DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (Hansard) - Thursday, March 1, 2007 
 Budget Debate - J. Horgan    (system requirements)

J. Horgan: It's a pleasure to stand in this place today representing the people of Malahat-Juan de Fuca and respond to the 2007-2008 fiscal plan that was tabled by the Minister of Finance last week.

I think that we have to put this budget, this latest dropping from the government, in perspective. I'd like to think of it as: over the past two and a half weeks we've had one flip, one flop and a flip-flop. I'd like to start with the flip. We've already had, of course, our opportunity to respond to the throne speech, but the biggest backflip of all since New Year's was the epiphany that the Premier had while on vacation reading a few books about the impending doom of climate change. All of a sudden the throne speech reflected this new reality, which is a good thing for British Columbians.

But of course it became quite a surprise to the Minister of Finance, who had been working on her budget from last fall. Documents were prepared, tables were ready to go, and on the February 13 the Speech from the Throne was replete with references to how we were going to change the world in British Columbia and how we were going to lead the country, the continent and the world with respect to climate change.

This was all very good news, and it was quite a flip, as I say. But a week later we had the flop, and that was the tabling of the budget with no reference, aside from a $4 million one-time-only fund to finance the climate action team.
So a flip, then a flop, and then this past week we had the flip-flop, which was the energy plan tabled by the Minister of Energy, proudly declaring there would be no dirty coal burned in British Columbia. Again, that was very good news, certainly, for people in Princeton, for people in Tumbler Ridge, but of course it was a complete contradiction of Liberal policy and the idiom in which they were operating up to that point in time.

One flip, one flop and a flip-flop. That's how I characterize the month of February for the B.C. Liberals. I'm fairly confident that - here we are on the first day of March - they're pretty happy about that. We've got the month of February behind us, which as you know, hon. Speaker, is supposed to be the month when the government blows its horn. It trumpets and champions the direction it's going to take over the next 12 months. It lays out its fiscal plan. We had the added bonus of having an energy plan which was a little bit of old gruel reheated and then distributed as a new plan and a new vision for British Columbia.

One of the goals - I spoke about this with the minister yesterday, and his enthusiasm almost knocked over the Minister of Environment when he came to his feet with all of the wind that he could muster - was with respect to the 50-percent reduction in conservation initiatives that he has directed B.C. Hydro to fulfil. What that would mean, in essence, is that one in five current consumers on the grid would have to unplug to meet that challenge - extremely ambitious.
I gave the minister credit at the time for making the target, but then when I went through the fine print and looked at the documents, there were no new initiatives to meet that challenge. There was nothing there for consumers or British Columbians to incent them to do the things we need to do to meet the challenges as we go into a climate change environment. So one flip, one flop and a flip-flop. The month of February 2007 will go down as a very, very interesting month in the annals of B.C. history.

One of the challenges that the Minister of Finance had when she tabled her documents was that she had a plan. She'd been working on it earnestly with her very capable staff in the Ministry of Finance for months and months and months, and the focus was on housing. It was supposed to be a housing budget. If you look at all of the literature, many documents were produced by the public affairs bureau to champion and trumpet this great new housing plan that was laid out in the budget.

But when you stripped it all away, it was in essence a one-off tax cut that would amount to about $1.5 billion over three years - front-end loaded for those at the higher end of the income scale and less so for those at the bottom end of the income scale. The actual housing component was less than $500 million, and of that $500 million, half was for a slush fund to be used in the future. The interest from the $250 million housing fund would go towards housing research.

In my constituency we have many, many residents living in manufactured home parks, mobile home parks. In two instances, one in Pedder Bay and one in Shawnigan Lake, these people are being displaced from their houses and basically put out on the street with 12 months' notice and 12 months' pad rental. Insufficient to move their home to another location - if there was another location to go to on Vancouver Island, one of the hottest real estate markets in North America. An enormous housing challenge for those who are currently in affordable housing. Not a whisper from the government.

In fact, last year the government amended the Residential Tenancy Act to incent owners to displace people from their homes. Nothing in this budget to assist those people in my constituency. Nothing in that budget to assist those who need and are looking for affordable housing stock - not just social housing stock, not just shelter beds, but affordable housing for middle- and lower-income British Columbians. Not a thing in it, but yet they called it the housing budget.

I want to take a moment to comment on the commentary by pundit Norman Spector. Now, Norman Spector is not a political ally of mine. Norman Spector worked in this place.

Norman Spector worked for the Premier of British Columbia as a senior adviser. He worked for Brian Mulroney, of all people, as a senior adviser in Ottawa. This is an individual who knows government very well. He understands budget-making and understands the processes of government.

He said in his comment on the budget that this was the first chink in the armour of the newly minted Finance Minister, the first blow to her credibility. I'd have to agree with him, hon. Speaker.

We have a Finance Minister with a group of professional public servants, who diligently went about putting together the fiscal plan for the coming year, assuming they had the blessing of cabinet and assuming they had the blessing of the Premier. It turned out that a week before the tabling of that document, the Premier had another vision. He had another direction he wanted to go in - something shinier to follow, as I've said in some of my commentary on this matter.
Norman Spector - again, no friend of this side of the House - made it abundantly clear that this is the first misstep - the first patty, if you will - that the Minister of Finance has put her new shoes in since she was sworn in, at the same time as I was, in 2005.

That's regrettable for her, and it's also regrettable for the able people in the Ministry of Finance. I know, having worked there for a time, that they take their job very, very seriously. They put together a budget - many, many long hours into January and February - to make sure everything is just right. To have a throne speech yank that out from underneath them must be very disheartening for those public servants and certainly, I would expect, for the Minister of Finance - particularly when it wasn't a housing budget at all.

It was a modest tax cut for middle-income families, a large tax cut for those who don't need it. I heard the Solicitor General say earlier on.... Those over $80,000 a year have had a 31-percent tax cut since 2001. I'm sure that's very good for them. They'll be able to buy their Lexus now. They'll be able to pay off a couple of their loans or make more investments and make more money.

Certainly two years ago when the minister tabled her first budget, unbeknownst to anyone, including the business community, was the $500 million corporate tax cut. So if the corporate sector and those high-income British Columbians aren't happy with the way the government is going, I don't know what will make them happy. I know you're doing the best you can, on that side of the House, to keep them very well fed indeed.

Certainly the CEO of Partnerships B.C. is very well fed on the tax dollar, bringing in his friends to talk about all the great and wonderful things we're doing here in British Columbia. But not all British Columbians can be fed that well, and not all British Columbians can buy imported wines and then bill the Minister of Finance for it later on. I heard her carefully say yesterday that we were going to review that policy, and I look forward to the tabling of that sometime in the near future.

Yesterday I heard the Minister for Mining, my good friend from Kamloops-North Thompson, speaking in glowing terms about the state of the economy in British Columbia. I would certainly agree with him on many counts that like other provinces, like the Canadian economy as a whole, like the world economy, everybody is doing very, very well. We're having a demographic shift. We have the challenge of dealing with our seniors. How do we meet their health and housing needs into the future? Not addressed in this budget.

In terms of the rhetoric, I just wanted to comment, because the Minister for Mining was saying that it was B.C. Liberal government policy that was driving this change. In fact, the Solicitor General just said as much as well.
I'd just like to remind them, though, that since 1995 the price of gold has increased 177 percent, silver 285 percent and copper 215 percent. Copper is the backbone of the mineral sector, the metal sector here in British Columbia with respect to mining - a 215-percent increase in that commodity price.

Those on that side of the House would have us believe that has nothing to do with the state of the economy today. It has nothing to do with the state of the economy. It's only the goodwill of the member for Vancouver-Point Grey and his allies in cabinet - and the tax cuts they give to corporations and the tax cuts they give to high-income British Columbians - that has led to this resurgence in the B.C. economy. Poppycock, hon. Speaker. I may call it a vessel which you cook with, but I understand that's out of order in this place. But if I had the opportunity to say that, I would - a vessel which you cook with.

That's what I think ofwhat those on that side of the House are saying about why the economy is where it's at.
Aluminum, a 73-percent increase. Despite that, this government felt it was important to give Alcan, the Aluminum Co. of Canada, a sweetheart electricity deal to offset their sagging profits with a 73-percent increase in the price on the open market for aluminum.

It strikes me that the economy is doing very well for a host of reasons - some policy, some commodity, some demographic. But what we hear from the other side of the House, and perhaps maybe a little bit too much from this side of the House, is the toing and froing about what the real answer is. Well, there's a whole bunch of answers, hon. Speaker. You and I have had this discussion in our private moments - that public policy doesn't happen when governments change. Public policy happens all the time.

History will record that over the course of time, governments have come and governments have gone. The economy has gone up, and the economy has gone down. Commodity prices in a resource-based economy are the primary driver of economic activity. They all know that. They should just admit it one day. I certainly know the member for Peace River South knows that. If he could maybe get more time with his colleagues.... Now that he's a parliamentary secretary, he could get into the cabinet room and say: "Why don't we just fess up to it? Commodity prices are driving our economy. That's good news. A labour shortage is the biggest challenge we have. How do we address that?"

How are they going to address the labour shortage in this budget? They're going to give a thousand bucks to every kid born this year. That's going to stimulate skills training sometime in the distant future, when I'm confident that not a soul on that side of the House and probably not a soul on this side of the House will care a whit. We'll be worrying about our hip replacements and how we're going to pay for them. That's what we'll be worrying about.

Hon. G. Abbott: I've got that under control.

J. Horgan: The Minister of Health assures me that my hip is in good hands. My back is killing me, but....
I want to move on to some of the issues that are taking place in my riding and where I would have liked to have seen some of that $300 million cost overrun on the convention centre go. I say $300 million because it's in the range. It could be $400 million, $500 million or $600 million by the time they finish this thing in the inner harbour.
I was there the other day looking over at Burrard Inlet, a beautiful place. It's $300 million over budget, and all you've got is a couple of metal pilings sticking out of the water. It seems to me to be a bit of a challenge, but I'm sure Partnerships B.C. will call in Larry Blain. He'll have some cocktails, a couple of bottles of wine, and we'll get this thing straightened away without any difficulty at all.

If I had $300 million, hon. Speaker, you know what I'd do with it in Malahat-Juan de Fuca? I'd put it into hospice beds in the district of Sooke. I'd go to Ayre Manor, the seniors housing project that I understand I'll be visiting with the Minister of Health in the coming days to do some groundbreaking. I'm looking forward to a photo opportunity with the minister. I will wear my best bib and tucker. I won't embarrass you. I'll try and make sure everything is in place.
What they're missing at Ayre Manor.... The Vancouver Island Health Authority is funding a certain number of beds. B.C. Housing is funding a certain number of beds. But what we could really use in the district of Sooke.... I know when the minister visits the site, he'll recognize, after an hour or so drive up the west coast of Vancouver Island into beautiful Malahat-Juan de Fuca country, that we don't have any hospice capacity there.

The people in Sooke who are working on this project, and have in fact been working on this project for three decades and are now seeing it come to fruition.... These were young men and women who felt that the community would need seniors housing sometime in the future. It turns out now that they are seniors, and they will be able to access this seniors housing. That's long-term planning, and that's what they're doing in Sooke.

What's absent from that is a hospice component. Two beds are what we need. I know the minister is listening intently, and I'm hopeful that when we get the opportunity to break some ground in Sooke, we can talk in more detail about the need for hospice funding at that location.

The other issue in my riding.... If I had $300 million, I'd probably want to do something about transportation infrastructure in my community. I know the Minister of Transportation listens to me intently whenever I raise these issues, and he wants to assist in addressing the transportation challenges in the lower Island.

Certainly in my community of Langford, there's discussion of an interchange at Spencer Road that would lead to breaking up the bottleneck as you come off the Malahat into the approaches to Victoria. The Minister of Community Services and the Minister of Transportation are talking intently about that because they know, as well, that it's an important issue in our community and an important issue for all in the south Island. That's why I'm always anxious to....
Are we good?

Deputy Speaker: Member, I think we should not refer to the activities of other people in the House.

J. Horgan: Okay. Fine with me. And again, I apologize. I just know that both the ministers are avid proponents of the initiatives in our community, and I wanted to acknowledge them in my remarks. Certainly, the member for Oak Bay-Gordon Head and the member for Surrey-Cloverdale are integral to the success in my community, as I see it, and as the municipal leaders in my community see it. Without their support and encouragement, which we've had from day one, we wouldn't be able to achieve these initiatives.

That leads me to a discussion of the Malahat corridor. Two and a half years ago the government, in a failed attempt to elect a Liberal in NDP country, said they would do a study of the Malahat corridor. They said they were going to spend a grand total of $250,000 - that's $250,000 - to do a systematic and detailed study and investigation of the transportation needs of the people in my community, and in fact the people in the South Cowichan and into the Goldstream Park area.

That $250,000 is certainly getting a lot of mileage, because we've almost had.... Well, let's see. At last count we've had something like 28 months without an even remote resolution to that challenge. Yet in that same period of time the government has managed to find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on transportation infrastructure in ridings that are currently represented by Liberal members of this Legislature.

Now, I don't begrudge those members, hon. Speaker. You know that. I'm as generous as the day is long, when it comes to encouraging other people to benefit from the resources of British Columbians. But in all fairness I would be remiss if I didn't remind members on that side of the House that although there are only 33 of us over here, we represent geographically a significant portion of the province and a significant portion of the population, and therefore are as in need of infrastructure spending as those on that side of the House.

No more in need than any other jurisdiction is my community of Malahat-Juan de Fuca. It's held together by two ribbons of highway. There's Highway 14, which stretches through Sooke, where the Minister of Health and I will be next week, out to the community of Port Renfrew at the far point of my constituency. Then there's the Malahat highway, Highway 1, through Victoria up to the city of Duncan. That's it - two roads, one north and one west. Victoria and the lower Island is the second-largest population centre in British Columbia, and it certainly is the second economic engine of the province. Yet it's being ignored.

It's been ignored in this budget. It's been ignored in previous budgets, and I'm disappointed to say that I don't have much hope that there's going to be any attention paid to the Greater Victoria area unless the member for Oak Bay-Gordon Head and the member from Saanich North get going. I'm prepared to sit down with them, as you know, hon. Speaker, at any time to talk about issues in the Greater Victoria area so that we can address some of these challenges in a bipartisan way in the interests of improving the economy, the quality of life and other issues in and around my community.

Another challenge that I want to raise while I have the opportunity is the $200 million giveaway to Western Forest Products. In January the Minister of Forests announced, with not much fanfare - wanting to keep under the radar, I would suspect - that in the interest of reducing the debt burden of Western Forest Products, the largest forest products company on Vancouver Island, the government agreed to allow Western Forest Products to take private land out of a timber farm licence. Now they can do whatever they want with it.

What that means in real terms for the people in my community is an end to industrial land-based employment and the beginning of a wholesale sellout of real estate on the west coast. That means in the Jordan River area and in and around Sooke 28,000 hectares of land was just given away to what had been in the past and will most likely be in the future a very profitable forest/real estate company.

If the government wants to give its friends, its corporate backers, gifts and trinkets, that's fine. But giving away land, giving away the common resource of all of us, for nothing is reprehensible. The minister has given no accounting to the people in my community as to why he made the arbitrary decision to yank that land out of a public Crown TFL and give it away to a private company. Imagine that - 28,000 hectares.

I have a little plot of land that my little tiny house sits on in Langford. The Assessment Authority says it's worth a whole bunch of money. It astounds me how much it's worth. But if I had 28,000 hectares, I would be a very, very rich man. I'd probably give some of it back to the Crown because I'm so generous. I know the Minister of Health understands me to be among the most generous people in this place, but I wouldn't give 28,000 hectares to Western Forest Products just because they asked for it.

When I see the Minister of Forests in this place walking down the corridors, I'm almost tempted to ask him if he'd give me a couple of thousand hectares. Maybe I could then sell that off and see some transportation improvements in my community with the benefits and the profits from that sale. Maybe I would be able to protect people in manufactured home parks from expropriation and eviction because they can't meet the needs of the landowners in and around Greater Victoria.

These are all big challenges. I don't believe that the government has any malice when they completely ignore Vancouver Island when they're making their decisions, when they're doing their budgeting, when they're planning for the future. I think they just want to ignore Vancouver Islanders because they know they have no real prospect of ever electing anyone here.

If that's the calculation they make, that's fine, but you can't just fly in on a white horse in 2009 and say, "Oh, here's some more money for a study," and expect to get elected. If you want to get elected, you have to earn the respect and support of the electorate. A good way for the government to do that is to spend lots and lots of money in my constituency.
I know that all the ministers on that side of the House are thinking: "How can I help the member for Malahat-Juan de Fuca? His constituents, like mine, deserve to benefit from the abundance we're receiving right now in this province because of high commodity prices, primarily, and historically low interest rates that have been low for almost half a decade now."

These are economic indicators that I know the Minister of Finance is well aware of. I know that her staff brief her regularly, if not daily, on the fluctuations in these commodity prices because they have such an important and integral role to play in her forecasting and the budgeting for this province.

Anyone who's spent ten minutes with a budget - I know that the Minister of Health and others have done that - recognizes that natural gas prices.... What happened with natural gas prices last year? Certainly, I know the member for Coquitlam-Maillardville knows what happened. They went through the roof. What was the result of that? Enormous windfalls to the treasury, good news for British Columbians.

Was that a result of policy initiatives instituted by the B.C. Liberals? No. Was that a result of policy initiatives whose foundations were laid by the previous NDP government? No. It had everything to do with the marketplace. You would think that a party slavishly driven by the free market would acknowledge that the free market is what in fact drives the revenues in the treasury, but they're not able to do that.

That brings me back to Norman Spector, who said in his commentary that if this government was honest with the public and if they said, "What we're going to do with this budget is give a modest tax cut to low-income British Columbians, another tax cut to high-income British Columbians and put $250 million away in a slush fund for pre-election spending in and around housing so we can warehouse people in the Greater Vancouver regional district so that no one will see them during the Olympics...." If they had been honest with people, I think some commentators like Norman Spector would have tipped their cap.

Transportation, health care and education - those are the fundamental issues to the people in my community.
Health care is being addressed in small measure in the district of Sooke. I've already talked about the absence of any hospice care or any benefit from the province. I'd also like to talk about primary care because in a constituency like Malahat-Juan de Fuca, you are in close proximity to Victoria General Hospital and the Royal Jubilee Hospital - two fine institutions in and around Greater Victoria. You're still an ambulance ride away from health care, and it's a long ambulance ride on a very treacherous piece of highway - Highway 14. If you have the misfortune to have ill health in Jordan River, you're that much farther away.

The need for some form of primary care in Sooke to service the growing population on the west coast of southern Vancouver Island is very, very important - in fact, I believe fundamental - to the health and well-being of the people in my constituency.

I make an appeal today to the Minister of Health to contemplate that in his planning and his discussions with VIHA over the next short while. In a growing population centre like Sooke - absent any other health care initiatives - you can do a lot of dying in an ambulance coming out on the west coast to Victoria General Hospital.

I want to conclude by touching on an issue that I think is going to be the fundamental issue for us and future generations, and that is climate change. I think the epiphany that I spoke of earlier that the Premier had whilst on holidays is good news for all British Columbians, particularly those who have a concern for our natural environment. We can't continue to live with the lifestyles that we've become accustomed to. We have to adapt. We have to change.

That is a difficult message for public officials. Elected representatives knocking on people's doors saying, "You need to change the way you do business," is a hard, hard message. But I'm confident that those on this side of the House are prepared to carry that message forward. If there is anything to be clutched onto from the throne speech and the modest funding announcement in the budget, it's that some of those on that side of the House are coming around to that fact as well.

What does trouble me is that the announcement of the energy plan.... The Energy Minister said that climate change is real, and then he said that human impact on climate change is partly real. That troubles me because that's the Ronald Reagan approach. Trees create pollution. I remember that during the acid rain discussions in the 1980s - the cross-boundary challenges that we had as two nations addressing the negative impacts of coal-fired generation and the acid rain that resulted from that - the President of the United States at the time said that burning coal wasn't causing acid rain. Trees were.

It's that shortsighted view of the world that led to an extended negotiation to meet that challenge, which we're all happy to say has been realized today. But we can't ignore the fact that human activity is resulting in the changes that we're seeing in our climate, whether it be weather events, as we have seen in British Columbia, certainly on the west coast of the Island....

I know that they were holding a tag day for Stanley Park. I know that Stanley Park is the jewel of the lower mainland. But the damage there is insignificant compared to the challenges that we have on the west coast, whether it be the West Coast Trail between Port Renfrew and Bamfield, where thousands and thousands of old-growth trees....
These are big trees. These are not twigs that we're talking about. These are big trees that were blown down in the storms of November and December in and around Sooke. Individuals suffered significant damage to their homes.
I'm pleased that I've had discussions with the CEO of B.C. Hydro, and Hydro officials will be coming to my community to talk about the extended power outages that we experienced in November, December and January. That, I know, is important to the people in my community. I am grateful that Hydro recognizes.... I think the quote I heard from the minister is some $35 million in damage just to the hydro infrastructure, the distribution infrastructure in the lower mainland and in south Vancouver Island.

Those are issues that the people in my community want to talk about. They're concerned about it. I'm hopeful that....
Am I going to get a time, Member?

Deputy Speaker: Yes, you are, hon. Member. Thank you very much.

J. Horgan: I regret very much that I wasn't able to complete my remarks. I want to advise those on that side of the House that I will be voting against this budget.