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)

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 16, Number 8

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

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Prayers.

Introductions by Members

D. Barnett: Today in the House we have a gentleman who is a friend, and he is the president of the Likely and District Chamber of Commerce, working very hard with his community over the disaster that happened at Mount Polley. He is also president of the Likely-Xats’ull community forest. He’s the chair of the Cedar Point Class C Provincial Park, and he’s a self-proclaimed mayor. Would everyone welcome Robin Hood to the House today.

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S. Robinson: Earlier this week we welcomed a group of young people into these chambers. It’s my pleasure to welcome a group of older adults to these chambers. We welcome a number of people from the Korean community, many of whom have never actually been to the Legislature.

I’d like to welcome, from my community, Sang-Bin Seo, Dong-Choon Seo, Heesik Choo, Hong-Kun Yang, Il-Soon Yang, Kong-Seon Kang, See-Sung Lee and Yeoun-Sook Lee from Port Coquitlam; Ik-Soo Lee and Jung-Sook Lee from Coquitlam. Would the chamber please make them feel welcome.

Hon. C. Oakes: It is truly my honour…. The member for Cariboo-Chilcotin introduced Robin Hood. I would like, if I may, to introduce some of his merry men today. We have Bee Hooker from Beaver Valley. He is from the community of Big Lake and the current manager of operations for Imperial Metals. As well, we’re delighted to have Councillor Thomas Phillips of the Soda Creek Indian Band and manager of the Xatśūll business arm of Xatśūll General Partner Ltd. Would the House please make them welcome.

A. Weaver: I have three sets of brief introductions to make. The first are two students visiting from Pearson College on their fall project week to help us out in the Legislature with some of our research. They are Sam Unger, from the member for New Westminster’s riding, and Linda Worden, from the member for Penticton’s riding. I did try to take Linda to the member’s office earlier to get some of these very fine apples from Penticton there. We’re looking forward to meeting the member for Penticton shortly.

Also, I have a student who was so enthralled by question period yesterday, Lizzie Bomford from Mount Douglas high school — part of the Democracy in Action Youth Conference — that she is back again today to watch question period. She will also be here.

Finally, two dear friends: Rob Dyke, well known in our community as the man who swam around Vancouver Island in support of the Red Cross; and his business colleague, my very dear friend Roger Huang from Taiwan, who is here working together to build partnerships between Taiwan and British Columbia in green trade. Would the House please make them all very welcome today.

Hon. A. Wilkinson: If they’re not here already, they soon will be — 30 grade 11 students from Prince of Wales high school in my riding, along with their hard-working teacher Mr. Andrew Humphries and two long-suffering parents. Would the House make them welcome.

J. Horgan: I just want to follow on my colleague from Oak Bay–Gordon Head, who just introduced Rob Dyke. I know he knows this, and perhaps he was saving it for me. I made a statement here some years ago, reminding this House that Rob actually swam around Vancouver Island to raise money for the Red Cross. I just want to put that back on the record today for those who weren’t here at that time.

S. Chandra Herbert: I, too, would like to join with the member for Vancouver-Quilchena, the minister, in welcoming my alma mater, Prince of Wales Mini School, and head teacher Andrew Humphries and parents to this Legislature as well. I look forward to meeting with them later today.

J. Darcy: It’s my great pleasure to welcome a constituent of mine, Mr. Chinuook Kim, who is here as part of the Korean seniors delegation. We have a growing Korean-Canadian community in my community of New Westminster, and it’s wonderful to have them visit this House today. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Kim to the House today.

D. Bing: I am pleased to say that my youngest son got married on the weekend, and it was a great event. It’s not very often that two young people meet in high school and go on to university and reconnect there, and that’s what they did. I’m pleased to welcome Tamra Weigel into the family, who married my son Graham. Would the House please congratulate them.

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M. Elmore: I’m very happy to welcome our friends the seniors from the Korean community — annyeonghaseyo. Also, I ask everyone to please make them welcome: Mun-Jong Kim, Myung-Ku Kang, Eun-Sook Oh, Nam-Pyo Lee and Hae-Sook Lee.
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A. Weaver: Hon. Speaker, I neglected to add — and I do apologize for this…. In the introduction for Rob Dyke and the subsequent introduction by the member for Juan de Fuca, I would like to have added that Rob Dyke actually has taught swimming to some of the member for Juan de Fuca’s family members. I think we should also recognize that, because he has been a great contributor to the community. I think the hon. member for Juan de Fuca is very thankful that Rob Dyke has been so helpful in the training of his children to be prepared for the swimming of tomorrow.

J. Shin: My heart is really full with all of my friends from the Korean community. I think that’s half of my campaign team right there.

We have in the House Insoon Lee, Han-Su Jung, David Won-Bae Lee, Iris Park, Kun-Ho Cho, Kang-Joo Lee and Mi-Ja Kim,who are also joining us as part of the seniors group that’s joining us. Would the House please make them feel very welcome.

B. Ralston: I, too, have some members of the Korean seniors group that are here to introduce: Ok-Sik Choi and Young-Ja Choi from Vancouver; Tiagon Do and Jong-Yen Pak from Surrey; Gae-Nam John from Vancouver; Sang-Une Lee — a very distinguished person. He’s a constituent of mine from Surrey-Whalley, so I think he deserves a special round of applause at the end. Then Won-Keun Kim and Chan-Ho Gu, one from Richmond and the other from West Vancouver. Could the House join me in making them all welcome, but particularly my constituent from Surrey-Whalley.

Statements
(Standing Order 25B)

CAYOOSE CREEK BAND
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

J. Tegart: I’m pleased to have the opportunity to stand in the House this afternoon to recognize the economic development efforts of the Cayoose Creek band. This community is located along the Fraser River just south of Lillooet. It served as a trading place with other nations and has a rich history of toolmaking. This community has overcome many hardships and is proud of their history and who they are today.

Under the leadership of Chief Michelle Edwards and the band council, they are building a brighter future through innovative business ventures which are providing new employment opportunities through their economic development company, Cayoose Creek Development Corporation.

One business owned by the corporation is Splitrock Environmental, an award-winning business owned by members of the community and specializing in environmental services, ecological restoration and production of native plants. The business is proud to be 100 percent aboriginal-owned. Everyone who is part of the organization is passionate about preserving our environment, our lands and our natural world.

Earlier this summer the Cayoose Creek band acquired the Antares Project Services Ltd., an industry leader in planning, development and execution of construction projects in both public and private sectors. Antares, in partnership with the Seton Lake band, is developing the Seton Portage Hotel, a 40-unit residence using state-of-the-art modular construction processes that will provide comfortable accommodation for B.C. Hydro workers.

Will the House join me today in congratulating Chief Michelle Edwards and the Cayoose Creek band on their economic development efforts and helping build a brighter future for their community and the region.

IL-SOO KIM AND COMMUNITY EVENTS
BY SENIORS IN BURNABY

J. Shin: This month of October was no different than any other month of the year, packed with generous initiatives by the people who pay it forward.

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On the second Friday of this month, in the Hannam plaza on North Road in my constituency, a group of women led by Insoon Lee, president of the Korean-Canadian Women’s Society, were pouring hot coffee and serving delicious sweets at the grand opening of their new social enterprise, Café Espoir, with all the shop’s proceeds going to phone counselling service as well as local projects like Burnaby Task Force on Homelessness.

On the third Saturday of this month, Burnaby was swinging, myself and the member for Burnaby-Edmonds included, to the ’50s rock ‘n’ roll performed by Dave Myles Band to raise funds for the wonderful non-profit organizations in my community like Burnaby Neighbourhood House and Burnaby Connections.

On the fourth Saturday of this month, a hall full of volunteers gathered to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Parent Support Services Society of B.C., and we watched together their new video project called Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.

What all of these incredible activities in our community have in common is our seniors. In particular, I would like to express my profound gratitude to Mr. Il-Soo Kim, a Korean war veteran. Mr. Kim immigrated to Canada in 1987 and long served as the president of the Korea Veterans Association. But first and foremost, he was a leader, he was a mentor, and he was a friend and a volunteer in our community.

On October 9 we all bid our fond farewell to Mr. Kim. His last words to me…. The two of us held hands just a few days before he passed at the hospice, where he said: “Go on, Jane. You’ve got a lot to do. So go and change the world.”
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Today in the gallery we have the honour of 32 seniors that are joining us. So I ask the House to please recognize and thank each and every one of them for empowering me, for empowering all of us and the next generations, like Mr. Kim has.

JOHN SUTHERLAND

S. Gibson: There are three kinds of people in the world. There are those who wonder what’s happening, there are those who watch what’s happening, and there are those who make what’s happening. In this House we value people who make what’s happening.

Today I want to bring to the attention of this House someone who has definitely made things happen in Abbotsford. He was first elected to the Abbotsford school board way back in 1983. That’s the same year the mobile phone, Microsoft Word and CDs were introduced. Who remembers CDs?

He was elected ten times over 27 years. I refer to John Sutherland, one of the outstanding educational leaders in the Abbotsford area. He is one of the reasons why Abbotsford continues to have a high level of student performance that exceeds the provincial average. John was a key member of the team which initiated programs such as the youth council, StrongStart, New Beginnings and many others.

It was a privilege for me to work with John over the years while I served on Abbotsford city council. He was also a highly regarded professor of business at Trinity Western University, where he served as chair, and now he is retiring. John Sutherland will be missed. His contributions to the city will be remembered in the lives of the children and the young people that he passionately cared for. Hundreds of parents, teachers and administrators will remember him and thank him for the work that he did and for contributing to educational excellence — in particular, his passion for aboriginal education.

Thank you, John Sutherland, for giving the Abbotsford community 27 years of dedicated service.

JIM CESSFORD AND
DELTA POLICE SERVICES

V. Huntington: Well, I stand today to thank Delta’s police chief, Jim Cessford, for 46 years of extraordinary service to the people of Edmonton and Delta. It is with mixed emotion that I congratulate him on his retirement next January. It’s hard to imagine Delta police without him.

I was on Delta council when we hired Jim. Chief Cessford came to Delta over 20 years ago, and he quickly led our police force into a new era. He challenged conventional models of policing and of fighting community crime. He brought the Delta police back to its roots, adopting principles of community partnership, customer service, problem-solving and community ownership.

Jim Cessford is celebrated for implementing Delta police’s popular “No call too small” policy. The slogan is on every car and every mind. By focusing police attention on smaller, seemingly minor problems like broken windows, Delta police nipped nuisances in the bud before they became serious public policy and safety concerns.

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People saw police in their neighbourhoods. A lot of us saw Jim and his colleagues coaching on the ball fields, in the hockey rinks and at police summer camp. The students saw a police liaison officer in every school. For his hard work and accomplishments, Jim has received, among other honours, the Governor General’s Order of Merit of the Police Forces. He was named one of Delta’s citizens of the year.

As we say farewell to our friend and ever-so-popular Chief Jim Cessford, we do so knowing that he leaves Delta police equipped to meet the future with a strong succession plan supported by our local police board. Despite the new challenges facing modern policing — and mental health services come to mind — we know that Jim leaves the Delta police force ready to keep Delta safe and sound in the years ahead.

Will the House please join me, and I’m sure, the member for Delta North, in congratulating Canada’s longest-serving chief of police, Chief Const. Jim Cessford.

PREMATURE BIRTHS

Moira Stilwell: Prematurity is one of the most challenging prenatal issues facing families today. A baby born prematurely is at risk of serious birth defects, including respiratory illnesses, brain hemorrhages, hearing impairment, developmental disabilities and cerebral palsy.

We know now that premature birth is rarely caused by one single reason. Factors that contribute include a woman’s pregnancy history, gestational diabetes, infection, lifestyle and pregnancy-induced hypertension. Premature birth can happen to anyone — or any woman, at least — and many women who give birth prematurely have no known risk factors.

When a baby is born preterm, the experience can be frightening and overwhelming for the family. Most parents dream of holding their child just moments after their birth. But for some, that initial contact can be delayed by days, even weeks or months. Premature babies require a much longer hospital stay than full-term births. Sometimes these stays can last many months in the newborn intensive care unit.

Next month our province will recognize World Prematurity Day, a campaign that aims to raise awareness of preterm birth and to spread the word that it happens everywhere, regardless of country or race. I encourage everyone to take part, learn, share an experience and help put a face on the problem of premature birth.
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CLIFFORD BOLTON AND FIRST NATIONS
STONE-MOVING CEREMONY

R. Austin: I recently attended a poignant ceremony called a stone-moving that celebrates the life of a loved one who has died. It takes place at least one year after the death and represents not only the end of a period of mourning but also the spirit of that person leaving this world and continuing on to the next.

This ceremony was to honour the late Clifford Bolton, a past chief of the Kitsumkalum Band. It was led by Harry Nyce Jr., a member of the Gisbutwada, or killer whales, who was knowledgable on the protocol, with some work also done by the Ganhada, or raven clan. It is customary for other clans to step up and contribute when asked.

The final part of this cultural ceremony will take place November 22, when a settlement feast will be held to complete the circle of his cultural tradition and pass on Clifford’s name. Clifford Bolton, or Soō-Natz, his traditional Tsimshian name, was an extraordinary man, who was born in Port Essington, near the mouth of the Skeena River, and became a revered master carver later in life.

He was also involved in politics and became chief councillor of Kitsumkalum in order to work on revitalizing Tsimshian culture in light of the many years of colonization that had attempted to take away not only his people’s language but also their cultural ceremonies.

Because of his life’s work, it was fitting to witness his stone-moving at the home that he built at the confluence of the Zimmacord and Skeena rivers. These ceremonies are now commonplace in northwest B.C. and are further evidence of the First Nations renewal of cultural practices that nearly became extinct. As Harry Nyce commented to the crowd, it is only through participating and organizing these traditional ceremonies that First Nations people will once again have pride and a sense of belonging to the communities and clans of which they are members.

For us in this Legislature, however, Clifford Bolton will forever be connected through two things: firstly, his carving in B.C. jade on the Black Rod used by all Lieutenant-Governors on entering this chamber; and secondly, by a visit from Steven Point and Madame Speaker to Clifford’s home community of Kitsumkalum, where they brought the Black Rod back to share it with people, many of whom have never seen this chamber but now appreciate that one of their own has a place in B.C.’s history.

G. Holman: I seek leave to make an introduction to the House.

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Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

G. Holman: I’d like to introduce Alan Moberg, an award-winning singer-songwriter, a longtime resident of Saltspring Island, who has just written a song called Don’t Build Your House on My Bones regarding the construction of a luxury home on Grace Islet. Would the House please make Alan welcome.

Oral Questions

COMMENTS BY PREMIER AND
WORKERS COMPENSATION FOR WORKERS
INJURED IN LAKELAND MILLS EXPLOSION

J. Horgan: In April of 2012 a terrifying explosion tore through the Lakeland sawmill in Prince George, killing Al Little and Glen Roche and injuring 22 others. One of those injured was Bruce Germyn.

Two days after the incident, the Premier attended the injured workers and said: “We will be there to support you.” In fact, the Premier made that very pledge to Mr. Germyn at his bedside in intensive care, but since that visit two years ago, Mr. Germyn has twice had his workers compensation benefits suspended and has had to fight to have them reinstated. One of those times was in December of 2013, just before Christmas.

My question is to the Premier. Before the election, the Premier attended to the injured and the families of those who were grieving and made a commitment to be there for them. Can she reaffirm that commitment to Mr. Germyn and ensure that his workers compensation benefits are not cut off again?

Hon. S. Bond: There are certainly some events that have occurred over the last number of months and years that will be etched in the minds of those of us who live in northern British Columbia, but in the minds of British Columbians as well. Certainly, our commitment to stand beside workers and communities started the night the explosions occurred and has continued.

I can assure the member opposite that we will continue to look through WorkSafe for them to be caring, compassionate and providing the kinds of supports that family, individuals and communities deserve and require.

Madame Speaker: The Leader of the Official Opposition on a supplemental.

J. Horgan: Cutting off benefits to people injured in a horrific industrial accident and putting some of the others on surveillance is hardly a sympathetic and compassionate approach to the incidents that happened in April of 2012. Again, the Premier, before the election, was filled with empathy. Since that time we have not heard a lot more from her.

I’d like to again revisit, particularly, the case of Mr. Germyn. Two years after his incident he suffers from post-traumatic stress, from burns on 40 percent of his body. He was unrecognizable on the evening of the blast. Since that time he has been harassed and pushed off of
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benefits by WorkSafe. For the minister to stand and say that "We’re there for you" is not sufficient at this time.

Again, I would put my question to the Premier, who had empathy in the pre-election period. Does she have today a commitment to those workers and those individuals to make sure that they’re treated fairly and with respect after all they’ve done for the community?

Hon. S. Bond: To the Leader of the Opposition, I am sure he is well aware of the fact that we are not in a position to discuss the specific details of an injured worker’s circumstances or the specific treatment or supports they’ve been provided.

Interjections.

Hon. S. Bond: The members opposite can groan all they wish. The fact of the matter is that in the case of WorkSafe, they are not permitted to share details of the provision of services either, unless injured workers in this province give their permission. That is appropriate. That is exactly what we expect from ourselves and from WorkSafe.

The workers in this case have not given permission for WorkSafe to share the details of the treatment, the support that has been put in place. To suggest that there has been harassment is an outrageous statement by the member opposite. We should be very clear. Before any surveillance is initiated, there is a very high test before WorkSafe even considers that. Injured workers have been cared for. They continue to have services.

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If, in the opinion of a worker or their family, they want reconsideration, that process is available to them.

Madame Speaker: Leader of the Opposition on a supplemental.

J. Horgan: Again, my question is to the Premier. The Premier was there when the cameras were on two years ago. The cameras are on again today. The cameras are on right now.

My question is direct and to the Premier: you have let down these individuals. WorkSafe has harassed them, has cut them off.

Madame Speaker: Through the Chair.

J. Horgan: Through you, hon. Speaker, will the Premier stand in her place and make the solemn commitment that she did before the election, right now, to ensure that these heroes…? The fireball was so intense that paramedics could not attend. They dragged each other out of a horrific situation, and now their government has abandoned them.

Premier, stand and offer some compassion and hope for these people.

Hon. S. Bond: There are days when I stand in my place in this House and I wonder if any issue is beyond partisan politics. I can assure the member opposite, the Leader of the Opposition, that there is not a person in this House that doesn’t believe that workers’ safety is a priority.

WorkSafe has continued to serve workers in British Columbia. For the Leader of the Opposition to describe to me when…. In fact, this is my backyard. These are families and paramedics and others who actually live in my community. WorkSafe has consistently and aggressively provided supports.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Order.

Hon. S. Bond: As I said, when there is, in the opinion of workers or their families, a concern about the provision of their services, there is a process. As I understand it, there are actually appeals underway. I am not in a position to discuss the specifics of the circumstances of those individual workers’ cases.

D. Donaldson: Well, it’s my backyard, too, and I personally know workers who were injured in those explosions. What we want on this side is the Premier to answer to the words that she said at that time.

John Engstrom sustained major injuries at the Lakeland explosion. He was told by this government that he would have their support. Instead, he was put under video surveillance by WorkSafe B.C., who are now demanding he repay $24,000 in benefits because they have footage of him taking walks.

These men went to work to support themselves and their families, expecting this B.C. Liberal government to have them covered when it comes to safety standards. In Prince George, after the explosion, the Premier said in local media: “We will be there to support you. We have your back.”

Why is the Premier leaving these workers blowing in the wind? How is that covering these workers’ backs?

Hon. S. Bond: As I said in my earlier question, WorkSafe does not at any time move to initiate surveillance without, perhaps, input from individuals, including social workers, potentially doctors. There is a very high test before surveillance is initiated.

As I said to the Leader of the Opposition, the fact of the matter is that at this point workers have not given WorkSafe permission to discuss the specifics of their case. I am precluded from doing that as well.

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We can articulate the significant efforts of support that have been provided to families and communities. That is right and deserved and appropriate.

Within one to three days of the explosion, injured workers who were hospitalized were visited, whether
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they were in Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria or Prince George. Families were provided with hotel accommodation, meal allowances and transportation. Critical incident response services were established in each of those communities for both injured and non-injured workers. The list goes on.

None of us here today can understand for a heartbeat what those families, those individuals or those communities have gone through. But I can assure the member opposite that there have been significant and ongoing services, as one would expect, provided to those individuals and families.

Madame Speaker: The member for Stikine on a supplemental.

D. Donaldson: Well, the minister says this government’s commitment has continued since this explosion. Let’s hear it from the Premier.

The Premier said, “We have your back,” but she never met with injured workers to explain how this government failed to prevent this explosion. The Premier said, “We have your back,” but she never met with injured workers to explain the botched investigation into the explosion. The Premier said, “We have your back,” but she hasn’t met with injured workers so they can explain their grievances with WorkSafe B.C.

The Premier said: “We have your back.” Why isn’t the Premier true to her word? Or is it another case of, once again, saying what she thinks people want to hear at the time and then not following through — in this instance with injured millworkers?

Hon. S. Bond: Dedicated case management teams were established to ensure there was a high level of support. For severely injured workers, regular hospital visits were coordinated. For workers with serious psychological injuries, extensive mental health support has been provided for over 2½ years. A number of injured workers remain in regular treatment and will be provided with supportive counselling for as long as there is a clinical benefit.

I would suggest that that is absolutely having those workers’, those families’, those communities’ backs. We will continue to work to ensure that WorkSafe has a culture that changes the investigative process. We made that clear. That work is well underway. We will continue to work aggressively to support those individuals who deserve and require attention.

SUPPORT FOR BUSINESSES IN LIKELY
IMPACTED BY TAILINGS POND
BREACH AT MOUNT POLLEY MINE

K. Conroy: There seems to be a common theme here. The people of Likely are still waiting for the Premier to live up to her commitments to them too. After the Mount Polley tailings pond failed, the Premier stood in Likely and held Peggy Zorn’s hand, who owns Ecotours-B.C., and told her: “If there is anything at all I can do for you, let me know.”

It has been nearly three months since the spill, and the people of Likely are still waiting for something meaningful to happen — more evidence that the Premier says what she thinks people want to hear and then fails to deliver.

Will the Premier tell us: when is she going to live up to the commitment she made to Peggy and other businesses of Likely?

Hon. N. Yamamoto: We do share the concerns of tourism operators and small businesses in the area. That’s why the hon. member for Cariboo North and her neighbouring colleague, the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin, were there in Likely right away. They were there to ensure that every appropriate government resource was there to help the community of Likely.

I can tell you that there are hundreds of workers in Likely — government workers — working tirelessly with local officials, working with community members and working with the chamber of commerce.

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Unlike the members opposite, this side of the House recognizes and appreciates the members of chambers of commerce in British Columbia.

Destination B.C., the provincial marketing association for British Columbia, and the regional destination marketing organizations have been working very closely with the tourism operators and the small businesses in Likely. I can tell you that the businesses in the community and the folks in Likely want the world to know one thing, and that is that they are open for business.

Madame Speaker: The member for Kootenay West on a supplemental.

K. Conroy: Well, that’s not what the small business people and the tourism operators told myself, the Leader of the Opposition and the number of other of my colleagues who went up there and actually met with them and talked to them and saw what was happening up there.

Here’s what Peggy Zorn and her husband, Gary, and other business owners had to say in a letter that they just sent to the Premier and the Minister of Environment. “Providing $50,000 to hire someone to find out what the community needs is not a solution. We already know what went wrong and what we, as community members and businesses, need.”

She says the Liberals have “lost touch with the reality of British Columbians, especially rural British Columbia.” Peggy continues, and she says in her letter to the Premier: “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
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Will the Premier actually live up to her commitment, or is this just another example of her promising one thing but then failing to deliver it yet again?

Hon. N. Yamamoto: This is an interesting line of questioning from a member of the opposition that in every opportunity for economic development and growth, their answer is no.

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: The members will come to order.

Hon. N. Yamamoto: As we continue to support the businesses in the Likely area, the members opposite continue their typically negative and destructive manner. Wouldn’t it be nice, just once, to actually have the members opposite step up to the plate and support the businesses with a positive message. The businesses in Likely want the world to know that they’re open for business.

We won’t stand here and listen to the members opposite lecture us on small business. It’s Small Business Month. This side of the House supports small business. The other side of the House has no respect for the chambers of commerce and members in their community.

PROTECTION OF BEE POPULATION AND
AGRICULTURE MINISTRY STAFFING

L. Popham: The B.C. Liberals don’t understand how important bees are to our agricultural industry and to our provincial economy. By neglecting this side of agriculture, they continue to put the industry in jeopardy. They haven’t even given the provincial apiarist an appropriate travel budget to do his job. Bees are not being inspected at our provincial borders, allowing disease to enter our province and taking away economic opportunities for farmers in B.C.

Will the Minister of Agriculture bring in a real plan to protect the health of our bees?

Hon. N. Letnick: Thank you to the member opposite for the question. Definitely, the government recognizes the critical and vital role that bees play in our environment and to agriculture all throughout British Columbia and, actually, throughout the world.

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Honeybees play a major role in agriculture as pollinators of crops, contributing an estimated $275 million in the economy in B.C. and over $2 billion in Canada alone. That’s why our government has staff available to support beekeepers right here in British Columbia. We are proud to have one of the foremost apiary specialists on staff right here in B.C. The individuals provide free support to B.C. beekeepers.

Actually, I had the opportunity of meeting with B.C. beekeepers just last month. I even attended one of the beekeeper’s farms, a meadery on Vancouver Island, near Sooke. He told me he had over one million workers on his farm. We had a good chance to go and look. We support them, we support that farmer, and we’ll be there for beekeepers for years to come.

Madame Speaker: Member for Saanich South on a supplemental.

L. Popham: I was recently at the B.C. Honey Producers AGM, where the provincial apiarists showed a slide noting there are four empty inspector positions in this province. If you talk to any beekeeper in B.C., they will tell you that filling those four empty positions is a bare minimum that’s needed.

My question is to the Minister of Agriculture. Is he going to appoint more inspectors — yes, no and when?

Hon. N. Letnick: Thank you for the question. I think it’s appropriate to remind the members opposite that in the last two years we increased the budget for Agriculture by 20 percent. At the same time, we increased the amount of money for greenhouses, for their carbon tax rebate. We increased the amount of money going to the land commission by $4 million. We also….

Interjections.

Hon. N. Letnick: What about bees?

Madame Speaker: Through the Chair.

Hon. N. Letnick: Sorry, Madame Speaker. We also had money going for a replant, and we intend to make an announcement on that very soon.

What I’d like to say at the end is we continue to invest in British Columbians, in their food, in food security, including a range of products and a range of services. That’s why this side of the House believes in expanding the economy so we can continue to have the money to support agriculture throughout British Columbia.

FOREST INDUSTRY JOBS AND
LOG EXPORT POLICY

D. Routley: As a result of B.C. Liberal forest policy, 43 percent of forestry manufacturing jobs on the coast have been lost — thousands of family-supporting jobs. Added to the list this month are more than 100 jobs at Western Forest Products’ Nanaimo sawmill. This is the same mill where the Premier stood in 2011 and said that the coastal forest industry is once again thriving. More evidence that the Premier knows what to say, but her actions show she just doesn’t care.

While that mill shuts down, logs that could have fed the mill literally go past the mill site to be exported. Will
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the Forests Minister explain why he allows raw logs to be exported at record levels while B.C. mills are shut down?

Hon. S. Thomson: On this side of the House, with the forest industry, we recognize that it is one of the foundation resource industries in British Columbia. That’s why we work with them to build a competitive industry in British Columbia, and that’s why we’ve seen 58,000 people working in the industry — a 13 percent increase since 2009.

That’s why we’ve seen export value for the industry increase to $11.6 billion, a 53 percent increase since 2009. That’s why the forest industry contributes over 33 percent of the export value for British Columbia, and that’s why we will continue to work with them to ensure that we have the framework in place that creates and builds a competitive industry in British Columbia, because that’s what creates jobs and economic activity throughout communities in the province.

[1420]

Madame Speaker: Member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan on a supplemental.

D. Routley: The loss of coastal sawmills like this Nanaimo sawmill is putting increased pressure on the pulp and paper sector as well. The pulp sector depends on the low-cost residual chips from sawmilling. Harmac pulp mill in my constituency pays $35 million in wages into our local economy each year. These are real jobs right now. Right across from Harmac, on the site of another closed sawmill — through a chain-link fence — are mountains of logs stacked for export.

More than a chain-link fence separates the workers and their jobs from those logs. B.C. Liberal forest policies that encourage raw log exports is the real barrier between our resources and our jobs. What’s the minister going to do about it?

Hon. S. Thomson: As I said, we’re putting in place a foundation that’s helping to build a competitive, world-leading forest industry here in British Columbia. That’s why we just completed a trade mission with over 25 senior representatives from the industry to continue to build those critical markets in China, Japan and Korea. That is what is providing economic activity and growth in British Columbia.

Western Forest Products is part of that growth — over $10 million investment at Duke Point. There are steps they are taking to ensure that they can continue to provide those jobs, continue to build that economic activity and consolidating their operations, which will actually result in increased utilization of the logs at their mills, increase activity in their mills and ensure the continuation of those good, strong-paying jobs in those communities.

We are continuing to work with the industry to build a competitive industry in British Columbia. It’s one that continues to contribute jobs and economic activity throughout coastal communities and throughout communities all across British Columbia.

H. Bains: It’s incredible to listen to that side brag about having, in the country, one of the worst job creation…. They are among the worst, and this is not something to be proud of.

The mill where the Premier stood for a photo op in 2011 is being closed permanently, adding to the tens of thousands of jobs that are already lost in the forest industry. That is a direct result of this government’s forest policy. That allows half of all of the logs harvested on the coast to be exported instead of using those logs to create jobs right here in British Columbia.

It is devastating for the sawmill industry, no doubt. The spinoff effect means that the pulp mills are next. My question to the minister: will the minister stand up for the forest jobs in B.C. and ensure that B.C. logs are used to create B.C. jobs?

Hon. S. Thomson: That’s exactly what we’re doing. We are standing up for the forest industry in British Columbia to make sure that they are competitive and can compete in a globally competitive market by ensuring that we continue to build that diversified market for our companies and for our employees and for our communities here in British Columbia. That’s why we’ve seen a 13 percent job growth since 2009. That’s why we’ve seen 53 percent growth in the export market since 2009. These are investments that work that are ensuring that we build a competitive industry.

The export policy…. We’ve had this debate in the House before. We recognize that a portion of the export value that is needed is part of the economic equation in ensuring that we meet that objective. Less than 10 percent of the total harvest in British Columbia is exported, but it is a part of the economic equation, particularly in high-cost operating areas, that ensures that we can continue to be able to provide the lumber to the domestic industry.

[1425]

COMPASS CARD SYSTEM
AND TRANSIT SERVICES

G. Heyman: TransLink’s fare gate Compass card system has been a financial disaster from day one. Its price tag is almost $200 million — 14 percent over budget on another failed Liberal plan. Today we hear that a key component, the tap out, is being abandoned because Cubic can’t or won’t make it work.

Then Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon forced this costly system on TransLink after Ken Dobell lobbied on Cubic’s behalf. That would be the same Ken Dobell, the
[ Page 5027 ]
former deputy minister to Premier Gordon Campbell, who forgot to legally register as a lobbyist.

The government was happy to listen to insiders about Cubic’s Compass card, but they haven’t been so keen to listen to commuters in the Lower Mainland who can’t even get one extra bus to take the strain off overloaded routes in Vancouver and Surrey.

To the minister: when will this government stop wasting money on failed insider deals and act on the Lower Mainland’s real transit needs?

Hon. T. Stone: I want to thank the member for his question. Certainly, upon learning of these latest challenges at TransLink specific to the Compass program, I did call the board chair, and I expressed the disappointment and the frustration of government. The Compass card program, just again to remind all members of the House, is all about safety. It’s about saving money. And it’s, indeed, about reducing….

Interjections.

Madame Speaker: Order.

Hon. T. Stone: The program is all about safety. It’s about saving money. And it’s about reducing fare evasion. British Columbians are rightfully outraged at fare evasion, which continues to take place at TransLink. Now, I know that there may be members opposite who may be a bit sensitive about the whole fare evasion question, but that’s what this program is all about.

For the program to be successful, TransLink does need to get its act together. TransLink needs to be accountable, and it needs to fix this problem. I’ve communicated that very clearly to the chair of TransLink.

[End of question period.]

Point of Privilege
(Reservation of Right)

J. Horgan: I’d like to reserve my right to raise a point of personal privilege with respect to the comments made by the Minister of Tourism during question period today.

Hon. N. Letnick: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

Hon. N. Letnick: Today in the Legislature is an old friend of mine from Banff days. Some of the MLAs around here might have had contact with him because he was the CEO of Banff Executive Leadership, the Banff School of Management. Would everyone please welcome Doug Macnamara to the House.

Statements

MESSAGE FOR GORDIE HOWE

Hon. M. de Jong: Madame Speaker, I neglected, during the appropriate time, to ask all members of the House and you to send best wishes to an individual that everyone in Canada knows. He is an icon. He suffered a stroke.

Gordie Howe has still got his elbows up high. He is, we are told, in good spirits. But to the guy who patrolled arenas longer than any other, from this arena I know all members will want to join in and say: “Gordie, go get ‘em. We’re with you all the way.”

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: Calling second reading debate on Bill 2.

[1430]

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 2 — GREENHOUSE GAS INDUSTRIAL
REPORTING AND CONTROL ACT

(continued)

[D. Horne in the chair.]

D. Eby: It’s a pleasure to resume my remarks from yesterday. Just before I begin, I did want to correct one matter. I misspoke yesterday when I suggested that the member for Chilliwack-Hope had been the only B.C. Liberal who wasn’t a cabinet minister who spoke to the bill. There were two others. I want to be clear about that and correct that before I start.

Interjection.

D. Eby: Well, I do have to say that I may have been distracted by the content of the member for Chilliwack-Hope’s remarks that prevented me from noticing there were two other brief sets of remarks from B.C. Liberal backbenchers.

I think that one of the most useful measures of this bill, of whether it achieves the goals that the government sets out for it, is to evaluate it against the remarks of the Minister of Environment when she introduced this bill in this House for second reading. It’s that test that applies to the entirety of the bill, which I intend to go through in what remains of my remarks’ time today.

When a cabinet minister, like the Minister of Environment, rises to speak to a bill and tell the public what is in the bill and what the intention of the bill is, it’s more than just a summary of the bill. It’s the measure by…. I mean, for most people, if they pay attention to the Legislature at all, they understand that those remarks reflect the content of the bill.
[ Page 5028 ]

Unfortunately, these remarks do not reflect the actual content of the bill and its implementation. The Minister of Environment started by saying: “I rise to speak to the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act. This bill will enact a performance standard for liquefied natural gas facilities and certainty for industry.”

That “certainty for industry” piece is very important. I would suggest that not only does industry need certainty but so do the residents of British Columbia and so do the members of this House.

Does this bill create a performance standard for liquefied natural gas facilities that provides certainty for anyone — let alone, as the minister suggests, for industry, for the members of the B.C. public and those concerned about climate change, among whom I do not include the member for Chilliwack-Hope? It does not.

This bill does not legislate a performance standard for liquefied natural gas facilities. It leaves it to the regulations — regulations that can be changed with a stroke of the pen by this government without bringing it back to this House. There is not certainty for industry or for members of the public or for this House in passing this bill that the government expects us to pass.

The next sentence that the minister used to introduce this bill was an interesting one to me because I had missed it in the original reading, and when I went back to Hansard, there it was. “The intent of the new act is to enable a performance standard for prescribed facilities under the scope of the act, initially liquefied natural gas and coal-fired electricity generation opportunities.”

Coal-fired electricity generation opportunities — this was a very interesting piece of information from the minister in introducing this bill.

[1435]

I’m very curious about coal-fired electricity opportunities in this province. Coal-fired electricity, of course, is not a manner of generating electricity in this province that minimizes carbon pollution — in fact, a notorious form of carbon pollution across the world.

The Liberals suggest that the LNG project will reduce emissions internationally exactly because it will displace coal-fired electricity. Yet in the introduction of this bill, we’re told that it is to enable coal-fired electricity opportunities in British Columbia.

So I ask: which communities? Which projects? How exactly will introducing coal-fired electricity in British Columbia result in achieving the stated goal of this bill of controlling greenhouse gas emissions in this province?

The minister continued with her remarks, listing that this bill enables regulated operations to meet the benchmark “by adopting energy-efficient technology or using clean energy to power the operation.” They can comply with the benchmark “by purchasing offsets, purchasing earned credits or purchasing funded units that invest in clean technology research and development for long-term emission reductions. A registry is used to help the government track compliance.”

Well, there are some notable omissions from the bill if that’s the case. In particular, how will the offsets work? What is the mechanism by which offsets will be regulated and approved? In fact, they are not in this bill. They are going to be separate from this process. They’re going to be done through regulation, rather than through a process of debate and approval in this House.

I note the technology fund that the government talks about. They suggest that industry would pay $25 a tonne to contribute to this fund, when offsets are available in the open market for $9 a tonne. Why on earth would any industry contribute to a technology fund if they had the option to buy offsets for only $9?

An Hon. Member: To leave those jobs in B.C.

D. Eby: They wouldn’t, is the answer. They wouldn’t.

The idea of a technology fund is much like the ideas of the elimination of the sales tax as a result of this industry in B.C. It’s but a fiction, hon. Speaker.

The minister continued: “The standards for high-quality offsets and processes to create offsets will be prescribed by regulation.”

Interjection.

D. Eby: Well, that’s right. But the problem with that is this government’s record on offsets and in doing this kind of thing behind closed doors rather than in the open air of the Legislature.

We saw the Pacific Carbon Trust. We saw the failures of the Pacific Carbon Trust, where money from schools and hospitals and universities was transferred to industry in a thinly disguised shell game that was absolutely savaged by the Auditor General.

We also saw this government’s reaction to that, which was to close the Pacific Carbon Trust and dismantle it. Yet here in the bill we see the suggestion: “Oh, we’re going to do offsets again. We’re also going to do it outside of the bill. We’re going to do it through regulation rather than in this House.”

Well, this government has not earned the trust of the public on offsets and offset regulation. The public should not be reassured that that information is not in this bill that is in front of this House and available for debate.

We’re also told — it’s not in the bill, but you can wait — from the minister: “There will be a positive list of protocols issued by the director to provide certainty on how to quantify emission reductions and removals.”

On one hand, we have a bill that is here, ostensibly, to provide certainty. On the other hand, the protocols issued by the director to provide certainty are not available to this House in debating this bill. So we don’t know how the government intends to quantify emission reductions and removals. They’re not in the legislation before
[ Page 5029 ]
us, yet this government expects that we should vote for this legislation.

Again from the Minister of Environment: “Earned credits may be generated where a regulated operation performs below the emissions limit applicable to that operation. The money from the funded units is collected by the Ministry of Environment to put into a technology fund or to directly fund clean technology opportunities.”

[1440]

In a briefing with ministry staff they called this technology fund “a backstop.” They suggested it’s a long way off from having any shape or form. They said that offsets on the open market — the price difference; it’s not just my opinion but the opinion of ministry staff — are much cheaper than $25 a tonne, which is the expected contribution to the technology fund. So the likelihood of anyone purchasing these offsets is very low, yet here it is in the introduction to the bill as a reason why members of the public should support this legislation — something that doesn’t even exist yet.

The conclusion of the minister’s brief remarks at introduction to second reading: “These are the provisions of the bill which, if approved by the Legislature, will set a performance benchmark for liquefied natural gas facilities in B.C. to be the cleanest in the world.”

Actually, this is a bill that was introduced apparently to take advantage of coal-fired electricity generation opportunities in British Columbia. These are not provisions of the bill, in many cases. These are provisions of regulations which have yet to be written. These are not provisions of the bill. These are provisions of a technology fund which is completely economically impossible. Not only that, the shape of it does not even exist yet.

In reviewing these introductory remarks, one has to ask: what has been brought in front of us today to pass? I can tell you exactly that what’s been brought in front of us to pass is basically a clear slate for the government to pass the actual rules, the actual laws, outside of this chamber through regulation.

Ten pages of the 40-page act were “given over to granting the cabinet open-ended powers to make regulations at its convenience at a later date,” according to the media. So 25 percent of the bill in total relates to provisions to be named later.

This government wants a broad and generous opportunity to write this legislation in private, and that is unacceptable on an issue as important as restricting greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia.

Many people might look at the title of this bill, Greenhouse Gas Control Act, and believe that somehow this act will be controlling greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia, but the legislation doesn’t actually require any actual greenhouse gas reductions. It provides flexibility for companies — that’s the word of the government, “flexibility” — to emit as much carbon pollution as they choose as long as they’re willing to pay for it.

In addition to that, this legislation doesn’t cover 70 percent of the emissions in the process of generating liquid natural gas from the well to the ship. It does not cover…. I’ve heard it mentioned many times by my colleagues, and I’m going to mention it again because it’s so important, and this bill’s omission of it is notorious and conspicuous. The upstream emissions are not covered by this legislation.

So here we have, ostensibly, a bill about controlling greenhouse gas emissions that has no upper limit. In addition, it doesn’t cover 70 percent of the carbon pollution expected from this new industry.

This bill, if we hit the government’s target of five new liquid natural gas plants….

B. Ralston: I thought it was seven.

D. Eby: Or seven. Or 21. I lose track because it changes all the time.

Interjections.

D. Eby: Well, there was another provider today who put their plans on hold. It changes constantly.

But regardless, if we did hit this government’s targets and we look at this legislation and we do the math, it’s very clear that we cannot hit our greenhouse gas emissions targets, our legislated greenhouse gas emissions targets. It’s impossible, unless B.C. households reduce their emissions by 33 percent by 2020.

All by itself, LNG would account for about 20 percent of provincial emissions — 62 million tonnes. So which is it? Is the government frankly admitting that they aren’t going to hit their target number of plants? Or is the government frankly admitting that they have no intention of following their own legislated greenhouse gas emissions law?

[1445]

I heard much talk from various members of this House, on the other side of the House, about the cap-and-trade act, which this legislation actually repeals. It repeals it while other jurisdictions, in particular California and Quebec, are full speed ahead on this. At one point cap and trade was very popular with the government, and now we’re going the other direction. Washington and Oregon and a couple of New England states are also expressing interest in participating. Well, we’re well past that; we’re going the other direction.

But more concerning, I heard a lot about the carbon tax. This law gives the government the power to exempt companies from the carbon tax. Oh, we heard from the Minister of Health in his speech how important the carbon tax was, how other jurisdictions are following us on the carbon tax, and how dare we question the carbon tax and hold the government accountable on the carbon tax. Yet in this legislation itself, the government is back-
[ Page 5030 ]
ing away from its own initiative, exempting companies from the carbon tax.

This bill’s title is not accurate. The introduction by the Minister of Environment shows clearly that this bill does not achieve what it is intended to. It asks for very broad powers behind closed doors about an industry that this government says is critically important, the opportunity of a lifetime, yet we can’t debate it here openly in the House — how to make sure that it doesn’t pollute the environment for our children and children’s children.

If it’s not apparent, I will be voting against this bill. I’m very disappointed that given all the time that the government took to put this together, this was the best they could bring to this House — legislation where 25 percent of it has yet to be written and so much of it is not even formed yet. What is already here does not hit the standards that the government prescribed.

Thank you very much, hon. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to this bill.

M. Elmore: I’m very pleased to be rising and speaking on Bill 2, Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act. I want to be very clear that this act is to deal with one aspect of the liquefied natural gas industry, and that while I’ll be speaking against this particular bill, Bill 2, I am and the opposition are clearly in favour of our liquefied natural gas industry.

Being clear about that, in terms of the broad context, we recognize the historic importance and the key role that liquefied natural gas has played in our British Columbia economy, not only in terms of development in the north but also powering homes right across the province and supporting our industry here in British Columbia.

When we talk about the opposition and myself being in favour of a liquefied natural gas industry, we should be clear that it’s with the understanding that benefits from the industry should accrue to British Columbians. The primary principle is that this is a resource that is owned by British Columbians here. Fundamentally, the opposition holds the position that British Columbians should also benefit from the extraction, the processing, refining and export of liquefied natural gas.

That means that in the production of the industry and the construction of facilities, primarily, jobs should go to British Columbians and that British Columbians should be the ones to be building the liquefied natural gas industry. Clearly, if there are….

We’ve heard about the talk, really contrasting promises from the Premier before the election, about the great benefits that we would see from liquefied natural gas. We would see 100,000 jobs, the elimination of debt and a prosperity fund. Certainly, those are not bearing out today.

[1450]

My position with respect to the liquefied natural gas industry is that jobs have to be delivered for British Columbians. Certainly, if any temporary foreign workers are to come into British Columbia…. The Premier has signed agreements to bring workers in from India to build and also signed agreements with China to bring temporary foreign workers into British Columbia. All jobs should be for British Columbians, and any temporary foreign workers coming into our province should have the opportunity to apply for citizenship to become permanent residents and Canadian citizens of our province.

When we talk about the benefits of a liquefied natural gas industry accruing to British Columbians, it should be in terms of jobs. It should be in terms of revenues, and we’ve seen now promised revenues cut in half just in the span of eight months. We’re also not hearing about the benefits coming forward in terms of a prosperity fund.

As well, I think what is missing is the discussion of the role of our First Nations being involved and benefiting and being included as partners in the industry. And Bill 2 addresses a fundamental principle, that a liquefied natural gas industry should be developed and ensures that our air, land and water are protected.

These are promises we heard from the Premier, that we would see jobs created. In reality, it’s the bringing in of temporary foreign workers. That’s been a promise, and that’s been the record of this government. My expectation is that British Columbians should have access to those jobs and, as well, that revenues coming forward from the industry should benefit British Columbians.

Looking at the bill, the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act, the intent of the bill is to address the impact particularly on our air quality and concerns around greenhouse gas emissions generated from our LNG industry. I want to just lay out some points and follow on remarks that my colleagues have made.

In 2014 it would seem, to myself…. I was taken by surprise, I think, in a state of shock when I heard remarks coming from the member for Chilliwack-Hope really calling into question the issue of climate change. Indeed, if I quote from the member for Chilliwack-Hope, he was “not naturally inclined to believe in the science of global warming” or convinced of human-caused global warming.

He characterized that there’s an ongoing debate within the scientific community itself and made reference that there may be regional warming taking place, in reference to some stories we’ve heard. Many members were talking about, over the years and decades, how being able to skate on local ponds or having snowfalls across British Columbia have declined.

There is the reality of climate change. We’ve heard the overwhelming consensus of the scientists and scientific experts. Certainly, it would be my expectation that when we discuss the reality of climate change, there’s an understanding of members in the House, elected representa-
[ Page 5031 ]
tives, that this is a prime concern and one of the driving concerns that we face today in our province, in our country and around the world. It’s unbelievable that the member for Chilliwack-Hope would call that into question, and apparently he’s not alone.

Well, I want to just lay out, when we’re talking about climate change, the impacts and threats — if it comes as a surprise that climate change is transforming life on earth.

[1455]

We’re seeing seasons shifting; temperatures have been climbing; sea levels rising; wildlife at risk; melting of glaciers and putting polar bears at risk; increased risk of drought, fire and flood — many examples just across the border; California has been experiencing a drought — and stronger storms and increased storm damage.

We’re seeing these patterns not just in British Columbia — and we can cite local examples — not just in North America but around the world. It is recognized at the United Nations, recognized through many national governments. And really, I think there’s no shortage of organizations that recognize the reality, the challenge and the need to take climate change seriously and to take steps towards reducing human-caused climate change.

When we look at that and understand that, then we have to lay it out for members of the government — the importance and the necessity of taking this issue seriously and making a commitment towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions here in British Columbia, which are under our jurisdiction and our responsibility.

Let’s talk about the economic loss and damage through our rising sea temperatures that impact fisheries in British Columbia, our rising temperatures. We can understand the pine beetle, how has that really ravaged our forests because we do not see cold temperatures in our winters. Tourism is impacted, ski resorts, with declining snow. Also, the impact of drought on agriculture, particularly California, which impacts food security and the rising prices.

That is the reality of climate change. I hope the member for Chilliwack-Hope can have some conversations with members in his constituency and also this government, driving home the reality of climate change and the necessity to take this issue seriously and make a concerted effort towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When we move into realizing that and understanding that Bill 2, the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act…. We see that this act falls short in terms of addressing this reality.

The B.C. target was to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 33 percent below 2007 levels by 2020. To meet that, we would have to take serious steps around not only limiting greenhouse gas emissions out of a liquefied natural gas industry but also reducing that. And we see that this bill does not address that necessity and falls short in terms of having any ability to set limits or to impose penalties or to incent the industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The legislation — one of the main problems in terms of a gap with recognizing the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the context of a liquefied natural gas industry is that the bill only talks about downstream emissions. When we look at greenhouse gas emissions from the entire industry — from the well, from the extraction, to the production to the export of liquefied natural gas — we miss, and this bill does not apply to, upstream emissions, which account for nearly 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

So it does not apply to upstream emissions such as extraction, combustion, flaring, fugitives and pipelines. According to the Pembina Institute, 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in a liquefied natural gas life cycle are not covered by Bill 2. That’s one. It excludes 70 percent of the cause of greenhouse gas emissions out of the industry.

[1500]

Two, we hear the claim that the government is going to adopt the cleanest liquefied natural gas industry in the world. That certainly is a very strong claim, and on paper we can measure that. The greenhouse gas intensity benchmark of 0.16 carbon dioxide per tonne of LNG produced is set on paper, but in actual fact, it excludes these upstream emissions. That’s the first problem with the bill that really jumps out at you.

[M. Dalton in the chair.]

Additionally, on top of excluding 70 percent of emissions from the industry, the bill does not actually require reductions, even from the 30 percent that is covered. The problem is that it is not set — a hard cap — to ensure that companies reduce their emissions. It allows for flexibility for companies to meet the greenhouse gas intensity benchmark, either through offsets or technology fund contributions, and companies are not required to reduce their actual carbon footprint.

The 0.16 carbon dioxide per tonne of liquefied natural gas is the benchmark, and while it would set the mark on paper, it does not include the fact that in B.C., LNG producers would be burning natural gas to power their process, which would, in addition, add and compound greenhouse gas emissions. While these facilities would not be clean and would not be required to absolutely reduce their emissions, they would be allowed the flexibility to purchase offsets or make contributions to the technology fund to meet this benchmark that’s kind of floating and is not, certainly, a hard benchmark and not in any way an absolute mark to encourage companies to reduce their emissions.

That is an additional problem with this legislation. The bill excludes 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. As well, it does not require a reduction of emissions on the GHG emissions that it does cover. As well, there is not a penalty. If facilities exceed the 0.16 tonnes of carbon
[ Page 5032 ]
dioxide for every tonne of LNG exported, they do not incur a penalty.

Additionally, it’s very problematic that we do not have…. The bill does not…. It’s missing a lot of details. There are a lot of grey areas, there are a lot of gaps, and it does not explain adequately, for example, the plan for offsets. How are offsets going to be measured? How are they going to be administered? How is it going to be put into practice? This is also another area that is unclear in the bill.

Adding to that, and compounding this problem, is that the record of the Liberal government is not a good one in terms of offsets. We see that the details are missing from the bill, allowing room for, basically, these details to be filled in at a later date through regulation, and that we are still waiting to see how the offsets are going to be administered. We know that there will have to be investment, and there will have to be a program put into place, and there will have to be staff hired to oversee and administer the offsets, but that is not coming forward.

[1505]

In addition, we see that the plan for the incentive program is not clear. This is another area that is lacking in details and also takes the approach of asking British Columbians to just trust the government. I think British Columbians are entitled to be informed, certainly, of the intent and the details around the incentive program.

In addition, we hear reference to the technology fund. This is also another area where details are not forthcoming. The incentive program is not clear. The details around offsets are lacking. As well, explanations in terms of the technology fund are lacking from this bill, really adding up to a whole series of areas that are not clearly articulated in the bill, leaving significant gaps and raising questions in terms of these big holes in the legislation to adequately address greenhouse gas emissions in the LNG industry.

In addition to these problems and the lack of details around many of the references that are made with respect to the technology fund, the incentive program and the offsets, we see that when we look at the overall purpose and the goal of reducing British Columbians’ greenhouse gas emissions, this bill does not address that. It’s clear that B.C. will be unable to meet the reduction targets.

One, it’s clear that targets will not be met — the target that had been laid out to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent, at the 2007 levels, by 2020. Those targets will not be met. Two, there is not a plan laid out as to how we are going to meet those targets.

The problem is that it doesn’t set limits. We are not going to meet those targets by 2020. In addition to that, it does not lay out how we are going to meet those targets. So there’s a real lack of…. There is no plan, and there is no direction in terms of how we are going to achieve that mark and reduce — the important goal of taking seriously the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia.

You know, it’s characterized as the biggest challenge that we face in our time — certainly, the challenges of global warming and human causes of global warming. While countries around the world are taking steps, British Columbia…. I’ve heard arguments from members from the other side, from the government, that British Columbia…. Well, we’re not the biggest polluters; we’re not the biggest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions. But I think it misses the point that British Columbia also has to play our part. We have to contribute towards reducing our greenhouse gas emissions part and parcel with provinces across Canada, our neighbours to the south and countries around the world. It will take all jurisdictions seriously working together and setting targets and meeting targets.

This bill fails to do that. It also leaves open, really, the ability to change and add details through regulation to large numbers and large swaths of the bill. Clearly, we have it here that nearly 25 percent of the bill allows government to change regulations at a later date.

[1510]

In addition to that, it also repeals the 2008 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act, which is also referred to as the cap-and-trade act. Not only does this bill not set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; it excludes greenhouse gas emissions from 70 percent of the emissions created in the industry. It also removes and is really a step backwards in terms of repealing the cap-and-trade act at a time when we’re seeing other jurisdictions move into cap-and-trade. California initiated it. Quebec recently joined. Our neighbours to the south, Washington and Oregon, as well as several New England states are interested in joining a broader cap-and-trade.

We’re seeing these measures of other states and provinces taking the initiative and moving forward. In British Columbia it’s very disappointing that we are stepping back. We’re not only stepping back but really stepping away from our commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to ensure that when the liquefied natural gas industry is developed, there is regulation to ensure that emissions not only are limited but are reduced. This bill does nothing to address those concerns or help British Columbia to meet our targets in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We’ve heard concerns from a number of organizations. The Pembina Institute has released a report raising concerns that 70 percent of emissions are excluded from this bill. We also hear the argument that the development of our LNG industry in British Columbia will help to offset, globally, greenhouse gas emissions by exporting to China and, therefore, having China replace their coal-fired energy with a cleaner-burning liquefied natural gas. That has been debunked and, I think, is clearly not a strong argument. On the one hand, exporting liquefied natural gas to China does not have any impact in terms of our control, in terms of the use or the burning of coal
[ Page 5033 ]
either in China or other countries.

I think when we look at where we have influence, certainly, it has to be within British Columbia. We have to be very clear and take that responsibility seriously by taking steps to ensure that we take responsibility for that, that we take steps to reduce that — greenhouse gas emissions within our jurisdictions, within British Columbia. This bill does not address that reality.

Another problem with the bill is that not only does it not set targets or ensure that companies have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions; it subsidizes companies that exceed the 0.16 GHG intensity, with the understanding that government will subsidize the penalty — and up to 100 percent — for plants that have emissions over that level. So those continue to be concerns.

When we look at the development of our liquefied natural gas industry, certainly taking seriously the need to limit and reduce our GHG emissions from the industry as one of the major contributors in British Columbia, Bill 2 falls far short.

[1515]

It doesn’t seriously address and it doesn’t have the ability to ensure that companies limit their GHG emissions or even incent companies to lower those emissions. It doesn’t allow us the opportunity to meet our targets with developing our liquefied natural gas industry.

When we talk about the LNG industry in British Columbia, we need a bill that not only reduces our carbon footprint but ensures we get a return from this resource. This bill does not ensure or move us in the direction of sending a message to industry to reduce its carbon footprint as an industry, and it also seriously undermines the ability of the province to meet our goals and the targets that were set out.

It’s irresponsible. It’s disappointing. I think that it lets down British Columbians, and it is inexcusable. It will not stand, this excuse for a bill, Bill 2, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It does not meet, I think, on any number of areas, either to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions or to capture the full range of GHG emissions from the industry…. As well, there are huge gaps in terms of details about how various aspects of the bill are going to be implemented.

It shows, I think, and reveals a lack of commitment of the government. It abdicates their responsibility to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I think it really does a disservice to British Columbians.

I’m going to be speaking against the bill. I’ll be voting against the bill. Certainly, we have to do better in British Columbia. I think British Columbians expect that. We need to do better in this House. It does not meet those expectations to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to limit climate change, and I’ll be voting against the bill.

J. Darcy: I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak to Bill 2, the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act — even though, as I will go on to set out, I think that what is actually contained in the bill falls far short of the title of the bill and the expectations that are created by it.

I think that when our children and our grandchildren look back on the debate that’s happening in the Legislature about this bill today, they will ask us about it. They will ask us where they stand. Certainly, my son, our children, our grandchildren, the young people in my community, feel passionately, perhaps more passionately, about this issue than they do about any other issue facing our province, our country and our planet today — because climate change is, indeed, one of the single greatest challenges facing us as a province, as a country and as a planet.

When this issue has been discussed…. I’ve had the opportunity in recent weeks to discuss this issue with people in my community, and they’ve asked me a number of questions about it. The issue for them and the issue for the official opposition is not whether or not liquefied natural gas presents an important economic opportunity for the province, as you’ve heard my colleagues express over and over again. Certainly, it does.

The question that people in my community are asking, the question that I believe British Columbians are asking, is: how is it that British Columbia will actually benefit from the way in which this government is proceeding with liquefied natural gas, on the issue of jobs, on the issue of fair revenue for British Columbians, on the issue of real partnership with First Nations and on the issue of environmental protection?

[1520]

They’re asking me, most of all: what is it that we’re doing in order to minimize the impact of liquefied natural gas on the environment? What is it we need to do to protect our air, our land and our water? Will this bill, will this government’s actions, ensure that we respect the climate action commitments that have been made previously by this B.C. Liberal government?

Last spring, February and March, a group of students from the environment club of the New Westminster Secondary School came to visit me. I know that similar groups visited MLAs’ offices right across British Columbia. They were particularly concerned about talking about climate action targets.

We sat down in my office. We met for about 45 minutes. These were young people, high school students, very intense, very engaged, very committed to taking action on climate change. We spoke at length, as I said. At the end of our conversation they asked me to sign a pledge, and that pledge said: “I am committed to British Columbia’s climate action targets.”

I learned a whole lot from those young people. Certainly, it deepened my knowledge and understanding of this issue. I was very pleased, of course, to sign that pledge at the end of the conversation that we had.
[ Page 5034 ]

I was especially pleased when they took me outside my constituency office on Sixth Street in New Westminster a little bit later to show me the chalk art that they had done on the sidewalk outside of my community office. With many different colours of chalk, they had done some really lovely paintings, some chalk art, which said…. In particular, the centrepiece of it was: “Defend our future. Respect the climate action commitments of British Columbia.”

After that time I took the opportunity to go back to take a close look at what those climate action targets were that were set by the B.C. Liberal government, going back seven years now. I was just reviewing them last night. Then-Premier Gordon Campbell, back in 2007, declared that British Columbia would lead the world in slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, I have to say, and I’ve indicated this on many occasions in this House and outside, that I didn’t agree with Premier Gordon Campbell about very much.

I had the great honour of representing health care workers for 6½ years in the Hospital Employees Union after the Gordon Campbell Liberal government had carried out some of its worst attacks on health care workers and on public health care in British Columbia, stripping away collective agreement rights that stood in the way of contracting out and privatization that resulted, ultimately, in the layoff of 9,000 women workers, mainly immigrant workers — the biggest layoff of women workers in this country’s history.

We have spoken at length in this House earlier in this session about the same actions of the Gordon Campbell government and the current Premier, then Education Minister, with Bill 27, which stripped from teachers the right to negotiate about class size and class composition.

This is an issue that we know was a subject of a recent dispute in the education sector and certainly is an issue that I hear about every single day from my constituents — how really critical that issue is to the ability of every child to reach their maximum learning potential in our schools.

I could go on about what I disagreed with former Premier Gordon Campbell about. But on climate change, he did decide that Canada ought to lead the world. This is some of what he had to say back in 2007: “The province of British Columbia is now mandating greenhouse gas reduction targets and providing legal tools to implement government strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent below current levels by 2020.”

He reaffirmed that many times — at the UBCM convention and then again in the throne speech. He said: “Our target for 2020 is very aggressive, and it will challenge us all to meet it. In this coming fall session,” he said at the time, “we intend to legislate the 2020 target, as well as a target for 2050. The bill will also require us to establish legally binding emissions reduction targets for 2012 and 2016.”

[1525]

Later he also said: “The science is clear. It leaves no room for procrastination. Global warming is real.” Global warming is real.

Well, let’s fast-forward to 2014. The official opposition has raised a number of issues in this House. We’ve raised issues about jobs, the grand promises of 100,000 jobs in British Columbia — which the government is sometimes even forced to admit they’re not going to be able to meet — and the issue of ensuring that those jobs go to British Columbians, when the government has also already signed agreements with other countries about temporary foreign workers.

Let’s be very clear about the position of the official opposition on temporary foreign workers. The issue is not about whether immigrants come to our province and work in this province or work in this country. My parents immigrated to this country with me as a young child, as did many of the families of the members who sit in this House.

The issue is whether there’s a path to citizenship for those workers or whether they’re going to be exploited and treated differently than workers…. And it’s about whether or not we’re doing the training to ensure that workers in this province have the skills and the training to be able to take advantage of those jobs. That’s a critical issue that the official opposition has raised.

We’ve raised the issue of First Nations — that we have to stop paying lip service to respect for First Nations. We have to truly, in this process about attracting liquefied natural gas investment, ensure that First Nations are full partners — not just consulted, not just using the word “respect” but full partners — in the process. And we have to absolutely ensure that the LNG industry in this province protects our land, our air and our water.

I’ve spoken about what former Premier Gordon Campbell had to say about greenhouse gas emissions. What does the Premier of the day say? What have the B.C. Liberal government and the members opposite said repeatedly in this House?

Let me quote the Premier. “In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, we can either decide that we want to get to yes, or we are going to throw up barriers in the way of that that will ensure we don’t have a natural gas industry in British Columbia.”

The official opposition and a whole lot of other people out there in this province are saying: “You’re not going to be able to meet your own greenhouse gas emission standards with this bill.” That’s about throwing up a barrier? I say it’s about holding this government to account. It’s about saying: “If you’re going to talk the talk, it’s about time that you walk the walk.” This bill, frankly, doesn’t do that.

Several of my colleagues have made mention of, and quoted from, the member for Chilliwack-Hope, who spoke on this issue a couple of days ago. You may ask why we keep coming back to what the member for Chilliwack-
[ Page 5035 ]
Hope had to say. Well, first of all, because it was absolutely shocking to anybody sitting in this House and anybody watching it.

Also, I think that when we pay careful attention to what the member for Chilliwack-Hope had to say — especially when we move on to some of his comments about how we shouldn’t be so concerned about British Columbia, that we should be concerned about the rest of the world — sadly, we hear echoes of what the member for Chilliwack-Hope said pretty openly. We see here echoes of that from other members of the government and members opposite.

Let me just revisit for a few minutes what the member for Chilliwack-Hope had to say. “I’m not naturally inclined to believe in the science of global warming…. Although I’m not convinced of human-caused or so-called anthropogenic global warming, I wouldn’t call myself a denier either. I’m more of an agnostic on the question.”

But then he goes on to essentially be very clear that he is what is commonly referred to as a climate change denier: “The very use of language like ‘skepticism’ and ‘belief’ and ‘denial’ and ‘agnosticism,’” he says, “which are widely used around the world, to me is telling. These are words that we use of faith matters rather than settled issues of science. It suggests to me,” says the member for Chilliwack-Hope, “that the science is not yet settled.”

[1530]

“After all, we don’t really discuss or argue about whether one plus one makes two or whether water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen. Those kinds of things are beyond debate. But this, obviously, is not beyond debate,” said the member for Chilliwack-Hope.

He went on to say — and I find this one of his more troubling comments — “what makes me skeptical about the global warming debate is the passion, the rhetoric, the political pressure, the repression of opposing viewpoints, the accusations…apocalyptic pronouncements” and so on that “substitute for hard scientific data.”

Well, I can tell you that the students at the New Westminster Secondary School who came to see me are indeed passionate about this issue. As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, they believe absolutely that if we do not take action on climate change, on greenhouse gas emissions, it will have devastating consequences for this province, this country and this planet. They are not alone; 99 percent of scientific opinion around the world stands with them.

The member for Chilliwack-Hope went on to say: “We have conclusions that the Earth has a fever, the seas are rising, and the skies are falling. Every extreme weather event, whether it’s too hot or too cold, is considered to be evidence for global warming.” Well, that’s right. Indeed, that is what science says these days, and it is opinion that is…. It’s not opinion; it is widely established by experts around the world.

As I said when I first started quoting the member for Chilliwack-Hope, it would be easy to dismiss these comments as individual opinions, individual musings, but there are, in fact, echoes of what the member for Chilliwack-Hope said to be found in other statements from this government.

I want to come to this issue of speaking about what we need to do for climate change in this province as opposed to in the rest of the country. The member for Chilliwack-Hope said:

“The use of more LNG, particularly in China, will result in cleaner air around the world. This is a great thing. By getting involved in this industry, we’re going to be doing the entire world a favour by helping China to replace coal with LNG.”

He goes on to say that the rest of the planet will benefit from our great policy of LNG. Then he says:

“We could stick our heads in the sand and only worry about the impact of greenhouse gases on this province alone. We could ignore the rest of the world, but that would be to hide our eyes from the hundreds of millions of people in the cities of China who live and work in conditions that would be intolerable in this country.”

And further:

“To refuse to exploit our resource because it produces greenhouse gases would be to stifle an incredibly valuable and useful industry at home while denying the world the benefit of that industry….”

Well, it seems to me that we need to do both. Yes, we absolutely need to do our part to encourage countries like China and others around the world to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Absolutely, we should. But we also absolutely have to be good to our word. We have to honour the legal commitments that this government has already established going back several years — seven years, in particular — about greenhouse gas emissions and about climate change targets.

Let me come to some of the specifics of this bill. When the bill was introduced, the Premier said…. Sorry, some time ago. We’ll go back a number of months ago. The Premier said that the greenhouse gas bill, when it was introduced, would capture “the life cycle of LNG” — not just capture greenhouse gas emissions in the plant, in the production facility, but capture greenhouse gas and have the best emission standards in the world during the life cycle of LNG.

As we’re all aware, the centrepiece of Bill 2 is the emission intensity standard, the benchmark for LNG facilities. Now, interestingly, what the Premier is saying, what B.C. Liberals are saying, is these greenhouse gas emissions are “lower than any other LNG facility in the world” — emphasis: facility.

[1535]

We’re no longer talking about the LNG life cycle. Now we’re talking about the facility. The B.C. Liberals are using this intensity benchmark to say that they’ve achieved the province’s commitment to having the cleanest LNG facilities in the world. “Our government promised the cleanest LNG facilities in the world, and that’s exactly what we’re delivering today,” said the Minister of Environment.
[ Page 5036 ]

Again, an important reminder. The commitment, the earlier commitment, was to the lowest emissions standards during the entire life cycle of LNG. But the fact of the matter is that Bill 2 does not cover upstream emissions, as the members of the official opposition have stated repeatedly, as have very many other experts in this field.

The greenhouse gas intensity benchmark only includes facility emissions. It does not apply to any upstream emissions, including extraction, upstream combustion, flaring, fugitives and pipelines. According to the Pembina Institute, upstream emissions account for approximately 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the LNG life cycle, and they are not covered by this legislation.

The legislation also does not require actual greenhouse gas reductions. It offers LNG companies flexibility to meet the GHG intensity benchmark through offsets or technology fund contributions. Companies are not required to actually reduce their carbon footprint.

In other words, LNG facilities will not actually be clean themselves. They’ll be able to purchase offsets and technology fund contributions to meet what I have to call the Liberal’s smoke-and-mirrors approach to this issue.

This legislation essentially amounts to a greenhouse gas emission free pass. Under the legislation, LNG terminals are allowed to emit 0.16 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for every tonne of LNG exported without penalty. The plan for offsets is not clear, and the B.C. Liberals, quite frankly, have a very poor record on the issue of offsets. We only have to look at the failed and much-criticized and now scrapped Pacific Carbon Trust.

The government was eventually forced to scrap the Pacific Carbon Trust after a scathing report by the provincial Auditor General found that government agencies were buying offsets from the trust at a cost more than double the amount on the open market. It also found that the trust was purchasing carbon credits from projects that weren’t even eligible.

Another issue. The plan for the incentive program is not at all clear. Marc Lee from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points out that the subsidy will mean that LNG operators will end up paying very little for their greenhouse gas emission offsets.

The government will subsidize the penalty, as much as 100 percent of this, for plants with emissions that are just above the standard, dropping on a sliding scale to 50 percent of the penalty for plants at 0.23 percent greenhouse gas emissions. Above that there is no subsidy.

The fact is that the details on the much-touted technology fund are not available. The reality is that we cannot meet British Columbia’s legislated greenhouse gas emission reduction targets with this plan. The reality is that government has no plan on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere in other industries.

The government is bound by law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the 2007 levels, by 33 percent, by the year 2020. That’s not very far away. The Ministry of Environment has stated publicly that the government will still meet that law but admitted that it won’t be easy and that the province will have to find additional greenhouse gas emission reductions in other sectors.

But there is absolutely no plan provided, none whatsoever, that sets out how those targets are going to be met in other industries. They won’t be met in the liquefied natural gas industry. No plan for how they’re going to be met elsewhere.

[1540]

If, suppose, the province succeeds in landing the Premier’s promised five LNG terminals, then production is expected to reach 81 million tonnes, which would put a sizeable dent in the province’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent. All by itself, the liquefied natural gas industry would amount to about 20 percent of provincial emissions, which are currently 62 million tonnes annually.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this bill is that it basically grants the government the ability to change the rules at any time with the stroke of a pen. The legislation is incredibly short on details in a number of respects, but in addition to the weaknesses in other areas that I have cited, the glaring holes, approximately 25 percent of the bill allows the B.C. Liberal government to change regulations at a later date with the stroke of a pen through cabinet regulation. We’re talking about an issue of global consequence, yet the government is giving itself the power to make significant changes, to take action on issues that will have a major effect on greenhouse gas emissions, by the stroke of a pen by cabinet.

Some ten pages of this 40-page act were given over to granting the cabinet open-ended powers to make regulations at its convenience at a later date. That may be some sort of record, we’ve had several media pundits in this province note. The schedule at the end of the bill can be changed and/or added to or subtracted from at any time — again, by the stroke of a pen.

It’s not just the official opposition that has been raising these concerns. I’ve mentioned already the Pembina Institute. I’ll come back to that.

Clean Energy Canada says that on its own, this bill “won’t result in the cleanest LNG in the world. LNG production releases carbon pollution all the way down the chain of production, from wellhead to waterline.” Again, quoting Clean Energy, “Today’s legislation only addresses the last link in that chain” — that being the port facilities, where companies would chill the gas to load it aboard ships. That’s Clean Energy Canada speaking.

The Pembina Institute says that the biggest concern with the legislation, again, is that it does not cover the majority of greenhouse gas emissions produced in the LNG life cycle. Again, let’s note that word because that’s the word the Premier originally used: we would have the cleanest LNG life cycle in the world. We’ve now come
[ Page 5037 ]
back to just “cleanest LNG facility.” The Pembina Institute goes on to say that LNG facilities only account for 30 percent of emissions in LNG production; 70 percent remain uncovered by this legislation.

In conclusion, I want to echo the comments that have been made by the Leader of the Official Opposition and by many of the members on this side of the House, by many of the leading experts in this country who have commented on this bill, because the country and the world are paying very, very close attention to what we do in this Legislature at this time on this crucial issue facing our province and our globe.

I am very disappointed, and I know that my constituents are very disappointed, especially the young people in New Westminster who have come to me with great passion, engagement and commitment — and very deep understanding of the issue as well, I might add.

This bill does not meet the very targets that this B.C. Liberal government set for itself back in 2007. It does not even meet the rhetoric that was pronounced by the current Premier as recently as a few months ago. This is yet again another indication — but a very, very disturbing indication — of this B.C. Liberal government saying one thing and doing another.

British Columbians do expect this province to have the highest standards in the world on greenhouse gas emissions, and this bill falls far short. I can’t support this bill. We can do better, and we must do better.

[1545]

B. Ralston: I rise to take my place in the debate. I want to offer a few brief comments on the bill that’s before the House.

This bill represents a substantial diminution of the legislative legacy of Premier Gordon Campbell. Now clearly, as a New Democrat on this side of the Legislature, I didn’t always agree with him, but there was no doubting his will and his conviction in advancing a climate change agenda. My colleague from New Westminster has quoted him and some of his statements that he made in the House, but the most important one is just simply to say that global warming is clear. There was no dispute in his mind about the necessity to tackle this global challenge.

Certainly, we on this side of the House disagreed. I won’t rehearse the history that goes back some way in how he set out legislatively to tackle that, but certainly, many of the resources of government were put at the disposal of the Legislature and of the public service in order to begin to tackle these challenges.

The member for Victoria–Swan Lake, a former Environment critic, has passed to me, to help me in making my comments, a well-thumbed copy of the climate action plan, which was one of the centrepieces of the legislative program that was set out by the government at that time. I will quote from it, but clearly, what this Premier thinks is that the climate action plan and legislated targets are a barrier, a regulatory barrier, to achieving the goal of bringing an LNG industry here.

We don’t know whether LNG proponents themselves view that. Many of the proponents are responsible and global corporate citizens that are used to dealing in many jurisdictions and have profound environmental convictions of their own that they advance publicly in media and in discussions throughout the world, so it’s not clear that that’s their view.

Certainly, Shell, notwithstanding some of the difficulties that took place in the gulf in the last few years, advanced publicly their view of their role as a company that was prepared to contribute to the environmental debate globally, so they’re certainly not ignorant of those policy objectives of governments throughout the world. Yet this Premier sees this commitment and this science as a barrier, in her mind, to establishing an industry.

It’s worth, probably, looking back at the climate action plan and some of the goals that were set out there. In section 3 of the plan, on page 56, what the climate action plan says is:

“In British Columbia’s case, the business-as-usual scenario would result in emissions of approximately 78 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2020, over nine million tonnes more per year than today. This represents a 13 percent increase in emissions over current levels and can largely be accounted for by projected growth in population, economy and energy demand.

“Policies already announced as part of the B.C. climate action plan are expected to result in a significant change from business-as-usual scenario, resulting in an estimated emissions level of 55 million tonnes, instead of 78, by 2020. To achieve a 33 percent reduction, we must reduce emission levels even further, to 46 million tonnes by 2020. This means we have a nine-million-tonne emissions gap left to fully reach our goal, above and beyond the policy measures already defined for reducing emissions provincewide.”

There was even a sense in the plan that achieving the reduction that was set out was an ambitious goal, that sources were identified as possible areas of reduction, and, even beyond that, further reductions were required.

Now what this legislation does is take the province and its legislative framework very much in the opposite direction.

[1550]

One would have expected that in the internal debate that took place in the B.C. Liberal caucus, and perhaps even in the cabinet, there were those who were very strong supporters of Premier Campbell’s initiative who might have been expected to speak out in defence of that legacy, but apparently not. They’ve been muted or don’t have the courage of the member for Chilliwack-Hope, who’s expressed his own views, which are very different from those of Premier Campbell. But no one seems to be stepping forward to defend what the Premier said and set out and charted as a direction for the province.

Typically in legislation that’s brought forward by the current government, with the leadership of this Premier, it’s rhetorically very robust and factually very deficient. What the rhetoric has been from the Premier: beginning back in 2012 she promised British Columbians “the
[ Page 5038 ]
cleanest LNG in the world” when speaking to a World Economic Forum meeting in China. But very quickly the legislative direction began to shift.

The previous Clean Energy Act had legislated that at least 93 percent of electricity generated in B.C. come from clean or renewable sources. However, in 2012 B.C. Liberals amended the act to exclude natural gas from this requirement if used to power LNG plants.

The Minister for Natural Gas Development justified the changes saying: “…we changed the Clean Energy Act to accept natural gas for the purposes of making LNG in British Columbia under the Clean Energy Act. That’s in the law. We’re working to ensure that the LNG operations in B.C. are the cleanest in the world.” Once again, rhetorical flourish, but the facts are very different and a derogation from the legislative framework that was set out in the climate action plan.

The Premier continued that slippage, heading in the opposite direction, in October 2013 when she claimed that her commitment was only intended to apply to the liquefaction of natural gas. As others on this side have pointed out at some length, this excludes GHG emissions upstream of LNG plants — that is, those generated through extraction and moving natural gas via pipelines to production plants.

Just to quote the Premier again at this time — and the estimates are that that’s about two-thirds of emissions related to the production of LNG — the Premier’s comment was: “My commitment is to have the cleanest LNG facilities in the world. We don’t produce LNG in the northeast. We produce natural gas. There is no L in LNG until it gets to Kitimat or Prince Rupert.”

Not a profound analysis of the problem, I wouldn’t say, but clearly, that expresses her sentiment pretty clearly: that two-thirds of the emissions from the production process from start to finish would be excluded from consideration for the title “cleanest LNG in the world.”

A. Dix: L is for loophole.

B. Ralston: My colleague from Vancouver-Kingsway says that L is apparently for loophole, but I’ll leave that comment as I move on here. I do note that I only have a few minutes, and it’s tempting to be distracted by some of these matters.

The legislation is, again, striking in the fact that companies don’t actually have to reduce their GHG emissions. There’s a standard set in the legislation, and it gives LNG operators, in this one-third of the industry that’s covered by it, a variety of ways to deal with the standard. Those do not all involve actually reducing emissions.

There are avenues provided through what’s called a technology fund. There is a technology fund in Alberta, but the detail in this bill is very, very scant.

[1555]

In the briefings that have been held in conjunction with bringing this bill before the Legislature, officials seemed to think that this wouldn’t be used, and there’s really no detail that they could provide about how they imagined that a technology fund might, in fact, operate.

Perhaps the pressure of time, the pressure of the LNG minister and the Premier pressure have led to some gaping holes in this legislation that have simply been papered over with the opportunity to promulgate to regulation at some date further down the road. But clearly there’s nothing really that gives any detail about how a technology fund might operate.

The other alternative, the other way that the company could meet the legislative obligations of the legislation, would be to purchase offsets. Many are skeptical about the government’s ability to put in place an effective plan to deal with offsets given the history of the Pacific Carbon Trust. The Pacific Carbon Trust was the subject of a devastatingly scathing report from the Auditor General — obviously, resisted by the residue of those people who were working in Pacific Carbon Trust. It fell very, very far short of achieving the lofty legislative goals.

It didn’t have to, but the way in which it was carried out, as opposed to the way in which it was conceived as part of the climate action plan, really discredited the whole business of offsets. It really makes one wonder whether the vested interests who certainly vigorously attacked the Auditor General’s report…. There were a variety of ways in which they did that, which time doesn’t permit me to go into.

But they provoked the ire of the Auditor General. He said: “Of all the reports I have issued, one has never been targeted in such an overt manner by vested interests, nor has an audited organization ever broken my confidence as did the senior managers at PCT” — that’s Pacific Carbon Trust — “by disclosing confidential information to carbon market developers and brokers.”

Some refer to this process as regulatory capture, where those who are to be regulated and work with the agency come to dictate the policy direction and the actual outcomes of the agency. Certainly, nothing was more evident than what happened in the case of the Pacific Carbon Trust.

There were some very good examples that were given in the report of just how this came about. Certainly, there were several companies that received substantial sums of money from the Pacific Carbon Trust for projects which the Auditor General said they would have done anyway.

The very principle of carbon offsets is that the revenue that you receive is meant to fund the project that you would not otherwise have done. They describe it as the principle, the test, of additionality. In the case of these two projects, after a very careful scrutiny of two major projects, the Auditor General concluded that these projects would have been done anyway and failed that test of additionality, thereby discrediting the entire program.

The Pacific Carbon Trust paid $10 a tonne for offsets for what was called the Darkwoods project — it’s a for-
[ Page 5039 ]
est in the Kootenays — where they made a number of baseline assumptions about what they called liquidation logging.

[1600]

That included 30 percent more harvestable wood than was projected in the timber appraisal used for establishing the property purchase price and even ignored warnings from a third-party consultant that this valuation placed on the property, in order to earn the revenue that was going to be directed to it by Pacific Carbon Trust, was not accurate.

Encana, a major company, received revenue for a project which they had started in 2008, and the Auditor General found that the carbon credits were not part of the decision to proceed with the project. The principle of additionality was not present at all. They would have done the project anyway. They decided to proceed and go forward with it for ordinary business purposes. They didn’t need or deserve, according to the intellectual and policy structure of carbon credits, the revenue that was, in fact, directed to them.

The Pacific Carbon Trust really stands out as a vivid example of how not to engage the business of carbon offsets and really is a cautionary tale about what might take place were this to proceed under this legislation. I think the legislation claims that it would avoid some of those problems, but, no doubt, some of the same carbon offset agencies are still about, and the problem of regulatory capture still exists. It’s hardly an encouraging sign that one of the ways that these companies will be able to avoid their emissions is to enter into the carbon offset business. That’s something that really is troubling about this particular piece of legislation.

I do know that there are other speakers, and my time is very limited. I do want to say that it is troubling, indeed, that this legislation comes before the House with, really, the purpose of not dealing squarely and in a straightforward way with the climate action plan and those climate action goals and the emissions reductions that I think have become widely accepted. Although initially, perhaps, resisted, I think most people accept that emissions reduction is a legitimate goal of government and that British Columbia has a plan and is proceeding along it — although there are, obviously, some debates about how that might be achieved.

This clearly sends the signal that for the sake of a single industry — as the Premier says, throwing barriers in the way of creating an industry…. That’s how she sees those legislative targets, and it’s being set aside for that other purpose.

Clearly, this is legislation that I oppose. I join my colleagues in opposing it.

I want to thank the Speaker for giving me a brief opportunity to address the bill as it sits before the House, and I will turn the matter over now to another colleague on this side of the House.

J. Rice: I rise today to speak to Bill 2, the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act.

I’d like to start out today with a statement that the Environment Minister has said. She said: “There is no point in establishing an LNG industry in British Columbia if we can’t protect the environment.” Now, I think those are really telling words, and I agree with them, but I must contrast that with a comment that I heard in this House yesterday from the first speaker, the person that led off this debate on Bill 2.

[1605]

The member for Chilliwack-Hope said: “But I want to explain my support of this bill, which combats global warming, particularly when I’m not naturally inclined to believe in the science of global warming. I think I represent many of my constituents as well. Although I’m not convinced of human-caused or so-called anthropogenic global warming, I wouldn’t call myself a denier either. I’m more of an agnostic on the question.”

The dichotomy of the statements from the members in this House is really confusing. The members opposite are often talking about the ’90s. Now, in the ’90s I was a teenager. I really think that this demonstrates the archaic thinking of some of the members on the opposite side of the House.

Global climate change is that — a global issue. It’s the issue of this generation. It should be imminent, uppermost, on our minds. I’d like to say that I support LNG for British Columbians. I support LNG for British Columbians, provided that it comes with good-paying jobs for British Columbians. I support it if we get a fair return for our resources. I support it if First Nations are respected and they benefit from the resource. Lastly, and obviously, I support it if the protection of our air, land and water, including living up to our climate change commitments, are upheld. Bill 2 clearly does not meet this test.

I support good-paying LNG jobs for the local people in my community of Prince Rupert. They eagerly await the promised benefits from our enthusiastic Premier. The Premier touted a trillion-dollar industry for northern British Columbia, and my constituents eagerly await this prosperity. It is paramount that LNG proponents enter into express guarantees that put jobs and training opportunities for British Columbians first.

As I said, we need to be guaranteed a fair return for our resources. However, we now see those benefits being cut in half. In the North Coast nearly half of the population that I represent is aboriginal. It’s paramount that First Nations are being respected, made partners in LNG, and their rights to a share of the benefits must be recognized. There must be protection of our air, our land and our water, including living up to our climate change commitments. As I said, Bill 2 clearly does not meet this test, and I will outline why.

Bill 2 shows the Premier as breaking her promise to have the cleanest LNG in the world by failing to address
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upstream emissions that represent 70 percent of the emissions LNG production creates. Not acknowledging this is negligent.

I parallel this to the way the National Energy Board terms of reference for the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline project were examined. That process did not look at the Alberta tar sands. It only looked at what the pipeline impacts would be. Yet tar sands development would need to be created, and industry would need to be stimulated in order to produce enough bitumen to put in that pipeline. All they wanted to examine was the impacts of the pipeline.

Again, that’s not realistic. According to the Pembina Institute, upstream emissions account for approximately 70 percent of GHG emissions in the LNG life cycle, and they’re not covered by this legislation. The legislation also provides LNG proponents with the flexibility to meet that benchmark. If proponents cannot reduce their GHG emissions to the 0.16 carbon dioxide equivalent per tonne of LNG produced, they can either (1) invest in B.C.-based offset at market prices or (2) contribute to a technology fund at a rate of $25 per tonne. Therefore, this legislation does not actually require LNG operators to reduce their GHG emissions.

The government press release accompanying the legislation includes a backgrounder on the LNG environmental incentive program, which provides further subsidies to the industry and proposes a market system for tradeable performance credits for facilities that perform below the 0.16.

[1610]

The release states: “Facilities that have achieved annual performance below the 0.23 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per tonne of LNG produced are eligible to participate in the LNG environmental incentive program. Performance below 0.23 and above 0.16 will receive a prorated incentive based on their actual compliance costs. Performance below 0.16 will earn the facility a performance credit that can be sold to other LNG facilities.” However, no further details are provided. How big will this subsidy be? How will the performance-credit market be regulated?

The LNG legislation is short on details, and approximately 25 percent of the bill allows government to change various regulations at a later date with the stroke of a pen through cabinet regulation. Furthermore, the only part of the legislation that sets or even mentions the 0.16 GHG intensity level is the schedule at the end of the bill. This schedule can be changed and/or added to or subtracted from at any moment. LNG could even be exempt entirely from the legislation if the government chose to do so. How is this serving our people?

I would just like to read into the record a quote from Clean Energy Canada, and then I will wrap up. There are a couple other speakers, and we are coming to the conclusion of the debate on this bill. But I could go on forever.

In a statement Clean Energy Canada said:

“It’s a good start, but on its own it won’t result in the cleanest LNG in the world. LNG production releases carbon pollution all the way down the chain of production, from wellhead to waterline. Today’s legislation only addresses the last link in that chain — the port facilities where companies would chill the gas to load it aboard ships. It also allows companies to buy credits rather than actually build cleaner terminals.

“It will take continued and strengthened leadership from both government and the industry before government can credibly tout the cleanest LNG in the world, and even if B.C. does ensure that this industry is built to world-leading standards, it would still sharply increase the province’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

Hon. Speaker, this is why I cannot support this bill. I will not be voting in favour of Bill 2.

J. Horgan: Thank you, hon. Speaker and assembled colleagues. It’s a pleasure to be standing here today to speak against Bill 2, the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act. It’s been a while since I’ve had an opportunity to stand in this place and speak to legislation. Since I became Leader of the Official Opposition in May we’ve only had a few pieces of legislation available for debate, and I’m very pleased to be engaging in this one today.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

I would be remiss if I didn’t give a heartfelt thank-you to the member for Vancouver–West End for his thoughtful interventions at the beginning of this debate and also to my colleague from Victoria–Swan Lake, who had been the Environment critic for four years prior to the last election and did a great job advocating on behalf of this side of the House to make sure that there were rational, reasonable carbon-pricing policies brought forward. We were doing our job, I believe. Certainly, the member for Vancouver–West End and the member for Victoria–Swan Lake were doing their jobs in ensuring that they’re holding the government to account.

Now, I raise those two individuals, hon. Speaker, but as you know, many members have been speaking in the House today — some in favour of the bill, others opposed to the bill, and some, even, who we expect to support the bill, but they’re not sure if they’re in favour of the bill. That is, again, what happens in a democracy, and that’s legitimate. I don’t for a minute discount the views of the member from Chilliwack for having his views. I just disagree with them. That’s fine; that’s as it should be.

But as we go forward, we have to take a look at this legislation — and every other piece of legislation that the government brings forward — through the lens of what the government, particularly the Premier, said in the last election.

I guess I’m old school. I come from a background that says if you say something, you should stand behind it. Time after time after time, when it comes to this Premier and this government, they say one thing and they do an-
[ Page 5041 ]
other. We raised some of those issues today in question period. We raised some of those issues around liquefied natural gas just the other day as well.

The example, of course, was the notion brought forward by the Finance Minister, not in any form of legislation, not in a motion, but just at a briefing with the media: “Oh, by the way, we may well have cut back on the amount of money we expect to raise from LNG, but there’s another tax that we might bring forward when we try to attract head offices here to British Columbia.”

[1615]

Now, there was no basis in the comments that the minister made. There was nothing before this House that would have confirmed that there were going to be hundreds of millions of dollars coming forward. It was an off-the-cuff comment that became now part of the lore around LNG here in British Columbia.

I want to take members back to the 1990s. I know that the people on the other side of the House enjoy doing that. I heard, surprisingly, that our arguments were so forceful in the 1990s with respect to the Oil and Gas Commission that the member for Abbotsford West, the current Government House Leader and also the Minister of Finance, was persuaded by those arguments to support expanding the gas sector in British Columbia. That was, of course, kick-started by the B.C. NDP government of the day.

Before the expansion of the Oil and Gas Commission, we were talking about importing natural gas to British Columbia. I don’t know how many members are aware of that. I have been steeped in this sector for some time. When I first came to work in these buildings as part of the government of the day, we were talking about importing natural gas because there was an abundance of it in the international marketplace.

Things change. Markets change. Investors have different perspectives. The very locations that we’re now talking about as export terminals in the Douglas Channel were being proposed as import terminals as early as 1989, ’90 and ’91. Things go up, and things go down, but not, sadly, in the world of the Premier, where everything is upside and there’s no downside.

We have an obligation, as an official opposition, to shine light on the shortcomings of government policy. We have an obligation to shine light on the statements of government members that are inconsistent with reality. One of those inconsistencies, of course, is embodied in this bill — that being that under the B.C. Liberals, LNG will be the cleanest in the world.

Now, you can say whatever you want during an election campaign. I heard the Premier make that utterance to the media just before the last election. As it turns out, you can say just about anything you want before an election. The challenge, of course, of governing is living up to those commitments.

We know with absolute certainty that we’re not going to be debt-free by 2017. We know with absolute certainty that we’re not going to be debt-free by 2021 or 2025, but it matters not to the Premier of British Columbia when she’s on the hustings. It matters not to the B.C. Liberals when they’re in an election campaign. All you want to do is win. “Just win, baby,” as they say in the major leagues. Power for power’s sake, not for the public good.

Now, we on this side of the House believe that the public good should drive and motivate all that we do. That’s why we’re opposing this bill.

Now, having said that, we — and I, particularly — do not oppose expanding our natural gas capacity and finding higher-priced markets for our natural resources. I am a firm believer that British Columbia was built on natural resources, and I believe that natural resources will continue to maintain the quality of life that most British Columbians, our constituents, have become accustomed to. But it is not the only element of the economy that we need to focus on.

As I’ve been travelling around the province — whether it be in Prince George, Williams Lake, Penticton, Kamloops, into the southern Interior — I’ve heard business people and I’ve heard working people say: “This LNG thing — what’s in it for me?” Now, if you believe the Premier and the B.C. Liberal Party, we’re going to be debt-free. I don’t think so. If you believe the B.C. Liberal Party, we’re going to have a prosperity fund that will be overflowing with billions, it will be so large. I don’t think so.

We had commitments before the election of massive amounts of revenue. We even had commitments as recently as February of increased revenue that was going to pay for all of the things we need in British Columbia. We have a bill before the House — Bill 6, that I’ll speak to when I have the opportunity — that touches on those issues.

But I wanted to make it abundantly clear — certainly to the B.C. Liberals, so that they can down tools on their heckling — that I support expanding our natural gas capacity and finding markets offshore. But I have four conditions to do that.

First and foremost, we have to ensure that we’re developing this sector with B.C. workers. We need to ensure to the greatest extent possible that we are getting British Columbians working in these high-priced jobs, not temporary foreign workers — absolutely not temporary foreign workers.

Secondly, we want to make sure there’s a fair return to the people of B.C. That’s partially addressed in Bill 6, and we’ll deal with that when the time comes.

[1620]

Following the Tsilhqot’in decision this summer — in fact, well before that with Delgamuukw and other decisions made by Supreme Courts and government policies, certainly in the 1990s, partially implemented by the former Premier here in British Columbia — we have to
[ Page 5042 ]
ensure that there’s a fair and appropriate benefit to our First Nations.

Lastly, most importantly, we need to ensure that we’re protecting our air, water and land, and that means living up to our commitments to climate change.

You know, it’s disappointing that the language in the bill…. I’ve heard many of my colleagues talk about “from wellhead to waterline,” and that’s, of course, the expectation that the public had when the Premier made her comments. I’m going to refer to two documents that I’m sure other members have had a chance to look at.

In the 2012 LNG strategy the government said: “LNG development in B.C. will have lower life-cycle greenhouse emissions than anywhere else in the world.” The accompanying natural gas strategy said the following: “LNG development in B.C. can have a lower life cycle for greenhouse gas emissions than anywhere else. This will differentiate B.C. in the global LNG export market.” So there you have it.

The challenge, of course, is that they’ve made the point over and over again, and now with Bill 2, the rubber has hit the road and they have not met the test. Seventy percent of the emissions that will flow from meeting the capacity requirements for LNG will not be captured by this bill. In fact, they’re completely ignored — 70 percent.

How can you possibly stand in this place with a straight face and say: “We are going to be the cleanest in the world because we’re just counting from the plant gate to the waterline. We’re going to have pipelines, there are going to be fugitive emissions, there are going to be emissions as a result of extraction” — on and on and on it goes — “but we’re going to pay no attention to that.”

That’s the B.C. Liberal way: say one thing, because that’s what you think people want to hear, and then do something completely different.

Interjection.

J. Horgan: I’m delighted the humourist from Quilchena has joined us here today. It doesn’t seem just quite right without his thoughtful interventions, sporadic as they may be. It’s always nice to have that around.

What do we do when we’ve got a bill that is inconsistent with the commitments that the government made during an election campaign? The responsibility of the official opposition is to highlight those deficiencies, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing during this debate.

By doing so, that does not diminish our commitment to growing the economy, expanding job opportunities for British Columbians, making sure that there’s wealth for the programs that we need — not by a long shot. It’s our job, and the public of British Columbia understands that. Sadly, the members on that side, particularly those in executive council, don’t seem to understand that.

Everything that comes out of cabinet is not correct. I know from experience. The challenge for the government is to have the fortitude to recognize when they’re short on what they promised. If you say you’re going to meet your greenhouse gas targets that were legislated by most of the people in this House, then you should try and do that. If you’re going to blow those up, you should admit it and move on.

We have obligations that we have made to the people of British Columbia, before the 2009 election, before the 2013 election, and now they’re being completely ignored by this side of the House. We were leaders in climate change, and now we’re a laughingstock. That’s the result of Bill 2.

Now, when the Premier committed, by her words and her deeds, to the cleanest LNG industry in the world, she said that we were going to be, as I said, from the wellhead to the waterline. Why in the world would you abandon that? I look at my colleagues, perplexed, and I say: “Why in the world?”

It’s inconceivable that you would make a commitment to the people of B.C., a solemn commitment in an election campaign, where you’re supposed to lay out what you’re going to do on behalf of the people. The public interest — how will you serve that? They just made it up — back of an envelope. “This sounds good. Let’s say it.”

Well, it doesn’t work when you come back in here. Thank goodness for that. Thank goodness that we have a Legislature where the member from Chilliwack can stand up and offer his point of view — honestly held, I’m sure — and I can stand up and offer my opinion without fear of retribution or bullying from the other side.

[1625]

I disagree with the contents of this bill. I support the notion of having the cleanest LNG facilities we can possibly have in British Columbia. It will not happen with this bill. It will not happen with a piece of legislation that, 25 percent of which, will be done at the cabinet table — where no mistakes are ever made.

I look at the back bench of the B.C. Liberal group along the way. If you do get the good fortune to sit at the cabinet table and be part of executive council, I can assure you it’s tough, tough work. I can assure you that you will make mistakes. As backbenchers, you’ve got the humility to understand that. But something happens when you start breathing the rarified air in executive. Maybe it’s the free lunches — I don’t know — but something happens, and your common sense and your goodwill and your understanding and commitment to the people who sent you here seems to evaporate.

That’s the tragedy of collective decision-making in cabinet. I’m pleased that the minister’s writing that down. I look forward to her response to it when the time comes.

Another issue I want to touch upon is the notion that the Premier seems to talk about regularly. I don’t know if it comes from her time at the big 98, at CKNW, where all knowledge flows, but she seems to think that if we provide energy products to the world, that somehow gives us credit.
[ Page 5043 ]

Now, every international organization that has come together, from Kyoto to Copenhagen, has said: “You’re responsible for the emissions in your jurisdiction.” There’s no getting around that. You can’t just pretend that that didn’t happen. You have to live by the international rules that are on the table. You can’t say: “I’ve got a better idea because I was a talk show host once, and people called in and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea?’” That’s not how it works.

If the Premier and the minister for gas are going to put in place agreements with the various proponents that are proposing to invest here that they will only sell LNG to customers who agree to not burn coal, then maybe we’re on to something. I rather doubt that that’s part of the equation.

We know there are commitments to temporary foreign workers. We know there are no serious commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So how in the world are they going to convince Petronas and Shell and Woodfibre and others…? Well, they’re not going to convince BG, because today BG said: “Ah, we’re out of here. We’re going to take a pause. We’re going to take a few years to look at the marketplace and see where we go.”

When I became Energy critic under the former leader of the B.C. NDP, I said then, and I say now, that the marketplace will determine whether LNG in British Columbia will succeed. The role and function of government is to ensure that the public interest is served. The role and function of government is to meet the four commitments that we’ve talked about on this side of the House. It doesn’t happen with Bill 2.

We on this side of the House believe in the science of climate change. Global warming is a serious problem, and suggesting that the enormous economy of China will neatly replace one unit of coal burned with one unit of B.C. LNG is simplistic at best. Saying that we can give companies a free pass on pollution here because they’re counting on people across the ocean to reduce their emissions just doesn’t work. That’s not the way that the international community operates. That shouldn’t be the way the province of British Columbia operates.

When we come to this place, we come from backgrounds diverse and from parts of the province far afield. We all come here, I believe, to do our level best to make British Columbia a better place, to make the world a better place. Some of us have children; some of us don’t. I hear many people have grandchildren. I hear that often in introductions. So I don’t for a minute diminish the views of the people on that side of the House, the independents and those who are supporting the government on this bill, even though they don’t in their heart believe the content.

What I do know is the people of B.C. smell rats really easily, and they know when they’re being sold a bill of goods. The challenge for us now, on this side of the House and on that side of the House, is to respectfully engage in the differences that we have.

We will call you out, government Members, when you do stupid things. To say before the election that you’re going to have the cleanest LNG in the world, then put Bill 2 before us and argue that that is meeting your commitment, is just not believable. It’s not plausible, and we will not support it.

[1630]

There are many opportunities ahead of us in the next number of weeks as the fall session of the Legislature…. Although it’s an infrequent thing to have us all here for Halloween and Thanksgiving, I’m delighted to have the opportunity. I was pleased to stand and speak to Bill 2. I will have more to say on the fiscal elements that were laid out in Bill 6 when that bill comes to the place for second reading.

I want to again reiterate to the people of B.C. that we on this side of the House understand that we have a resource economy, but not just a resource economy. As I travelled around, and as my colleagues come from, the disparate parts of the province and bring their stories and ideas and discussion and suggestions to our caucus table — as they do on the government side — there are tensions.

There are tensions on resource extraction. We have to work through those. I believe a balanced approach is the way to go. That side of the House believes that unbridled cheerleading is the solution to the complexities of life in British Columbia. I disagree with that.

My job as Leader of the Opposition, and my colleagues surrounding me today…. Our job is to call you out when you make stuff up. It’s to call you out when you over speak on the benefits and underscore the consequences.

There are consequences to resource development. We all know that. The Minister of Environment knows that. The Minister of Education knows that. We all do. Why not, hon. Speaker — now this is going to knock you over; I’m glad you’re sitting down — have an honest discussion about that?

Why not have the people of B.C. benefit from 85 people, assembled from every corner of their province, having a genuine and honest discussion about what the trade-offs are to economic development?

It is not all honey and roses as the government says. And it’s not doom and gloom, as others would say. Somewhere in the middle rests the truth. Sadly, the truth rarely makes it out of the executive council because you put your line in the sand and you say: “We shall not move beyond this.”

I would suggest to the Minister of Environment, when she closes this debate, that she contemplate the commitments that were made during the election campaign, the rhetoric that has been supporting this legislation through press release and some of the interventions by members, with respect to the member from Chilliwack, about this bill and what it will achieve. It will not achieve what the government says it will. It just won’t.

So why not be honest with the public? Tell them that
[ Page 5044 ]
we’re going to abandon our greenhouse gas emission targets. Tell them that our LNG sector will not be the greenest in the world. It will be as green as we can possibly make it. That’s an honest statement. That’s a true statement. But to say, unequivocally and without reservation, we are going to be greener than anyone in the world just isn’t going to work.

From wellhead to waterline — that’s what the commitment was. It’s not in this bill. We won’t support it.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the Minister of Environment closes debate.

Hon. M. Polak: It’s a pleasure to rise and close debate on what I think is a very significant piece of legislation in this House. It, perhaps, might be the piece of legislation that, in the future, I look back upon as being one of the most impactful on the future of British Columbia and, in fact, the world.

Recently we have seen a very well-written report from the Pembina Institute working together with PICS. It highlights the significant challenge — in fact, some would say, I would say, the challenge of our generation — and that is: how are we going to reverse the trend of global climate change? How are we going to reverse its impacts?

The challenge for us in British Columbia gets put in even more stark relief when one considers just what a small percentage of GHG emissions come from a jurisdiction of our size. How on earth can a jurisdiction the size of British Columbia, emitting a small proportion of Canada’s GHGs — in turn, Canada emitting a relatively small proportion worldwide — possibly have an impact around the globe?

[1635]

I’ve heard that from my constituents since the climate action plan first came into being in 2007. Why on earth does British Columbia even bother with a carbon tax or with all these other initiatives when even if British Columbia eliminated 100 percent of its GHG emissions, it would have precious little impact on the world?

Well, we see from the Pembina report the opportunity that British Columbia has, and it’s one that we’ve already begun to seize. And that is beyond leading by example in terms of setting and meeting our own climate change targets — it’s affecting policy on the international stage. It’s convincing other jurisdictions that they can do some of the same things that we’ve done. It comes in the form of things like the mandate I had from the Premier, in my mandate letter, to attempt to move other jurisdictions closer to a price on carbon. It’s an area where we’ve been quite successful. It certainly isn’t British Columbia on its own.

I can tell you in the meetings I have had with international representatives to talk about our experience with the revenue-neutral carbon tax that it’s something they all want to hear about. It’s something they’re all interested in — just to give you a sense of how that has changed since the days when we were almost alone implementing a carbon tax and certainly alone implementing one of the form of ours.

We now look at others who are coming along with us, where we’ve made very good progress. Certainly, east coast states are starting to pay attention. Alberta, Quebec and California are implementing pricing programs in North America. France and Mexico are implementing carbon taxes this year. The European Union is continuing with their regional program. Chile is announcing plans to implement a carbon tax. We know from the accord that the Premier signed with the Pacific Coast Collaborative that we now have Oregon and Washington state following suit and many more jurisdictions looking with interest at that kind of work.

Here we are looking at a record of success in a small jurisdiction that has had a big impact. There are areas where, I have to say, in spite of the fact that they embrace some of them now, that at the time when they were announced, these were initiatives where the response at the time from the opposition sounded pretty darn similar to one I’m hearing about what we are doing now. “You can’t possibly do it.” That’s what they said. “You can’t become a carbon-neutral government. It won’t work.”

We’re still the only province or state in North America that’s a carbon-neutral government. We were the first. We’ve done it four years in a row. We’re continuing to do that. But they said it couldn’t be done. They said that you couldn’t introduce a carbon tax without damaging our economy. Instead, the reality is that our GDP is up and our emissions are down.

They said that we couldn’t meet our 2012 interim target for GHG emissions reductions, 6 percent below 2007 levels — very aggressive — and we have.

There are ample examples in the recent past of times the opposition has counted out our Premier and the things that she has committed to. I would think that after the series of recent experiences they may have learned not to count her out.

So here we are with another huge challenge in front of us. We’re no longer in a pre-2008 world. We face the prospect of dropping natural gas prices which could very easily impact on the natural gas industry, outside of anything that’s going on with liquefied natural gas — to the point where you risk even seeing the industry continue at the same rate that it is now. If we’re not finding new markets in a world where the U.S. is now flush with natural gas availability in their own jurisdiction, if you’re not finding those new markets, you’re not going to have a natural gas industry for long if prices continue to go the way that they are predicted.

[1640]

There’s the opportunity of liquefied natural gas but the adjoining challenge of how you move what is acknow-
[ Page 5045 ]
ledged as a transition fuel, the cleanest-burning fossil fuel on the planet….

How do you move that into jurisdictions like Asia, assist them with reducing their reliance on other, dirtier fossil fuels, while at the same time not contributing to this overall challenge that we are facing in terms of global climate change? And how do you do it without, as Pembina points out, continuing to contribute to the reliance on fossil fuels and the growth and interest in that in growing economies where a middle class is emerging and — guess what — they want all the benefits and the comforts and enjoyments that all of us have enjoyed in our western democracies and more developed countries for many, many years? How do you do that?

Well, I see it as two pretty distinct choices. I think they’re both valid choices, but there are two distinct choices. You could decide that you are going to vacate the field. That’s a valid choice, to say: “This is just too much of a price to pay, and so we’re not going to do it.” I should say that I think there is, maybe, a subsection (a) to that choice, which is that if your regulatory framework is unmeetable in a way that’s economic for companies, you’re making the same choice. You’re making the same choice to say, “We won’t go there,” because 100 percent of nothing is still nothing.

You have two distinct choices. That’s the one. The second choice, and the one that we have taken, is that rather than vacate the field, which would mean you’re no longer worried about contributing more to global climate change but you’re also not going to contribute to driving innovation in the natural gas sector….

Rather than do that, we’ve chosen to take what I acknowledge is the much more difficult route. And that is to set a framework that will see the strictest regulations of emissions of facilities around the world right now and create incentives that we believe will drive innovation in the natural gas sector, in the upstream, in the pipelines, in all their operations such that governments on their own could never afford.

That is the choice that we have decided to make. It is the harder path. There is no question. The work that we will have to undertake — the research that will have to be undertaken, the work we’ll have to undertake in other areas of our economy, other areas of life in our province — is going to be significant.

But we refuse to vacate the field and say: “It’s too hard.” Instead, we choose to be the jurisdiction that not only grasps an LNG opportunity for generations to come in our province but becomes the global energy leader in terms of new technology innovation that helps around the world to drive a cleaner natural gas industry and can lead the world in that technological innovation. We have the people, the knowledge, the research, and we, through this legislation, can have the investment to make that possible.

Now, I don’t want to cast aspersions on large corporations. Of course, it is their tax money and their resources that they extract from the ground in mining and forestry. They contribute to our economy. I’m certain that the members of the opposition wouldn’t argue that on our side of the House we’re very supportive of the role that large corporations play in our economy.

But I also know that it is not large corporations, by and large, who sit around their boardroom tables and struggle to think of new ways that they can spend more money to simply achieve a positive social outcome or a positive environmental outcome. We have to do some things that will cause them to want to do that, and that’s why the incentive portion of this legislation is so significant.

[1645]

There is no way that taxpayers should be on the hook for all the research and technological advancement and investment that will be needed to change the industry in a substantial way. That has to come from the industry itself. Industries pay attention to the bottom line, and it’s the bottom line where we are addressing the incentive and creating that opportunity for ways to address the upstream.

We know from the Pembina report, from others — and certainly members opposite have raised it and the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, in particular — the real challenges with emissions that are coming from the upstream when you get off the footprint of the facilities. Huge challenges but also huge opportunities. When we start to look at the technologies that are becoming available, becoming in wider use….

I’ll list a few of them: lower no-venting equipment, electrification, cogeneration, waste heat recovery, natural gas vehicles out in the fields, exploring carbon capture and storage or reuse. These are the kinds of new technologies that the LNG sector will afford an opportunity for investment in and that can truly drive significant change. This is the way it’s going to happen, and the incentive program that we have outlined can do that.

There are some things, though, that I’ve heard in the debate that I think are worth addressing here, with respect to concerns about how we might do that. I guess every department in government has its own inside jokes. In the climate action secretariat one of the inside jokes they have is that everybody in the environmental movement likes offsets until you start to use them.

I heard some very interesting comments from the members on the opposition side. I’m not sure if it’s their overall policy, but certainly, there were very many members who were quite open about their belief that offsets just aren’t worth anything, that offsets aren’t good policy, that we shouldn’t be doing offsets, that it’s essentially people paying to emit and you’re letting them off scot-free. They didn’t like offsets. They were opposed to offsets.

I’m not sure if that’s the opposition’s overall policy, but I’ll tell you right now that if it is, they better hurry up and tell the First Nations that. There are a whole lot of First
[ Page 5046 ]
Nations in this province that are right now in discussions with LNG companies about selling them offsets. Imagine that: not just benefiting from the traditional role of work and contracting and all those kinds of things, but actually entering into innovative agreements with liquefied natural gas companies that will have an environmental benefit and at the same time generate much-needed revenue in those communities.

First Nations as full partners. If that side has decided that they don’t want to support the policy of offsets, then they have an important discussion to have with First Nations. On this side of the House we led the way initially with atmospheric benefit revenue-sharing agreements with First Nations, and now we are on the cusp of seeing those First Nations benefit from those agreements. So they’d better be clear on what their position is with respect to offsets.

I’m also fascinated by the seeming opposition to having the large corporations be the ones that are investing their money into the kind of innovation we want to see. I’m fascinated by it because…. As I’ve sat in this House since 2005, it seems to be a fairly consistent position on the opposing side that if a company has a whole lot of money or if a person is really rich, government wants more of it and government wants to use that money for programs — that that’s what we should be trying to do. If you’re rich and if you’re a big corporation, we should try to exact more money from you. Yet here is a case where they don’t want to see that. I’m puzzled by that.

Lastly, I really do feel I have to address the comments from the member for Chilliwack-Hope. Now, I don’t share his view. I happen to believe that humans are the significant contributors to climate change on the planet. I don’t share his view; I’m in the same caucus. But I listened with interest to his speech. It was very respectful.

[1650]

He outlined his views, but then he said this. He gave the reasons for why he supports this bill. And you know what? They’re the reasons why we all support actions on climate change. He wants clean air. He wants clean water. He wants preservation of wild spaces. He finds those things important. He’s not motivated by the same thing that motivates me or many of my colleagues or the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head. Yet he has the same goal in mind.

Here’s what I want to take issue with. I think all of us probably have political mentors. I had many. One thing I was taught very clearly was: be hard on the ideas, and be easy on the people.

Now, I listened with interest to the Leader of the Opposition. I want to thank him, because in mentioning the comments from the member for Chilliwack-Hope, he also referred back to his own views, which are different from ours, with respect to the disposition of the bill. He said: “I’m free to make these comments, express my views” — and as he said — “without fear of bullying or retribution from the other side.” Or something to that effect. I don’t think I got the direct quote.

Well, all across the opposition members, maybe not to a person but a significant number of them…. A significant number of them didn’t just disagree with the member for Chilliwack-Hope. They engaged in what I think was a personal mocking and ridicule of him as a person for the type of views he holds on climate change. That was in contrast to the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head, who had a very passionate speech and made his position clear. But he was hard on the ideas. He wasn’t hard on the people.

I am really proud that on this side of the House we can have a respectful disagreement. We can be hard on the ideas. But I think it is absolutely shameful that the opposition doesn’t realize that when they mocked the member for Chilliwack-Hope…. It might be a surprise to you, but there are thousands of British Columbians around this province who hold the same views. They hold the same views.

It’s time that we stop mocking and ridiculing people if we want them to be supportive of challenging climate change policies that are difficult for people to deal with. The carbon tax was difficult for people to adjust to. You are not going to get their support if you mock and ridicule their views.

I really thank the member for Chilliwack-Hope for having the courage to stand up and express those views, knowing full well that that is exactly the reaction he would get from the other side. He doesn’t get it from this side, because we can accept a diversity opinion, find shared goals and still achieve them.

This bill will put British Columbia in the leadership in terms of restricting greenhouse gas emissions from liquefied natural gas facilities. It will put us in a place where we can ensure that there is significant investment in the upstream, in the pipelines, in all the activities around natural gas extraction. That is what we know needs to happen for us to have an impact on global climate change.

This legislation, Mr. Speaker, lays the foundation for us to accomplish that, and I thank you very much for the time to share that with the House.

I would now move second reading.

[1655-1700]

Second reading of Bill 2 approved on the following division:

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

Bill 2, Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. M. de Jong: I call second reading on Bill 5.

BILL 5 — CONTAINER TRUCKING ACT

Hon. T. Stone: First, I move that the bill be now read a second time.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise and speak to second reading of Bill 5, the Container Trucking Act.

Port Metro Vancouver is Canada’s largest and most important port. B.C. truckers provide a vital link in keeping goods moving to and from this port. In fact, our economy and our lives as British Columbians depend very much on truckers.

These are extremely hard-working men and women. Our food, medical supplies, clothing, books, parts for manufacturing — the list goes on and on. All of this depends on truckers. When we sleep, the trucks continue to move. Holidays, the trucks are moving; 24-7 the trucks are moving so that we can live and enjoy the quality of life that we have in our province.

Now, about $126 million of goods moves through the port of Metro Vancouver every single day. We want to grow this number, and in fact, we believe that we can grow this number.

[1705]

With top-notch people and companies working throughout the supply chain, world-class infrastructure and, indeed, our geographic proximity to rapidly growing markets in Asia, we know that we can grow the value of goods moving through our port and further solidify its position as North America’s Pacific gateway.

Today we are one of the most competitive ports in North America. With this legislation, we are taking steps to maintain and, in fact, strengthen that position. This is a highly competitive industry, with ports up and down the coast of North America competing for Asian trade. We have a geographic advantage. Our ports are closest to Asia. We have a long-sought-after…. We have worked really hard to develop the reputation for stability and reliability. These factors are absolutely vital to growing and sustaining our place in this marketplace.

Make no mistake. Anything that erodes that reputation, that makes us seen as less than stable and reliable, will result in us losing this advantage. That is why I am here before you today.

Back in March of this year Port Metro Vancouver was shut down for approximately four weeks, which meant the equivalent of $3½ billion worth of goods was not able to move through the port. Again, $126 million of goods moves through the port every single day, and 90,000 jobs depend on this port.

During this most recent labour dispute tens of thousands of other jobs above and beyond the 90,000 were compromised in every corner of this province. Stories were coming into my office fast and furious from companies and communities across British Columbia. In the forestry sector, Aspen Planers in Merritt issued 142 layoff notices during a temporary shutdown. C&C Wood Products in Quesnel — their business ground to a halt.

I received letters from large private sector companies like Loblaws and Canadian Tire expressing deep concerns about the costly disruptions at the port. Manufacturing companies, many of these being small businesses, struggled as they tried to have parts come in and struggled to get their products out.

Then we heard from a family who had recently relocated to Terrace from outside of the country, only to discover that the shipping container containing every piece of their personal belongings was held up at the port. To make matters worse, the family of four, who had come here seeking a new beginning and an opportunity, was faced with astronomical container storage fees, an unexpected and unaffordable cost that took a toll on them both financially and emotionally.

Beyond these stories, these direct impacts to communities and families here in B.C., we also know that the international shipping community was watching. U.S. ports began to benefit as ships diverted to other North
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American facilities. Market share was lost — market share that can take months, if not years, to get back. In some cases, you will never get it back.

We also understood the frustration of the truckers that led to this and earlier disruptions. These are hard-working men and women who are trying, like all of us — through their efforts, through how hard they work day in, day out — to simply put food on the table for their families. At the end of the day, port shutdowns are good for no one. We must do what we can to ensure that these shutdowns never happen again here in British Columbia.

Our government was elected to create jobs and to grow the economy. Businesses, small and large, across British Columbia depend on a stable, reliable port to import and export their goods. Continued success at building markets overseas for our commodities depends on a stable, reliable port.

Bill 5 is the result of a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of hard work that’s been done over the last number of months by the province, by the government of Canada, by the ports, terminal operators, trucking companies, shippers, unions and, indeed, truckers — independent owner–operator truckers and union drivers. A tremendous amount of effort has gone into getting us to where we are today.

Veteran mediators Vince Ready and Kamloops’s own Corinn Bell engaged all of these parties and spent countless hours to determine what is needed and how to get there. What does that path forward look like?

[1710]

The result of these discussions was a report recently released with recommendations calling for truck licensing system reforms, which is currently being managed and handled by the port of Metro Vancouver, with the support of the federal government.

The recommendations also called for a provincially regulated commissioner to oversee the many issues in the container trucking sector on a go-forward basis, including rates of trucker pay, a whistle-blower mechanism and a strengthened audit system. These recommendations are our guiding next steps, including where we are here today.

Two distinct actions are now falling in place, and these actions represent unprecedented federal-provincial cooperation. Now, as I mentioned a moment ago, the port of Metro Vancouver, with the full support of the federal government, is in the midst of reforming the existing truck licensing system and conducting a reduction of the current fleet size. I think all parties, all stakeholders in this industry, uniformly have indicated that there are simply too many trucks chasing too few containers.

The second key action which is falling into place — this is the provincial piece of this coordinated effort — is the introduction of this legislation. This legislation will bring into force rate regulation for the marine container trucking companies that are serving the port. As a starting point and through regulation, we will ensure that the rates that were agreed to in good faith with truckers back in March of this year will be honoured. The hourly rates, the trip rates, the fuel surcharges — the rates that we agreed to back in March — will be respected and will be fully implemented, and this legislation will provide us the path to ensure that that happens.

This legislation will also establish a new, independent container trucking commissioner, an office of the trucking commissioner. This office will assume full responsibility for all truck licensing system licences once the reforms that are currently underway by the port of metro Vancouver, supported by the federal government, are complete.

The commissioner will also oversee subsequent rate regulations and will take on the oversight of the whistle-blower line and the enhanced auditing and enforcement functions. The commissioner’s office will be informed by an industry advisory committee, which will consist of representatives of the trucking industry.

With this bill, we are recognizing the importance that the trucking industry plays in the supply chain, and we are taking the steps needed to make sure that industry can reliably serve the port to ensure that it is always open for business.

With this bill, we will create a new model for the container trucking sector at Port Metro Vancouver while creating the conditions for the port to increase its efficiency and reliability and strengthen its position as a competitive, world-class port.

Again, with this legislation we are confident that the port of Metro Vancouver can and will become the most competitive port in North America.

C. Trevena: I think it really is in the interest of everyone to get this bill right and to make sure that what is in it is going to be really fulfilling what is so vital to our province, which is ensuring that the port is able to work, that there are no unnecessary stoppages and that we can make sure that our economy keeps on moving.

I think that everyone is very aware of the importance of ports, the importance of trade, the importance the port plays. Both the Port of Prince Rupert and the port of Metro Vancouver are vital for our economy, and we have the Port Alberni, too, growing with its opportunities. I think that everyone really wants to make sure that this is going to work out, whether it’s the trucking industry, the truckers — the company truckers, the independent truckers — obviously, different levels of government or the port itself. We need to ensure that the port keeps moving.

[1715]

We’ve had a long and, I would suggest, quite troubled history with the port, with stoppages in 1999 and in 2005. That’s really what has led us to where we are — the fact that there seem to be unresolved difficulties dating back, basically, from the 2005 stoppage — where we again had
[ Page 5049 ]
Vince Ready. The mediator who was involved in this report and the final report here was involved in the 2005 stoppage. We ended up at that stage with what’s known as the Ready rates — the amount that was paid to truckers.

This has been one of the problems that we’ve faced. Those rates have not moved since they were implemented in about 2007, so we’re talking about seven years. Instead of this being the baseline from which we’re going to grow, it’s been, essentially, just the base that hasn’t grown. That has obviously caused problems.

We had the strike of this year — a number of weeks out. The minister has commented about the cost to business. We know the cost to many small businesses. I know that colleagues are going to be talking specifically about that, about how much that cost small businesses when they were trying to deal with it, and how a number of small businesses still haven’t been compensated for the loss of income during the stoppage. There is obviously a desire not to have that.

Now we have the legislation. Legislation is always a significant route to go to try and resolve disputes, but we have, obviously, the legislation in front of us. It really is important to have it not as a heavy-handed tool but as something that will ensure that we are moving jointly to something that’s going to be effective for our economic health and our economic growth.

With all legislation, there are a lot of problems. I know that we often say on this side of the House that we look forward to the committee stage because that’s when we get to the bones of it. I have to be rather boring in my comments: I’m looking forward to go to the committee stage to get to some of the bones of this.

It’s always the unfortunate thing; you’re reading this quite coldly. As I read it, there are some solutions and some direct results from the recommendations from the Bell and Ready report. But I still think there are a number of question marks.

I spoke in response to another bill — which we’ve just voted on, Bill 2 — about how much was in regulation. I noticed that in this bill there is quite a significant part of the bill which is handed over to order-in-council, to the cabinet making the decisions. I’m looking forward to get a bit more detail on that. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

As the minister said, it defines the “commissioner,” who will control a number of areas. It really shows the importance of that role. One of the questions that I have — straight, really, right from the beginning — is the independence of the commissioner. If you’re setting up a commissioner, they have to be independent to be able to operate independently. Initially, as I understand it, the rates are going to be set through order-in-council, through the cabinet.

They’re going to be set until we have a commissioner, and then the commissioner will work, supposedly, independently. But we’ve seen a number of examples of this government where we have commissioners or bodies that are supposed to work independently, and we see, often, the heavy hand of government in them.

In transportation, we have the ferries commissioner, who is there as an independent person. I have huge respect for Mr. Macatee and the work that he’s doing. But we also, then, have the minister getting quite involved in the day-to-day decision-making and getting involved in the schedules.

The commissioner is going to be reporting to the minister when we get to the other performance terms. I think there are, really, a lot of questions about how the commission will work and how the office will work. Obviously, it’s not just one commissioner. There are commissioners and deputy commissioners.

[1720]

One of the questions that I’ve been hearing, whether it is from the truckers or the truckers association, is the question of who that commissioner will be. How is there going to be somebody who has the knowledge necessary to handle such a complex issue as the whole trucking industry at the Port Metro Vancouver at the same time as having the independence? Who could possibly be there?

There is a lot of interest in who she or he will be, who is going to be appointed to be the commissioner, accepting, as well, that that person’s hands are already going to be somewhat tied by decisions made before the person is in place. There will be an appointment in the short term of a civil servant, decisions will be made by the government, and then the commissioner will be the acting.

Again, I’m looking forward to more details from the minister as we go through the process of this bill to find out just how independent she or he will be and, also, to look at the details of the role, because there is a huge amount of responsibility in this commissioner’s role. There’s no question.

The powers of the commissioner: looking at being able to place orders, looking after fees, information, records, making publications. They are going to be setting the licences and the rates. So there are a huge number of areas that the commissioner will have responsibility for.

There are also, though, a number…. These will be questions which I’ll be asking in the committee stage. Even though it’s in the commissioner’s remit, according to the bill, as I understand it, there are still areas that will be looked after by cabinet through order-in-council, including setting rates and fuel surcharges. Again, this may be something that the minister will be able to explain very easily later on.

As I say, to get this right, to make sure that we are ensuring the economy is working smoothly, that our export and import trade is continuing to be competitive, that we are keeping the people employed there who we want to keep employed there, we’ve got to ensure that this is right.

There are some very specific parts about licensing in the bill. The minister has just mentioned that that is also
[ Page 5050 ]
a federal jurisdiction. The port is already in negotiations with the truckers about the licences, and we’re seeing this one move forward.

There is the question of the licensing. In the report from Mr. Ready and Ms. Bell, it says on licensing: “We sincerely remain concerned that undercutting and gamesmanship will continue in the industry. In particular, a concern that, based on some of the scenarios presented to us…companies and drivers will…find loopholes in the proposed wage system.” Then there are a number of recommendations to ensure that those loopholes are closed, that it is working smoothly.

Again, it would be very interesting to get a clearer understanding from the minister, as we move forward, on that. Very interesting — the details that came from the Bell and Ready report, which said that there was definitely the need for a commissioner. It says there is “considerable support for a provincially regulated agency to oversee the many issues in the drayage sector” and then notes that we need government regulation to establish the agency and the framework, which is this bill.

It’s looking very much like the agency has the licensing of trucks; the enforcement and setting of future driver rates, both on and off dock, including the fuel surcharge rates, in consultation with stakeholders; the evaluation of wait-time fees; the container dispute resolution program and other dispute resolution programs; and facilitating service-level agreements.

Again, as I mentioned previously, the commissioner clearly has a lot of authority. It’s how much of that will be…. Will she or he be able to be independent, and how much will she or he be governed by what the orders-in-council are, what the cabinet wants?

[1725]

The other areas that I think need to be highlighted and aren’t in the bill are…. One of the questions is the number of drivers working. I think that many people agree, and people in the trucking industry also agree, that we have approximately 2,000 drivers at the moment, picking up an average of 3,500 loads per day. It’s been estimated that if you need four loads to make a living, that’s not going to be enough for anyone. So there is an understanding within the industry and with the governance of it that there is a need to reduce the number of drivers.

That isn’t addressed in the legislation. It’s obviously addressed in discussions. It’s been an issue throughout — the number of drivers. I’d like to know how the number of drivers is going to be reduced. What sort of consultations are going to be had to reduce the number of drivers, and will this be something that the commissioner has a responsibility for? This is quite a significant responsibility.

We want to, again, make sure we have the free flow of goods. But also the apparent contradiction — I know it can be explained — that we have drivers waiting a long while to pick up loads and drivers who are not making money because of the rate structure at the moment. They’re picking up from on dock or off dock…. So whether they are actually making the money and how that rate structure works and who is responsible for that….

How we are from that point going to be reducing the number of drivers I think is going to be something that is challenging. If it’s up to the commissioner, that is something which will be, I think, a big task straight off. If it’s not, how are we are going to do that?

We’ve got to make sure that we have that movement of goods. It’s got to be done realistically. We also, as the minister said, talking about growing the sector…. We’ve got the expansion of the port, we’ve got the expansion of Deltaport, so we will likely need more drivers. What sort of flexibility is there going to be there for the issuing of licences and for ensuring that when you reduce the number of drivers, you can then build up the number of drivers? How is that going to work out with the possible increase in the movement of goods by rail, rather than by truck? These are things where, again, we’ll be needing to have some clarification.

The other thing that was included in discussion, and the minister mentioned it as well, is an advisory committee that’s going to advise the commissioner. I know there is a lot of anticipation about that and how that’s going to work, because people do want to be engaged in this. There is a hope that there’s going to be openness and transparency and a really good engagement from all stakeholders.

Again, there is no reference to this advisory committee in the legislation, so this is going to be set up outside. Will it be set up as part of the commissioner’s office? Will it be set up independently of the commissioner, and the commissioner will be just one of the stakeholders who’s coming to the advisory committee?

These, again, are questions that are not answered in the bill, and I’m looking forward very much to having a sense of that.

One of the things that the minister talked about quite extensively when he announced the fact that we were going to have this bill, just before the bill was tabled…. He said it would mean continued labour peace. There really is no indication, within either his remarks or through the bill, how that can happen. In fact, there are remarks in the bill that the commissioner can supersede the rates already set, which means that they could, as I understand it — and again, this is going to be for clarification in the committee stage — basically undercut collective agreements.

If that is the case, that would be obviously hugely problematic. One assumes it’s not going to be the case. One assumes that this is being done in good faith, to increase the rates, to ensure that the drivers are getting adequate remuneration for the work and making sure that we do have a sector that continues to move freely.

[1730]

How the minister conceives that this is going to be continued labour peace will be interesting — whether
[ Page 5051 ]
it’s through the role of the commissioner, through the role of the advisory committee, how they’re going to be engaging both the unionized and non-unionized sector of the industry to guarantee that continued labour peace.

I know that there are long-term agreements with the longshoremen. Maybe they are looking, at the moment, for long-term agreements with the other union, with Unifor. But then we’re still working with the non-unionized sector.

I’m very interested in how the minister will guarantee that we have labour peace. We haven’t had labour peace at the port for the last number of years. As I mentioned at the start of my remarks, in 1999, 2005 and 2014 we had major interruptions to the movement of goods with the stoppage of the port. How this can be guaranteed for the future…. I don’t see any recognition of that in the bill.

There are many areas that there are still questions about. We have a number of things that won’t be dealt with, obviously, through the bill — the reservation system and things like that. But again, it’s showing goodwill and moving along, making sure that when the commissioner is in place that there is the ability to work independently, but also the ability to have the input from all the people who are involved in the sector to make this work.

As I mentioned earlier on, I’m very much looking forward to talking more about this in the committee stage. I think that while we have a piece of legislation that seems to be generally supportive, I do reiterate my cautions about how independent we’re going to see the commissioner, how independent we’re going to see the third party.

Because we have a history of a government that looks at independent bodies, whether it’s the way it’s been handling the ferries…. We talk regularly about B.C. Hydro here. We’ve got the independence of the B.C. Utilities Commission. We see other independent bodies where the government decides that it is in its interest to suddenly get involved in the interest of, sometimes, the people it is working with, but definitely in its political interest to get involved.

We don’t need this politicized. We need to make sure that what is happening at the ports, whether it is Port Metro Vancouver or Port of Prince Rupert or the port of Port Alberni…. We’ve got to make sure that this is being done without interference. As I say, we can see where you get government bigfooting a commissioner. I’m very interested to see how this is going to evolve. We’ll be watching it very closely. We’ll be questioning very closely on this, making sure that there is a clarity to this.

We already have a number of concerns, as I say, about the independence, about some of the issues, and the fact that it appears to be that, even with the concept of the independent commission, there is still this whole area that is left to regulation that is going to be left to order-in-council and the cabinet to set the original stage and then set further sections of the rates.

It is with caution that I approach this bill, but with the hope that it will do exactly what the minister had suggested and ensure that we have a peaceful port sector, that we are able to maximize the port, that we are allowing the free flow of goods, both import and export, for many years to come.

Hopefully, it may be a model for other areas looking at the ways forward to see that this is something that we’ve learnt from, taking the advice of the Bell-Ready report, and establishing a new way forward.

With that, I will take my place. I know that many people want to participate in this debate. I do look forward to continuing it in the committee stage and getting many answers to many questions.

[1735]

Hon. P. Fassbender: I rise in support of Bill 5, the Container Trucking Act, and I do so representing a riding that has many of the people who are employed in the industry as part of my constituents. Within the broader city of Surrey we have many people who participate in the trucking industry and have for many years.

I feel very strongly that we need to recognize that the issues around the trucking industry and the port have been longstanding.

Before I get into the substance of my remarks, I do want to say that as a member of the government when we had the last labour disruption, when I saw the amount of time and effort put in by the Minister of Transportation, by the Premier’s office and other members of this House in wanting to find a resolution and a path towards a long-term solution, I want to applaud the minister and his team, his staff, the Premier’s office and the members of the federal government who were engaged in the Prime Minister’s Office and in the federal Minister of Transport’s office.

We recognize clearly, as the province of British Columbia, that our ability to deal with some of the systemic issues that created the situation that we found ourselves in were somewhat beyond our control because of the nature of the structure and the governance of the port and all of the attendant issues around it.

So when I compliment the minister and the team that worked on it, it was a very, very critical time for us as a province and as an economy. The port of Metro is the gateway to many areas of our country’s economy and North America’s economy because many of the goods and services that come in not only service this province but the rest of the country and, indeed, North America and the globe.

I found it interesting at the time because the members opposite were blaming the government for not moving fast enough and for not taking decisive action, criticizing the provincial government for our lack of ability to bring this to a head and to a solution when many hours were being spent to do exactly that in an area where we
[ Page 5052 ]
had other partners — namely, the government of Canada and Port Metro Vancouver and their board — that we had to deal with.

This government clearly supported Mr. Ready and Ms. Bell to come in to work with all of the stakeholders and the people in the industry — both the unions and the non-union truckers, all of the terminal operators, all of the people and all of the companies that were involved in it. What became clear to the minister and the government was that we needed a long-term solution that ensured the stability and the reliability of goods movement through Port Metro Vancouver to the economy of our province, the country, North America and, indeed, the world, as I’ve said.

What became obvious to those of us that were perhaps a little more intimately involved — I know myself and my colleague from Surrey-Panorama and the other MLAs in Surrey, in talking to the people in the industry — was that it was very complex. There was a history of a number of issues that brought it to the point where we had the disruption. What was going to be critical was not only to solve the issue and get the port open in the short term but to develop that path for the future.

That is what this bill is doing, and it has been worked on in order to ensure that that pathway is clear, that it is achievable and that the goals of long-term stability and reliability are one of the main principles.

[1740]

The other thing that is inherent in this bill — and in the negotiations that took place during the dispute and afterwards leading up to where this bill is being presented in this House — is that whatever we do has to ensure that compensation for the members of the trucking industry is fair and that it is reliable for them as well — that as they build their futures for themselves and their families, these hard-working men and women recognize that their careers and their futures and the futures of their families are protected.

That’s why the issues of compensation, the trip rates, the fuel surcharges and all of the things the minister has spoken about are so important moving forward and that there is the ability for the people in the industry to be able to advocate for the issues as they arise — as opposed to waiting until they are at a boiling point that we’ve seen so many times in the past — where there is the opportunity to sit down and deal with issues in a timely fashion so that no one can say it is not being looked at and it is not being dealt with.

That’s why the office of the commissioner is going to be so important. That’s why the industry advisory group that is going to be a part of that process is so important, because it is very obvious that if you leave things until they become a flashpoint, then it becomes much more difficult to bring to resolution. That’s why the minister has included those provisions in this bill and the opportunity for the industry to be active participants on an ongoing basis.

The province really clearly recognized that with the recommendations that came out of the Vince Ready and Corinn Bell report, there are a number of elements, those of which the province of British Columbia, through this legislation, is clearly standing up and taking the role that we should take in this market with our port to make sure that we can avoid disruption in the future — that the mechanisms are there to ensure that that happens. It is also going to help create a much more efficient model for British Columbia’s container industry and the sector that serves Port Metro Vancouver. And the people who derive their living from that industry are going to be able to be fairly compensated, as I’ve said.

The licence reforms that have been referred to by the previous speaker are very clear that they are complex. They have come to a place, and the minister has clearly articulated the fact that working with the federal minister, the federal government’s responsibility in that is going to be lived up to by the federal government. That is why this legislation is so necessary, because once that is done, then we need to see the forward movement in the industry that is so important.

It also is going to be important…. The federal Minister of Transportation, when she was recently here, along with the provincial minister, made the announcement. And this is a key element for the people in the industry. One of the big concerns that they had is: is there going to be any assistance during the transition? I know that the province of British Columbia, through our minister and the Premier’s office, advocated very strongly with the federal government that there needs to be transition assistance for the truckers, to ensure that those things that they have been affected by are looked after.

The federal minister stood up and clearly said publicly that transition assistance is going to be part of moving forward, and they recognize that that responsibility rests on their shoulders. We advocated for that, and they have recognized that and accepted it.

I also think it’s really important that we remember that as we do the reforms in the industry, we’re doing that in conjunction with the federal government and Port Metro Vancouver and that these reforms will look at all of the conditions under which the truckers work and increase the economic stability for the port at the same time.

[1745]

I’ve heard from many of my constituents that the issues in the port are complex, that their working conditions need to be looked at. Again, that is why the office of the commissioner is going to be so important in order to help facilitate dealing with the issues as they arise so that those conditions meet the needs of the truckers in the industry.

I also know that when you look at the issue of trucking to our province…. Something that I feel very strongly about — I know that the Minister of Transportation does — is that we need to celebrate the contribution of the trucking industry to the economy of British Columbia.
[ Page 5053 ]
We need to celebrate the contribution that the men and women that work in that industry need. There are many other issues that we deal with.

I know that in the city of Surrey the issue of parking for truckers is a very important issue. I know that the Minister of Transportation, along with my fellow MLAs on this side from Surrey, had a meeting with truckers from our community, with the city of Surrey.

The minister made a commitment, as part of a long-term trucking strategy, to look at how we provide parking for truckers, not just in the city of Surrey but throughout the province, so that they can find safe, reliable parking, where they can get the services they need as they do their jobs day in and day out. I know that we are working, again, with Port Metro Vancouver to look at that strategy. That is part of the holistic look at a trucking strategy that is part and parcel of what I know the minister is intending to do, and those announcements will be coming as we move down the road.

From my perspective, as a member of government, we heard what the industry was telling us during the dispute. We worked very hard to help them drill those issues down and to get a path forward. We got them back to work and working with the federal government and with the port and with the union and the independent truckers. There was a lot of time and effort that went into getting that done. As a result of that, the steps that have been taken since have clearly laid out a path to a secure and stable future for the industry, for the people who work in it and for the province of British Columbia and Canada.

Again, I believe that this bill is going to show that this government is committed to solutions in the industry and also to recognizing the importance of it.

S. Simpson: I’m pleased to get the opportunity to stand and to speak in debate on Bill 5, the Container Trucking Act.

This is an important piece of legislation. It’s certainly important to me. A large portion of Port Metro Vancouver, of the working port, is in my constituency. Many, many of my constituents work in the port, or they work in services that are supportive of the port. The ILWU, the longshore union, is housed in my constituency. It’s where their main headquarters are. I know, growing up in the community — many, many of my friends growing up — the best opportunities often were to be able to go to the hall and be able to get casual work on the waterfront.

I have many friends who I grew up with who continued that work and built their careers working on the waterfront. When I’ve spoken to them, and I’ve spoken to longshore…. They know that their work on the port is part of a partnership with the railways, with the trucking industry — everything that makes the port as successful as it is and makes it the key economic driver, certainly, in Vancouver and in the Lower Mainland.

We know that there are tens of thousands of people who rely on the port for their livelihood — many, many tens of thousands of others who indirectly are supported by the port. That includes a couple of thousand truckers. We know that. We know that the port is a complex place and a complex operation. We know that that complexity also can be challenging. We know that it’s been challenging for the trucking industry and particularly for the drivers.

[1750]

We saw that frustration when it blew up back in the spring, when we had a protracted dispute. That dispute was about fairness, about drivers being treated fairly and about how they could have a dependable system that they could rely on to ensure that their livelihoods would be protected and they would have the kinds of incomes from their work that would be necessary to support their families. We saw a lot of that.

We know in that dispute that there was an effort made — and the province was part of that effort, along with the federal government and the port and others — to try to resolve that matter back in the spring. It looked for a moment like maybe resolution had been achieved. But we also know that it went sideways again, because while there was a lot of discussion, I believe, about some good ideas, about how to get there, there was not the infrastructure and the framework put in place to actually accomplish those objectives. That was a problem. We saw that.

We know that the fallout of that was the need to go further. I think that a big piece of that was, of course, the work that Ready and Bell did — you know, two very accomplished negotiators, mediators, who were able to help frame a package that they believed, from their consultation with all the parties involved, would lead to a resolution that would bring more peace to the port, particularly in terms of its relationship to the trucking industry and to how truckers are paid and compensated for the work that they do in helping to drive our economy, through their efforts.

What we saw with that was the result of the announcements that were made earlier by the Minister of Transportation and his counterpart at the federal level. The result of that in terms of British Columbia, of course, is Bill 5, the Container Trucking Act. When looking at the act, you see that there are a half a dozen key components to this act.

The first is the establishment of the trucking commissioner. The commissioner — it’s a good idea. It’s an important idea. It’s an idea that has value. They will hopefully — whoever the commissioner is at the time that the appointment is made — have the skill set, the experience, the wherewithal and the gravitas to be able to do the work they need to do to ensure that they stay on top of this industry; that they ensure fairness is established in the foundations of the industry, moving forward, and that those are upheld moving forward; and that they have
[ Page 5054 ]
the capacity and the authority to be able to resolve issues when they do and will inevitably arise.

I know some of the concerns or the issues. These are issues when I talk to people in the industry, when I talk to the union, when I talk to the non-union drivers, who all have support and are hopeful for this legislation to be successful. But there are questions that aren’t answered in the legislation, and I know they’re going to want those answers. They’re going to ask us to ensure that we put those questions forward in committee stage. I’m sure that in their own consultations and discussions with the government, they will also broach those issues in an attempt to get answers on some of the questions, because this, again, is like many things: the devil will be in the details on lots of this.

What we have, though…. You have the trucking commissioner. The questions, really, around the commissioner will be: what’s their authority going to be? What’s their independence going to be? When cabinet, through regulation, sets some of the rules for that commissioner, are they going to set and establish those rules in a way that ensures that the commissioner has that capacity to be able to do the job that needs to be done? Not an easy job. They’re going to need the tools to do that and the authority to do that. It’s not clear whether that will be there.

Questions have been raised previously that there are other regulatory bodies in this province where government has made the decision that they know best, and they have changed the rules around those regulatory bodies in ways that have impeded or hampered their ability to do their job. The one that jumps out at me most clearly is the role of the Utilities Commission. Clearly, that’s a problem, and we don’t want to see that replicated with this trucking commissioner.

[1755]

Issues around money. Money is a big part of this discussion. Pay rates are a big part of this discussion. There are questions both about the minimum pay rates and how those get established and put in place and how those move forward, and a lot of concern about what the pay rates will look like on wait times. That’s a big piece — whether people are waiting in the port, waiting outside the port. I know, from the drivers I’ve spoken to, that they have a number of questions about how that will work because, unfortunately, drivers spend a fair amount of time sitting and waiting, and that’s a problem.

Now, we do know that the decision, the recommendations here to reduce the fleet, the number of trucks, significantly, by about 25 percent or so — down to about 1,500 from 2,000 — will maybe help to resolve some of that, and I think we can hope that it will resolve and shorten some of those wait times simply because of the turnaround ability for the truckers.

People that I talk to in the industry recognize…. The people who drive those trucks recognize that there are more trucks on the road than are necessary for the body of work that’s there today. But, as I know the minister knows, and I know that my colleagues on both sides who have engaged in this issue know, there is some concern about how the decision is made about which of those 2,000 trucks go off the road — which ones aren’t driving anymore, which ones aren’t in this business of working the port anymore. There are suggestions around seniority approaches and other approaches to be taken.

What I’m hearing from the drivers is an acceptance and an acknowledgement that we need to reduce the number of drivers who are there, the number of trucks that are on the road, but there is a significant concern about how that choice is made. There obviously are people who worry about whether there’s cherry-picking going on to decide who does and who doesn’t drive.

The process has to be clear for that selection, and it has to be transparent. It has to be a process that everybody understands. It has to be a process where people can fully appreciate how the decision is made that driver A and truck A have a permit to go into the port and driver B and truck B don’t have a permit to go into the port. It needs to be clear, understandable and balanced for everybody.

That’s going to be a challenge. Maybe that’s the challenge for the commissioner. Not entirely certain. Hopefully, we’ll determine that and that will become clearer as we move forward.

The other piece that clearly is here is the question of this advisory committee. That’s not necessarily covered here, but it’s a key piece. Again, much like the powers of the commissioner, much like questions around how the selection and the culling out of who’s not going to be on the road are in play, people want to know more about this committee, more about its authority and about its composition.

Clearly, representatives of the drivers, whether it’s the union drivers or the non-union drivers, want a voice on that advisory committee. They want a role on that committee, and they want the ability to be sure that they are being heard in the discussions that frame that work and, presumably, the advice that will go from that committee, both to the commissioner and ultimately to government, since we know that a significant piece of what’s going to happen moving forward is going to be done through regulation.

As we’ve said on other pieces of legislation — we talked about it with Bill 2; we’ve talked about it with other sets of legislation — it is one of the areas of some concern.

Whenever you put things into the regulatory regime and not as a legislative initiative that comes here, gets to be spoken about here, gets to be voted on…. For anybody who has an interest, they have the ability to see everything, to hear everything and to decide what they think about that, but when it becomes regulatory, it goes into that cabinet room. Decisions are made in that room. The debate, the discussion that goes on, is unknown to any of us who are not at that table, and we just read the decision at the end of the day.
[ Page 5055 ]

That’s a concern, and it’s particularly a concern around areas like this, where it so directly affects people’s livelihoods. So it is important that there be as much clarity as there can be about how these critical decisions, the four or five critical decisions, are going to be made.

[1800]

How does the commissioner get selected? What’s their authority and their power? How are pay rates, whether it’s for time on the road or wait times, established? How are they determined, and how are they guaranteed?

How is the selection on the reduction of numbers of drivers and trucks on the road going to be made? How are those choices going to be made? Is it going to be clear, transparent and above reproach, in terms of that process? Is the group that’s going to provide advice here to governments and to the commissioner going to be totally inclusive and include people who represent drivers, among others?

I think that all of those things — again, as I’ve said, the devil is often in the details — are important questions. I know they’re questions that my colleague the spokesperson for Transportation on our side will be talking about in committee stage.

Others of us will be engaging in committee stage to try to draw out answers or some clarity on these matters. I’m hopeful that the minister is going to be enthusiastic about wanting to provide that clarity. I think the minister wants this bill to succeed. He wants the result of it to be successful. He wants the result that, as he has said, is labour peace at the port.

That’s something that we’re all striving for. It’s not something that necessarily is achieved by the legislation unless the pieces are done right. If they’re done right, then I think you can go a long way. You know, nothing’s perfect, but you can go a long way. But it’s going to be how those pieces get put together and how people feel included.

As the minister will know, after the resolution, back through March, when in fact the government played a role in coming to what was hoped to have been a conclusion at that time…. When it went sideways, it was because people didn’t have any sense of that. They were frustrated by it. They didn’t know what was going on. That was a big challenge. That, I think, has to be one of the things that we deal with moving forward.

I’m looking forward to this. I’m looking forward to voting for this bill here at second reading, and I’m looking forward to the discussion that will unfold after that as we move forward.

I know there are a number of other people who have different aspects of this that they want to speak to. I’m sure we’ll get to that committee stage that we’re all looking forward to in due course.

Hon. A. Virk: I rise in support of Bill 5. Let me speak broadly. Sometimes we take things for granted in how our interconnectivity is — what we wear, what we eat, where we live and how we get it. I’ve had the incredible opportunity of working across the country — seeing crops growing on the prairies, living up in northern B.C. and watching the forestry industry, and the pleasure now in the Lower Mainland for the last 13 years, as well — and I see the connectivity across the country.

When you look at the port of Metro Vancouver — many land on the Helijet there — you see the activity. Yet perhaps it doesn’t resonate — the connectivity and how it not only connects a province but connects a country. And we’ve heard before how it connects the world.

I lived on the prairies. Those crops — those lentils, those beans — that are grown on the Prairies feed a world. They come to the port, they are shipped overseas, and people across the world count on Canada to feed them at the dinner table. For individuals up in the Northwest Territories, those consumer goods that are available to them come through our ports and are eventually trucked to those locations. We sometimes take all that for granted in the connectivity and the interconnectivity of our entire transportation networks.

[1805]

We recognize the tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs at the port of Metro Vancouver, not only in B.C. but how this extends — how that mill in Merritt stands still when the port stands still, how that manufacturing facility in Richmond or that resource sector anywhere in the province, that has to ship British Columbia’s raw materials and Canada’s raw materials, stockpiles and can no longer function.

We’ve all seen the issues that arose out of the work stoppage at the port of Metro Vancouver. They not only affected the economy. They not only affected industry. They affected men and women, fathers and mothers that were taking their children to that soccer pitch, fathers and mothers who were putting food on the table.

I’ve seen the value of truckers everywhere I’ve worked — hard-working truckers. As noted before, while many of us slept, those hard-working truckers, who were indeed an integral part of that supply chain of not only this province but this country, were moving goods from port to consumer and from producer to market. This is not only about the economy of British Columbia, the economy of Canada, but it’s about those men and women whose very living every day depends on the port and the movement of goods.

The situation that gives rise to the introduction of this bill is a culmination of all those facts. Under the leadership of the Premier and the hard work of the Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skills, the Minister of Transportation and a number of my colleagues — some of them are here, seated with me today — we were able to bring the variety of these stakeholders together to have a return to work of all the parties. An action plan agreed upon by all those parties was signed at that time.
[ Page 5056 ]

It became abundantly clear that there were elements of the underlying factors, in terms of jurisdiction of the port between the federal and provincial elements, that required a core route examination. Upon that core route examination, it became abundantly clear that leadership was required and that under the leadership of the Minister of Transportation, we had to put forward a bill to define and clarify the jurisdiction of the port.

This, very clearly, is a step in that direction — to clarify the jurisdiction of the port, along with our federal partners, who have intent to introduce similar legislation in our nation’s capital to work on their part of this equation. The action plan that was agreed upon by all parties and the subsequent recommendations made by senior negotiators Vince Ready and Corinn Bell took many, many months of negotiation, of consultation, of discussion. A number of recommendations were made.

We’re at the point…. I might emphasize that I believe this is very much a non-partisan issue. This is a non-partisan issue to ensure…. Not only do our truckers that live in my riding or the ridings of the members for Surrey-Whalley, Surrey-Newton and Surrey–Green Timbers….

I recall going on the air not too long ago saying: “I fully expect these members” — you know, my colleagues across the aisle — “to be supportive of this legislation, to support all those truckers that live in their ridings. For them not to do so will be, perhaps, a slap in their faces — shameful for them not to offer full support to their constituents that live right in their backyards.” I fully expect these members from Surrey to stand up, perhaps against the wishes of all their other colleagues, to support this bill.

This bill will create a trucking commission and establish a regulation for the ability of that trucking commission to oversee key elements of the industry in the Lower Mainland. That’s rates that apply to wait-time charges, fuel surcharges, on-and-off truck movement, oversight of whistle-blower legislation, and enhanced auditing and enforcement as well.

The establishment of that trucking commission will also include an ongoing voice for those truckers, in terms of an advisory group that continues to hear the voice of these hard-working men and women as they export and import our goods from market to consumer and then from consumer to market.

[1810]

It’s also important to note that we’ve had a great deal of cooperation from our colleagues in Ottawa, as well, under the leadership of the Minister of Transportation. It’s understood, and we have talked about it, that there will be elements and discussions that are going to ensue to ensure that the right number of trucks are in this industry to accommodate a fair living wage for those individuals that are providing that transportation, that there’s a rationalization of that. Our federal counterparts in Ottawa have conduct of that element of it.

Once again, as our legislation works through, I expect nothing less than this becoming a non-partisan issue with full support from my members across the aisle joining the government in voting for this bill.

V. Huntington: Just a comment directed towards the Minister of Advanced Education. Perhaps he should listen to some of his colleagues on this side of the House who have indicated support for Bill 5, I believe.

Firstly, I’m pleased to add to the debate on Bill 5, the Container Trucking Act. This act has an enormous ramification for my riding, which, as you can expect or conceive, is impacted extremely by container traffic moving from the port of Roberts Bank, Deltaport, through to the distribution centres of the region. In fact, the province built the South Fraser Perimeter Road simply to move the goods from Roberts Bank through to the regional distribution points.

While we are grateful for the traffic that has been removed from our roads, we do still suffer from the impact of that port and the container traffic on the community. This act will go a long way to resolving some of the problems that we have in the community and that we have known for some time the truckers have experienced.

I echo some of the comments that the Minister of Education made in his opening. I believe that the resolution to this issue and the work done at the time of the strike by members of the provincial cabinet and their team was excellent. I think we all applauded when they were able to announce that the strike had an interim settlement. But the minister did say that this was done so that we wouldn’t leave things until the next flashpoint that arrived. But we did leave it. We did leave it until that flashpoint arose, and perhaps my addition to this debate can have a bit of an historical perspective on the problems we experienced earlier this year.

The entire trucking affair at Port Metro Vancouver was summed up so well by Sean Leslie of CKNW at the time of the strike, when he said: “This is one of those classic Canadian cases of too much government — too many empires and fiefdoms getting in the way of common sense. There should have been intense efforts at the bargaining table to resolve this dispute long ago, not finger-pointing between politicians while the economy — and the truckers — suffers.”

But, you know, it wasn’t just politicians doing the pointing; it was the federal government at the province, the province at the feds, the port at the truckers, the truckers at the port, shipping companies at the terminal operators and vice versa. Everybody was pointing at everybody else.

At the time I wanted to say: a pox on all of your houses. They all knew of the problem. They had known for years of the problem and that the solution to the trucking dispute was going to take time, hard work, intense negotiations and money.

We knew following the last strike, ten years ago, that a major problem had to be resolved and that the 2005 re-
[ Page 5057 ]
ports from Mr. Vince Ready and the task force on transportation and industrial relations both outlined in black and white what had to happen and who had to make it happen. And they didn’t make it happen. They made their own bed, and then none of them wanted to lie in it.

[1815]

Let’s talk about the truckers. While I sympathize with their predicament at the time of the strike, I have to say that the problem they experienced was one of their own making. The existing fleet is there because they undercut the previous operators. Then they found themselves in the same boat, and the chickens had come home to roost, so to speak.

That didn’t mean the problem shouldn’t be fixed, and both the 2005 reports have specifically said: “Fix the problem.” That was ten years ago those reports said to fix the problem.

The truckers wanted compensation for wait times, and could anybody blame them? In Delta South we see the lineups, sometimes 100 trucks long, backed all the way from Roberts Bank to Highway 17, hours and hours of idling and waiting. Of course they need fair compensation for legitimate waits. Their job is not a fill philanthropic one, no matter how much the other players might wish it to be.

The truckers wanted a fair hourly rate that gave dignity back to their job, and they deserve that fair hourly rate, one that is reliable and dependable — and is protected, just as importantly, from abuse. But did the responsible parties that were challenged in Vince Ready’s 2005 report deal with the compensation issues back then? No. Again, the chickens came home to roost.

To be complimentary at this point about the truckers, did anyone ever note that the truckers struck in the slow time of the year? They didn’t strike at Christmas when they could have. I’ve always considered that a very responsible decision in a time of labour crisis.

Let’s talk about the port and its role in that labour strife. Yes, the port introduced a reservation and licensing system for trucks entering the port, and yes, they are introducing GPS to the system — both, I emphasize, that were also part of the 2005 task force recommendations. But were they clear about whether or not the system was working? No.

The port talked about their data showing turnaround time was less than an hour. “Come and review the data,” they said, which must be a first for this rather unaccountable agency. “Come and review the data,” but what they didn’t really want to make crystal-clear is that the one-hour turnaround time was after the truck got in the gates. It had nothing to do with wait times or compensation — another example of the port’s opaqueness and its failure to fix this outstanding problem.

Then there was the 14-point action plan, upon which Bill 5 has been built and which was like déjà vu to anyone following the port.

[Madame Speaker in the chair.]

Point 11 of the action plan: “Roll out the next phase of GPS,” which should have been done long, long before.

Point 9: “Extend hours of the port.” You know, extending the hours of the port has been under discussion for years. A report written for then federal minister David Emerson made a number of recommendations regarding port operations. Two were absolutely fascinating, and they were something this Transportation Minister and his government should, I would recommend, seriously evaluate.

The authors of the report to Emerson said no further expansion of this port should be contemplated until the port’s inability to compete internationally was solved. What were the two competition issues? Labour relations and hours of operation. Déjà vu — a complete failure to move on either that report to Emerson or on either of the 2005 reports.

Point 13 of the action plan: “Compensation will be set at a flat fee of $25 per trip if the scheduled pickup is exceeded by two hours.” The generosity overwhelms me. No wonder the truckers were skeptical.

Finally, let’s talk about the port and the province, and their interest, or lack thereof, in supporting small business during the trucking crisis. Port Metro Vancouver has one of the highest demurrage rates in the world, ten times that of Los Angeles. How is that competitive?

Did the port use its influence to force terminal operators to reduce container storage fees during the strike, fees that ran $250 a day for the first week and $480 a day after? No, and every small business dependent upon imports was suffering. It was a windfall for the operators. Did the province or the port do anything about it during the strike? No. And then we learned that the province is funding one-third of the port’s GPS installation costs.

[1820]

All I can say is that I think the port has this province wrapped around its outstretched hand. “Cap our property taxes, reimburse local government for anything over the cap, let us write off new construction in ten years, help pay for GPS, build us a new highway, let us destroy habitat, build us a new bridge, get rid of the tunnel, build us new railway tracks, and get BCR to buy port-related land.”

Has anybody in this government ever done a cost-benefit analysis on the port’s actual cost to this province and to the provincial taxpayer? How heavily subsidized is Port Metro Vancouver? And all this from a government which supposedly supports free enterprise. But the largest port in Canada cannot be brought to its knees, and it needs to function smoothly and efficiently.

I support Bill 5. It is an act which will hopefully see fair compensation and protection for the container trucking industry. I’m pleased to see the act and hope that this time we have started down the road to righting the problems that have beset the trucking industry and its relations with the port of Vancouver for a long, long time.
[ Page 5058 ]

J. Tegart: It is my pleasure to take my place in the House today and speak in favour of Bill 5, the Container Trucking Act. This legislation is vital to ensure that we keep our goods moving, trade growing and building a strong economy to benefit the next generation of British Columbians.

The introduction of this legislation is a key action taken by our government following the recommendations submitted by mediator Vince Ready and Corinn Bell. This comes after consultation between government, port authority and the trucking sector, and I think we can all agree that this House appreciates all of their hard work over the past several months.

The labour dispute at the port showed how important the port is to our economy. During the work stoppage we experienced $126 million worth of cargo per day, or $855 million of B.C. shipping losses per week. Wages were lost and GDP affected because product was not moving.

Our competitors benefitted, however. The port in Tacoma saw increased traffic of shipment of product at their facilities. B.C. businesses couldn’t get their products to market or receive vital components for their operations. When the port was not operating, it certainly had ripple effects on our economy, and the impact was felt in my region. Hundreds of miles away in Merritt, Aspen Planers was going ahead with layoffs for employees as the dispute between the two parties continued on, with the mill losing an average of $200,000 per week.

The mill survived many challenges over the years, from the mountain pine beetle to the softwood lumber dispute. The strike was yet another setback. They made considerable efforts to diversify international markets to sell their products, but since all export shipments to Asia were curtailed during this time, the markets available to them were limited to domestic and the United States. This was not the only mill at risk of shutting down because of the dispute.

In the end, thankfully, all sides came together. Government, unions and port authority, realizing the risks of continuing labour disruption and our reputation as an export facility, reached an agreement to benefit all sides in the dispute. That is why this legislation has been introduced as part of the process to help create a new and more efficient model for B.C. container truck traffic serving Port Metro Vancouver.

Our goal through this action is to make sure that Port Metro Vancouver remains the premier port facility in North America. We also want to ensure that all port facilities in B.C., such as the Port of Prince Rupert, Kitimat and Victoria, become destinations for shippers and that support facilities such as our highways, rail corridors and inland terminals — such as the Ashcroft Terminal located in my riding — can support even further growth in international trade in B.C.

The economy of our province and our country depends on these facilities so our trading partners know that our province will deliver products they need to fuel their economy, and we receive the vital components to support our own growing economy. However, when our products are not moving, it puts our international reputation at risk.

[1825]

B.C. ports serve as a vital link for most Canadian products to Asia, Latin America and the United States. On any given day you can see that the port is buzzing. There are almost 135 million tonnes of cargo being handled by Port Metro Vancouver each year. Ongoing activity related to Port Metro Vancouver contributes $1.2 billion annually in tax revenue to all levels of government, including $336 million annually in B.C.

There is no doubt that this bill is very important to the province of British Columbia, and it is with great pleasure that I speak in support of it. I will now take my seat because I know there are so many others who also wish to have a say.

H. Bains: It is an honour and a privilege to stand and speak on a bill that is so important and that affects so many of my constituents and many, many people in Lower Mainland and elsewhere. We are talking about the trucking industry, truck drivers and owner-operators — people who are, I would say, a bloodline to our economy. They are a lifeline to our well-being and quality of life.

Truck drivers — it’s not just another job. It’s hard enough to pack your lunch pail in the morning and go to work and come back. But these people we are talking about today, men and women, are required to invest about $100,000 to $150,000 of their money, and then go to work and spend 12, 13 or 14 hours in traffic. Imagine us being stuck in traffic for an hour or an hour and a half — the howling that we’d hear, for good reasons. But they are there for 12, 13 or 14 hours. Are they getting the respect that they deserve for what they do for us?

Up until now those who are employed at Port Metro Vancouver, especially, didn’t believe that the respect was there. They didn’t believe that the fair return on their investment was there. They didn’t believe that fair wages were earned after investing that kind of money.

As a result, we have a long history here going back to 1999, the first time when a dispute disrupted Port Metro Vancouver. Then 2005 — promises were made; MOAs were signed.

Guess what. The problem continues on, because the government was sleeping on the switch, just ignoring the problem as if it never existed. Port Metro Vancouver thought the problem was going to go away. You know what? The Minister of Education just finished speaking. I hope that I capture everything he said as a quote. He said that if you leave things until they become a flashpoint, then it becomes that much more difficult to deal with. Under their watch, not only did they reach a flashpoint; they blew up time and again. And then again, they
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still wouldn’t deal with it.

Prior to the 2014 dispute they were warned — six months prior to that — that there were huge problems by UTA, Unifor and other unions, but the government turned a blind eye to it and thought that nothing was a problem out there. Then finally, they were forced to withdraw their services. And guess what, Madame Speaker. Again, the Premier of that time said: “It’s not my problem; it’s a federal problem. The federal minister has to deal with it.”

These hard-working men and women, with all their investments on the line, their houses on the line…. This government thought that it was somebody else’s problem. But they brought the issue to a head.

To the truckers, I say thank you for standing up to this government, standing up to Port Metro Vancouver and standing up for your rights, because that’s the only way we are going to get what you really deserve and so that we can find a long-term solution under this bill.

[1830]

I’m hoping that those solutions are here. There are so many questions here about elimination of those 500 to 800 trucks. What process will be used? Is it by seniority? Is it going to be an objective process? Is it going to be cherry-picking — or picking and choosing whoever they wish, to have them in there?

There are some good components in here, but I will have a lot of questions during the committee stage, because the time is running out. I understand that the House Leaders have made a deal that this bill be passed today before seven o’clock. I have a lot to talk about here, because this is very near and dear to me. There are so many people that I know that are working in this industry, and they will affected by this.

You know what? I will be watching very, very carefully. I know my colleagues will be watching very, very, carefully, because this is one chance the government has to do it right. They have one chance to do it right, and I hope that they will do it right, because we will be asking those questions when we are at the committee stage.

In conclusion, I just want to say this. Meeka Sanghera, Manny Dhillon and Gagan Singh of UTA; Gavin McGarrigle, Paul Gill, Paul Johal of Unifor, and many others who showed leadership during that dispute continue to show leadership even today.

Hopefully, we will find a really long-lasting solution where these truckers can have a fair return on their investment and have fair wages they can earn so that they can continue to support their families, can continue to support our communities and can continue to support our economy.

I’m hoping that all those questions will be answered in a positive way so that we all can vote in favour of this bill. But it all depends on a lot of those questions that government has to answer during the committee stage.

B. Ralston: I want to address the bill very briefly, because the time that we have for it is very limited. It was interesting to listen to the Minister of Advanced Education reflect upon the role that ports play in connecting disparate parts of the world.

In fact, I recently read a book called Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate. It’s a book written by a journalist who travelled in a Maersk container freighter from Felixstowe in England, through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, across the Indian Ocean and wound up in Singapore.

Along the way in the book, which I don’t have time to go into, she really stressed the importance of the shipping industry and our ports — of which the trucking industry is an integral part — in joining international trade and making it all possible. Sometimes it’s an industry, as the title implies, that is not understood or given much prominence.

Certainly, in dealing with this dispute, there’s a history to it. An unfortunate history, I suppose, would be one way to put it. The 1990s dispute resulted from disputes about low rates of compensation and dysfunctional operating practices. Those same practices resulted in a further stoppage in 2005 and another one very recently.

The same issues arose again: terminal wait times, reservation policies, rate undercutting and inequality in the rate of pay, lack of an industry-wide auditing system and lack of enforcement of audit judgments. The report by Ready and Bell recommends what they call an agency, a governing agency. Since this is the inspiration and the genesis for this bill, I’m favourably disposed to the idea of a governing agency.

Clearly, there are obviously many complex inter-jurisdictional issues, given that ports are a federal jurisdiction and port lands are a federal jurisdiction but the motor licensing and trucking industry is a provincial one. The governing agency that’s suggested in the report would deal with a number of issues — including licensing of trucks, the enforcement and setting of driver rates, an evaluation of wait times, a container dispute resolution program — and would also facilitate discussion about service level agreements.

[1835]

I don’t think anyone would suggest…. My colleague from Surrey-Newton has described accurately some of the history. There has been an unwillingness, particularly of Port Metro Vancouver, to grasp the nettle, to deal with this. I think there was some wish that it would simply go away. It hasn’t. This agency that’s proposed in the bill, I think, will go some considerable way towards dealing with the problems.

There is a note of caution. In the report the authors, Ready and Bell, do note…. I do want to just quote this, because it gives an idea of the deeply ingrained and difficult problems that exist in the industry:
[ Page 5060 ]

“We sincerely remain concerned that undercutting and gamesmanship will continue in this industry. In particular, we are concerned that based on some of the scenarios presented to us over the course of the previous four months” — that’s during their investigation — “companies and drivers will seek to find loopholes in the proposed wage system. In order to address some of these loopholes, we recommend the following….

“It will be considered a breach of the TLS licence” — that’s the truck licensing system — “for any trucking company to require that an employee purchase a truck, trailer or any other equipment or that any employee purchase or acquire any proprietary interest or obligations in the company’s business as a condition of employment.”

They recommend strong sanctions in the event of such action.

“It will be considered a breach of the TLS licence for any trucking company to require that owner-operators sell their truck, trailer or any other equipment…and require the owner-operator to become an employee as a condition of employment….

“It will be considered a breach of the TLS licence for any trucking company to require a driver to misrepresent the time worked, the distance travelled or any moneys paid as a condition of employment. We recommend….”

Then they go on to talk about tough sanctions in the event of that. Finally:

“It will be considered a breach of the TLS licence for any trucking company to require a driver or drivers to forfeit the minimum call-out pay or deduct any wait-time fees as a condition of employment.”

They recommend tough sanctions if that’s discovered.

“It will be considered a breach of the TLS system for any trucking companies to withhold payment to drivers for more than three weeks’ pay, and ideally, we would recommend holdbacks of two weeks’ pay.”

This gives a sense of the deeply ingrained problems and some practices which are obviously highly objectionable and have led to sometimes explosive work disruptions and general dissatisfaction on the waterfront in the trucking industry.

If this agency is created and it has strong investigative and enforcement powers, then it very well may be able to begin to deal with some of the problems. As my colleagues have said….

Sometimes these questions have to be explored at the committee stage, but it seems that to the degree to which this bill follows the recommendations of the Ready-Bell report, it may be on the way to solve some of the deeply ingrained problems that have plagued the waterfront here in the Lower Mainland, and we’ll be on the way to a better and smoother operating and a fairer system for everyone involved, including many of my constituents who are employed in the trucking industry and who reside in Surrey.

J. Kwan: I wish to enter into debate for Bill 5, the Container Trucking Act.

A lot has been said by my colleagues on both sides of the House, so I won’t belabour the same points. However, I do wish to just raise a couple of points that were brought to my attention during the period of the labour dispute.

As we know, in all of our communities…. What makes our communities so successful are the small businesses. They are, in fact, the backbone of our economic engine. There’s no question about that. During this labour dispute I heard from countless numbers of small business owners who were deeply impacted through no fault of their own. They were not able to access their supplies, because they were held at the port. Now, this has several implications for them.

As one individual wrote to me…. What they said was that as a result of the labour dispute, each day where they could not access their goods, they were being charged $220 U.S. as their shipped goods were held in the port. For that particular business, at that time when they phoned me, they had already racked up some $3,000 worth of charges because they could not access their goods.

[1840]

In addition to that, there was $100 a night for storage and $120 a night for the vessels that are docked at the port. The net effect is that they’re being charged for goods that they could not access.

In the meantime, for these small businesses, the shelves were becoming empty because their stock was running low. They could not access the goods to replenish their shelves in order to keep business going. The challenge that they faced was insurmountable. It’s quite something.

Some of the details that people also told me were that the storage fees were $200 a day for a 40-foot container and $225 a day for a 45-foot container. After five days of storage the fees increased to $440 a day for the 40-foot container and $495 a day for the 45-foot container. Overdue accounts would be charged at the rate of 19.56 percent.

This was all in addition to the fact that they couldn’t access their supplies to stock their shelves to keep the business running. The ripple effect was enormous. There’s no question that the impact was huge for all concerned.

To see Bill 5 before this Legislature — I think it is good news. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, though, in Bill 5. But it’s good that we have this bill before us as an attempt to try to resolve some of these issues.

All of those unanswered questions will, I hope, be answered during committee stage, when we enter into clause-by-clause debate with respect to this. I do hope, though, that the issues that I’ve raised in terms of the ramifications and the impacts on the rates as they relate to a dispute like this for the small businesses — for the storage, etc. — would be addressed somehow in Bill 5.

In reading Bill 5, I actually don’t see the clause or the section that deals with that. Maybe I’ve missed it. Maybe I haven’t looked at it carefully enough, but I actually don’t see that. Maybe the commission, somewhere in there, will address this. I hope that the minister will address this as well. This is paramount for the small business communities who rely on access to the port in a timely manner. Through no fault of their own, as a result,
[ Page 5061 ]
they actually faced penalties that they, really, in my view, should not have had to incur.

I look forward to the minister’s comments. Maybe he’ll shed some light on this in terms of how that aspect of the Container Trucking Act would address these kinds of concerns for the thousands upon thousands of small business people in our communities.

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

Hon. T. Stone: First off, I want to thank all members who rose and made a few comments on this particular bill. I think the comments thus far have been very thoughtful and focused. I certainly look forward to getting into more detail in committee stage and answering all of the questions that I know the members have.

I will say this. The genesis of this legislation, of Bill 5, really comes from the need to address two critical challenges facing the container trucking industry here in British Columbia.

First off, we want to ensure fair compensation for truckers. Back in March of this year, after a four-week-long dispute, through a lot of hard work, we were able to get the port reopened. That was the direct result of a 14-point joint action plan, which was negotiated in good faith with the truckers of British Columbia — the truckers that serve the port of Metro Vancouver specifically.

It is very, very important that the rates, whether they be the hourly rates, the trip rates, the fuel surcharges or other related components…. It’s very important that these commitments, which were negotiated in good faith by the UTA, by the unions that were present that day and, certainly, by government representatives…. It’s very important that these rates be respected and implemented.

[1845]

The work stoppage — the four-week shutdown — which was predicated on the truckers’ frustrations, was the direct result of a tremendous amount of rampant rate undercutting and, literally in some cases, a race to the bottom, from a rates perspective.

Fundamentally, that needs to be addressed. That was addressed in March as part of the joint action plan. This path that we’re now on, certainly, with this legislation will ensure fair compensation for truckers, who deserve the compensation that they were promised back in March.

The second key genesis of this legislation is the need to take action today to ensure long-term competitiveness of the port, competitiveness not just for the next six to nine to 12 months, not just for the next few years, not just till the next shutdown, but for the long term.

I will remind this House that about $126 million worth of goods moves through the port every single day. As I think a number of members on both sides of the House today have indicated, that number, $126 million, when you actually break it down into real examples…. These are people that are trying to get parts for their businesses. These are companies that are trying to get their products out for export. These are a huge number of small businesses in every corner of the province who are trying to grow their businesses. They need the services of the port.

This is food that comes in through the port. Important medical supplies and other important products come through our port. There are 90,000 jobs that are dependent upon the port being open. That doesn’t count the tens of thousands of additional jobs that directly spin off because we have a vibrant port in Vancouver.

It is a good thing that, for the most part, for a number of years now the port has been competitive. It has been competitive with other ports around North America. But we want to do better. We believe that we can do better. We believe that the port of Metro Vancouver can be the most competitive port in North America.

For that to happen, that means we need to all come together. We need to build upon the strengths that we already have, the strengths of people. We have amazing men and women who work at the port. We have world-class infrastructure at the port. As I mentioned earlier, in my remarks at the opening of second reading, we also have a number of other competitive advantages, including the proximity to Asia. Our ports are simply closer to Asian markets than other ports are in North America.

That means that — to be stable, to be reliable, which are the underpinning requirements of competitiveness — we must take action. We have to ensure that the conditions at the port are such that a shutdown is no longer possible, can no longer happen. If we want to continue to build markets overseas, if we want to continue to import and export commodities, we need a reliable port. That is fundamental to our reputation as an important trading partner in the world context.

The path forward, as I’ve stated, has been the result of a tremendous amount of hard work on the part of many different people and organizations. Certainly, as others have acknowledged, I would like to thank the hard work of all of the men and women in the ministries, the provincial ministries, certainly in the Ministry of Transportation. I want to thank my colleague the Minister of Jobs and Minister Responsible for Labour, who has tirelessly worked by my side on this file.

I certainly want to thank everyone in the Premier’s office. I think the contributions that the federal government are making on this file are not insignificant. I’ll touch on those again in a moment. The port, the terminal, shippers, truck companies, the unions and, last but certainly not least, truckers — a tremendous amount of hard work has gone into this file on the part of all of these different individuals and organizations.

[1850]

Certainly, the foundation for moving forward, the path for moving forward on these two fronts to address fair compensation and competitiveness, really is built upon
[ Page 5062 ]
the recommendations of Vince Ready and Corinn Bell, who have also put countless hours in on this file, meeting with all of the different stakeholders in this industry over the last number of months.

As everyone in this House can acknowledge, and certainly I know everybody understands, this is a complex file. There are complex jurisdictional realities. There are competing interests. There are lots of moving parts.

There have been failed attempts in the past at trying to bring stability to this port — long-term stability. The work is not done. What we are doing here today with this bill is one piece of the solution moving forward.

I will reiterate that the action we’re taking today is part of an unprecedented federal and provincial cooperation, collaboration. The federal government is very much at the table with us, working hard to fix their piece of this. Their piece of this relates to the truck licence reforms. The need which everyone in the industry has acknowledged, including truckers, is the need to have fewer trucks serving the port — the need to address the reality that today there are simply too many trucks chasing too few containers.

The federal government currently has the jurisdictional responsibility for truck licences. As was announced a couple of weeks ago, the federal Minister of Transport, Lisa Raitt, and the port of Metro Vancouver will be working very hard over the next couple of months with all stakeholders in the industry to define new criteria that will be used to determine who will actually hold a licence in terms of serving the port.

All of that work will be done by the federal government. The province has, frankly, no role in that piece of the solution moving forward. I will say, and I know my colleague the Minister of Education mentioned in his comments, that we certainly, in offering some input to the federal government on the licence reform, have indicated we would like the feds to be as equitable and fair as they possibly can be with truckers.

Certainly, we’ve advocated very strongly for some federal transition assistance to assist those truckers who will be displaced as a result of the truck licence reforms. While the federal government and the port are undergoing their work in reforming the truck licence system, we are undergoing our work here with Bill 5.

Through Bill 5, we will accomplish a number of things. First, we will ensure that there is rate regulation in this sector and rate regulation across the entire dock. Currently only 20 percent of the truck moves on dock are actually captured by the current federal regulations. Once all the dust settles on this coordinated federal and provincial action, and certainly through this bill provincially, the entire dock will be covered via provincial regulation, which will make it that much easier and that much more efficient to ensure that the rate regulation can apply across the entire dock.

We will ensure that as a starting point, through regulation, the starting rates are those rates which were negotiated in good faith last March. That is very important. It is important that those commitments again be honoured to the truckers.

The legislation will also provide for the creation of the office of the container trucking commissioner. That office will be independent of government. That office will have the authority on a go-forward basis to assume all responsibilities for rate regulation. This office will be responsible for the whistle-blower mechanism and also will be responsible for the audit function. This office will eventually also be responsible for truck licensing. But again, that piece will only fall into place once the federal government and the port of Metro Vancouver have completed their reduction in the number of truck licences.

So with that, I want to say that all of this collaboration and coordination between the federal government, the province and the ports and other industry stakeholders is going to be represented through a tremendous flurry of activity and more work that’s going to take place from now right through till the end of January, early February.

[1855]

We expect by February of next year to have all of these pieces in place. By doing so, we believe that we will, on the one hand, have taken the strongest action we can to ensure fair compensation for truckers, all the while positioning our port, Canada’s port, as the most competitive port in North America.

With that, again, I thank everyone for their contributions. I look forward to the detailed discussions in committee stage, and I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Hon. T. Stone: I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole House to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 5, Container Trucking Act, read a second time and referred to a Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. T. Lake moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Madame Speaker: This House, at its rising, stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow morning.

The House adjourned at 6:55 p.m.

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