Orders of the Day

Hon. R. Kahlon: I call continued debate on the budget.

Budget Debate

(continued)

E. Sturko: I’m going to continue my response to last week’s budget.

I mentioned earlier the feelings of anxiety I had knowing how many people in B.C. are struggling. In fact, I would even say a lot of people are suffering as a result of a lack of action by this government, a lack of funding for important programming. But I was also left shocked by a lack of investment in schools.

[1:35 p.m.]

Even those schools that were already promised by this government, not only once, but multiple times, including in election campaigns, did not receive the funding that they were promised.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

There is no new Olympic Village school funding, despite multiple promises from the minister that it would be in the budget. No mention of an eight-classroom expansion to Langley’s Nicomekl Elementary to address overcrowding. And in Surrey, which is of course B.C.’s largest school district, where students in multiple high schools now will be in staggered starts as part of an extended school day, there are no new schools. No new schools anywhere.

I know the Minister of Education got upset that I said this last week, but everything that’s in the budget for education is a project that was already underway or previously announced. Nowhere is it meeting the needs of school districts across the province. It’s actually gross. This is a government that promised to eliminate portables. Instead, we have double-decker portables and kids going to school in shifts.

This is a government that promised one thing and is delivering the exact opposite. For many, it’s a government that’s lost its credibility.

Not only in schoolyards is it that we’re full of portables, but there’s also a portable outside the emergency room at Surrey Memorial Hospital. Conditions at Surrey Memorial have been so dire that doctors and nurses and health care workers had to hold a rally to get the minister’s attention. For weeks, the minister and this government denied there was even a crisis going on at Surrey Memorial, even though doctors were risking reprimand by going to the public to talk about conditions which had become dangerous. It was at that time the minister assured health care providers and members of our community that improvements were coming, improvements at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Yet when you open the budget, there’s nothing there. There’s no funding for improvements at Surrey Memorial Hospital.

The Cloverdale hospital, which is essentially, at this time, an empty field, was already $1 billion over budget before construction even began.

To justify the NDP’s record deficit budget, the Finance Minister stood up in this House yesterday in question period and started fearmongering. She says that the only way to balance the budget is by making cuts. But having a responsible budget is about financial competence. That’s something that clearly this government lacks. So it’s either a case of underestimating the true cost of capital projects or absolute mismanagement. How do you run $1 billion over budget on something that you haven’t even started?

You don’t have to imagine that, but do imagine hiring a repair service to your own home. Then you get a quote for the repairs. Then when you get the bill, it’s $1 billion more than you agreed to. That’s what the NDP is doing to us. That’s what they’re doing to people in this province, and that’s how they’re spending your money.

The $1 billion cost overrun for the Cloverdale hospital could have gone a long way to improving Surrey Memorial Hospital or towards building schools or housing or transportation infrastructure.

Right now housing is so expensive that no one can afford it. Our taxes are high, and our wallets are empty.

Health care is so mismanaged in this province that we’ve lost trust that it will even be there when we need it. The overdose public health emergency is so bad that it’s the leading cause of death in people under age 59 in our province. I cannot say it enough. Seven people a day are losing their lives in British Columbia to drug overdoses.

People in our province are also feeling so unsafe. Small businesses are closing under the weight of unending threats and intimidation. They’re losing customers because people refuse to walk through a gauntlet of drugs, smoke and human feces. It’s ridiculous. Just over $70,000 of the $10.5 million securing small business rebate program has been deployed to businesses due to red tape and application processes.

Regardless, even…. You have to think: you open the budget and maybe you do see a few things in there for people, but you cannot trust this government to be able to implement them. They’ve proven it time and time again over the past seven years, whether it’s with child care or whether it’s with small business programs.

[1:40 p.m.]

This budget has no mention of ending David Eby’s catch-and-release justice system or the NDP’s failed de­criminalization experiment. In fact, decriminalization wasn’t even mentioned once in the budget. This is despite Budget 2023 allocating $184 million over three years to safe supply and $19 million over three years to implement decriminalization.

While the NDP’s decriminalized drugs left people with­out proper supports, B.C. United has a plan. We have a plan to help people access treatment, a plan that will help people rebuild their lives.

Earlier this morning the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions spoke about 180 beds — 80 of which are not available, by the way — that would be accessible to the public, that the government would fund. But B.C. United put forward a plan last February called Better Is Possible, which would make treatment and recovery services acces­sible by removing financial barriers for every British Columbian. Not just 180 beds, but everyone who needs treatment and wants to recover in this province will get the help that they need.

Don’t forget that this is our plan, but it doesn’t mean this government couldn’t have implemented those same things. They fail to recognize that this affordability crisis that they’re responsible for in this province is impacting people with mental health and addictions. You know what? People don’t have the savings account to be able to pay for privately funded treatment beds. They need help to access those.

If you are already receiving social assistance or living on a very low income, there’s a likelihood you might be able to access subsidized care. If you’re super rich, then finance isn’t creating a barrier for you. But for the majority of British Columbians and for the majority of people who are suffering from mental health and addictions issues in this province, one of the largest barriers they face is a financial barrier that this government could have funded. Yet they did not add anything new in the budget for mental health and addictions.

B.C. United has a plan. It’s also one that will not only make our community safer, but it’s going to help address the root cause of social disorder and crime in B.C.

It’s clear that the NDP budget is a mess, and it’s clear that it’s only set to get worse. But rest assured, B.C. United has a plan, and united, we’ll fix it.

D. Routley: I appreciate the opportunity to stand in support of Budget 2024.

First, I’d like to acknowledge that we’re gathered here on the traditional lands of the Songhees and Esquimalt people.

Also at home and at work, in the constituency I represent, I represent people who live in the territories of the MÁLEXEŁ, Cowichan, Lake Cowichan, Halalt, Spu­ne’luxutth, Lyackson, Stz’uminus and Snuneymuxw Nations.

It’s a great privilege to have grown up in those areas and to represent the people who I grow up with.

I’m so proud to be a British Columbian. I’m so proud of our province and the great place that it is to build a life, to live and to have a family.

We have so many natural advantages. We have the natural advantages of our forests, our minerals. We have the natural advantages of our environment, of the rivers and the lakes, the coast we call home on Vancouver Island.

We also have an overwhelmingly huge natural advantage, and that is in the people of British Columbia, some of the younger ones I see walking into the chamber now, into the gallery. These people, the people of British Columbia, are the foundation stone of what we call a successful and thriving province. It is, in fact, that belief that underpins all of the values represented in this budget.

[1:45 p.m.]

We have enormous economic advantages in that we have strong public services that support a thriving private entrepreneurial economy that is diverse and represents a broad range of cultures and participants.

Above all of those things, I would suggest we have the natural advantage of the reconciliation effort that’s underway in this province. this fantastic partnership that is too long in coming but is finally beginning to deliver the benefits that, I think we all agree, it always should have.

We have seen efforts, even in this building, with the phrases at the front of the building, the involvement of cultural components into the events and process in this building. We are entering a new world with our partners, the First Nations of British Columbia. It is that that underpins all the principles and direction of this government, both in its throne speech and here, realized in the budget.

Nanaimo–North Cowichan, the area that I represent, is like the rest of British Columbia, as I have just described — full of people who are committed to their province, to their communities, to their families, to their neighbours. Organizations, non-profits, volunteers — people who are giving of themselves and collaborating, combining their efforts to meet the challenges that our province faces.

We have, in this province, thankfully, very low unemployment, one of the lowest unemployment rates of major provinces in this country. We also have the highest wage growth in the country, amongst large prov­inces. These are two things that combine to paint a bright picture for the future for the young people who sit up in the gallery right now.

This province is an economic leader in this country. We have shown the way through our investments in people. We have shown that investing in the people of British Columbia, the public services that support them, will enable people to thrive. In fact, it’s a partnership, and this government will not surrender its role in that partnership when tough times come. In fact, we will emphasize, re-emphasize and reinvest in the people of British Columbia.

We do face huge challenges in this province, as other provinces in this country and other countries on this globe face. We face higher interest rates, higher inflation, and we face a slower global economy. Those three things combine to present a challenge to the families of British Columbia, to the organizations, to the public services and to this government. But our response is to support people through those tough times. Our response is to reinvest and to even make a bigger commitment to the people of British Columbia.

We’ve seen how the other side responds to those kinds of challenges. I was a school trustee during the tenure of the B.C. Liberal government, and most of my time was spent organizing the defence of small schools that were being closed. Instead of reinvesting in people, we saw the cancellation of child care programs, the cancellation of a housing program and massive tax breaks for the wealthy amongst us, while the rest of us were forced to pay for those tax breaks through a deficit in services and challenges to families.

We saw the cuts. We saw vulnerable British Columbians left out, and we are still dealing with the consequences of that. Still to this day, we struggle to reassert the role, the highest place in our province being that of investment in people.

The last few years of success have been built on a different set of principles, as is this budget. This budget is built on the principles of partnership, investment in the number one resource our province, the people, and the actioning and leveraging of the natural advantages of this province, the economic advantage we enjoy being closer to the Pacific Rim, being positioned on the coast, being positioned in the same time zone as Silicon Valley, thereby supporting our tech industry and our movie and entertainment industries.

[1:50 p.m.]

We have great natural advantages, and it is, I believe, the role of government to leverage and action those advan­tages to the benefit of the people of British Columbia.

We have seen commitments in housing that are unprecedented, billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of units built. Just in the constituency I represent, Nanaimo–North Cowichan, we’ve seen over 1,800 housing units already completed.

In education, we’ve seen commitment after commitment to hire more teachers, more specialty teachers. My own mother was a school librarian and, when she retired, the longest-serving teacher in our district. My father was an administrator. My sister is a teacher currently in Vancouver, and I was a school trustee, as I mentioned.

We have made commitments because we know that is the foundation stone of what makes a great and strong province. Just in this budget, we see a doubling of the provincial commitment to capital spending on new schools, on seismic renovation of schools and on expansion of schools. We’ve seen almost $1 billion committed to hiring new teachers, new support staff, new specialty services for children in the K-to-12 system.

In health care, we’ve seen a massive commitment. Yes, health care since the pandemic has been under a huge challenge. This province, in the last year, has attracted over 700 family doctors, and that is an outstanding feat well above any other province’s accomplishment in that area. We’ve also seen the hiring of an additional 6,000 nurses, a total of 30,000 people added to the public health care workforce. That will answer the challenges, but it takes time to see those answers materialize.

We’ve seen, in reconciliation, agreement after agreement and new relationships founded between communities, between First Nations themselves, and a new em­powerment that is being propelled by this government’s commitment to encourage the leadership of First Nations in the decision-making on the land base and in the decision-making around resources that come off of their territories. That is an enormous turnaround.

All of these are partnerships. All of these are the partnerships that underpin the values and the principles represented in this budget and in the throne speech last week. These principles put into action have delivered for people.

I used to run a small business importing bicycles and manufacturing bicycles and distributing in North America. While my father was an administrator in the school system, we often had conversations about the public versus private sector and how there’s this tension. It is unfortunate, because in fact, strong public services are the reason that British Columbia is able to punch above its weight class and compete in markets far bigger than our own, because our business people are well educated, our business people are well supported, small businesses are well supported, and they’re well supported in this budget.

These principles are indeed the foundation of the budget. It’s a budget that will support people through these tougher times that I discussed. It’s a budget that reaffirms government’s commitment to its role in that grand partnership. Now that things are tough, what we would have seen from the B.C. Liberals in the past would be an abandonment of the role of government in that partnership. That is the last thing that this government will do.

Our commitment is to people, to families, to small business, to technology, future skills and a clean economy. This budget propels British Columbia into the next phase. It positions B.C. to leverage those strengths that I mentioned, that I hold to be the highest order of what we come here to defend and represent. It takes those investments made in people, in partnerships and in reconciliation and leverages them so that we can enjoy the dividends of those investments in the near future.

[1:55 p.m.]

In fact, we already are, when we see that communities that were struggling are beginning to thrive, that people who struggled are finding their way, that children who lived in care of the province now have free access to post-secondary education. This allows people to thrive, and that is the commitment of this government.

The other side would have us disinvest, as they did in their time. Tax breaks for wealthy friends. They were paid for by you, by me, by our families, by the most vulnerable British Columbians. Then they were paid for again by our public services. It really is a choice, right out of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, between people working together for each other, like Bedford Falls, or people left to fend for themselves, like Pottersville.

That would weaken the public services British Columbians have built. British Columbians have built our public services. British Columbians have made the investment that this government seeks to build on and protect.

Instead, by working together, we can support people against today’s challenges. We have the country’s third-lowest debt-to-GDP ratio. Our debt-servicing costs are 3.2 cents per dollar, less than half of what Quebec is and less than half the cost of Ontario’s debt.

The opposition, when they were in power, on their first day, gave a huge tax break to the most wealthy British Columbians. Everyone else paid for that for 15 years. They phonied balanced budgets by driving B.C. Hydro into the ground, forcing B.C. Hydro to borrow in order to pay dividends that didn’t exist.

That dumpster fire was the first big job for our government to fix. They would do it again, and we can’t afford that. They fleeced ICBC of hundreds of millions of dollars, driving up rates for everyone. They would do it again, and we can’t afford that. But perhaps worse than all that, they inflicted huge cuts to public services, deficits in services.

Education: larger class sizes, less support for students, fewer teacher-librarians. They closed schools throughout the province, the cynical attachment of funding to a per-student model at a time when they knew enrolment was going to go through a significant but temporary dip. That took finances for districts with it and forced school closures, forced cuts to programs. We are still repairing those damages, those deficits in education and health care.

Disinvestment in health care and education is another thing that British Columbians cannot afford. We cannot afford that tragedy again, because it isn’t merely a temporary thing. Students who went through school at that time were deprived of the fullness of the experience that is available to them now, with a reinvestment. But that time is gone for those students. Communities have lost schools. Communities have lost school properties as districts were forced to sell properties.

They sold off vital public lands to their insiders and big-money donors at fractions of their true value. They sold the land for the Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Our budget maintains precious investments in our province, positioning us to thrive once we see interest rates return to lower rates and the global economy recover.

We’ve been very clear about what our priorities are and where our investments are going. Our forecasts are cautious. They are done by technical experts in the Ministry of Finance, and they are well within the range of the Economic Forecast Council.

If B.C. Business Council’s latest forecast was incorporated, the new economic forecast average for 2024 would be unchanged, 0.5 percent change, and for 2025, there would be an increase of 2.2 percent, from 2.1 percent.

The Economic Forecast Council estimated that B.C. real GDP expanded by 0.9 percent in 2023 and expects growth of 0.5 percent in 2024 and 2.1 percent in 2025, broadly aligned with the national average.

The Ministry of Finance’s forecast is 0.8 percent for 2024 and 2.3 percent for 2025. Our debt-to-GDP, as I said, is one of the lowest in the country. We are an economic leader.

[2:00 p.m.]

The other option would be not to build hospitals, housing, schools and roads and transit projects we are building. It would mean cuts to all the infrastructure that people depend on. Our communities are growing. People cannot afford that. We need to invest to have our province come out of these times in a position to thrive. Some would say we should make cuts during these slower times, but we know that doesn’t work.

Our population is aging and growing. People are facing big challenges, and it’s only by supporting people through tough times, by providing key services and infrastructure that we need, that we can build a stronger British Columbia. Our budget maintains those precious investments, and we will see a recovery. This province will be ready to take advantage of that recovery.

Highlights of the budget include the highest GDP growth between 2017 and 2022 among large provinces, at 14.4 percent over that period of time. B.C. has recorded the highest-average hourly wages in the country. From 2017 to 2023, exports increased by 30 percent, putting us in a strong place to weather today’s slower global economy. From 2017 to 2023, women’s employment grew by over 100,000 people, and that is directly attributable to investments and commitments to child care.

These are the things that benefit people. We help peo­ple with costs. The B.C. family benefit is increasing by $248 million. Families will see a 25 percent increase in their benefit.

Individuals will see a $100 electrical credit from B.C. Hydro, and businesses will see a $400 credit. This is a B.C. Hydro that was essentially run into the ground by the previous B.C. Liberal, B.C. United, BCUP — whatever we’ll call them today — government.

Climate action and the tax credit for climate action. A family of four received $890 last year, and now this coming year, they’ll receive $1,005. Individuals who received $447 will now receive $504. The majority of British Columbians will receive more credit than they paid.

So when the other side bemoans the carbon tax that in fact they brought in, they are saying to British Columbians that rather than receive more credit than the carbon tax you’ve paid, you’re on your own. This government will never say that to British Columbians. This government will never cut people loose.

The employers health tax is a good example. It was put in place after the MSP premium was cut. The MSP premium cut was the largest tax break to the middle class in a generation. Every province other than British Columbia has an employers health tax. The B.C. employers health tax was the lowest in the country when it was introduced, and now we make it better.

The exemptions for businesses to pay the employers health tax will…. Instead of $500,000 and below, in the past, it will now be $1 million and below. Even those businesses up to $1.5 million will pay a graduated tax.

The 2024 renters tax credit of $400 will help people with the challenges they face in acquiring housing. Housing is one of the biggest challenges in this province. As I said, in the constituency I represent alone, over 1,800 units have already been delivered, and more are on the way. This doesn’t even count student housing. This doesn’t even count all the units that have been freed up through speculation and vacancy tax.

This doesn’t even count the units that will be created through the multiple-unit housing on single residential lot regulation that has been brought forward. We are building more homes faster than ever. Short-term rentals are being brought under control because people need homes. People in this province need to come first.

[2:05 p.m.]

We are expanding the speculation and vacancy tax to some of the communities in my constituency. And I can tell you that every mayor of those communities affected was asking for that to happen. Land near transit is being used for homes. That will take greater advantage of investments that are already being made in transit and make those investments more secure and more effective.

Secondary suites in all British Columbia communities will mean homeowners will have the chance to participate as partners in delivering housing solutions to the people in their own communities, everywhere in this province.

We are capping rents well below inflation. The previous B.C. Liberal government had ruled that rent increases could be the inflation rate plus 2 percent. We capped it at 2 percent, well below the inflation rate currently.

If we had not done that, rents would have increased by probably, per year, 4 to 5 percent more. That would be permanent inflation. So even when those landlords see their mortgages on those homes reduced when interest rates return to lower rates, those rents would not go down. They would be permanently inflated. I just don’t see how that makes any economic sense for British Columbians. Secondary suites in all our communities will help everyone.

Preserving rental stock with a rental protection fund that one of our friends spoke about earlier today is ensuring that rental stock can be protected from redevelopment and being taken out of the rental mix.

The new B.C. home-flipping tax, introduced in this budget, is something that will reduce speculation — speculation that has mercilessly driven up prices for British Columbians.

Property tax exemptions being expanded will also help first-time homebuyers. So $895,000 will be the exemption point, and that first $500,000 will be exempt. That should save first-time homebuyers up to $8,000.

BC Builds is receiving another $198 million, adding up to billions, along with the federal government that recognizes the value of that program to build new homes for middle-income British Columbians and families.

Health care in the constituency I represent. The Cowichan District Hospital, the original previous hospital, currently under use but soon to be replaced, was opened in 1967 as a centennial project. I remember standing as a six-year-old holding my dad’s hand at the opening of that hospital.

My assistant, when this government announced the new hospital, noted to me that part of the problem with the old hospital was the ground had shifted underneath the hospital. So I asked her: “You’re saying that there’s actually been a seismic evolution in that hospital, a tectonic shift?” She said, “Yeah,” so I informed her that yes, I was there at the opening, embarrassingly. So that’s how old I am, and that’s how old that hospital is.

But the new hospital will serve our communities, will have many services that we don’t currently have and will be a shining example of the investments this government has made.

There’s a new intensive care unit already open in Na­naimo, millions of dollars committed by this government.

There will be a cancer care clinic in Nanaimo so that residents don’t have to drive all the way down over the Malahat to Victoria to receive care.

Capital investments in this budget: $13 billion, 700 new doctors, 6,000 new nurses, 30,000 new health care workers. These are commitments to the people of British Columbia.

In education, there’s a new high school in the Cowichan Valley set to open next year, a beautiful new high school. I grew up about six houses from the old high school, another reminder of just how old I am.

We’re going to see $4.2 billion put into capital investments in the education system. Rather than closing schools — as I had to try to avoid as a school trustee, had to fight for the schools that I went to as a child — we’ll see new schools. Gabriola saw an accessible playground that is in use by the entire community. A wonderful thing.

[2:10 p.m.]

We have 13,000 more students in this province because people are coming here because they see what a great province this is and what backstop this great government is providing. And that is being met with a $968 million investment in staff increases to support those children.

In the climate emergency, we see a $405 million commitment. For wildfire, $154 million in operating expenses supporting my stepson, Matt Baird, as he travels around the province and fights fire. I’m so proud of him and his commitment to that work. And $21 million in capital, including a new forest wildfire centre in Prince George, $56 million for aviation challenges in the firefighting, $38 million for year-round staff.

I’ll close by reaffirming my support for this budget, reiterating my pride in standing here and representing this budget, reaffirming my commitment to the people who allowed me the honour of serving them here to fight for and to vote for and to represent their needs, their challenges and their strengths in this building.

I am so proud of the people I represent, the communities. They, like the rest of British Columbia, understand that we need to lock arm in arm, that we need to walk hand in hand, that we need to work together.

That’s the basic foundation of this government, whether it comes to public services or reconciliation. These are the commitments that will make a historical turn for this province and set us on a path that’s chosen by the people of British Columbia, chosen because it’s a positive path that puts them first, that recognizes that the strength of this province is the people, that we need to leverage everything we have and work to protect everything that’s in their interest.

That’s the role of this building. That’s why I came here 19 years ago, and I’m so proud of having been able to be here for that relatively short time in the history of this province, to have an opportunity to speak on behalf of the people I represent, because I believe in them, and I know that this government does too. This budget proves it.

M. Morris: When I first heard the budget speech and listened to the state of affairs of British Columbia being expressed by the minister when she read it, highlighting a lot of the problems that this province is facing right now, one of my first thoughts went to the fact that we’re mortgaging my grandchildren’s future, and perhaps my great-grandchildren’s future here as well.

I don’t think that’s right. We’re spending money that could be used to make British Columbia a better place for the children of our future generations.

We’re paying for bloated government services through increased carbon taxes, 30 other taxes that we have out here. We’ve got the highest gas prices in Canada. We’ve got the highest rents in Canada. We’ve got the highest home prices in Canada. To describe that, I have to go to a word that this government has been using time and time again for the last seven years — unprecedented.

This is the most unprecedented, inflationary debt that this government of British Columbia has ever seen in its history. That’s what we’re leaving. That’s the legacy that this government is leaving for my grandchildren, your grandchildren, our great-grandchildren out there.

There wasn’t anything in this government that gave me any confidence in the private sector. Private sector investment is what keeps this economy strong in British Columbia, in any economy, and we don’t see that. In fact, it’s shrinking. I think it shrunk by something like 6,000 jobs last year.

The public sector is growing. We see LNG Canada wrapping up. It’s been thousands of people working on that project. Coastal GasLink. Travelling through my riding, significant employment involved in that.

[2:15 p.m.]

We see Site C wrapping up. They’ll start filling up the reservoir very shortly, and Site C will be online providing well-needed power for British Columbians through­out, in the Lower Mainland. Between Site A, Site B and Site C on the Peace River system, and Williston Reservoir, of which a large portion is in my riding as well, providing probably 40 to 50 percent of the province’s power once that’s on board.

That has employed thousands of people, as well, over the last few years. I understand that now it’s down into the hundreds, and soon there won’t be any more construction on that particular project.

Then the Trans Mountain extension that has employed thousands of people and has gone millions of dollars over budget. It has been a vital part of local economies in the whole area — in fact, throughout British Columbia. There are a lot of contractors from throughout British Columbia that have been working on that project, as well as others.

There’s nothing else in the hopper. There’s nothing that I’ve seen that this government is trying to enhance.

We have some of the richest mineral deposits in the world sitting here in northwest British Columbia. We have an oil and gas sector that is second to none. We’ve got the richest liquid natural gas anywhere, sitting up in the Montney play. Yet there’s no effort to look at the petrochemical side of things.

The world runs on plastic. There’s nowhere that we see an emphasis on the plastic side of things that runs our society. The cars and the aircraft that we see have nothing but polymers in them for the large part, and we could be building those in British Columbia, not only building the raw materials from the liquids and the natural gas and our crude oil but also the downstream manufacturing opportunities that we see. We could be putting thousands of people to work.

Since 2018, when I talk about bloated government, this government has hired about 140,000 more public sector employees — 140,000. I think the cost associated with that is about $17 billion off the bottom line every year to support the salaries and whatnot of that. So 40 percent more workers in British Columbia today than we had in 2018, but the results are terrible. Nobody…. I don’t think there’s a citizen out there that can say that we’re getting better results for 40 percent more people working within the public sector.

We’ve never seen worse results in health care, the outcomes. Homelessness. Crime is running rampant in our communities. People feel unsafe when they walk in our downtown cores, our parks and our school grounds. The opiate deaths. Widespread addiction. The catch-and-release justice system that we see. They’re abysmal results right across the board.

I look at this, and I’m wondering: where are these 140,000 extra workers that are providing the results that we’re seeing today? Like, what are they doing?

I know the Health Minister — I think it was the minister — yesterday was talking about 35,000 more employees in the health sector in the province in that period of time. Why are the results…? Why do we have the longest wait times in Canada? Why do we have the worst cancer outcomes in the province? We have people dying of cancer because they haven’t been treated yet. And 35,000 extra people in the health care system.

Now, I’m wondering whether the minister has said…. They spent a lot of time converting a lot of the private contractors that were looking after the kitchens and the laundry and a lot of the support things that are very necessary in our health care system, and brought them in under the public sector unions to work in our hospitals and work in our health care system. But I wonder if that’s what he’s referring to — the 35,000 people that he’s brought in.

They were already working in the system, but they’ve converted from private into the public sector. Perhaps that’s what he meant.

The government’s position on decriminalization has utterly failed. Utterly failed. I haven’t seen a worse example of a social experiment anywhere that has failed as miserably as this has, particularly after other jurisdictions have used it and come up with absolutely abysmal results as well, at the end of the day.

[2:20 p.m.]

This is allowing the opioid crisis to paralyze British Columbian society. It has paralyzed us. It has paralyzed our community centres. It has paralyzed our court system. It has paralyzed the police. There’s downtown lawlessness, illegal encampments. Hospital emergency rooms are full all the time. A lot of it can be attributed to the opiate crisis. A lot of it can.

B.C. United would scrap that the minute we get elected into power in the next election. I look at that. I’ve been against decriminalization ever since it was initiated by this government, where they said the police don’t go out and seize these small amounts of drugs: 2.5 grams of fentanyl, of heroin, of cocaine, crystal meth, a combination. It doesn’t matter what it is, but 2.5 grams or less.

The police were seizing those drugs before because they’re illegal to have. They weren’t charging anybody. We haven’t had criminal charges processed against individuals for simple possession for a decade, at least, or more, in the province. So in effect, we’ve had decriminalization.

I say this. When you look at the minute amount of drug that can cause an overdose…. If a drug trafficker has not mixed it properly, and it’s got a little bit more fentanyl in that particular sample than it should, it doesn’t take very much. How many lives did the police save by seizing that 2.5 grams of drugs prior? How many lives have been lost since because people have been allowed to keep 2.5 grams of tainted drugs that they’ve spread around our communities? I think that’s something that was never looked at properly.

Increased violence, fighting over the lucrative opiate demands that we have in the province here, transnational crime that now is focusing on British Columbia as a great place to set up camp…. In fact, we’re exporting gang members from British Columbia to run their international organizations from foreign countries. We have homeless camps full of people suffering from addictions and mental illness freezing to death.

I was speaking to an orthopedic surgeon a year or so ago. He was in complete despair over the fact that he had to amputate four legs during the months of February and March last year. That didn’t count the number of fingers and toes and other limbs that orthopedic surgeons had to remove in Prince George, let alone any other part of the province here, where we have people becoming overdosed on drugs.

They fall asleep, they pass out, and they end up losing a lot of their limbs. The people that go through that end up on support — public support, medical support — for the rest of their lives because they can’t function on their own anymore.

I read a report a number of years ago, about four or five years ago now, that the B.C. Centre for Disease Control had out on the acquired brain injury that individuals suffer as a result of the overdoses. Every time they overdose, that acquired brain injury gets progressively worse until the individual ends up dying from an overdose, or they’re homeless on the street and they can’t function any longer because of that acquired brain injury.

To me, that’s tragic. That’s what we’re seeing in our homeless camps in a lot of our downtowns and our parks. It’s people with the acquired brain injury as a result of their dependency on the different drugs and the number of overdoses that they’ve had. That doesn’t seem to get the attention of this particular government.

I’ll use Prince George for an example, but I’m sure that the same thing can apply in many of our other communities around the province here. Homelessness is a concern for everybody. But when I look at the work that B.C. Housing has done in my region…. I’ve known some folks that work for B.C. Housing in there, and I’ve known them for years. They go out of their way to ensure that there’s a home provided for individuals.

My office did a lot of research into this in the last couple months. At any given night in Prince George throughout this winter, there have always been available beds. Always been beds available for anybody that wanted them.

There was no need to have anybody living in Moccasin Flats or any other homeless camp in Prince George be­cause there was accommodation for them. But people chose not to live in those accommodations.

[2:25 p.m.]

Society runs on rules. We need rules. We need that centre line going down the highway to keep people on the right side of the road. We need the regulations out there to keep people mindful of how a just society will work.

A lot of the individuals that remain in these homeless camps choose to remain there because they don’t have to abide by any rules anymore. Lawlessness appears to be the game. In Moccasin Flats, I think we have had one homicide and one shooting just so far this year, since January, and a number of other terrible criminal tragedies have happened there.

In my view, the province has abrogated their responsibilities. Health is a provincial issue, housing is a provincial issue, but they seem to pass it on to the communities or municipalities. Our municipalities have been burdened now, and all these responsibilities have been downloaded. I have heard the government members talking about it, where they expect communities to come up with accommodation for addictions treatment, mental illness, housing and all those facilities that are a responsibility of government.

If the government were serious about addictions and mental illness, they would have done something more than provide a safe supply of drugs for everybody. On addiction, there’s nothing in the budget to show that they have placed this as a high risk throughout the province, where they plan….

You know, they’re talking about having 600 addictions treatment beds in the province, as if that’s a pretty good number. We have over 2,000 people a year that are addicts dying from opiate overdoses — 2,000 every year — let alone the thousands that are suffering from acquired brain injury, and all we have is 600 beds.

That’s deplorable. It is absolutely deplorable that we only have 600 beds to deal with the thousands and thousands of opiate addicts that we have, let alone the addicts to some of the other substances that we have out there. I think the province has really abrogated their responsibility when it comes to that.

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

When I look at the 140,000 new employees the government has hired since 2018, where are they, when we see more than 2,000 people a year dying from opiate overdoses? Where are they when we see the homeless camps burgeoning and exploding in some of our parks in our regions? Where are these 140,000 employees that are supposed to make life more affordable and better for everybody?

I look at policing in the province, and it has been significantly affected by the opiate crisis as well. Police have to wait for weeks and months for lab testing results to come back for a simple blood test for impaired driving, because our labs are under-resourced. I don’t see how many of the 140,000 people have gone into manning some of these laboratories so that we can get those results back and start prosecuting some of these offences before the time limits, which police are constrained with, run out at the end of the day.

Police make a drug seizure of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, whatever that case might be, and they have to send those samples to the laboratory to be analyzed before they can even entertain charging individuals. Sometimes those samples are taking weeks and months to come back, and then the big disclosure package has to be put together by the police, as well, at that particular time.

We’re often seeing delays of a year or two before any charges are laid because of the lack of resources on policing, on all the support systems that the police need within the labs, and whatnot. We also see our courts plugged up, at the end of the day. We see a lack of sheriffs across the province.

You know, the government announced a little while ago that we were seeing a little dribble of maybe 13 or 14 sheriffs graduating and moving into Prince George and other communities in the province. I think it was last year that there were something like 90 cases that had to be put over because there were no sheriffs to provide security in those courtrooms. Where is that in relation to the 140,000 people that were hired by the province?

[2:30 p.m.]

Some 70 percent of B.C. Corrections inmates today are in there for remand, waiting for trial or waiting for a bail hearing for those that are held for bail. It’s got to be pretty darn serious before somebody is held for bail these days. But 70 percent of the Corrections population are waiting in remand. That’s unacceptable.

Where are the prosecutors that we need in order to start holding these? Where are the judges that we need? Where’s the extra court time that we have? You know, we run our hospital 7/24. We run our corrections centres 7/24. Perhaps it’s time to hire the judges and prosecutors that we need and the court staff and the sheriffs that we need in order to run our court systems 7/24 as well. There’s not one metric that I saw in place that indicates that we’re going to be seeing some improvement.

B.C. United has announced our Better Is Possible. I like that platform because it talks about building addictions treatment centres regionally as well as provincially. We will be giving anybody that wants treatment for any kind of addiction immediate attention and start their recovery process with no arbitrary timelines involved in that at all.

We’re going to be building psychiatric treatment centres regionally and provincially as well. When we look at the number of acquired brain injuries that we have right across the province here, there’s going to be a lot of need for this in the future. The paranoia that’s attached to some of the other drugs, the crystal meth, some of the psychosis that’s developed as a result of taking a lot of these….

We’re going to talk about a safer B.C. We’re going to aggressively fill 500 policing positions across the province, provincial policing positions across the province, to address a lot of the deficiencies there. Like I said, we’re going to end decriminalization. We’re going to have alternate sentencing. It’s not just jail, but we’re going to make sure that individuals that commit criminal offences are going to be held accountable and that there will be consequences for that at the end of the day.

All crimes will be treated seriously. We’re going to pursue civil consequences for trafficking causing death. Drug trafficking with fentanyl or carfentanil…. We saw that large seize that was made by CFSEU here a few days ago in B.C. Anybody that takes carfentanil or fentanyl-laced drugs and dies as a result of that…. I think there’s criminal negligence involved, and there should be some conse­quences for that at the end of the day.

In the last few minutes that I have here, I’m going to talk about natural resources a little bit here. The non-disclosure agreements, I think, have been running rampant with this particular government. In fact, instead of being called the New Democrat Party, I think they should be called the non-disclosure party because of the amount of these disclosure agreements that are signed out there by individuals.

I have got a lot of people I know, First Nations I know, who have been working with the government. We’re dealing with public assets when we talk about forestry, when we talk about mineral resources, when we talk about oil and gas resources.

Those are public resources, and 92 or 94 percent of the land in British Columbia is public land. Yet anybody that’s negotiating with government on any of these issues dealing with our resource bases in British Columbia is required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. “Don’t talk about it to anybody. We’re going to do all this in secret. We’re going to do all the decision-making behind the scenes in secret and keep British Columbians out of the loop.”

That’s wrong. It should be as transparent as any discussion that we have in this House or anywhere. These are public assets that should be…. The negotiation should be available to the entire public. Any land use should be available to the entire public so that we’re aware of what’s going on.

There’s nothing present in the throne speech that I could see that addresses, I think, one of the greatest dangers facing British Columbia. They talked a little bit about fighting fires and wildfires and floods.

There’s a recent study out that was released in December of this year, and it’s a culmination of about 25 years of science. It was UBC forestry that put it out.

[2:35 p.m.]

What they have identified is…. They have definitively linked the loss of forest cover to the increased frequency and magnitude of flooding in British Columbia. They’re saying that as a result of the loss of forest cover, we are seeing the magnitude of floods increase and the frequency increase where we see our communities, along the entire Fraser Basin — it’s a long waterway — and some of the other communities that we see in British Columbia. A lot of those floods can be attributable to the loss of forest cover that we see. That was an eye-opener for me.

I first came across some of the research probably about five years ago on this, and I was reading up on it. The Forest Practices Board alerted government to this in the report from, I believe it was, late 2016 that highlighted this particular fact.

I looked at some of the research studies that they had referred to in that report. What they were saying is that in the southern Interior in British Columbia, it takes 80 years for a conifer tree to grow to a height necessary to provide a level of protection to prevent the massive snow melt that we see in the spring freshet in snow-dominated regions in the province here — 80 years. Up in the northern Interior, it takes longer. It’s probably 100 or more years in the northern Interior.

When we look at the fact that British Columbia has clear-cut logged, removed the forest canopy from over 20 million hectares since the mid-1960s — that’s only 60 years ago, 55 to 60 years ago — none of those trees have re­covered to the extent necessary to provide the same level of protection that the original forest provided. When you look at that factor and the fact that we are still cutting in a fairly significant way, about 35 million cubic hectares this year, that’s alarming to me. I think that should be alarming to British Columbians as well.

I would say that if government is aware of this, government is seized with this information that there is a link now between the loss of the forest canopy and the frequency and magnitude of floods in the province, what are they doing about it? What instruction has government provided to the chief forester in order to address that?

If the chief forester signs off on more removal of the forest canopy without considering that research, I think it puts government in a pretty precarious position — or any industry player, or any consultant or anybody that’s involved in that aspect of forestry. I think this is a very significant scientific finding.

One of the other parts of that particular study that came out indicated that forest hydrologists have been using the wrong basis in order to anticipate the impact on the land from removing the forest canopy. This information has misled government policy now for decades. This is what this report says: that this has misled government policy now for decades. I think this is time government looked up at this and realized that this juggernaut is coming down the track, and we’re going to be faced with more fires and more floods.

What is this government doing about it? There wasn’t one word in the budget about this. There was not one word in the throne speech about this. There was nothing. Silence. Yet it’s one of the most significant things that has impacted forest removal, whether it’s for forestry or anything else in this province. It’s one of the most significant things that has happened.

When we see billions of dollars in infrastructure damage from the floods, when we see loss of life from the floods and the fires, billions of dollars in infrastructure damage from fires, I think government needs to wake up. If it’s asleep at the switch, it needs to wake up and realize the situation they are in and come up with some strategy in order to address that. I haven’t seen that. They’re quiet on that.

We are in a drought season right now. We’re going to be faced with increased risk for wildfires throughout the entire province. We’ve already got a fire going. We have them going up in the Chetwynd area already, and we’re going to see more than that.

[2:40 p.m.]

I think this is something people need to pay attention to, that government needs to pay attention to, that consultants need to pay attention to, that industry needs to pay attention to, because I have no doubt that this study will be part of ongoing and upcoming litigation moving forward.

You will have to be able to stand up and say, “We have rationalized our decision by this,” or whatever strategy they have in mind. This is something that is no light matter. It’s probably the most significant thing that’s faced government in decades in this province.

As a police officer before, involved in law enforcement, I was always monitoring case law. Jurisprudence came out that required us to change our tactics. Case law came out and required governments to change their approach, to change legislation in order to address something that the Supreme Court of Canada or any court had identified as a deficient approach, either legislatively or investigatively by the police officers. If you didn’t do that, then it opened you up to all kinds of civil litigation.

I think the same thing applies to science when it comes out and identifies something as significant as this, that something needs to be done and action needs to be taken.

The government’s been made aware of this, probably, for at least the last two or three years, that I’m aware of, and particularly since December. It would be interesting to see what changes they will be implementing in order to address that change.

This budget is a depressing budget when it looks at the amount of debt that is being piled on my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren for decades to come. There’s no sign of any private sector economic de­velopment. We could have a thriving resource sector in British Columbia that would expand our economy significantly, not only from the raw materials perspective, but also from the downstream manufacturing opportunities that we’ll see in British Columbia.

Hopefully we’ll see some changes. We may have to wait for the October election before we see the B.C. United come in and make those types of changes.

J. Sims: It is a pleasure today to rise and speak in support of a transformative budget that was put forward by the Finance Minister.

I want to say that budgets don’t just materialize. There is a whole group of people that do incredible work. It’s just like when you put together your family budget. You look at where the needs are. It’s not always equal, but you look for equitable distribution of the budget to try to have economic growth, but also support those who are going through challenging times.

I’m really happy to see that this budget reflects those priorities of this government. It’s very different than a government of a different ilk, when a previous government chose to strip collective agreements, cut out health care workers, contracted out their jobs and created chaos and economic uncertainty for so many people.

As I was a teacher at that time, I almost get PTSD when I think about the experiences that teachers went through in the classroom as they faced those horrendous cuts in supports to special needs kids and eventually to supporting teachers and classroom teachers.

On the other hand, B.C. is a wonderful place to live. There are many who were born here and others who have chosen to make B.C. home. We know that because it is such a beautiful province, we have more and more people wanting to put down roots and raise a family here.

I’m one of those. I arrived in B.C. in 1977, and my intention was to stay for six months or maybe a year. That was ’77. So two children, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild later, we are here and so happy we made that decision.

Why are people attracted to British Columbia? Number one has to be our geography. It is second to none.

[2:45 p.m.]

Also, when you look at our economic forecasts, we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada. The lowest unemployment rates in Canada. We’re a leader in growing jobs and growing wages for working people.

Just announced recently, and now tied to the cost of living, is our minimum wage. Our minimum wage will be at $17.40. That is truly something to be proud of for everybody in this House. We know that even at that minimum wage, it is very, very difficult to meet the challenges of running a household today. But we have one of the best minimum wages in the country, and we are competitive to attract workers at a time we’re hearing that there is a worldwide worker shortage.

It’s these kinds of actions that send a message that in British Columbia, we want to have economic growth, but we’re not going to be leaving workers behind. We’re going to be looking after the people who work and build this province.

There will be some, many in the last few days, from across the aisle who have said…. They bemoan the fact that we have this huge deficit, as they call it. Yes, there is.

One thing I can tell you, Madam Speaker: if there is one thing we have learned over the last few years, especially as we went through COVID, it’s that during challenging times, when some are facing bigger challenges than others, it is always best if we can work together and support each other through these challenging times. By working together and supporting those that are in need, we can keep building on B.C.’s strong foundation so people can build a good life here for themselves and their families.

We must not forget that we are an economic leader, not only in growing jobs. But when you look at our debt-to-GDP ratio, it’s the third lowest in the country. It’s the third lowest in the country. There isn’t any government that governs to say: “Let’s see if we can grow the deficit, or the debt.” But governments, like families, have to make choices.

When I look at this budget, I’m proud of the choices made by this government. They have made these choices because they know we have to support young children. We have to support renters. We have to support people to get into the housing market. We have to tackle the child care challenges that many families continue to face. They know that as well as growing jobs, we also have to make sure that we look after each other.

We have to face those challenges together, and at the same time being very cognizant of the fact that the investments we make are going to grow jobs.

As we invest in building more schools, more hospitals, more child care centres, those are not just facilities that are going to provide services. That is infrastructure that is going to support good-paying jobs. You need people to build infrastructure.

I can remember a time, a long, long time ago, when people who were more conservative leaning recognized the value of investing in infrastructure for this province. I may not have agreed with them on every other aspect, but there was a time when there was a belief that you need to build infrastructure today for tomorrow. So I’m very, very proud of what is in this budget for helping us to build the infrastructure.

I want to talk a little bit about education now because, as you all know, it’s a topic that is very dear to my heart. I’ve been a teacher all my life. One thing I’ve always said is that investment in education and in our youth is an investment in the future. It’s an investment that every single one of us needs to make.

[2:50 p.m.]

It doesn’t matter if you have children or not, because when children go to school to be educated, those are your future plumbers, your doctors, your lawyers, your nurses, your engineers, your health care workers. Every one of us benefits with a well-educated population right here in British Columbia.

Once again, I’ll hear: “This isn’t here. That isn’t done.” But I will tell you, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody on this side of the House who said: “We’ve finished. Every­thing is done.”

What I say is: “We have done lots, but we have lots more to do.” That is because we followed on to or came after a government that really did not believe in investing in people, investing in public education, investing in health care or investing in infrastructure. Nobody recognizes that as much as the people of British Columbia, and especially, I would say, people in Surrey.

I’m going to talk a little bit about education in Surrey. When I first ran to be an MLA back in 2017, we had approximately — well, just below — 7½ thousand students in portables. As we all know, Surrey is a fast-growing city, and at our meeting with the school board just a few weeks ago, what they said was that where they were, a few years back — like even three, four years ago — adding 650 new students to the K-to-12 sector, this year they’re in line to add 2,300 new students. So 2,300 new students per year moving into Surrey and looking for school space.

How much has been invested in Surrey, into the school system, building schools? Over $700 million. That has meant, since 2017, 8,190 new seats from 17 projects that are completed. I’m not talking about work in progress, though that’s very popular with me as a teacher. This is 8,100 new seats from 17 projects that are completed, and 4,155 new seats coming from ten new schools in construc­tion, design or prefabricated additions. When you add those numbers together, you’re looking at well over 12,000.

I want to take us back to 2017, when there were just over 7,000 students in portables. You can see the amount of investment that has gone into Surrey, but there is also this huge growth that is happening in Surrey, and there is still lots more to be done.

I always like to go right down to Surrey-Panorama. After all, those are the wonderful people of Surrey-Panorama who elected me and sent me here, and I am always honoured and humbled by their trust in me.

In Surrey-Panorama alone, $108.3 million has been invested in schools. Since 2017, 1,295 seats from four projects that are completed. And 655 seats for a brand-new elementary school, Snokomish Elementary, which is to be completed. It’s in process. I’ve visited the building site. It is well on its way.

Then, of course, there is a school that is just right next to me and, under the new divisions, is part of the redistribution. That school is going to get 573 or 23 new classrooms added. That shows that in Surrey-Panorama alone, over 2,500 new seats have been added. As I said, lots done, lots more to go.

I look at Woodward Hill elementary, Panorama Park Elementary, Sullivan Elementary and now, of course, a brand-new Snokomish Elementary.

[2:55 p.m.]

Sullivan high school, which is right across the way from my office, right next to the Bell Centre, added 700 new seats, and that school is open. And of course, it is full, because we have a fast-growing population.

There are other ways we need to support our school system as well, and often we heard from parents that they have to do so much fundraising in order to even get something as simple as the school playgrounds updated. I’m very happy to say that in Surrey-Panorama, T.E. Scott, Sullivan Elementary and Goldstone Park all have new playgrounds due to the funding provided by this government, and that program continues.

Of course, there’s also the Feeding Futures program. Surrey has received $8.4 million over the next three years to make sure that a school meal program is provided. And I’ve had the privilege to visit those schools and see what a huge difference it is making in the lives of kids.

Of course, because of the growth, other investments have gone into education, but I’m not going to sit here and walk you through each and every one of them. This just gives you an idea of the infrastructure that is being built to support students in Surrey and in Surrey-Panorama. Parents tell me that they really appreciate the moneys they get, and Surrey-Panorama parents received $144,000 to their PACs. That means parents are not having to sell as many hot dogs or wrapping paper or other things in order to function as a successful PAC.

There are so many good things that we can find in this budget. I have to admit that one of the stellar programs is child care, overall. Since we have been in government, we have made a huge difference in the lives of workers, of working women, of families and of young children.

Just to give you an example, in Surrey-Panorama, we have 76 licensed child cares. If any of you don’t know my riding, my riding is mainly a residential riding, and it has very few service organizations, so to speak — maybe one or two, and that’s it. But it is definitely a residential area. These licensed child cares are in schools, homes and stand-alones. Three of them are in schools for after-school care and before-school care, which is truly amazing.

The total amount of child care investments since 2018 for Surrey is $424,663,651. And Surrey-Panorama, my riding alone, is over $42 million. That is a commitment to quality child care that actually speaks right there. Child care seats that have been funded for Surrey are 4,014.

Now, this is one that often doesn’t get talked about, and we need to be aware of this. In Surrey, money that was returned to families, money that gets spent in the communities to buy additional food, clothing or even take a holiday…. But all this money goes to support our small and medium-sized businesses. These parents are not the kind that are going to be sending off their money to the Canary Islands to some tax shelter. This money gets spent in the communities.

In Surrey, the money returned to the parents is over $232 million back in the pockets of parents. And for Surrey-Panorama, it’s $25,288,673. That’s not small change. That makes a huge difference to people’s lives. And yes, I’m proud that Surrey has 620 $10-a-day child care spaces.

[3:00 p.m.]

Is that all we’re going to be building there? Absolutely not. That is a good number for now. As I said before, lots done. Lots more to do. But as I said, when you put together a budget….

By the way, at this rate, we should always do shout-outs to others who do good work. I do want to say a huge thank you to the federal government for recognizing the importance of child care and making sure there is affordable child care available. It was an area that I did quite a bit of work on when I was a Member of Parliament, and it’s very dear to my heart.

I do want to thank the current government for making sure that they are providing support to the provinces to implement the $10-a-day child care. So a big, big thank you to them.

Once again, when we invest in child care — and there’s lots of science to support this, and data — for every dollar we spend, we get five dollars back. So this is incredible returns for this kind of an investment that this government is making. But it’s more than that. It means good-paying jobs. We have made sure that the pay for the child care workers has received lifts. Not just once, more than once. Is it perfect yet? As I said: lots done, lots more to go.

Also, new child care centres have to be built. But also, let me tell you that what happens is that creates jobs. Now imagine the number of women and men who were staying at home to parent. It applies to both; we’re an equal opportunity government here. What it means is that more parents are able to get back to work, and they’re able to focus on their work because they know their children are receiving quality child care. That is really, really important.

That is a huge economic boost, not just in the short term but long term. We know that when children get quality child care, it saves us, in the long run, in health care and in education. Not only is it good for the kids and good for the families, it makes good economic sense to keep investing in child care, and I’m so happy that we have done so much. Lots done, lots more to do.

Now, let’s get to housing, one of the favourite topics. As I said, I am a teacher. And when I first bought my house back in England, I was told that the maximum debt load I should take on is three times my gross income. If we were to apply that to teachers today, even teachers who have been teaching for ten years, what we would be looking at is a house that’s worth $300,000. And you and I know that it’s very, very difficult — I would say almost impossible in Surrey — to find a house for that price.

It is important that we start looking at rentals and making sure that we have affordable rentals, but also that we look at below-market housing, social housing, which is very, very critical.

Also, we need to start addressing housing for the middle class, for our doctors…. They make a little bit more than teachers; I think a lot more. For our firefighters, for our police officers, for our health care workers and for our child care workers, if we cannot address housing for those middle-income workers, how are we going to find workers? If they cannot afford to house themselves or get into the housing market….

I’ve heard a lot of excitement over the flipping tax and the home vacancy tax, and I absolutely am 100 percent in disagreement with the opposition leader, who basically says that the flipping tax is unnecessary. The flipping tax is there. It’s not the magic bullet. I think I heard the Premier saying that this morning on the news. It’s not the magic bullet, but it’s one way of making sure that houses that are built are homes. They are not a commodity that is flipped.

[3:05 p.m.]

Now, if you have extenuating circumstances — you’ve lost your job, you’re relocating, your family situation has changed — it doesn’t apply to you. But you know something? I am glad it is here. Just as the vacancy tax on housing created lots of new housing on the market, I am hoping that this will also draw people to that.

By the way, it doesn’t apply to builders who are growing the housing supply. This actually applies to a lot of people who just buy a house, sell it in a year, sell it again and sell it again. We’ve seen that happening over and over again.

But so much more than that is the recognition that, as a government, our responsibility is to make sure those people who are working in the middle-income area as well as those who are at the low-income area have affordable housing that meets their needs.

I’ve had nothing but good things said to me by people of Surrey when they talk about the fact that the zoning changes that have been suggested for fourplexes or du­plexes and additional suites is truly a welcome way not only to increase housing, but it will help to offset the cost of housing for those who make the initial investment and buy the house.

I wanted to talk a little bit about health care, but I know I’m running out of time, so I’m going to try to condense things a little bit.

It takes time to build a house. I know that because I went through that experience myself. Building a hospital takes even longer. But I’m glad to say that the new hospital in Surrey is being built. You can drive by it. You can see that we are well on our way.

As well as the hospital, what we need are doctors, nurses, health care workers. I’m very, very proud of the work that the Health Minister has done, along with the Finance Minister, in ensuring that we become a place that attracts health care workers. When I look at the number of nurses we’ve added, the doctors we’ve added and other health care professionals, it’s heartwarming.

So when I hear my colleagues talking about the burgeoning public service, I want to say, with all the new peo­ple who’ve arrived here…. Yes, we’ve got more teachers. Yes, we’ve got more doctors. Yes, we’ve got more nurses. Yes, we’ve got more health care workers. That’s what happens when you have a growing population.

Surrey is not only getting a new hospital, but we are getting a cancer treatment centre that I think will serve south of Fraser really, really well. As a mother of a daughter who is diagnosed with cancer, I can tell you that this means a lot, because that new hospital is not only going to have state-of-the-art treatments; it’s going to have research attached to it. I’m so looking forward to those kinds of facilities being available south of Fraser as well.

When I look at this budget, I look at the way families look at their budget. When a family sits down and looks at what the needs are, what the absolute basic needs are, and then they start building out, can they do everything in one year or two years? That’s why our child care plan is over a ten-year plan. That’s why the housing plan is not a one-year plan. It’s spread out over five to seven years, not only because we have to make sure that we have the workers to build, but we also need to make sure that we have those who can work in those facilities.

So there is a plan, and I’m glad to see that the Health Minister has put the work into health care that is needed to make sure that our trajectory is going in the right direction. I know what it’s like in Surrey Memorial emergency room. I have been there. I’ve spent more time there than I ever want to spend again.

[3:10 p.m.]

But I can tell you this. With a new hospital opening, when it opens, and with the kind of streamlining and the extra work that’s been done at Surrey Memorial, with the expansion at Peace Arch Hospital, expansion at Langley Hospital and other facilities being nearby, I think we are moving in the right direction. And absolutely, we are going there.

When it comes to schools, do we need to be building a lot more schools? Absolutely. I was flabbergasted to hear one of my colleagues from the other side speaking about: “It’s easy. Just add more kids to a classroom.” We need to have bunker desks then, right? Really?

What we need to do is make sure our children get a quality education, and that does not happen when you keep increasing class sizes. Besides, those are negotiated into collective agreements. Mind you, there was a previous government that totally ignored that and ripped all those provisions out of the collective agreement and then needed to be smacked by the Supreme Court of Canada to reinstate.

This budget is a balanced budget in that it recognizes the challenges we have. It invests into the future, into growing a good, strong labour force. It invests in infrastructure to grow decent-paying jobs. At the same time — I could have spoken for another two hours — through many other measures, what it’s doing is it’s also supporting those who are in need, whether it’s with increased child care credits or whether it’s with a rebate on the hydro bill or your gas bill.

There are many things in this budget. But sometimes when I listen to my colleagues from the other side, for whom the sky is falling, let me tell you that since 2017, every single day, I have been grateful that we have this government in power to see us through some very difficult and internationally challenging times. It’s because we know, if they were on this side…. What we lived through in the year 2000 was not very pleasant, nor was it in 2001, nor in 2002.

I’ll finish off by doing a huge thank-you to our Finance Minister for being prudent and for taking on the challenge to create a budget that supports families and sends a message: “Together, we are stronger. Together, we can ride through this.”

L. Doerkson: There are certainly a few things to rebut there. I’ll spend a couple of minutes just suggesting that.

I would agree with the member that I feel like the sky is falling. This member just referred to the chaos and even PTSD that she lived through or endured under a different government. I’ll tell you a little bit about chaos.

Last year in Cariboo-Chilcotin, a nine-year-old boy succumbed to asthma because he couldn’t breathe from wildfire smoke in this province. A 14-year-old boy died at Redstone while waiting for an ambulance that was an hour and 50 minutes away. Sadly for that 14-year-old, the son of a very good friend of mine, past Chief Ervin Charleyboy…. His son died at an hour and 40, and not because we didn’t have an ambulance close by. There was one at Alexis Creek, but it wasn’t staffed, and we had to bring an ambulance all the way from town.

Chaos in this province? Tens of thousands of people evacuated every year from fire and flood, with no significant plan, as the member for Prince George–Mackenzie laid out, with respect to wildfire. We’ve introduced a plan that would put wildfire out in this province. But we’re making a decision to manage wildfire, and nobody has been clearly able to define to me what that means.

[3:15 p.m.]

I’ll tell you the damage on our landscape is shocking. When we talk about chaos…. We are living in chaos. The 100 Mile Hospital was closed, the emergency, last week. The week before, Williams Lake’s emergency was closed for the first time in its history. Things are getting better, we’re told. We’ve never endured this in Williams Lake or the Cariboo. Never.

Something you might not know about me is that for a number of years, I competed in rodeos, rode horses bareback, and I wasn’t very good at it. You fall, you hurt yourself, and you break bones. I’ve been in a lot of hospitals. Never have I waited 12 hours for care in a hospital.

The member for Surrey-Panorama kindly pointed out chaos, and it frustrated me because there is chaos in our province right now.

I want to clear up something else that was said earlier, with reference to the employer health tax. We hear often this tax was removed. Let’s be clear. It was not removed. Sorry. It was moved from one group of British Columbians to another.

Interjection.

L. Doerkson: I’m not sure what the member is saying down there. I couldn’t quite hear, but I think he’s had his opportunity to speak, and I think he knows that I’m correct in saying that the businesses, the small businesses of this province, have taken that on their back.

Now, I can appreciate there are some changes this year, and part of them, I’m even happy about. But the fact is that it’s not as though this government got rid of that tax. They just moved it to another place.

The member previous, Surrey-Panorama, also referred to the word “deficit.” I laugh. This isn’t our book. It’s theirs. And it clearly outlines the deficit, the largest inflationary deficit in B.C.’s history, at $8 billion almost. That is staggering. I’ll talk about that again. But the notion that we took 130-plus years to amass a debt in this province of $50 billion and, by the end of this plan, we’re going to see it nearly at $165 billion is staggering to me.

If we don’t think and we can’t agree, in this House, that that is going to have an effect on future generations, then we must be on the moon or something.

We’re going to see a $4.1 billion interest-only debt payment in this province. Think about that for a second. I mean, I’m sure we all remember credit cards that potentially got out of control, and you could just take care of the interest and not pay on the rest of the balance. That’s what we’re going to do. If that doesn’t concern us all in this House, then I’m even more concerned about this Budget 2024 than I thought.

Chaos is not only in the landscape, but there are things in the budget that don’t make sense. We heard from the throne speech that there were going to be 3,600 treatment beds in this budget. In the budget, there are 2,200 beds.

Twenty-five hundred people succumbed to toxic drugs in this province. To me, that is startling. Again, we have a plan for this. Frankly, we shouldn’t wait for that plan. We need treatment. We need treatment right now, and we need it in rural B.C. like we’ve never needed it.

A 75 percent increase in spending since 2017, and we talk about what’s happening out there. I think somebody was quoted here earlier as saying we’ve hired 700 doctors. We’ve hired 137,000 people, and we still can’t keep our hospitals open. We still don’t have enough ambulances to attend.

We have fire departments that can’t raise enough money in this province to stay open. The Greeny Lake fire department is currently trying to raise a half a million dollars to buy a truck. Why? Because their fire truck is outdated. We’ve managed to get a five-year extension on their truck, thankfully, to the Minister of Public Safety.

[3:20 p.m.]

Can you imagine $500,000 in apple pie at a time? They don’t have any other funding mechanism. If there is a fire at Mount Timothy or in the Timothy Lake area, they are going to be the first department that is dispatched to put that fire out in the landscape. It’s a 75 percent increase in spending, and members opposite wonder why we’re questioning this.

Now, maybe this is just the divide that we hear about in rural B.C. or the city, but it is happening in my community, and it’s not make-believe. We have so many challenges in our communities, not just with front-line workers and hospitals and ambulances but our infrastructure as well. We have infrastructure that sometimes takes years to fix.

A $3 billion contingency fund for FIFA. I’m not op­posed to FIFA. I love the sport. But we need to understand priorities in this province, because people are paying the ultimate price, in many cases.

I agreed with a couple of statements that were made last week, thinking about a better future for everyone. Of course, I hope for that. I hope that we can offer up our sympathy and our condolences to those that have lost someone in a toxic drug overdose. I have, and it’s not good. That’s for sure. Seven people a day now, in this province, are dying from this unbelievable crisis, and the sad thing is that that number is not going down.

We’re going to rebuild our province stronger than ever, so that we’ve got the lowest unemployment in Canada. You might want to check regionally, because things are changing in the North. Things are changing drastically in the North.

We’ve heard it today. Projects are coming to an end. There’s a workforce of tens of thousands of men and wo­men in the North that are going to see the end of Site C, LNG, pipelines. There has really been no forethought as to what to do with that workforce, what major projects we could be taking on, where we could have directed those people.

We’ve talked about a strong and growing economy. I wonder what the residents of Fraser Lake are saying right now to a strong and growing economy. We’ve lost mills all throughout British Columbia. How dare we sit here and try to convince people that we have a strong economy? Again, maybe that’s just a rural B.C. thing, but I would suggest that it’s not. We are in tough shape, in many cases.

You want to talk about chaos. We are, probably as we speak…. When I flew out of Williams Lake on Sunday, there was a big burn happening — a big burn of, well, what the industry would call fibre. Now, many would say: “Well, that’s for wildfire mitigation, and it’s the right thing to do.”

Here’s the problem. We have a power plant in Williams Lake called Atlantic Power, and that power is generated from using fibre. It strikes me as a little peculiar that in British Columbia we are purchasing power from other sources, that we are burning fibre, yet for Atlantic Power, which generates enough power for 55,000 to 60,000 homes in this province, its future is uncertain.

[3:25 p.m.]

Can somebody explain that chaos to me? They an­nounced two or three weeks ago that they are not certain, under pressure from renegotiating contracts with B.C. Hydro and a lack or a shortage of fibre, yet we are burning it at an alarming rate.

The member for Cariboo North and I had the pleasure of flying together a couple of weeks ago, and we flew over dozens of fires throughout the Cariboo. It was shocking, knowing that there are 40 or 50 people that could be curtailed from that job.

In Williams Lake, we also have a mill that is curtailed right now, so 60 or 70 friends and constituents are not working in Williams Lake right now. I would suggest they probably would question the statements made by the government suggesting that our economy is strong right now.

What’s worse is that when we lose those types or those components of our industry, I can tell you with certainty that it hurts a community in unbelievable ways. The amount of men and women that are employed outside of that, little businesses that supply everything from glass to tires to cars to sandwiches, are all affected in a very, very serious way.

[J. Tegart in the chair.]

I’m trying to bridge the gap here today between disagreements. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do that.

I question statements made by the government with respect to our economy. I think it is either not quite as good as what the government is suggesting, or it is certainly turning, and turning for the worse in many ways. There are all kinds of warning signs. Yet we are about to borrow so much money. It’s just hard to even understand what we’re about to do.

We talked a little bit about the chaos and concern. I can assure you that I looked for, and was interested in hearing, two specific words in the budget and in the throne speech. Those were “rural” and “seniors.” I’ve got to tell you that I’m happy to say that I did hear about rural B.C. a number of times. I think I counted about seven or so. But I didn’t really hear what was coming for us in rural B.C. I heard rural mentioned, but I didn’t hear anything specific.

Seniors. I want you to know that the notion that seniors will be okay is so far out of touch, it is hard to imagine. I have delivered a petition in this House from seniors that are begging for the government to fix SAFER. It came up in question period the other day. I have heard it on the Finance Committee.

There are seniors making so little that cannot qualify for this program because the thresholds have not been revalued. They absolutely have to be. The seniors advocate would agree. In fact, I talked to her about this very topic to see where I should go with the petition. She absolutely confirmed for me that if there was a way to get a couple hundred dollars back in the hands of seniors, it was through this program. Seniors need it.

I hear from seniors every single day. I delivered letters here, along with the member for Prince George–​Vale­mount. We delivered letters here from seniors in my community and, I think, some from Cariboo North — hundreds of letters from seniors trying to understand better why natural gas in this province is so expensive. It’s not the commodity that’s expensive. It’s the carbon tax. Every time we turn around that carbon tax is another dial that can be turned up.

Seniors are struggling. Our moms and dads are having an extremely difficult time getting away. I know that. I help my mom often. She was here last week, and she would confirm just how difficult it is to get by.

[3:30 p.m.]

We heard last week about Andrew, who, because of legislation, is living in a newly found rental. Well, I’m happy for Andrew, but we didn’t hear about Mike, who sold his short-term rental because of the same legislation.

That short-term rental provided lodging for students in Kelowna. It provided lodging for patients attending cancer care. It provided lodging for people from my community that needed that short-term rental for medical treatment. We didn’t hear about that.

We heard that first-timers will get on the home ownership ladder. I believe that’s what we could have quoted. Well, I’d like to know how.

B.C. United has a plan around a rent-to-own program I sent out to young people, my own kids as well. They simply texted back and said: “This is a game-changer. It will get us started.” I did not see a plan from this government.

Access to care is showing results. This goes back a little bit to the beginning of my statement. I cannot stress this enough. Cariboo Memorial Hospital has never been closed — never.

Two or three weeks ago when it was closed, I received a call about a week after from a woman — about whom I’ll share more at another time — who’d had a kidney stone attack. While I haven’t endured that, I’m told that it is excruciating.

Here’s the problem: we’re an hour away from 100 Mile. So once finding out the hospital was closed, she headed to 100 Mile, only to find out that the equipment that she needed was in the Williams Lake hospital, but it was closed. She needed an ultrasound. She needed other things that the 100 Mile hospital didn’t have.

After a number of hours waiting, a number of hours screaming, she was very sick. I won’t go into the details that she shared with me. Her husband drove her to the Kamloops hospital, and about 13 hours later, she was re­ceiving pain relief and a diagnosis of kidney stones.

A couple days ago the 100 Mile Hospital was closed as well. The emergency room there closed — without warning, I might add. That was on Saturday evening. I was emceeing an event, and I went out to the truck. Of course, as we all do, I checked our Facebook immediately to make sure that everything was okay in Cariboo-Chilcotin, and it was not. The emergency room was closed in 100 Mile, with no answers, no announcement, nothing. I’m horrified to hear what might be the result of that closure.

We’ve heard all through rural B.C. — Merritt, all kinds of places — where we have seen hospitals closed. I would suggest to the member for Surrey-Panorama, who mentioned the chaos that was created 20 years ago, that she might have a look around this province right now, be­cause it is serious.

There was some money, left over from announcements from a year or two ago, with respect to connectivity in rural B.C. I have spoken on this matter a number of times in this Legislature, and I will continue to speak on it. It’s actually getting worse. Now we have communities that are actually losing connectivity through their telephones and such. It’s actually going backwards.

When you think about the Chilcotin…. I’ve had the Minister of Public Safety right there. I took him out to the end of the driveway, at the Cotton Ranch, which is just west of Williams Lake, and explained to him that that is a stretch of highway for four or five hours, which our first responders are communicating on with portable ham radios.

[3:35 p.m.]

It’s shocking to me, in this day and age, when I started my speech, explaining that we had a 14-year-old child in the Cariboo, who died while waiting for an ambulance.

We had an ambulance come from Kelowna to serve somebody in Nemaiah. I forgot to tell the House about that.

Once you get past the Fraser River, good luck in communicating with anybody. For that matter, think about just the risk associated with trying to get to a location quickly, only to be called down. You can’t even call down an emergency vehicle without communicating through a ham radio or, I guess, a satellite phone.

It is extremely concerning. There is $23 million in this budget, and I would make a plea to spend some of that in Cariboo-Chilcotin, because we need some connectivity. We talk about wildfires and the evacuation of tens of thousands of people. How do you communicate with people on a highway corridor that is four hours long, if they can’t connect in some way?

The Minister of Emergency B.C. has introduced an entirely new fine structure that could see people fined $100,000 for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. People may not even know they are in an evacuation zone because they’ve been driving for two hours and have had no ability to connect.

Our residents want to feel safe, but frankly, they’re not. They’re not feeling that comfort at all. We have had so much damage in our community. In fact, I’ve read a question in question period with respect to a shoe store that was absolutely looted after its front windows were kicked in.

The fact is that this is happening. We’ve had meetings about this in some of my communities to discuss the challenges that are being faced by residents every single day, and it’s not getting any better. We hear that this official opposition is crying that the sky is falling. Well, to a lot of people, it is. When you think about armed robbery in an A&W or in a 7-Eleven in my community, and realize that could have been one of my 15-year-old daughters standing behind that till, it does get your attention. It is concerning.

I want to be really clear that the RCMP detachments in Cariboo-Chilcotin are incredible. They are doing every­thing they possibly can, and they’re doing an unbelievable job.

When you think about the size of some of these patrol areas, and you think that you have 12 members servicing an area from Lac la Hache to pretty much the top of the hill at Clearwater, imagine staffing that for 365 days a year. Then understand that when RCMP are called to an event in Lac la Hache, it’s no wonder they can’t make the party that’s happening at Deka Lake every Saturday night. It is a massive challenge.

Our front-line responders, our nurses, our doctors — they need real help. It’s offensive to think that a member would talk about 700 doctors and 137,000 employees in this province that have been added to the payroll and not note that there is a significant shortfall in so many places.

While I’m running out of time, I do want to mention a couple of other things that came from this budget. Things are changing, and there are flashing lights out there that are saying: “Wake up. Don’t be borrowing all this money.”

[3:40 p.m.]

We lost 6,300 private sector jobs. That’s not my number; it’s in their book. We lost 5,896 people to Alberta. They left this province. I have talked to some of those people. They didn’t leave because British Columbia was the best place to live. They left because they could afford to live in Alberta.

We’ve got kids now going to school in Alberta because it’s more affordable. We’ve got colleges and universities all over this province. My kids are both graduates. And we’ve got people having to go elsewhere for school.

I’m truly concerned about the budget this year. There’s no question about that. I’m not the only one that is concerned about it. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is giving this a failing grade. Here’s a great quote by the CTF: “The ministry of debt interest is now the fourth-biggest in the province.” I loved that one.

The fact is it is not just myself. There are many people that are extremely concerned about this budget and about the money that we’re about to borrow that is going to mortgage so much of our future for our kids.

The final thing I wanted to say is that I am extremely pleased to represent Cariboo-Chilcotin here. It’s always an honour to come before you and to share thoughts. Those thoughts today, of course, have been shared with business owners and with constituents in my riding.

I had the pleasure of speaking last week at the South Cariboo Chamber of Commerce. I’ve had the pleasure recently of speaking at a number of other events. Trust me when I say that the residents of Cariboo-Chilcotin are not shy about sharing their thoughts, and they’re definitely in tune with what’s happening here. What I want is for here to be in tune with there. That is something that I see as a significant challenge.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for allowing me the chance to speak to you today.

A. Singh: I was thinking of responding to some things, but I think I’ll just carry on.

Government is all about priorities and the ways that government functions. But let’s lay bare what those government priorities are. I’m really proud to say that I’m part of this government that takes care of people and looks at people and has them at the centre.

British Columbia is an incredible place to live. People want to put down their roots and raise a family here. We had, I think, something like half a million people move here in the last two-and-a-bit years. People want to come to British Columbia. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada, and we’re a leader in growing job wages and for working people.

While we’re an economic leader, people are facing in­credible challenges. High interest rates, inflation, a slower global economy — real challenges for people. The opposition would say that we should respond to these challenges by leaving those very people behind to fend for themselves and by making deep cuts: austerity in the name of reducing the deficit.

We can’t afford to do that. We’ve been sent here to take care of people. If there’s anything that the last few years have taught us, it’s that going it alone does not work. The choices we’ve made in our new budget show that — show that we are here to support people through tough times. That’s what a government is meant to do. By working together, we can keep on building B.C.’s strong economic foundation so people can build a good life here for themselves and their families and their loved ones.

Empty rhetoric like inflationary deficit, an outdated emphasis on austerity and economic theories that have been thoroughly dismissed or shown as not credible, is not helpful to anyone. Inflation is a global phenomenon that has very little to do with little old British Columbia’s economic policies.

British Columbia is a great place to live, but global inflation has made life more expensive for everyone. The world was just barely recovering from a global pandemic, and we’ve been hit with the uncertainties that war in eastern Europe and the humanitarian disaster in the Middle East have created.

[3:45 p.m.]

Couple that with multiple environmental disasters caused by climate change. A sidebar: the kind of climate change that the carbon tax is there to address and gives us the ability to address. We have little control over those things.

What a government does have control over is how to design programs to help the people that it serves during those hard times. That’s what we’re here to do.

Let me say that again: serves. We are here at the will of the people. So in this time where life is hard for people, what we need to do is continue to reach out with that helping hand and make sure all British Columbians are carried forward together.

This budget, Budget 2024, ensures we’re helping people with everyday costs, including delivering more affordable homes, reducing the costs of child care, providing more meals and snacks in schools, boosting skills training so people can access good-paying jobs, making sure those jobs are there, supporting industry, building on this foundation by keeping more money in people’s pockets during these tough times.

More families with children will get more help with costs. Families will see a 25 percent increase to their monthly B.C. family benefit, with $248 million for a one-year B.C. family benefit bonus program starting this July. By example, a family of four would receive up to $2,850 per year and, with the bonus, now will receive as much as $3,563. A single parent with one child will now receive $2,688 per year. On average, most families will receive $445 more, and we all know how every dollar counts.

More families will benefit. Approximately 66,000 more families, which is 25 percent more, will receive this benefit and the bonuses here. A total of 340,000 families — that’s not people; 340,000 families — will benefit during the 12-month period. That’s real help for real people.

British Columbians will also get a break on their electricity bill, thanks to a one-time, year-long B.C. electricity affordability credit, saving households an average of $100 on their bills over the course of the year. Again, every dollar counts.

We are also helping businesses and commercial and industrial customers, who will also receive savings up to 4.6 percent of their electricity consumption. The average small business will save $400 over the course of the year, and that will help that business function and employ more people.

Individuals and families will also see an increase to their quarterly climate action tax credit payments this year. Let me repeat that, because the opposition and the Fourth Party make a lot out of the incorrect comments about the carbon tax and its impacts on everyday people.

In the same speech, we were talking about the tragic case of a child dying of asthma because of a climate emergency. I don’t see how you can attack a carbon tax that’s meant to address that very climate emergency.

So 100 percent of the revenue from the carbon tax increase will be directed to the climate action tax credit. For example, if a family of four received $890 last year, they’ll receive $1,005. The majority of British Columbians are projected to receive more through the enhanced credit than they pay in the carbon tax by 2030 — again, helping British Columbians, helping everyday people.

We also listened to businesses when designing this budget, and the exemption threshold for the employer health tax has been doubled from half a million dollars to $1 million. With this change, over 90 percent of businesses in British Columbia will now be exempt from the tax, estimated to save them more than $100 million per year.

Starting in 2024, as people file their 2023 income tax return, renters will see up to $400 come back to them through the B.C. renters tax credit.

All of these measures are designed to make life more affordable in this unique time, as we face impacts from war, disease, climate emergencies, things that are beyond our control. Again, as I said, there are some things that are in our control, and we try to help people with those things.

In addition to helping people with their day-to-day expenses, this budget also places a razor-sharp focus on delivering homes for people. We’ve been doing that since 2017.

People want a decent home that they can afford in a community they love. With inflation and day-to-day cost-of-living pressures, finding affordable housing is challenging for too many people.

[3:50 p.m.]

Add on to that the fact that half a million people moved into British Columbia in the last few years. That’s an immense amount. I don’t think that actually counts the number of international students and temporary workers that have moved here as well. Those are staggering numbers for a province that has about ten times that as its total population.

This government is leading the country in finding solutions to the widespread housing crisis, and it’s taking action to deliver more homes that are within reach for people. Our actions are being copied, lauded by governments all across Canada, including the federal government. We’re taking action by reining in the out-of-control short-term rental market. Our estimate is that thousands more units will come back into the affordable rental market.

There’s nothing wrong with renting out your basement, but when it becomes just another vehicle for in­vestors, just another stock, that’s when it’s a problem. That’s exactly what the short-term rental legislation is designed to tackle.

Expanding the speculation and vacancy tax. Fixing restrictive and outdated zoning rules. Turning more land and areas near transit hubs into homes for people. Making sure secondary suites can be built in every community in British Columbia. Expanding the number of suites that can be built on a single-family lot. Making sure…. Cutting down long wait times at the residential tenancy branch and protecting renters by capping rents.

As a lawyer at a small law firm that operated in the fastest-growing community about a decade ago, in Surrey, I often heard from colleagues about how home prices were being inflated through assignments, subcontracts and drive-through sales. We dealt with that.

Now we’re also introducing the flipping tax. As part of the Homes for People plan and to discourage speculators from driving up prices, there will be a new B.C. home flipping tax effective January 1, 2025, on the profit made from selling a residential property within two years of buying it. There are, of course, some specific exemptions for life circumstances such as divorce, death or relocation for some reason.

Again, this is not designed to bring in revenue so we can use that for…. It’s designed to discourage the flipping of houses so that those prices don’t go up inordinately.

In addition to all of these things, we’re making housing more affordable by introducing property transfer tax exemptions. For many people, buying a home is often the largest purchase they will ever make, and property prices are making it harder, so every little bit will help.

This budget aims to give people the financial boost they need to bring buying a home within reach, including increases to the threshold for the first-time-homebuyers program so it reflects today’s market. Qualifying first-time homebuyers can benefit when they purchase a home worth up to $835,000. With the first half a million completely exempt from the property transfer tax, that could mean as much as $8,000 in savings per family.

An estimated 14,500 people — that’s twice as many as before — will now be eligible for support to buy their first home, helping them move out of the rental market, which again frees up rentals for others.

Raising these property transfer tax exemption thresh­olds and incentivizing building of new rentals and homes will save more people money, an estimated $100 million per year. The private sector alone has not been able to deliver the homes that middle-income British Columbians need. Government needs to step in, and we’re doing that. Through government initiatives that help people buy a home, the province is helping free up more rental homes for people, alleviating pressures and therefore bringing down costs for everybody.

We also, earlier this year, announced BC Builds, which the federal government came and supported. This budget reinforces the Homes for People plan with $198 million in new funding for that program, for BC Builds. This will support the program to speed up the development of new housing that fits the budgets of middle-income people and families.

This uses government-owned public and underused land and the lower rates that government has, borrowing rates, to offer low-cost financing, to bring down construction costs and deliver more middle-income housing for people. It also works with local governments, landowners, homebuilders and housing operators to move projects from concept to construction within 12 to 18 months, compared to the current average of three to five years.

[3:55 p.m.]

Any delay just adds to the unaffordability of housing, and we recognize that, hence all of the initiatives that we’ve pushed through. These new units will be income-tested and will ensure that people who keep B.C. communities thriving can find homes that they can afford.

In the past year, our province has prioritized new initiatives centred on delivering thousands more good homes for people where they’re needed more. This budget supports these existing programs and services with $116 million more in funding, which will maintain more than 500 permanent and temporary shelter spaces in communities throughout British Columbia, again helping those who need help the most. Since 2017, this province has delivered more than 78,000 homes that are a result of continued investments in other housing initiatives that we brought through.

In a time of need, it is the government’s responsibility to deliver services that people rely on and support a growing population. In a time where populations are growing, where there is a real need, where people are suffering, we cannot afford to cut services.

As I think one of my colleagues said, we cannot afford to have a service deficit. This is what Budget 2024 does. It provides $8 billion over three years to strengthen health care, kindergarten-to-grade-12 education, justice and public safety, and help for people who need care and support.

With the population growing and aging, and a large segment of doctors and nurses retiring in the next decade, add on to that the problems of underinvestment over the last few decades, more people are needed to fill those jobs and help meet the demands of the health care system. Budget 2024 provides more than $2 billion to support people’s access to the full range of health services, including primary and acute care, long-term care, assisted living, home care, and mental health and substance use care, and recruitment and retention of health care professionals.

My friend on the opposite side spoke about 700 doctors. You know what that means? Seven hundred family doctors means 700,000 patients — actually more than that; it’s usually an average of about 1,100 or 1,200 per doctor — that now will have access to a doctor. It’s significant.

Capital investments of $13 billion over the next few years will support the construction of long-term care, acute care and cancer care facilities. Never mind the capital investments that have already been announced for hospitals all around British Columbia, including a brand-new hospital in Richmond.

I’m really excited about that. My colleagues and I visited a few weeks ago and saw…. It’s a unique project because you already have this massive hospital in the centre of Richmond, and there’s no new place to build it. So they’re taking down parts of the old hospital as they’re building the new one. To see how they manage that is quite unique. The new cancer care portion of that…. They closed the old one down, and they’ve just opened the new one. We were able to visit that, and I was quite impressed with that.

Like many people here, I have a unique relationship with cancer.

The demand for cancer treatment has increased and will continue to increase. And B.C.’s ten-year cancer action plan is ensuring more patients get the treatments that they need. To build on this, this budget invests $270 million more to deliver treatments and strengthen prevention and screening services such as HPV vaccines, cervical and rarity cancer screenings. These cancer care centres are also on the way for Surrey, Burnaby, Nanaimo and Kamloops to provide better care closer to home.

As a cancer survivor, I know my whole journey was fraught with anxiety. I understand the importance of screening services. I think I’ve shared it, slightly, before. I went in for a regular test. I had no symptoms. Nothing was happening to me; it was just a regular screening test that our province provides. It came back suspicious, and I was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer that had spread to several lymph nodes, so on the verge of stage 4.

If I had not had that screening for a few more months, it would have been stage 4, which would have been a completely different story. I stand here today as a result of the great cancer care that we have in this province. I’m proud that we have that care, and I’m really proud that we’re investing more in that.

Home and community care for seniors to support sen­iors, their quality of life and to enable them to live in their own homes longer. This budget provides $334 million to ensure seniors can continue to access the services they count on in their own homes, even as demand increases, through $227 million for home health care services to help with daily activities such as bathing, grooming, lifts, transfers and nutrition. These services, of course, would be provided by regulated professionals, including nurses, occupational and physical therapists, and social workers.

[4:00 p.m.]

An additional $127 million is for community-based services such as Better at Home, which supports seniors with day-to-day tasks like grocery shopping, light housekeeping, minor home repairs, snow shovelling, transportation to and from medical appointments — things that don’t seem that big but that can have a huge impact on a person’s quality of life.

My father relied on these very services for the last few years, until he passed away last summer. I can’t stress how grateful I am to the compassionate, hard-working people that surrounded him. I’m in their debt forever. From home care workers that came to our home and took care of him, bathed him and cleaned him, sat with him and joked with him, to the staff at St. Vincent’s Langara long-term-care facility, where he spent his last year, I can’t say enough about them, and I am eternally grateful to them.

Helping people with conceiving babies, in vitro fertilization. No one should be denied the opportunity to have a child because of how much money they make, whom they love or whether they have a partner. How­ever, many people cannot conceive without this help. The financial burden of IV fertilization is substantial, $18,000 to $20,000 per time.

Starting in April of 2025, our province will launch a new, publicly funded in vitro fertilization program, funding both treatment and medication for a single cycle. A total of $68 million has been allocated for that. This brings us in line with many of our fellow provinces.

Mental health and addictions. There’s substantial work in mental health and addictions. From climate emergencies to the pandemic and the toxic drug crisis, people in British Columbia have been through a lot in recent years. That has increased demand for mental health programs and services. This budget continues to build on the province’s work of the last seven years to expand services and break that stigma that prevents people from calling for help.

Addiction and diseases of the mind are such that, as a society, we still have not really come to terms with them. The amount of stigma faced by those who suffer is such that it keeps them in the dark. We need to shine a light on those fellow human beings who are suffering, those fellow British Columbians.

I don’t speak just as an MLA. I speak as someone with very real, lived experience, who came to the precipice of death on more than one occasion because of my mental disease. Thankfully, I was able to get the help that I needed, and I’m over 13 years sober now. I want others to have that chance as well, and I’m proud to be part of a government that sees that and offers those chances.

What scares me is a narrative that the opposition parties have chosen to follow that does nothing to help the situation and only increases stigma. I’m glad to see that our government is steadfast in its singular focus to save lives and help the people that need that help.

So $117 million will be invested to continue funding the more than 2,200 community mental health and substance use treatment beds at the more than 300 health authority and community care facilities, and almost $50 million to support existing harm reduction initiatives at 49 overdose prevention sites, with drug checking and naloxone kit distribution.

Harm reduction. There’s a new narrative that seems to be out there that treatment, treatment, treatment is all there is. You can’t go to treatment if you’re dead. Harm reduction has always been part of treatment, even a part of abstinence-based programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.

Thanks to my higher power, I recovered through Alcoholics Anonymous. Even in that, for those first few days, my sponsor was wise enough not to cut me off and to bring me down by giving me a little bit of alcohol over those few days so that I wouldn’t go into medical shock. That’s harm reduction. That’s exactly what safe supply and harm reduction do. That kept me alive so that I could go and get the help that I needed.

Almost $40 million to fund existing peer-assisted care teams and mobile integrated crisis-response teams. One of the other things that I’ve learned, over the last decade or so, is that you’re more likely to listen to someone who has been through the same things that you have, who has the same lived experiences as you have.

[4:05 p.m.]

This funding for peer-assisted care teams — I can’t stress how important this is, and how happy I am to see that this has expanded. They are life-savers. The drug toxicity crisis is out of hand, has been for a long time. I shudder to think: if we didn’t have the programs in place, how many more people would be dying? How many more people would be affected? Again, I’m very, very proud to be part of a government that continues its razor sharp focus on continuing to provide people with the supports and the care that they need.

Through this province’s capital plan, additional funding will also support treatment and recovery beds, including work to expand the Red Fish healing model.

In terms of education, my colleague spoke about education very passionately. She has a lot of passion because she went through a unique time where she was one of those voices that stood steadfast against a whole government for students. I was speaking with a colleague who sits across from me there who was one of those people, one of those, I guess, lost students who spent more time outside of school than in school during those years when those struggles were going on.

Schools have had a historic enrolment growth in the last year, with 13,000 more students. This budget invests almost $1 billion more for staff in classrooms to support this growth. Through this funding, students will also be better supported with money for the classroom enhancement fund to hire more teachers, including special education teachers, teacher-psychologists and counsellors.

As I said, as we go through these hard times, we’ll see that mental health is something that…. I’m glad that we’re recognizing that there’s a continuum there and that we need to reach out to people and help them at a younger and younger age.

A record $4.2 billion is dedicated to build, renovate and seismically upgrade schools and playgrounds over the next three years as part of this province’s capital plan. Really important for my constituents in Richmond. We live in that delta where, if there is a tragic earthquake, the ground essentially just melts underneath you. So making sure that our children are safe when they’re at school — I can’t think of anything more important than that.

In terms of justice and public safety, this budget invests almost $400 million to keep people safe and to keep communities strong. These investments will better support families with access to the justice system by expanding early resolution model and legal aid services. This early resolution model helps divert family law cases to mediation to improve timely resolution and also helps reduce the amount of family law cases that proceed to court.

Court is a really adversarial process, especially in the realm of family law, and probably not the best place to resolve issues because these are personal issues. Many of them sometimes can be resolved outside of an adversarial process. So I’m really pleased to see this, and I’m pleased to see all the new models that are coming through.

Funding for legal aid services will also help establish a new family law clinic dedicated to families experiencing family violence and expand access to legal aid services to help us serve thousands more families per year.

I remember the time when legal aid for the most vulnerable was gutted. Courts and services were closed. We’re still dealing with the fallout of those myopic decisions. When I started out, I took a few legal aid cases. I’ve taken cases throughout my career, some legal aid cases, but there are often times where I would just end up doing those cases pro bono because it would take me more time to actually fill out the paperwork to get paid through legal aid. What I would get paid would be just so nominal that I’d rather just do that case pro bono. I’m glad legal aid is being funded again.

Additional funding will also support a variety of public safety programs, correction centres, B.C. Coroners Service and RoadSafetyBC programs. We will continue to help those people who need care and support the most.

This budget protects and strengthens supports for children and youth in care or with support needs. This in­cludes $114 million for children in alternative care arrangements and will improve frontline support within the child welfare system with new staff, including workers who support Indigenous children and youth.

[4:10 p.m.]

There will also be funding with better support for children with dyslexia and related learning deficiencies in the K-12 school system. It will support early literacy screening for kindergarten to grade 3 students. It will better equip teachers and support staff with professional development and provide additional intervention and outreach programs for those children.

Once this program is fully rolled out, it’s expected that approximately 9,000 students per year will benefit from these new supports.

There will also be new funding that’ll support 2,800 more children and youth through the autism diagnosis or complex health needs, for a total of 28,000 children and youth in the year 2024 to 2025. This funding will also help families access eligible services and supports that promote the skills development as part of the medical benefits program.

There will be additional money for Community Living B.C., which does an incredible job. It’ll improve the quality of life for people with developmental disabilities and their families’ lives, helping clients access services and supports to manage their daily activities.

I see my time is almost up, so I’ll try and zoom through this.

Building a stronger, cleaner economy that works better for all people…. Again, we’ve seen the impact of the climate emergency. It’s real. Not only does it impact us economically, but it impacts our health. This budget provides $1.3 billion for new measures to help mitigate and better respond to the impacts of climate emergencies, to build a cleaner economy and to address the challenges that people are facing right now.

From record flooding in 2021 to unprecedented drought and wildfires in 2023, with the way things are happening right now, this season may see more of that. We’ve experienced firsthand the impacts of climate change. This government has invested and will continue to invest over the next few years to bolster our province’s capacity to prepare for and respond to future climate emergencies.

All in all, this is a budget that I can stand up here and be really proud to speak in favour of. It lays bare this government’s central priority, which is to take care of people in a time of need.

C. Oakes: Crisis. Chaos. Cuts. Government choices that are picking winners and losers. That is what Budget 2024 is.

I rise today to provide a response to the government’s budget. Not only is it a budget drowning in red ink, leaving the largest deficit in B.C.’s history at 7.9 billion, the largest debt levels B.C. has ever seen, this government is forecasting to drive taxpayer-supported debt to $126 billion by 2027, a tripling of what it inherited upon taking power in 2017.

Now, we have heard members of the government stand before you and talk about how the decisions that they’re making in this budget are about making choices and delivering services to people across British Columbia.

Well, over the time I have today, I’ll provide examples after examples of the significant cuts, the challenges and the disproportionate access to services in rural British Columbia and how this is truly a budget that abandons rural communities.

[4:15 p.m.]

B.C. encompasses a vast geography, but only 86 percent of the population is concentrated in a small number of urban centres, occupying 4 percent of the land mass. Now, while only 14 percent of the population lives in rural B.C., it is rural B.C. that produces the lumber, the food, the natural gas and the electricity that allow all of us to enjoy a high standard of living.

It’s been described to me that rural B.C. is the fuel, while urban B.C. is the engine of our province. Both are required for us to continue to move forward. When one part of this equation is left behind, our society and our economy as a whole will fail.

While the government stands and talks about the record levels of money that are being spent, we contrast that to the results that we’ve seen on the ground. What I would say to the government, the reason why they’re delivering such poor results, is that they failed to understand that critical partnership, that important understanding that while rural B.C. is the fuel, urban B.C. the engine, and without the two working together, everything else will fail.

In government’s response to their budget, they continue to repeat that this is a budget that has people’s backs. So to the constituents of Cariboo North, soon to be Prince George–North Cariboo, I want to do an assessment of this budget to help you understand how the investments in this budget will impact you.

I’ve broken it into some themes. I’m going to start with public safety: crisis, chaos and cuts.

Businesses in the community have seen an increase in theft, shoplifting, vandalism, arson, smash-and-grabs and general bad behaviour in and around their businesses. Business owners feel helpless. Even though they’re doing everything right to document, report, submit evidence, the criminals are going unpunished, and there is just no effective deterrent. Prolific offenders are identified but are going unpunished because of lack of resources. This budget failed to acknowledge that, and this budget has failed to take the necessary steps.

Last weekend I met with members of the Quesnel Down­town Association, and they clearly want me to express to this government that our downtown is in crisis. If this government does not step up and provide the necessary services, our community will be hollowed out. We will be gutted. We will be a community that the government can be proud to say of: “Look, we abandoned you and left you on your own.”

I’m having a town hall on March 11. I invite the government. In fact, I invite all levels of government, because I do believe that these types of solutions, to solve, require all of us working together. Whether you’re in government, in opposition, at the federal level, the local level, the provincial level, the regional district, we all need to come together to address this. So I invite everyone, on March 11, to come to our town hall and have your say. Let’s look towards finding solutions.

Now, one of the critical things that, as a community, we need to look at when we look at the challenges that we’re seeing around some of the behaviour in our communities…. We certainly understand that a significant part of the challenges we have faced is because we have challenges with mental health and addictions in our communities.

Reviewing this budget, my expectation, based on all of the rhetoric of this government about how they care about people and how they are going to invest the necessary investments in mental health and addictions and recovery…. I reviewed the budget to find out where those investments would be in our community. Where are the funds for mental health?

Well, actually, guess what I learned? March 31 of this year, our mental health facility is going to be cut, at a time when we have record challenges in our communities. We’re losing people, loved ones, family members. At a time when it is critically important that we have mental health supports, that this government would cut the funds for a mental health facility in our community is deplorable.

[4:20 p.m.]

What about treatment and recovery? I know members of this Legislature, on all sides, have had the people come into your office, families that have put mortgages on their homes to help support loved ones go through treatment, if they can get treatment — long waiting lists, very limited options in rural B.C., specifically the North. Where’s the investment in this budget to support mental health and addictions? It’s not.

I’m calling on all levels of government to step up. Government likes to talk a good game in saying how much money they’re spending. They’re just not delivering any results.

I’m going to move now to health care. Again, crisis, chaos and cuts under this government and this budget. I’d like to share with members of this Legislature a snapshot of some of the constituent files I’m currently working on.

Currently there is a flood of people coming into my office with very concerning letters. Let me read the first letter. The first sets of letters come from people who just found out that we’re losing four doctors in our community. This is just from last week.

While the government, the minister, has stood in this House and talked about how they’re adding 700 doctors in British Columbia, where are they? How is it that we’re losing four doctors in a community our size? What does that do to a community in the Cariboo that loses four doctors in our community?

Let me just read what these letters sound like: “Dear patient. With regret, I must inform you that I will be leaving my medical practice. There may be a contingency plan for my practice to be taken over by another physician, but this is currently undetermined at this time. As of now, there’s no clear replacement for my practice. There are currently no other physicians taking new patients.”

Here’s what the constituents shared with me.

“We chose to move to Quesnel from Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island to be closer to our family and their support in our aging years. We arranged to have our medical records forwarded, paid over $200 to have that task completed. On Tuesday, February 13, 2024, we both received letters….” which I just read out.

“We feel incredibly let down and frustrated by this whole situation. We realize we are only two of many who are dealing with no physician. But this smacks of deception, being assigned to someone who is already leaving only months after meeting them, and then be required to pay a fee. We are seniors on a poverty-level fixed income and cannot frivolously pay for what is rightfully our information.”

Here is another letter that I received from a constituent.

“Dear patient,

“You have been enrolled in the British Columbia provincial retinal diseases treatment program, a collaboration of the Ministry of Health, government of British Columbia and the retinal specialists of British Columbia. This program covers professional fees, administrative fees and drug costs for the treatment of wet macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema and retinal vein occlusion.

“Over the past 15 years, since its inception in 2009, the program, the first and most comprehensive of its kind in Canada, has preserved the vision of over 25,000 British Columbians annually across our province; provided immediate access to care within days at no additional cost to patients in all areas of the province, including many rural sites; provided treatment for the above-noted conditions by the most highly qualified eye care practitioners; saved over $2 billion in health care costs with ongoing annual savings in the range of $250 million; developed the largest, longest-running real-life database of patient treatments in the world.

“No other jurisdiction in the world has been able to achieve the level of quality access and cost-effectiveness of this program, which has become a model for other British Columbians.

“With inflationary and rising cost of facilities, equipment, supplies and staffing, it is simply not sustainable for retinal specialists to continue to participate in the program under these circumstances. As a result, unless there is a reversal of this program and a new agreement that fairly addresses our situation, the program will terminate on March 31, 2024.

[4:25 p.m.]

“To date, the Ministry of Health has not expressed any interest in entering into any further discussions with the retinal specialists in regard to this, so we are now informing you of the charge, going forward.

“As of April 1, 2024, patients will be individually responsible for the costs of administration and management fees, as well as the costs of the drugs, and will need to directly seek any reimbursements of these costs from the government or private health care insurance.

“We deeply regret this turn of events, which is not part of our making, and the disruption it will inevitably cause our patients across the province and, in particular, in the rural outreach sites, which may no longer be viable for us to continue to provide service. We assure you we will continue to endeavour to provide you care to the best of our ability, given these circumstances.”

How is it that the government, with record spending, found it so easy to make cuts and make decisions that are going to have significant impact on people in my area?

In the case of the doctor of the constituent I’ve talked to, this doctor sees 70 to 90 patients a day in Prince George. These patients come from all over northern British Columbia. What happens…? So 70 to 80 patients a day just received this letter, and this is a government…?

The minister spoke up today, said: “No problems here. No, everything’s going to be just the same.” So either the government isn’t up to date on what letters have gone out, or they’re just trying to sell people on the fact that everything’s okay. I hope they step up. I hope this government steps up and does something about that.

Let’s talk about the meeting I had last week with the Canadian Mental Health Association in Quesnel. For all the rhetoric of this government, they have not received funding for mental health necessary to keep the doors open beyond March 31 of 2024. I talked about that a little bit earlier.

Let’s talk about the radiologist at the cancer clinic in Prince George. Now, he’s leaving for Ontario, so surgery wait times for knee and hips, which…. Again the government takes victory laps, yet we’re hemorrhaging specialists and doctors throughout the North and rural British Columbia. Yet the government says: “No problem here, folks. Everything’s great.”

I would say to the government that perhaps they should come into our communities and talk to some of the folks who are faced with these difficult challenges.

Now, transportation. I want to talk a little bit about this because I don’t think somebody living in an urban setting understands what happens. We have limited cardiac support in the North. So say you have a heart attack. What happens in rural British Columbia or, specifically, mine, is you get flown down to the Lower Mainland.

While the air ambulance will take you down to the hospital…. You get discharged in whatever the clothes are on your back, whatever you have when you were put in the ambulance. You’re sent home, and you have to figure out your own way home.

I can tell you we require all of our specialist appointments down in other areas, and it’s a significant cost to people. For all the government says that they’re making sure that there are supports for people, that’s certainly not the lived experience for people in rural B.C.

Let’s talk about seniors for a minute. Health care should be equally accessible to all British Columbians. In reality, it simply is not. Whether it’s access to a family physician, 24-hour acute care, hospital beds, diagnostic, laboratory, medical specialists, long-term care, home care or ambulance services, seniors in rural B.C. enjoy less access than their urban counterparts.

What is needed as we age is the same, regardless of where we live. We need medical support, a home that can meet the mobility challenges and people to help if we can’t do some of the services ourselves.

On February 16, we had the pleasure of having the sen­iors advocate in our community, and here are some of the statistics she shared.

While there are physician shortages in urban B.C., current data suggests 17 percent of rural seniors do not have a family doctor. There are 70 percent fewer acute care beds in rural areas.

[4:30 p.m.]

There is a 27 percent longer length of stay for alternative levels of care with rural senior patients, 24 percent fewer home support clients per 1,000 rural population, and they receive, on average, 19 percent fewer hours of care.

There are 55 percent fewer publicly subsidized long-term-care beds, and the median wait time to access publicly subsidized long-term-care beds is twice as long in rural B.C. How does this budget address that? It doesn’t.

Seniors living in rural areas often need to travel to access health care and, again, it’s not covered. What about the funding for the cardiac care tower in Prince George? Is it in this budget? No, ignored.

Let’s talk about child care. In fact, child care, $10-a-day daycare, was the signature platform promise two times by this government, so I was keen to understand how that investment would look in our community. Well, shockingly, there are, across this province, 10,000 fewer children in child care, and 10 percent of child care facilities actually delivered the $10-a-day child care. Imagine this. A signature platform announcement, universal $10-a-day child care. So how are we doing? Well, 90 percent of people don’t have it.

I looked at the numbers in our community. The City of Quesnel estimated in 2020 that there were 587 spaces. Look forward to now. What are we looking at? Three hundred and sixty-five spaces. We have had a 20 percent decrease in licensed child care spaces under this government and all of the rhetoric of how great they are doing.

Get this, Madam Speaker. I asked: “Well, how many $10-a-day child care spaces do we have in Quesnel and the region?” We have 14 spaces. So much for anyone that voted for that universal $10 child care promise delivered twice. Guess what. You’re not getting it, not in this budget, probably not in any budget of this government.

Let’s turn to the economy and connectivity. The member for Cariboo-Chilcotin talked about what we’ve been seeing in our area with the slash burns and the challenges that we’ve seen with the number of fires that the ministry are lighting and the challenges that we’ve had with access to fibre.

I want to spend a moment on the experience that we’ve had around wildfires. Of course, the Cariboo has been significantly impacted many years since 2017. One would think, with all of the consultations that this government has done and all of this work that they have done, that we would be in a position now where there would be some level of confidence in rural B.C. that we are prepared for this wildfire season.

Well, guess what. I just heard from one of my volunteer fire departments. Actually, their community gaming grant, which is critical to the operation of our volunteer fire departments that do the on-the-ground, in-community response to wildfires, has been cut.

How is it that government can talk about all this record investments and getting us ready for this wildfire season — it’s going to be a record challenging year for us — and they’re cutting the budgets of our volunteer fire departments? How does that make sense?

Now, let’s talk a little bit about the economy and something that’s critically important for us. It would make a lot of sense. This government has talked about value-added. I think that’s a critically…. I will say that value-added is a critically important piece of our economy. I was proud of our government and the steps that we were taking to look at the entire utilization of fibre and how critically important that is.

Imagine my surprise when two weeks ago I had the conversation of: “How are we doing on the wildfire salvage permits getting released?” Imagine my surprise when I learned that no permits had been released in our region. Alberta, three weeks after their wildfires, was able to get the wildfire salvage wood permits out the door. Now, members of this Legislature…. “Well, it’s just a permit.” What does that mean?

[4:35 p.m.]

Well, I can tell you that because of the delay in the permits in our region right now, 400 people were out of work last week. Four hundred people didn’t get a paycheque. If we don’t have permits released in our communities, and we can’t get access to fibre, the necessary fibre — whether it’s our pellet facilities, whether it’s our sawmills, whether it’s our pulp mills, whether it’s our value-added sector — people don’t work.

So how can this government say that we’re there for the working person, that we’re there for the people of British Columbia, when we have permit paralysis right across the board in the natural resource sector? People actually are the ones that get impacted by this government’s permit paralysis, because they don’t work.

It’s not like somebody’s coming to them and saying: “Look, we’ll give you a paycheque for that week that we have down time because the government couldn’t get the permits out the door.” It doesn’t work that way.

Now, when there is such a significant affordability challenge, the fact that we have a government that just…. They grow government so big, and they talk about this record level of money that they’re spending. But what is happening…. They’re growing government so big. It’s such a big government, they can’t get anything done. They can’t get anything done, and we’re seeing that lack of results in our community.

Let’s talk about Barkerville Historic Town. I was so proud last week. We had the B.C. Games in our commun­ity. I’ve talked a lot in this Legislature about Barkerville. It truly is the most special place in B.C. It’s really dear to my heart. It’s an incredibly important piece of tourism diversification in our region. It’s something that really matters.

Their budget was cut in this budget. So all historic properties in British Columbia, I guess, are getting a reduction this year. Not only is it a reduction. It’s a reduction…. For example, you know that reconciliation that the government talks about and how we need to have that interpretive element across the board?

If you have seen Cheryl and her team deliver the Indigenous interpretation at Barkerville, it’s amazing. But the budget has been cut. It’s not here. On one hand you say, “This is so important to us.” On the other hand, you see those things cut in this budget. One needs to reconcile. Is it truly…? I think that there is….

Here’s what I believe. We’ve seen such a high level of investment in communication officers under this government. They’re banking on the fact that if we hire enough communication officers, they can spin this budget to make sure that it’s everybody else’s fault. If we just keep repeating the phrase that we’re there for people, maybe people won’t understand that they’ve cut funds for Barkerville. They’ve cut mental health. They’ve cut other services in our communities. They’ve cut specialist funding. They’ve cut health care. They’ve made all these cuts.

Let’s talk about education. I heard earlier about educational assistants and how critically important…. Look, they are so critically important. In our community, I can share that it’s in crisis. For all the rhetoric that the government talks about and all the investments, we’re just not seeing any results.

Part of that ties in with our public post-secondary in­vestments that need to happen. Look, in March of 2022, this was a government that stood up and said they were going to review the funding model, understanding that post-secondary institutions were struggling to provide the necessary programs just with the inflationary costs and a lot of other challenges that they’re facing.

I can tell you that what is critical to reconciliation in our community, what is critical to ensuring that we have the labour force in our communities, is that we absolutely need access to programs at our North Cariboo Community Campus. That’s that partnership between the College of New Caledonia and UNBC.

I can share with members of the House that there is a significant amount of concern, not only with the comments that this government has made recently that have done significant international damage to our post-secondary reputation but by the decisions or lack of decisions seen in this budget to really support the necessary investments in post-secondary at both the college and university levels at our public post-secondary institutions.

[4:40 p.m.]

Look, if this government does not make the necessary investments and the changes necessary, we’re not going to have the workforce that we need to drive our health care, our social services, our economy. Those investments just weren’t in this budget.

In conclusion, I have talked a lot about roads in this House. Boy, I’ve delivered more speeches in this Legisla­ture…. I think when I leave here and Hansard looks up Coralee Oakes — oh, I’m not allowed to use my name, sorry; the minister — it will have…. I don’t know how many speeches I’ve delivered in this House on the necessity of investing in roads. And look, climate change has really changed the nature of what happens to our critical infrastructure.

I didn’t see the north-south interconnector in our community, and that’s critical not just for our community but the regional movement of goods, people throughout British Columbia, and I hope that maybe in the contingency or leading up to the election there will be a promise made by this government, because it’s critically important.

I guess, in closing, maybe this is…. I don’t know. If anyone in the Ministry of Transportation might get a copy of this or is watching or perhaps any of the maintenance contractors out there….

I got to know a lot, more than I ever thought I would, about the mainten­ance of roads and how critically important it is to take care of culverts and ditching and to make sure, as we head into spring freshet, that proper maintenance is happening. I’ve seen the results of life-altering deaths in our communities when you have significant challenges with potholes and all the rest.

Look, you’ve got to do a better job, folks.

To the Ministry of Transportation and our maintenance contractors, you need to step up. It’s not good enough, what is happening right now, and we’re heading into another freshet year. I hope we’re not seeing another 150 roads damaged, or 200 roads.

I know that there’s a lot more to it. But step up. We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Finally, I’m proud to serve as your representative.

Hon. G. Heyman: It’s a pleasure to stand up and speak in support of Budget 2024, because this is a budget that understands that British Columbians are facing tough times — tough times with respect to affordability, tough times with respect to the related challenges of housing, both finding it and affording it, concern about the provision of health care services, concern about the impacts of climate change, and concern about building a healthy, clean economy that will serve their kids.

This budget is significant, because it is a commitment by our government to support British Columbians, to support them in the range of services and supports they need, whether it is finding and building new housing, whether it is addressing the impacts of climate change, whether it is strengthening and building a strong, durable economy that’s built for a clean economy future, whether it is looking at some of the daily costs that they face and putting money in their pockets, targeted to people who need it.

When I think about this budget and what it does, I think about the first time I ran for office in 2013. I spent time walking door to door in Vancouver-Fairview, talking to people about what they were concerned about and what the impacts were they were feeling on a day-to-day basis.

[4:45 p.m.]

At that point, there had been 12 years of a government that had many of the people who still sit on the opposite side of the House as ministers making critical decisions that affected British Columbians’ lives.

What I heard constantly was concern about service cuts, concern that the government of the day took away from people the supports they and their kids needed and didn’t invest in the supports that would make their life easier, didn’t invest in child care. In fact, they cut the wages of child care workers to the point where many child care workers in town halls said to me they couldn’t afford child care for their own kids, so they were leaving the field so they could find work that would support them.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Excuse me, Minister.

The side conversation…. Could you step out in the hallway, please?

Hon. G. Heyman: Thank you, Speaker.

They were concerned about cuts to health care, and because many health care institutions exist in my riding…. The central hospital district, one of them in Vancouver was in my riding. There were many health care workers who worked there, and many of them had had their livelihoods cut by the previous government through ripping up of collective agreements and wage cuts. They were struggling to survive.

That was over a decade ago, and I think that members of our government heard very clearly when we were in opposition what people wanted and needed. They wanted access to education. They wanted seismic upgrades for schools. They wanted affordable housing, and they wanted protection from renovictions and intolerable rent hikes. They wanted child care. They wanted medical care.

What I’ve heard in the hours of debate from the members opposite is, on the one hand, saying that we are running a huge, unprecedented deficit, which is, in fact, a budget that is designed to deliver to the people of British Columbia the supports that they have been clamouring and asking for, and putting money into education, into health care, into building rental housing, into supporting people with B.C. Hydro rebates, with an enhanced climate action tax credit, with the B.C. family benefit, with many, many measures that make their lives more affordable in every way.

Then, on the other hand, when the members stand up and speak, they say that we’re not providing enough services, that people are going wanting. Well, you really can’t have it both ways.

We know what people on the other side of the House did when they were in government. They said the most important thing was a balanced budget. If that meant hacking the wages of people, hacking services to people, failing to deal with the housing crisis until it became a huge housing crisis, failing to address the needs of renters, disrespecting workers, particularly unionized workers, because they felt they made too much money, that’s what they did. That’s what they did to balance the budget.

We have a good fiscal record. We know that the pandemic and runaway inflation have impacted the economy around the globe. This is not unique to B.C. So when people need our help, we are deciding to deliver that help. We are deciding to send a positive message to British Columbians that the services they need and count on, they can count on our government to deliver, because that’s what they want.

That’s not fiscal responsibility. That’s focusing on the critical needs and crises facing British Columbians today. It includes building a diversified, strong and healthy economy with many jobs, with investments in the future that will build and support British Columbian families as we build infrastructure and services to support them. Of course, we will continue to be responsible in our government spending.

[4:50 p.m.]

We are working to leverage British Columbia’s strengths for a cleaner and more sustainable economy that will work better for everyone, that will take us away from the kind of boom-and-bust economy that members opposite still seem to think is the best that British Columbians can hope for.

We have, in fact, been creating thousands of jobs and delivering cleaner air by investing in clean energy solutions. We have supported through myriad programs, in­cluding the CleanBC industry fund and a number of other programs, businesses and manufacturers to innovate, to adopt, to grow, to create more family-supporting jobs.

That’s whether it is in the technology sector that develops the technological solutions to reduce carbon emissions in our resource industries or it’s those resource industries themselves, like mining and forestry, that have been supported by our government to reduce emissions in the commodities that they produce, which is responding to a growing international market that wants to invest and buy products made from responsible jurisdictions that take climate change seriously while still supporting industrial development.

We are training people for in-demand jobs so we do not have to fill demand for workers in B.C. from outside B.C. We train British Columbians and British Columbia’s young people to take those jobs, to be ready for those jobs, to be able to stay here and build a future and family-supporting employment.

We’re providing affordable, accessible child care, step by step building toward our ultimate goal of $10-a-day child care for everyone. We have created thousands of spaces and reduced rates for many, many parents and working families while, at the same time, supporting child care workers, like the ones who talked to me in 2013, ’14 and ’15, to make a decent wage so that they can afford to work in a sector that we all depend on.

It’s working. In 2023, we added 74,000 jobs in British Columbia. We had the highest wages and one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. We had, over a five-year period, the highest gross domestic product increase of large provinces in Canada. That’s a record to be proud of. It’s not a record to criticize simply because people are on one side of the House or the other. It’s something we should all celebrate and we should all look for measures to support.

British Columbians have been devastated by the im­pacts of climate change, whether it is the deaths in the heat dome; the significant costs of the atmospheric rivers and the flooding, the effects on agriculture and other industries; the two record wildfire seasons that followed other record wildfire seasons; or the droughts that we know we had and will experience because of the low snowpack this year. British Columbians want a government that takes climate change seriously every single year by remaining committed to a careful and well-thought-out plan to reduce emissions and build a low-carbon economy.

Of course they are concerned about affordability and want us to support them, and we are doing that. We are doing that through the B.C. family benefit, we are doing that through B.C. Hydro rebates, and we are doing that by an increased climate action tax credit that ensures 100 percent of the increase in the carbon tax is returned to people through the climate action tax credit. It’s important.

It’s important to support people to make the changes in their lives that will make their homes more sustainable and more comfortable and, ultimately, lower their energy, home-heating and water bills long term. Those are the kinds of measures we find in CleanBC and this budget.

[4:55 p.m.]

The choices that we’ve made and that we’re making help us build on a very, very solid B.C. foundation. It delivers on a vision for a stronger, cleaner economy that works better for everyday people.

Budget 2024 adds $411 million over four years to continue to fund grant and rebate programs for clean transportation, for energy efficient buildings and communities and to support the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Forty million dollars for heat pump rebates for low- and middle-income households. Many people who thought a heat pump was out of their price range will now be able to afford one, will be more comfortable, will be protected from cold and extreme heat, and will face lower energy costs over the long term that far more than repay their outlay.

That’s what people want. When they think they can’t afford it, it’s understandable they can’t purchase it. That’s why we’re helping them. We’re working to help them to make the changes that they need.

We will continue to do that, because we know British Columbians want to build and have a more sustainable future. We know that British Columbians look to our government to assist them in doing that, whether it’s through investing in public transit, through supporting zero-emission vehicle adoption, through supporting electric heat pumps and energy retrofits to make their homes better and more energy efficient.

Thirty million dollars to expand public electric-vehicle-charging stations across B.C., on top of the very significant investments we’ve already made. We are addressing the concerns that people have about what it means to have an electric vehicle. Not everybody now has to buy a new one. Although the costs, in fact, between internal combustion engines and electric vehicles are getting closer, there are many used EVs on the market now as well.

For those who say, “That’s fine for Victoria; that’s fine for Vancouver; that’s fine for Metro Vancouver; it doesn’t work in the North,” maybe they should explain that to the Environment Minister of the Yukon, who drives an electric vehicle around the Yukon, including down to the B.C. border, and urged me and our government to ensure there were more EV charging stations so he could drive all the way down through northern B.C. to Vancouver if he wanted to visit friends.

We have other people who demonstrated how possible it was to use an electric vehicle across northern B.C. in very cold weather, and we know that the new generation of heat pumps are good to minus 30. Sometimes you need some backup, but that’s no reason why, in the 90 percent of the time when electric heat pumps and energy-efficient heating of water and space and also cooling in the summer is available, we shouldn’t be helping people to use that.

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

We have $20 million for community active transportation investments, the kind that make a difference to people who don’t want to own a car but need to be able to get from home to work or to see their friends and family in a convenient, accessible way. We’re going to continue to invest in active transportation and public transportation options to ensure that people who want to take a bus or a SkyTrain or ride their bicycle or have access to an e-bike or simply roll on a skateboard or a scooter can do that and feel safe doing it.

I hear often from young people. One of the things that I try to do…. Every time I’ve had an invitation to speak to a high school class, sometimes an elementary school class, often university classes, I try to take that opportunity because I want to hear from young people about what they’re concerned about, both for their working future, their working lives, but also about the environment they face, the threats of climate change, what they’re thinking.

[5:00 p.m.]

This past summer I held a number of round tables at post-secondary institutions around the province. I heard there was a lot of anxiety, but I also heard people were looking for opportunities to be trained in the skills that will be needed in a clean energy future. They want those skills. They want skills for the future, and we’re investing in those skills for the future.

Some of them also want to find ways to make a difference, to both help adapt communities to climate change, to help build resilient communities and to help take some of the measures that will reduce emissions.

One of the things, though relatively small, that I’m very pleased to see in this government as part of the CleanBC submission is $3 million in a one-time grant to the Youth Climate Corps of B.C. It’s a not-for-profit supporting youth engagement in climate programming across B.C. communities.

Their accomplishments have been considerable. I have talked to the founder of the Youth Climate Corps, who talks about having attracted and engaged young people to the Youth Climate Corps who were looking for work, having trouble finding work, had anxiety about the future, were feeling alienated and disconnected. Being able to find an opportunity to do meaningful work, to develop skills and to be paid for it was literally life-changing for them.

Many of us, as young people, in this House had that same experience when we had the opportunity to do various kinds of work in our late teens, in our early 20s, finding something when we were looking for work and couldn’t find it — something that made a difference, that made us feel not only like we were doing something worthwhile and making a living but that we were contributing to our economy and our communities. We were making things better for people, our neighbours. It’s a great start to a working life, and it often dictates the choices people will make later in their careers.

We also want to ensure that British Columbia is well poised for the economy of the future. We know that a low-carbon economy depends on a lot of critical minerals, and we have those in B.C. We have a vibrant mining sector. We have people around the world looking for jurisdictions with stability, with a clear commitment to emission reduction, with environmental, social and governance goals built into their culture.

We are devoting $24 million for a new B.C. critical mineral strategy that will support collaboration with First Nations, with industry, with local governments and the public and ensure that we have adequate resources for mine permitting and for assessments so that when we have a chance to develop a new mine in an environmentally responsible way, in a way that delivers benefits for British Columbians, in a way that is co-developed and provides opportunities for First Nations who have collaborated in the design of the project, those projects can go forward on an expedited basis while still being responsible to the social needs of the communities, to the concerns of the communities and to the environmental needs of the province.

We are having success. When we launched CleanBC in 2018…. We have seen significant changes. By supporting British Columbians to buy electric vehicles, by investing in charging infrastructure, we blew past our 2025 target several years early. Last year almost 23 per cent of light vehicle sales in B.C. are electric.

In talking to the New Car Dealers of British Columbia when we were mingling in the Hall of Honour after the budget, they said that in the upcoming auto show, there will be 40 varieties of electric vehicles for people to choose from. They have a longer range. The prices are coming down. It is significant. And British Columbia is on the leading edge because our government introduced legislation, because our government invested in British Columbians, because our government invested in infrastructure.

[5:05 p.m.]

We have issued thousands of rebates to make heat pumps more affordable for people, and we have brought forward initiatives to ensure that we streamline the application process, that we’re giving support to the British Columbians who need it most, those who would not otherwise be able to afford to make the change.

We are trying to support the adoption of heat pumps, including unit-by-unit heat pumps in multiple-unit buildings. We want to support that uptake in rentals because we want to reduce emissions, we want to reduce people’s heating and cooling costs, and we want to make life more affordable for people in the long term.

Contrary to what I have often heard from the members opposite during question period, not only are B.C.’s per-capita emissions down 21 per cent in 2021; the GHG intensity of the economy fell by 29 per cent since 2007. Our absolute emissions: not just per capita but, while B.C.’s population has grown and our economy has grown, B.C.’s absolute emissions are down significantly since 2017.

We are continuing to evaluate, to iterate on our CleanBC plan and our CleanBC roadmap, to ensure that we remain on target to meet our emission reduction legislated goals for 2030 and then on to 2040 and on to 2050, while working with industry to ensure that we have jobs in British Columbia and we have investment in British Columbia while they reduce their emissions profile.

I mentioned, at the beginning of my comments, that people were concerned about what had been a lack of investment in infrastructure in British Columbia. Whether it was schools, seismic upgrading, public transportation or hospitals, there was huge demand in British Columbia. We have made significant progress in meeting that demand, despite our constantly growing population and the de­mands placed on it.

We are climbing out of an investment and infrastructure deficit that we inherited, and we’re going to continue to make those kinds of investments, as we have over the seven years that we’ve been in government.

Budget 2024, in addition to capital plan funding, pro­vides $250 million to 21 local governments that make up the Northwest B.C. Resource Benefits Alliance, to support planning and infrastructure construction such as roads, water, sewer and other community facilities to ensure that there are livable communities for their growing workforce as the resource economy in those communities continues to grow.

One of the concerns that exists in my riding and close to my riding, in the soon-to-be riding of Vancouver–​Little Mountain, is the long-standing demand for a school at Olympic Village. We are committed to building the Olympic Village school. We know how important the project is for the local school community and their families. The Vancouver school board and the city of Vancouver finalized the lease for the site in 2022. The site has been complex, and it has required some additional planning, which has eaten up some time.

That is, understandably, frustrating for parents who want a place for their kids, but the project is making progress. The Ministry of Education has been working with the Vancouver school board, who submitted their finalized business case for review in the last few weeks. Ministry staff are working quickly to review the report, and more news will be available about timelines soon. We appreciate people’s patience, and we look forward to delivering for them.

In every election I’ve run in, at every door I’ve knocked on, housing has been an issue, whether it’s renters worried about losing their affordable rent or people concerned about mortgage rates rising or about the fact that their kids can’t afford to either rent or own a home in the neighbourhoods where they grew up, close to their parents.

[5:10 p.m.]

Everyone has got a story about housing; everyone has got a concern about housing.

That’s why it is so important that we’ve taken so much time in this budget and in legislation last fall, this spring and in years preceding to address housing in a systematic way, to continue to build it.

We know that the demand is high. We know that the population is growing. We know that people need to live and work close by, rather than to travel long distances, for so many reasons — for convenience, for family time, to ensure that we’re not wasting our time in traffic while emitting greenhouse gases that are harming our climate.

Whether it’s transit-oriented development or investment in public transit, massive investment through BC Builds in affordable rental housing, using public lands or supporting co-ops and non-profits, or simply speeding up the process for private developers to build needed housing, we are on the job for British Columbians. We know that people have serious needs. We know that people are facing a crisis of affordability. Every measure in this government that the opposition has claimed as reckless spending is designed to meet those needs.

I will close by saying that I’ve heard members opposite claim that all we’ve done is preside over a burgeoning public service that doesn’t get anything done. In fact, the burgeoning number of hires in the public sector represent those services that British Columbians need, that they want and that they were denied for so many years. Whether it’s nurses and care aides, teachers or other workers that ensure that people have the services they need, that’s what we’re spending money on: people who deliver the needs of British Columbians, not people who sit back and don’t deliver for British Columbians.

We know that people are looking to their government, in a time of hardship, to have their back. That’s what we’re working hard to do. That’s what Budget 2024 is about. That’s why I’m so proud to support it.

M. Lee: I rise to speak to Budget 2024. It provides us with an opportunity to review the performance of this NDP government after seven years. All we see from this government is more and more spending, delivering less than ever before. There has been no tangible, positive change for British Columbians.

We’ve been left with the challenges that we continue to face around affordability — including the worst affordability for housing in North America, with the highest rents in Canada; a mismanaged health care system, with the longest wait times for hospitals and medical clinics; and the challenges on our streets and neighbourhoods, in terms of people feeling unsafe. Yet this budget leaves us with a remarkable $8 billion deficit. It’s the largest inflationary budget deficit in B.C.’s history, and it’s a series of consecutive deficits that we’re seeing.

In the seven years since the NDP became government, they’ve increased the public debt for the province from about $8,500 per British Columbian to $22,000. That’s more than a 150 percent increase. While it has been said that it took 150 years in the history of our province to accumulate the first $50 billion in debt in British Columbia, under this NDP government, in just seven years, that public debt has doubled to over $103 billion and is projected to hit $165 billion by 2026-27.

[5:15 p.m.]

When we talk about what this government has done, this government continues to dig a very big, big hole for our children, for generations to come, for Indigenous peo­ples and British Columbians in this province — without a plan. We’ll get to that later in my remarks, but we know that the debt-servicing costs alone have doubled from $2.6 billion in 2017 to $5.7 billion in 2026 and that if debt-servicing were a ministry unto itself, it would be the fourth largest ministry of this government.

We know that this out-of-control spending by this government only fuels inflation. We know that these skyrocketing costs are going to hit British Columbians very hard, yet the results are not there. What we see and what we know is that there is a need for change. After seven years of this NDP government, British Columbians are faced with so many challenges that they need change.

For our B.C. United caucus, with our leader, we have a real plan to fix the problems facing British Columbia, a plan that would make life more affordable by eliminating everyday costs for British Columbians, making investments to bring back our province’s world-class health care system, and focusing on keeping British Columbians safe.

As I hear other members of the government talk about the future, I am just as concerned about that future. When you have the difficult conversations with British Columbians who are making choices about whether to stay in this province and build their lives and their livelihoods — whether it’s working in the resource sector, building a family, finding housing or finding the health care they need — difficult choices are being made. That’s why we’re seeing the increased net migration out of this province, just like we saw in the ’90s.

We know that in Vancouver we see the challenges on our streets and in our communities. There is no new funding for Vancouver school capital investment. This has been something I’ve been talking to the Minister of Education about, in last year’s estimates, and through letters.

There’s a huge disconnect, with the Vancouver school board, as to the projections of student enrolment going forward. It was a 15,000 gap. The Ministry of Education projected a 10,000 increase in student population by 2031. Vancouver school board, until recently, had projected a 5,000 decrease in student population by 2031, a 15,000 gap in students.

This has led to a real challenge. How do we ensure that we build the kinds of communities with affordable housing, with the school infrastructure that we need for a growing population, with overcrowded schools like Churchill Secondary in Vancouver-Langara?

Recently, the Vancouver school board has finally re­versed the trend of their projections. They now see an increase in forecasts, at least for the next three years. We continue to hear members of this government, including the current MLA for Vancouver–False Creek, making many assurances and many promises about the new Olympic Village school. There is no money in this budget for that school.

[5:20 p.m.]

We have a whole community of families and parents waiting for another NDP broken promise. It’s no wonder we see so much challenge in our Vancouver school district.

It’s important to recognize that there are decisions being made, selling off public assets, subdividing lands. These are hard decisions. But they’re not done with the kind of integrated planning that should be there between the Ministry of Education and our Vancouver school district.

We’ve seen, in South Vancouver, where 30 percent of the residents travel to work on transit. The infrastructure that was built under the former B.C. Liberal governments, like the Canada Line, under our current leader for the B.C. United when he was Transportation Minister, has been a significant benefit, going out from downtown Vancouver, out to the airport of Vancouver and into Richmond — new Canada Line stations being built.

I have been advocating for the last seven years that we need additional stations built at 33rd and 57th avenues in Vancouver, that we need additional support for rapid bus service on 41st and 49th avenues. We have Langara College where 85 percent of the students arrive on public transit. This is the kind of transit infrastructure investment that we need and that we’re not seeing from this government.

We’ve also seen challenges around health care. In South Vancouver, we still are looking at the pending closure of the South Vancouver Community Health Centre at 49th and Knight. No new money in this budget for how we address the need to ensure that there’s accessible health care for the residents of South Vancouver, including Vancouver-Langara — the seniors, the families.

These are just a few examples of the lack of focus by this government on the priorities that are needed to be addressed in Vancouver.

I recently have had the honour to return to the Attorney General critic role after many good years of service by my good friend, the member for Abbotsford West.

In joining the effort, as we continue to look at the challenge around community safety, last year in July, StatsCan put out their crime severity index. We continue to see a rise in criminal activity, violence across communities in our province. This began under our Premier, as a soft-on-crime Attorney General. Violent crimes, according to Statistics Canada, have increased by over 37 percent under the Premier and this NDP government, while overall crime has surged by nearly 10 percent.

B.C. has seen the largest single increase in homicides in Canada in 2022. The number of homicide victims has risen by over 72 percent under this Premier and the NDP government. The youth crime rate in British Columbia has skyrocketed, with an increase of 11 percent in the last year.

We know it is this Premier that has been the architect of the catch-and-release system, which has caused chaos in our communities by warehousing people with severe mental health and addiction issues without proper supports. Clearly, it is time to scrap the Premier’s catch-and-release policies and keep prolific offenders off our streets.

In September of 2023, the leader of the B.C. United team, with the member for Surrey South, announced the Safer B.C. plan. That plan will restore public safety and close this Premier’s revolving door of justice.

[5:25 p.m.]

As much as we see the continued challenges in our criminal justice system, we don’t see the level of investment by this government for the resources needed to continuously deal with and address the public safety concerns.

In fact, when you look at this government’s budget — as was pointed out by the shadow minister for Finance, the member for Kamloops–North Thompson — we actually see a percentage decrease, year over year, in this budget when it comes to protecting property and persons.

We don’t see the kinds of additional resources that are needed, the kinds of resources that we’ve called upon in our Safer B.C. plan — for example, to fill and address the 500 police vacancies across the province, to provide better supports for police, to ensure that we have a dedicated hate crime team, which I will also comment on more — the need for that. And certainly, there has been significant dialogue and review, in last year’s estimates and the estimates before, around the continued need to crack down on bail offenders.

I know, as the member for Abbotsford West had canvassed at length with the Attorney General, that we need to be very clear about the measures and parameters and the results of this government in addressing the kinds of public safety concerns that we’re talking about, to address those gaps. The B.C. United Safer B.C. plan will do that. It’s the kind of results-driven approach that the leader of the B.C. United would bring as the Premier of our province.

Recently I received a response from the Attorney General to a letter I read in the middle of December, talking about the concerns that we all have about the rise of antisemitism in our province, particularly since October 7. Recently, with statistics that have been shared by the Vancouver police department, for example, the Vancouver Jewish community has experienced a 62 percent increase in police-reported antisemitic hate incidents in 2023 as compared to 2022. Thirty-three of these 47 incidents oc­curred after the October 7 terrorist attacks by the Hamas.

We have seen investigations by the Vancouver police department, who have been ever so present and supportive of the Jewish community, in their places of worship, in their rallies, in their day schools. They have investigated 50 criminal offences connected with the October 7 terrorist attack, which has led to nine people being charged in connection with 11 incidents. To date, though, we have not seen any prosecutions.

I understand, and I do appreciate, that this government has revised HAT 1, their Crown counsel policy dealing with hate crimes, certainly to incorporate one point that I did raise with the Attorney General in terms of recognizing and updating the policy in respect of section 319(2.1) of the Criminal Code.

I continue to be very concerned about the rise of antisemitism in our province and the mechanisms for which this government is addressing that. I have called for a specific direction, for example, to address that.

[5:30 p.m.]

Certainly, under the Safer B.C. plan, we would see an increase in resources towards the hate crime units to deal with all hate-motivated crimes against minority and marginalized communities, but certainly in the context of what this province and the country is seized with and ought to be seized with in terms of the dramatic spike in hate incidents of an antisemitic nature since October 7.

I would just like to turn to one other point, at least in this section of my remarks, relating to an intentions paper that has been out there since September of 2022. This is in respect of the legal professions regulatory modernization.

As we know from this government, it is quite challenged around consultation. We’ve seen that with the Land Act amendments. But in this case, there was some understanding to the public, although I do think the public should have a greater understanding about what this government is considering. Certainly we’ve seen…. I’ve spoken to members of the Notaries Association, legal, paralegals, legal aid and others, and I’ve spoken to a number of people who are under NDAs, non-disclosure agreements. So there are limits in terms of what people can be saying about what the government is considering.

There was the intentions paper. There was, a year later in May of 2023, a year ago now, the what-we-heard report. In both of these reports, on next steps, there’s a real lack of clarity as to what the next steps are. In fact, there are no next steps spelled out. There’s complete silence. There’s just gratitude for people who’ve made comment.

Well, I know that as we know, as is the pattern of this government under this Premier in particular, there has been no respect for the independence of lawyers, the rule of law. I remind this government at this juncture that as a government, there is no greater duty for the Attorney General and a Premier who is a former Attorney General — who I have argued repeatedly in this House as the former shadow minister for the Attorney General, of the conflict of interest that this Premier was under, being the minister responsible for ICBC yet changing the rules of court to suit the biggest litigant in this province, being ICBC….

Here we see this government bringing forward…. As far as I understand, they haven’t taken it on the table. They haven’t taken it back, like the Land Act amendments legislation.

Potentially that would undermine the independence of lawyers from a regulation by government. Without that independence, it undermines access to justice in our province. It would hamper the ability of lawyers to advocate for their clients and to serve British Columbians more effectively.

I take this opportunity to say this because it will preface my remarks in the last section of my remarks around Indigenous relations and reconciliation. This government must respect and understand Supreme Court of Canada decisions. The laws of our land are not just made in this House. They can be found in the jurisprudence, case law, decisions of the highest courts of our lands.

Justice Estey said in the decision Attorney General and Law Society of British Columbia in 1982, 41 years ago…. You’d think that this government would recognize that and understand that — what happens when a law society needs to take their government to court.

[5:35 p.m.]

Justice Estey said: “The independence of the bar from the state in all its pervasive manifestations is one of the hallmarks of a free society. Consequently, regulation of these members of the law profession by the state must, so far as by human ingenuity, it can be so designed, be free from state interference, in the political sense, with the delivery of services to the individual citizens in the state, particularly in the fields of public and criminal law.”

I know potentially we may have more opportunity to discuss this in the House, but something as fundamental as recognition and respect for the laws of our land is something that I would say this government has lost sight of. Certainly, the Premier has had a track record of that, and we know the track record of that is his losing decision record when he was Attorney General.

I don’t have the time in this budget speech to go back over that losing track record but let me just say this. In terms of Indigenous relations and reconciliation, as an­nounced by the leader of the B.C. United caucus in Prince George in early January, as part of the resource prosperity plan, we certainly see the need, fundamentally.

When you’re looking at an $8 billion deficit, $167 billion plus public debt, what’s this government’s plan? How are we going to actually move forward? To all our children and grandchildren and others right now, who are making real-life decisions about whether they have a future in this province, what do we say?

I certainly heard the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation say it when he was asked the question: “Will this government create an Indigenous loan guarantee program?” The minister said that he understood the opposition had called for that. Yes, we’ve been calling for this. I will acknowledge that this government has put that forward in the budget — that they put an initial $10 million towards this.

With the nature of resource projects that are right now in front of this province still waiting for decisions on permitting — including the Nisg̱a’a LNG project, McLeod Lake resource development projects, mining projects — we know that this government, in 4½ years, has only been able to put in place two agreements under section 7 of the Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act — two with the same nation, out of 204 nations.

I would just remind the government that when we’re talking about the role of what is needed, it is about that partnership with First Nations, as we called upon under our resource prosperity plan. We’ve called for capacity-building supports for First Nations, an increase under a B.C. United government to address that, the greater role that First Nations need to have in shaping the environmental assessment process.

We also know, and I would remind this government again, that it has the responsibility to do what the Supreme Court of Canada said in the Haida decision in 2004. That is: “Balance and compromise are inherent in the notion of reconciliation. Where accommodation is required in making decisions that may adversely affect as yet unproven Aboriginal rights and title claims, the Crown must balance Aboriginal concerns reasonably with the potential impact of the decision on the asserted right or title and with other societal interests.”

It’s been a failure of this government, with their failed process around the Land Act amendments, as I questioned in question period last week. No announcement re public process, no details, very little details, pulling back their presentation deck, reframing it…. This government needs to act for all British Columbians, and it failed to do so.

[5:40 p.m.]

I will say that what we’re seeing is a continued challenge by this government. We see that in the context of the challenges right now by the Doig River First Nation and Halfway River First Nation. They have submitted legal petitions, filed petitions in the court, in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to challenge this government.

I invite all members of this government to read these petitions. They should get access through the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation or the Attorney General of this province.

It is a complete failure of this government that they did not meet their duty to consult. In fact, they misled these nations, as these nations state in their petition. They misrepresented the content of what British Columbia was actually negotiating with Blueberry River, that became the constitution of the Blueberry agreement.

For example, in the Halfway River petition, British Columbia represented that the Blueberry agreement would not grant Blueberry River more decision-making power than Halfway River in the Halfway River territory and would not interfere with Halfway River’s own decision-making power in Halfway River territory. In reality, British Columbia effectively promised to recognize Blueberry River as possessing priority Treaty 8 rights in large portions of Halfway River’s core territory, in perpetuity.

These are just a few examples of the kinds of concerns that are raised by these petitions.

I know, having met with chief and council of these nations, that they are in discussions with government. But it has been a year. I remember, like so many other members of government in our caucus, going up to Prince George a year ago, being there when the Premier went up there and made an announcement with Blueberry River First Nation and then the other Treaty 8 nations. It seemed very rushed, and it was.

Clearly, these two nations, Halfway River and Doig, were misled. There was a memorandum, a letter of agreement, without the details. This government failed to consult with those nations.

This is the challenge when you have a government that does not respect their obligations under the law. This is the challenge when we know, as was said by the lower court in the Mineral Tenure Act review case, that UNDRIP is illustrative, as the Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation has said to me when I questioned the minister and this government about the undermining of the economic rights, the livelihood of Indigenous peoples in this province, with unfair labour conditions under that community benefit agreement in Cowichan.

These are the issues that we need this government to address.

A. Olsen: I will be our designated speaker.

As we stand on the cusp of an election, we, the members here, and British Columbians more broadly, ask ourselves a question: whether the B.C. NDP government is delivering on what they’ve promised. The election is a question for citizens of a jurisdiction to answer about who is best suited to lead them into the future. Who has the clearest grasp on the reality we face? Who has the plan to address it? I think we should be asking: who is in it for the people in place, and who is in it for themselves?

What I’ve seen from this political system is, frankly, a whole lot of selfishness, behaviour that serves the political mafiosos but does little to address the systemic dysfunction created by the dominant political, economic, social theories and ideologies.

This place has been infected with a neo-liberal disease, has embraced a philosophy of toxic individualism, festering for the past few hundred years, that has us ravenously consuming the finite resources of our planet and has us careening toward a turbulent and tumultuous future.

When I examine the throne speech and the budget that followed only a few days later, I look for what my colleague from Cowichan Valley talked about in her response: a through line. More deeply, I look for signs that our government has a grasp of the interconnectedness of all things.

[5:45 p.m.]

In W̱SÁNEĆ, our world view is relational with the ani­mate and inanimate of our territory. It grounds us, and, importantly, it threads together all things with a coherence that is nowhere to be found in the guiding visionary document of this B.C. NDP government and the economic plan described in their budget.

This B.C. NDP government doesn’t offer a well-being budget that one would expect from a true social democratic political organization that they purport to be — the narrative of their rhetoric. Rather, they’ve become some orange-shaded Thatcherites. They have abandoned the im­poverished and destitute, promoted a green-washed, fossil-fueled drenched propaganda while inequality grows on their watch. They protect the extreme profits of a few individuals and multinational corporations. These aren’t your Tommy Douglas New Democrats.

In 1972, a handful of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology produced a report called The Limits to Growth. It’s an important work. They produced a world model of population, consumption of natural re­sources and pollution. The authors wrote:

“The intent of the project is to examine the complex of problems troubling people of all nations: poverty in the midst of plenty, degradation of the environment, loss of faith in institutions, uncontrolled urban spread, insecurity of employment, alienation of youth, rejection of traditional values and inflation and other monetary economic disruptions.

“These seemingly divergent parts of the ‘world problematique,’ as the Club of Rome calls it, have three characteristics in common. They occur in some degree in all societies. They contain technical, social, economic, and political elements. And, most important of all, they interact.

“It is the predicament of humanity that people can perceive the problematique, yet, despite our considerable knowledge and skills, we do not understand the origins, significance, and interrelationships of its many components and thus are unable to devise effective responses. This failure occurs in large part because we continue to examine single items in the problematique without understanding that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, that change in one element means change in the others.”

This was written in 1972. The world model outlined in the report paints a dire picture for the next 100 years of humanity. To be clear, it’s not necessarily dire for the planetary system, because it persists. However, the model paints a dire picture for the human systems, the ones that we govern.

The report’s conclusions are as follows.

“1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100 years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

“2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that basic material needs for each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize their individual human potential.

“3. If the world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.”

When I look at these recommendations, written more than 50 years ago, and put them in the context that we are halfway through the timeline the researchers offered, modelled by their model, I come back to the job that we have at hand here in British Columbia.

[5:50 p.m.]

How is the vision of this B.C. NDP government, as ex­pressed in their throne speech, how is their economic, social and environmental plan accommodating the stark reality that we face?

As my colleague noted in her response, it’s not possible to identify a through line, the thread that ties these documents together. There is no real tie that binds the different ministries within government together.

The B.C. NDP government is governing by announcement. They pass off spending money as solving problems or at least advancing solutions. Really, there is no correlation between spending money and addressing the system’s multi-dimensional challenges we face as a subnational jurisdiction and how we are contributing to the federal and global response to collapsing ecosystems, collapsing populations, collapsing social safety nets, collapsing industrial complexes, exhausted natural resource stores and collapsing economic and financial systems.

There is no indication in this throne speech or budget that this B.C. NDP government has any strategic approach or that they consider the systems and how they are interrelated and interact with each other. It’s just a series of taxes generating revenue and a series of expenses amounting to an $89 billion budget.

The authors of The Limits to Growth predict the dramatic increase in population and industrial growth that we saw over the last 50 years and a startling population and de-industrialization collapse that is likely to follow. We haven’t got there yet. Indeed, we’re standing on the edge of stark demographic challenges facing European and Asian countries today and economies that, as we de-industrialized in North America, we’ve come to rely on heavily.

We can continue to stumble around the darkness, or we can remove the blindfold to see the reality that exists, one that requires a significant amount of planning and strategizing to ensure we navigate it in a way that does the least amount of damage to our province.

That is the opposite of what we are doing, though. We’re pretending like everything is okay, borrowing against a future and using extreme short-term thinking.

It would have been fine in Dave Barrett’s day, because the predictions that are hitting with remarkable accuracy from the report called The Limits to Growth were still five to ten decades in the future. We may have five decades left in that model; we don’t likely have ten. The reality that we as community leaders face is that we are managing the worst five decades, not the best. Yet we are operating as if we haven’t been warned. It is irresponsible in the extreme.

We are now 40 years removed from Ronald Reagan, yet the so-called social democrats here in this province are delivering an infinite-growth ideology and bragging about it in their responses in question period and media interviews like it doesn’t matter. They’re pretending like the scariest parts of the prediction are not markers that can be easily identified in our 21st-century society and economy.

Poverty in the midst of plenty — check. Increasing child poverty in our wealthy society. We’ve got that here in B.C.

Degradation of the environment — check. Drought, clear cuts, wildfires abound.

Loss of faith in institutions — check. Growing frustration that the basic needs are not being met while inequality grows unabated.

Uncontrolled urban spread — check. Even though the Housing Minister will argue that the zoning changes re­cently made partly addressed this issue, we still are building our communities on watersheds.

Insecurity of employment — check. People are working multiple part-time jobs. Seniors are unable to retire be­cause they can’t afford to do that in this province.

Alienation of youth — check. Entire generations feeling abandoned by their elders. Unstable housing. Climate anxiety. Skyrocketing depression.

Rejection of traditional values — check. Government demonizing local democracy and shutting down debate.

[5:55 p.m.]

Inflation and other monetary and economic disruptions — check, check, check.

This brings me to the 2024 throne speech and budget. I must start by raising my hands to the Speaker of this House and the work of our Clerk’s office. They recognize that in this place, symbolism and protocol matter. The mace, the Black Rod, the black robes, Her Honour delivering the Speech from the Throne are all inherited from the colonial powers.

This House is not the only place that symbolism and protocol matters. When I look to my W̱SÁNEĆ culture, my relatives here in the lək̓ʷəŋən territory, symbolism and protocol matter. They provide the structure of our governance, society and economy. They provide the guides that allow us to determine whether we have done our work in a good way.

Mr. Speaker has begun to change the symbolism and protocol of this House in a respectful way. Having our session open with a song and prayer from my lək̓ʷəŋən relatives, having Her Honour be brought in here by our singers and dancers in Coast Salish regalia is a welcome change, and the symbolism is not lost on me.

At a time when government’s’ own hubris or, perhaps a little more generously, their oversight, opened the door for unfortunate politics that amounted to race-baiting — I’m referencing the proposed Land Act amendments — I must also thank the Premier for ensuring this government’s strong commitment to reconciliation featured at the very beginning of that throne speech: “Meaningful reconciliation, where we work together to preserve Indigenous languages and acknowledge the true history of these lands. Words and symbols like this are undoubtedly important. That’s why your government remains committed to implementing the Declaration on the Rights Indigenous Peoples Act, which was endorsed unanimously by this Legislature.”

As I look to my colleagues in this House, no matter our differences of opinion on the matters and issues that we have to tackle together, I will always be an ally to those who are advancing reconciliation in a meaningful and good way. Bring me in. Include me. This should never be a partisan issue. It is too impactful on our province.

That is why I believe we need government to make the best use of the tools we have — the Select Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, for example — to keep us together, to maintain our unanimity, at least in our commitment to walking this journey of reconciliation together in a good way.

When looking at the budget, next year treaty First Na­tions will have the power to take care of their own taxation in their communities. There’s also legislation coming to create First Nations equity financing. This will assist First Nations who are looking to have an equity stake in projects in their territory. There will be provincial loan guarantees, the ability for revenues from the project to be allocated to a special fund. The province will secure up to $1 billion in loans.

For those First Nations that are looking for this relationship with industry in the province, this is an important program. For too long, First Nations have watched as industry and the province have harvested their territories, denuding their landscapes with little or no benefits to their communities.

As my Chief, Don Tom, stated, First Nations want to manage wealth, not poverty, and this is one mechanism. It works particularly well for First Nations neighbouring major projects. It works well for industry because they can have a partner who can come to the table with financial resources where, previously, First Nations had no such mechanism. And it works well for the province, looking to expedite approvals for major projects. Even where I may disagree with the project personally, this is an important tool for First Nations who have every right to have a different opinion.

However, this mechanism is limited. When considering how it might apply in a highly urban environment like Metro Vancouver or the capital region, our territories have already been heavily developed. There are no tools or fiscal mechanisms for First Nations in those geographic regions to generate revenue from their territories.

[6:00 p.m.]

Also, why is it that First Nations can only generate revenue from their territory in the context of resource development projects? When will this government recognize that own-source revenues that allow First Nations communities to improve their communities, to lift their members out of poverty, is just the basic expectation of every other governing body in our country? First Nations re­main cap in hand, waiting for the provincial or federal government to step up with program moneys.

As I sat listening to Her Honour reading the throne speech, I felt bad that she was left with basically a vacuous document that either failed to describe the vision of this government or, worse, described it perfectly. Right at the moment that the B.C. NDP needed to connect with British Columbians, they showed just how out of touch they can be.

The rosy picture they painted is not the reality facing many British Columbians who are losing pace through growing inequality. In the throne speech, government writes: “While your government focused on keeping people healthy and the economy moving, British Columbians were busy working together to rebuild our province stronger than ever.”

And in the budget, we see the fragility. They write:

“While B.C.’s economy has been resilient, the province’s economic outlook is subject to uncertainties about inflation, interest rates, the global economy and geopolitical and climate-related disruptions.”

They note a few upside risks and many downside risks, including:

“Persistent high inflation leading to higher interest rates over a longer period of time, weighing on consumer spending and business investment. Higher mortgage costs and rent, reducing affordability and disposable income. Aging demographics and housing affordability weighing on the supply of labour. Severe climate-related events disrupting the lives and livelihoods of British Columbians, destroying productive capital and impacting economic activity. Volatility of immigration levels impacting the supply of labour and consumer spending, potentially exacerbating fluctuations in economic activity.

“Weaker-than-expected global economic activity and broader economic challenges in Europe and Asia. Lower prices for B.C.’s major commodity exports, such as lumber, pulp, natural gas and coal. Geopolitical conflicts weighing on trade as well as leading to higher commodity prices and inflation. Higher volatility in international foreign exchange, stock and bond markets. And timing of operations and exports related to the LNG Canada project, similar to the risks that exist for other major projects.”

Those are the downsides. And as our provincial budget balloons to $89 billion, with revenues of only $81.5 billion and a $7.5 billion deficit and debt-servicing this year of a cool $4.1 billion, this list of downside risks should not be underestimated.

We should not have any illusion of the perilous perch we sit on. If one or multiple of these downside risks come to fruition, our budget outlook is in deep trouble.

It should also be noted that the $4.1 billion that we’re going to be spending on debt-servicing is more than we’re spending on social welfare programs, and it’s the same as we’re spending on child welfare in this province, just to service the debt.

When I heard Her Honour read, “Proving once again that here in B.C., our greatest natural resource is the peo­ple of this province,” I couldn’t help but feel just a little bit sorry for British Columbians. The way our government has treated natural resources — clearcutted, gillnetted and fracked our landscapes…. Perhaps government should describe our people a little differently.

When considering how this connects to the budget, there is no well-being analysis in this budget, no detail on how this spending is focused on improving the outcomes for people or planet. As I said in my opening, the B.C. NDP have provided no detail on their overarching framework for prioritizing investment or the outcomes that we can expect to see change as a result.

I celebrate with the government that in the narrowest of terms, “in December, women’s employment increased more than in any other province.” We added 43,900 jobs last year, 49,500 net new full-time jobs, losing 5,600 part-time jobs, showing employment growth among women, gaining 56.6 percent of the full-time jobs.

[6:05 p.m.]

There is a “however” here. How is it that under this B.C. NDP’s so-called social democratic government, women have only been able to achieve pay transparency and that same B.C. NDP government argued vociferously against pay equity? It makes no sense to me that as we celebrate job gains for women, women are still being paid less than their male counterparts for doing similar work. How is that happening?

Twenty years ago, the B.C. NDP were arguing something completely different. They come to the table with pay transparency when they should have come to the table with pay equity.

Additionally, we should be concerned that job creation in our province was unbalanced: 26,100 public sector jobs, 24,000 self-employment jobs were added, while the private sector declined by 6,300 jobs.

The throne speech notes: “After decades where our housing market was allowed to serve the interests of investors and speculators, even those who earn a decent middle-class income are finding it hard to afford a home.” The recent changes in zoning and transit-oriented development offered no protection for renters, no affordable housing stock, and provided no new requirements for the development of affordable housing.

I have heard deep concern from my constituents about the negative impact that inflation has had on the cost of their food and other daily necessities, and this B.C. NDP government has done little to address this issue. Nothing to limit the profits of predatory grocery pirates. Nothing to systemically address inequality. Increasingly abandoned community while blaming, undermining and diminishing local government and grassroots democracy.

Nobody is going to complain about the rebates and other miniscule measures in Budget ’24. And according to Angus Reid, only 14 percent of British Columbians think the B.C. NDP is actually doing a good job on tackling affordability. Not going to complain with what was offered. However, what was offered was far from what was needed.

Offering people $600 through one-off increases to the B.C. family benefit, B.C. electricity affordability credit, the climate action tax credit, does nothing to address the structural inequities that exist and have been allowed to persist under this B.C. NDP government. It’s a far cry from the promise of the support of a true social democratic government.

There was a promise in the throne speech. Government will “have your back so that you are not facing these new challenges alone. Leaving people to fend for themselves does not work.” Yet supports for people with disabilities leave them $10,000 below the poverty line and desperately running crowdsourcing campaigns for their basic needs. Teachers are left alone in overcrowded classrooms with no support. Nurses are left alone with two to three times the number of patients that is safe. Sick people are left languishing in community and emergency rooms or on waiting lists until it’s too late.

Families are left with no resources and little information on how to help their loved ones struggling with addictions. Renters are either forced to stay in their current home or face incredible rent hikes because the NDP has failed to implement vacancy control. Seniors are left to fend for themselves because their SAFER payments only cover a portion of their rent, leaving them unable to house and feed themselves. Local government fiscal framework is outdated, and they are competing with each other for provincial grants to upgrade aging infrastructure.

There are a lot of people fending for themselves because their B.C. NDP government has abandoned them. In Budget 2024, there’s no increase in supports for people living with a disability and no change to the financial support package.

In education, we hear the B.C. NDP state Budget 2024 is investing $968 million in funding over three years, including for teachers and support staff in the classrooms.

[6:10 p.m.]

The funding includes $651 million for public school en­rolment growth, $62 million for independent school education costs and $255 million, over three years, to increase funding for the classroom enhancement fund. They will say the fund supports the hiring of additional teachers, including special education teachers; teacher-psychologists; and counsellors.

However, what is the response from the teachers? Well, as they correctly point out, the investment, on a per-child basis, is basically keeping equal with the insufficient funding from last year. So it’s not a real increase. The parents in my riding, who’ve been advised to get a designation for their child, so that their child will finally get the help that they need to support their learning, only to have the school redeploy those extra resources to other children with behavioural challenges, are out of luck, I guess.

Budget 2024 offers renters an annual income-tested tax cap of up to $400 a year. It’s a long way from the needs of renters. The most expensive province to rent in, with the highest chance of no-fault evictions: that’s under a B.C. NDP government. The highest cost of rent, with the highest chance of no-cost evictions: that’s the record of the B.C. NDP government. Again, I wonder out loud why it is that this government has done so little for the 1.5 million British Columbians who rent.

The throne speech states: “Young families want to know that living in a decent home is within reach and that child care is available and affordable. Seniors want to know that after a lifetime of hard work, they will be cared for and will be able to help their kids and grandkids.” However, the reality is that the cost of living is outpacing salaries, and seniors are pushing off retirement because they can’t afford to stop working.

In the last election, the B.C. NDP promised to exceed their target of 22,000 new child care spaces by 2022-23, last year. Two budgets later they’re still 8,000 spaces short. The B.C. NDP promised to boost $10-a-day child care funding by an extra $250 million a year, starting in 2020, to grow the system out. Yet they haven’t met that funding promise once. The majority of funding now comes from the federal government and is set to expire in 2026.

The rhetoric the Minister of Finance offered, in her re­sponses to questions this week, is nowhere near the experience my constituents have in accessing the promised universal $10-a-day child care spots. The B.C. NDP, in fact, has created a layered, complex system for providers to navigate and have made big announcements with no follow-through.

As much as the B.C. NDP wants to run from this reality, they need to turn and face it. The parents in our commun­ity, who were promised universal health care, need them to deliver on that promise. The Premier can threaten that the opposition would do worse, as the defence of his government’s inability to deliver. But at some point, he needs to stop the pretending and start being accountable. Again, spending money on child care, apparently, does not equal child care delivered.

Hear this nostalgic rhetoric from the throne speech, “If you worked hard, got an education and played by the rules, you could make a good middle-class living and be able to afford a decent home.” It’s followed by this acknowledgment: “Housing costs went up, and in recent years, the combination of inflation, interest rate hikes and a lack of supply has only made the situation harder for people looking to buy or rent a home.”

We have been building homes, but not for people. For investments. Thousands of units of luxury housing have been built and marketed as an investment vehicle in this province. It must be noted that there isn’t an intergenerational element in this budget. With respect to housing, the throne speech has a lot to say. The B.C. NDP highlights expedited housing permit approvals, fixing zoning rules, establishing municipal targets, building near transit and protecting affordable rentals, with expert advice that suggests their changes will create hundreds of thousands of new housing units.

[6:15 p.m.]

There is no doubt that we need more housing supply, but we have specific needs. Instead of strategically delivering that and letting the private sector provide the market housing, the B.C. NDP has been overtaken by a trickle-down housing economics that is uncharacteristic of social democrats.

Their approach would have left those who have offered a compassionate advocacy planning perspective, like re­nowned American planner Paul Davidoff, shaking their heads.

Whoever is advising on the changes made by this government instead chose a rather heartless neo-liberal market approach. They have left people who cannot afford to be in the housing market competing for units way above their financial means; deferred inclusionary zoning to an afterthought, potentially coming this spring session; ignored impoverished people and communities; abandoned social planning and instead adopted a non-planning philosophy.

Rather than embracing community involvement and grassroots democracy, this B.C. NDP government demonized it.

Whoever is advising this government on housing is cold. None of these zoning changes will necessarily bring affordability for middle-class homes. The minister argued that requiring affordability would limit growth. The minister’s own study showed that.

Speeding up housing approvals may very well have hap­pened, but there are no requirements for developers to build when they get the permit, so they can sit until the market conditions favour their profit.

The new targeted municipal approach is likely the best approach because it allows for the province and local governments to work together to strategically plan and deliver the actual housing that the housing needs assessments identify, rather than the blanket, non-planning approach the B.C. NDP adopted.

[The Speaker in the chair.]

As Brad West suggests, in order to have transit-oriented development work, you need transit. The province has been tepid on their support for transit. More on this a little later.

Protecting affordable rentals from becoming luxury condos is critical. Yet when we demanded the B.C. NDP limit the access to the supply from predatory REITs, they voted our amendment down.

None of the supply that the B.C. NDP created last fall is imminent. So 2025 at the earliest. None of the supply created by the B.C. NDP is for the people that Thomas Davidoff calls affordability challenged.

You can almost hear that strain of economic theory blaming the affordability-challenged people for their affordability challenges. Like they just haven’t pulled their socks up quite high enough yet.

We know from the statistics that the most affordability-challenged people are those in the core housing need and the extreme core housing need, people spending more than 30 percent to 50 percent of their annual income on housing. In addition to the growing unhoused population, these are the most desperate housing needs that require the most immediate provincial intervention.

But this is an election year, and our former social democratic party has been hijacked by the narratives of the profit-driven, private sector housing development industry.

I reserve my right and move adjournment of debate.

A. Olsen moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of House.

Motion approved.

The Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 6:19 p.m.