Of course, there are many people who would say: "Well, that's great you're investing in roads, but it's really important that we advance cleaner travel, that we advance the opportunities for public transit." We're investing there as well — significant investments.

Over the next three years our service plan calls for over $836 million of provincial investment in transit infrastructure. We've committed $586 million to the Evergreen line, and our service plan calls for $364 million for rapid transit buses and other transit priorities over the next three years.

For those who live outside of the Lower Mainland, they'll be more familiar with B.C. Transit. I'm pleased to say that B.C. Transit will see a 22 percent increase in their operating budget over the next three-year period.

We're also going to continue to work with our federal partners, with TransLink, to achieve the goals that we have in the provincial transit plan and make sure that we are constantly able to respond to the growth not only in the Lower Mainland but to the needs of communities outside of urban centres.

Then there's B.C. Ferries. Very, very challenging —
[ Page 13212 ]
changing travel patterns, increasing demands for service, isolated communities that need to have basic service levels and yet really challenged by low utilization rates in many areas.

We've been involved in a significant consultation with the public. We've asked them to provide us with insight that goes beyond the numbers, beyond the utilization rates, that tells us something of the importance of ferries and the services to their communities so that when we make the difficult decisions we're going to be faced with, we're making those through the lens of the needs of the community beyond just the numbers of what it costs us, how many people ride them.

We understand that we need to be there as a provincial government to support those communities who would never be able to afford ferry fares at all were there not a provincial contribution.

I'm pleased to say that last year we allocated an additional $79 million in funding over four years to B.C. Ferry Services, and over the three-year fiscal plan coming the province will provide total funding of $525 million to B.C. Ferries. That's a huge amount of money, yet we know that there will still be struggles as we seek to make sure that B.C. Ferries remains affordable for families, runs an efficient operation and provides the services that people will need.

[1650]

All of these are difficult choices, but the only way that you get to make them is if you have the fiscal wherewithal to achieve the investments that you need. That means that we have to consider the ways in which we can assist families and invest in them as well. Infrastructure is one thing, but families, our people, are our greatest human resource. If we're not investing in them, we aren't going to get very far.

I was pleased to note that there are a number of initiatives in this budget that address that directly. First of all, the B.C. training and education savings grant — a very innovative idea, I think. It wasn't that long ago that government announced that it was putting the money away for infants who were born in British Columbia. That money has been accruing savings, and it's time that British Columbia families enjoyed that.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

I'm very pleased to see the approach that has been taken here, because it truly puts the decisions in the hands of families — very important, I think. Again, it gets to that choice as to whether or not you want to grow government or grow the economy — and, in this case, helping to grow the economy by supporting families, their choices.

For B.C. residents whose children are turning six, they will be able to receive the one-time $1,200 grant towards a registered education savings plan. That will allow them to leverage even further benefits, through the way in which RESPs operate, such that they would have significant savings, each and every one of those children, by the time they wish to use that, hopefully for their post-secondary training.

It could be for apprenticeships for trades. It could be for university. Nevertheless, it's a very practical way of helping families, investing in families — indeed, investing in our future.

The new B.C. early childhood tax benefit — another one that I think is innovative in its approach. So many times we see governments come out with grant programs that tend to target a particular activity or behaviour of families. Instead, here we've said that we're not going to be the ones making the choice for a family as to whether or not they are at home and delivering child care in that manner or if they are accessing child care outside of the home.

We have said: "Here is the credit that you will receive. As parents who value your children and value their education, their future, we know that you are going to make the choices in the best interests of those children." It takes another amount of pressure off families by providing them with some additional financial help.

Then there's the early-years strategy. Of course, you need a number of different initiatives to try and address the very comprehensive nature of dealing with the advancement of children and families in this province — indeed, in any place.

The early-years strategy not only invests $76 million over three years to support the creation of new child care spaces, but included within this is $32 million that will support the creation of new child care spaces; $37 million will improve the quality of services available — very important.

I know that at times, when I have had the opportunity to speak with families who are struggling to find child care, struggling to find quality child care, it's something that beyond the cost — just trying to make sure that they have the best possible child care service for their offspring — is incredibly challenging.

Anything we can do to improve that for parents and improve that for children, again, is a valuable investment in our society. It's one that is so keenly important for us to continue, in spite of difficult economic times.

There are other types of initiatives that become important. No government can simply pay attention to the particular issues of investing in road and transit infrastructure and looking at investments in care for children. There are other things that have to occur as well. We have to look broadly at our community and see where those investments are needed.

[1655]

The $60 million in new funding for the sports and arts legacy fund is very important in my community. I know there are small groups all over the province — I see them,
[ Page 13213 ]
certainly, in my riding in Langley — that volunteer their time to make sure that arts groups and sports groups are able to be operating and active in communities. It's huge for the fabric of our local communities. It keeps kids engaged and active. It introduces them to the arts, and it makes our communities vibrant — a very, very important investment.

An additional $52 million over the three years for increased RCMP policing costs. Very challenging times we've had in navigating the challenges we face in terms of safety and security in communities and big decisions around whether or not communities wish to see RCMP service or independent local police agencies. But fundamentally, the fact is that we all want to see our communities be safe.

I'm very proud of the work that our Attorney General has done and others who participated in the RCMP negotiations — very difficult and trying. Nonetheless, at the end of the day what they've managed to do is increase the safety of our communities and make sure that they're supporting those initiatives with a budget that can do that.

An additional $18 million for the B.C. Creative Futures is, again, something that I am applauding because it's innovative. Whenever you can undertake initiatives that will increase the participation of youth in the arts, I think you're doing something to build for the future of local communities and also the future of youth, who can find, oftentimes, a very satisfactory career and interest in the arts — something, again, that adds to the fabric of our society.

There's $20 million to provide carbon tax relief for commercial greenhouse, vegetable and flower growers. I know that in my riding I've heard from a number of constituents who really applauded this initiative. They understand that there is a need for us to pay attention to matters like climate change, conservation, clean air and clean water.

At the same time, it was becoming very, very hard for them to understand why we would be applying the same type of tax regime to an industry that, of course, is required to produce CO₂ in order to make their plants grow. So that is one that I certainly applaud, because we need to be always taking a look at the exceptions to the rule and understanding that not everybody's circumstances are the same — very, very important.

Then, of course, there is the exemption for coloured motor fuel. I note that the Minister of Agriculture is very, very pleased about these initiatives. He seems to be even more pleased than the farmers and greenhouse growers that I've met. That's good. He has been quite a champion for those industries — obviously, bedrock industries in British Columbia.

While we advance our work in terms of developing British Columbia's vast natural resources, we can never do that at the expense of our ability to produce food. As one of our former colleagues used to say: "You have to eat to live." That means we have to be paying attention to the health of our agricultural sector, and I think these initiatives go an awfully long way to doing that.

But I would not be telling the full story of this budget if I only talked about the new spending initiatives. Now, for anyone, whether you're a government, a parent, a business owner — in whatever role you play — it's always much nicer to be the person coming with a gift, coming with something to provide to someone. That's always a nicer position to be in. It's not the happiest occasion when one has to charge for something or when one has to be the bearer of bad news.

Unfortunately, anytime one wants to talk about raising taxes, you're indeed the bearer of bad news. Nobody wants to pay more taxes. But we've recognized in this budget that there is a balance to be struck, and that balance is not just with respect to the bottom line of the budget. That balance is in terms of the relative amounts that you spend relative to the amounts that you collect.

We made the difficult decision to raise the general corporate income tax rate to 11 percent from the current 10 percent — a difficult decision to make, and one that I think we all knew would not necessarily be received with open arms and cheers. Nevertheless, it goes back to these difficult decisions. Do you grow government? Do you grow the economy?

[1700]

What I am cognizant of is that in spite of this increase, nevertheless…. This goes back to the results of the work that has been undertaken over the last ten or more years to keep our tax rates competitive. In fact, it began by reducing them and reducing them, maintaining their competitiveness. I'm pleased that even with this 1 percent increase, we still remain extremely competitive — not just within Canada, within North America, but certainly when you look around the world.

There's also a two-year increase in the personal income tax rate for individuals earning more than $150,000. Those will increase by 2.1 percentage points. Ultimately, they'll be 16.8 percent. Again, as a result of the tax reductions over quite a number of years in British Columbia and then maintaining those low rates, we still have the lowest personal income tax rate for people who are earning under those amounts and very competitive above those.

It's not a pleasant thing to have to raise those taxes, but in the context of the world fiscal situation, in the context of British Columbia's fiscal situation, I think it's a very balanced approach and one that seeks to be very pragmatic about how it is we manage going forward.

Increasing taxes on tobacco. Well, back in the day when I used to smoke, I might have been upset about that. But I have to say that the $2-a-carton rise…. What I've heard from my constituents and people round about is that they'd certainly welcome that and see it as not only
[ Page 13214 ]
something that will help the budget but also something that will further discourage people from taking up smoking — in particular young people, who of course are more challenged by the finances.

Incidentally, I understand that we still maintain the lowest rate of smoking amongst youth in all of Canada. I think that's an achievement we can be very, very proud of.

Once again, initiatives on both sides. Initiatives of new spending in areas where it's important for us to maintain investment and then, at the same time, initiatives in small ways — nevertheless, initiatives that engage in further taxation and raising revenue in that regard.

Of course, we have important things, aside from transportation infrastructure, to invest in. There are also the investments that we will be seeing in continued expansion of schools, hospitals and other infrastructure all across the province. That's expected to total another $10.4 billion.

That brings us to: what does your credit rating mean, and why does it matter?

I have to admit that just given my own inclinations around money, I always…. When I was out of government, before I arrived at this House, I certainly thought it was probably something important for governments to have a good, solid credit rating, just as I wanted one in my own life. I don't think I really understood the magnitude of the impact of that until I arrived here and was part of making some of the important decisions that we have to make each and every day, the important choices that are often very difficult.

The fact that we have been able, in these economic times, to maintain a taxpayer-supported debt to GDP that will peak at 18.3 percent and then start to decline to 18.1…. The fact that we've been able to do that means we can keep our borrowing affordable. It means that our credit rating remains intact.

Long term, that means our ability to continue the very important investments that we will need if we are going to continue to expand our trade, to grow our economy, to ensure that we truly can take advantage of the natural resources that British Columbia provides us as a province.

That wasn't always true. I think back to the way in which certain investments stopped in previous times when budgets got tight. In a previous government there wasn't a single major road improvement project built on the Lower Mainland during the entire 1990s. In fact, the last one prior to 2001 was the Alex Fraser Bridge in 1986. Yet it was a population that was growing at a staggering rate.

[1705]

We can't afford to make the same mistake. Just because money is tight doesn't mean that we can stop investing in these very important things. If we stop, we will not see the continued expansion of our economy. As a result, we won't be able to achieve the kinds of outcomes that we are hoping to. It means that we've had to make choices around controlling spending.

I suppose it's part of the rhetoric, part of the verbal dance that we do in this House, but invariably, oppositions are asking: "Why don't you spend more on this? Why don't you spend more on that? Why don't you give more money to this agency, this department, this ministry?"

As I previously said, that of course is what everyone would like to do. I'd certainly rather be a Transportation Minister who is able to be out on a whim announcing projects all over this province that at this stage we couldn't possibly afford. But where would that get us? It would get us into places that we've seen other governments go.

It would get us to a place where our debt-to-GDP increases and we have lost that credit rating, Then our ability to deliver for British Columbians is gone. Instead, most importantly, we are controlling annual spending growth to 1.5 percent over the fiscal plan period.

I would close by saying that for those who say it's unrealistic, all you have to do is look back on the record. I cannot remember a time when we've had opposition saying that we should be spending less on the things that we've had in our budget. In fact, we've seen repeated calls for more and more spending.

We've said we have to spend what we need to spend. We need to find efficiencies where we can and remember that controlling public spending is the responsible thing to do when what we are investing is taxpayers' money. It is hard-earned by those taxpayers.

I'm pleased to support this budget, pleased that it is balanced and pleased to have the opportunity to speak about it in this House.

D. Donaldson: I am happy to take my place today in the Legislature in order to respond to the government's budget that was tabled last week. I'll talk a little bit about the revenue side and then the spending side and missed priorities and how this budget does not bode well for the northwest or the province as a whole — making, of course, positive suggestions to this government along the way.

This is not a balanced budget. In fact, with a bit of analysis, it appears to be a budget deficit in the half-billion-dollar range. I'll explain how an analytical approach to what this government presented in its budget leads to the conclusion that to say it is balanced is bogus.

In fact, after four straight deficit budgets totalling $5.3 billion, this, in reality, is the fifth deficit budget in a row for this government. It's more about trying to create an absolutely false sense of fiscal management before heading into an election.

First, let's look at the revenue side. I'll give a couple of examples here. The government is claiming revenue that we will never see in this next year. In fact, they're booking $475 million in so-called surplus asset sales for 2013-14.
[ Page 13215 ]

They claim that work is underway on 16 properties and that another 65, which they won't name, are being prepared, all for this coming budget year. None of these have been sold, and anyone with knowledge of the real estate industry knows that predicting when a certain property will sell is very uncertain, let alone what the selling price will be.

The Little Mountain property in Vancouver, for example, is something this government has had on the books to sell for $300 million for the last two years. They still haven't managed to sell it.

Add to this the uncertainty of selling Crown lands with respect to First Nations aboriginal title concerns and any environmental mitigation factors, and you have a huge question mark about being able to bring 81 properties onto the market in the next year, let alone sell them.

So it's an extremely suspect $475 million, counting on the real estate market. Don Drummond, the noted economist who did an analysis of the Ontario budget, said that you shouldn't count this type of revenue until the asset is actually sold.

[1710]

Let me be clear. The occasional selling of a Crown-owned property in an orderly manner could be a legitimate financial strategy. The wholesale dumping of 81 properties in a 12-month span with little time for due diligence is an irresponsible tactic aimed at covering up a structural deficit by this B.C. Liberal government.

Another example of how the revenue side of the 2013-2014 budget is bogus relates to the booking of $545 million in revenue from B.C. Hydro. B.C. Hydro, which used to be a crown jewel in the Crown corporation field, is $15 billion in debt. A large portion of blame for that is the framework created by the B.C. Liberals that B.C. Hydro must work within — the so-called green or clean energy stipulations, where this government passed legislation requiring B.C. Hydro to purchase electricity from privately owned power-generation projects.

B.C. Hydro was forced to buy power at three times the price they can sell for. They've had to sign contracts to pay $80, $90, $120 a megawatt hour. Meanwhile, in the material assumptions in the government's own budget on page 125, the mid-Columbia electricity price for 2012-13 was U.S. $25 a megawatt hour, and for 2013-14 the estimate is $33 a megawatt hour.

Being made to buy for $90 and sell for $33 — that's what this government has done to B.C. Hydro. No wonder B.C. Hydro is in debt, and no wonder the consumer is getting the shaft with ever-increasing electricity bills.

Every year they're going up. In the north I have examples of people having little to no money left over after having to pay their winter electricity bills just this winter. They're depending on the land base in order to feed themselves. Depending on the land base is a consideration this government seems oblivious to when promoting development on the land base.

Out of the $545 million the government is booking for revenues to create the illusion of a balanced budget, is a dividend of $245 million from B.C. Hydro's net income. This is based on the corporation maintaining, by law, an 80 to 20 percent debt-to-equity ratio.

Now, I've talked about B.C. Hydro debt and why it is growing due to B.C. Liberal policy. But this kind of debt growth could make it impossible for the government to grab such a large dividend to once again create the illusion of a balanced budget.

What they have conjured up with B.C. Hydro is called deferral accounts that, in effect, allow the corporation to move losses off the books, improving the debt-to-equity ratio and therefore justifying the $245 million dividend that we see in the revenue stream in this budget. It's really reverse accounting, enabling the dividend outcome that you want. The deferral accounts at B.C. Hydro are now in the billions — not exactly a sound financial management practice, yet one endorsed by this government to arrive at revenue for this bogus budget.

In fact, the Auditor General reviewed this practice and concluded: "It creates the appearance of profitability where none actually exists."

So there are two areas of the revenue stream — just a quick overview of the revenue stream — where at least $720 million is in great doubt. Now, with a projected surplus in this bogus budget of $197 million, that means it is reasonable to conclude we are facing a deficit of upwards of $523 million.

Let's look at another area of interest in government revenue projections in this budget, and that concerns natural gas. One finding of the independent economist who reviewed some of the revenue side — a very limited scope, mind you — of this budget was that the government needed to recalculate its projected revenues on natural gas, based on the volatility of the North American and world prices — something our Finance critic, the member for Surrey-Whalley, has been pointing out for years.

[1715]

From page 19 of that independent economist's review of the revenue side of this budget, he says: "On the other hand, prices have been significantly overestimated in…the last four years and in six of the last nine years." That's the price of natural gas he's referring to and the estimates by this government. So much of the government's ability to predict the future of natural gas prices rests on the volatility of the markets.

Admittedly, it is a difficult job to predict natural gas prices. When this government claims that liquid natural gas production is going to be the answer to our economic challenges — as they did in the throne speech — and say the ship will come in 30 years from now, then their credibility takes a huge hit.

In fact, the budget document has a special box on page 50 looking at long-term opportunities for British Columbia in liquefied natural gas. It says: "Studies." The
[ Page 13216 ]
Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas commissioned independent consultants. "The studies assumed" — assumed — "five liquid natural gas plants, three smaller and two larger-sized plants; supporting pipelines; sufficient upstream natural gas to fuel the plants; and most plants fully operational by 2018."

Well, it came out last week that the author of these studies had put a few caveats on what was forecast there. In fact, in regard to one report by Grant Thornton LLP — and this is a quote from their report that the government used: "The estimates are not forecasts, and this report is not intended to attribute any probability that those impacts will occur or not occur in the future."

Here's another report the government depended on for this part of the budget on page 50, from Ernst and Young: "The inherent uncertainty and variability in the assumptions may result in the province receiving significantly different revenue from the LNG projects than estimated."

So all in all, this approach to LNG borders on the fantasy side, and that was picked up in an article last week by the Vancouver Sun. The headline read: "Fantasy Gas Fund Built on Shifting Sands. Putting Faith in LNG is Like Counting Your Chickens Before They Hatch or Banking on a Future That May Never Arrive." That was the headline in last week's paper, in the Vancouver Sun.

Of course, not even Alberta is taking this "put all your eggs in one basket" approach. In an interview in Washington this week, Conservative Premier Alison Redford made a pledge for new spending in her upcoming budget aimed at making her province less dependent on oil. She says her priority will be spending to support Alberta's non-oil economy. Here's her quote, "Our budget on March 7 is going to make some pretty fundamental shifts in our fiscal framework to try to reduce the dependency on that" — meaning oil.

Meanwhile, this government is rushing headlong into a strategy of overdependence on one component of the revenue stream, natural gas. In fact, Martin Mittelstaedt, a respected business reporter from the Globe and Mail, said: "Additionally, in Alberta's case, it was just pure folly for the province to rubber-stamp just about every oil sands megaproject to walk through the door. Try to build too many projects at once, and dramatic cost escalation is guaranteed."

The assumptions that I just talked about, on page 50 of the budget plan, sound like the disaster unfolding in Alberta: putting all your eggs in one basket. There's no doubt of the importance of natural gas in the current revenue stream.

Once the government was forced to recalculate on natural gas prices, it comes out to a forecast of $282 million in natural gas revenues for 2013-14. This sector, no doubt, will continue to be important. But the public has no confidence in this government to manage the type of growth suggested or speculated in the budget document.

In Stikine they don't believe in the overstated benefits, and they don't believe this government has done any type of significant analysis on the risks — risks to communities, to the environment and to local economies that exist right now — before jumping headlong into their supposed vision of the future.

I can tell you that First Nations in the northwest have not been consulted in a government-to-government manner by this government on the vision outlined by the B.C. Liberals of five LNG plants and up to four new pipelines. They just haven't been consulted in that manner. That's a shocking oversight and lends even less credibility to this pie-in-the-sky vision.

[1720]

The people of Stikine are looking to government for some kind of legitimate public oversight on this LNG gold rush, something like a demonstration project that's just wrapping up after two years of work. It's a joint initiative by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and the Ministry of Environment called the cumulative effects analysis framework, CEAMF.

It has the ability to consider and define values such as water quality, air quality, biodiversity, social well-being and economic well-being and to do an extensive risk-benefit analysis considering the time, the scope and the geographic implications of a major natural resource initiative. It provides increased certainty for decision-makers, communities, First Nations and industry. It's worth considering, this CEAF approach, for an LNG new pipeline, increased-gas-production proposal.

Let's move on to the spending side. It's just not realistic to expect that service levels could be maintained with the spending proposed in this budget, and that is what the government is saying — that service levels will be maintained. I'll give a couple of examples.

Health spending. Health spending is decreased in this budget compared to what was projected in the last budget for this coming year. The projection that just over a 2 percent increase will meet the growing needs isn't realistic when you look at the trends of the past few years of growth in the 3 to 4 percent range. In fact, this represents a $131 million decrease from what was planned for this year in the previous budget for health authorities.

What impact will that have? Well, already in the areas I represent we've had instances just this year and in previous years of people waiting for days, weeks, almost a month for postoperative-care beds, and they couldn't get surgeries down south when they needed them. They waited, in one case, up to 28 days for a postoperative-care bed. So how will a decrease of $131 million to health authorities help solve that situation?

Emergency room nurses. I had an example recently of an emergency room in Smithers where there has only
[ Page 13217 ]
been one emergency room nurse on. She had to do her other duties and couldn't tend to a person in the emergency admitting room that went unattended for 30 minutes — 30 minutes, hon. Speaker — with chest pains.

How will a decrease in the health authorities' budgets help that kind of situation? A situation where 2,100 new nursing jobs that this government has committed to…. The budget doesn't even account for that kind of growth. So it won't go to say that this budget will not have an impact on front-line services. That's just patently not true.

Advanced education, another spending-side example, will see a $45 million decrease in its budget over this budget plan. Again, Don Drummond, the noted economist, said: "If you're going to look at places to cut advanced ed, it's just not a place to cut. It's shooting yourself in the foot, cutting your nose off to spite your face."

A prime example in this budget is seeing a $45 million decrease over the budget plan in Advanced Education. How will that impact and help a situation like Northwest Community College's School of Exploration and Mining, an award-winning school?

It won an award from Premier Campbell for its excellence, and yet it has never been able to get continuous commitment from the Ministry of Advanced Education on its funding. That causes uncertainty; it causes turnover in staff. Even though we have industry supporting the school and saying if there was core funding, then they would be able to leverage that and….

I have a quote from Byng Giraud from Imperial Metals. He presented to the Finance Committee in Smithers in the fall. He said: "I don't usually come asking for money as a mining company. But we think that if they" — Northwest Community College School of Exploration and Mining — "were to get the core funding, as a private sector we would be able to help them leverage that money — use some of our money to produce the programs and produce the people that we need to operate our facilities."

Again, a cut of $45 million over this budget plan does nothing to address that kind of issue, and it really puts in doubt this government's commitment to a jobs plan. It's not leading to B.C. resources, such as the mineral resource, used for creating jobs for B.C. people, and we've seen that situation in the northeast.

I have a couple of suggestions that I'd like to run through quickly for this government to increase your focus on diversifying the economy and supporting revenue-generating ministries.

[1725]

Here's an example of diversifying the economy. In this budget this government cut $39 million from forest health. That does nothing to diversify the economy and get away from a situation that the Alberta Premier is alluding to and putting all our eggs in one basket.

In this budget we have five ministries that deal with permitting in the mining sector. Three of those ministries are getting a budget cut in this budget plan, and two are flatlined, one of them being the environmental assessment office — no increase in funding, and yet they are having to consider billions of dollars' worth of projected projects, not just in the next year but in future years.

For instance, Seabridge Gold, on their KSM project, just submitted a 30,000-page environmental assessment description to the environmental assessment office. But with no further resources, that office has to deal with that, plus all the ones in the pipeline. So again, this will lead to backlogs and unnecessary delays.

I'd like to finish off in talking about how services in rural communities are so important — health, education, transportation — as I spoke about. They all support the revenue-generating side of the equation that the rest of the province depends on.

Nothing in this budget about recommendations from Wally Oppal's commission or from the rural commission in Prince George that happened six years ago on the Highway of Tears, nothing on the transportation aspect of that. And if you want to grow the economy based on rural resources, you have to support the rural communities. Without rural communities being healthy and supported, then we'll never see the potential of the revenue generation from resources in rural areas. So health, education, transportation are key components of that.

That is the real revenue-generating picture — not an "all your eggs in one basket" approach that may or may not reap dividends 30 years from now. The here and now is what I am talking about in this response to the budget — the here and now, not what might happen in 2015 or what might happen 30 years from now.

Here is the here and now. This government decided to spend $17 million on taxpayer-funded partisan ads. I watched the Vancouver Canucks game a couple of nights ago, and I was astounded. I don't watch much television. I try to watch the Canucks now and then, but a couple of nights ago it seemed like every commercial was a new partisan, taxpayer-funded ad about how great things are in B.C. Whether it was the dominoes ad or….

In this case, it was a young woman appearing to say there are jobs in the trades, when we know those jobs aren't necessarily there. In fact, I have one example of a young woman from Hazelton who has graduated in a plumbing and pipefitters trade from her initial education at Camosun College, and she can't find a job in the northwest in that trade. She just can't find it, and she wonders what these ads actually mean when the government is talking about jobs.

We have $17 million spent on job ads, and at the same time, literacy programming is being cut by this government. We just found out that literacy programs in com-
[ Page 13218 ]
munities across the northwest…. Fifty-five different communities received letters in the last couple of weeks, different community organizations, saying that their literacy programming has been cut.

In fact, in Houston, Nechako Lakes, $30,000 was cut from Houston Link to Learning. We know that literacy is fundamental for developing not only engaged and active citizens that help support vibrant, healthy northern rural communities, but also literacy funding supports skills development.

When you're spending $17 million on partisan, taxpayer-funded ads and at the other side of the equation cutting literacy funding in northern rural communities, how wrong is that picture from a priority perspective? How wrong is that?

Or look at spending $17 million on ads when we're challenged to provide basic health care services for northern communities. I just ran through some very practical examples of that. Basic health care services — being able to go and have a doctor do a check-over on you, refer you to a specialist in a southern community and then having to wait for days, weeks, up to a month in order to have that surgery happen while you're in the hospital in an acute care bed, running up a $1,000-a-day tab, when you could have got that operation if some more resources were put towards that kind of scenario.

[1730]

Again, $17 million on ads. People waiting for operations in the northern communities….

Most recently I had a very concerned doctor come to me with an example of a 77-year-old lady in the Smithers hospital. She came into emergency with two broken legs, broken femurs. You can imagine how painful that would be. She came in and waited 36 hours in the emergency room in Smithers because a bed was not available at the Prince George Hospital for her to recover after surgery, after a specialist orthopedic surgeon in Prince George could operate on her — 36 hours waiting for that kind of care.

That is not the standard of care that people in this province expect nor that the people in northern rural communities expect. Yet we have a government spending $17 million on an ad campaign, and at the same time, people in the north are facing that kind of situation.

Finally, we have a $17 million ad campaign when children in Hazelton and elsewhere in Stikine are going hungry. This is the reality in B.C. today in our society — children going hungry because of a lack of action on child poverty. This government is proud of the fact that they're second-last in child poverty in Canada — second-last, as if that is something to be proud of.

We have people — families — who are living in poverty, impoverishment. It's a constructed situation. It's not that people choose to live in poverty. It's that people are impoverished by government policies. When we have children in poverty in Stikine and elsewhere in the province, it means that families are in poverty — families who are finding it difficult to feed their children before they go to school or pay their electricity bills. These are the choices that I've outlined that people are having to choose in the north.

In my communities, in some of the Gitxsan communities, you pay your electricity bill to keep the heat on and have $20 left over to feed your family for the rest of the month. The only way that that happens is people depend on the land base. They go out to hunt moose. They have fish on the shelves, jarred from the summer fish run. They really depend on the land base.

When we look at the budget and it has nothing in there in the Ministry of Environment and other ministries for additional work on inventories for moose, on inventories for the land base, then we see that as directly attacking people's ability to feed themselves and their families.

These are the choices this government has made: $17 million on ads or children going hungry. These are the stark realities. I don't like to say it, but these are the realities the people I represent are facing.

I've outlined some of the revenue-generating fallacies in this budget, some of the underestimates on spending and how the spending that's outlined in this budget will actually lead to a decrease in services and not a maintenance of services as this government says, some of what I think should be priorities in the revenue-generating side of the ministries.

It's something that the former Minister of Energy and now the Minister of Community agrees with me on. He said previously that we needed to pay more attention and provide more resources to the revenue-generating ministries. We're not doing that, and this government continues to not do that.

I've also outlined priorities of this government that I think are wrong: spending $17 million on an ad campaign when they're at the same time cutting literacy, when at the same time there are challenges to providing basic health care — like not sitting in an emergency room with two broken legs as a senior citizen, waiting 36 hours for a bed to come open, and like when children are going hungry.

[1735]

I'd just like to wrap up my generous time here by saying this is a budget that I believe shows a government that's out of gas, out of ideas. It's a place-taking budget that should be taken for that. I'll be very happy not to support this budget if and when it comes to a vote.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: I am pleased to rise today to speak in favour of the balanced budget 2013 and to note that we are one of only two provinces in Canada that have a balanced budget for the next fiscal year. That's because we have demonstrated fiscal discipline, and it's possible for us to have such a budget because of that discipline.
[ Page 13219 ]
It's an important part of having a strong economy and certainly fits in with how I was raised, which is that you don't spend money if you don't have it.

We believe that it's wrong to saddle the next generation with our debt. For that reason, we're controlling spending and being respectful of taxpayers when we do that. We've taken a balanced approach with this budget, with a modest growth in spending, with small increases in the income tax for the highest-income earners but maintaining the lowest income tax in the country for people who earn below $120,000 annually.

Before speaking in more detail about the budget, I want to take a moment to speak about the riding that I serve, Vancouver-Fairview, and to say, first of all, what an honour it is to serve the people of Vancouver-Fairview. I want to really sincerely thank my constituents. They are in touch with me, and in particular, I appreciate when they come and actually see me in my constituency office and raise issues and help me to understand the things that are most important to them. They're certainly a very diverse group of people.

Very frequently they come in with issues that are actually municipal or federal issues. I'm happy to say that my constituency assistants have become experts in negotiating other levels of government, which I'm sure is true for all of us. I want to take a moment to thank the wonderful people that I have working in Vancouver, particularly when I'm here — Aaron Fedora, Brittany McLeod and Chantal Lee.

Vancouver-Fairview is a remarkable part of the province — I'm not biased at all — and it's a great place to live and work and also to do other things like shopping and dining and having a really fabulous cup of coffee. It's home to some wonderful schools, libraries, fire halls and many outstanding not-for-profit organizations. I've had a chance to visit many of them. I actually had two fantastic lunches at the fire halls; they're very good cooks.

I wanted to spend a minute talking about the not-for-profits. Because of the location, there are many health not-for-profits and also some arts and culture not-for-profits. They're all really providing just a wonderful benefit to the people, not only in Vancouver-Fairview but, in many cases, to people around the province. There are some great volunteer opportunities, as well, through these not-for-profits, and I know that many people in the riding take advantage of that.

It's also the location of some hospitals which serve not only the people in my riding but people around the entire province — places like the Vancouver General Hospital, the B.C. Cancer Agency and B.C. Women's as well as Children's hospitals. Then there are some research facilities that are also remarkable, which I'll speak more about later on.

Vancouver-Fairview is home to a number of small businesses, some that have served their neighbourhoods for over 50 years and are really great neighbours.

As many of my colleagues have when they've risen to speak, I would like to just briefly thank my family and friends, without whom I wouldn't possibly be able to do my work.

I did want, also, to thank Tim Schindel, who provides chaplaincy services here in the buildings. Members may not be aware that Tim coordinates prayers for each and every one of us individually. We are regularly being prayed for around the province, which I certainly very much appreciate.

Since becoming the Minister of Health, I've had the opportunity to visit a number of hospitals and other places where health care is provided. I have been fortunate enough to go to some openings — for example, the opening of the brand-new, beautiful Nanaimo emergency department. I've been, also, in some hospitals that have been around for 50 or 60 years. What both the brand-new facilities and the older ones have in common are the health care providers who are in those facilities. I've been really inspired, repeatedly, in every single one of the places I've been to.

[1740]

I have the opportunity to speak with doctors and nurses and other providers, as well as people who provide various kinds of support services that we often don't think about when we think about the hospitals in particular — people who sterilize instruments, people who keep the hospital perfectly clean and safe for people who come there, and also people who provide administrative support, which is critically important. What all these people have in common is this very strong desire to provide excellent care and patient-centred care.

When I visited the Nanaimo hospital, which was about to open their brand-new emergency department and start to see patients there, they talked with me about conversations they'd had some time ago — perhaps two or three years ago — where they talked about the philosophy that they wanted to have for their emergency department. Even though they were waiting for the new facilities to be built, they wanted the emergency to be a place where people loved to come to work.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

So they started making changes, working as a group, well before the new facility was available. It was a spirit of wanting to provide excellence in patient care as well as having people love the jobs they were coming to. They're very confident that they will be providing service so that health providers will want to come from far and wide to serve there.

Mr. Speaker: Sorry to interrupt you, Member. The Administrator is in the precinct, so if you want to reserve
[ Page 13220 ]
your right and adjourn debate and continue next Monday.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I will conclude debate and ask to save my place for Monday.

I move that we adjourn debate.

Mr. Speaker: And you've reserved your right.

Hon. M. MacDiarmid moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, the Administrator is in the precinct.

[1736]

His Honour the Administrator requested attendance to the House, was admitted to the chamber and took his place in the chair.

Royal Assent to Bills

Deputy Clerk:

Provincial Sales Tax Transitional Provisions and Amendments Act, 2013.

In Her Majesty's name, His Honour the Administrator doth assent to this act.

His Honour the Administrator retired from the chamber.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Hon. M. de Jong moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

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

The House adjourned at 5:49 p.m.

[ Return to: Legislative Assembly Home Page ]

Hansard Services publishes transcripts both in print and on the Internet.
Chamber debates are broadcast on television and webcast on the Internet.
Question Period podcasts are available on the Internet.

TV channel guide • Broadcast schedule

Copyright © 2013: British Columbia Hansard Services, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada