Michael Sather

NOVEMBER 24, 2011
Committee of the Whole House

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

M. Sather: This section is on covenants, and the explanatory note says that it “provides that a covenant that restricts the use of agricultural land for farm purposes has no effect until approved by the commission.” I want to ask the minister: who is it that requests these covenants?

Hon. S. Thomson: Covenants are requested and placed on the land by the owner.

M. Sather: But isn’t it also the case that the Agricultural Land Commission can request a covenant?

Hon. S. Thomson: From a legal perspective, the Land Commission could request a covenant, but the landowner is under no obligation to do that unless he agrees.

M. Sather: The Agricultural Land Commission could say, then…. For example, if a road were being put through the ALR, the commission could request that a covenant for agricultural use be put on the adjoining lands. The road, let’s say, had been approved under those conditions. So is the minister saying, then, that…?

Well, first of all, let me ask…. In that case I’m assuming, then, that it would be the local government, in conjunction with the landowner, that would put on the covenant. Would that be likely?

Hon. S. Thomson: Just to clarify, this section and the amendment that is being proposed here simply takes a previous condition that was in place, which related to where there was a prohibition of farming activity — that that would require the approval of the commission.

What this amendment does is add a process where there are potential restrictions to farming activity and, again, to say that in that case, in the interests of ensuring that agricultural land is used productively for agriculture, if there are restrictions proposed in that covenant, that would still require the approval of the commission.

We’ve simply taken what was before, where they had that ability — which would be only on where there is a prohibition of farming activities as part of the covenant — to broaden it to say that where there’s a prohibition or where there are restrictions to farming activities, then that requires the approval of the commission.

M. Sather: So if the decision by the Agricultural Land Commission requests a covenant that restricts the use of land for agriculture only, is that a prohibition? Or what is that? It was
agricultural land before, and the commission is saying it must continue as agricultural land, as I understood it. There’s no prohibition in there, is there?

Hon. S. Thomson: This amendment of the legislation relates to the situation where a landowner is requesting or where there’s a covenant requested on the land that takes a portion or some of that land out of agricultural production, either through a straight prohibition on agricultural use on the land or through a prohibition of agriculture on a portion of that land or prohibition of certain activities.

Again, all we’re simply doing here is broadening the process to say that it requires Agricultural Land Commission approval for either a prohibition or where there are restrictions to agricultural activity on a portion of the ALR land, just broadening the powers of the commission in that case — and, I think, very clearly strengthening the role of the commission in the process to ensure that the agricultural land continues to be used for agricultural purposes.

If a person, the landowner, wants to have a covenant…. In some cases it may be valid. So this doesn’t mean that in every case the commission is going to refuse that covenant request. There may be some legitimate circumstances where there are values — habitat, environmental values, those kinds of things — where you may want a covenant. It may be appropriate and may help support the overall farm operations, so you would not necessarily want to completely restrict the process around covenants.

It just provides the additional oversight for the commission beyond covenants that prohibit activity to covenants that both prohibit and potentially restrict agricultural activity on agricultural land.

M. Sather: To go back to an earlier comment that the minister made, and that was that if a covenant was requested by the Agricultural Land Commission, it would require the landowner to be in agreement with that. So if the landowner is not in agreement with the covenant being placed upon their land, the effect of the ruling, if you will, by the Agricultural Land Commission really has no effect, then.

Hon. S. Thomson: To be clear, we’re dealing with the bill here and the legislation and the amendment that’s in front of us, and the member opposite is referring to a different process around
applications and approvals of applications and conditions that may be placed on approvals of applications.

This section deals with the capacity of the commission, where there are covenants requested by the landowner, to be able to put the lens on it of ensuring both — if there are prohibitions of agriculture or restrictions to agricultural activity on the ALR land — to be able to have that ability to say yes or no to the covenant.

This is simply about giving some…. Again, in the theme of what we’re doing with the overall legislation in terms of strengthening the capacity of the commission and strengthening the protection of agricultural land, it’s to be able to have that oversight beyond simply dealing with where the covenant requests a prohibition.

M. Sather: I take the minister’s comments under advisement, but I think it’s unfortunate. I’ll go back into Hansard, but I’m quite sure that he made the comment that if the Agricultural Land
Commission were to put a covenant on, which has happened in my community, that it’s up to the landowner as to whether or not they agree.

That’s very disconcerting, because communities have been led to understand that a covenant that is placed on land for agriculture purposes only by the Agriculture Land Commission has some effect. But the minister’s comments earlier, which he’s not now willing to address, I guess, make it pretty clear that that’s not the case. That’s going to be very unwelcome news in my community.

Hon. S. Thomson: I need to respond to this. Just to be clear, I made the comments about what this section in the legislation that we’re dealing with here and the amendments deal with. The
process that the member opposite is talking about — nothing has changed with respect to the amendments here. That process is an application process, and there are conditions related to approval of an application with respect to subdivision or exclusion or anything like that. If there are conditions placed on the approval process, then that process continues, and nothing has changed in the legislation with respect to the situation or the line of question that the member opposite is pursuing.

M. Sather: Section 7 is on “Chief executive officer may refuse applications.” Under section 2(a) and (b) it says: “Despite any other provision of this Act, on an application, the chief executive officer may refuse permission if (a) within 5 years immediately preceding the application, a previous application was refused permission by the commission, (b) the previous application was made on or after the date this section comes into force.”

My first question to the minister. Could he tell me: when does the government anticipate that this section would come into force?

Hon. S. Thomson: This amendment would become effective on royal assent.

M. Sather: Excuse me, perhaps, for my ignorance, Minister, but when would royal assent be?

Hon. S. Thomson: As I stated, this comes into effect when royal assent is provided, so that means when the bill is passed and royal assent is provided by the Lieutenant-Governor.

M. Sather: I thought it was a pretty straightforward question. I’m not sure I got a straightforward answer. Can the minister tell me: are we looking at the end of this session? Are we looking at
the beginning of January next year? When is the timeline?

Hon. S. Thomson: From my position here as minister I don’t control that timeline, so as I said, it would be when royal assent is provided.

M. Sather: That’s interesting, because to me this is the most significant piece of the legislation that the government has brought in with regard to the Agricultural Land Commission, and it’s been hailed by people in my community, saying: “Wow, this is fabulous.”

The government has talked about how they’ve been beset upon by reapplication after reapplication. It has tied up the Agricultural Land Commission. So this looks like, and I think it is intended to be, a piece of legislation that would address that.

If I’m understanding the legislation…. It seems pretty straightforward. It says if I made an application to the Agricultural Land Commission to have some of my land removed and it was turned down, I couldn’t reapply for another five years. So that would definitely also give some certainty to the agricultural community in general, but I would think it would help the Agricultural Land Commission with their backlog of applications.

Obviously, I would think the government must have discussed…. You know, do they see this as a necessity, to bring this legislation into effect soon? If we have no assurance of that…. I mean,
sometimes legislation never comes into effect. So I’m looking here for some assurance from the minister that this legislation is actually going to come into effect soon. Otherwise, I’d have to say it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.

Hon. S. Thomson: In this case royal assent is the fastest way to bring this into effect. Otherwise, we’d potentially have to bring it through by enactment of regulation, so that’s why the
provision is that this would come in place on royal assent. Again, that timeline is set by the process and the Lieutenant-Governor. The intention is to…. Because that is the fastest way to bring this into provision, that’s the method that has been chosen here.

M. Sather: Let’s assume, for example, that this legislation or this section came into effect January 1, 2012. Subsection (b) says: “the previous application was made on or after the
date this section comes into force….” Well, if it came into force — let’s just, say, choose a date — January 1, 2012…. In that case, if I had made an application in September of 2011 that was turned down, is this saying, then, that I could make another application in January of 2012?

Hon. S. Thomson: To be clear, this provision does not have retroactive application. Whenever the date is that this comes into provision, an application made after that date would then be
considered. If it was then dealt with, then the provisions of this amendment would apply to that application at that point. If it was previous, you would not be able to reapply for that specific application under all the criteria here. It does not have retroactive application.

M. Sather: It’s unfortunate that the government didn’t bring a retroactive application in, say, for a couple of years. Assuming that this legislation does come into force, it’s really going
to, you know, drag out the effectiveness of it because there will continue to be reapplications coming forward, and it will actually take five years from the time this legislation comes into force that it’s actually going to have any effect.

People, I think, were jumping up and down, some of them, in my community, thinking that this takes effect as soon as this legislation is approved, in common parlance, and that’s not going to be the effect. All I can say is that I think it still is a good piece of legislation if it is brought into force, and it will take effect but, unfortunately, not as quickly as it could have.

I wanted to ask the minister about subsection (2)(d), which is talking about the chief executive officer refusing a permission again if “the chief executive officer considers that the application is
substantially the same as the previous application.” Can the minister give me a better understanding of what “substantially the same” means in this context?

Hon. S. Thomson: This section sets out some of the criteria where the chief executive officer may refuse the application, and it says “substantially the same.” I think there’s recognition
that there may be circumstances where there is significant new information or a significant change in terms of the application, which would then provide the provision for it to be considered. But the basic intent is that if it is substantially the same application for the same piece of land and for the same purpose, then the chief executive officer has the ability to refuse that
application.

I think this will take work with the commission and things, in terms of developing the internal policies of how that consideration would be applied. But again, as the member opposite pointed out, this is a key piece of the amendment in terms of being able to provide the efficient operation of the commission and have them focus on their core mandate of preservation of agricultural land — to be able to deal with applications and to be able to reduce the treadmill of resubmissions of applications that are substantially the same.

M. Sather: I think I just have one last question on that. Just again, on that question of “substantially the same” that the minister…. Supposing I put an application in to remove 100
hectares of my farm to the Agriculture Land Commission and was turned down. If I came back and said, “Okay, I’ve taken 25 hectares out, and I’m reapplying,” would the minister see that as being “substantially the same” or different?

Hon. S. Thomson: Just to be clear, that’s not the minister’s decision. That’ll be the policy that’s developed within the commission. Again, if it’s, you know, substantially the same
application…. Each one would be considered on a case-by-case basis, and policy will be developed internally within the commission to manage the consideration of this process.

M. Sather: I wanted to ask the minister why the government considers wolves to be dangerous wildlife.

Hon. T. Lake: Because they are.

M. Sather: I assume that the minister is referring to dangerous wildlife as dangerous to human beings, not other wildlife. Insofar as the minister insists that wolves are dangerous to humans,
he certainly needs to enlarge upon that, because throughout the history of the last number of decades in wildlife biology, it was clear that wolves did not attack human beings. I’m curious about the minister’s knowledge on this.

Hon. T. Lake: Well, it is an existing definition in the Wildlife Act, so it is not apropos to the changes that we are talking about today. That already exists.

In fact, there are incidents — one on Vargas Island — in which wolves have endangered human lives. Certainly, we’ve had incidents, even in urban areas, of coyotes endangering or putting people at risk. So I don’t think it is much of a stretch to imagine that wolves in that situation would do the same thing.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2011

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

M. Sather: It’s my pleasure to join the debate on Bill 19, Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2011. As with most miscellaneous bills, this one has a number of areas of amendments in different acts, and I’m going to address two of them — the Agriculture Land Commission Act amendments and the Wildlife Act amendments.

There are certainly parts of this bill that I find quite supportable, and I’m pleased to see them come forward. There are others that I have questions about. In addition, I think the government has missed an opportunity with this bill as well. But certainly, with regard to the Agriculture Land Commission Act, it’s very relevant to my constituency, and so I wanted to get into parts of the bill that are of interest to me.

The first one I wanted to talk about was section 5 of the Agriculture Land Commission Act. In the explanatory note to the bill it says that it “provides that a covenant that restricts the use of agriculture land for farm purposes has no effect until approved by the commission.”

This one is significant to me because we had…. It’s an ongoing situation in Pitt Meadows, where a road was proposed through the agricultural land reserve north of Lougheeed Highway. It’s a cutoff from the connector to the Golden Ears Bridge to the Lougheed Highway. It’s been called the North Lougheed Connector. This is very concerning to me and to many residents because it would definitely push the urban boundary north into the agricultural land reserve and constitutes urban sprawl pretty clearly.

Now, the land commission has ruled on the North Lougheed Connector, and they gave approval for the road, which I was very disappointed in. But they made a condition which I felt very heartened by, and that condition was that the lands adjacent to that potential road — which, as I say, on agricultural land reserve — must be covenanted for agricultural use. I thought: “Well, that’s good, because we can keep it in the agricultural land reserve, but they have to have a covenant, surely, for agricultural use.”

This has led me to talk to the Agricultural Land Commission about this. I initially thought: “Well, the commission would impose the covenant.” But that’s not the case. The municipality, the city
of Pitt Meadows, would have to do that, and just how they would do that is becoming less certain to me. So I’m curious to know, and it will be good to find out more about this from the minister, as to what effect this amendment would have because it says that the covenant insofar as it may or may not be placed has no effect until approved by the commission.

So I’m really looking to understand what that means. Does it mean that in our case, in Pitt Meadows, that now because there is no covenant on the land as we speak that a proposal can be brought forward to remove land from the agriculture land reserve? I suspect that is certainly the intent. It needs to be understood that the real intent of this road is for big-box development or the like. And SmartCentres organization, which fronts for a lot of big-box development, is very actively involved in these properties along this road.

So I’m really looking forward to the discussion, and I certainly do hope, as other members have said, that we do have committee stage for this bill, because there’s not enough explanation in the bill. And you know, that’s understandable. Oftentimes bills are sort of inscrutable, and it’s really good to have the minister and the backup that he has with the professionals to explain what’s going on, so I look forward to that one.

Another section of interest to me in this bill is section 7. This is on panels, the panels that the Agricultural Land Commission has in place to make decisions over applications to remove land from the agricultural land reserve. It says in the explanatory note that it “provides for the executive committee to reconsider a decision made by a panel.”

But before I get to that, though, I do want to talk about subsection (2) of section 7, which I think is the part that…. You know, this is a good part of this bill. What it says, in effect, is that the CEO may refuse permission, that is to remove land from the ALR, if within five years immediately proceeding the application a previous application was refused permission by the commission.

So in the case, for example, in Pitt Meadows…. A different situation. I’m sorry. This one is in Maple Ridge just across the border from Pitt Meadows where the Pelton family made an application to remove a large section, 200 or so acres from the agricultural land reserve in which is the most contiguous agricultural land in Maple Ridge and the best area for agriculture, although we have lots of smaller parcels farther inland.

This one was turned down by the Agricultural Land Commission, as so it should be. The ALC commented in that decision what would happen to the surrounding farmlands if they were to grant approval. The commissioner said very clearly: “Well, I can tell you what would happen. It would be that every other landowner in that area would be coming to us to remove their lands.” Why wouldn’t they, if somebody gets a big chunk like that out for industrial use, which is primarily what it was for.

That application came forward. I’m wondering how one like that would be affected by this bill. On first blush it appears at least that it would be five years — because this was in 2010, so within the last five years. It would appear that for the next five years they couldn’t make a reapplication, except that as I read the bill, subsection (b) says that “the previous application was made on or after the date this section comes into force.” So obviously, this section…. None of this bill is in force yet. As early as it could come in force, I suppose, might be next week. I don’t know, but oftentimes it’s longer.

In any event, it seems to me, then, that that application which was turned down in 2010, the person can make another application…. Let’s say it comes into force on January 1, 2012, and the person could make another application. So it wouldn’t be really five years from the last one at all; it would be, like, two years. Then after that, if it’s turned down again, they can’t make another application.

So it’s a good piece, but I wish that there was a retroactive clause in it too, that said that if you had made an application, let’s say, in the last two years before this bill comes into force. As I
understand it, there will be, as I interpret this bill, the opportunity for plenty more reapplications before the bill really takes effect.

In the long run it’s going to be a very positive outcome, I think, for the agriculture land reserve, because as the commission has pointed out, they’ve been inundated with reapplication after reapplication, sometimes five or six of them, such that they’ve been completely swamped by that — so badly that the government has had to make some response with some additional funds to try to address that.

The other part of section 7 that I started to talk about was subsection (d) that says: “the chief executive officer considers that the application is substantially the same as the previous
application.” That is, if the commission looks at this reapplication and says it’s substantially the same as the last one…. Again, I’ll want clarification of what it means, “substantially the same.”

The Pelton proposal, for example, was about 200 acres. If they carve off a quarter of it, does it remain substantially the same, or is it actually a different application then, and in fact, they can
reapply sooner than the five years, given the considerations I’ve already mentioned?

This is good legislation, that part of it, but we need to know more, certainly about…. You know, the devil is in the details is the saying. We want to know that there’s not going to be wiggle room for applicants to get around — which I think is the intent of this part of the legislation, to make the agricultural land reserve more secure.

Certainly, it hasn’t been over recent years. We’ve had a lot of loss, in some parts of the province especially, but even in my area in the Lower Mainland. We have the best land, so some of the smaller losses are still very significant because there’s plenty of potential to produce on some of those.

Then the next part of the bill talks about reconsiderations of decisions of a panel. There again, I wonder. As it stands, if your application is turned down — that would be the only reason, I would assume, that you would go back for a reconsideration — you can go back for a reconsideration. I guess that’s okay, but again, I worry that a reconsideration is going to replace the reapplications. “Well, I can’t reapply in the next five years, but I’ll keep bugging the commission for a reconsideration.”

Again, we’ll be looking for assurances from the minister and the government that this is going to, on the ground in actual fact, have a really positive effect on agriculture, because we definitely need that.

From there I wanted to move on to the Wildlife Act, and section 16 of the Wildlife Act. This one is talking about “dangerous wildlife” and attracting dangerous wildlife. I wanted to know…. I was
wondering what the government meant by “dangerous wildlife.” I don’t see it defined in the act anywhere, but looking in the information bulletin that the government put out, it mentions grizzly and black bears, cougars, coyotes and wolves.

I want to make a few comments about dangerous wildlife. Whether it’s a wild animal or it’s a domestic animal, virtually any animal can be dangerous at some point. If you throw Bowser a steak on the floor and then try and take it away, you could get bit. You know? If you get a varying hare backed up in the willow bush somewhere, they might take a swipe at you too.

G. Gentner: Or a porcupine.

M. Sather: Or a porcupine. Definitely. The member knows all about being threatened by a porcupine, as it happened to him a couple of years ago in the Spatsizi. But anyway, Mr. Speaker,
he survived. Porcupines aren’t afraid of anybody, by the way.

Coyotes and wolves — I don’t like us to put them in the category of dangerous wildlife. Probably the most dangerous coyotes in British Columbia are the ones in downtown Vancouver, because they get used to people and sometimes there can be some problems, but they’re not widespread.

In the wild, coyotes are by and large certainly not dangerous. And the same thing goes for wolves, actually, contrary to what a lot of myth may be, with the possible exception of…. There have been problems, not fatal or severe, but there have been a few problems on Vancouver Island, interestingly enough, with wolf-human interactions.

I don’t know why that is. It may be because wolves and dogs interbred on the Island — I’m not sure — and maybe some of the dog genes are still there in the gene pool and are causing some of that kind of behaviour. And of course, as the member from Revelstoke mentioned, the Kootenays have a problem with some deer that have been rather aggressive.

That’s unusual. We don’t generally tend to think of Bambi as being dangerous wildlife, but as I say, any animal at some point might be dangerous. That’s a comment I wanted to make on section 16.

Section 17 is the interesting one. Again, it’s about attracting dangerous wildlife. But it makes a significant change, I believe, to current legislation, and it is a good one. The first part talks about it
being…. “A person must not intentionally attract dangerous wildlife, but then it goes on to say that you can’t place an attractant, whether it’s a carcass of an animal or some other form that would attract dangerous wildlife. That becomes an offence.

So although it says in the explanation, it “makes it an offence to intentionally feed or attract dangerous wildlife,” I think the important part is subsection (2) there which talks about placing an attractant, whatever that attractant might be, in a place where wildlife are — in particular, dangerous wildlife— or that can be accessible to dangerous wildlife. I don’t know how this is all going to play out, but I know in the Lower Mainland we have huge problems — in Maple Ridge, like many communities on the north side — with interactions between black bears and human beings, and so much of it is around a fruit that’s left out, not gathered.

Sometimes, it’s true, the animals take the fruit right off the trees, but a lot of times it’s fruit that’s left to rot underneath. I’m not sure if this is going to address that. I gather from some of the comments I read in the paper that it’s felt that it will.

I certainly hope so, because it’s nothing short of carnage, the decimation of black bears. It’s astounding. It’s usually well in excess of 100 that are killed annually, because once they are attracted to whatever it is that’s there, people become worried about that and the bear sometimes become dependent upon that. Certainly, bears can be dangerous to people.

So that’s a good section that I am certainly supportive of. Now, subsection 17(5) is where I think the government has missed an opportunity. It says that “A person does not contravene…leaving or placing an attractant in, on or about any land or premises for the purposes of hunting or trapping wildlife in accordance with all other applicable provisions of this Act and the regulations.”

I have a real concern that it still says in the Wildlife Act that you can bait wolves. You’re not allowed to bait bears in this province, but you’re still allowed to bait wolves, which means specifically
that you do place an attractant, usually the carcass of an elk or moose or deer, and then use that as part of the hunting process. That’s a concern to me when I look at what the overall effect is of what’s going on in this province with regard to wolves. It seems rather than trying to protect….

You know, wolves are wildlife. That is the first thing to remember. They’re not vermin; they’re wildlife. And yet….

Interjection.

M. Sather: I disregard the comment there from my colleague, because it’s not repeatable.

You know, this government seems bent on increasing the kill on wolves. They have now no closed season and no bag limit on hunting wolves or….

Interjections.

M. Sather: I see the wolves are howling. Only these are dangerous wolves. They could actually do damage.

But you know what it means in terms of reality? If you’re hunting wolves year-round, what it means is that you are killing the adult wolves during the period when they have pups in the den, which means….

Interjections.

M. Sather: Oh, there’s lots of chirping over there.

….which means that if you kill the parents of those wolves, in most likelihood those pups are left to starve to death and die in the den or outside the den. I guess that members opposite think
that’s okay. I don’t think most British Columbians think that’s okay — that you let the young of any animal starve to death or die. But that’s the effect of what this government is doing.

They’ve missed a great opportunity in Bill 19 to be able to actually address some of the problems with regard to the management or the lack thereof of wolves. This is based, admittedly by the officers themselves, who know what they are talking about, not on science…. And the government says: “Oh, we’re science-based.”

This decision to have a year-round kill of wolves is not based on science, because they don’t have the science. They’ve even admitted — or their spokespeople have, who actually know — that it’s anecdotal information. It’s really unfortunate but that’s the case.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

M. Sather: The minister says: “Talk to the farmers and ranchers.” Well, you know there actually is a provision, if someone has livestock that’s killed by wolves, to have the conservation service have a look at that and for them to get recompense for that. But there’s nobody left in the service, in the ministry, to go and look. So now they are going to say…. The government says, “We’re not going to provide any conservation officers” — cut them way back — “but now we’ll just let you have at it yourself. That is not responsible wildlife management. It is really not at all.

Moving right along. I wanted to move on to section 32…

Interjections.

M. Sather: …and you know what? I really suggest that members opposite get up on their feet and say their piece. Put it on the record, because I’d be glad to hear — particularly what the Minister of Environment has to say. I’d really love to hear what he has to say about this bill.

Section 32 “removes the requirement for a guide outfitter to deliver a completed guide report to the regional manager within 10 days of concluding a hunt.” In the publication, the info bulletin, it says: “The requirement to submit a guide report after a hunt will be moved from the act to regulations and consideration will be given to extending the report submission deadline to give guide-outfitters more flexibility and time.”

That may be okay. I would want know, though, how long the government is considering delaying or extending the time to report, because, as has been mentioned by one of my colleagues, the guide-outfitters do a great…. In fact, they tend to be doing a lot of the wildlife management in the province, because the government has abdicated their responsibility for it. So it is important to get their reports back, and it’s important to get them back in a reasonably timely fashion.

I want to hear more from the government. The Minister of Environment perhaps wants to get up today and actually talk about the bill. But it would be good to hear what the intentions are there with the regulation that’s going to be forthcoming.

Then lastly, I’m a little but curious about section 35, which clarifies…. Is this the one about bag limits? Yeah. Section 35(a) says: “in respect of a regulation under paragraph (l), requiring that
wildlife taken or killed by a person be included in the bag limit of another person.” I want to understand. The minister, in wrapping up or whatever, can explain what that means.

A bag limit, by the way is the amount of game of whatever species that you can kill in a day. So they are talking about including that in a bag limit for another person, so…. I mean, it kind of sounds like…. If you go out hunting with, say, two other people, and you’ve each got a permit for one moose and you get your moose, does that mean you can shoot another moose and put it on the bag limit of your friend who wasn’t able to do that? I hope not, because that’s never been the way that we’ve done wildlife management before. That may not be the intent — I don’t know — but it’s kind of curious to me as to just what it means, so again I’ll look forward….

I know that the members opposite are really eager to get up and explain how wonderful the bill is and their great understanding of wildlife management and wolves and what have you. That’ll be very worthwhile listening to.

With that, I will take my seat and let another speaker have her piece.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2011

Afternoon Sitting

Second Reading of Bills
Bill 8 — Community, Sport and Cultural Development Statutes Amendment Act, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dear Mr. Sather: “Our names are John and Yvonne Murdoch, and we are the owners of Hamming View Farms in Pitt Meadows. We would like to voice our extreme concern regarding the latest developments in the Pacific cooperative summit in Honolulu between Prime Minister Harper and President Barack Obama, using the supply management system as a tool to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I hope that you support supply management and the fellow dairy farmers in your constituency. The press only mentions the 20,000 farmers that it will affect, but that doesn’t include the thousands of support people and businesses that help keep our operations running and in turn provide stability to our economy. Support your local farmers before we become extinct. “Thank you, “The Murdoch family.”

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Second Reading of Bills
Bill 6 — Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Statutes Amendment Act, 2011

M. Sather: I rise today to join the debate — I should have looked around to see if any of my colleagues opposite were getting up, but obviously they weren’t — on Bill 6, the Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Statutes Amendment Act, 2011.

Members of the public have seen a lot of changes in names of various ministries in this government and may not be familiar with this one. But it is, in fact, the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations under which this statute is being launched.

The previous speaker or speakers have pointed out that in the past we always had a ministry solely devoted to forestry. Now we see it lumped in with a whole lot of things, including environmental issues, hunting regulations, even some fisheries management. So it’s a grab-bag of responsibilities that I’m afraid is reflective of the state of forests in this province today. That’s of concern to all of us, I think, certainly on this side of the House.

I remember in the ’90s, the favourite decade of members opposite, when I was assisting the then MLA for Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows and hearing the then members of the opposition say
that when they got into power they were going to show British Columbians how forestry should be run in British Columbia. They didn’t add the word “down” at the end or “out of business” at the end, but that is how it has been as we have seen the destruction of our forest industry under this government.

We have seen the demise of a once proud ministry, where it’s relegated now to part of a grab-bag of responsibilities of government, and that’s truly dismaying, I think, for all British Columbians.

Not seeing forestry even highlighted in the throne speech, again, speaks volumes to, I think, the fact that the government has given up on the forest industry, other than to act as an agent for exporting increased numbers of logs to China.

That’s not a job strategy that has any merit, in my view, and one that a lot of folks in the forest industry — currently and previously, those out of work that used to have jobs —
would, I think, agree on. They would like to see jobs for their families here in British Columbia.

We know that when we have manufacturing…. Of course, manufacturing is disappearing from the developed world as we move through the wonders of free trade. Well, it’s not free for the
workers in British Columbia. It’s costing the workers in British Columbia a lot, whereas we just ship off our resources and we don’t make any effort to get the maximum amount of manufacturing dollar out of those resources here in our province. It’s a real shame.

I want to focus most of my remarks on this bill around one particular part of it, one that a number of speakers before me have addressed, and that’s the issue of the removal of
private lands from woodlots in British Columbia. The woodlots that we have in British Columbia grew out of the farm woodlots that previously came into place in 1948, which I want members to know was a very good year. Under those, farmers were able to acquire the use of forest lands adjacent to their farms, or they could go out and cut down wood for fence posts or building a barn or  maybe helping to build a new home or the home.

That has evolved, until in the 1970s the Pearse commission did a voluminous report on forestry. The evolution of woodlots as we know them now arose from then. I had the pleasure of
speaking to a former colleague the other day with regard to this — one Corky Evans, who some members will recall. Corky made submissions to that commission because he has a background working in small-scale forestry.

I see there are some members in the House that weren’t here when the estimable Mr. Evans was in the House. They missed one of the finest speakers, I think, that has graced these
halls and a person that I will always remember for having blown the lights of the Legislature out. That happened in an all-night debate we were having in these chambers. Corky was up waxing eloquent and actually singing a Woody Guthrie song about how some people will kill you with a pistol and others with a fountain pen. And boom! The lights went out. To me, it spoke to the spiritual power of the man and his connectedness. Even the electrons were paying attention.

So there has been a lot of input into the woodlot issue. Just a bit of facts and figures on woodlots: 65 percent of woodlot licences are held by individuals and partnerships, 25 percent by corporations and 6 percent by First Nations. So there’s a very large…. It’s really, basically, a family-based forestry operation, although there are others that have a stake in it as well. But it’s family-based, it’s community-based, and it’s a very good program, which everyone on both sides of this House, I’m sure, supports.

Woodlots were seen to be particularly valuable in areas near civilization, where there would be increased emphasis on sustainable management.

You know, if you fly over the province in an airplane you can see sometimes some very large clearcuts that bring howls of protest from some quarters. That could have included me at
times. But when you are in close to communities, there’s more scrutiny. There are more people watching out for what’s going on in the forests next to their homes and next to their communities or in their communities.

So the woodlot licence program is a very good way of having a smaller-scale, oftentimes family-based operation where there’s a strong emphasis on sustainability, including
environmental sustainability, and that made it a very supportable program. I certainly do support the woodlot program in our province.

The woodlots require annual allowable cut in a management plan by which they operate, not that larger tenures don’t have that as well, but just to be clear, they are managed and
regulated in that respect. It’s not that they just go out and do whatever they want — quite the opposite.

Harvest on woodlots increased from 1.1 million cubic metres in the year 2000 to 2.4 million cubic metres in 2006. That’s attributed, in considerable measure as I understand it, to the increased harvest opportunities for beetle-killed wood, which obviously is a two-edged sword for all of us. A lot of our forests died and still are dying in some quarters as a result of the beetle kill. There are a lot more folks out there harvesting that timber.

But the other side of it is that the long-term viability of your woodlot is completely changed from what you…. You know, it’s not a matter of harvesting 1 percent annual allowable cut or anything like that, because the trees are all dead in front of you — at least all the pine trees are — and they are falling down. There’s lots of wind in some of these areas in the Interior, and they get blown down fairly quickly. So you’re looking at a whole different ballgame.

The woodlot licence owners in many areas are very aware of that and concerned that the viability, or at least the…. For the next 40 years or so, it’s just entirely different — what they are dealing with — than what they had before. So that may, in fact, have something to do with the genesis of this legislation.

Woodlots utilize 1.5 percent of the province’s total annual allowable cut. That’s not a large amount, but as I say, it’s dedicated to handsawn resource management. So it’s a really valuable tool. It’s a really special deal, if you will, an opportunity for a very sustainable resource management in the forest industry.

There were 811 woodlot licences in 2003 and 826 in 2007, but the previous size limits were doubled to 800 hectares on the coast and 1,200 hectares inland. When you read Peter Pearse’s report back in the 1970s, I think there were 30-some, and he was decrying the fact that it was very difficult to get people involved in these licences, these opportunities, and hoping for more. Well, certainly, we’ve seen a change in that regard, and a very positive change insofar as that goes.

There are now 875 woodlot licences today, and 85 percent of those licences of those woodlots — that’s nearly 700 in total — in B.C. contain private land. It’s about 130 hectares of private land on average, per woodlot, and 18 percent of the woodlot land is private. So the vast majority of them have private land attached, but the woodlot itself…. A lot of it is Crown land. The vast majority of it is Crown land.

What we’re looking at is smaller chunks of private land but significant parts of the whole process, as has been talked about in this House and that I will add a few more words about.

The private lands. Certainly, in parts of the province that are mountainous — which, as we know, is a large part of our province — the private lands tend to be in valley bottoms, which
are flatter, obviously, and more productive. The soils are better in valley bottoms than up on the hillsides or, certainly, in subalpine areas, so they’re very desirable places on which to have a woodlot. I also want to mention that they tend to grow about twice as much forest per hectare as Crown land — again, very productive.

Prior to the woodlots there was no annual allowable cut or a management plan for a lot of this high-quality forest land. What would happen is that people would come in and high-grade —
take out the most valuable trees and generally degrade the site, sometimes clearcutting it and leaving the forest depleted for many years as a source of wood and local income. The woodlot licence program is really valuable in order to allow for far greater sustainability in forest practices, which we all strive for.

Crown land is often approved as part of the woodlot in return for putting private land in the woodlot. Bill 6 frees up the private land for development while allowing owners to keep the Crown land lease.

We’re not talking about the buildings where the person lives. If they had a forest on their property that was private, that becomes part of the woodlot, along with, normally, a much larger part of Crown land. That changes the dynamic of a woodlot entirely, with this legislation, because once the private land is removed, as I think the member previously mentioned, it’s not tending to go back into forestry.

According to the website of the Federation of British Columbia Woodlot Associations, the woodlot licences are “a form of area-based tenure which is unique to British Columbia. In effect, they are partnerships between the licence holder and the province of British Columbia to manage public land and private forest lands.”

That puts it very well. It’s a partnership — a public-private partnership of the type that our side can fully support, a very healthy relationship. This legislation is going to upset the balance of that healthy relationship. What we’re saying is that, yes — and I’ll get into it in a minute — there are obviously reasons why some woodlot owners…. I don’t know the exact numbers, perhaps the majority. The minister, I’m sure, does have a better idea of that. Some want their land removed, but we have to look at the public interest.

There are good personal reasons why they want to do that, but we have to look at the interests of the public at large. This is a model that’s working. It’s a “not broke, don’t try to fix it” kind of thing.

I think that the government would be wise to reflect on that. They’ve got a good model. We have a good model here in the province for many years. Why mess with it when it’s working
well?

In 2007 the government allowed large forest companies to remove their private lands from forest licences and sell them. We’ve seen a bit of this on a bigger scale already. Now, I’m not talking about woodlots. I’m talking about larger tenures held by forest companies. But the principle is much the same.

On southern Vancouver Island, for example, 28,000 hectares of private land were removed from tree farm licences by Western Forest Products with the approval of the government.
Of course, that land is not destined for future forestry. That’s taken out of the collective forests that we have in the province for residential or other kinds of resort development.

So we’re looking at a history of seeing the government move to privatization of forest lands, which is not surprising. Privatization is, of course, one of the themes of this government. And we’re seeing a different ramification with the woodlot licence. But nonetheless, it’s a removal from the public good into what is seen, at least by some of the owners, as a private good. Though I think we can all sympathize and understand the problems of succession and so on, of handing on your work to other members of your family, perhaps, we don’t want to throw out the baby with
the bathwater, as the saying goes.

So the working forest, which has been spoken about over the years a lot in this province, has been seen as part of a social contract between private industry and the public lands that we’re so blessed with in this province of having in abundance, and we want to keep it that way.

Those same forest companies — I do recall some of those same forest companies, anyway — very much were supportive of that social contract when it came to alienation of forest lands
by the formation of parks. But now the shoe is on the other foot. It’s not only southern Vancouver Island. It’s happened in the Interior as well with the working forests. So we need to keep that forest working such that when we decide that maybe shipping all our logs, or more and more of our logs, to China is not the best jobs policy in the world, we can have that working forest intact to continue to actually provide jobs for British Columbians in an industry that’s synonymous with British Columbia — the forest industry.

With regard to the removal from tree farm licences, the Auditor General said that it wasn’t in the public interest to do that. He said that at the time. We think the same principle applies now. What we’re seeing in the Kootenays, in the north, for example, is that…. Another issue with the woodlot licence — woodlots and other than woodlots — is that individuals from outside the  province sometimes, oftentimes, are buying large tracts like ranches for private hunting reserves. We don’t want to see the taking over of woodlots in this way for other purposes.

I’m not a hunter now. I was a hunter. I hunted a lot when I was younger. I thought it was great. But I don’t now. Nonetheless, I don’t want to see our forest lands become private reserves, in effect. Peter Pearse, way back in the 1970s, talked about that as an issue we had to be aware of, that we couldn’t let happen — that we need to keep our forest lands for forestry and not have them being used for other purposes in broad measure.

We’re saying, I think, that the woodlots — certainly, we are — should stay under the current positive sustainable management requirements that we have. I have no doubt that members
of the woodlot association want to proceed with this in a respectful way, because they’re doing great, great work and always have done.

The assurances that the minister makes and that the woodlot association has talked about, such as that before any land be taken out of a woodlot, private land be taken out; it would
be advertised locally and public comment invited…. That’s all well and good, but I don’t see anything in there that would change the outcome, once the government gives the go-ahead to take their private land out of a woodlot. It’s great the communities will be notified, but I don’t see any sense that the outcome would be affected.

The other thing is that it’s being said — the minister, I think, has also said this — that you’d have to have had your woodlot ten years before you could take the private part out. You know, that’s fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Eventually it’s going to end up in the same way for those that want to remove the private portion of their woodlot.

The issue, though, of a family needing, like anyone, to have recompense for their assets — if they want to give it to their kids, for example, to carry on with — is a real one, and it’s a problem, obviously, with agriculture as well. There are programs federally that assist young farmers in being able to borrow the money they need to help with that transition.

Maybe we need to be seeing — if the government is going to proceed with this, and I presume they will — if there isn’t some kind of funding arrangements that could be made in this
instance as well. It wouldn’t actually have to be…. In fact, it could negate, if it worked, the necessity for — and we don’t think it’s necessary to do this — or the actuality of what Bill 6 contemplates.

Again, this is a similar, common theme that happens with agricultural lands. In Maple Ridge, for sure, we have a lot of smaller parcels in the agricultural land reserve. I hear, not
uncommonly, from some of my constituents who own these lands, that they want them out of the agricultural land reserve so that they can sell them.

But this is a contract, the agricultural land reserve, that we’ve had from the ’80s, many decades now, that governments of all political stripes have recognized as being in the broader
social interest to maintain. So that’s the understanding. There are some costs, obviously, with maintaining that social contract, but it’s valuable, we believe, to do so. We are hoping that the government will reconsider it in this regard as well.

Another issue that I just want to bring up briefly that’s come to my attention has similarities to this as well, in my view. In Bridge Lake — which is not far from 100 Mile House, between 100 Mile and Highway 5 on the other side — there’s a land swap that’s being contemplated where land that was set aside way back in 1945 for the enjoyment of the public…. It’s waterfront, and that’s valuable property up there. The idea is to cut a big chunk out of the middle of it and swap that for a piece of land on the island.

Of course, a piece of land on the island is much more difficult to develop. How do you get there, to your cabin, etc.? But it speaks again to the willingness of this government to go ahead with alienation of lands that are there for the public good in exchange for private interests. In all of these cases I think they are misguided, and I’m hoping that the government will see fit to reconsider. That, of course, is our purpose in having these debates.

With that, I thank you very much for the opportunity to respond, and I will pass the mike on to the next speaker.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2011

TEST RESULTS FOR DISEASE IN WILD SALMON

M. Sather: The infectious salmon anemia virus has been discovered in wild salmon in Rivers Inlet. This is a potentially devastating disease that hasn’t been reported before in the North Pacific. The Chilean farming industry was devastated by this same virus: $2 billion in losses, production cut by half and 26,000 people laid off.

We have a lot more to be concerned about here in British Columbia as well. We have our world-renowned sport-fishing industry, our commercial industry and our First Nations food fishery.

Now, Dr. James Winton, who leads the fish health research group at the Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle, called this outbreak a “disease emergency.” My question to the Minister of Agriculture is: does he agree with the assessment of Dr. Winton?

Hon. D. McRae: Well, we’ve got another example of spinning media headlines and fearmongering from the opposition.

The reality is this. The lab results were sent to P.E.I. They were not following protocol when, instead of actually contacting CFIA, they went directly to SFU, which in turn went to the media.

When CFIA then, in turn, said, “We’d like to do our test samples,” and said, “We’d like to test the fish,” well, unfortunately, I’m advised that the tested-positive results at the P.E.I. lab
were destroyed and, therefore, not available to CFIA.

Now, what I want to make sure that we have very clear in this chamber today for all members here and all members of the public is that ISA poses no risk to human health. I don’t want people leaving this chamber for one second thinking that ISA is a problem to human health.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Just take your seat for a second, Member.

Members.

Continue, Member.

M. Sather: Well, in my time in this House that has got to be one of the worst answers I have ever heard. The minister is really making a mistake in going this route.

Those fish were tested by the World Organisation for Animal Health. Now, if the minister wants to quibble with the worldwide body that’s responsible for fish health, go ahead — fill your boots — but you’re making a big mistake.

And you’re making a big mistake about not taking what’s happening to our fish, our wild fish, our salmon farm fish in this province…. You’re not taking it seriously, Minister, and you ought to be
ashamed and apologize right now.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. D. McRae: By all means, we take this incredibly seriously and don’t for one second think that the health of wild salmon is not hugely important to the government of British Columbia and the people of British Columbia.

What’s really important, though, is that when an allegation or a test is done, we make sure that the protocols are done to make sure that CFIA can ensure that these results were fair, accurate and, basically, making sure that they react accordingly.

One study needs to be backed up with another. CFIA is working diligently to make sure those results are being done, using the sample that they do have available, not the two fish that have gone missing. We want to make sure that the CFIA will move forward and act accordingly once the information is done and made available.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2011

Oral Questions

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO TEST RESULTS FOR DISEASE IN WILD SALMON

M. Sather: Well, yesterday in this House we questioned the Minister of Agriculture about the detection of infectious salmon anemia in our salmon in Rivers Inlet. Now, this is a very
serious virus that’s not dangerous to people, as the minister digressed yesterday, but is very dangerous to salmon. Yet instead of showing how he is prepared to deal with this threat, the minister went on to attack the scientists who detected the salmon in our waters.

So with the benefit of 24 hours of reconsideration and thought — serious thought, I hope — can the minister explain to this House what he’s doing to address this serious threat to our wild and our farmed salmon?

Hon. D. McRae: One of the things I’ve done is that I was talking to the president of CFIA. I want to make sure we have some messages, not only for this chamber but for the general public. They wanted me to pass on this. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency takes reports of reportable aquatic animal diseases very seriously.

In Canada suspected cases of ISAV must be validated by the national aquatic health program. CFIA right now are collecting the available samples from the research program being conducted by Simon Fraser University. When these are collected, they will be sent to the Fisheries and Oceans national aquatic animal health laboratory in Moncton, New Brunswick, for analysis.

CFIA is also working with the Atlantic Veterinary College to review their findings. If ISA is in fact validated, the CFIA will take appropriate disease control actions and notify World Organisation for Animal Health. CFIA and DFO — this is their mandate to look after. They are taking it incredibly seriously. This ministry, this government, is taking it incredibly seriously as well. Thank you very much for your question.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

M. Sather: I’m pleased to hear — and, of course, it’s what I would expect — that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is going to follow up with further tests, and that they should do.

But we’re still not seeing any expression of actual concern about this government planning to do something themselves. But the fish farm industry, the salmon farm industry, is concerned. This is what Stewart Hawthorn, managing director for Grieg Seafood, had to say about the detection of ISA. He said: “This could be a threat to our business and the communities that rely on our productive industry.”

He’s right to be concerned. You know, this virus wiped out the salmon farming industry, pretty close, in Chile — $2 billion worth of damage. Now, we want to know what the minister’s plan is to deal with this. What is he doing to deal with the threat that’s facing us? Other than just saying, “Well, I’m passing it on to somebody else,” what is he doing? I want to hear it.

Hon. D. McRae: I want to make sure, as well, that the member opposite knows: it’s not what we’re doing now; it’s what we’ve always been doing. I’m pleased to say that over 5,000 samples have been tested for ISA in the last several years. How many came back positive? Let me think about it for a sec. Zero — not one.

One other thing that I’d like to bring up as well. Yesterday the member opposite was wanting to quote some articles in the States, and I want to just read into the record, because part of it is true, what he said. “Fish virus experts from the U.S. Geological Survey to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife called the discovery alarming, even while they acknowledged the tests don’t make clear how wide-ranging the virus is. The results had not yet been confirmed by additional testing.”

Now, this is the one part I really want to bring in here, from that same article: “‘We found the sequence of this virus in two samples of wild sockeye, that’s all,’ said Fred Kibenge, the highly regarded scientist who performed the tests. ‘There was no link to disease, no indication of massive outbreak, and we don’t know if this is virulent or not.’”

But the reality is that CFIA and this government are in constant communication, making sure that the agencies responsible, CFIA and DFO, are getting down to the answers and making sure that they’re available to the public.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a further supplemental.

M. Sather: Well, all we’re seeing from this minister is denial, denial, denial. Dr. Kibenge also said: “This is probably the single most feared virus in the fish industry.”

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Member. Member, just take your seat for a second.

Members.

Continue, Member.

M. Sather: The minister wants to actually brag about what this government has done for fish? What this government has done for the salmon is try to suppress all the disease records
at the Cohen inquiry. How is that for a starter?

And now, even with the chance to think about this, to show that he’s actually working with the federal government to get something done, the minister is trying to make excuses once again for doing nothing. It’s absolutely inexcusable.

Hon. D. McRae: I’m not sure, Mr. Speaker, if there was a question there, but I want to take it as an opportunity to respond nonetheless.

So how will we define “suppress”? If suppress means actually submitting information to the Cohen Commission, well, I would direct the member to several websites, if you may.

Exhibit 1471 of the Cohen Commission. What does that do? Well, let’s just see. It is a summary of PCR tests of fish farms available from the Ministry of Agriculture, given to the Cohen Commission.

But we also want a bit more perhaps — a summary of the testimony with respect to provincial fish data related to ISA. ISA is publicly available, again, at the Cohen Commission, on pages 104 to 112, item 78.

But there’s more also. Exhibit 1678 — more information from the provincial government about ISA and fish farm health in the Cohen Commission. If that’s not enough, don’t hesitate to check out exhibit 1549 on the B.C. fish health database in the Cohen Commission.

We’ve put forward everything we have. We’re not hiding anything.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2011

Second Reading of Bills
Bill 3 — Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2011

M. Sather: I rise today to join the debate on Bill 3, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Amendment Act, 2011. I think we have to look a bit here at what I would describe as first principles. One needs to look at what a government does more than at what the government says they’re doing. I think that’s probably the case with scrutiny that is deserved on any government, but it’s really apparent with this government. After watching this government in operation for ten years, I’m completely convinced that often what they say they’re doing is at complete odds with what they are in fact doing.

The Premier says that she is committed to open government and open data. I guess I’ll have a chance later on to talk about open data, whatever that may be. But what evidence do we have about this government being an open government that should give residents of British Columbia confidence that this bill is actually designed to make government more open?

Well, one of the tenets of democracy is open elections, and yet what is part of an open election? An open election is where you put yourself out there before the public, willing to discuss the issues of the day. That’s what we’ve always done, traditionally, in elections in British Columbia, but that’s not where this government has gone, not under Gordon Campbell and not under the current Premier.

When she had the opportunity, during the by-election last spring, to put herself out in the public in an open and transparent manner, to discuss the important issues around her election or the election of her opponent, she said no. She said: “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to submit myself to the scrutiny of the great unwashed. I’m, you know, above that.”

It’s this same Premier that we’re supposed to trust, that the public of British Columbia is supposed to trust, that’s bringing forth a bill that’s going to lead to more openness in government. We have to take it, unfortunately, with a great grain of salt.

This culture of lack of openness…. I think Paul Fraser talked about that, about there being a lack of a culture of privacy in the government. It’s not just a random phrase from an uneducated person. It’s a person who has, I would submit, watched this government in action very carefully and said that there isn’t a culture there of protecting privacy — not to the degree, certainly, that we should have in a free and democratic society.

When I ran in 2005, the first time, my opponent refused to join some of the debates, and this has happened in many constituencies throughout the province where the Liberals have asked the public to support them. Yet they won’t follow that very basic tenet of open government of putting yourself out there in person before the public who, Lord knows, have little opportunity otherwise to engage with this government.

Whenever Gordon Campbell came to Maple Ridge or Pitt Meadows, nobody knew about it except Liberal insiders, and when this Premier came to Maple Ridge recently and went to the shindig at Gordy Robson’s place, nobody else knew about it either. Sounds awfully familiar to the same pattern that I’ve seen before.

This is not open government. So when that government brings a bill before this House and extolls the virtues of it and wants us to believe and wants us to trust that we’re looking at not only open government but enhancement of open government, you really have to wonder how believable it is.

I’ll talk a little bit later about the nature of the bill itself, insofar as it’s difficult to determine what it’s actually about.

This government, I submit, unfortunately is not on an agenda, is not on a mission of openness. It’s on a mission of secrecy. They’re following a formula, a formula that corporate-first governments are using throughout North America and the developed world.

It’s the formula that people are rising up against and saying: “Wait a minute. This is not in my best interests. You’re not representing me. What you are doing is promulgating an extremely
sophisticated….” I’ll give them this. The spin that they do is good. It’s good. It may be Machiavellian, but it’s pretty darned effective. This is one of the things that they do. If they’re doing something that in fact is secretive, they make a great cry that they’re doing just the opposite. And we’ve seen it in a number of venues.

Of course, Stephen Harper has sharpened it up even more. I mean, reporters are lucky to be even invited to some of his openings. Or you hold an all-candidates meeting where you have to be a member of the party to attend. I hope it isn’t going to become that bad here. I don’t know how much more opportunity…. There’s certainly going to be one more election, and we’ll see how the government fares in terms of being open, in willingness to put themselves before the people.

But I submit that this bill is not about openness and transparency. It’s about issues management. It’s all about issues management. Like I say, the formula that corporate-friendly governments like this one use are privatization, deregulation and contracting out. Those are the standards. Those are the posts that support the way they do business. It’s making it increasingly difficult for the public to get any information about the goings-on of government. Just as my colleague from Columbia River–Revelstoke pointed out, it’s exceedingly difficult.

The privatization agenda that this government follows is a win-win. It’s a win-win for this government. On the one hand, they turn over as much of the business of the people as they can to private interests, and then when the people go and say, “But wait, this is in my public interest; I want to know about this,” they say: “Whoa. Sorry, that’s private information. It’s a private company that’s handling that business. You don’t have the right.”

That’s not openness, Madam Speaker. That’s not transparency. That’s secrecy. That’s keeping the people’s business from them. You know, as much as I can determine what this inscrutable bill actually means, I’m concerned that that’s where we are going with this one as well. We’ve seen so many slogans over the years, a ten-year history of this government of saying one thing and doing another.

“The best fisheries management in the world, bar none” — we all remember that one. Look at what the government actually does. They send a lawyer, acting in a very hostile manner, to the Cohen Commission to do everything they can to keep the release of fish health data from the public. For those that attended, and I attended many of them, you would watch that lawyer aggressively attack anybody that stood up to protect wild salmon. So say one thing; do another.

“Build the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities and special needs.” Well, we’re seeing how that one’s going.

B. Ralston: How’s that going?

M. Sather: It’s a disaster, because again the government says one thing, and they do another. They say that people are wilfully going to homestays that might have come off Craigslist — you know, “free rent,” “mortgage helper,” whatever. Some of them are good, but I mean, it’s a free-for-all.

The member for Abbotsford-Mission has spoken to that. And it’s exactly not what they’re doing. There’s no choice for people. People are thrown out of their homes, the homes they’ve had for many years. But saying one thing and doing another is the stock-in-trade of this government.

I’ll look at some of the contents of the bill. The government wants us to have on-line government identification. It’s one of the things they’re looking at. Madam Speaker, I don’t want that. Quite frankly, I don’t trust it.

Technology today, obviously, is a very useful tool. It can do many wonderful things, but one thing that is, I think, becoming pretty clear, more clear every year, is that this it is not capable of
protecting our privacy. There are more and more breaches of privacy all the time with data that’s held electronically. Will I have the right to say: “No, I don’t want my private information held on line”? I don’t think I will. I can bet I won’t.

The member for Vancouver-Quilchena talked yesterday about the virtues of computerization of personal data, and there are many. I mean, I remember when I worked as a mental health therapist for Fraser Health. It was frustrating.

I was working in Burnaby. We needed information about our clients, which they had given us permission to access in order to serve their mental health needs as well as possible, and a stone’s throw away was the boundary with Vancouver and another health authority who wouldn’t give us that information. Now, that is the kind of barrier that is not helpful to meeting the needs of individuals.

So there are benefits, certainly, of electronic data transfer. There can be, but there are also great pitfalls. The member, the former Minister of Health, talked about…. You know, you go around to offices and see all this data in file folders and how at-risk it was.

It’s true. I mean, there is some risk, particularly and usually if it wasn’t stored properly. But I would submit that that data that got into the wrong hands — and sometimes it did — was more through carelessness, not that that’s forgivable, and that it was somewhat limited in amount. Whereas data that’s stored electronically can be accessed by those that have the means of doing so and in large amounts, in very large amounts of data.

It’s a very risky business that we’re engaged in, and I don’t know what kind of safeguards there really are. I mean, the government says there are going to be safeguards. They haven’t really, I don’t think, fully elucidated just what they are. I’m not convinced at this point.

That’s what the minister said when she introduced: “…one of the special committee recommendations is to allow citizens, by choice, to consent to the collection of personal information in limited circumstances that are set in law.” So is the government going to phone up citizens and ask them if they consent to the transfer of their data? I don’t think so.

There’s going to be, I would predict, some protocol in place that will facilitate the transfer of this data. I bet it will be largely outside of the consent of citizens of British Columbia, but there may
be some sort of deemed consent or something of that nature.

I read that an individual lawyer, actually, who specializes in protection of information and privacy found this bill pretty inscrutable. What does it really mean? How is it going to unfold in reality? The government needs to explain exactly what the mechanisms will be by which citizens will give their consent for the transfer of their personal information.

This bill is a rush to facilitate data transfer but without the attendant concern about the protection of privacy rights of those whose data is being transferred now.

It’s surprising, you know, to find out where your personal information goes and how difficult it can be to retrieve it at times. My wife and I had an incident a little while ago. It was actually the summer of 2010. Our Visa company phoned us up and said: “Oh, your cards have been compromised. You have to have them replaced.” “Oh,” I asked, “how has my card been compromised?” because there was nothing on my bill that suggested that somebody else had been using it.

Well, it could happen in many ways. They were very vague about that. But I’m not told how that happened. Was it that somebody hacked into Visa’s information or my information on Visa? I don’t know. Then we were told: “By the way, you don’t need to do this, but you just might want to phone a couple of these companies in case something should happen in the future, and you would be protected.”

Well, that sounds good. You want to protect yourself if something happens in the future. The companies — one is called Equifax, and one is called TransUnion, I believe it is, both of which get your information. I don’t think Canadians know this. Any time you go and apply for a loan or get any kind of credit, they have a record of everything that you have done. So I said: “Fine, sign me up. I want to be protected.”

Nothing happened, and I didn’t notice anything till the spring of this year. We went to buy a couch at Sears, and they said: “Oh, if you want to get us to deliver it free, you can get a Sears card.
Have you got a Sears card?” No. Okay. Well, I guess so. I don’t really like having a lot much more plastic, but $60 off sounds all right to me. “Sign me up.” They try to sign me up, and: “Oh, there’s some problem here. You have to phone this number.”

So I phoned Visa and said: “What’s going on?” Without going into the specifics of our personal situation…

Interjection.

M. Sather: I need a lawyer maybe.

…I can tell you that there was no reason that such a thing should have happened. However, I was then directed to phone these two companies who told me: “Oh, there’s a fraud alert on your account.”
What it meant.…

An Hon. Member: You’re not even a Liberal.

M. Sather: And I’m not even a Liberal. There’s no excuse for it. I agree with the member.

So there it stands to this day. I tried to get it off. I talked to them, and as far as I know, I guess I’ve got to go and apply for another credit card.

There’s a lot of problems with data transfer and the holding of our personal information. I think we as a society are pretty enthralled with technology, and I guess for many good reasons. But I don’t know. I’m not so much. I guess I’m old school. I’m much more cautious about my personal information. I don’t tweet either, actually. I mean, the only tweets I’m interested in are the ones out in nature. I’m really a bad performer on Facebook too. So there, I confess.

But this is serious stuff that we’re looking at. We have to be sure that the government…. We have to in fact, I think, trust the government. We don’t have anything else to go by. We the opposition can get up here and we can talk about our concerns, but in a democracy, and in the end, it’s the governing party that has the say.

I think the member for Revelstoke made a good point earlier, that it’s setting up the future in terms of freedom of information and protection of privacy and that we have to hope and try to hold the government to account. Apparently, a lot of these transformational things that are going to happen are going to come in through regulation. I always hate that when things come in through regulation, because they don’t get the scrutiny of the House.

So, you know, there are a lot of potentialities that the government has talked about with regard to this information, this legislation, but what it’s going to really look like I don’t know.

Bill 3 changes consent provisions in the act so that the government can now ask citizens to consent to have their information collected, used and disclosed, if the government thinks it will result in improved service delivery.

Another thing that concerns me is that, you know, the government is talking…. Among the other points in favour of the bill, they talk oftentimes about the commercial transactions. It seems to me, with this government, in any legislation they bring in, in any acts they do, there’s always an eye to business opportunities.

I don’t want business opportunities to be first and foremost with my personal information, and I don’t think most British Columbians do either. But it seems to me that that’s the standard by which this government operates — that, you know, there’s all kinds of things in government that have commercial interest, and so let’s facilitate their ability to do that.

In fact, data sales is a big deal these days. I mean, you all get the calls. We all get the calls every day from marketers wanting to interview us about this, wanting to interview us about that. There’s a card for everything. You have a card at Save-On. You have a card at Safeway. It’s all about collecting information about you and your habits, because it has value. They don’t do all this for nothing. They do it because it has value.

The information that’s going to be stored somewhere has value too. It has commercial value. That’s something else that I worry about. Because is it a culture of secrecy, or is it a culture of privacy? And the former acting commissioner expressed concerns that there isn’t yet a culture of privacy with this government, and that’s a concern to me when he says that.

I spoke to the man, as you all have, and he seems like a very open individual, a very forthright individual. We can’t take these things lightly. It seems to me that government wants us…. It’s almost like buying a pig in a poke. We don’t know what this is really all about. And the residents of British Columbia will only find out later, and then they may say: “Well, wait a minute. I didn’t agree to that. I didn’t even know what you were doing.” Some would say that the government doesn’t know what they’re doing generally, but that’s a concern that they have.

A few years ago the company EDS, a Hewlett-Packard subsidiary, has…. I think they got the contract and still have it for all the servers for all government information. That’s a lot of information that they hold and that we entrust to them, and that, of course, is a private company. There’s limited access to what they’re doing with our information. Does information get zapped to the home base sometimes in the United States? Who knows? We’ll never know, I don’t think.

You couldn’t ask and find out through freedom of information. Certainly, you wouldn’t get that, or it would cost you $100,000 or something. Then, of course, if that does happen, everybody knows about the Patriot Act in the United States, whereby the government can access your information, and they don’t have to tell you. We don’t want that in Canada, I don’t think. I think that we need to be more vigilant about our privacy, not less, because there are so many more opportunities now for breaches of privacy than there were before.

The minister says: “Make no mistake. Open government is here to stay.” Well, I want to see the evidence that open government is here at all, in the first place, before I’m willing to accept
that it’s here to stay. Let’s start with first principles, as I say. Let’s see the evidence in actions that this government takes — that they’re open and accountable.

You know, that whole fiasco with CLBC. My experience is that it was obfuscation, not openness, that was the rule of the day — giving all kinds of bizarre reasons for cancelling the program in my community, or threatening to cancel, the Ridge Meadows recycling program, a supported work program for folks with developmental disabilities.

Some very bizarre reasons were given, not about openness at all, which actually kind of smacked of business interests. It really did.

I was told: “You know that program that you have over there in Maple Ridge? Most of those have been gotten rid of long ago.” That’s what the CEO for CLBC told me. I looked at him and thought: “Hmm. Wow.” So a non-profit agency with a stellar track record in the community for 20 years — that’s one of those things that have been gotten rid of, most of them, a long time ago, and you know, this one ought to be going down the same road. That was the pretty clear inference that I was given.

If that non-profit agency serving our community so well were to go, what would it be replaced by? Wastech? Probably. Another business opportunity. They’re always there in what this government does, but it’s often, unfortunately, not in the best interest, not in the public interest.

The minister says that the foundation is really about being able to identify who you are on line in a secure way that is not possible today. I agree. It’s not possible today. It’s not happening today. Oh yes, my wife’s credit card was compromised again a second time. This time the people were out there buying gas on her credit card. Watch out for that. That’s what they do. They buy gas in your local area so that you don’t notice it, because everybody buys gas in their local area, pretty much, if you drive a car.

The act needs to be modernized, said the minister. There’s another buzzword we hear a lot of from this government — modernization. Who doesn’t want to be modern? You know, the Water Act needs to be modernized. Yet, you know…. Gee, certainly the Water Act is very, very old and needs improvement. But modernization? What does it mean to this government?

Well now, we hear talk about trading water rights. Is that what modernization means? What does modernization of privacy rights mean to this government? I really want to know.

So the government wants to move in the future on electronic voting. I really have concerns about that one. I think the way we vote now — you go down, and you cast your ballot — is as secure as you’re going to get. Electronic voting? I’m not so sure, because everybody gets a PIN number, and where do those PIN numbers end up?

There have already been problems with the use of this kind of system. We know that. Yet the government is talking about doing that. Well, I guess it’s the rationale that more young people will vote. Maybe that’s true; maybe it isn’t. But if it’s going to be a system that is less than democratic instead of more democratic, that’s not what I want to see.

I want to see a system that we know is free from any manipulation, as free as possible, and I think the voting system we have now is that way. I trust it. We have lots of backups to it, so I’m not too excited about the future of electronic voting.

Paul Fraser talked a lot about expediency has consistently trumped privacy. Expediency or opportunity, whatever it is. It seems to be the case.

Voting on the HST is happening now. The BC Liberals have characterized the vote in favour of the HST as a “vote for lower taxes.”  Lower than what?  The ten percent HST, should it ever be implemented, is lower than a twelve percent HST if that’s what they mean but it’s certainly not lower than the GST/PST we used to pay.  In fact, according to Statistics Canada, the HST adds $521 per person in taxes to B.C. families every year.  This additional cost to families comes as a result of HST tax breaks to some businesses, particularly the largest businesses in the province.

The low income HST tax credits do not make up for the extra costs that seniors and others on low incomes are paying.  The $175 for children and some seniors is a one-time payment only. The HST, if it passed the referendum, would be forever.

The HST taxes many items and services that were not taxed before by the PST. Everything from buying a new house, a used car privately, home renovations and repairs, restaurant meals, haircuts, school supplies, funeral services, legal services, packaged food and dozens of other items are now taxed 7% more by the HST.

The BC Liberals said before the election in 2009 they would not introduce an HST then after the election they did just that. They said the HST would be revenue neutral to the government but instead the government is collecting much more than the tax credits and low income credits cost.  The government said all the HST would be dedicated to healthcare then they flip-flopped on that.  They said spending on the HST campaigns would be split equally between the pro HST and the anti HST sides.  Then they proceeded to give the anti-HST side less than 4% of the spending while they went on to spend seven million dollars of taxpayers money to try to convince you the HST is good for you, including a half million dollars on a pamphlet last year that they ended up scrapping.

The BC Liberals have no credibility on the HST issue. They have misled British Columbians time after time about the tax.  Now they want British Columbians to forget all that and hand them the power to continue to stick it to B.C. families to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars a year.

The HST is a bad tax, introduced, packaged and being sold in a dishonest way.  It hurts B.C. families by further widening the tax paying gap between corporations and average citizens.  British Columbians want the government to be held to account for this fiasco.

These are the reasons I’ll be voting Yes to extinguish the HST.

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(HANSARD)

HOUSE BLUES

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

Afternoon Sitting

MOTION 11 — GOVERNMENT CHANGES
TO HARMONIZED SALES TAX

M. Sather: Well, my oh my. We’re witness to the ongoing saga, the ongoing debacle of the HST that this government has brought upon itself and brought upon, unfortunately, the citizens of British Columbia. We have a new Premier now that has had a number of things to say about the HST.

She’s been in a rush, it seems, to deal with the HST. She’s tried a few things. I’m not exactly sure why she’s in such a rush, but it seems to be tied in with the necessity that she feels to call an election soon. Now, I don’t know. Even her good friend Bill Good is saying: “You know what? Maybe you ought to try governing for a while” — you know, that arcane concept — “and we’ll see how we like you then or not.”

No, she’s bound and determined to have an election soon apparently, but she had that little HST problem to deal with. When she was running for the leadership, she said: “Well, what? That’s no problem. We’ll get rid of it. We’ll just get all those MLAs that are waiting for me to be crowned to go in the House and vote against it.”

Well, you know what? That didn’t go over so good. Some of those MLAs said: “Just wait a minute. You know, we actually have done that already, and we voted for it.” She kind of had to retract that one. That didn’t go over very well.

Then it was going to be a vote on the 24th of June, I think it was. That didn’t happen. Now it’s dragged out to a mail-in ballot and just a tremendous amount of toing and froing.

I’m sure the members opposite probably said to their esteemed new leader: “Look, just show us what the plan is. Show us that you….” They want to see a map, I’m sure, of what they’re in for, but I’m not sure that our erstwhile Premier actually has a map. I think they’re beginning to wonder as well.

Certainly, the Liberals see the train coming down the track, and they are doing anything they can which they think, they hope desperately, will somehow get them over this HST obstacle.

Well, there are more promises being thrown out. We’ve seen promises and broken promises and re-promises around the HST. This is another one. “Oh no, don’t worry, we’re going to reduce it in the future, next year.

“We’ll drop it a percent,” they say, “and then maybe later on, 2014, we’ll drop it another percent. Just trust us.

“Now, you know you can trust us around the HST. We have an immaculate record on that account, so never worry. We may be saying one thing, but it’s not that we’re going to do another. Just trust us.” That’s what they’re asking British Columbians to do, to trust them on a file where they absolutely have no credibility whatsoever.

As far as the corporate tax rate that they, in a Stalinistic fashion, are now raising, they say, 2 percent….. They’re telling business: “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It’s only temporary, and as soon as we have a balanced budget” — which they still claim they’re going to do in the spring of 2013 — “don’t worry, we’ll get rid of it, and we’ll drop that small business tax and all those goodies.” That’s, of course, before the phantom second 1 percent is supposed to happen.

It is the most unbelievable math you can imagine. I think as we go through this once again twisted — and, hopefully, the last — process around resolving the HST, that British Columbians certainly are seeing through the government’s machinations.

We all know the famous, now infamous, statements that the Premier has made about buying people with their own money. I mean, I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you very much, Madam Premier. I’ve got to admit, she can be helpful at times when it comes to looking for quotes from the other side.

Then the government commissioned a report, the Dinning report, saying that the HST is going to cost the average family 350 extra dollars a year, notwithstanding a few big ticket items like a house and renovating a home — those kind of minor deals.

Of course, another study, Stats Canada–based, said it would be $520 a year — or it is that — that it’s costing the taxpayer. That one also didn’t take in housing and home-related investments.

If you look at what some of those costs are, an $800,000 home, which certainly isn’t unusual in the Lower Mainland, knocks you back 19,250 bucks in HST. A $700,000 home, it’s 12,250 bucks. You spread that kind of an expenditure over quite a few years, and you still get an average that gets jacked up quite a bit, I would suggest, above even the $520 figure. The member for Peace River North figures it is costing him between $600 and $800 a year, and he’s probably right. That’s probably around what it is.

The former Finance Minister, now the member for Vancouver-Quilchena, said: “Don’t you worry. Business is going to pass on their savings to the consumer.” Now, I haven’t heard too much about that claim lately, like some of the other ones. The revenue neutrality of the tax — that’s another one that went out the window. But if you just look at the big exporting industries — like oil and gas, like mining — they sell their product on the open market, the international market. It doesn’t make a whit of difference whether there’s HST in little old B.C. or not in terms of what they get for their product. So what incentive is there for them to reduce the cost of their product? None whatsoever, and they don’t. They don’t.

J. Les: The NDP really doesn’t get it.

M. Sather: The member opposite doesn’t get it. We realize you don’t get it, Member. The whole province realizes you don’t get it, and no matter how much you try to spin, no matter how much you try to weave on the HST, the facts of the matter are that it’s a scam. It really is, and it’s a shame.

Deputy Speaker: Member, may I remind you to address your remarks through the Chair, please.

M. Sather: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I’ll do that.

It actually is a shame and, you know, rather than trying to manipulate again the people of British Columbia, you hear them saying: “Well, okay, we screwed up big time.” Yeah, okay, and there’s that $1.6 billion; they haven’t taken all of it yet. There’s another $500 million that they’re going to collect, I assume, on July 1 before they get to the referendum vote.

“But never mind all that,” they say. In fact, you hear the members opposite telling British Columbians this kind of chiding thing. “Well, you have to support the HST, because look at the ramifications. Look at the results if you don’t, like the $1.6 billion.”

Well, excuse me. That’s their fault that there’s $1.6 billion on the hook. It’s not the fault of the people of British Columbia, and it’s appalling to hear them stand up here and say that British Columbians now have to accept it — suck it up, as the member just said from Vancouver-Langara. We just should suck it up now.

I don’t think so. There’s no reason why the people of British Columbia have to suck it up when a government has been so disingenuous as this government has been around this issue and continues to be so. Over 700,000 people in this province signed a petition to get rid of the HST. You know, we haven’t seen a voice like that before in this province come forward and say how strongly they feel about it.

What effect does it have on the street? I was talking to somebody the other day. I don’t know if their figures are way out of whack. You look at contractors, for example. A friend of mine was telling me they had some landscaping done and they had to get a contractor in. So she was talking to the contractor about the HST and “How does that affect you?” He said: “Well, my problem is that I can’t find anybody that will pay the HST, even when I offer, even when I want them to pay the HST.”

He said “That’s hard for me, to find anybody that will do it.” Obviously he’s got tax forms to fill out next year. so he needs to show something for that. The fact of the matter is that it’s a total underground economy, which there is no accounting of. How much is the HST costing us that way? A lot. You know, the people that aren’t waiting now to see about the renovations, to see if the HST is gone so they can save a whole bunch, are all too many, unfortunately, not paying any HST. They’re going under the table.

You know, there’s the roughly revenue neutrality myth that we know, certainly, was not true. On it goes. Let’s talk a little bit, in the few minutes I have, on what is affected by the HST. A lot. Live theatre, movie tickets, amusement parks — these are costs that weren’t there before, which are now there with the HST — veterinary care; accounting; architecture; wedding planners; caterers; acupuncture and alternative medicine; yoga, dance, cooking and martial arts programs; haircuts; team sport fees; private facility or community centre rentals; ice rink rentals; taxis and commercial bus fares; car washes; auto towing; emergency roadside services; bicycles; school supplies; basic telephone and cable; magazines and newspapers; part of the cost of non-prescription drugs, vitamins and certain other health care products; appliances; new housing.

You know, sometimes we hear that if you buy a new house, it’s only if it costs more than $525,000. But that’s not the case. You’re still paying 2 percent up to $525,000 — a total of $10,500, a lot of money. A lot of money that doesn’t count because it’s one of those big-ticket items. So the hurt goes on and on.

They’re offering some reductions to some folks through this, which is a one-time-only reduction of $175 a year. But it’s going to cost you, by the way, before this is fully implemented — this phantom reduction in the HST, if it ever was introduced…. By the time it is fully introduced, you will have paid another $800 in HST, and that $175 a year is going to take you until after 2020 to even break even. That’s the kind of pig in a poke that this government is offering to the people of British Columbia and expecting them to swallow it.

I don’t think so, Madam Speaker. I think the people of British Columbia are too wise to do that, and I think we are going to see that in the vote to come.

I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the comments by the very nice gentleman — and he is a nice gentleman — the member for West Vancouver–Capilano, who referred…. I won’t even say what he referred to, but I just want to go over some of the economic record of this government.

This government has run up…. This supposed anti-deficit government has run up a deficit of $47.3 billion in this province, on top of which they have another $53 billion in so-called contractual obligations. It’s another word for debt that this government has run up. They’ve run up seven deficit budgets since they’ve been in, including the biggest deficit in the history of the province. They’ve been a have-not province six times, and the B.C. Progress Board report in 2009 found that B.C. was sixth out of ten provinces for business investment. They have the second-lowest rate of productivity growth in the country.

The member called it an oasis of financial rectitude. Madam Speaker, if that’s an oasis of financial rectitude, I would hate to see what the other side of the coin is because it would be a very scary thing indeed. I think what we’re looking at is a desperate attempt — you know, a hail Mary pass. “Let’s throw it one more time. Let’s go. What else can we do to convince British Columbians to believe us now? We’re going to do this; we’re going to do that. If you were to vote in favour of the HST, then we’re going to follow up on our promises” — of course, in like manner that they have done so far.

There’s a whole range of other things — maintenance costs for condos and rental properties going up due to the HST, even the parking tax in Vancouver. Restaurant sales in B.C. are trailing the rest of Canada since the HST was implemented, notwithstanding what the Finance Minister says about restaurants and how disparagingly he speaks of the restaurant association. “They’re lobbyists.” My goodness, this government lives on lobbyists. I can’t imagine them speaking ill of a lobbyist, but there you have it. There’s a lot of amazing things that have happened in the way that this government has presented themselves around this issue.

I think that the government should, you know, not just apologize for the first round of missteps, shall we politely put them, but they should apologize for the whole thing, including the way that they said they were going to equally fund the two sides of the referendum.

Instead, they’ve come out with $7 billion. All but 4 percent of it is roughly designated towards supporting the HST, their friendly HST website, the $700,000 that they wasted last fall with a flyer that got thrown in the trash. There should be apologies for all of that, not more manipulation.

With that, all I can say is that I definitely will be voting against this motion. It’s a sorry tale, but there you have it.

 http://bcndpcaucus.ca

MEDIA RELEASE 

May 26, 2011

 FAIR CHASE ACT WOULD CLARIFY HUNTING RULES, PROMOTE GOOD SPORT

 VICTORIA— New Democrat MLA Michael Sather introduced the Fair Chase Act today, a bill which would clarify rules around using motor vehicles while hunting.

 ”This bill would clarify the rules for ethical hunting and ensure that those who are less familiar with the concept of fair chase are given clear guidelines to follow while hunting,” said Sather.

 The Wildlife Act prohibits harassment of wildlife by use of a motorized vehicle. However, the definition of harass is such that it is unclear whether or not such behavior is illegal in the process of hunting that is otherwise legal. The Fair Chase Act will serve to eliminate that ambiguity.

 ”This legislation would ensure that new hunters, and hunters who are unfamiliar with the way hunting is done in British Columbia, understand that they must allow wildlife a fair opportunity to escape as part of the chase,” said Sather.

 The act would also extend the prohibition against baiting wildlife to include wolves.

 ”Baiting of wildlife has long been considered reprehensible behaviour,” said Sather. “This act will ensure that wolves get the same protections as bears in this regard.”

 Adrian Dix and the New Democrats have a plan to protect and preserve our natural environment for British Columbians today and for generations to come.

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2011

 M. Sather: I have a constituent that I wanted to talk to the minister about. He’s been to my office a number of times to talk to me about a health issue he has. He has a rather severe chronic condition that requires him to get weekly massage therapy treatments. On a yearly basis he’s paying $998.40 HST on his massage therapy.

Even if the Premier rolls the HST back a couple of percent — which, given her variable responses to the HST, I don’t think can be taken to the bank — by my calculations he would still owe $838.76. I wanted to ask the minister if he felt that it was acceptable that British Columbians like my constituent have to pay that amount of money in HST to get a very needed health service.

Hon. M. de Jong: Thanks to the member for the question. There is an awareness of an inquiry having been made. I must confess that I’m at a bit of a disadvantage to refer specifically to the case the member has raised.

Based on the numbers, if I rely upon the numbers the member has provided and can extrapolate, I guess we’re talking about someone who is accessing massage therapy treatment to the tune of $8,000 or $9,000 over the course of the year, which is in and of itself a significant amount. Of course, even under the regime that would have been in place previously, he would have been responsible for just about half that amount under the GST. I suppose it’s that remaining amount of money that we are talking about. I’m not really in a position in the course of this debate to make specific comments about this specific case.

The member has heard at length the government’s rationale for both the HST and more recently, as recent as today, some changes that are being proposed to the HST that in our view would lessen the burden significantly felt by families — in fact, under the analysis that has been conducted by independent bodies, lead to a situation in which virtually every family finds themselves ultimately better off.

I understand that that is a position that the member and his party take issue with. We can have that discussion here, but it…. Well, we can have that discussion here, or we can, I’m sure, have the discussion in a different forum, and one will present itself shortly.

M. Sather: Yeah, that’s fine. It sounds like we are going to have another forum to discuss the HST further, so I’ll leave that and move on to ask the minister some questions about Ridge Meadows Hospital.

In 11 Lower Mainland hospitals less than 55 percent of patients admitted to hospital get a bed within ten hours. In Ridge Meadows it’s only 35 percent of patients who get a bed within ten hours. I wanted to ask the minister why the admission rate for getting a bed is so low at Ridge Meadows Hospital.

Hon. M. de Jong: Could the member repeat the numbers? I want to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples here.

M. Sather: By all means. The information I have is that in 11 Lower Mainland hospitals less than 55 percent of patients admitted to hospital get a bed within ten hours. Ridge Meadows, I think, is on the lower end of that with only 35 percent getting a bed within ten hours of being admitted to hospital. I wanted to ask the minister why it seems to be so difficult to get a bed at Ridge Meadows Hospital.

Hon. M. de Jong: I think he is referring to some targets that have been set. We are, as we speak, trying to confirm the numbers that he has presented, and then we’ll move on to a discussion about them.

The objective, of course, is to get every patient a bed assigned within ten hours. We haven’t obviously realized that objective yet but are making progress. If the member can bear with me for a couple of minutes, we’ll see if we can get the data and an explanation for that as it relates to Ridge Meadows Hospital.

M. Sather: Well, according to Fraser Health public affairs director David Plug, the problem, in part at least, is that there are so many seniors and acutely ill occupying beds in Maple Ridge.

I wanted to ask a specific question, which I asked Fraser Health, and that was: what are the minimum and maximum times for a senior in Ridge Meadows Hospital waiting for placement in a residential care facility? Part of the problem here is that we have a lot of seniors that should be in residential care.

Now, the information I got from Fraser Health…. They gave me the minimum time, but I didn’t get any maximum. What is the range, then? How long are seniors having to wait at Ridge Meadows Hospital to get into a residential care facility?

Hon. M. de Jong: I just want to confirm with the member. I think his question relates to that issue we hear about from time to time and one that has been a significant issue. It seems to be diminishing somewhat. It’s the notion of bed-blockers — seniors that are in an acute care facility when where they actually need to be is in supportive housing.

We’ve got the data for Fraser Health, but I think the member has received that. What I’m going to try and get is something more particular to Ridge Meadows. I don’t have it at my fingertips. The officials you see are endeavouring to get it. If the member is agreeable, we’ll try to track down something that is a little more particular to Ridge Meadows, because all we’ll have at our fingertips right now are Fraser Health Authority numbers.

M. Sather: Another constituent told me something recently that really astounded me. He said he’d been admitted to hospital at Ridge Meadows with a broken bone — I seem to recall it was an ankle — and he didn’t get it set for four days. I was astounded at that, but I’ve since learned that this does happen more frequently than we would like. I think that must be unacceptable to the minister. What’s he doing to ensure that my constituents, and other residents in the province, don’t have to wait four days to get a broken bone set?

Hon. M. de Jong: Just to back up for a moment. This is a very general number, but I should remind the member that ten years ago the median wait time for access to residential care was up to just about a year. Today the median wait time is about 90 days.

Now, that can still pose challenges in individual facilities, but it is much improved from where it was.

The member’s next question relates to, again, an individual constituent and both diagnosis and treatment. Of course, we do on occasion hear stories about patients who receive their treatment in a timely…. Well, actually we don’t hear about the 98 percent that receive their treatment in a very timely way. We tend to hear about examples where it has taken longer than many of us would think reasonable.

What do we do about that? Well, we try to train more professionals. We are training over twice as many more physicians in British Columbia today than was the case ten years ago. We try to train more nurses, more health care technicians. We try to ensure that there are more professionals on site, available to treat our citizens.

We try to make sure the facilities are there that can accommodate people as they come in the door when they submit to injury or illness, all of it complicated by the fact that as our population grows older, more and more people are seeking access to medical treatment, to health care treatment. So it would be disingenuous of me to suggest there is that one thing that you can do to guarantee that no person ever again is obliged to wait longer than most people in this chamber and most citizens would think reasonable.

I will say this. On balance, I think very positive progress has been made. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t more work to be done, and that doesn’t mean that the demand on the professionals that we in society rely upon day in, day out to attend to our health care needs won’t continue to grow.

COMMITTEE A BLUES

MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH

(continued)

 M. Sather: I have a question for the minister. A family of seniors — a senior family, I guess — have come to my office asking a rather particular question. The husband is in a care home in Maple Ridge and, of course, there’s the 80 percent income requirement to be paid. So they’ve undergone — his wife, who is still at home — income-splitting with their…. I don’t know if she did it on her own or with assistance from professional help. She did that, and she wasn’t able to get, didn’t receive, the information she needed to do that until about March, as I understand it, so by the time she then reapplied to the facility for a new rate, she was granted the new rate but only effective as of April 1.

This only applies until the end of the year, she tells me, at which time she will have to go through the process again. Essentially, she’s losing the three months; that’s what she’s concerned about. So January, February and March she’s not getting the benefit of the reduced rate. Apparently, they will probably do this financial exercise again — splitting their income — next year, as I understand it. So she’s concerned that she’s not getting the full 12 months’ benefit, only nine of the 12 months, and she’s concerned that this is going to happen again because of the delay and the natural time it takes to get your T4s or whatever the case may be.

I guess my question to the minister would be: is it permissible for facilities to hold back in that sense those three months of the reduced rate such that she doesn’t on an ongoing basis get the full 12 months’ benefit?

Hon. M. de Jong: To the hon. member. He will know, I think, that we had a pretty extensive discussion with his colleague from Kootenay West about some of the challenges that people are facing. I’m obliged to him for highlighting another circumstance.

The provision for income-splitting is designed, of course, to ensure that we are in a position where the entitlement or the subsidy is being calculated in a way that is fair and not prejudicing a spouse or a partner who remains behind in a home. There is a requirement, I am reminded, that people reapply on an annual basis. That is certainly the case. There is no intention to penalize people who apply or file in a timely way so that they would lose, in the circumstance that the member has described, that three months associated with the income-splitting.

I am also told this. I don’t profess to be an expert, necessarily, and I’m not sure this is even applicable in the specific example the member has highlighted, but there is a bit of a tension, we have discovered, between the desire to income split for one purpose — that is, the calculation of applicable care rates — and not income split for other reasons, perhaps income tax–related reasons, or vice versa.

The member may recall from the conversation we had with his colleague, the member for Kootenay West, that it is precisely those questions that we are pursuing in the review that is being undertaken now around this whole question of income-splitting for the purpose of rate calculation.