2014 Legislative Session: Third Session, 40th 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, October 9, 2014

Morning Sitting

Volume 15, Number 5

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

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2014

The House met at 10:03 a.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Prayers.

Reports from Committees

Hon. M. de Jong: There are a number of procedural matters to deal with at the outset today.

[1005]

Firstly, I have the honour to present the first report of the Special Committee of Selection for the third session of the 40th parliament. For the information of members, that is the committee that met this morning to confirm membership on the various select standing committees and special committees.

Madame Speaker: Hon. Members, the question is the report being taken as received.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: Yes, thank you. I did move that the report be taken as read and received, and happily, it has now been done.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to adopt the report.

Leave granted.

Hon. M. de Jong: I don’t intend to read all of the names in. I think they have been circulated, and members can confirm with the Opposition House Leader. I think the independent members of the House have received a copy of the report as well.

Motions Without Notice

APPOINTMENT OF
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEES

Hon. M. de Jong: Flowing from that, then, are a series of motions activating six parliamentary committees. These motions continue the work of three select standing committees and two special committees.

In addition, a new Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits will be activated. The full text of those motions has been provided to the Opposition House Leader and, again, to the independent members.

By leave, I would move the first motion, regarding the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth:

[That the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth be appointed to foster greater awareness and understanding among legislators and the public of the BC child welfare system, and in particular to:

1. Receive and review the annual service plan from the Representative for Children and Youth (the “Representative”) that includes a statement of goals and identifies specific objectives and performance measures that will be required to exercise the powers and perform the functions and duties of the Representative during the fiscal year;

2. Be the committee to which the Representative reports, at least annually;

3. Refer to the Representative for investigation the critical injury or death of a child;

4. Receive and consider all reports and plans transmitted by the Representative to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia; and,

5. Pursuant to section 30 (2) of the Representative of Children and Youth Act, S.B.C. 2006, c. 29, complete an assessment by April 1, 2015, of the effectiveness of section 6 (1) (b) in ensuring that the needs of children are met.

In addition to the powers previously conferred upon Select Standing Committees of the House, the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth 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
[ Page 4630 ]
the recess after prorogation until the next following Session and during any sitting of the House;

c) to conduct consultations by any means the committee considers appropriate;

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

e) to retain personnel as required to assist the Committee;

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

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: Then, by leave, I move the second motion, regarding the Select Standing Committee on Health:

[That the Select Standing Committee on Health be empowered to:

1) Consider the conclusions contained in the Interim Report, October 2012, of the Select Standing Committee on Health of the 39th Parliament; as such, the Interim Report of the Select Standing Committee on Health, and any submissions and evidence received during the 39th Parliament, are referred to the Committee;

2) Outline potential alternative strategies to mitigate the impact of the significant cost drivers identified in the Report on the sustainability and improvement of the provincial health care system;

3) Identify current public levels of acceptance toward the potential alternative strategies; and,

4) Consider health capital funding options.

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

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

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

c) to conduct consultations by any means the committee considers appropriate;

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

e) to retain such personnel as required to assist the Committee;

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

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: Thirdly, by leave, I move the third motion, regarding the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts:

[1. That all reports of the Auditor General of British Columbia transmitted to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly 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, S.B.C. 2003, c. 2, which is referred to the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services; and,

2. That the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts be the committee referred to in sections 6, 7, 10, 13 and 14 of the Auditor General Act, S.B.C. 2003, c. 2.

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 may be; to deposit the original of its reports with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly during a period of adjournment and upon resumption of the sittings of the House, the Chair shall present all reports to the Legislative Assembly.]

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: By leave, I move the fourth motion, regarding the activation of the Special Committee to Review the Personal Information Protection Act:

[That a Special Committee be appointed to review the Personal Information Protection Act in accordance with section 59 of the Personal Information Protection Act, S.B.C. 2003, c. 63, and in particular, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by organizations.

The Special Committee shall submit a report arising out of the results of its inquiry to the Legislative Assembly by February 25, 2015.

The Special Committee shall have the powers of a Select Standing Committee and in addition is 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 conduct consultations by any means the committee considers appropriate;

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

e) to retain such personnel as required to assist the committee;

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

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: Madame Speaker, by leave, I move the fifth motion, regarding the Special Committee to Review the Independent Investigations Office:

[That a Special Committee to Review the Independent Investigations Office be appointed to examine, inquire into and make recommendations with respect to the administration and general operations of the Independent Investigations Office in accordance with section 38.13 of the Police Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 367, and in particular:

1. To conduct, before January 1, 2015, a review of:

a. The administration and general operations of the Independent Investigations Office; and

b. The Chief Civilian Director’s progress towards a goal of having an Independent Investigations Office that is staffed entirely with employees and Independent Investigations Office investigators who have never served as officers or members of a police or law enforcement agency.

2. To solicit and consider written and oral submissions from any interested person or organization by any means the committee considers appropriate.

3. To submit a report, including any recommendations respecting the results of the review, to the Legislative Assembly by February 25, 2015.

The Special Committee shall have the powers of a Select Standing Committee and in addition is 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 such personnel as required to assist the Committee;

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

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: And finally, Madame Speaker, by leave, I move the sixth motion, regarding the Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits:

[A Special Committee on Local Elections Expense Limits be appointed to:

In Phase 1 — Examine, inquire into and make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly by November 27, 2014 on:

a. Principles for the relationship between elector organ-
[ Page 4631 ]
izations and their endorsed candidates with respect to expense limits, including how elector organizations and endorsed candidates share accountability for expense limits, with consideration for fairness between independent candidates and candidates endorsed by elector organizations.

b. Principles for establishing expense limits for third party advertisers, including whether there should be an overarching, cumulative limit on third party spending such as exists in provincial general elections.

The above recommendations to the Legislative Assembly shall inform the preparation of legislation to implement an expense limits system in local elections.

In Phase 2 — Examine, inquire into and make recommendations to the Legislative Assembly by June 12, 2015 on expense limit amounts for candidates, including, but not limited to, the general relationship between limits for the various offices, and for third party advertisers in local elections.

For Phase 2, the Special Committee shall specifically consider spending data from the 2014 local elections and other comparative information in making the above recommendations.

For both phases, the Special Committee shall undertake the above examinations with due regard for the following:

The Report of the Local Government Elections Task Force, including principles (May 2010);

The Expense Limits in Local Elections — Summary Report on Expense Limits Engagement (May 2014);

The Local Elections Campaign Financing Act, 2014, including its application to elections for mayors, councillors, electoral area directors, Islands Trust trustees, parks board commissioners and boards of education trustees;

The expense limits model approved by Government in July 2014, which is to have provincially-set limits for candidates and third party advertisers in local elections, with limits to be set using a flat-rate amount for jurisdictions under 10,000 people and a per capita formula for those over 10,000 and third party limits as a percentage of a candidate’s limit in the jurisdiction where the third party is advertising; and

The nature of local elections and the differences between local and provincial election systems.

The Special Committee shall limit its consideration of campaign finance topics to forming recommendations on expense limits for local elections.

The Special Committee shall have all the powers of a Select Standing Committee and in addition is empowered to:

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

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;

Conduct consultations by any means the Committee considers appropriate;

Adjourn from place to place as may be convenient; and

Retain personnel as required to assist the Committee.

The Special Committee shall report to the House on the above dates, or as soon as possible, and shall deposit the original of its reports with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly during a period of adjournment and upon resumption of the sittings of the House, the Chair shall present all reports to the Legislative Assembly.]

Motion approved.

Hon. M. de Jong: For the information of members, I understand that in a couple of instances there are meetings scheduled for today. I know that the Clerk of Committees will oblige us all by confirming meeting schedules, or the offices of the House Leaders can confirm that information as well. That work will undertake.

Government Motions on Notice

MOTION 1 — CHANGES TO QUESTION PERIOD
AND DAILY HOUSE BUSINESS

Hon. M. de Jong: I call Motion 1 on the order paper, standing in my name.

[That the Standing Orders of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia be amended as follows for the duration of the Second Session of the Fortieth Parliament, which commenced on February 11, 2014:

1. Standing Order 25 be deleted and the following substituted:

The daily routine business of the House shall be as follows:

Prayers (morning or afternoon sittings)

Introduction of Bills

Statements (Standing Order 25B) (afternoon sittings: Monday and Wednesday; morning sittings: Tuesday and Thursday)

Oral question period (30 minutes, afternoon sittings: Monday and Wednesday; 30 minutes, morning sittings: Tuesday and Thursday)

Presenting Petitions

Reading and Receiving Petitions

Presenting Reports by Committees

Motions on Notice

Written Questions on Notice

Proposed Amendments on Notice

Orders of the Day.

The order of business for consideration of the House day by day, after the above routine, shall, unless otherwise ordered, be as follows:

MONDAY

10 a.m. to 12 noon

(Private Members’ Time)

Private Members’ Statements (10 a.m.)

Public Bills in the hands of Private Members

Private Members’ Motions

Private Bills

Public Bills and Orders and Government Motions on Notice

No division, on Orders of the Day, will be taken in the House or in Committee of the Whole during Private Members’ Time, but where a division is requested, it will be deferred until thirty minutes prior to the ordinary time fixed for adjournment of the House on the Monday, unless otherwise ordered.

MONDAY (AFTERNOON), TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY

(Government Days)

Throne Speech Debate

Budget Debate including Committee of Supply

Public Bills and Orders and Government Motions on Notice

Private Bills

Public Bills in the hands of Private Members

Adjourned debate on other motions

2. Standing Order 47A be deleted and the following substituted:

There shall be a 30 minute Oral Question Period at the opening of each afternoon sitting on Monday, and Wednesday and at the opening of each morning sitting on Tuesday and Thursday, which shall be subject to the following rules:
[ Page 4632 ]

(a) only questions that are urgent and important shall be permitted;

(b) questions and answers shall be brief and precise, and stated without argument or opinion;

(c) supplementary questions may be permitted at the discretion of the Speaker. There shall be no supplementary question to a question taken on notice;

(d) debate shall not be permitted;

(e) points of order arising during Oral Question Period may, at the discretion of the Speaker, be deferred until Question Period has been completed;

(f) Oral Question Period shall not take place on the day of the Speech from the Throne.]

I took advantage of the opportunity to look back to February when we first considered this matter. Somewhat embarrassingly I note that I began my remarks then by observing that I did not intend to speak long and then took about 25 minutes to disprove that statement. I don’t intend to speak as long today.

[1010]

The motion before the House at the moment would seek to continue the practice — I suppose I could call it the pilot project — that we commenced in the spring sitting earlier this year whereby question period on Tuesdays and Thursdays would move from its traditional time in the afternoon to the morning.

At the time when we commenced this, I observed that there was a disparity of views. I think at the end of the day, the view from the opposition was hesitancy and reluctance. I can say that I’ve spoken with members on both sides of the House, and there continues to be a disparity of views, even within groups — those who like it a lot and those who are more comfortable with the traditional afternoon time for question period.

I can also say that on the part of the third parties who do not occupy seats in this chamber, I have heard from them. A number have expressed enthusiasm for the change; some, not so much.

What we’re proposing to do with this motion is continue with that for the duration of the fall session. It is again a sessional order that will end when the session is prorogued. Under our schedule, that would happen in advance of the spring sitting set to commence in February.

The last thing I’ll say is this — kind of a summary of some of the things I observed back in February. We’ve made some changes around here. Many, I think, have served members in the institution well; others, perhaps not so well. But on balance, I think, over the last number of years, there has been a willingness to explore procedural changes. Tradition is important, but sometimes it is equally important to show a willingness to embrace some change.

I’m happy that the Opposition House Leader and I have already initiated some conversations around some other matters — in, I’m happy to say, a collegial way — that we’ll continue to explore in advance of the spring session, that on a trial basis we may be willing to recommend to members and that will improve deliberations in the work that takes place here.

It is always preferable, in my view, if we can embark on those kinds of changes in a bipartisan way, though I understand that from the perspective of the opposition, ensuring that there is sufficient time to prepare for important things like question period will remain a fundamental concern.

I’ll listen with interest to the other comments, Madame Speaker.

M. Farnworth: I rise to speak to the motion which, as my colleague the Government House Leader said, is a sessional order. It will restore question period to what it was last session. That’s what I want to talk about, and I want to respond to some of the comments that the Government House Leader has made.

In this chamber we operate under a series of standing orders — some are permanent; others are sessional orders — which govern how this place operates. Whether it is question period, whether it is the introduction of bills, whether it is the estimates process, whether it is discussions that take place in this chamber, whether it is the opening up of the Douglas Fir Room — Committee A, as it is known — or, as we have seen more recently, the Birch Room — Committee C, as it is referred to…. All of those things are governed by the rules and the procedures of this chamber.

The Government House Leader has been here a long time. I have been here a long time. Many members of this House have been here a long time. When this House functions best, it functions best when those rules and those procedures and those practices in this House are arrived at jointly, when they’re not arbitrarily imposed by one side on the other.

[1015]

I think that’s the challenge that the opposition has. I mean, the Government House Leader is quite right. There are mixed views around the issue of when our question period should take place. Should it take place in the afternoon, as was tradition in this House up until the last session, or do we want to look at changing it? Some people on our side like the change; others don’t. But the one thing that I think we all agree on is that these kinds of changes should take place on a bipartisan nature. That’s what did not happen last time, and I think that’s what we need to change.

We need to look at establishing a committee where these kinds of changes can take place, because they have taken place in the past where both sides have come together and said: “Hey, let’s improve how this place works by both agreeing that we can look at some innovations.”

Sometimes those innovations…. I think the one that I remember best in having the House Leaders in discussion was we looked at a committee chaired by the opposition,
[ Page 4633 ]
for example. We’ve looked at going to a fixed calendar and making changes in how that works. Many of those have been successful, and those are the ones that succeed because both sides have input.

This, again, is one of those where the government has decided that: “Yes, we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do this over the objections of the opposition.”

My message to the government is that we are open to looking to make the place work more efficiently and effectively. I think we can, and the Government House Leader mentioned conversations that he and I have had. Hon. Speaker, in the past you have been part of conversations, with members on both sides of the House, on how we can look at the estimates process, for example. I would encourage the government to look at ways in which we can make this place better by bringing people together to look at how changes should be made.

In the meantime, on this particular issue I’ve already…. It’s no secret to the Government House Leader that I said we would be opposed to the motion. But having said that, there is an understanding, an acknowledgment, that people on both sides of this issue have…. Some people love that change, some people hate that change, and some people are indifferent. That’s the way this place is.

At the end of the day, change like this is best made when it’s done jointly. As I said, hon. Speaker, I will not be speaking long on this, but we will not be supporting this motion. But as I said, we’re also open to working together to bring about change that benefits all of us in this House.

A. Weaver: I spoke in opposition to a similar motion in the last session. I, as an independent member, experienced the question period in the last session, and I found that it actually was beneficial to me sitting as an independent member. So while I support the direction that the government is taking with this, I do agree with the opposition that such decisions would be best made if there were joint committees looking at them.

While I will vote in support of this motion, because it did serve the independents well — at least me and my team — I would encourage the government in the future to follow the advice given by the official opposition with respect to having such decisions made through committees.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we actually had a free vote once in a while in the Legislature? And what better issue than the issue before us right now?

Motion approved on division.

Tabling Documents

Madame Speaker: Hon. Members, I have the honour to present a report of the Representative for Children and Youth, Not Fully Invested: A Follow-Up Report on the Representative’s Past Recommendations to Help Vulnerable Children in B.C.

Hon. M. de Jong: I call continued debate on the throne speech.

[1020]

Throne Speech Debate

(continued)

B. Routley: I should warn the members that they’re going to see a changed MLA from what you saw last night, for the first little bit at the very least, because I have a very serious matter indeed that I need to talk about.

I got a phone call this morning, and I think every MLA would agree that what’s got to come first is what happens in your constituency. This morning I got a call, and I sat there in tears listening to this story that I’m about to share with you. Now is not the time for tears for me here in this Legislature. Now is the time for me to fight for a young mom and her husband.

This mother is dying as we speak. She needs and desperately requires a double lung transplant. They lived in the Cowichan Valley, and for the last three years they’ve been dealing with this problem. In the last three years they’ve lost their house in Lake Cowichan. They’ve had to go to Toronto and spend any money that they had left trying to help his wife.

The husband, Norm, now has no financial way to live up to the demands of him to be the support person, because one of the requirements is that you be a support person for three to six months at the hospital in Vancouver, even — get this — to be put on the list for a double lung transplant. You even have to show that you have the financial ability to do that.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

He can’t do that. My staff went over his financial situation with him — and he, by the way, signed a disclosure — and explained that after…. He’s got three teenagers at home. After he pays his rent…. I mean, he’s gone through bankruptcy protection. After he pays his rent and all of his obligations — hydro, the rest of it — he’s got 300 to 400 bucks left a month to live on. There’s no possible way this family can go to Vancouver and provide the support that they need.

So you can imagine how any staff from any MLA would feel if they had this man come through their door. Norm came in, and he said to Doug Morgan, my assistant: “I didn’t think I’d ever have to turn to the MLA, but here I am.”

He broke down in tears at the counter. He broke down in tears, and he said: “Even though I was in the Coast Guard and served the people of Canada and British Columbia and have medals to show for it….” Medals to show for it. This man was weeping, saying: “I can’t even help my own wife, and I have to stand there and watch her die. Just before I left home to come to this office, my
[ Page 4634 ]
wife turned to me and said, ‘Norm, we can’t afford it. Just let me die.’”

I can’t believe that I live in a country and a province where a person would be in that situation because they can’t afford it and they can’t afford to live in Vancouver for up to six months to have a transplant. They can’t even get on a list to get the help that they need. What? There are two letters from doctors from the transplant team that are saying this lady needs to be on the transplant list.

I’m sad to say that I’ve been told that the ministry has turned them down, that the Ministry of Social Development says they can’t help them. Well, I don’t know who it takes to help them, whether it’s the Minister of Health, but I thought we still lived in a country where we looked after people, and we didn’t let somebody fall through the cracks.

[1025]

Apparently, if you’re really poor, you get the help you need. If you’re really rich, you can take care of it yourself. But if you’re stuck in the middle, like this family is, being told that they’ve somehow fallen through the cracks and that they don’t fit the criteria….

Now, there’s an opportunity. This government likes to talk about regulations standing in the way of doing what’s necessary and what’s right. Here’s an opportunity to show what really matters when you say families are first, when you say you care about the people of British Columbia. We should all hang our heads in shame. If we can’t help a man and his family who is reaching out and pleading for help, there is something very wrong.

The member that spoke the other day about his health care…. He acknowledged how good it was. I’m happy to acknowledge that I had wonderful health care when I had my heart condition. I’m sure it was very expensive, and I’m glad the system was there for me. How can it be that there are people falling through the cracks? It’s just unacceptable. I know I have the proper channels to go through, but when I sat in my chair this morning crying, tears running down, hearing my staff tell me this story, I knew that I had to put that first before I got funny in this Legislature.

I had all kinds of ideas going through my head last night on how I could say something funny. It’s great fun to be funny and have things to say. I don’t know why all these weird thoughts come into my mind about stuff that really is kind of funny. At the end of the day, when you have a family living in your constituency in this situation, I just had to pause and deal with this matter. It’s all I can do. The only tool I have is this big mouth.

I want you to know that I care about this family. I hope you can care about this family. I hope we collectively can find a way to help — if nothing else, if we’re just pleading through the media, through the TV camera, for somebody with deep pockets to step forward and do something. Somebody got a spare room or whatever for a dad and three teenagers? It is ridiculous that we can’t find help for a man who has helped so many others and has the medals to prove it. I think we would all feel better knowing that this man, at the end of the day, somehow gets the help he needs.

Enough said about that. I have to go back to the work of dealing with the things that are going on here and the incessant drone of LNG. And I like LNG. LNG is a good thing. The scientists and the folks that go out there and look for these things — and they find a huge area. Apparently, we have one of the richest natural resource areas for not just LNG but other gases as well that are very, very needed in the world.

Sure, there’s a bit of a market downturn right now. I think if the government was honest, they were looking at prices that were rising dramatically. Now they’ve softened a lot, and things don’t look quite as good, quite as rosy. But that’s what happens. You pay the price when you go out there and run around saying you’re going to make billions and trillions and billions of dollars. Now, when the truth comes out, we’re talking…. Well, we’ve got a bit of a chance.

The window is closing, some people are talking about. It’s unbelievable what we’ve heard. This throne speech skipped any mention of the past election promises, and they were real promises. It wasn’t just that we’re working towards this. What was stated was that we were going to have a trillion dollar economic windfall from LNG that would fill a $100 billion prosperity fund. It was going to wipe out a $60 billion debt and create as many as 100,000 jobs.

[1030]

The Premier promised that LNG would not only erase the province’s debt, B.C. Ferries’ debt, B.C. Hydro’s debt and do away with the PST potentially forever…. Now I feel that she’s put British Columbians right where Petronas wants us. She can’t deliver on the LNG tax bill in the House because they’re not finished working it out, and with their…. I would hate to think they’re our masters right now, but when you put yourself in a bargaining position where you’ve promised the people of British Columbia the sun, the moon and the stars, and now you can’t deliver because they’re threatening to leave for 15 years, that’s very much a problem.

Now we see the government is in full retreat. In this throne speech they’ve recast it. Clearly, they’ve recast it as a chance, no longer a windfall that will help…. Get this. Now the statement is that it’s going to help B.C. maintain the same world-class services we rely on — the core services this government needs to have protected, they say in the throne speech.

The throne speech also highlighted how a slow global economy and an aging population have made it challenging to afford B.C.’s current publicly funded government services. Meanwhile, we have the head of Petronas issuing public statements just hours before the throne speech, warning that a proposed $11 billion LNG plant
[ Page 4635 ]
near Prince Rupert could be delayed up to 15 years — not five, not ten. Now they’re saying 15 years.

Clearly, he wanted issues resolved, and that I see as bargaining through the press. It’s an outrageous statement to be made when we know that he has — as Vaughn Palmer put it — so much skin in the game. They’ve got a lot of money invested here in British Columbia, and for them to be threatening to pack their bags and leave….

I remember one of our NDP leaders once said that when they threaten to leave, tell them to pack their bags and get out of town because, at the end of the day, the value is still right there in the ground. They’re not taking the value with them. So they shouldn’t be threatening British Columbians in any way, shape or form, from my point of view.

The value is still there. Somebody is going to go after it. Somebody will see the opportunity because they’re not doing this as a social program for us. Anybody that’s under the illusion that they’re doing this to help us out…. They’re doing it for their own needs and their own profitability. They want to take hockey socks full of value from British Columbia and run off back to their home country and empower or enrich….

I mean, it’s great they enrich Malaysia. But why should they be doing it on our dime? Why should they be taking bags full of cash away from British Columbia and running off around the world to spend it elsewhere? We need a fair share.

You know, what this turns out to be is as close as it gets to a complete election admission of the kind of jiggery-pokery and gibberish and gobbledygook and just more smoke and mirrors. It’s hard to take this Premier at her word anymore. She knows what she wants to say, but then she does whatever she wants. She backed down on every major commitment she made around LNG — again, devoid of jobs, devoid of the magical prosperity fund. Then they actually ran off and started telling the federal government that we need more temporary foreign workers.

I want to say about that again…. I said it yesterday, and I want to say it again. Why do they need to be temporary? British Columbia was built by workers from China who worked on our railways all across this country. Why do they have to be temporary? What about the East Indian folks who have built our mills and our forest industry alongside?

[1035]

I remember a day when I was looking through the files in the basement of our hall. Let me apologize right now for former forest industry union reps back in the ’30s — 1937 we were formed. I couldn’t believe that I found a collective agreement that actually said on it that they had a rate for the Chinese, a rate for the East Indians and a rate for the whites.

You know what? At one point we had an investigation, right there in the union hall. Somebody said that there was a charge of discrimination, so they had an investigation. The report back was that they investigated, and they didn’t find any. You know, that’s the kind of jiggery-pokery when I talk about it. I know that there was something that went on in the history of even our union that I’m not proud of.

It’s unacceptable at any level. It has to be called exactly what it is. It was unacceptable then. This is unacceptable now. Free people should be fighting for free men and women to come over here. Why can’t these workers be coming over under the umbrella of Canada? Why can’t they be coming under the umbrella of British Columbia? Why do they have to be under the thumb of an employer? I’ve seen it happen in my own constituency.

Imagine four Filipino workers, nervous and scared, arriving in British Columbia, the land of promise, the home of the free, the brave — supposedly. They get a job at Burger King. Their employer basically signs for them to be there. So they’re basically…. They can’t even go down the hall and complain. I heard about it roundabout from family members that they were being stuck four to a room — four to a room — and they were being forced to pay, deducted from their pay, $500 each for rent. The apartment was less than a $1,000 apartment. Four of them paying the boss this kind of money. And the boss was pocketing the rest at their expense.

You know, they came down and talked to us, and they were nervous. I’ve never seen four more nervous people in my life. They said: “Oh, whatever you do, don’t tell anybody. You can’t talk about it.” I can talk about it now. Burger King is gone. It went bankrupt, and so it should. Good riddance to them, that they would treat people like that. They had the audacity to treat working people that way.

Those wonderful workers would have found jobs. They could have just walked down the street to another restaurant that was hanging out a shingle and been hired.

What about…. It’s shameful that right there in the Cowichan Valley we have the highest unemployment level amongst First Nations, the largest First Nations group in British Columbia. It’s something like 80 percent unemployment amongst the youth. They’ve had suicides in the Cowichan Tribes. When I ask some of the young people why they feel that way, they said they feel that way because they don’t think it’s ever going to change. They’re always going to be treated as second class. They’re always going to be treated as that folk off the reserve. That’s how they’re going to be treated.

Now we’ve got legislation and laws. Oh, now we’ve got the Supreme Court saying: “You better pay attention.” Well, we’ll see. We’ll see. But when you think of decades…. Do you know what lands the federal government gave our Cowichan Tribes? The floodplain in the Cowichan Valley. They got the floodplain.

It’s just criminal that we’re bringing in foreign workers — back to the foreign workers — and we’ve got unemployed amongst our own. No proper training program.
[ Page 4636 ]
There are small glimmers of success and hope when somebody reaches down and pulls them up and says: “I’m going to help out.” They can do that. There’s no reason more employers….

I challenge the chamber in the Cowichan Valley: step up to the plate. You’ve got a lot to say? Well, let’s hear you say something to your own chamber members and say: “We want to see every employer in the Cowichan Valley looking at training and mentoring First Nations.”

[1040]

Now I’d see some real action instead of this whining about whatever problem they have, instead of this whining about whatever problem they have, while they pony up to the plate with their Black Tie Awards. That’s fine. It’s wonderful. It’s good to have black tie awards. I went and sat there, but I’ve got to tell you, I sure didn’t feel among my people sitting there with a bunch of snobs.

Anyway, at the end of the day….

Interjections.

B. Routley: Go ahead. Please do. You go ahead and tweet that out, because you wouldn’t believe the snobbery I’ve seen. You go ahead and call a spade a spade. You wouldn’t believe the letter I received from some of them clowns.

Anyway, at the end of the day, this government is quite comfortable with the temporary foreign workers being under the boss’s thumb and instead just throws them away like yesterday’s news.

We had all these promises — billions we were going to have, and everybody knows you don’t start bargaining by telling of all the money you’re going to have and all the money you’re going to spend. You know, it’s unbelievable when you think about it. Debt-free — now they’re back-pedalling.

One of the funnier notions in my mind was the idea that when their spin doctors were spinning as fast as they could, and they were putting out…. Oh, they were saying we were going to have all of these wonderful things, trillions of dollars, billions of dollars in a prosperity fund. Why didn’t they go even further? They could have had the retained earnings room down in the basement, with so much overflow cash from the prosperity fund. I think the banks call it a rounding error or spillage.

They could have so much cash in there that for a small fee you could go down there, and they could turn on the fan and just blow the cash around. They could have even come up with another one. For 1,000 bucks you could have a sleepover in the retained earnings room and throw the cash around and maybe even have breakfast brought in from the legislative dining room. And for 5,000 bucks, they could even bring in a king bed and have dinner in the retained earnings room.

And overnight I was thinking, you know, if the Liberals really believed all of this stuff, they should have gone the next step and talked about a cruise line — the Princess Prosperity, they could have called it. Their maiden ship could have been the Princess Prosperity, and they could have all kinds of fun with the retained earnings making money for the people of British Columbia.

But now you think about what’s happening. They’re backing away from doing anything about emissions here in British Columbia. They’re pretending that burning more natural gas won’t have a real effect on climate change here in British Columbia.

The throne speech promises a comprehensive legislative framework, but now we’re going to see how the big gas industry has plucked the Premier’s golden goose. Will we be down to just the guts and feathers? I certainly hope not.

Moira Stilwell: I do enjoy the days when you get to speak after a hard act to follow.

It is a pleasure to stand in this House this morning to respond to the Speech from the Throne. I say that, well aware that around the world many people would give anything to be able to stand in a House like this and speak their mind — to speak their mind and know that they can do it freely, without fear of government, without fear of being imprisoned or threatened.

[1045]

We only have to look at the recent demonstrations calling for democracy in Hong Kong to realize how lucky we are to live here in British Columbia. In Hong Kong the citizens want to elect leaders they nominate, not individuals handpicked by their government. Can you imagine British Columbians or Canadians being told: “You can vote but only for the people that the government has selected”? Well, for a start, there go a lot of members sitting here now.

The Hong Kong protests in support of a real democratic election were, as so often happens, led by young people — young people who are connected to the world and a world of ideas through their smart phones, tablets, Twitter, Facebook and the like. As one protester said: “Democracy is coming around the world, and even if China is the last holdout, it will nevertheless come. It is inevitable.”

After all, you can only contain and control people for so long. The fact is history has shown that even the most controlling and dictatorial and demanding regimes do not last. Eventually people turn, the dictators tumble and free people speak up.

Here in Canada and British Columbia we constantly try to figure out how to get more people engaged in politics — to get them to participate in their own democracy. And yet, we struggle. We struggle to find people who want to put their names forward in elections, we struggle to get people out to vote, and we wonder why we take democracy for granted.

Yet only last month we saw that when a people believes
[ Page 4637 ]
something is worthwhile, they will participate, they will engage, and they will vote. Last month after a 300-year relationship, the Scots voted on the issue of independence from the United Kingdom. At the end of the day the Scots voted 55 percent to 45 percent to stay united with the U.K.

The turnout was a record. Voter turnout was the highest since universal suffrage was introduced in the 1950s. A record 85 percent of Scots voted, and because the issue was of such importance to the future, they let the future vote. They allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to vote. If anyone thinks young people are not interested in politics, just look at the Scottish referendum numbers — 80 percent of 16-and 17-year-olds stepped up to vote. Why? Because they were asked to be a part of something important, and so was every Scot.

They turned out in droves. They turned out because they wanted their voice heard, and they genuinely believed that their vote mattered and perhaps made the difference. Too often people feel like their voice or vote doesn’t matter, but if you ask those young people in Hong Kong or the voters in Scotland, they will tell you that voices do matter.

Frankly, it’s a lesson for all of us in this House. Our citizens want to be heard. They want to know their voice and vote counts, and part of our job in this House is to make sure that that happens.

We sit in this House at the pleasure of the people. In 2014, perhaps more than any other year, we need to appreciate the people who made this House and the freedom that comes with it possible — 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War.

More recently it marks the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing that saw thousands of Canadians step up and fight to free Europe and the world. At 6:30 on June 6, 1944, 14,000 Canadians would land on Juno Beach, the Canadian beach. Before the day was over the Canadians would suffer more casualties that any of the British battle groups. But the Canadians would push farther on D-Day than any of the other Allies. Canadian airmen joined 4,000 Allied bombers on D-Day, and 450 Canadians parachuted behind enemy lines before the invasion began.

Royal Canadian Navy ships were among the 7,000 Allied naval vessels that bombed the French coast and landed Allied troops. On D-Day alone 359 young Canadian men would die, young men who would never visit this chamber or enjoy the freedoms that they preserved for generations yet unborn.

By the end of the Second World War, 1.1 million Canadians out of a total population of 11 million would join the military. They are called the greatest generation for a reason.

To honour the handful who remain, our Minister of Finance welcomed B.C.’s D-Day veterans at a dinner in their honour just days before they left for France and the anniversary celebrations. On that evening the government of France recognized the valour and service of those men by giving them the Legion of Honour, France’s highest award.

Whether we look at the protests for democracy in Hong Kong, record turnouts to vote in Scotland, or the beaches of Normandy where young Canadians fought to save our freedoms, all of us in this House are reminded that we stand on the shoulders of men and women who got us this far and who are counting on us to carry on even further.

[1050]

These shoulders include men and women of both sides of the House — W.A.C. Bennett, Dave Barrett, Alex Fraser, Alex Macdonald, Grace McCarthy, Gordon Campbell and Emery Barnes, just to name a few.

Yesterday’s throne speech gave us the opportunity to glimpse the future. It’s a future full of possibilities, potential and choices. It’s a future built on the bedrock of a strong economy. It doesn’t matter what your politics are. A strong economy is the key to getting things done. It’s the key to building roads and bridges and schools and hospitals. It’s the key to social programs and supporting and helping our most vulnerable.

We’ve had a rich history in this province when it comes to building our economy. We are resource-rich. We sit on the edge of the Pacific Ocean in front of and next to the world’s biggest markets. We are strategically positioned. We have what the world needs, and we can make it work.

As we move through this legislative session, particularly in this special year, I think it would do all of us a world of good to remember how we got here, who put us here and why we were sent to this House.

Around the world people envy our freedom, our resources, our skills and the good fortune we inherited simply by being born here. By any measure, Canadians and British Columbians have won the birth lottery. Now let’s put what we’ve won in that birth lottery to work so that future generations can stand on our shoulders and see their future — a future as bright as the one given to us by the men and women of this House and this province who have come before us.

M. Karagianis: I’m happy to take my opportunity to stand here in the House and address the throne speech.

It’s great to be here in what is a very rare fall sitting. It’s kind of unique. We haven’t had a chance to be here for a full fall sitting for a very long time. I think we’re out of the habit a little bit, Mr. Speaker, and it is unique.

I’m not sure yet that the public have kind of caught on to the fact that we’re here and what we’re discussing. Nonetheless, I think it’s a good opportunity for us to bring forward the voices of our community and make sure that they’re fairly represented in here and that the voices and needs of our community are reflected in government’s decisions — and certainly in what we see as indications coming out of the throne speech.

I’d like to take just a moment, before I talk directly to the throne speech, to offer up some thank-yous to those
[ Page 4638 ]
people who make my job easier and who make my life very fulfilled. I’d like to thank my family. In this House I’ve spoken often of my children, my grandchildren. I’ve had a great summer and an opportunity to spend some time with them, and I’m thankful every day for the support that they give me so that I can do my job.

Also, I have the great fortune of only being a few minutes away from the Legislature, and that helps enormously, in that I don’t have to travel great distances like many of our members do.

I’m very thankful for that constant support and the touchstone that I always have of being able to see my grandchildren and my children on a regular basis — and of course my husband at home, keeping the home fires burning while I’m busy down here for long hours of the day. I do thank him as well.

My constituency staff are absolutely fabulous. As all of us in this House know, being an MLA is not a one-person endeavour. It is a team endeavour. In my case I have a terrific team that does great work for me every single day in my constituency office while I am busy here at the Legislature or travelling around the province doing the work that I’ve been tasked to do by our leader.

I’d like to thank Jayne Ducker and Andrew Barrett for really stellar work in my constituency office. I know that the community appreciates them very much. I have a terrific legislative assistant as well, Jared Butcher, who also does terrific work. I’d like to thank all of them. We don’t get enough opportunities to stand here and do that in the House, so I’m happy to do it.

My community also. Great thanks go out to the community of Esquimalt–Royal Roads. Although the boundaries have shifted occasionally over the last couple of decades, the core of my community has remained the same, and I’m very privileged to have the kind of community that I do.

[1055]

Lots of people who are connected with government live in my community. A lot of people who work in the public service live in my community. They have a keen interest, maybe even keener than some communities that are further away, because they’ve got an attachment to this place in some form or other. They are much more aware of what goes on here in the Legislature, so it’s easy to have dialogue with them about the things that are important to them and about how the Legislature functions or doesn’t function to their satisfaction.

This November, as we move into municipal elections, will mark for me 18 years in public office, nine as a municipal councillor and now nine and counting as an MLA. So much to my surprise, I’ve spent 18 years representing my community in one form or another. It’s been a great privilege and, yeah, a little bit surprising to find myself here. But I have to say that it has been an enormously fulfilling and satisfying job to this point, and I know that as I continue to do it, I’m very thankful for the opportunity to be here and to offer a voice for my community and for all those I have represented in one way or another in critic portfolios and now as an advocate for a couple of files which I’m going to talk about.

One of the things I have learned in all these years of working with my community is that people right across this province are very much the same. We are a hard-working people in British Columbia. We appreciate that we do live quite a privileged lifestyle here compared to things that happen elsewhere in the world, when we watch what is happening in Hong Kong, when we watch what is happening in Africa, when we watch over the period of time the Middle Eastern conflict. We do live a very privileged life here, but it is not without its challenges. Certainly, there is huge disparity in our communities around equality of income, around equality of opportunity.

Despite the fact that we do live in a very privileged environment, we still find ourselves struggling with those things that other countries are fighting in the streets for. It seems somehow wrong that in a wealthy province we would still have such disparity, and I want to talk a little bit about that in my comments this morning.

You know, my community has very unique and specific needs here as part of the capital region. We function in Esquimalt–Royal Roads as being right in the centre of huge transportation challenges. Anyone who’s driven the Colwood crawl morning and night will know that we need some transportation solutions.

I know that the Transportation Minister has been pondering what the most important things are in the region around transportation. I’m not sure McKenzie interchange is the number one priority here, but certainly I would say it’s a top priority as part of the solution around transportation challenges. But I think there are many other things that come first and foremost to people’s minds. Those will include things like B.C. Ferries and our ability to get back and forth off of an island.

I would think when people think about transportation, they want to see more and better bus service. They certainly want to see some kind of resolution to the Colwood crawl, whether that’s taking more immediate action on HOV lanes on the Trans-Canada Highway and allowing buses to be a better and more attractive option than driving your car every day. I certainly think that would make good common sense, and I’ve said that for many years — sadly, most of the years that I’ve been in public office. I’ve talked about those kinds of simple, commonsense solutions, and we find ourselves here in 2014 without those immediate and obvious opportunities to resolve some of the transportation pressures.

My community is not unique in any way in that affordability is, again, one of the number one concerns on families’ minds. Whether it’s Vic West, Esquimalt, View Royal or Colwood, affordability seems to be a general theme that I hear from communities and from families
[ Page 4639 ]
from one end of my constituency to the other, and I’m going to talk a little bit about that as well.

[1100]

When I listened to the throne speech here on Monday it was through a lens of knowing my community as well as I do, knowing the challenges, thinking about the challenges that I’ve talked about here in the Legislature, that the government has heard many, many times from members on this side of the House, from letters, from their engagement with my community and with community members in the region. The throne speech didn’t speak to us at all.

Because I have such a good opportunity to have close contact with my community, I’ve already had feedback from my community on what they thought of the throne speech. People were extremely disappointed because it was, in fact, so devoid of any serious and substantial content that unlike past throne speeches…. We’ve had some that have been slogan-laden, and we’ve had others that have promised us all kinds of goals and fantastical things to occur.

This throne speech was so devoid of anything real that my community has said: “What was it about? Why have you been called to a fall sitting of the Legislature and a throne speech that’s delivered nothing? Nothing tangible. No real indication of what government’s goals are. Was it a stopgap? Is it to buy time? What is the purpose of it?”

Really, I think that when the public sees that the government seems to not even have an agenda themselves laid out in their own throne speech, it feeds into the skepticism that people have about this government and about what kind of business they’re conducting on behalf of the people of British Columbia.

I hear frequently in my community that people are confused. They are confused by the fact that we hear the Premier say one thing and then we see the Premier do something entirely different. We see the Premier making all kinds of grandiose promises. We see the Premier doing very little to deliver on any of those promises.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

When my community has huge expectations that government might be paying attention to the things we need like transportation solutions, more affordability and less burden of fees and expenses onto working people, more resolution to too many part-time jobs — you know, to the loss of too many jobs — here on the Island they say: “We’ve been hearing the Premier make all kinds of great promises to us, yet the throne speech reflected very little of any of that anymore. We’ve seen in the last year that there has been no delivery on the things that were promised just a year ago in the election campaign.”

Governments are judged by what they deliver, based on what they promised in the campaign. Here we are a year later, and already all of the promises seem to have evaporated into thin air.

You know, the 100,00 jobs that the Premier had promised…. We had a jobs plan that was already a bit of a catastrophic failure. Now we have seen any reference to the 100,000 jobs in the liquid natural gas industry disappear. That’s a little footnote that’s gone.

We have seen references to how liquid natural gas was going to be the great saviour of our generation. The Premier promised us in the last election that this was going to be the great panacea. It was going to give us economic freedom. It was going to give us wealth and riches, trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of jobs, a prosperity fund similar to what Alberta has enjoyed.

Here we are a year later, a throne speech, really, right on the brink of seeing what the liquid natural gas legislation is supposed to look like, and we saw no mention of any of these things. Now suddenly all those fancy slogans from a year ago during the election campaign have evaporated.

I guess the public can easily see through this. Empty promises. When you talk the talk but can’t walk the walk, what does that say? That says that you have not delivered. What is the purpose of this government’s continued promises that somehow things will get better in the future, that LNG will deliver something for us?

In fact, I’ve seen that the government has now begun to sneak in language that kind of scales back expectation everywhere. They themselves don’t believe in all of that empty rhetoric that they flashed around during the election campaign.

[1105]

I’m also deeply troubled. Although here on the south Island, in my constituency, we’re not going to benefit directly from liquid natural gas…. We’re not going to have jobs that are based on what’s happening in the liquid natural gas industry worldwide. But we have seen this creep of temporary foreign workers and have our concerns about that. I know other members have canvassed this and done a terrific job of it in their debates in the last couple of days.

I have a community where people are often working two and three jobs to try and keep shelter over their heads and their families fed. People are working split shifts. People are having to readjust their lives. My own children are in this same category, where they’re having to work various shifts that disrupt family life, that make it very difficult financially for people. Certainly, all of this promise of liquid natural gas jobs or jobs for temporary foreign workers do absolutely zero to address that issue.

So that’s a big concern of mine, and the fact that the throne speech didn’t even give the tiniest wisp of hope for those people who are working and struggling with several jobs, several low-paying jobs. They don’t see any foreseeable opportunity in the future for them that they don’t have to work very hard for and struggle for.

This issue of temporary foreign workers is going to continue to be a problem. The Premier has championed
[ Page 4640 ]
this. We’ve talked in this Legislature about the fact that some of the loss of mining jobs has left communities with only temporary foreign workers, and that’s just wrong. That wasn’t part of what the Premier promised a year ago in the great largesse of what we were going to get from liquid natural gas and her jobs plan.

Certainly, watching companies like Petronas play out their negotiations with the government in public — on the front pages of the newspaper, in the headlines of the newspaper, as the leading stories on the TV news every night — is just plain wrong. It shows, I think, a complete lack of professionality and competence on the part of government that they have put themselves in a position where Petronas thinks they can play out their expectations on tax regime in the headlines and get away with it. It’s because we’ve demonstrated a naivety in this province and an incompetence in this province on this file.

All of these grandiose promises that the government made a year ago, that the Premier has made…. Given her performance on delivering absolutely nothing on most of these promises, it means that we are now caught in a very ridiculous situation where the very companies that want to come in here and take our resources out of here have the upper hand and are using the upper hand.

When I hear the Premier say, “Well, we were great at negotiating the teachers strike, so therefore we’re mature enough and professional enough to go out and negotiate against an international corporation with far more resources and far more expertise than we have in this province,” it’s laughable. You take a group of teachers that you have systematically destroyed and beat up for a decade, and you leave them on strike for six weeks and don’t make any concerted effort to change that until the very last possible moment, and then you call yourself a great negotiator. That is just ludicrous.

To then stand up and say, “And that skill set makes us capable of going up against one of the largest corporations in the world and negotiating for the best interests of British Columbians,” is just laughable. I think the public can see that. I know the public can see that.

The throne speech, for me, was devoid of all of the really important opportunities that government could have taken here to address real issues, rather than this kind of staged environment that the Premier likes to create around LNG.

I have been charged now with some new roles to take on and am continuing with some previous roles that I had in the past as an opposition member. Our leader has given me the job of being an advocate for seniors, for women and for child care and early learning. I think it’s a great opportunity for me, not only looking at the throne speech and a government agenda through the lens of what my community sees and needs and wants but also putting on those hats and saying: for each of those advocacy roles, what is it that the government has demonstrated on those files?

[1110]

Well, in fact, for all three of those particular areas, the government mentioned nothing in the throne speech — not one mention of seniors. Yet we know that is a conversation — seniors care, aging, the baby boom demographic as they move through, issues around affordability for seniors, around dementia care. Those are all things that are playing out in just as bold a headline in the news media as Petronas’s efforts to grind us on tax regimes.

Those are all really important issues that we face within a health care system here in British Columbia — and yet no mention of seniors at all. No mention of the issue around the growing alarm around dementia care. No mention whatsoever about this growing demographic of seniors. I’m one of those people. I’m on the cusp of being a senior, so I am part of that baby boom bubble that’s moving through the system.

Justifiably so, my family — like many, many other families in British Columbia — is caught in that particular sandwich between parents aging out, and what kind of care they will have and need in the future, and still having children at home and having to worry about child care costs and the education system. There’s kind of a continuum between my advocacy roles as the seniors advocate, the women’s advocate and the advocate for child care, because many middle-class families are in fact facing both those pressures on either side.

We know it, we talk about it, economists talk about it, and sociologists talk about it. Yet the government has chosen to ignore that. Generally, they throw at least a crumb or two to seniors, for no other reason than because they are a group who does vote. They are very, very engaged in paying attention to how government treats them and delivers services, and they vote. You’d think, at the very least, you’d kind of throw a placebo out to seniors, but we got not even that in the throne speech.

As I have begun to travel around and talk with seniors organizations and seniors groups and people in my community about this new advocacy role I’ve taken on, it has become very evident to me that one of the reasons the government avoids talking about issues around seniors is because affordability is top of mind for most seniors. They’re certainly concerned about the kind of care that they might need now and in the future, but the struggle of getting from month to month is very, very real for far too many seniors here.

This government, over the course of its time and certainly over the last couple of years, has made life more difficult for seniors and less affordable for seniors. We have seen hydro rate increases — some have occurred now, and they’re scheduled to continue occurring — that are making it very difficult for seniors. Even those who have what seemed like a very reasonable pension are very concerned because costs are outstripping that fixed income they are on.
[ Page 4641 ]

Hydro increases are putting seniors in a position of having to make a choice: “Do we keep the lights on? Do we keep the heat on? Or do we turn the heat down, keep the lights on and just use one room in the house during the wintertime to keep costs low? We cannot afford that and eat and afford medication at the same time.”

Ferry fares I touched on earlier. If the Transportation Minister wants to talk about a transportation issue of paramount concern to people who live on the islands and in the coastal communities, ferry fares are right up there. I’ve talked to many seniors who no longer go back and forth to visit family. They are now losing touch with family. More isolation is occurring. Families are in fact feeling the impact of this, and it saddens many seniors. I’ve talked to many senior women who feel very sad about this.

I would say that on the whole issue, the whole spectrum of affordability for seniors, there is no other group within the seniors sector that is more harshly affected than senior women — many, many, many of whom do not have the kind of pensions that their spouse may have had. They may have lost their spouse.

[1115]

The largest demographic group that is suffering poverty within our communities is senior women, and that’s a tragedy here in British Columbia. The government has made it more and more difficult for them The government has made it more and more difficult for them rather than less difficult for them. Hydro rates going up all the time. B.C. Ferries almost unaffordable for many, many families and certainly for many seniors. MSP premiums and the direct costs that this has to families and to seniors. All of these things are squeezing seniors’ meagre incomes. They are not growing at the same rate as the cost of living.

It seems to me that in British Columbia in the 21st century, in a province as rich as we are, which enjoys the kind of lifestyle that we do…. It is really sad to me that seniors find themselves living in poverty concerned, very concerned, and having to make hard choices in their own daily lives — seniors who helped build this province and bring it to the point where we do have a fabulous province with a fabulous society and a fabulous standard of living. That seniors in the years when they should be able to retire with great dignity…. Many of them are not doing that. Many of them are having to make hard choices.

The homelessness coalition here in the region, greater Victoria, reported out — I was at their AGM two weeks ago — that an alarming number of seniors are in fact homeless. When they do a homeless count, there is a significant and alarming number of those homeless that are seniors. That is the hardest group. The group that is the longest without housing in those demographic studies is seniors. What a pathetic statement to make in the capital city of British Columbia — that we have seniors who are homeless for a long period of time. We didn’t hear anything about that in the throne speech.

I talked earlier about working families, the middle class and their issues around affordability. The story of what’s hitting seniors on hydro increases, ferry increases, MSP premium increases and difficulties around transportation…. That’s all the story, definitely, for working families, and add to that the burden of child care costs and all of the other pressures that have grown and grown and grown on families.

Here in greater Victoria there is still a disproportionate amount of income that goes to shelter alone. We’re about to see a couple of Vital Signs reports come out that tell us: what kind of income do you need in order to just afford basic shelter and survival in the region? It’s generally much higher than what the minimum wage is or than what many families earn. This is not a dissimilar story now everywhere in British Columbia. Whether you’re in greater Victoria, whether you’re in Prince George or wherever you are, this is a similar story. People are feeling more and more troubled and more and more pressured on how they will get from payday to payday.

I saw nothing in the throne speech that talked about those people. I know the Premier will talk about her jobs plan. We know that the jobs plan is a failure. I mean, Stats Canada has told us that. Those facts are there for us to read. Whether we even want to be hopeful that the jobs plan might have worked, we can see that it has not worked and that it has been a failure. So you have to deal with that reality.

We don’t hear any of that from government. We continue to hear that somehow there’s a rosier British Columbia. There’s a rosier job statistical report out there than what Stats Canada has produced. Somehow there is magically some other altered reality that has all kinds of jobs in it. Not true. We are about to see a mill closure here on the Island, which will have all kinds of effects on the communities where those mills are. We’ve seen job losses in the forest industry alone, which has really been a cornerstone of our economy for a long time.

We’ve seen job losses, close to 40,000 jobs lost — gone forever, disappeared forever. Raw logs are being shipped to other countries and keeping their economies alive but not keeping mill jobs in British Columbia, here on the Island. We have seen the loss of more full-time jobs and an increase, where it occurs rarely, in part-time jobs. So in fact, what we’re seeing in British Columbia is a complete erosion of affordability for families around job losses.

[1120]

Getting into the educational clash that this government undertook with B.C. teachers I think would require its own half-hour here in the House. At a time when we should be investing in every child in British Columbia in a robust public education system that allows every child to have an opportunity to get the best education, to come out of the education system ready to take on whatever the new economies of the future will offer, we have instead
[ Page 4642 ]
a government that is engaged in a battle and a clash and has still neglected to satisfy the issues around class size and composition. I’m hoping we’ll have a chance to talk about that, because that was not addressed in any way in the throne speech.

Everything that has been talked about by this government for over a year now, since the election in 2013, has been about one topic only, liquid natural gas. If it’s not the one-trick pony, the government has no interest in it. They somehow believe that by telling British Columbians: “When our LNG ship comes in, we’re going to be rolling in money. There’ll be money for everything….” It’s irresponsible. It’s laughable, in some ways.

You don’t even have to have a great, deep interest in liquid natural gas to see, as the headlines play out, that it’s a changing environment. It’s now an environment that is certainly not producing 100,000 jobs or a prosperity fund. The government themselves, the Premier herself, is now beginning to use language about scaling back. This is now an opportunity rather than a sure thing.

We’ve produced no clear contracts. We’ll find out what is going to happen with this taxation legislation. I think that we’ve been sold a bill of goods, and we’re going to be paying for it well into the future.

Hon. T. Stone: It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise today in support of the government’s throne speech. It truly is an honour to be here in this chamber. Having been a member of government and elected, actually for the first time, in May of 2013, walking into this building continues to take my breath away. It really is an honour.

It’s a terrific responsibility and a privilege to represent the people of Kamloops–South Thompson: certainly, the city of Kamloops; the village of Chase; the communities of Savona, Westwold, Monte Lake; and a lot of rural area in between. As I’ve had the opportunity to criss-cross the constituency over the past almost year and a half, it just never fails to amaze me, the incredible work ethic that exists in this part of the province, the commitment to family that I see in the communities throughout my constituency.

I want to take a brief moment to acknowledge and thank the efforts of my constituency staff. I am very well looked after by Maryanne, Pat and Shauna. I know they’re watching. I think they’re probably amongst the 12 people that are watching my speech at this moment.

Interjections.

Hon. T. Stone: There are the 12, plus a couple at home perhaps.

I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the contributions of the mayor of Kamloops and the entire city council of Kamloops and, indeed, the mayor of Chase and the entire city council in Chase for their continued service on behalf of their constituents. Certainly, those that are running again, I wish them good luck.

Those that are not: thank you very much for your service.

In particular, to the mayor of Chase, Ron Anderson, who has served Chase with absolute distinction and has done a tremendous amount to help Chase move forward as a community, I want to say: “Ron, thank you very much for your service. We understand the desire to retire and spend more quality time with your family, so good luck in retirement.”

[1125]

I also want to take a moment to acknowledge my family back at home: Chantelle and our three daughters. Obviously, as all children, they are thrilled to be back at school. They’re all in Juniper Ridge School in Kamloops, a public school. As we went through this education dispute, it certainly was a tremendous amount of pressure being applied from many quarters. I can say that with our third daughter going into kindergarten this year — the third of three daughters — certainly there was a tremendous amount of pressure on the home front to get this thing settled. When it was, I had a very happy wife at home as well.

I want to just take a quick shout-out to my three daughters. Hannah turned ten back on June 2. Sydney is now eight. Her birthday was in September. Our little baby girl, who will be five, has a birthday coming up in November.

One of the more interesting and exciting and, I would say, fun things that we did as a family over the summer was we decided to do a staycation here in British Columbia, and we decided to experience the Discovery coast circle tour. We did this journey over five days. Day 1 we drove from Kamloops to Nanaimo, day 2 to Port Hardy, day 3 via two ferries through Bella Bella and then to Bella Coola, day 4 off to Williams Lake and day 5 to Kamloops — a tremendous trip. We thoroughly enjoyed it as a family, and I would encourage all British Columbians and, indeed, people from around the world to do this trip.

I’m pleased to report that the highways were in very good condition, particularly here on Vancouver Island, Highway 19 right up, particularly from Campbell River through to Port Hardy.

The Northern Discovery ferry, for those who haven’t been on it, is an absolutely spectacular ship in the ferry fleet, and the service was phenomenal. The little Nimpkish ferry, the little 16-car ferry which now serves Bella Bella to Bella Coola, is getting the job done. I’m pleased to report that the amenities which we asked B.C. Ferries to improve — better seating, better food choices, other improvements to the interior of the ship — have all been made, and the ship is comfortable. The schedules are synced now. The ship was full.

I talked to passengers from countries around the world who were thoroughly enjoying the trip. The high-
[ Page 4643 ]
light for our family was the journey from Bella Bella to Bella Coola, with stops in Shearwater and Ocean Falls. In Indian Channel we actually had a pod of dolphins following us for a good two and a half hours, swimming underneath the ferry and jumping on both sides. That certainly had our three daughters enthralled. We saw orcas; we saw grizzly bears — all kinds of other wildlife.

One of the more interesting things for me, being a history buff, was the ferry coming up to and actually cutting its engine and slowly drifting by the Mackenzie monument. This is a monument that was erected many, many years ago. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere, but it marks a very important spot. It marks the spot where Mackenzie, the explorer, discovered the Pacific Ocean. It marks the spot where he had his first interaction with the local First Nations.

These are all experiences that you can have on this ferry. As many of the passengers onboard indicated to me they really felt that this journey was an adventure. It was an opportunity to see British Columbia’s glorious nature up close and personal.

I really hope that in moving forward, the tourism associations and coastal communities, and particularly communities through the Bella Coola Valley and up through the Chilcotin, will continue to work with government. We’ve reached our hand out to work in partnership with these communities and these organizations to promote what we believe is a world-class tourism product.

[1130]

I’ll end on this note with respect to the Discovery coast circle tour. To those who criticize the decisions that were made and those who say that the Nimpkish will not work and that the Nimpkish will not enable this to be a good tourism product, if my wife and I can take three little girls on this ferry and enjoy the journey and survive, anybody can. I would encourage all British Columbians to do it.

I would like to also just highlight a couple of exciting items in the constituency of Kamloops–South Thompson. The city is growing. More people are working than ever before. The mining industry is doing really well. Forestry is doing really well. The tourism industry in Kamloops is doing exceptionally well.

We now have over 12,000 students on our university campus — 12,000 students. When I graduated from UVic back in the 1990s, there were about 15,000 students there. We have 12,000 on campus now at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, and one of the largest contingents of international students. About 2,800 international students are now studying on campus in Kamloops. In addition to the very obvious and very positive impacts to the community’s social fabric that those international students are contributing to, they’re also contributing a heck of a lot to the economy in Kamloops and the region.

I was very pleased this summer to purchase wine at our local Kamloops Farmers Market. Yes, we actually have two wineries in Kamloops. We have a third one coming. It was an absolute pleasure to purchase wine from the two Kamloops-based wineries, Privato and Harpers Trail — really good wine. Of course, the ability to do so was because of changes that we have made as part of our reform of the liquor legislation in British Columbia.

I want to also acknowledge a couple of other people, the tremendous efforts of Chris Rose and the Kamloops autism centre, which is regarded as one of the finest autism-focused centres in all of Canada, west of Montreal. They continue to do just tremendous work there. I want to salute Chris Rose.

I also want to salute Brenda Aynsley, who is the executive director of the Kamloops-Thompson United Way and who has been recognized by her colleagues across Canada as being one of the most visionary and the most successful drivers of United Way and their various programs across Canada.

Last but certainly not least, I want to acknowledge a very dear friend who passed, Peggy Gilmour, back on June 29. She was a very dear friend of mine. She passed away peacefully at the age of 86 years old. This was a woman who was a pioneer in so many respects in Kamloops and Merritt and in the Thompson and the Nicola valleys, who did so much for the community, particularly with respect to the arts. I really want to take a moment here to acknowledge her passing. I know she’s looking down from on high with a big smile on her face.

I’d now like to turn to the topic of transportation. As I often say when I’m out speaking at public engagements, I really do believe that I’ve got one of the best jobs in government. Being the Minister of Transportation is really key to ensuring that we continue to have a strong and vibrant economy. It’s all about the safe movement of people and goods. It’s all about continuing to grow markets overseas. It’s about ensuring that we can continue to get our products to our markets overseas, and creating jobs in the process.

It’s also very critical to every community in British Columbia. A couple of weeks ago I was pleased to attend the Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention up in Whistler. As one of the busier ministers, I met with over 90 local government representatives. That, just in and of itself, I think, goes to show how critical transportation is, whether it’s roads or ferries or transit, airports, ports. There is just so much that communities continue to need in the form of infrastructure. I certainly enjoyed my time with all of those mayors and councillors.

British Columbia continues to have, on a per-capita basis, the most robust infrastructure program in the country. In fact, since 2001 we’ve invested $16 billion in all facets of infrastructure — highways, transit, ports, airports, ferries and so forth. Our infrastructure investments, on a go-forward basis, will continue to be robust. We have about $3.3 billion earmarked for investments in transportation over the next three years.

[1135]

The ability to continue to make these very strategic investments in infrastructure is really rooted in the reality that we have looked after the fiscal realities in this province. We have ensured continued fiscal discipline, balancing our budget not once but two years in a row; keeping taxes low; having one of the lowest debt-to-GDP ratios not just in Canada, not just in North America but across the world. All of this fiscal discipline is what really is required to underpin the ability to continue to make strategic investments not just in transportation but, I would argue, in health care and education and other services that British Columbians invest in.

I often hear from members opposite and, certainly, a good number of British Columbians, particularly those in coastal communities, that continued investment in ferries is an important priority. I want to acknowledge on behalf of government that we certainly understand that there is a correlation between fare affordability and passenger volumes. We understand that the number one challenge facing B.C. Ferries today and, indeed, people who live in coastal communities is affordability.

That is why we are working so hard to implement the many different facets of our ferry vision that we launched earlier this year, which is all focused on getting B.C. Ferries to a place of affordability, efficiency and long-term sustainability.

Often lost in the rhetoric, particularly from the other side of the House, on this file is the fact that this government invested $1.9 billion in ferries since 2001. We will invest another half-billion dollars in ferries over the next three years. Last fiscal year alone was a record level of investment in B.C. Ferries of taxpayers’ dollars of almost $200 million. In addition to that, B.C. Ferries is well on its way to achieving over $54 million in efficiencies, which was the target set by the B.C. ferries commissioner and the B.C. government.

I fully acknowledge that service adjustments that were announced and rolled out earlier this year have certainly had an impact on coastal communities. No question about that. They’ve said that all along. But the $18 million of savings that are realized from those service adjustments is also a critical part of helping us get Ferries to a place of sustainability.

We simply don’t believe that running ferries on particular sailings with more staff on board than passengers makes sense. We don’t believe that it makes sense, when we need to watch every single dollar we can and when we’re asking British Columbians to tighten their belts, to run ferries with utilization rates in the low single digits. That was what the service adjustment component of our strategy was all about.

But there’s a heck of a lot more to this strategy. There is a tremendous number of initiatives that we’re pursuing vigorously, and this is often entirely lost upon the members opposite. We are exploring everything from passenger-only service in complement to vehicle service. We’re exploring alternative technologies. The Denman Island cable ferry will save $2 million per year. This was opposed by the members opposite.

We are exploring doing a feasibility study of a fixed link to Gabriola Island. Why shouldn’t there be an analysis done of this to determine whether or not it would be more cost-effective to invest in a fixed link versus continued ferry service to this island? We’re going to do the analysis and determine, just see, what those numbers look like. If it’s more cost-effective for the taxpayers of Gabriola Island and the people of British Columbia, then we think that that should be on the table.

B.C. Ferries is working hard on a new reservation and point-of-sale system. I’ve asked B.C. Ferries to explore potential changes to home-porting, which we believe will have a very positive impact on a number of coastal communities.

We are exploring a gaming pilot.

We are looking at doing all that we can to pull coastal communities together to lobby the federal government for more federal support. We believe that the direct investment that the federal government makes in B.C. ferries needs to be increased. They invest about $32 million per year in Atlantic ferries, only $20 million per year in our ferries, and we move a heck of a lot more passengers.

We are talking to the federal government about crewing levels. We think there’s an opportunity to save a lot of money there.

[1140]

A couple of weeks ago B.C. Ferries announced the conversion of the two Spirit-class vessels to LNG fuel propulsion. This initiative alone is going to save B.C. Ferries $9 million per year for 27 years.

Yet the members opposite oppose virtually every item that I’ve just walked through, particularly the member for North Island. Her solution is for the government to just write another big, fat cheque, to increase the taxes of British Columbians.

We say no. This government is not going to increase the taxes of British Columbians. We are not going to run deficits to put more money into B.C. Ferries.

I’m going to move to an exciting announcement I made earlier this week. That’s the development of a new ten-year transportation plan called B.C. on the Move. This is an exciting opportunity for British Columbians to work with government and to let government know what their priorities are as we inform our strategic investment priorities for the next decade.

I am appalled that the member for North Island would say on the radio this morning — just this morning — that she believes that public engagement is insulting to British Columbians. That’s what she said. She said that public engagement is insulting. Big surprise, I suppose.

We believe that every opportunity one can have to reach out to British Columbians and ask British Columbians what they think, whether it’s in the context of liquor re-
[ Page 4645 ]
form or in the context of safety and the speed review we did or in the context of transportation priorities for the next decade…. You know what? We’re going to reach out. We’re going to ask British Columbians what they think, and we’re going to make sure that our decisions are informed by what British Columbians have to say.

Now, the last time that the ten-year plan was done was back in 2003. It was called Opening Up B.C., and it resulted in a myriad of strategic investments across all facets of transportation in this province, including a ferries investment, the Canada Line, the Evergreen line, the Port Mann–Cape Horn interchange project, the Sea to Sky Highway, tremendous investments in our ports and investments in 34 regional airports across British Columbia. I could go on and on and on.

The focus of this new ten-year transportation plan will be, obviously, on the safe movement of people and goods first and foremost. But we’re going to be also applying a second lens to how we prioritize the tax dollars of British Columbians in terms of transportation investments.

That second lens is going to be all about economic development. It’s going to be all about industrial opportunity. It’s going to be about LNG. It’s going to be about investing in rural communities. It’s going to be about creating jobs across British Columbia.

We’re going to work with First Nations. We’re going to work with local governments. We’re going to work with communities and, indeed, British Columbians.

I look forward to what British Columbians have to say about further investments in our secondary highways and rural side roads, for example. I look forward to what British Columbians have to say about perhaps developing a trucking strategy as part of our ten-year transportation plan.

I look forward to what British Columbians have to say in this engagement in terms of what they have to say about airports and continued investment in transit, in ferries, in port and rail operations. I look forward to what they have to say about cycling and other transportation choices.

This engagement has started now. It will go through until December 12. Our goal is to launch British Columbia’s new ten-year transportation plan, B.C. on the Move, early in 2015. The discussion guide is available for download, and the website that will facilitate feedback will be up and running very, very soon.

Also, I want to mention in the context of the ten-year transportation plan that we actually started the engagement a month ago. My parliamentary secretary, the member for West Vancouver–Sea to Sky, spent three weeks criss-crossing Vancouver Island, meeting with First Nations, meeting with local governments and meeting with community organizations to dive deep into what the priorities are here on Vancouver Island.

Now, I know that the member for North Island thinks that’s insulting. We actually are very pleased with the feedback that we received in that engagement. We will continue to embark upon this engagement plan over the coming weeks.

I’d like to turn to the LNG opportunity in front of us.

[1145]

We are hearing, and continue to hear, from members opposite nothing but pessimism and criticism and negativity — nothing positive whatsoever about what really is a generational opportunity for British Columbians. This is an opportunity for communities and British Columbians across our great province.

I can confirm a number of the statements that have been made by a number of my colleagues previously in this debate on the cross-ministry cooperation in our effort to create an industry that only a matter of years ago didn’t exist in this province.

The cross-ministry cooperation is unprecedented, with the Ministries of Natural Gas, Energy, Environment, Aboriginal Relations, Transportation, Community, Health and others fully engaged to do everything that we can to create this new industry.

Doing so is complex, and it takes time. There’s no question about it. But British Columbians and proponents of this industry are going to be provided with the details of the two key pillars relating to the tax regime and the environmental requirements. They’re going to have those details very, very soon.

With respect to the tax regime, our LNG industry is going to be competitive with the world. With respect to the environmental requirements, our LNG industry will be the cleanest LNG in the world.

The members opposite — again, it’s criticize, criticize. This is not…. Let’s just refresh everyone’s memory about where exactly we are with this opportunity. Currently there are 18 proposals, with approximately 30 companies involved. Nine export licences have been approved. Seven others are under review. Five environmental reviews are underway, with one complete.

Over $7 billion has already been invested by industry in natural gas assets. An additional $2 billion is being invested to prepare for construction. Companies will spend anywhere from $1 billion to $2 billion just to get to a final investment decision. The natural gas sector currently employs approximately 13,000 people, and we expect that number to grow significantly.

I also want to highlight an important part of this. Obviously, working with communities is important. It’s also important to acknowledge that we have tremendous collaboration with First Nations on this generational opportunity. We’re working with First Nations in partnership to ensure that the economic and social benefits that this opportunity can provide are provided to all British Columbians, including First Nations.

Last year our government signed economic partnership agreements with 15 First Nations along the planned pipeline route for the Kitimat LNG. There are many other
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deals that have been signed and other deals that are in the works.

Communities support the creation of a liquid natural gas industry. First Nations support the creation of the liquid natural gas industry. Labour supports the creation of a liquid natural gas industry. British Columbians in every corner of this province support the creation of this industry.

I ask the question: why is it that members opposite, the NDP, seem to be the only people in British Columbia that do not want this industry to succeed? Successive failure. I would say this on what we’ve heard from the NDP opposition. First, they said this opportunity would never happen: “It will never come about.” Then their tune changed, and they said they might support it, sort of: “But it won’t be as large an opportunity as originally expected.”

Some members of their caucus support fracking. Other members of their caucus don’t support fracking. Some members opposite seem to be good with this LNG opportunity. We heard from the member for Cowichan Valley earlier today. He says he supports it. Other members, we know, clearly don’t.

Some say they support LNG but not fracking. Well, I’ve got a news flash for the members opposite: you can’t export LNG if you don’t extract it first. You need to extract it to export it.

Which way is it? British Columbians want to know. They want to know: where does the opposition actually stand on liquid natural gas? Where do you actually stand? The mixed messages coming from your side of the House this week and in past months are mind-boggling.

[1150]

I know why it’s so hard for members opposite to get behind the generational opportunity that LNG presents. I know why it’s so hard. It’s hard because the members opposite don’t support any economic development in this province. They don’t. They don’t support mining. We’ve seen in previous NDP governments they’ve tried to kill mining twice. They don’t support mining.

Site C — that project. Well, initially they supported it, and then they didn’t support it, and then they might support it. We’re not sure where they stand on Site C. Kinder Morgan and pipelines — no idea where they stand on that. Forestry. They opposed opening up new markets in China. Thank goodness this government did that so we could protect the jobs in the industry.

The contrast between this side of the House and that side of the House could not be starker when it comes to the focus on jobs and economic development.

I want to end on this note. There’s no question that we have a lot of hard work ahead, but I’m excited. I’m energized. I’m optimistic. Making tough decisions, being disciplined and focused, doing the heavy lifting will get us to where we’re going to provide a bright future for our kids, my three daughters, your kids. Our children and our grandchildren are counting on us. They’re counting on us to make those tough decisions today so that their futures are brighter tomorrow.

Point of Privilege
(Reservation of Right)

C. Trevena: I reserve my right to rise on a point of personal privilege.

Debate Continued

S. Simpson: I see that we’re going to be short here, so I’m just going to get an introduction in before I adjourn this debate, but I did want to make a comment.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

The minister previous…. It’s clear that this is a minister who has embraced his Premier and probably aspires to her job at some point. He certainly has embraced the notion that there is no need to have any connection between what you say and the facts. It’s clearly the case. It’s unfortunate, because we could have a debate here that was based on facts and on evidence. That’s not going to happen here. We’ll just have to live with that. I’ll have some more to say about those particulars at another point.

I’m looking for some guidance here as to whether we want a couple of minutes. I’ve got a couple of minutes. Thank you, Madame Speaker.

To start I’d like to say that it is a pleasure to come and to be able to speak to the throne. I’m in my tenth year now in this place. I’m not sure I ever thought I would be here for ten years, but so be it that I am. I’m proud and I’m privileged to be here and to support and to represent my constituents from Vancouver-Hastings.

Vancouver-Hastings is a constituency that has been my home essentially — Hastings and East Vancouver, the broader area — for pretty much my whole life. So it really is a privilege to be here and have that opportunity to be able to represent those folks. I would note that it’s an area that has a lot of unique factors.

Being on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh lands is an important acknowledgment that I want to make, particularly because I have a very large urban aboriginal population, in raw numbers, in my constituency. They provide a very interesting dynamic to support the overall fabric of what is Vancouver-Hastings.

It’s a constituency that both has people who are fortunate, middle-class folks, like myself, and a number of people who are quite challenged and vulnerable and need our support and need to have opportunities created for them to move forward and be able to be successful as well.

It’s also a very diverse constituency in terms of ethnicity. I think 40 percent of my constituents are Chinese-speaking. They bring a wonderful mix to the community. You just have to walk up Hastings Street or Commercial
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Drive, and you can see what that means every day.

Again, as I said, I’ve been here ten years. Over that time I’ve had a number of staff people working for me, both in my Vancouver office and here in Victoria. As every member would know on both sides of this House, we simply don’t succeed without our staff and without the hard work and the effort that they put in.

[1155]

I especially want to say thanks to Rachel and to Lynn and to Theresa, who work in my Vancouver office and provide remarkable service and make me look good every day in the hard work that they do for the constituents of Vancouver-Hastings; and Susan, who works for me as my LA and keeps my life in order, in large part, here in Victoria, which is not always the easiest thing to do, but she’s very good at it; then, of course, the research and communications and other support staff, who all come together to support members on our side and do a remarkable job.

I’m pretty confident that members on the other side would say the same thing about their staff, and that would be accurate as well. I really do want to thank them.

Also, of course, I want to thank my partner, Cate, who has been on this adventure with me for the ten years; and our daughter, Shayla, who is grown now and out enjoying the excitement of her own life. Still, as always with kids, I learn that even though she gets a little older, we all stay very close. I’m looking forward to this weekend coming up, when we’ll get to sit down and have a dinner together.

I’m looking for direction from the big Chair here.

Interjection.

S. Simpson: Okay. Well, then, I would reserve my right and move adjournment of debate.

S. Simpson moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. T. Stone moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Madame Speaker: This House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 1:30 this afternoon.

The House adjourned at 11:56 a.m.

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