Hansard -- Thursday, October 6, 2005 p.m. -- Vol. 2, No. 3 (HTML)


CONTENTS

	Routine Proceedings
		Page


Introductions by Members		561

Introduction and First Reading of Bills		562
	Forests and Range Statutes Amendment Act, 2005 (Bill 10)
	Hon. R. Coleman

Statements (Standing Order 25B)		562
	Government support for first nations
	J. McIntyre
	Mental illness awareness
	C. Wyse
	Richmond Youth Soccer Association
	J. Yap
	Public transit
	R. Fleming
	Cooperative governance in B.C.
	J. Nuraney
	David Walton
	S. Simpson

Oral Questions		564
	Government role in teachers labour dispute
	C. James
	Hon. S. Bond
	Hon. M. de Jong
	D. Thorne
	J. Horgan
	J. Kwan
	Access to nutritional supplements for income assistance recipients
	C. Trevena
	Hon. C. Richmond
	Government support for social housing
	D. Routley
	Hon. R. Coleman
	Government support for low-income seniors
	R. Chouhan
	Hon. G. Abbott

Tabling Documents		569
	Forest Appeals Commission, annual report, 2004
	Hon. R. Coleman

Second Reading of Bills		569
	Teachers' Collective Agreement Act (Bill 12) (continued)
	R. Chouhan
	G. Coons
	D. Cubberley
	M. Sather
	G. Gentner
	B. Lekstrom

Motions without Notice		589
	Continuation of sitting beyond ordinary hour of adjournment
	M. Farnworth
	A. Dix
	J. Kwan
	Hon. M. de Jong

Second Reading of Bills		594
	Teachers' Collective Agreement Act (Bill 12) (continued)
	M. Karagianis
	G. Robertson
	S. Hammell
	C. Trevena
	J. Kwan
	R. Fleming
	C. Wyse
	C. James
	J. Horgan
	L. Krog
	D. Cubberley
	Hon. M. de Jong
	A. Dix
	S. Fraser
	G. Coons
	R. Chouhan
	H. Bains
	G. Gentner
	B. Simpson
	C. Trevena
	M. Sather
	C. Evans
	R. Austin
	J. Brar
	D. Thorne
	C. Puchmayr
	M. Farnworth
	K. Conroy
	N. Macdonald
	C. James
	D. Routley
	S. Simpson
	B. Ralston
	D. Chudnovsky
	J. Horgan

	Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply		719
	Estimates: Ministry of Community Services and Minister Responsible for Seniors' and Women's Issues (continued)
	Hon. I. Chong
	M. Karagianis
	C. Trevena
	N. Macdonald
	J. Horgan
	C. Wyse
	B. Simpson
	S. Fraser

C. Puchmayr: It is my pleasure to introduce to the House today Carol Arnold, who resides in my constituency. Carol is of Métis-Cree heritage and is seconded to the Gulf Islands school district to work as a faculty associate at Simon Fraser University. She's engaged in teacher education with the indigenous people's teaching education module. It is important to note that 60 percent of Canada's aboriginal population lives in B.C. and that this segment of the population is the fastest growing in western Canada. The majority of first nations are under the age of 25. Carol is part of a delegation of the public school teachers from across the province, and she serves as co-chair of the aboriginal education committee for the B.C. Federation of Teachers. Please give her a warm welcome.

Hon. L. Reid: I am pleased to welcome to the chamber today Lynda Croft Reynolds Turney, who indeed has been a friend of mine for 33 years. I would ask the House to please make her welcome.

D. Chudnovsky: I have two introductions to make today. First, I'd like to introduce to the House Sheila Maracle, who is a constituent of mine. Sheila is from the Mohawk nation in southern Ontario. She's lived in B.C. for the past 15 years and has taught for ten years in Vancouver's inner city, where the schools have a majority of aboriginal students in their class. Please make Sheila welcome.

I'd also like the House to welcome Christine Stewart, who is a Ganada and citizen of the Nisga'a Nation. She's a Vancouver teacher, and Christine has just defended her master's degree in July. The topic was indigenous teachers working in lower mainland public schools. Please welcome Christine Stewart.

R. Lee: In the House today we have some visitors from Guangdong, China. We have Jock Zhao, section chief of the Zhongshan Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau; Mr. Yan Lin and Mr. Jianing Song from Zhongshan Radio and Television Station; Mr. John Zhang, principal of the Bond Language Institute. Accompanying them is Mr. Lincoln Liu, president of the Victoria Hook Sin Tong Charity. Would the House please make them welcome.

R. Austin: It's my privilege today to introduce two members who are visiting here. They are both constituents of mine and friends. The first is Sue Spalding — she's a member of the Tsimshian nation — and her partner Shane Pauls, who is a member of the Tahltan nation. They are both aboriginal educators. I would like the House to please make them welcome.

M. Polak: I would like to introduce to the House Daryl Racette. I had the pleasure of working with Daryl when I was part of the aboriginal education advisory committee in the Surrey school district. Would the House please make Daryl welcome.

M. Karagianis: In the gallery today we have eight people who represent a very innovative entrepreneurial enterprise called Street Newz. Street Newz represents and is an entrepreneurial effort on behalf of all those who live in poverty on the streets. I would like to introduce Janine Bandcroft, Ted Hawryluk, Ken Bath, Robin Kingsley, my good friend Rose Henry, Robert Lightheart-Jones, Jim Hedger, Diane Wallrich and Larry Wartel. Would you please make them welcome here today.

Hon. J. van Dongen: I'm pleased to introduce to the House today a special visitor from the United Kingdom. I'm pleased to welcome Martin Cronin, the newly appointed consul general for the United Kingdom in Vancouver. He's here for meetings with a number of ministers mainly on trade, commerce and energy issues, and we welcome him to British Columbia and wish him well today. I ask the House to please make him welcome.

L. Krog: With great pleasure I introduce three guests today. One of my old classmates from law school, a senior public servant from Ottawa, Milly Nickason. Accompanying her is her mother Millicent Nickason and her uncle Dr. Gilbert Ogilvy. I'd ask the House to please make them welcome.

D. Routley: I would like to welcome to the House a friend and constituent, Brock Mcleod, a fine activist, a defender of education. I would like the House to please make him welcome.

R. Hawes: Years ago, when the Minister of Agriculture was a young man still trying to find his way, he met a mentor that straightened out his life and taught him everything that he now knows. That mentor is in the gallery today, Mr. Ted Adlem. He happens to also be the president of my riding association. Could the House please make him welcome.

G. Coons: I'm pleased and honoured to have the privilege of introducing a good friend and colleague from Haida Gwaii. She's one of my constituents. She's an aboriginal teacher from Tsimshian nation. Her traditional name is Bilham Yuks, which means pearl on the fin of the killer whale. She is from the Git'le'giux tribe from the house of Meduck, grizzly bear. Her crest is killer whale. She has been a proud member of the B.C. Teachers Federation for five years, and she currently teaches grades two and three in Skidegate on Haida Gwaii. Please join me in welcoming Michelle Davies to the House today.

Hon. K. Falcon: Today in the House we are joined by three members of the Elliot family. They are three young people. Two of them are full-time students, one is a high school student, and one is a full-time SFU student. I would like to welcome Molly Elliot, Nigel Elliot, and Caroline Elliot, affectionately known to family and friends as Boomer. Will the House please make them welcome.

S. Simpson: I'm very pleased today to welcome my good friend and a good friend of many on this side of the House, Cheryl Hewitt. Cheryl has been a longtime advocate in the health care and cooperative movements. Importantly, she is a lifetime member and activist in our party. She is currently the treasurer of the provincial NDP. I'm pleased to say that she managed my election campaign, and I thank her very much for all that work. Please make her welcome.

G. Hogg: This morning I had the honour of meeting with a resident of Surrey–White Rock. She's an aboriginal teacher in the Surrey school district. Her name is Gaaxstalas Wedlidi. She's a member of the Tlowitsis first nation. She's a passionate teacher who cares deeply about the services provided to the students of Surrey and this province. Would you please make her most welcome.

G. Gentner: It's with great pleasure I introduce to the House Lynda Toews, a teacher from my constituency of Delta North, although us colonials refer to it as north Delta. Lynda teaches adult basic and special education at the Invergarry adult centre in Surrey and is an executive member of the BCTF. Could the House please give her a warm welcome.

M. Sather: I want to add my welcome to a member of my constituency, Millie Nickason, who is here today. Millie is 82 years old and just full of life. She recently came to my constituency office asking that assistance be provided for people who are seeking treatment across the river in terms of getting there — not for herself, but for others. Would all members please make her welcome.

M. Farnworth: I'm pleased this afternoon to introduce to the House Laura Rudland, who is a teacher in the Vancouver school district and lives in my constituency. Laura is also president of the First Nations Education Association, Provincial Specialist Association. She's also a member of the Metlakatla nation. I would ask the House to please make Laura welcome.

Hon. R. Coleman presented a message from His Honour the Administrator: a bill intituled Forests and Range Statutes Amendment Act, 2005.

Hon. R. Coleman: I move that Bill 10 be introduced and read a first time now.

Hon. R. Coleman: I'm introducing Bill 10, which proposes amendments to three forestry statutes: the Forestry Revitalization Act; the Forest and Range Practices Act, or FRPA; and the Wildfire Act.

The proposed changes to the Forestry Revitalization Act correct the schedule to reflect the current owners of licences and allows further updates to be made to the schedule as they are required. This bill also makes parallel amendments to the Forest and Range Practices Act and the Wildfire Act. These amendments clearly authorize the compliance and enforcement actions that may be taken for past contravention of the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act and for contraventions of the grandparented code under which some licensees continue to operate while they transition to the Forest and Range Practices Act.

The amendments ensure that all contraventions of the code are subject to the compliance and enforcement actions set out under the Forest and Range Practices Act or the Wildfire Act. These amendments will ensure that the government can continue to protect the forest and rangelands for all British Columbians.

I move that the bill be placed on the orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Bill 10, Forests and Range Statutes Amendment Act, 2005, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

J. McIntyre: I'm pleased to rise today to report to the House that I had the privilege of attending the Premier's announcement last week of the provincial government's doubling the funding to $6 million for the Squamish-Lillooet cultural centre in Whistler, in my riding. This centre will showcase first nations history and culture and will be a lasting legacy for generations to come from hosting the 2010 games.

It also demonstrates the benefit of partnerships not only between two first nations but among first nations, various levels of government and the private sector — in this case, Bell Canada — who have combined resources to build what will be a tremendous cultural addition to the region. Building new arts and culture facilities will have the added benefit of reinforcing Whistler's status as a first-class international four-season resort.

Throughout the past year I have had the privilege of developing constructive relationships with first nations leaders in my constituency as we work together to advance this government's commitment to build new relationship with first nations. I have had various meetings with the Squamish nation, Lillooet, Nekwakwa, the newly formed Iskut nation, as well as the Lower Stl'atl'imx Tribal Council to assist in achieving goals and dealing with concerns.

I'm proud that in the budget update, this government has committed $100 million to a New Relationship fund that supports capacity-building and will assist first nations communities to be effective partners in consultations regarding the use of land and resources. British Columbia will be an even better place for all of our children to grow and thrive as a result of our government's approach based on recognition, respect and reconciliation.

C. Wyse: I would ask my colleagues to join me in acknowledging that this week is Mental Illness Awareness Week. Mental health touches all segments of the population. I think that every one of us here has probably been touched at some point by an individual with a mental illness.

Despite the fact that one in five Canadians is directly affected by mental illness, the social stigma that our society has yet to fully overcome prevents many from getting the help they need. Fifty percent of the ten leading causes of disability are related to mental disorders. Mental health conditions now contribute more to disability in Canada than any other single disease group, including cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The theme of Mental Illness Awareness Week this year is "Face mental illness." The Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health and all of its member organizations, including organizations in B.C., are putting forward the faces of courageous Canadians who have gone forward with their stories of mental illness so that we can all see that they are just like you and me.

I would ask that all of my colleagues reach out to individuals and organizations in your community that are marking this week, and not just this week but every week, so we can promote greater understanding of just how we are all impacted by mental illness.

I would, in particular, ask my colleagues to also recognize that today is Depression Screening Day and to raise public awareness about this so that people in your community can get the help they need. Public institutions like colleges, universities and organizations in the community hold free screenings to build public awareness and get people help. There is much more to be done to ensure that people with mental illness can lead healthy and productive lives.

J. Yap: I rise today to talk about the greatest sport in the world and how it's doing in my community — that would be soccer — and the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Richmond Youth Soccer Association.

I recently had the opportunity to be a guest along with the Minister of Tourism, Sports and the Arts at the wonderful dinner held to celebrate this anniversary at the Vancouver Austrian Club in Richmond. Back in 1955 the Richmond Youth Soccer Association started with just six teams. Since then, soccer in Richmond has grown rapidly. Thanks to the support of countless volunteers, Richmond soccer today has 168 boys, 100 girls and 100 adult teams. This coming weekend 113 boys teams and 110 girls teams will be coming from all over the lower mainland to participate in the 29th annual Thanksgiving tournament. It will be a great weekend for sport in Richmond.

These men, women, girls and boys play soccer year after year, developing their skills, working out and having fun with friends in a team environment. Over the past 50 years over 25,000 children have come through the Richmond Youth Soccer Association. Some of the notable players include Randy Samuel, who played for the Canadian national squad and the Whitecaps. Most recently Jason Jordan of the Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club was named the United Soccer League's first-division most valuable player for the 2005 season.

Three Richmond youth players under 14 will be going to Florida in November with the Whitecaps youth program to defend their North American youth league championship: Connor Radil, Joseph Martin and Tommy Cui.

Richmond Youth Soccer supports our government's great goal to lead the way in North America in healthy living and physical fitness. This is important because the more people we get into a healthy lifestyle, the fewer health problems our government will have to deal with that are caused by inactivity. Fewer health problems will mean happier people and less need for expensive health treatments. Certainly, Richmond Youth Soccer is a valuable institution in my community.

R. Fleming: I rise to speak today to make a statement about the important role that public transit plays in Greater Victoria and in over 50 other B.C. communities.

Every day B.C. Transit provides mobility to a significant section of our citizenry. Public transit also plays a tremendous role in the development of our economy and contributes to the health of our citizens. Good transit systems enhance property values in commercial centres and assist in the revitalization of downtown centres. In areas of heavy congestion, investment in public transit helps goods move faster, provides personal time savings for commuters and improves employers' access to labour.

Public transit also helps our economy and public safety by reducing vehicle collisions. The rate of fatal

collisions per passenger kilometre is 1/20 that of car travel. Recently in Victoria a group of transit riders, supported by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the B.C. Restaurant and Foodservices Association, supported the introduction of late-night bus service on weekends. The cost of the service is relatively small; the potential to save lives, immeasurable.

My community is unable to fund this initiative and has been unable to make up for the cutbacks to transit service in the last four years. Today there are 100,000 fewer hours of transit service on the road in my community. With fewer buses on the roads, service is worsened. I'm deeply disappointed that the 2005 budget update has not shown any vision for communities or displayed any interest in public transit in Victoria and the 50 other small and medium-sized communities across B.C.

J. Nuraney: I want to share my observations at the UBCM convention, which I attended last week. I was very impressed to hear comments from mayors and councillors from different jurisdictions in our province like Tumbler Ridge, Chetwynd, Hudson's Hope, Penticton and others. The common core was the excitement they felt because of the economic activities taking place in their municipalities. There was a marked sense of confidence and optimism about the future of our province.

Apart from this infectious optimism, what I found most reassuring was the hum of cooperation among the different levels of government. Remarks from our Premier, the Prime Minister and other leaders resonated with the new way of doing business through cooperation and consultation.

When the Leader of the Opposition spoke about her resolve to work in the spirit of cooperation, I felt a sense of new hope for our province. In a democratic society such as ours, it is expected for political parties to have differing points of view. However, when those leaders with opposing political philosophies talk about seeking common ground, it bodes well for the future of our province.

I would like to thank both the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition for their efforts in pursuing a new way in cooperation and in adopting a road that is less travelled in order to seek what is best for British Columbia.

J. Nuraney: If I may, Mr. Speaker. I consider it a privilege to be a part of what I like to call a new way to improve the lives of British Columbians and for the generations to follow.

S. Simpson: On October 2, I attended a celebration of life for my friend David Walton, who passed away from cancer. After struggling with the disease for 26 years and having beaten it twice, David finally lost his battle on September 1 of this year.

It was an honour for me to attend David's celebration of life along with hundreds of others, including the member for Vancouver-Kensington and David's cousin, the Minister of Economic Development.

David was born on April 5, 1959, in Squamish and raised in 100 Mile House. He graduated from Simon Fraser University and was the recipient of the Terry Fox Gold Medal award for courage in 1986, an award that is given to a person who has demonstrated those personal qualities of courage in adversity and dedication to society which have been exemplified by Terry Fox in his Marathon of Hope.

David was a longtime political and community activist, one of those people that we who sit in this place know are the backbone of the political process, an active New Democrat who volunteered in every capacity including many years as constituency president. He worked as executive assistant to the Attorney General and as ministerial assistant to the Premier. David was bright, committed and compassionate. His many friends in the political world will miss his wisdom, kindness and generosity.

His activism was much broader than simply partisan and electoral politics. It included his many years of community work both as a volunteer and professionally, including with the Pacific Community Resources Society where he worked for families and youth in need.

David has left behind many good friends and family who will miss him dearly. More than anything, he will be missed by his wife and soulmate, Anisa Kassam-Walton. David was one of those people we are all proud to have known. He was committed to social justice, to his family and to his community, and he was an inspiration in the manner in which he dealt with his illness with dignity and courage. I was privileged to have known David Walton. I ask this House to pass on its most sincere condolences and best wishes to his friends, his family and in particular to his wife Anisa.

C. James: With parents and students now in limbo, I'd like to ask the Deputy Premier if she will take any responsibility for increasing the level of confrontation in this dispute with teachers.

Hon. S. Bond: Well, that's an interesting question coming from the Leader of the Opposition. This is actually the side of the House that believed that education was so important that we said it was an essential

service, to make sure students stayed in school and in classrooms across this province.

C. James: Well, we can see where their essential service has taken us now. It's taken us to a crisis, to the brink of a crisis. Leadership demands a search for common ground, trying to find solutions. That's what leadership is about. But this government has not shown any leadership.

Again I ask the Deputy Premier: do you think that it was a mistake for the Premier to brush off a request that was made three months ago for the government to sit down with teachers and try and resolve this dispute?

Hon. S. Bond: We have made it perfectly clear that class size is an important issue to us. We have made several opportunities available to have that discussion, including for a number of years the education advisory committee. We want to have that discussion. We think it's a meaningful place.

This morning my colleague the Minister of Labour met with members of the B.C. Federation of Labour and the B.C. Teachers Federation. As a result of that discussion and a briefing that I've had with the Minister of Labour, we are going to create in the province a learning round table. I expect this afternoon to be contacting parties — which include the B.C. Teachers Federation, trustees, parents and also administrators — to come and participate in a significant forum.

We understand that class sizes and situations for teachers are important. In fact, we are prepared to have that discussion. I invite the B.C. Teachers Federation to join us at that table.

C. James: I understand that disputes like this are complex and difficult. But it's been three and a half years. There have been opportunities to resolve this dispute and to find a table before this. Why, once again, does this government need to bring us to the brink of a difficulty for parents and students in this province before they finally look at a solution?

Again, I'd like to raise another issue with the Deputy Premier. Will she at least accept that the Premier and his party used the election process to again inflame the situation and create more confrontation by using the education system as a political tool?

Hon. M. de Jong: Mr. Speaker, I have to say, through you to the Leader of the Opposition, on the eve of what she has correctly described as a day fraught with uncertainty, that I'm a bit surprised at her question. We are at a point where we need to show leadership. On this side of the House we are doing so. We are doing so with a piece of legislation that is before this House, which I understand there are differing views on. But we are all legislators. We are all lawmakers.

The leadership that the Leader of the Opposition has to show is to make it clear to the people who she counts on for political support that she does not support what would be unlawful and illegal activity. This is her opportunity to do so.

Hon. M. de Jong: And while we are committed to working and leaving no stone unturned to find a resolution to these complex matters, that is the question that the Leader of the Opposition must answer and make clear — that she, her party, will not support teachers or anyone else breaking the law.

D. Thorne: This government has made it very clear that they believe the bargaining system in British Columbia is broken in this instance, and it's true. It needs to be fixed. But it is not going to be fixed in a climate of anger and confrontation, a climate that this government laid the groundwork for.

Does the Deputy Premier understand how ripping up the teachers' contract in 2002 contributed to this serious impasse?

Hon. M. de Jong: It is broken. We have been through the history, and there are versions of that history. But the part that is irrefutable is that through five rounds of negotiation, the parties have never arrived at a freely negotiated collective agreement. So we have begun the process of rebuilding or attempting to rebuild that negotiating structure.

Earlier today I announced, as I said I would earlier this week, that Mr. Vince Ready has accepted the role as the industrial inquiry commissioner to begin the process, to work with the parties, to get them to a state and a stage armed with a process that we hope will work better than the one we have now, where in a matter of months they can negotiate an agreement — a freely negotiated agreement — that is different from the last five insofar as it didn't involve governmental interference. In the meantime we want kids to be in the classroom.

D. Thorne: By the minister's own admission, the bill that brought us to this crisis is not needed. Leadership is also about admitting mistakes and learning from experience, but every interaction that this gov-

ernment has had with teachers has been confrontational. In 2004 this government even overturned a Supreme Court ruling in favour of the teachers' position on learning conditions.

Does the Deputy Premier even begin to realize how using legislation to overturn the courts does nothing to help fix a broken bargaining system?

Hon. M. de Jong: Surely this member realizes the trauma and uncertainty that accrues in the lives of teachers, students and their parents as they drift further and further into escalating job action. There was a choice, and we made it. We made it armed with a report from a fact-finder that many of the members opposite have quoted from — some of them favourably, actually — which said there is absolutely no prospect of a settlement. We did so on the basis of 35 meetings that had taken place where the parties apparently couldn't even agree on getting a cup of coffee.

I said at the outset that no one is happy about the fact that we're here, but it's time to settle this and move on, to use the good services of Mr. Ready and construct a negotiating framework that stands some prospect of succeeding.

J. Horgan: This government is so concerned about class size that they've increased it right across the province. We've had confrontation in this province for the past four years, whether it be health care workers or whether it be teachers. Any organized group of individuals in this province has seen nothing but contempt and ridicule from that side of the House.

We had an election campaign where the result materially altered what this world looked like, and we thought on this side of the House…. The public thought that the government had heard what the people had said — that they wanted balance, and they wanted support for people in communities. This government rejected that. Here we are at the brink of the cliff as a result of this government's actions.

Will the Minister of Labour stand in his place and agree to meet tonight with the B.C. Teachers Federation, tomorrow morning with the B.C. Teachers Federation, and resolve this dispute?

Hon. M. de Jong: Well, it is a remarkable statement that the hon. member makes. In dismissing, as he apparently does, the over 130 freely negotiated collective agreements, I think he does a real disservice to the working men and women who actually agreed of their own volition to those agreements.

I've just had a meeting, and it was a candid and frank exchange. We certainly are prepared to continue that discussion, but as I said to the people at that meeting, it is difficult to have that discussion when the very people we look to, to set an example for students are breaking the law. That's not on, and that makes taking this discussion forward very, very difficult.

J. Horgan: I want to tell the minister about setting examples. I want to tell the minister about an individual named Mark Neufeld. He's a teacher in our community. He's a constituent of mine. He's not an activist. He's not a radical. He came to school on Wednesday morning, and he said to his cross-country team that he's been coaching for years: "I can't in good conscience continue to do this." He said to the basketball team that he coaches proudly: "I cannot continue to do this when the government that sits in this House disrespects and undervalues the work that I do."

What did that man do? What did that individual do? The example he set is that he started walking. He walked ten kilometres from Claremont School to this building to meet with the Premier. That's an example that I would be proud to show my children. Not yours.

J. Horgan: My question is to the Minister of Labour. I would rather have the kids in my house look to Mark Neufeld for leadership than Gordon Campbell. Where is the Premier…?

My question is to the Minister of Labour. Mark Neufeld walked to this place. He has been outside for 24 hours wanting to meet with the Premier so that the Premier will show leadership in this issue. The question is: where is the Premier to talk to this individual?

Hon. M. de Jong: First of all, I appreciate the passion and commitment that teachers like Mr. Neufeld bring to their profession on a daily basis. That is why the Minister of Education actually did meet with him. There is no doubting that these are difficult, complex and at times vexing issues that we have to deal with, as they have been over the better part of a decade and a half at least. But I am still awaiting a clear indication from the critic, from the government benches, about where he and his caucus stand. Do they stand for a society governed by the rule of law? Or do they stand for the proposition that we have laws that you simply pick which ones you want to abide by and…?

Hon. M. de Jong: I do detect a growing feeling of discomfort on the opposition benches, because it is a difficult question to answer. Is it about abiding by the rule of law or, when a friendly organization is involved, simply looking the other way? On this side of the House, we stand irrevocably beside the right of students to be in the classroom getting an education.

J. Kwan: Conflict and confrontation is the approach that this government has chosen. The government ripped up collective agreements in 2002. This government stripped teachers of a self-governing body in terms of their ability to govern themselves in 2003. This government overturned a ruling of the B.C. Supreme Court to strip classroom support conditions from the bargaining table in 2004.

My question is to the Attorney General: is it one law for the teachers or a different law for this government? Which is it?

Hon. S. Bond: We believe class size is so important that we enshrined it in legislation with caps and flexibility for school districts. We've also said that while we believe class size is absolutely essential, and it is important we have those discussions, teachers need to be at the heart of those discussions.

But there is a role for parents and trustees and people who are involved in the lives of children every day in our schools to be involved in the discussion about class size. That's why we're going to create a permanent learning round table — to have those meaningful discussions to make sure that today we're saying to the B.C. Teachers Federation: come and sit and talk with us. Help us determine the terms of reference. Help us work together, but please, most importantly, let's keep our students in classrooms.

J. Kwan: Let's just be clear. This Liberal government overruled a court ruling by legislation, using the legislative hammer when it was convenient for them. They will change the law just like that, because it is politically convenient for them. Then they want to ask questions, and then they want to cast aspersions by pointing fingers and creating an escalating crisis today that will actually cause law-abiding citizens to engage in an activity that they may not want to but are forced to do.

I want to ask a question to the Deputy Premier: why is it so convenient for them to overturn a law when it suits them, when instead they could have chosen an alternate course — a course that would actually bring people together and ask the teachers, ask the educators, ask the school trustees, ask the people who have an interest in education, in improving education, to come to the table to address the issue of class size and class composition? Why didn't they choose that alternative and instead chose to break the law by overruling it?

Hon. S. Bond: First of all, let's make it clear. There has always been an avenue to have a discussion about class sizes. The difference has been…

Hon. S. Bond: …that the union has suggested that the only place to talk about class size is at the bargaining table. We disagree. We want to now create….

Hon. S. Bond: We would like now, as I have just mentioned, to create a learning round table. We want to find a way to have that meaningful discussion.

But let's make it perfectly clear. What we're really waiting for here is to talk about leadership. Let's see the Leader of the Opposition stand with us today and say that this would be illegal and that we want you to stand beside us and keep students in classrooms.

C. Trevena: William Duboise is a resident of Campbell River who is waiting for a lung transplant. Mr. Duboise receives a person-with-disabilities benefit and has applied to the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance to provide him with a monthly nutritional supplement. The cost for these supplements is $165 a month. His doctor says Mr. Duboise's life will be endangered without them.

The ministry has denied this request. The reason? The administrator disagrees with the doctor's assessment. I would like to ask the Minister of Employment and Income Assistance: why can administrators overrule doctors on what are potentially life-and-death cases?

Hon. C. Richmond: I thank the member for her question. I am not familiar with this situation, so if you would please provide me with the information, I would be glad to bring an answer back to you and to this House.

Mr. Speaker: Member, it was kind of taken on notice. Do you have a different question?

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. I know of other cases. I would like to know whether, on principle, bureaucrats get a bigger voice than doctors on certain cases.

Hon. C. Richmond: I think the member is aware that I cannot talk about individual cases in this House, and if she has other instances, I would like to hear about them. We evaluate every request for assistance on its own merits, and virtually no one is turned away when they're in a time of crisis.

D. Routley: Recent reports point to the reality that homelessness is growing in both urban and rural communities. Thousands of British Columbians are slipping below the waves, but the Premier is planning to eliminate the provincial housing program by '07-'08,

My question is to the Minister for Housing. Will the minister explain to this House why such a successful program is being cut and why plans to address the need for increased social housing have been put off for another year?

Hon. R. Coleman: That is not the case. We are not cutting a social housing program. As a matter of fact, this government has done more for social housing in four years than the previous government did in ten.

Let's be aware of something. The opportunity existed for the previous government from 1990 to 2001 to do something about the SAFER program to help seniors in British Columbia — ignored them completely for ten years. We stepped up to the plate, and we have 7,700 more seniors eligible for support in the province just from our SAFER adjustments alone.

The Premier's Task Force on Homelessness is already announced and has committed $20.6 million in provincial funding for 533 units in 12 housing developments across the province for homelessness. We are working on a provincial housing strategy that will be so exciting and so good for people on the ground that you'll see more and more people being assisted by this government than any time in history.

D. Routley: Yes. I think we're supposed to bring a new tenor to the House, not only comedy.

Last week a fire broke out in an abandoned building in Duncan where a number of homeless people were living. Like many people on our streets, including those caught in the Duncan fire, the lack of housing is intimately linked to mental health and addiction issues. In Vancouver alone, 750 people with mental illness are on the wait-list for supportive housing. It is estimated that two-thirds of the homeless in Vancouver experience drug addiction and mental health issues. Will the Minister for Housing commit to increasing the number of supportive housing units for people with mental illnesses?

Hon. R. Coleman: First of all, what happened in Duncan was absolutely a tragedy. We are willing to work with that community to address the issues of homelessness in Duncan. Unfortunately, at the UBCM last week it was one of the communities that did not come to see me about housing as an issue that they wanted to talk about in their community, although a substantial number of communities did. We've committed to those communities to find ways for innovative practices to go into smaller and medium-sized communities for housing issues for them in the long term. That work is underway already, as a result of our discussions at UBCM.

In addition to that, like I said, we've already given 533 units of commitment in 12 housing developments across the province, including Vancouver, Nanaimo, Surrey, Victoria, Kelowna, New Westminster, Prince George, Terrace and Fort St. John. There's nobody in any community in the province who should ignore the issues of homelessness, mental health and addictions.

Hon. R. Coleman: …the first piece of leadership has got to come from here and that we tell communities: "Don't be afraid to stand up and not be NIMBYs and support projects in your communities so we can help the people at risk in your community."

R. Chouhan: Emelda Bain-Parten is a 78-year-old resident of Burnaby-Edmonds. Recently she was taken to hospital in an ambulance. Somewhere between the ambulance and the hospital, her dentures were removed to insert tubes. Somehow her dentures were lost. Instead of replacing her dentures, the government bought her a blender.

Hon. G. Abbott: I appreciate the member raising the issue. It's the first I've heard of it. If he would like to provide me with the details of it, we would be very happy to see if we can assist.

I think one of the things we should not do, though — although I know some members opposite are prone to it — is try to blame a great health system for unfortunate events that sometimes occur in it.

Clearly, there are thousands of people in our health care system who care deeply not only about the seniors that they see. They care deeply about all the patients that they see. Every day they make difficult, sometimes heart-wrenching decisions about health care, and I support those people. I will not presume of any person who works in the health care system or, actually, anywhere in government that they operate with any bad intent. I am sure that something unfortunate has happened here.

Hon. G. Abbott: The member should not presume that the system is against that person.

R. Chouhan: Also, for the information of the Minister of Health, I do come from the health care industry. I

know how health care workers work there, how they take care of the elderly and the patients every day.

Imelda is a low-income senior. She cannot afford new dentures. Because she cannot eat solid food, she lost a significant amount of weight. In fact, she was so weak from her liquid diet that she is now down to 80 pounds. My question is to the minister. What are you doing to make sure that low-income seniors are getting the care that they need?

Hon. G. Abbott: I'm sorry. I apologize. I was so eager to respond to this question, I may have got ahead of myself. So I apologize for that, Mr. Speaker.

The issue, again, is an important one. If the member would be so kind as to forward to me the details about this particular lady's situation, I would be glad to see what we can do for her.

What I will not do is attempt to politicize the circumstances of an individual and try to draw conclusions about a whole system, as regards that. We have done a lot of things. I'm tremendously proud of what this government has done for seniors. I'm tremendously proud of the Independent Living B.C. program that benefits thousands and thousands of seniors across this province. I'm tremendously proud of the Fair Pharmacare program that ensures that frail elderly who need the support get it.

Finally — because I know we're running out of time — I'm tremendously proud of the recent changes in the SAFER program which, as the Minister for Housing pointed out, benefit thousands and thousands and thousands of seniors in British Columbia.

Hon. R. Coleman: I have the honour to present the annual report of the Forest Appeals Commission, 2004.

Hon. M. de Jong: In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 12 and in Committee A, for the information of members, continued estimates debate on the Ministry of Community Services.

R. Chouhan: I rise to oppose Bill 12. Like many of my colleagues, I, too, come from a family of teachers. I have a sister, Jaswan Chouhan, who was a teacher all her life, and later on she became the principal of a senior secondary school. I have a sister-in-law, Jaginder Chouhan. She was also a teacher and became principal later on. She was appointed as director of education system. I have a sister-in-law who teaches in Burnaby, Toni Grewal. They all teach. They're all in this profession because they love teaching; they love students.

Teaching is a very noble and respectful profession, but by introducing Bill 12, this government once again has shown a total disrespect for teachers and their rights. Yesterday we heard from the Minister of Education, and the Minister of Labour on Monday, that they took no pleasure from introducing Bill 12. Well, if that's the case, if they're not happy, then do the simple thing: withdraw Bill 12. Utilize other options that are available. Negotiate in good faith with the BCTF, but don't sit here and pretend that you have tried. We know you have not.

The government may say that there were 35 different meetings with the bargaining committee of the B.C. Teachers Federation. For the last 18 years I have done lots of bargaining. I have done lots of collective bargaining negotiations in the last 18 years with the health care employers. I have taught hundreds of students in the last 18 years how to negotiate a collective agreement. One can have hundreds of meetings, but if your bargainers don't have the mandate to negotiate a settlement, then obviously no number of meetings would produce the desired result.

Time and again teachers have asked the government to meet students' needs. Teachers need adequate resources. The teachers' message is very clear. When the size of a class is so large, they cannot attend to all students. When students bring home the homework without proper class instructions, the parents are left with spending extra time with the children to complete their homework. God forbid if parents are not familiar with the subject. The student's education suffers even further.

I'm a parent. For many years I was the vice-president of the parents advisory council at the Cariboo Secondary School in Burnaby. I know how hard the teachers work. What do they get in return? Longer hours, lesser resources and a total lack of respect from the government.

Teachers have rights like anybody else, and those rights must be respected. The government tries to claim that it respects teachers, but how could that be when their rights are trampled upon? Show them that you truly value their work — not the platitudes. If we want our children to get the best education, if we are serious about the future of our children, then let the teachers have the necessary tools.

In 2002 government legislation stripped learning and working conditions from the teachers' collective agreement and now refuses to deal with them. The government demands that teachers stay in the classrooms and continue to uphold the high standards. How can that be possible? Despite the deteriorating working conditions, the teachers have done everything

In 2001 legislation was passed declaring B.C. teachers an essential service. The government changed the definition of essential service at that time. The previous definition was: "Necessary or essential to prevent immediate and serious danger to the health, safety or welfare of the residents of British Columbia." But to meet its political agenda, the government changed the definition to state: "The minister may direct the Labour Relations Board to designate as essential services those facilities, productions and services that the board considers necessary or essential to prevent immediate and serious disruption to the provision of educational programs."

No other province has this kind of broad definition. In fact, no other province considered teachers as essential services. The ILO and the United Nations have found this legislation to be in violation of international standards to which Canada is signatory.

Over the last four years this government has closed 113 schools and has laid off over 2,500 teachers. The government tried to justify it by saying that the student enrolment was down, and therefore fewer schools and fewer teachers were needed.

Let's go over the facts. In my hometown, Burnaby, between the 2001 and 2002 school year and the 2003 and 2004 school year, student enrolment was reduced by 1.9 percent. But in contrast, the counsellors were reduced by 8.1 percent, ESL teachers by 17.6 percent, special education teachers by 11.8 percent and teacher-librarians by 9.1 percent. Teachers were reduced by 6.1 percent. These are the facts. This figure comes from the Ministry of Education itself.

Mr. Speaker, you can see clearly what this government has done to the education system, but this government is saying that all that was done to enhance the public education system. The government should be ashamed of what it has done. The facts speak for themselves. Over the last few days the government members have been falling all over each other to claim how much they value teachers, but the reality is different.

Let's see how the teachers see this. Listen to what the teachers in Burnaby are saying. This is a letter from one of the teachers in Burnaby. It says: "Last year I had 31 kids in my grade four class. It wasn't just hard; it was impossible to get around and help each child with their needs during lessons. I even had to set up a take-a-number system."

Another teacher: "More behaviour students are incorporated into larger classes. Each student gets less attention than they need. The students and I become frustrated. More exciting, hands-on lessons would be appreciated, but lack of room, materials, resource assistants — that's learning assistants — and librarians make it more difficult."

Another science teacher tells us: "The lab space is set up for 28 students, but now students are crowded three to a bench. It's a safety issue." I have a lot more letters and statements from teachers. Each one of them is telling me how difficult it has become to teach and how concerned they are about the ability of students to learn. All of the teachers want a negotiated settlement.

The government should withdraw Bill 12 and mandate the BCPSEA to negotiate with our educators in good faith. The government should start respecting the free collective bargaining process. This government did enough damage to free collective bargaining in 2002 when it introduced Bill 29. That was the bill which took away the rights of health care workers. Through Bill 29, the government ripped up a truly negotiated collective agreement between the health care workers and their employers. That agreement was accepted and ratified by over 82 percent of the health care employers. But this government did not care then, and it does not care now.

By doing what the Liberals are trying to achieve through Bill 12, they may please their rich corporate friends, but they will not help any student — or parent, for that matter. Priorities of this government are wrong. They can find millions for their rich corporate friends, but they have no money for more textbooks, special needs teachers, librarians and ESL teachers. This government has millions for its rich corporate friends but no money for decent wages for workers. If this government is really serious about helping students, then it must withdraw Bill 12.

In 2002 the provincial government legislated a major stripping of the teachers' collective agreement, removing significant provisions that set limits for class sizes and established staffing ratios for the provision of specialist teachers. It made it illegal for teachers to bargain class size, class composition or staffing formulas in the future. Now the government is pretending to fix a broken bargaining process. The bargaining process is broken because Liberals broke it.

The government has said it wants to make B.C. the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent, but on the other hand, the government has reduced the teacher-librarians. Between 2002 and 2004, according to the Minister of Education, teacher-librarian staffing declined by 25 percent. International research has shown a consistent correlation between school libraries, subject learning and information literacy. How do all these cuts put the students first? If the Premier is really serious about making B.C. the best-educated and most literate jurisdiction, then he will instruct his government to withdraw Bill 12 and return to the teaching and learning conditions that existed in 2002, prior to the contract being stripped of those provisions by legislation.

What we need is leadership — leadership that would truly enhance public education, not continue on the path of confrontation. We need the government to recognize that it had made a mistake in 2002, and now is the time to rectify it by engaging in meaningful and good-faith bargaining — not through Bill 12.

Bill 12 is a recipe for disaster. It will not foster harmonious relationships between the teachers and the school boards, between teachers and the students or

parents. Maybe that is what this government wants — to create a wedge between the teachers, students and parents. The time has come for this government to stop being cynical and start treating teachers as professionals. Teachers are concerned about the learning abilities of their students. That's why teachers talk about class composition. Why do they do it? Let me read from information that I received from a teacher on this issue of class composition.

That's why teachers talk so often about class composition as their biggest challenge. They support inclusion if they have the support to make it work.

In the extensive tearing-up of the teachers' collective agreement in 2002, not only were upper limits on class size removed, but the class composition clauses were also eliminated. That opened the door for much more difficult situations for both teachers and students. Students with special needs had less support. At the same time, attention to the other students in the class was reduced. That's what teachers faced when they had to deal with more special needs with less additional support. Eliminating the contract provisions had a negative impact on the teaching and learning conditions.

This government is responsible for breaking the system. The government has created unnecessary fear in the public's mind that the system is so unworkable that we have to bring in the law. But the public is not fooled. People understand who's responsible for that. British Columbians expect this government to show leadership, to come forward with a meaningful solution, not confrontation.

It's about time this government extended a hand of friendship to the teachers, to our educators, to show them that they really are concerned about the students and the parents. Sit down with those teachers and their organization, the B.C. Teachers Federation, and negotiate a collective agreement in good faith. Stop playing these games.

What we need is a meaningful gesture on the part of the government, not platitudes. The time has come for the government to show leadership, for the Premier to stand up for education, for the public education system, and do something about it. I sincerely ask and am hopeful that the government will withdraw Bill 12 and engage itself in negotiations.

This occasion is one that I'm not proud to be involved with. We have just witnessed another blatant attack against our teaching workforce and, I may add, the day after we recognized World Teachers Day. This is a sad day for students, a sad day for parents and a devastating day for teachers all across this great province.

We have the greatest education system in this province. We have the best education system in the world and the most dedicated group of stakeholders that we'll find anywhere. Our teachers, our valued teachers-on-call, are the most hard-working, conscientious and devoted group of professionals that you'll ever find. Their commitment to curricular and extracurricular activities is renowned throughout the province and throughout Canada.

Teachers work with and educationally challenge our most valuable resource, our children. Parents put their trust and their faith in educators to shape and mould their children as they embark on a life-long journey of learning. Trustees put their lives on the line to strive for the best education system for their respective districts. I thank and I compliment all trustees throughout the province for this difficult task.

Parent advisory committees realize the importance of a well-rounded school that has the necessary funding to make the school the best it can be. I thank all parents for their dedication to this end. Students throughout the province throw their hearts and souls into their own learning curve, whatever that may look like. They come in all different sizes and shapes, so much alike yet so different and unique.

One thing that all these stakeholders expect is that the government of the day will adequately fund our education system and work with our teaching force, not against them, so we can continue to improve education for our students. This government has let down parents, students and teachers. This is a sad day for all those concerned about quality education.

There was an opportunity for progress in this dispute, but this government chose confrontation and the option that will not effect any change in working conditions in the classrooms. That is shameful. This government could have chosen the path to discuss learning conditions but decided deliberately, in a seemingly preconceived plot, to go straight ahead in another forced settlement. It's yet another imposition, an imposition that will only create conflict and chaos in our education.

So why are we here today? The symbol of this government, Bill 12. The inability of the government…. It's a symbol of this government's incompetence to work with all of the stakeholders involved in our system and to bargain in good faith for an agreement that works

for British Columbians — one that would enhance and better learning conditions for students, one based on free collective bargaining where both sides sit down and discuss the issues to create an education system that works for students and for teachers, one that reduces confrontation and is based on listening and respect. This government had the opportunity to do this, and they blew it.

Teaching is a proud profession, and I'm so pleased to have so many educators in the gallery today. It's a proud profession, where educators can positively influence the lives and learning of their students, watching children gain that confidence, grow in their skills. Seeing the growth, the maturing into young adults, is something that makes it all worthwhile.

I know that feeling. I've been a proud member of the British Columbia Teachers Federation for 27 years. That is one of the many, many reasons that I'm in these chambers today. I not only witnessed a government that treated teachers without dignity and respect; I experienced a government that intimidated, chastised and bullied teachers at every opportunity.

As we all know, we're all taught to challenge and confront those who bully. How did we get here? Through this government's draconian ideology that we need to manipulate and control working people. In August 2001 Bill 18 was enacted. This declared education an essential service, which normally is reserved for where the life, safety or health of the population is at risk, as in hospital, police or fire services.

But don't misunderstand me. Education is very, very important, but it is definitely not an essential service. B.C. is one of the only jurisdictions, if not the only jurisdiction, in the world where education is essential, thus eliminating a key component of free collective bargaining: the right to strike.

This violation of fundamental rights, which are respected in democracies worldwide, was chastised by the International Labour Organization, which stated that this Liberal government should abide by international law. The ILO is a United Nations agency that sets international standards for labour relations, and Canada is a signatory to that. The ILO is not a union-run organization. It's jointly run by representatives of government, business and labour, and promotes internationally recognized human and labour rights. The ILO condemned this Liberal draconian legislation and recommended this bill be repealed.

On January 27, 2002, Bills 27 and 28 were enacted. These, once again, were condemned by the ILO. These had devastating effects in schools, in classrooms throughout the province. Bill 27 imposed a contract on teachers with a raise of 2.5 over each of three years, but this government refused to fund the forced deal, resulting in millions and millions of dollars that were downloaded onto school districts.

Recently on CKNW our Premier blamed local school boards for the ballooning class sizes, thus disavowing any responsibility. That's shameful. This week I had a local trustee from school district 52 contact me and demand that I bring this to the attention of the House and let our Premier know that it's not school boards to blame; it is this government and how they are defunding our education system.

This downloading resulted in 2,600 teachers laid off, where only 700 of them can be attributed to the infamous declining enrolment. And 113 schools shut down in communities all over the province, mostly in rural communities. The ILO indicated to this government that contract imposition, again, violates basic human rights and that "a unilateral action by authorities cannot but introduce uncertainty in labour relations, which in the long term can only be prejudicial."

What do we see today, 3½ years later? We see that uncertainty in this province, and this government is to blame. The government was warned, and they ignored that warning. It did not stop there. Bill 28 removed provisions from negotiated contracts that limited class sizes, guaranteed supports for students with special needs and set standards of service from trained specialist teachers. In other words, this government ripped up contracts that dealt with student learning conditions. The results? The results were devastating to students and to teachers. The impact on first nations students and on aboriginal programs and services throughout this province was severe: programs axed, first nations support workers laid off as school districts tried to meet the government's bottom line.

We certainly do need a new relationship in this province. Class sizes ballooned as the Liberals boasted that class size was enshrined in their legislation. I'll tell you what was enshrined: class sizes of 22 for kindergarten and 20 for grades one to three. It sounds reasonable, but there was no consideration, no regard for class composition and the number of children in those classes with special needs.

For grades four to 12 the enshrined class size wasn't a class size; it was a district average of 30 students. So a class with 22 students in one portion of the district could be countered with a class of 38 in another — as long as the average was 30. And again, no regard for class composition. Special needs support was drastically slashed as this contractual language gleefully ended up on the Liberals' cutting floor. There was a 28-percent reduction, with 740 fewer special education support positions over the last few years, and that's wrong. That's wrong.

Also cut were trained special education teachers by 17½ percent and teacher-librarians by 23 percent. We saw them in the galleries the other day. English-as-a-second-language teachers were cut by 20 percent. And how did our Premier react to this tremendous blot on Canada's reputation where he and his Liberal gang violated fundamental rights? He felt "no pressure whatsoever" to bring our province into compliance with an international convention to which we are all a signatory.

Liberal government officials characterized the accusations as frivolous. Teachers in this province, workers in this province, all those who believe in fundamental rights: we do not find ripping up contracts, forcing an

end to legal job action and gutting positions that uphold quality of education to be frivolous in the least — not at all.

I've seen the changes. I've seen the frustrations. I've shared the stories with these teachers, with those dedicated teachers on call, the parents, the administrators, the support staff in our schools. More importantly, I've seen it on the faces of our kids. It's not going to get any better with the introduction of Bill 12. It will only create more problems.

Now I was going to talk more about my experience in the school system and the exhilaration I feel working with kids. I was going to share some of my experiences of teaching at Kaien Island Alternate School in Prince Rupert, where I was the head teacher for five years and worked there for six years, but that was one of the schools in our district that was shut down. That closed due to lack of provincial funding, sending the most vulnerable of our students to fend for themselves in a system that cannot meet their needs.

I don't think I'm going to tell my story just yet. I've been cut off before, and I don't want to be cut off, so I might come back to me, but this is not about me. This is more about teachers that have contacted me, and I'd like to share a few of them from my own riding and my constituency. I have a primary teacher, 20 years' experience: "More students, more students with special needs. I no longer meet the needs of either the regular or special students. Currently there's a class of 21 in a K-one-two, a kindergarten-one-two class with 21 students and five IEPs. Bottom line: too many. Everyone is impacted negatively. I long for the good old days when we had class size composition."

Another teacher, all grades: "Classes overloaded with special needs students." Another teacher, a secondary teacher, 15 years' experience: "Class size and composition limit the effectiveness of my teaching practices. Some get left behind, and others are not challenged enough. I look at too many kids. Composition horrendous."

Here's an intermediate teacher in Prince Rupert, 25 years' experience. They have "seven students with special needs: two in wheelchairs, one vision-impaired, one hearing-impaired, one physically handicapped with cerebral palsy, one with a behavioral learning problem, one learning disabled, one student with learning disabled pending. This is unfair to the children. They won't get another crack at grade six when the government finally decides to fund education properly.

I have a teacher from Haida Gwaii who is teaching in a kindergarten-one-two-three class, a four-split class with 19 students: "The age and ability range is huge. The groups are huge. I'm burning out."

Another intermediate teacher on Haida Gwaii: "Students are suffering. So are teachers. Four grades in a classroom are too many. I'm trying to conduct a circus rather than a learning environment. When we know this is what works, it seems criminal that we're not able to provide learning conditions and class composition."

These stories are the stories that are occurring in all the classrooms throughout the province. These are not the stories we want to be telling; these are the stories that must be told. This government, the members on the opposite side, had the opportunity to listen, to see for themselves and find out what was really happening in our schools. They chose, as we've mentioned…. As they've mentioned, they made a decision. They chose not to listen; they chose not to find out.

They had the opportunity to work with the recommendation of the fact-finder. They chose not to do that. They had the opportunity to engage with teachers and all education stakeholders in an effective and meaningful dialogue regarding the critical issue of class size and composition, and they chose not to do that. This government has made many choices, like the choice to give huge tax cuts to corporations instead of putting it into programs that support children. I believe these are the wrong choices, and this government must accept the blame.

Bill 12 solves nothing. It will not get things better. The hon. members on the other side had a real opportunity to avoid conflict, to treat teachers with dignity and respect, to show balance, to sit down and work on solutions. They chose confrontation and disrespect. This is a sad day for quality education in our province.

Just one note. As draconian governments come and go, I know the resolve of great organizations throughout this province working together — organizations that respect contracts, that respect workers, that respect free collective bargaining — and I know that these organizations will still be here advocating long and hard for justice long after this Liberal government is just a faded memory. That's what's going to happen.

I pay tribute to all the workers in this province who have come under the wrath of this current government. I fear the battle has just begun. I hope common sense will prevail. I plead with my colleagues on the other side: sit down, negotiate — not only with teachers but with all workers in this province.

I'd like to take this opportunity to comment, as we've heard before, on a local Victoria teacher from Claremont Secondary School, Mark Neufeld, who I

talked to this morning with his spouse and his young child. I went out there as he was just seeing his wife and child for the first time, after he spent overnight, after walking ten miles to get here. He is camping outside there because he has to do something. That's why we have 33 members on this side up here talking about Bill 12, talking about how, hopefully, it will get repealed. Hopefully, this government will come to their senses, because we have to do something about that for the education system in this province.

Mr. Neufeld tried to get a meeting with the Premier but to no avail. The Minister of Education did have a meeting with him, did chat with him, but he fears his message will not be heard. So I will relate his message on the public record to the hon. members on the other side and to all British Columbians out there listening.

I'm optimistic about the future, but the future depends on what happens right here in this Legislature. I was pleased yesterday during question period when the Minister of Forests and Range, when questioned about softwood — and I would love to quote this from the Minister of Forests and Range — indicated: "We're going to be the ones that will negotiate in good faith. We're going to be the ones that will be honourable and accept the deals we make, and we'll stand up to and honour the deals we make" — and here's the clincher — "with the Americans in the future."

Now, I am hopeful that not only will this government negotiate in good faith with the Americans but that they bring it back home and they negotiate in good faith right here in British Columbia. I'm sure when the message gets out — that that's their stance as far as negotiating — that Liberal caucus members will reflect on these words and bring some honour back to our province and begin to negotiate in good faith, not only with teachers across the province but with all British Columbians.

Now I can get back to me. When I first started teaching, I taught in the special class in 1977 in Prince Rupert. I had a class of ten kids. My job description was: do whatever you want, but we don't want to see these kids. I was a first-year teacher, and I was in that school, actually, longer than I'm spending in this Legislature. I come to this Legislature about seven in the morning and leave about 8:30 or nine at night. I was leaving my school at 11 o'clock at night. My closest and best friends were the custodians.

I travelled around from classroom to classroom, finding out what teaching was about. I look back on those days with a lot of honour and dignity, because I had kids, and I started to integrate them. They were just normal kids, but they couldn't handle it in a regular classroom. I started to say: "Well, maybe they can be in the shop class or the PE class," or whatever, and then all of a sudden they were all farmed out — integrated into classrooms — and I nearly did myself out of a job, except they kept sending more in.

As we developed through the years, we had more and more kids being integrated into the school system, and teachers accepted that. We negotiated in those times, in those days, across the province with our school districts. We sat across the table and said: "This is what's good for education. This is what's good for students." We negotiated language that dealt with class size and class composition.

We said, "If you have a class of 27 to 28 kids, then three students with special needs would be appropriate," and we all agreed, because it worked, because we could take the time and the energy. When you have 30 kids in the classroom — and it's an hour class, if you're teaching at a secondary school — you do whatever you need to do in the front, do a bit of a lesson, and you may have 20 or 30 minutes left to deal with 30 kids.

When I was back at Charles Hays Secondary School last year teaching math 9, I had 31 kids in school and about seven, eight or nine of them really needed extra help and support. How much time did I have? I had maybe less than a minute with each student. Now, if I was distracted because somebody needed a couple of more minutes, then there was a handful of students that did not get any of my attention that day, and that's shameful. That cuts right to the heart when you know that there are students in there that want the help, that need the support, but you just can't get to them because you've got a handful of others that are taking up the time. They should be in classrooms where their needs are being met.

I went to Prince Rupert because I applied to be an alternate ed teacher, and after six or seven years I did make it. I made it to the top. I was at the Kaien Island Alternate School, and I was working with the best kids in the world, kids that don't fit into a normal situation in a school. Unfortunately — or in my case, fortunately — Prince Rupert has a high population of first nations students. My riding has the highest first nations population in the province. I respect their culture. It's so diverse, unique. I had a lot of good times working with students at the alternate school. It was shut down, as I mentioned. Students were distributed into the other high schools. One high school didn't have much support, and the other school created an afternoon alternate class that these kids went into.

Lo and behold, when I came back to teaching after my stint as the president of the teachers union in Prince Rupert, I went back to this school, and I was assigned this alternate school position. I was just so pleased, because I was back at the top again, and that's where I want to be. But I went in there, and I had poor kids that didn't have the support, didn't have the services. They had me. I think back to that, and it was one of the most

challenging years of my 27 in the teaching profession. I had to do something about that. I worked long and hard to create a program, but it was so frustrating trying to fit these kids, these round pegs, into square holes, because the facility we had and operated for many, many years was shut down due to de-funding of education.

I think back to James. James was the most challenging student I've ever taught, and I loved him dearly. He would always come in, and the sign on him was don't argue with him, because he'll always win. We'd go out in the hallway, and we'd argue. He always won, but that was fine. I'm in lots of arguments, and I let some people win.

But one day we had a fire in Prince Rupert. We lost an apartment building, and 50 people lost their homes. I was in the Salvation Army helping out at a building where stacks and stacks of clothes and furniture came in. I was volunteering my time, and the press came by. I wasn't even considering putting my name into the hat to get into politics.

I was in that Salvation Army helping out and working out. The press came along with the cameras. They took a picture, and I said something. I don't know what I said. But the next day, James came running up to me and said: "Hey, Mr. Buttons. How are you doing?" On the screen they had my name as Gary Buttons. I can say that. It's not my real name. Okay.

He laughed. Not only that, but he found out later on in months to come that I was putting my name into the ring. He was pretty astute, and he was saying: "So you're running for the NDP. I can handle that. If you need any help, let me know."

This was a student who came from five or six other school districts, passed around from classroom to classroom. Nobody could deal with him; nobody could handle the situations. Nobody had a designation for him. He needed serious help, and he was not getting it in the school system. I felt so frustrated.

On our TV system up north they do a week in review. About five days later they replayed me again, and he comes in Monday and says: "Mr. Buttons, you were on there again last night." I think back to that. When I go back home tomorrow, I'm going to drop into…. Well, I guess the schools will be under different operations tomorrow. But I'm going to give James a call and just let him know that I'm thinking about him, because that's what teachers do. They try; they try to make a difference.

Over my 27 years I feel that for at least 22 or 23 years, I have been making a difference. There are many teachers I work with right now who I actually taught — lo and behold — and that's difficult. But I'm proud to say that teachers do make a difference.

But it's frustrating. It's frustrating when we look at what's happened in this Legislature over the last four years, what's happened with teachers' contracts. I hope that this Legislature looks at Bill 12, decides to pull it, and works with teachers and works with stakeholders throughout the province.

D. Cubberley: I just want to thank the member for North Coast for sharing his comments with us and those from the heart. I think all of us have had the experience of teachers who have made a difference in our lives. Just listening to the member's comments about his own experience, it sounds to me as though he did make a difference in a lot of lives. Having been one of those kids who was round when the holes were square, I benefited from a couple of teachers who I guess recognized some innate capability of some kind that didn't necessarily show up on the standard grid and made some extra effort in my life. It has made a difference.

I'm pleased today to have an opportunity to respond to Bill 12, which was introduced by the Minister of Labour and Citizens' Services earlier this week. It's a pretty bland name, and it belies the fact that this act terminates bargaining. Not only does it not settle the dispute, as the explanatory note claims, but it risks prolonging and inflaming it further.

Bill 12 is a short and deceptively simple act that arbitrarily extends a collective agreement that had long expired. In effect, it summarily puts an end to bargaining between the BCTF and the government's agents, the British Columbia Public School Employers Association. This act can only be seen as an insult to the collective bargaining process. It will, I think with justification, be seen as further injury to the teachers of British Columbia who were already aggrieved by government's reckless actions in 2002.

I know that the Minister of Labour took pains to characterize the collective bargaining process as nonexistent, dysfunctional, broken — whatever other term could be conscripted to legitimatize the government's actions — I think coming at a point which the government had long planned to get to, at least judging by the absence of efforts to make positive overtures to teachers over the course of a year and a half. I'm not just referring to the orchestrated nature of the public ad campaign that the government unleashed, coincident with its introduction of the legislation to suspend bargaining, a step it took without bothering, I think, to reflect deeply or publicly on the content or the implications of Mr. Connolly's fact-finding report, not just his conclusions, and a step it took without accepting responsibility for engineering the impasse that Mr. Connolly's report merely confirmed, and which I think should have led to sober reflection rather than draconian action.

I want to highlight a couple of points touching on the way in which government as an employer created, through its actions or its inactions, the kind of stalemate that was used in the end to justify the introduction of the act.

First was the very clear statement that due to the depth of feeling on the part of teachers about the importance of discussions and negotiations, not just about

wages but about working and learning conditions, that government needed to engage in a dialogue. A quote directly from Mr. Connolly: "As professionals delivering the educational services to children in British Columbia, teachers are seeking an opportunity to articulate their thoughts and knowledge on the learning conditions for students."

Clearly, teachers wished and needed and deserved to be able to discuss working and learning conditions with their employer. Just as clearly, the employer's representatives had firm instructions not to consider issues or proposals with respect to class size, class composition or access to appropriate supports such as teacher assistance. These had been deemed to lie outside the collective bargaining process. As difficult as that is to understand or make sense of, they were deemed to lie outside the collective bargaining process.

Of course, there is no mechanism, currently, for teachers to discuss these matters outside of bargaining, nor any history of that occurring with this government, nor were there any overtures during negotiations as to how that could actually work. It's not clear why teachers should believe that even if it could occur, it could translate into meaningful changes if the results of those discussions weren't set down in some form that's actually binding on school districts — like a collective agreement — as they had been in the past.

In this regard, the government is certainly being true to form, and that's not a compliment. Indeed, I think it was this government's paramount goal to sever not just the contract language the BCTF had negotiated around class size from the existing agreement in 2002, but to sever any linkage between working and learning conditions and the process of negotiations. It took unilateral action in 2002 to strip the collective agreement, while it hoped to obscure what it was doing or soften it by mandating a 7.5 percent increase to wages, which in turn, it substantially downloaded on to school districts, thereby ultimately worsening the very conditions the teachers' agreement had sought to protect against. Nice job, folks. It's a really cute trick, if you don't consider the bitter harvest that we're reaping today as an outcome of the seeds that were sowed by those acts in 2002.

The lack of respect shown teachers by the arbitrary removal of limits placed within their collective agreement began a poisoning of relations that continued during an entire term of office and carried right on through the last election campaign. We sometimes hear members opposite say — and I find without a great deal of conviction — that they respect teachers and the work they do. But, you know, as our elementary school teachers taught us, in the end actions do speak louder than words — far louder.

I heard the Minister of Education say this afternoon, for example, "We believe it's so important," — referring to class size limits — "that we enshrine them in legislation." We'll come back to that.

Engendering a climate of disrespect — the shameful attempt to mislead parents into fearing that teachers were jumping to a strike vote the day after the election was over, something the Premier himself launched — isn't a productive accomplishment in management terms. In industrial relations, if you care about outcomes, it's exactly what you're trying to avoid doing. You don't demonize the other guys. You don't provoke them. You know that your employees are your biggest asset and that they identify their work as deserving of dignity, however humble the work they do is. And they rightly expect you to demonstrate that you respect their commitment and their work. The relationship in collective bargaining can never be about sticking it to your employees or provoking them into doing things based on reactions — not if you're acting as stewards of the enterprise.

But confrontation with teachers and provocation around their issues and the bargaining relationship is something that this government is really passionate about — indeed, I believe, relishes. Never mind the words; look at the actions. The actions speak clearly.

The second thing the government, had it cared about outcomes in students' lives, would have reflected more deeply upon in Connolly's report is this statement: "The lack of dialogue on compensation led to a public media debate about the cost of proposals that only increased the tension and conflict between the parties and did not further understanding, clarity or opportunity to find agreement within a collective bargaining process." Now, to my ear, that's an indictment. That lands the responsibility right at government's door, because it was this government that called in the play that led to refusal to discuss compensation, and that at the same time chose to ramp up public emotion by circulating wild numbers that had nothing to do with tabled proposals — wild speculation used to whip up public emotions and misrepresent intentions.

When a government who claims not to be involved at the table, despite defining what can and can't be discussed and calling in the plays, interferes in difficult negotiations by ramping up emotions, it can only make matters worse. But that's apparently just what the government intended to do. Government's responsibility for damaging the relationship isn't just a matter of gutting contract language nor just the injury of handing the employer the right to degrade working conditions by taking learning condition guarantees away from teachers. No, to my mind, it's the gross mismanagement of the system that flowed from governments doing all of that while off-loading costs onto school districts with capped budgets.

The cost of the MSP premium hikes passed through to school districts. Costs for teacher increases that weren't funded put into the legislated contract and downloaded onto school districts. Costs of inflation that every large program has on a year-over-year basis. Anybody who's worked in government at any level knows that there are increasing expenses due to inflation on an annual basis. You cannot deliver the same program every year with the same amount of money. You're reducing the program you're delivering if you aren't covering off inflation. But this government told

the school districts: "Be quiet. Eat those costs. Just go find efficiencies. Go away. Just do it."

Well, economies in school services can rapidly trigger deteriorating conditions, and now the chickens have come home to roost. Thrusting those costs down onto the system, combined with the loss of class size controls, produces negative effects in schools across British Columbia.

We often hear members opposite offer declining enrolment as the rationale for the reduction of 2,500 positions across B.C., and the closure of 113 schools certainly played a role. There were jobs that went with the closure of schools, as did contracting funding in the decision to close schools. But the real driver was the new costs, the costs that resulted in higher class sizes and more demanding class composition.

That's just a phrase that we say in here: "More demanding class composition." On the ground, more demanding class composition is the challenge that teachers face — and fewer supportive resources to deal with those needing special attention. You know, when I went to school, there wasn't a phrase "people needing special attention." It didn't exist. As we will see, it is now a substantial portion of what teachers deal with in the classroom.

That was the reason we lost nearly a quarter of our school librarians and why the remainder of our school librarians now spend more time doing clerical library work and less time teaching students how to use libraries — because school districts reluctantly cut librarians and support workers in order to shave budgets to cover downloaded costs. In other words, if you think about, Mr. Speaker, the net impact of government's decisions was to force the system to begin to cannibalize itself, and that's what it's been doing just in order to survive and to continue to try to deliver an increasingly difficult program to students. It's a rather ugly image, but it's apt. That's what's come from government action, and that's the context for teacher bargaining — bargaining the government approached in bad faith with no intention of allowing any discussion of learning conditions.

I have two school districts in my constituency. In the Saanich school district the teachers wondered about the government's arguments on declining enrolments as the rationale for fewer teachers — because that's what we hear in the chamber — so they used ministry figures to determine that their enrolments between 2000-2001 and 2004-2005 were down by a total of 41 students. Now, it's true they have some long-distance students and there may have been more decline in students in school and more students in distance education, but the total decline in students was 41. Then they checked on how many fewer people were working in the system, and you know what they found? They found they'd lost 33.2 FTEs. They lost 41 students, and they lost 33.2 FTEs.

Some of those, but certainly far fewer than half, were due to school closures, but the rest were positions like teaching assistants, which allowed teachers with multiple students with learning disabilities — which is what are showing up in class composition and/or other challenges, special learning prescriptions — to involve another teacher outside the classroom in providing them with specialized tutoring. That's the way we get efficiency in the classroom and the way we continue to allow teachers to have very high-level outcomes with high throughput. We take some of the problems out of the learning situation and we give them special attention, and we move those people back in again. Surprise, surprise.

What we hear anecdotally from teachers, and I'm going to read a little bit of it later, about their individual classrooms is actually reflected in the numbers provided by their own school district and runs against the grain of what the government is saying. Now that, to my mind, is something government should be interested in talking to teachers and administrators about.

That's something that does belong in collective bargaining as a discussion, because it represents a growing problem in the workplace that has impacts on morale, on productivity and on learning outcomes. But it isn't a discussion in collective bargaining, and that is because one assumes that government would find it inconvenient to have to acknowledge the problem it's actually created.

Damage was done by the government's actions, and the message was clear. The message to teachers was that working and learning conditions don't matter. How you feel about it doesn't matter. The message, as one teacher put it to me, is that teachers are not professionals worthy of respect, but rather worker drones there to do as they're told — to shut up and get on with the job, irrespective of the working conditions and the learning outcomes, treated like drones, not valued for their skills and their commitment nor for their volunteering countless hours in unpaid activities, some of which are integral to the job of teaching, like marking, and that contribute to the overall improvement and enrichment of children's lives.

I know that it's difficult for members opposite to hear some of this, and I know that when they respond to what we've been saying, they're going to return to some of the hollow generalities and self-congratulatory rhetoric of progress that they like to serve up for public consumption.

But, you know, this is about real teachers working in real classrooms, trying day in and day out to optimize outcomes for our children. How they feel about their work and the workplace is an important factor in the quality of those outcomes. It's time we all grasped that, if we want to be the stewards of public education, which is what our job is.

You know, teachers tell it a lot better than a politician standing at a microphone can, in their own words and reflecting their own experience. I think it's a good thing for all members to get a sense of what it feels like to be in their shoes. So I'll indulge myself with a little bit of what I've been hearing from teachers.

To give you another example, here's a teacher who writes from my school district: "I had a grade 9 linear class of English and social studies. I had 11 identified students and no TA support. I had a boy with Tourette's, one with Asperger's syndrome, two with ADD, one with ADHD, one working at a grade one level, and others had various more minor learning disorders. In that class I had five students working on an enriched program." This is in the same room. The class had approximately 28 kids in total.

He says: "It's impossible to meet the needs of all students when the range is so vast and the breadth of the learning disorders, for which you have to become an expert, is so varied." I can grasp that. As a lay person, I can grasp that. "In the end, after many complaints to my AO, I did finally get a TA. It was still extremely challenging to meet the needs of the kids."

One more just to give a sense that it covers a lot of lives: "I'm a teacher who has nine years of university training, including a master's degree in medical genetics, and I work very hard to educate the future scientists of this province." Good linkage there. It's not babysitting; we're actually producing the people who will contribute to our future productivity and allow us to expand our horizons and become the most literate and best-educated jurisdiction, not only in this hemisphere, but on the entire globe. "What I have gotten from this government? I got an unfunded raise of 7.5 percent." Here's the insight:

I've had some direct experience in collective bargaining. I can tell you that when you as an employer let things get to this level and your own people begin to feel that you don't respect them and that you don't care about the challenges they face, and you put your energies into denying there's a problem or provoking them or mischaracterizing their motivations to parents, you're hooped. You know you couldn't run a viable business that way. I know members opposite are close to business. You know you couldn't run a viable business that way. You wouldn't. You'd be out of business. I think you know deep down that you can't run public education that way either.

If you actually consciously set out to poison the well, it's almost impossible to unpoison it later. There are many examples of that in industrial relations. I would hope that this government would come to its senses and redirect itself to begin acting like a steward of public education, the steward it was elected to be, in a province with the goal of being the most literate and best-educated in whatever hemisphere it is.

I fancy myself to be a realist. I know that bargaining relationships are difficult and that the one with teachers has been anything but smooth or made good transitions or worked especially well at any time and that prior governments haven't made it work. We recognize that. I think we know our own history. But what you've done to damage the relationship with teachers during this government's time in office puts the entire undertaking at risk. What you're doing with Bill 12 isn't the beginning of a fix.

You have to recognize that it takes two parties to make a relationship work. The one with the greatest power — and that's always the employer — has the higher obligation to make it work. It can never work anywhere if one of the parties gives itself permission to treat the other party with disrespect. It's a downward spiral. If you begin to institutionalize disrespect, you're moving very quickly down that spiral. If you begin to approach the other party as though it needs to be taught a lesson, it's practically over. That's the path you're beginning to go down.

In a mature bargaining relationship — there's a lot contained in that phrase, Mr. Speaker; and you know that as well as I — the parties know how to express their disagreements and accept their differences. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it can work. When one party decides it's not worth taking the time for dialogue, doesn't want to hear any more and gives itself permission to act unilaterally, then the downward spiral begins. That's exactly what the government has engineered by its calculated efforts to politicize teacher bargaining.

I have to tell you that if that's your goal, you're definitely succeeding in politicizing our teachers. Maybe that's what you want. Maybe you want that punching bag. Maybe you want that so that you can knock it over and, in some misguided sense, be seen to be doing something for children and parents and sta-

bility and whatever. It's not just the BCTF; it's the whole body of teachers — people who are professionals, who have a passion for teaching and learning and a commitment to seeing individual citizens reach their potential by becoming lifelong learners, who simply want to practice their métier in a place that values and honours their service.

I've had them visiting me of late in my constituency office and here at the Legislature. It's quite moving, because these are people who are not political by nature. They're people who feel that they have to act because they're being pushed into a corner. I think it would be helpful, actually, if we could all try to understand how that dynamic works, because at some time or another in our lives we've all been pushed into a corner, and what you do when you're pushed into a corner and you reach that last resort is fight back.

These are people who are committed to being teachers, but they're pained and they're offended and they're insulted and they're disillusioned by what has gone on. They don't understand, because they aren't political people, why their calling in life…. They see it as a calling. They have to see it as a calling, because to put up with what gets thrown at them on a daily basis, they have to have a calling. You wouldn't stay. There are easier ways to make a living — far easier ways.

They don't understand why their calling in life is being politicized and their aspirations to do good things, the right things, for children in their charge are not being respected; why teaching and learning conditions are of so little interest to those charged with the stewardship of public education; and why class composition that can't possibly be handled by a single teacher is beginning to show up as a norm of school conditions. All that this can do over time, this denial about what's actually going on out there, is drive the good teachers out of the system. That is not a laudable goal, and I cannot believe for a moment that it is an outcome anyone in this chamber wants to see. But that is what will happen if we continue down the path.

Where I come from, you have to keep talking across the differences. I heard it from a very rough-and-ready labour leader very early on in my career. He's still very successful and, I think, has the respect of a lot of people, although he'd be a heck of a tough guy to ever come up against. Buzz Hargrove in the middle of a strike, telling people: "Even though we are at this point, we are talking." He said: "I keep talking to the other guy even when the other guy doesn't want to hear from me any more. I keep talking, because the only way that you ever come to an agreement is to keep the conversation going. The only way you do that is by reaching out."

D. Cubberley: I can't believe that I've already come to that point. Mr. Speaker, with your indulgence….

D. Cubberley: I can't believe that the members opposite don't want to hear more.

The Labour Minister says that the system is "broke." Given that this is about education, I have to say it's broken. Nevertheless, I must say that there are a lot of words that I think I could spell a lot better a few days or a few years ago than I can today, so I'll cut the minister a little slack there.

On a serious note, this is, indeed, a dark day in British Columbia — the day this bill was introduced. I think it bears some reflection on the history that brought us to this point. Although we recognize — and I think that all members in this House recognize — that it has been and always is difficult to come to an agreement with regard to teacher negotiations because of the nature of their clientele. Their clientele are our children, our most valued asset.

Having said that, what I've seen — and I think that a lot of people in British Columbia have recognized — is that this government, since the time they were elected in 2001, has set the stage for a very unfortunate situation that we have today — a situation where our teachers…. It's not overstating the case to say that our teachers feel absolutely dispirited, and there's no way that that can be good for education. There's no way that that can be good for our children. There's no way that that can be good for our society, because without a strong education system, we're hooped. Our prosperity depends on well-educated citizens.

How did this come about? Well, I think any unbiased observer, if you look back at the history of what happened in this province in 2001, saw a government come riding in on what they felt was a white horse at the time, I'm sure, to rescue British Columbia. What shortly became apparent, unfortunately, was that they also had some very hard-nosed, punitive attitudes toward certain segments of our society. It became very apparent early on that one of those segments that this government had four-square in their sights was the teachers of this province.

You know, it's not very politically popular to criticize teachers, because parents recognize that their children depend on good teachers. A lot of those parents go to schools regularly themselves to help out in the education system. They assist teachers. They work with them. By and large, they know that those teachers are doing a very thorough and good job in educating their

children, so they're supportive of teachers. It's not politically saleable to attack teachers per se.

What this government has done, I have to say, is focused on the union that represents these teachers, the B.C. Teachers Federation. It's not overstating the case to use the phrases that have been used many times in this House already — that this government sought to vilify that body. They have tried in numerous ways to distance the B.C. Teachers Federation from teachers. In fact, that is exceedingly insulting. That's insulting to the teachers of this province, because their federation is the body that represents them. It's a democratic body, and they exercise their free and democratic right to collective bargaining. The B.C. Teachers Federation is the spokesperson — the spokesbody, if you will — for the teachers of this province.

We've gone through a succession of Education Ministers. Certainly, some of those have been particularly damning, I have to say, of the teachers of this province through their union, the B.C. Teachers Federation. No teachers in this province, I think, will forget — and I believe I can mention her name — Christy Clark when she was the Minister of Education.

This attack on teachers has been aided and abetted, I have to say, by media in this province. Week after week, month after month, teachers have seen their name, their profession dragged through the mud in the media in all different sorts of ways. One of the ways that I feel was most unfair was the attack on the College of Teachers.

Every professional body has an organization to represent…. They may have a union, as teachers do, to represent them in bargaining with their employer, but they have a professional body, as well, to do with ethics and standards and the like. In their case it's the College of Teachers. Almost without exception, so far as I'm aware, the members of that college are people from that profession.

What did this government choose to do? They chose to appoint people to that body in the majority, so teachers were left in the humiliating position of not having the majority of representation in their own college. Don't think for a moment that this hasn't had a profound effect on teachers. I've talked to teachers over the years, and they're just outraged. They were outraged at what happened to their college.

There have been a lot of developments of this nature that have led us to today. It's not an accident that we're here. Yes, the system needs some fixing, if you will. Although teachers have been legislated back to work in the past, I think it's quite safe to say again that…. I don't believe that the morale of teachers in this province has ever been anywhere as low as it is today. The reason it's so low, I have to say, is because of the attitude of this government — the anti-teacher attitude of this government.

I don't believe for a moment that all members of this House, by any means, are against teachers. I don't believe that. But what I have seen is that the leadership of this government — and the Premier of this province, of course, is at the top of that chain — has shown a profound disrespect for teachers.

The government always tries to focus it on the union. Most recently they've talked about: "Well, you know, the BCTF is such a problem that we're just going to bypass them. We're going to go talk directly to teachers." That's code for another insulting endeavour towards this profession. It's saying again that your union will not be recognized. Teachers are seeing that over and over and over again. It's part of the reason why we're here in the sorry state that we're in.

I want to talk a little bit about how education has changed, because I'm not sure that members opposite, in all cases, are aware of that fact. I remember when I was in high school. When I was in school — and a number of members are probably in the same age group as I am — things were different. Teachers were respected by students and parents. Sometimes that respect was brought in a pretty harsh way, but it was there. Today, teachers are dealing with an entirely different situation.

I was talking to a high school teacher the other day, and he was telling me about how, in his classroom, a student had come in and was eating a sandwich in the middle of class. The teacher asked him to stop eating the sandwich and attend to the lesson. He refused. He asked him again, and the student got up and told the teacher to "f" off. I obviously won't use the full phrase, but he used the full phrase, and he repeated it.

I have to give the teacher some credit. Teachers also are certainly different than they used to be. He actually found some humour in it. He said that because this guy got up and said, "'F' off, Mr. Jones," twice in a row, he thought: "Wow, he's still calling me 'Mr. Jones' despite what he's saying."

In my day, you would be gone from school and probably wouldn't darken the doors again. I remember that in grade 12 one of my classmates — he was a good student in a small country school — decided, about two months before graduation in grade 12, to go downtown for some pop or whatever. He wasn't drinking alcohol. He came back to school late, and he wasn't that late, either. He was suspended for the rest of the year. He missed his grade 12 examinations. That's pretty harsh, but that's the kind of atmosphere it was.

I think the way that teachers are handling it now is better. I think the way this teacher handled that situation is better. He explained to me how they would sit down and talk with the student and try to get to the bottom of what was going on, bring in the parents and so on. Conditions have changed; there's no doubt. That's only one of the ways they've changed.

We've heard a lot about special needs students. I'm not exactly sure why, but I don't think there's any doubt that teachers have a whole lot more special needs students than they used to have. In Maple Ridge, in school district 42, where I'm from, there seems to be a particularly large number of students with autism. I don't know the reason for that, as I said, although I know that our school district does focus a lot on special

needs and has done a good job over the years. I don't know if parents are moving there with their children or what. But I know that in our classes and our schools there are a lot of children with autism and Asperger's syndrome.

I don't know if members know what it's like to be in a class or to be a classroom teacher when you have children with those kinds of profound special needs in your classroom. A child with autism requires a very strict environment. They don't have the capacity for tolerating a lot of change, particularly quick change. A teacher is faced with having to be able to assist that student with their particular needs but at the same time create a varied environment for the other students. If you have two or three or sometimes six special needs students, it's impossible.

Quite frankly, it's impossible to provide good education unless they have support. They need those special education teachers. They need those assistants to be able to help them to give those children the education that they deserve, and they're not getting it. We've heard a lot about that, and that is having a really negative effect.

That's why you hear over and over again about class composition. We've heard it a number of times in this debate. That's why it's so significant to teachers, because they have profoundly behaviourally disturbed children, they have children with special needs, and they have an atmosphere where there's less respect for them.

In my community 65 percent of parents work outside the community. An average commute is probably two hours a day. They're tired and worn out when they get home. They don't have a lot of time, sometimes, to devote to their children's needs. There are a lot of single parents, not only in my community but in all our communities. Children do not necessarily have the supports they need to be ready for school when they get there. These are some of the challenges that teachers face.

Teachers are willing and able to meet those challenges given a fair and level playing field, but they don't feel that they have it. I have to say that I agree with them. They do not have it. This government has not provided the kind of environment they need to ensure that the children in our schools grow up to be successful adults. How shortsighted is that? If we don't have successful children becoming successful adults, our economy is going to suffer.

The members opposite are focused a lot on the economy, so they should understand. They say they understand the value of an education system, but I don't think they do. In dollars and cents terms, I don't think they get it. This is not good for the economy, never mind what it's doing to the hearts and minds, if you will, of these children and their families.

Teachers have concerns about the intent of this government. The government says their intent is to keep children in school. That's a laudable goal. We all want to keep children in school. But how is it that they're going about that? A lot of teachers I talk to don't believe that this government is supportive of the public education system. They, in fact, are concerned that this government is going to drive the public education system down. They look around. They've seen what happened with health care.

Notwithstanding what editorialists in the Vancouver Province might say, teachers are not irrational. They're not paranoid. But they're also not stupid. They believe that public education is under tremendous threat from this government.

What they've seen in health care is that health care is privatized. More and more of it has been privatized, and there have been a lot of problems with that privatization and the service that's being offered. They worry that the same thing is happening in the education system — that if the education system is driven down so far that it's no longer functional, parents will be forced to seek alternatives. Whether they want to or not, they will be forced to send their children to private school. Every time you take a child out of the public school system, you take a lot of dollars with that child.

We've heard a lot of words from this government over the last four years about education. We hear things like "choice." We hear words like "flexibility." We hear words like "accountability." It all sounds really great.

M. Sather: They are good words, but what do they mean in this case? Well, you might want to cast your eyes south of the border and have a look at the education system that President Bush is in favour of. You will see a lot of those words used there also. This is the kind of education system that…. This is a Fraser Institute model of education.

The government is really getting big on testing. Wow, what could be wrong with testing? I have a background in science myself. I've gone through eight years of post-secondary education, passed a lot of tests. I think that testing has a place. It does, and I believe that measurement, objectivity and looking at the scientific results can be of value, but it also can be misused. It also can be misused.

They have a concern — teachers I've spoken to — that there are more and more barriers, in fact, being put to education through this testing model. There have always been exams; there always will be exams. Now there are exams in grade ten that weren't there before. It's getting harder and harder to get into university. All for what purpose? Is it actually going to improve the education system, or is it actually going to divide the education system between the haves and the have-nots, the winners and the losers?

The problem is that all students need to be winners. We can't afford to have an education system of winners and losers. It's not going to work for our society. This is not a marketplace system, at least it shouldn't be. That isn't going to be the best for our society and the best for

our students at all. They have a concern that the running-down of the education system they see happening is a precursor to privatization.

I just got a letter recently from one of my constituents who's a teacher in the district, and she said her biggest concern is that the Premier's government is trying to privatize education. I hear that a lot. That's a concern they have, and I think, unfortunately, it's not unfounded. One of the schools in my district was privatized after it was closed by the school board, because they had no choice because of the downloading that's been thoroughly documented in this House already.

It's really galling, I must say, to hear the members opposite sometimes say: "What cuts? There were no cuts." It's completely disingenuous. They know there were cuts. They just got somebody else to do the cutting.

Well, this school that's been privatized in my school district is an outfit from Britain. They're offering reduced tuition for those in the local public schools who'll sign up in their school. One of the things they also promote with their school — and a lot of private schools promote, interestingly enough — is small class size. Class size — that's the other issue that's pretty big in this dispute. I think we heard the government say earlier today that they instituted class size because they are concerned about that. Only for primary did they institute class sizes. The others are averages. I'm sure a lot of the members opposite, most of the members opposite, are well educated, and they will know that there's a difference between averages and absolute numbers. It's the absolute numbers that count.

The same teacher I was mentioning earlier, who was sworn at by one of his students, was telling me that his classroom — and some of the newer classrooms are actually smaller than the old ones — doesn't have desks for all his students. Some of his students are sitting along the ledges along the window. That's no education system that we can be proud of. That's an education system in decay.

I believe it has been clear to everyone that is an unbiased observer, as I've said, that this government has had no intention to bargain in good faith with teachers. Now we hear that the Labour Minister has had some talks with Jinny Sims of the BCTF and the B.C. Federation of Labour, and let's hope that something more is going to happen. I'm not hopeful that it will, but it certainly needs to for the good of our children. It certainly needs to. All of this is absolutely no way to make British Columbia the most literate jurisdiction in North America.

I mean, it defies understanding how the government can go and talk about making British Columbia the most literate jurisdiction in North America, the world — I'm not sure where — and then make the conditions so unfavourable for the development of literacy.

I wanted to mention a couple of other teachers that talked to me about some of their concerns. One of them is a teacher who lives in my district and teaches in Mission. He said to me that there are four grade-nine math classes with 36, 35, 35 and 34 students. One of the grade-12 math students who worked on my campaign said: "We have 35 students in my class, and in math it doesn't work. We have to have the individual attention to learn, and we don't have it."

There are a lot of other examples that he gave me too: a wood shop class with 27, although it's designed with a safety limit of 24. Three science nine classes, with 29 in a lab designed for 24….

G. Gentner: It's with great pleasure that I am able to address the House today, but it's unfortunate under the circumstances why I'm here relative to this important edict that's coming down from this government opposite.

The member for Saanich South talked earlier about the IEP situation, the learning difficulties with children in our schools. Our teachers in my district are besieged with the same problem: late hours at night. There are other details I hope we'll have time to come forward with this evening or this afternoon, but I do have to ask this government to cross what is really motivating this whole agenda here.

I can tell you that in my district, we have seen the wholesale sale of schools that have been sold. We've seen the increase of private schools. We've seen subdivisions created out of school yards. When you look at this thing globally, you have to look at the end result. This government opposite certainly looks favourably to the end result of privatization of schools.

In 2002 the government took out of collective bargaining the right to negotiate classroom conditions and instead put such issues into legislation, which we now know as the School Act. The BCTF wants learning conditions to be reinstated as part of collective bargaining. As such conditions directly impact their working environment, the B.C. Teachers Federation wants to negotiate such conditions directly with the government.

On this issue the fact-finder report points to some opportunity for movement. According to the report, both the teachers and the province agree that educators should be part of any dialogue that sets policy guidelines on class size and composition. But Bill 12 is strictly based on subjectivity. Nothing is for certain in bargaining except meaningful dialogue. Communication is decent and productive in a democratic society, not a lash hanging over one's head — in this case, a big stick. Yes, Bill 12 is a billy stick — a big one.

Tyranny can be disguised in many different ways, but nothing could be as vulgar and hateful in a democracy than when it's under the pretence of the public authority. It's clear that in British Columbia, prison doors could be open for teachers, while this government has closed a door for them as well.

The B.C. Teachers Federation — let's get to the facts — bargaining team is and always has been available to meet with the employer to reach a negotiated settlement. When the representatives of the British Columbia Public School Employers Association met with the media on September 15, they indicated that they had costed the B.C. Teachers Federation proposal and had determined that it would be worth 35 percent of the total annual education costs. Their numbers included a salary increase of between 10 and 13 percent. This is simply not true.

To date, the B.C. Teachers Federation has not tabled a salary proposal. The B.C. Teachers Federation president has said: "That is simply a fabricated number with no connection whatever to reality. In the last round we tabled improvements to maternity leave. When the B.C. Public School Employers Association calculated the costs, they assumed every single teacher of child-bearing age would become pregnant within the three-year life of the contract. That was totally absurd."

Early in September the B.C. Teachers Federation received legal advice. Acting on that advice, the B.C. Teachers Federation lifted from the bargaining table the language that the government stripped from its contract in 2002. On September 16 the B.C. Teachers Federation tabled manner-and-consequences language with the B.C. Public School Employers Association.

When the Minister of Labour released the fact-finding report on the current dispute between the provincial government and the BCTF, it stated that the two parties were far from agreement, particularly with regards to the key issues at the bargaining table. Wages remain a key stumbling block, and the other issue involves the negotiation of class size and composition. The report states that the two parties involved in the dispute are far from any agreement. The report was completed by Rick Connolly, associate deputy minister to the Minister of Labour and Citizens' Services.

In response to the release of the fact-finder report, our opposition critic for Education commented to the media with the following messages:

I think it's important that we do comparatives. I think we should even look at what happened last spring in Ontario, for example. The teachers got a deal. The deal included a sum, albeit paltry, of 11 percent, but they got a deal over three years: 200 minutes of prep time per week, the hiring of 1,300 specialist teachers and an early government announcement of $300 million to reduce class size, which will likely mean 2,600 more teachers hired for public elementary schools. It goes to show you that negotiations can work.

What it did, of course, was bring peace to Ontario's public elementary schools. The Ontario government brought the peace with the province's public elementary school teachers by handing out close to a billion dollars to local school boards. I want to look at Ontario. Before I do, it has to be said that Bill 12 is an edict of the Liberal government, a retro–restraint program to tighten up the belts of teachers.

You know, for many of us on this side, this is all new to us. But I have to tell you, we're also going through estimates, and this government hasn't even given us the courtesy to go to estimates and challenge the minister on expenditures and see where we can find the money. No, they had to ram this legislation through. A very sad day in British Columbia.

This type of edict ignores traditional wage comparisons, has taken out consultation of any kind, is duplicated countless times over and over again. I think we should look at the comparisons, and I have statistics from the Canadian Teachers Federation, which really has no bias with the B.C. Teachers Federation. It looks at a comparative example throughout the country.

Let's see where British Columbia fares on the wage scale. I'll give an example. In my school district, Delta, at the entry level teachers with no teaching experience begin at $35,000. I have to tell you that after all of the university costs, the tuition fees — the escalating tuition fees — it's not easy to live in one of the highest-per-capita areas, certainly, in North America at $35,000. When we look up at Prince George, of course, we can see it's $35,629. We can look at Surrey, across Scott Road from me — maybe $100 dollars more per annum, at $35,768. In today's world, that really isn't much money in British Columbia. With the price of gas and the escalating price of property values, it's not that much money.

When you look at Nova Scotia, the entry level for teachers there, believe it or not, is $35,906 per annum. I've been to Nova Scotia. It's a wonderful place. I've been to Sydney and to Halifax. I've done Cape Breton. It's a wonderful part of the world. It's a great part of Canada. They make more money there — and I know what the price of a house in that area is worth. It's al-

most half — at least half — the price of a house in the lower mainland. Think about it, Madam Speaker. Teachers in Nova Scotia at entry level are making more money than those living in Surrey.

Let's look at Brampton, Ontario — Brampton or Wellington, which are far removed from the urban hub of T.O. They, too, are comparable or are making more money.

Let's go a little higher in the wage scale — again, entry level. Let's go to the rich confines of Kelowna and Coquitlam. Entry level for Kelowna is $35,775. For Coquitlam it's $35,916. Again, for a professional in British Columbia that's a deplorable entry fee in my estimation — what you have to do in order to make a living in this province.

I want to compare that higher scale to the lovely province of New Brunswick: $37,132 — $2,000 more per annum. Newfoundland, way out there by St. John's — $40,000. When we go to Toronto — albeit it does have, of course, higher prices — they, too, are making far more money than are urban areas here in the lower mainland.

I understand the reason way up in the territories — Yellowknife and Yukon. They're up to $48,000, $55,000, and they deserve it with the bargaining and the area they have to live in. There's no question there.

I want to look at one of the highest areas, and it's the good bargaining position that occurred for years in the Greater Victoria area — one of the higher areas in British Columbia. Entry level is under $40,000. It's $39,473. Where do we compare that? It's almost comparable to little old Moose Jaw, Regina or Saskatoon. I have nothing against Regina. It's a lovely little place. I was basically raised in that area. But the cost of living in Regina cannot be compared in any way to the cost of living in Greater Victoria.

I want to talk about that bastion, if I can, that area of Alberta, which the members opposite ascribe as the wonderful age — new era — they're looking towards to accomplish.

Before I go there, let's look at even Manitoba. It's $39,473 in Greater Victoria. St. James, $42,958. Manitoba — think of the cost of living there to living here. Winnipeg, even more money — $4,310.

Let's look at the ivory-tower province that the members across ascribe to. Let's look at Lethbridge, $43,698; Red Deer, $44, 366; Edmonton, $44,195; and, Calgary, $44,266. So how can you compare? How can you deny the teachers a proper living allowance in this province when you look across the Rockies and see what they're getting? In light of the fact of the boasting that's going across from the other side on this great economy and the surplus, why are we denying professionals their due lot?

Of course, the interesting one, the highest of all, is the little town of "the Hat" — Medicine Hat. The southern Saskatchewan flows to it where the deer and antelope roam. Think about it: almost $45,000 for entry-level teachers.

I think it's absolutely disgraceful how this government is treating our teachers in probably the highest part of North America…. I think it's a complete slap in the face to those who definitely deserve better than that. Of course, we can continue to go on with, shall we say, part-time teachers.

Prince George hasn't been talked about. Let's talk about Prince George. Minimum annual salary with the minimum entry-level qualifications is $35,629. Let's compare that with Edmonton at $44,195. Incredible.

Now let's quickly talk about the maximum teachers' base in British Columbia. Let's even go to secondary education in Vancouver: $70,397. That sounds like quite a bit more. When you go back to Nova Scotia — Natalie MacMaster, by the way, great lady, great tunes, comes from Nova Scotia — 71,745 bucks. In London, Ontario, $73,502. In Peel, $76,000. They make a little more money there in London, Ontario, I guess, because the Canadian Auto Workers have that plant over there, and because they're able to negotiate, I guess people, too, want a decent wage there — far better than we'll see here with this government.

York — not quite Toronto; it's outside Toronto — is up to $76,265. Even Manitoba is making more. Teacher's salary, max, $74,000. It sounds a little monotonous, but it's overwhelming, what these stats say — isn't it?

Let's go back to the wonderful, incredible, free enterprise capital of Canada, Alberta: Calgary, $76,000; Edmonton, $75,321; Red Deer, $74,283; and little old Medicine Hat — bless them for living there; I've been through it in 20 minutes, blink-blink — $74,680. Think of it. Cost of living. We're going to deny the teachers the right to have a decent wage. You should be ashamed of yourself over there.

Now I want to talk about…. Let's talk about principals. Hang on, let's talk about principals. For the principals in Vancouver, the maximum is $114,000. In Nova Scotia they're $91,000. Isn't it interesting how the administrators suddenly make way more money in British Columbia than in any other province? Isn't that interesting indeed, how that works? I don't know. Saskatchewan, even little Saskatchewan, $99,256 for a principal. Edmonton — oh, they've got lots of money. The administrators there still make less than the administrators here — $104,000. And the same thing with Medicine Hat, although Medicine Hat makes slightly more. There you go.

In British Columbia we have one of the lowest rates of pay for our teachers and probably one of the most expensive places in North America to live, compared to the rest of Canada. Yet the administration side makes more money than anywhere else in Canada. Vice-principal salaries — I have the stats here. We can go through that too. But time is slowly running by us.

Similarly, if a public employer wants to fill a senior executive position by attracting an individual with special talents and qualifications away from private business or from university life, it often has to negotiate a mutually acceptable employment contract for him

or her. The fact that the government may be elected, that it may enjoy popular majority support, does not normally entitle it to conscript the assets of services of individuals or firms which the public would find useful.

Instead, it has to negotiate a voluntary agreement on terms which ultimately depend upon its relative bargaining position. That goes with management. You know where you get the best management, the most expensive per capita administrators in British Columbia? You've got to sit down and bargain with them. You've done that.

I've been on Delta council for years, and we've had to sit down and work with managers. We worked out salary benefits. We negotiated back and forth, all in good faith, and there were some trying times. We did it with CUPE, and we certainly did it with our management.

What I find interesting is when you look at — and this is all public information — the remuneration of deputy ministers. It's interesting that the deputy minister for education in total makes $236,000. That's equivalent to four teachers or 8,000 hours of special ed time. You know, that was negotiated. He came here, most likely, because of the package. The government negotiated a deal to get him here because, obviously, they felt he was worth it. I'm not going to deny that.

I will say that when you look at the sheets, the deputy minister is the third-highest bureaucrat in the province. In fact, interestingly enough, his salary is well beyond the loyal, dutiful bureaucrat of the Premier, Mr. Ken Dobell. Mr. Dobell, as we all know, has done a great job for many years. Mr. Dobell has, of course, been involved with the Premier in his stint as the mayor of Vancouver. Mr. Dobell was instrumental in the GVRD. He comes with great and wonderful credentials. He was also back there when the Premier decided to sell the fire boat, and of course, we know that the people of San Francisco picked that up really quickly.

The point is that these people come at a premium, and we do negotiate in order for them to be here — so whether a teacher or a deputy minister, we do negotiate. We do negotiate.

I want to talk briefly about Mr. Paul Weiler. Mr. Weiler was the chair of the B.C. Labour Relations Board. He was also doing groundbreaking analysis of the Supreme Court of Canada and also helped draft the Charter of Rights. His comments are simple:

My views — my bias, if you will — should be clear. In stark contrast to the United States, jurisdictions across Canada have extended the right to strike to the vast bulk of all public employees. These workers have tasted the fruit of that freedom, and it is unrealistic to think we can turn the clock back. To try to do so through massive restraints on the right to strike might well prove as futile as King Canute trying to stem the tide.

I do admit that the wish may be father to the thought. I do not think we should try to turn the clock back. We have proved that we can live with public employee strikes, although many people do not accept that. However exaggerated, their emotional responses are a fact of life with which the policy-maker must deal.

B. Lekstrom: I rise today to speak to Bill 12, a piece of legislation that I don't think anybody is joyful about, certainly, on this side of the House or your side. But it's a bill that, in my mind, is necessary. We've reached that point, and I've heard a lot over the last couple of days' debate on this bill — issues that certainly we're here to have the open and free dialogue on. That's democracy.

I'm going to take the opportunity to lay out some factual information as I see it. I think that's what we all have the opportunity to do. There's no good feeling for anybody. There's no good feeling for government, for opposition, for the teachers, for parents and, most importantly, for our children to see us yet again in the position we're faced with in British Columbia.

Our education budget is something that I want to touch on. Listening to what I've heard over the last couple of days, one would be led to believe that we've cut the education budget, that it's been devastated. For those people that want to pay attention — unfortunately, some on the other side may not — they can go to the audited financial statements of this government and this province, and they can see what the real facts are.

We have the highest budget ever for education in K-to-12. In 2000-2001 — and I'll read these numbers for the public and for the British Columbians out there that are watching — $4.59 billion was spent on the K-to-12 system. Today we have budgeted $5.07 billion. That's a 10.5-percent increase. So nobody, even if they want to say it, could believe it in their heart that there's been a cut to education. They can qualify what they want to say, but I've yet to hear them qualify with a statement of fact. So I have a grave concern over that.

In 2005-2006 our province will spend $7,097 per student. It's an increase of $881 since 2000-2001, and we're at the highest rate ever. Again, good news for the students of this province.

A highlight this year: we'll invest and have budgeted $150 million to our education system, the highest increase in over a decade. Again, good news, yet some people will try and find something wrong with that. It's hard to believe.

On the capital side, I've heard a lot about schools having been closed. Yes, schools have been closed. I've had a couple in my riding closed. But I'll tell you, just a little common sense will go a long way. It makes very little is sense to me to run three schools at 30-percent capacity, where we can spend all the money on light and heat and so on, versus running one school at 90 percent, where the funding can then go to the children. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Again, I have no problem debating the issues and the facts, but it has to be based on fact. What I've seen over the last couple of days is scare tactics — talking to the camera, talking to the people of British Columbia about what's been going on. I think it's healthy to have good debate and to put the facts out there as we see them, but the word "facts" is the key, and we're going to push that.

On the capital side, I'm just going to point out a few issues since 2001 that our government has done. We've approved 139 projects. Those projects include 14 new schools, 26 additions, and 54 renovations and replacements. We've got 31 new sites and 14 seismic upgrades, and we're committed to completing the full seismic upgrade for all of our schools for the safety of our children, our teachers and the educators that work in the system. Again, that's good news.

I'm not here to talk about teachers and say: are they good or bad? I'm going to speak to that in a bit, because I have a great deal of respect for teachers. I heard the previous speaker talking about wages, and now I'm going to use some of my facts as well. The BCTF minimum salary and benefit package — let's not forget that, because far too often we can have a play on words; "and benefit package" — is higher than all other provinces except Ontario and Alberta. We can say that.

The other one, as well, is that right now the starting salary for a teacher with a baccalaureate degree is not $35,000. It's $41,663, with pay increases incorporated into that, which will take roughly ten years as they progress through to a wage scale of $64,489. That's what most teachers will earn after ten years in the system.

Again, I'm going to point out that I don't know a teacher that went into the profession — and I know we all have friends; I'm sure many of us have family that are part of this — of teaching to get rich. They went into it because they have a love of children and a love of their ability to teach our children. If money were what it was about, most people wouldn't be looking to most of the professions they're in. People do it because they work, and they enjoy that work. That's the key issue that I think we have to make sure we understand on that.

We aren't here as a result of something new in this province. There's a history to why we're here yet again legislating yet another contract for the teachers. I've heard a lot about this government, this bad Liberal government. I fundamentally disagree with that statement because I'm very proud. We should never lose sight of the fact — this is a good one, and I'll slide off a bit here — that British Columbia became a have-not province under the previous government, the NDP. We're back. No longer will that happen in British Columbia, let me tell you. That's embarrassing.

I'm going to just quote a few things from a piece of paper on the history of how bargaining went. Prior to 1987, the teachers union had no right to strike. Binding arbitration was used. Local bargaining dealt with the compensation issues. From 1988 to 1993 there was full bargaining and the right to strike locally, which resulted in 30 strikes and two lockouts and significantly increased costs. Since 1993 government intervention has been required to settle each collective agreement negotiated with the B.C. Teachers Federation.

There's no pleasure in standing here to say we're here yet again to do that, but there certainly shouldn't be any pleasure from the other side in trying to point out that it's this government. It's a systematic problem that we have, and there is a highlight. If we can find anything out of this piece of legislation, it's that we're going to keep the kids in the classroom. But more importantly, we're going to find a way so that we may never, as legislators in this province, have to legislate a settlement on the BCTF again, because they can be negotiated at a table. That's my hope.

I want to go over that point again, because many British Columbians may have not heard this over the last couple of days listening to the opposition, and again, I have the utmost respect. Issue your views. In 1993, 1996 and 1998 the teachers were legislated back to

work in these very chambers by the opposition, who was then government — the NDP. That's what happened.

I've touched on the bargaining history. I'm going to move on. We have a zero-zero-and-zero mandate. Is that something I think British Columbia public sector workers are happy about? No, I don't. But I can tell you that we've reached 130 agreements already with our public sector unions. So I don't understand why, when the BCTF came to the bargaining table, they thought they would be exempt from that while other government employees — brothers and sisters of theirs across this province — have accepted zero-zero-and-zero knowing that the zero-zero-and-zero mandate expires March 31, 2006. Then there will be the opportunity to negotiate wage settlements again in British Columbia. We will have the ability — not as government, but as British Columbians and British Columbia together — to afford those and advance them in a sustainable manner. That's a key issue.

The zero-zero-and-zero mandate that I talked about…. I guess if I was a worker out there in British Columbia right now, a government employee, and I'd accepted a package that included zero-zero-and-zero, which I want to point out under the situation we face with the teachers in this province today and the BCTF…. They're accepting zero-and-zero because the mandate expires on March 31 of next year. The third year is open for compensation discussion. I think I'd have to be somewhat dumbfounded why one group thinks they should deserve something when others haven't gotten anything, yet agreed to it — not been legislated, but agreed to it, 130 negotiated settlements. A key issue.

I heard a lot about our education system, and I'm a product of it. I grew up in Dawson Creek. I went through grade school and graduated high school there. I'm very proud that my daughters have attended the same elementary school and high school as I have. I have one in university; the other is still in grade 11. I'm proud of the ability that I have as a result of the teachers I had.

I give full credit to my teachers. I think people who didn't would probably be somewhat foolish. They're the ones who help us through tough times, as I've heard from the opposite side. Sometimes when we're having difficulty learning a subject, they're the ones that are there, and they still are there.

I want to touch on something, because I hear a lot about overcrowded classrooms, no desks, no textbooks. Well, in 1967, roughly when I started school, I remember grade one, grade two, grade three. There were years I started school and — you know what? — there weren't enough desks for the kids in the classroom then. But within a day or two — as class sizes and the composition, as we call it today, got worked out — they were there.

We shared books in 1968 in my elementary school. We shared books as I went through school. It's incredible. But certainly the opposition would have you, the public, think this is a new phenomenon. It's new, and it has been created. There is nothing further from the truth.

Student achievement. Let's touch on that, because that's really a goal and a mark that we should look at. How are our students doing? That's what education is about, at least in my mind. What's taking place for our students? How are they doing out there with their marks and in the world? Well, I'm going to point out some issues for you. Our completion rate in 2003-2004 was 79 percent. Is that very good? I'd like to see it at 100 percent, as I'm sure every parent and every person in this room would. But the key issue here is that it's up 3 percent, 3 percentage points, from 2000-2001.

That tells me it's moving in the right direction. Those are good numbers. Our aboriginal completion rate is up as well. It's at 47 percent in 2003-2004. Again, not numbers I'm proud of. I'm stating them because I'd love them to be higher, but the key here again is that they're up 5 percent from 2000-2001. That's good news. Student achievement is up, and according to the latest international test of 15-year-olds, no other country outperformed British Columbia in math or reading, and only Finland and Japan did better in science.

Good, very good. You know what? It's a direct result of our education system and the dedication our teachers have to their students. That's what that's a result of. It's not a result of the opposition talking about this bill or our government talking about this bill. It's a result of our educators and the care and love and the dedication and commitment they have to their children. I call them children, and I probably shouldn't. I mean, someone in grade 12 is not a child. They're a young adult getting ready to go out into life.

We talked about class size and composition, and I've heard a lot of concerns. I have those concerns. I don't think anybody would stand here and say that if there's an overly large class, it wouldn't be a concern for them. We do have to look at that. We enshrine class size in legislation, and I fully support that, because I don't believe class size should be bargained at the bargaining table. It's just not the place for it. Do I think teachers should have the ability to come to the table, though, and talk about class size, about composition? Most definitely I do.

Our government has said that all along. It wasn't that we took it out of the collective agreement and put it in legislation so that teachers, parents and educators would never have the ability to look at that again. Actually, what we've done is opened up the opportunity for educators, for teachers, for parents and for government to sit down at a table…. Some people will call it a parallel process, although some will relate that to the bargaining table, so I want to be somewhat cautious. We'll call it…. We'll sit down.

We'll sit down at the learning round table that the minister spoke about today and talk about the class sizes, and….

But there is a reality, and let's not kid ourselves. We can all think about it. This is a tough bill. I don't think we're sitting down tonight with the teachers and parents to talk about class size and composition. But I certainly believe that once this bill makes its way through this Legislature, we'd better begin that process immediately, because we care, just as you care.

I'm not standing here to say that you don't care. I'll address that a few minutes into my address here, because I've heard some comments that…. Well, I'll address that later. They amuse me.

Class size and composition. Again, you're right, and everyone in this chamber is right when they say it isn't just about the number. I believe some classes can be taught with 30 students — 32 even, 33. But you know who's going to have the ability to dictate that or decide? The teacher? The composition is what we talk about. Special needs students being included in those numbers is really what we want to sit at that round table and talk about. What's the number that works? I don't think it can be a hard and fast number, because I think teachers teach in different ways. I think the teachers themselves are going to have some valuable input as to where we're going to end up with those numbers.

So I look forward to that. Our government looks forward to that. I certainly hope the opposition looks forward to it, because it's a great bill.

We made education an essential service, Mr. Speaker. I stand here and tell you I wholeheartedly supported it then, I support it now, and I will support it in the future. I just won't change my mind. I'm here, and people….

We've heard the definition of essential service quoted. I can't think of anything more essential, in my mind, than making sure our kids get an education, making sure they're in the classroom being taught. I honestly don't believe, although we're here today debating this bill, the BCTF and the teachers in British Columbia want to take job action. Are they frustrated? I think they are, justifiably so.

But the other side again — I'll address this — would have British Columbians believe it's a result…. Since 2001 when this government was elected, they're frustrated. Well, I have to tell you….

They can clap, but for the people that can look at history — and I know many of you were there through the 1990s…. You did the same thing three times, and I don't think you did it with a smile. I would think that you actually had concern when you had to bring those pieces of legislation forward. I know many of you. Some I'm starting to get to know. I won't stand here and judge you, but I can't believe anybody when they presented those pieces of legislation through the '90s was smiling and jumping for joy. They felt it was the right thing to do. That's what we are here today doing, because we think this is the right thing. We know it's the right thing for children, for the parents and for our education system, and we're going to continue doing that.

I've also heard too many times from the other side — and that's one of the reasons I'm standing here right now to speak to this bill — about how we don't care about children, about how we don't respect teachers. You know, it's bloody awful to hear that out of their mouths. It's awful.

B. Lekstrom: That's unparliamentary, Mr. Speaker? Then it's just darned right awful. How's that?

You know what? I think most of us are parents. If we aren't parents, we've been part of the education system. But to have somebody sit on the other side who doesn't know me and probably doesn't know the majority of the members over here….

To have members from the other side, Mr. Chair, point the finger over here and imply that I don't care about children, I don't care about our education system and I don't care about teachers is dead wrong. I'll never accept it, and it is…. How did I put it, Mr. Speaker, so that you would accept it? I guess I'll just say they're wrong. They know they're wrong, and they should be ashamed of themselves for saying it.

The job action that is scheduled to take place — it was announced — which everybody is waiting for tomorrow, is a decision that each and every individual teacher is going to make. The BCTF has taken a vote, and their members will do what they believe they have to do, although it's going to break the law. It's a violation of the law, and as was pointed out here earlier, we're lawmakers. It doesn't mean we agree with every law, but the sign of a good democracy is that you try and work within that system of law. If you disagree with it, you change that law within these chambers. You don't break the law on the streets of British Columbia.

I don't support their job action. Do I have the ability to respect an individual's choice as to what they're going to do? Yes, I do, and I'll let them live with the consequences. I'll let them take their decision. I believe that in their heart they believe they're doing the right thing, just as I know in my heart I'm doing the right thing by speaking to this bill, by supporting this bill and, more importantly, by looking for a future that teachers can have the ability to negotiate a contract in this province without having to be before this Legislative Assembly, which is now — for the fifth time — to have a legislated settlement imposed.

The other one is that there's a lot of blame. There's a lot of blame being pointed out here. I hear the other side talk about our leader, about how he doesn't care about education, about our children, about our teachers. I've worked with our Premier as an elected official

for a little over four years. I've known him for probably ten years. I can tell you that probably as I get to know you, I may have some of the same feelings. But I can tell you that I don't know a more passionate person about education than our Premier.

I'm not going to take a whole lot more time, because this isn't about talking about somebody is good or somebody is bad. We're talking about a bill that I think everybody has somewhat of a heavy heart having to discuss or present or vote on. I'm sure the opposition believes how they're going to vote. I know how I'm going to vote, and I believe our government certainly knows how they're going to vote on this.

I want to go back to the blame issue. It's always been, "We're blaming you, government; we're blaming you," which is a sad statement. I'm telling you, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to stand here today and put it the way it probably should have been put five years ago, eight years ago, ten years ago, two years ago. There's enough blame to be shared by all of us. There's enough blame to be shared by the NDP, who didn't fix this issue. There's enough blame to be shared by the BCTF. Yes, there's enough blame to be shared by us, our government here today.

It's interesting to hear them clap. When you talk about blame about the government, it's fine. Talk about blame on their side, and they're dead silent. Amazing. That is a sad state. I'm standing here saying that I think we can all bear a little responsibility for the position we find ourselves in here today — as legislators, as parents, as teachers. But the key issue is that we're going to fix it, I hope.

Forget what happened yesterday. Forget what happened in 1993, in 1996, in 1998, since we came to government. You know what? People say you don't want to forget. We can learn from it. But I'll tell you what. We better be here today debating this. Certainly, we have different philosophical views, but we better want to learn from it so that we can repair this system.

The key issue. The Don Wright report — I'm sure people have read that, taken the time — is a pretty in-depth report. I think there were some concerns expressed by the teachers. I've gone through it. I don't think it's a hundred percent the way I would do it if I was to write the result, but there are some good things in here.

I'm encouraged by the industrial inquiry commission that Mr. Vince Ready will head. I think he's a well-respected individual in this province. I think he has dealt with some very difficult challenges over his involvement through his years. I'm looking forward to what he comes with.

In closing, I'm going to go back again. I would hope that at the end of the day, the finger-pointing can quit. I want some strong debate. I want good philosophical debate, not personal debate. I'm going to judge not just this piece of legislation, I guess, but this entire issue. It's over 12 years old now.

I'm going to judge the success of not having to ever legislate a settlement in this chamber again on behalf of the teachers, because I'm hoping that the new system that we look towards, which is going to be brought forward, is one that can be accepted by both sides, looked at and worked in good faith on both sides so that we can put our children first and foremost again. There's no doubt in my mind — and I'll reiterate this because I've heard it far too often from the other side…. I do respect teachers. A great deal of them are good friends of mine. There is no doubt in my mind that when I go back to my constituency, we'll have some good debates.

The most important thing I'm going to tell everybody here is that we're going to remain friends, because losing friends over politics isn't the issue. Having a good debate is a healthy issue, and I encourage all of us to do that. I'm proud to be a member of this Legislative Assembly, as I'm sure you all are. We're going to get through this. I'm going to look to the future, and we're going to fix it so we don't have to be debating a bill like this again in this chamber.

Hon. M. de Jong: I rise on a point of order, and that point of order is to alert the House that the government intends to move for a continuation of the sitting beyond 6 p.m. I therefore do move that the House at its rising stand recessed for 35 minutes and continue to sit thereafter until adjournment.

M. Farnworth: I will respond to the motion by the member after Committee A has reported out.

Hon. M. de Jong: I'm obliged to the Opposition House Leader. I think Committee A is in a position to report out to the House.

Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

M. Farnworth: We will be voting against the motion. It is a sad, sad day when a government doesn't have the courage of its convictions to do the proper and democratic thing. They have said: "We want to adjourn the House until 6:35 and continue sitting." Why? What is the urgency? They have said today already that the bill that they want to pass…. They do not need to deal with the problems that they feel it needs to deal with. There are other mechanisms in place. They have admitted that. So rather than take the time to have proper, thoughtful debate, they are resorting to technicalities, to House procedural moves to be able to ram through, or attempt to ram through, a bill without reasonable considered debate.

We could adjourn at six like the rules of this House intend us to, and we could come back in a week's time and pick up debate where we left off. It would be a time for calm, cool heads to prevail, and we could do things the way we're supposed to do. Instead, we're being asked to recess for half an hour, to come back and to continue speaking on a Thursday evening and to possibly sit until many times, many hours into tomorrow. It stays Thursday in this chamber forever.

I suppose there's an upside to that, and that is that none of us will age. It will be Thursday forever. You are frozen in time right now. Oh, that's right. I forgot. I am too cynical. The government, we are told by many people, is doing this because they need a bill rammed through.

No, it is the hon. Government House Leader's birthday, and I guess he wants to stay the same age and never age. We wish him happy birthday — all of us.

M. Farnworth: The trouble, in speaking to this motion, is that we will continue to age, and birthdays will come. If this is an attempt to stop the aging process, unfortunately, it won't work. However, if it's an attempt to try and stymie debate and to make people become cynical about governments again, it has a good opportunity to do that.

You know, there were mechanisms that we could have used — section 81. Section 81 allows, in the confines or in the parameters that there is an emergency, for the House to sit extra hours and for debate to take place. That has been used in this chamber many times before over the decades, over the hundred-and-some-odd years since Confederation in 1871, and doubtless it will be again. It's used when a government says: "There is an emergency. There is an important issue that we have to deal with, and there's a standing order that allows us to do that."

But the decision isn't dictated by government fiat, by how many votes are on one side of the House or on the other. No, it rests in you, Mr. Speaker. It rests in our Speaker, whom we have confidence in. The government side makes its case as to why the debate should continue. The opposition makes its case as to why debate should or should not continue. The Speaker goes and deliberates, consults precedents here in British Columbia and in other parliaments throughout the Commonwealth and in the traditions of this House, and comes back and makes a decision. The interesting thing about that is that good Speakers, whom the House has confidence in, make their decision on that precedent and whether or not something is a true emergency and a true issue that needs the hours of the House to be extended.

That's why we are using this method — because we have a Speaker whom we have confidence in and who, if the reasons for this bill under section 81 were brought forward, would doubtless rule, though I would not mean to prejudge the Chair in any way…. There is a very distinct possibility that the Speaker could rule against the government, as was done in a previous ruling by another government who shall remain nameless, but I was a part of that government at that time. The Speaker told us: "Sorry, no. It's not an emergency, and you have to go back to the drawing board." That Speaker made a ruling, and we had to abide by it.

Here we are today, and we're not using that time-honoured section of parliamentary tradition. We are instead resorting to moving that we adjourn the House to 6:35 and that it sit thereafter on a Thursday afternoon. That's unfortunate, and it's unfortunate for a host of reasons.

It's not often that I go to written remarks for my speeches, but on this occasion I thought I would go to some written remarks about the problems with doing what we're doing this evening. I'm reminded of remarks that a member said. I'd ask some forgiveness if people see me with the glasses here, because I'm just getting used to using reading glasses, as unfortunately I can't freeze my birthday.

M. Farnworth: Very eloquent remarks, I might add, dating back to Wednesday, July 8, 1998.

M. Farnworth: Those, hon. member, are your words, not mine — in more ways than one.

M. Farnworth: Thank you, hon. member. I take that as a compliment, because with these glasses, I now do.

It's printed on page 9724. I might add, by the way, that this was in 1998. Since that time, there have been some changes, and I would say they are positive changes, in terms of the sitting days of the House. They make members' lives more ordered.

It then goes on to enunciate the circumstances under which the House can meet on other days. I'll even read that, because it points to a feature that is embodied in the standing orders. It says: "The House shall meet on Wednesday if the government has so advised the House…."

That's one of the key things — "has so advised the House." Unfortunately, that has not taken place here this evening. This place functions when that happens. Anyway, here's an important part of those words of wisdom:

Well, Standing Order 81 would allow us to do that. Unfortunately, this way of doing it makes a mockery of that. What I get from that is the only reason we are doing this motion is because the government knows the bill is not an emergency, that they're not prepared to wait for proper debate to take its course, but rather they want to ram it through and to further inflame situations that may or may not occur over the next few days.

These words that I have spoken are from my colleague the Government House Leader. They were very appropriate back then, and they are very appropriate today.

In closing, I want to say that it is unfortunate that we are taking this approach. It's a shame that we did not have the opportunity to use Standing Order 81 to truly put the case of whether this bill is of such urgency that we need to resort to extra sittings and put our confidence in our Speaker to make that judgment as tradition and parliamentary practice would call for.

With that, I will once again reiterate that this side of the House will be voting against the motion to extend the sitting until 6:35.

A. Dix: This is indeed a sad and a surprising day. You know, in the 1990s when the Government House Leader spoke those words so eloquently, as he often did in the 1990s, they were different times. There were different responsibilities on government and different responsibilities on opposition. Significant changes have been made since then to our standing orders. In a sense, we've provided and given ourselves, as the House, a fixed parliamentary calendar. There are assumptions in that. In the past, in the 1990s when the hon. Government House Leader spoke those words, opposition had a lot of control over the timing of legislation. The member for Shuswap was there as well. He'll remember it well. They always used to say that the government opened the session and that the opposition closed the session.

That's changed now because the members of this House have agreed to a fixed calendar. That calendar for this week meant that this session was to end at six o'clock today. The government has introduced legislation which is extraordinarily important for British Columbia and for members of this Legislature.

Clearly, members of this Legislature have very different views about the legislation. I heard the member for Peace River South speak towards the end of the debate. He spoke very eloquently. I disagree with him fundamentally, but he spoke very eloquently in the debate. The majority of members of this House in the regular legislative calendar have not had an opportunity to speak in this debate.

So what does the government do? They cannot claim this is an emergency because in his rhetoric outside the House, the Government House Leader has said it's not an emergency. Instead, what we have, with all the efforts that all of us have made together…. I give all the credit in the world to people on the government side who have made some of these changes, working with us over the past few weeks. What we are left with is legislation by exhaustion. This is what it's come to in week three of the House.

They want to drive legislation through, but they will not come clean with their intentions. So instead of the House calendar, the House calendar that everybody agreed to in this House…. We all agreed to a regular calendar. It has huge advantages for the government that weren't there in previous governments, weren't there in the '70s and the '80s and the '90s, but

are there now — to have certainty around sessions, to have passage of legislation, to have automatic votes. They want all of that, and they want everything else.

This is fundamental legislation for the people of British Columbia. That's why we on this side of the House are going to be opposing this effort to impose legislation by exhaustion with this piece of legislation. It is fundamental to us. We think that members of this House should be able to deal with this legislation under the rules that we together have set. The Government House Leader is trying an end run around that.

What we are saying today is that we are calling that out. We are saying that is not the way we should operate in this House. This is a change to the way we operate, and I think it's a government that wants to have its cake and eat it too. Well, that's why we on this side of the House are going to stand up and vote against legislation by exhaustion in this case.

We will also, however, be encouraging members on the government side of the House to participate fully in any debate that might follow, because I would guess — unless I'm mistaken — that members on the government side may well vote in favour of the motion. The majority? I don't know. The Government House Leader is not sure, but we'll see, and there will be a debate after that. I can tell the Government House Leader that in spite of my objection to legislation by exhaustion, I will be here as long as it takes to debate this important legislation.

I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I was here in the last four years when the government brought forward the new legislative calendar with much fanfare, I might add. The government said: "We are going to be civilized. We are going to have a schedule to follow. We will now know what we're going to do. We will now know how we will plan things, and then we'll move forward in an unprecedented way."

The government then went on to say we could have had that, long ago, before the last four years when it was put in place. Then they, of course, proceeded to blame the previous administration for not putting it in place. So we said okay. The government wanted to bring in the set legislated calendar with set hours, and we went with it. But I'll tell you this, Mr. Speaker. Many, many members in this House from the opposite side will know that since that set calendar has been brought in place, the government has time and time again overruled its own legislative schedule.

It didn't matter that there were two members of the opposition in the House at the time or that now, as it stands, there are 33 members in opposition. The government will do what they will to suit their own political agenda. That's what this motion is about. Let us be clear about that. The government says today — with some indignation, I might add — insinuating about people who may break the law…. Guess what. This government has demonstrated time and time again that when it suits them, they will change the rules by which they want to play and how the game is played — when it suits them.

They have the authority to do it so that they can stand up and say: "I'm not breaking a law, but I can do this." Why? Because in this Legislature and the composition of this Legislature, the government has the authority to use the legislative hammer to hammer democracy in the way in which they want to. So they can stand up, all high and mighty, as though somehow they didn't break the rules.

Let us be very clear. They're not breaking the rules, because they're changing the rules as they go along and making new laws as they go along. I would love to know how the Attorney General in this House, who is an ex-judge, feels about that. If every citizen out there acted like this government — changed the law and changed the rules just because it suited their agenda…. Imagine for a moment in the very debate we're engaged in right now around the teachers…. Imagine for the very moment that if teachers got to change the rules in which the game is played, how would this government feel? Would they be in a position to stand up to accuse people and point fingers at people?

You know what? I, too, heard the member for Peace River South, who spoke very eloquently I might say…. I even like the member most days. But let me say this. I disagree with him fundamentally, and I will go into all the reasons why I disagree with him fundamentally on the issue around the bill that's before us.

That's not what we're debating. But the issue is this. I would hope that the member would see the notion of hypocrisy and how this government applies that rule and changed that rule when it suits them. That's what we have before us today.

The government is sidestepping a fundamental function of the Speaker, who actually represents all of us in this House — to make a judgment on the government's action, whether or not the government's action is on the right track. That is whether or not this is an emergency motion, an emergency bill that deserves around-the-clock debate. This government took that away from the very person whom everyone in this House has confidence in — that is, the Speaker — to make that decision by using yet another trickery of rules just because it suits them.

That is the nature of this government, and this government says to British Columbians: "Oh, but please trust us. We know best." Well, I bet you that they know what is best. They know what is best when it suits their political agenda, and that's what we have seen in the last three weeks in this House.

The Premier pledges that he would do things differently, that he would be civilized. Well, how civilized is it when the public is turning on the television and sees members in this House debating this bill at 3:30 in the morning? How civilized is that? Is that democracy? Well, as my colleague from Vancouver-Kingsway has said, that is legislation by exhaustion. That's what the government is hoping for.

But I'll tell you this, Mr. Speaker. Thank goodness there are 33 of us on this side of the House. Every step of the way, every single step of the way, our members will be here to hold the government to account, even with little things like trickeries — trickeries of procedural rules so that the government can get around proceedings.

The members from the government side may not want to hear this, but they must hear it. They must hear it, and lessons must be learned. They must actually talk to their own current Minister of Labour on the words that he used years before on exactly the kinds of tactics that were used.

The government said it was wrong then. Well, how is it not wrong now? Maybe the members can think about that at around four o'clock in the morning as the debate rages on. Maybe they will have sleepless nights here in this very Legislature and reflect on the actions of government. The member from Peace River, who spoke so eloquently, waxed eloquent about how people are blaming other people and there are hurt feelings out there. Maybe one will stop and reflect and wonder why that is. Not everyone is afforded the opportunity that this government has taken for granted and uses liberally whenever it suits them to change the rules of the game, just because they can.

You know what, Mr. Speaker? It isn't democracy. That's not the way we should conduct ourselves. That's not how we should do business in this House. We should follow the very same rules that people have set up and follow those rules and honour those rules. That's what tradition of the House is about. That's what parliamentary practice is about, and that's how we show confidence with British Columbians — that they can trust in us to make these critical decisions on their behalf.

I am sad to say I'm a little bit disturbed — actually, quite disturbed — about how the government can just do this so willingly and easily. They do it like it's a walk in the park. I suppose they've walked down that path many a time. But good grief, at some point in time someone over there on the horizon may just have some leadership and some capacity to step up to the plate and say: "For once, we need to do the right thing, and for once, maybe we shouldn't just use our legislative hammer, the power that we have, just because we're in government, just because we have the numbers to do that — to overrule everything democracy depends on."

Hon. M. de Jong: Believe it or not, I am obliged to the members who have made their views clear in this debate and very much obliged to those who chose to delve back into the annals of the parliamentary journals for some wise and sage words from another age.

Actually, I must say, members have an intent to prolong the debate. I will make these observations, though. By my estimation, 25 or 26 members of the opposition have participated in a debate that technically began on Monday and certainly acquired full steam on Tuesday. Others will have to judge whether that, and the debate that follows, qualifies as having tried to ram a piece of legislation through the Legislature.

I actually take — and the government does take — very seriously the role that all members of this chamber have in presenting their views, particularly when it involves a piece of legislation as fundamentally important as this one, irrespective of what one's views — support or otherwise — are for the legislation.

Well, I may not convince my colleagues across the floor, but others will have to decide whether that four days and the debate that follows qualify as government trying to irresponsibly ram debate through. It is true that….

Hon. M. de Jong: Happily, the member from Creston's intervention has reminded me of one other point that I would otherwise have forgotten to….

Hon. M. de Jong: Let the member from Creston and I hope it is not a hair thing, hon. member.

It is this. I do actually appreciate the fact that members — some of them new members, in fact — have taken the time to study the standing orders and understand the provisions of Standing Order 81. I am still learning about the application and how some of these things happen, but I can advise the House that the invocation of Standing Order 81 would not have precluded the need for this debate. The standing orders are the standing orders. Notwithstanding the invocation of Standing Order 81, we would still be having this discussion.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member says, "Different circumstances," and perhaps that is so. Nevertheless, the government is of the view that circumstances are such, particularly in light of some of the commentary that has transpired over the last 24 hours…. There are circumstances unfolding that require this bill to be dealt with. We would like to deal with it. At the same time we would like all members to know that their participation in the debate is not only welcome but essential and to understand that there is a significant difference of opinion.

I hope the debate will continue on second reading, and we, and British Columbians who are watching, will have the benefit of seeing that exchange of views. In the end, they will judge whether a matter of this critical importance was dealt with responsibly by the government and by the chamber and whether or not the government is in any way, shape or form trying to ram legislation through. That is not our intention, and we hope the debate will continue. With that, I do move the motion.

Hon. M. de Jong: At the risk of inviting a subsequent debate, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to offer to all members that the House stand recessed until 7 p.m.

M. Karagianis: I stand here to speak in opposition to Bill 12. I must say I am very conscious of the fact that B.C. is watching us now. That's very evident to me by the number of e-mails and phone calls that are coming to me personally and going into my constituency office. I'm very conscious of the fact that the citizens of B.C. are watching us perhaps in a more critical way than ever before.

What I'd like to talk about here in response to Bill 12 is the value of teachers, because I think that is at the heart of the debate here regarding Bill 12. It's very interesting and kind of serendipitous that there was a PBS program on TV last night which talked about the value of education in America and a program that has been started in response to the poverty and the high level of illiteracy throughout the U.S., especially in communities that seem to be having the most civil unrest, that have highest levels of crime and that seem to have the highest levels of impoverished communities. Many of them are ethnic communities.

The program went on to basically lay out the quality of education as being a key to resolving poverty. I think that actually is a very applicable value for us to think about as well. It seems that everywhere I turn, I see education and the value of teachers flashing in front of me as being a really important component of what we need to do here in this House.

I'm a bit of a movie buff. Many years ago I saw a movie, and there was a quotation in it that I actually marked down and kept written on my diary for a long time. I actually used it as an inspiration. The quotation was: "My life was darkness, and then because of you, in one small corner of endless night, I saw a patch of blue." In fact, that quotation was about the inspiration of a teacher. That quotation referred to the spark that was lit in an individual by an inspiring teacher.

The Vision channel right now is actually playing an old movie that has to do with teachers and education. This movie is from 1955. For anyone who likes lovely, old, quaint movies from that era, Good Morning, Miss Dove is the story of a teacher — a rather stern teacher, a rather demanding teacher, a teacher who had very lofty goals for her students. The story is about how this teacher's life impacted every single person in the small town and inspired many of the successful members of that community — taught them strength of character, instilled work ethic in them and in fact caused the entire success of the community she lived in.

Another favourite movie of mine — maybe some of the members here might be familiar with this; perhaps the Attorney General, who I see had a little smile on his

It's a famous film called The Corn is Green, which is the story of a teacher who found a way to liberate miners in Wales. This is actually based on a true and factual inspirational story.

Many of these things stick in my memory. They are favourite things of mine that I ponder on, and they're about education. They're about teachers and how the value of teachers is so important to crafting our entire life, and how one little flame that's been lit by a teacher can change the course of our entire lives.

When I look back, I think about the teachers in my life that inspired curiosity and inspired my imagination, which I have used my entire life. Throughout the course of my life, even in new situations where I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, I could imagine, because my teachers had also inspired me to read and to have a curiosity about the world around me. I have gone on throughout my life to live an adventurous and curious life because of those teachers. In fact, some of those teachers gave me skills in my life that I didn't even know I would use.

Recently, in doing some home renovations, I explained to my husband the value of a fulcrum in lifting some heavy objects. He looked at me and said, "How would you know this?" as I'm explaining to him that he needs a longer fulcrum in order to lift a heavier load. I said, "My science teacher. Physics in grade 11." I remembered the laws of physics.

I also had a terrific art teacher who gave me inspiration in my soul and gave me an appreciation of art. That has turned out to be a very significant aspect of my character as an adult.

When I think about my children as they've grown up…. Several of my children have been inspired by exceptional teachers who took exceptional time and care with them. I have a son who has a special need, and he actually had the caring attention of a fabulous teacher in the first years of his schooling. That teacher was very instrumental in giving him the skills and the confidence to have fulfilled himself into being a really tremendous young man who now works with the special needs community. His teacher, Avril Gosling, is a bit of a legend in my family.

My next daughter went through the same teacher's hands and was equally inspired. She began to develop a confidence that was passed on to another one of her teachers, Bob Belcher, who offered my daughter an opportunity to host her first one-woman art show in grade five. Today my daughter is an exceptionally talented artist and has graduated from UVic with an art history degree. Her teacher also inspired her to write and helped publish a novel for her in the same year, in grade five. That novel was bound, and she illustrated it, and to this day we still have her published first novel. Those kinds of values that teachers inspire in our students can never, ever be belittled by legislation.

I think, as well, about the teachers in my community that have created extraordinary circumstances for the students growing up in Esquimalt. The first one that comes to mind is a teacher by the name of David Flello. David actually created what is now an extremely well-known program, which is jazz at Esquimalt High School. This is a teacher who had the vision and the commitment, in his personal time and in his personal vision of what education should be like, who created a jazz program that has become the envy of schools across this country and has become a cornerstone in the reputation of Esquimalt.

Esquimalt over the years has suffered a reputation because of its relationship to the base — a lot of people coming and going, not a very stable community. It had a bit of a down-at-the-heels reputation. But this one teacher gave our children jazz and created a jazz program that became such a drawing card that students from all over the region wanted to go to Esquimalt High School because they wanted to take jazz.

A whole generation of young people have enriched their lives with music beyond rap, heavy metal and thrash metal and have actually picked up the culture of jazz and carried it on. Many of those young people, in fact, worked on my campaign. It's always a thrill to go out and hear them. They are now professional musicians, some of them moving into the professional world — all because of one teacher's inspired, creative approach to education and the value he brought to the system. There is no way that a teacher like that can ever be rewarded by punitive legislation.

Another high school teacher, Marvin Dodds, is teaching right now at Esquimalt High. He has inspired so many students that I was actually quite amazed. My first official duty when I became MLA was to speak at the high school grad. It was a great thrill because a good percentage of the graduating class had been people who worked on my campaign, most of them in response to high tuition fees and the $6 wage. It was a great gift that we all shared with one another, which enlightened and broadened our world during the campaign.

It was a great thrill to speak at the graduation ceremony, and I was particularly struck by one thing that stood out among all of the graduation comments. A large percentage of that class gave thanks to Mr. Dodds for getting there. This was a teacher who had dedicated above and beyond the call of duty. This is a man who had inspired these students by lunch-hour sessions where they discussed political science. He got them involved in politics. He got them thinking and feeling and becoming responsible members of society. That's a pretty devoted teacher. That teacher does not need to be rewarded with punitive legislation for all of the years of devotion he's had.

I received a call here 24 hours ago from my oldest daughter. She said: "Mom, I'm glad you're going to be there debating this bill, because your oldest grandson is in a class of 33, and he's having some problems. So you get in there and fight for Hunter and for all the kids who are in classes that are too full, that are burning teachers out, that are not allowing teachers to give them the education they want."

These are teachers, many of them like the ones I've just mentioned, who go above and beyond the call of duty to inspire and to devote a great passion to what they do as teachers.

I have an e-mail here that came to me today, actually, from one of my local PAC presidents. I'd like to read it out because I think she kinds of tells the story from a parent's point of view. This is the PAC president at Lampson School.

I think that's pretty tragic for a parent to have to state about the school system right now. Interestingly enough, history has shown us…. The great wisdom of history has, from the beginning of time, talked about the value of education. Diogenes said that the foundation of every state is the education of its youth. Aristotle said that all who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.

So standing here discussing Bill 12, it defies logic that all of this wisdom about how the youth is, in fact, the very key, cornerstone and asset — the prime asset that we as government need to focus on. Yet we have legislation that has cast our children into unhealthy educational environments where teachers are forced beyond their capacity and are not valued.

I would say at this time that there has never been a time when education is more important than it is right now. An article ran here in the Vancouver Sun yesterday, in fact, October 5. This is Heather Reisman, who is the CEO of Indigo Books. I'll just read a couple of things that she says here, because I think they're very pertinent.

Isn't it interesting that this sentiment echoes very much the philosophy that this government has put forward about their goals for the children of this province? The reality is that global technologies are changing the world in which we live. Ten and 15 years ago, no one would have imagined that information technology would be the huge economic driver that it is. In fact, a lot of us, instructing our children to go into school, still really relied on the old idea: be a doctor; be a lawyer; get a profession. Did we know to talk our children into: "Hey, get computer literate. Start an IT company"?

In fact, it will be the green technology of tomorrow, and it will develop so fast that you will need to create young people who are able to thrive and think on their feet and adapt to new industries like that. I know for a fact that among the members in the House, there are probably still a few Luddites that don't feel completely comfortable, maybe, with their computer, definitely with their BlackBerry. I've heard lots of that.

Yet we have young kids that need to be prepared to go well beyond that — to take us into the 21st century, not us taking them. In fact, the education that we provide — we as government, we as legislators — to our young people is so incredibly important that it humbles me to think of the responsibility we have in our hands.

Listen. Other countries are preparing. They're way ahead of us on this stuff. They're not sitting and discussing punitive and draconian legislation about class size. They are in fact swinging through the world, picking out the very best of the education system, taking it in, using it up and taking it back to their countries so that they can become the new economies, the new powers of the world of the future. Our kids need to have the best opportunities — not crowded classrooms, not lack of assistance, not undervalued teachers. It seems to me to be so logical that in some ways it seems absurd to be standing here speaking the obvious.

I read recently a report from Ontario where universities are now crying out about the fact that so many students are coming to them semi-literate. Semi-literate — the year is 2005. Why is this happening? Because, in fact, we are not putting all of our resources into those precious minds on the way up. Some of them are coming through the system, sitting on the sidelines, sitting in the back of the classroom, having to go through the system, be passed through the system, never quite able to function as highly as they should, while teachers break their hearts at their inability to turn out a brilliant child from each and every one of the students that comes through their hands.

Plato said that the direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life. I think that's a very useful piece of wisdom that's just as relevant

Listen. I agree with the Liberals — you know, their great golden goal here or whatever it's called. The first one: make B.C. the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent. That's a pretty big statement, and I agree wholeheartedly with them. That's why it's even more astounding that government is proceeding to this goal in the way that they are. Is this hypocrisy? Is that what this is? Is this the height of hypocrisy, or is this a government so disconnected from the goal that they, in fact, don't know how to get there?

The government says we want to go there — right? We want the best-educated young people in the world, on the continent. But everything they have done in the past four years has gone completely against that. They have reduced resources. They have overcrowded classrooms. They have, through a bit of a sham game, turned responsibility over to school districts who have not been given enough money. Frankly, I think it's shameful that we would squander our children's future in this way.

We are charged with caring for the assets of this province, and lots of discussion goes on in this chamber about oil and gas, forestry and fish, tourism and all the great assets that produce money. But we're missing the boat. Our foremost asset is our children. Their education and their opportunities are, in fact, our future.

Oil and gas — we all know that at some point that is going to change. Our futures there are going to change. Forestry is changing. Fisheries are changing. All of these things are changing, and yet our best and biggest asset is here, stable, requiring only sensible legislation, sensible judgment and sensible resources to the education system to keep it there for the rest of our lives — in fact, to provide for our lives.

All of us are going to be retired and living off what our next generation, which we're producing, puts into the system. That will in fact fund our pensions, our old age security, our care, our health care — all of those things that look after us.

All of that will be on the backs of the next generation. In fact, as we continue to diminish the quality of education and diminish its value, we're turning ourselves over. The fate of our future is being toyed with by our own lack of vision and lack of commitment to those resources. This government's preoccupation with privatization, with selling off public assets, seems to have clouded and overshadowed our real responsibility here, and that's to care for our citizens and to care for those resources.

John F. Kennedy was killed the year I was 13 — November 22, 1963. I remember it very, very clearly. Despite the stories that came out afterwards, he was an individual who inspired more than a generation of people, and he knew the value of education. JFK said: "Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength to us as a nation." It was a long time ago, over 40 years ago, that he said that. Yet you know what? It's a very relevant and truthful thing he said.

I spoke the other day in question period about a teacher who had called me at quarter after seven in the morning to talk about her class of 47 students, to talk about the fact that she feels the system has let her down and let her children down. She's a very dedicated teacher who has poured her life and soul and heart into teaching children and is so frustrated with trying to get a grip on a large class like that — impart any kind of wisdom, inspire anything in these children, light those sparks, keep those little fires lit so that they can ignite into creative and productive human beings — that she's ready to give up on the system.

She said many of her friends are ready to give up on the system because they feel the system has given up on them. You know what, my friends? That is our responsibility in this House. Because of the way we have treated the education system and the kind of legislative decisions that are being made right now with Bill 12, we are creating this undervalued situation.

In all of the arguments that have taken place here and in the debate over the last number of days, we talk about dollars. We talk about large amounts of money, dollars cut from the system, dollars replaced into the system. We'll debate back and forth. Was it enough? Was it too much? Have we done better than the previous government? In fact, all those big numbers are really meaningless out there to the children who are sitting in crowded classrooms.

They could care less if it's $150 million or $130 million or a billion dollars. What they know is that their classroom is crowded, that their teacher cannot get to them and that the system is letting them down. I think the primary things here that I am getting from all of the correspondence that's coming to me from families in my riding and families all over British Columbia is that they feel government has not delivered on what they promised.

I go back to these lofty goals that government has laid out for themselves and reminds us constantly of. I look at all of them, and you know, they're real big shiny words — all of them. They're really excellent goals. It's like Mom's apple pie. I don't think anybody will disagree with them. I've sat around municipal councils long enough to know that you create strategic plans and create vision statements, and you spend a lot of time doing that. I'm betting the government spent a lot of time coming up with these lofty goals — goals that all British Columbians read over the past number of months and said: "Wow. Yes, that's exactly the kind of province we want to create for ourselves."

Yet so many of the things that have occurred over the past four years, so many of the things that have occurred over the past few weeks, and in fact the very

nature of this bill, defy everything that's written in here. I guess I have to say: how do I look my constituents in the eye? How do any of us go home and look our constituents in the eye and say: "Yeah, we're doing these great and wonderful things here in the Legislature"?

Gosh, this is actually only my 12th day here, and already my sense of shame over what is happening to the education system here before my very eyes, right here in my hands…. It saddens me. I waited a lot of years to get here, to represent the children and parents and families in my community that work very hard every day of their lives to contribute to this economy. Some of them struggle to do that, but every single one of them wants the same thing for their kids that I wanted for my kids and that most of you want for your kids.

Yet if we are truly going to meet these lofty goals, then we really do need to rethink the logic and the common sense behind how we are doing it, because in fact what we're doing here makes no sense at all. We have thousands of teachers right now watching out there, listening to us, weighing up what both sides of the House are doing and saying, and our commitment to them. They worked very hard to keep up the level of education in this province despite cutbacks, despite changing attitudes about them, despite the rhetoric and the arguments that go on. There are schools being shut down. Their entire quality of volunteerism is coming under criticism. Frankly, shame on all of us. They deserve much better.

G. Robertson: I rise to debate the second reading of Bill 12. Some of my colleagues have pointed out the irony of the name of this bill, Teachers' Collective Agreement Act, and the fact that none of those four words apply in any respect to teachers.

I want to start tonight by thanking all of the teachers that got me here — all of my teachers through my youth, through my formative years, who inspired me, who motivated me, who raised me up good. I owe them a huge, huge gratitude, and I'm thankful to be standing here today on their behalf as well.

I want to thank all the teachers in my community — teachers who supported me, who helped me to be elected to this honourable office. I owe them my great thanks. I appreciate all the help that they've been, and I appreciate all the work that they do in my community.

My community has seven elementary schools with teachers at General Wolfe, Emily Carr, Edith Cavell, Simon Fraser, L'Ecole Bilingue and False Creek Elementary. These are outstanding schools in the city of Vancouver that really set the bar very high in this province, and indeed around this world, for what kind of education we want for our kids.

Those teachers make it happen there, and my heart goes out to them for the action that they're taking — really against their own will. I support so much of what they do for my children and my neighbours' children all around our community. My thanks to them.

In the spirit of that thanks and at the risk of offending the authorities here, I brought an apple in here — a symbol of my thanks to the teachers of this province, the teachers who raised me. I'm not going to eat this apple. Don't worry. It's a fresh….

G. Robertson: It's an apple grown by Martin Rothe and his family in B.C., on an organic farm — a symbol of my appreciation and thanks.

I want to talk for a second about what the government, on this bill, deems the explanatory note. The explanatory note reads: "This bill settles the dispute" — and I'll come back to this word — "between the British Columbia Teachers Federation and the British Columbia Public School Employers Association and provides for the constitution of a collective agreement between the parties."

Well, by my interpretation, there is no settling going on here. We have the opposite of settling right now. I come from the juice business most recently, where we use the apples of our teachers' eyes, and we do anything but settle. We blend them up, and everything goes crazy. Settling is when you let everything mellow out; cooler heads can prevail. This isn't about settling.

What we're going to see around this province tomorrow is not about settling. I take great issue with the choice of words — not only the name of this act but the explanatory note and how this government has chosen, ironically, to use words that don't mean anything, to use words that in fact mean the opposite of what their actions are. My colleague the member for Esquimalt-Metchosin spoke aptly, I think, about the use of words and the misuse of words in the five great goals of the government of this province and how far off the mark they really are.

This bill, the explanatory note for this bill and all the goals that it's supposed to feed into are wrongheaded. They're the wrong words. I fundamentally disagree with that.

This is no settlement. Let's be clear about it. This is an impasse. The Liberal government is the architect of this impasse. Blame the teachers all they like, but the blame is clear, Madam Speaker. With the changes to the School Act in 2002 and the imposition of a contract that nobody wanted then, this government created this impasse.

This government took the single most important issues away from teachers by taking them off the bargaining table. They took class size and composition away from teachers. They took teachers ratios away from teachers. Teachers have been fighting to win these things to protect our kids in the classroom, fighting for the quality of our kids' education. Countless studies prove that class size matters to learning outcomes. I assume this is why the Liberal government thought it was important enough to put this in the School Act, this notion of class size. But even the Wright report says the process was careless.

They put class size in the School Act, but they made no provision to make sure that the guidelines were followed. For some grades of school there are no class sizes. Talk to the school boards around this province about whether class sizes can be maintained under the average dictated. In this province we have classes with four special needs students, 20 ESL students, and no extra help because the government cut funding for educational assistance.

This proposed legislation, Bill 12, is uncalled for and has now inflamed the situation. The government has no intention of settling this dispute. Teachers have been willing to bargain all along. They met with the shell employer, council, set up by this government 35 times — 35 times showed up in good faith. They wrote to BCPSEA after the fact-finder's report came down, saying they were still willing to meet.

They have been trying since May to meet with the Premier, who incidentally broke his promise to meet with teachers and resolve this matter. Apparently the kids, the parents and the teachers of this province aren't important enough for the Premier to meet with.

The teachers were saying until the last minute that they were willing to discuss class sizes for our kids with either the employer — the Public School Employers Association, which really has no power…. The fact-finder and Don Wright say that it has no money the government doesn't give to them; in effect, it's a powerless body. They were willing to discuss these things with the government. It is the government who is not playing ball here.

This is the government that, despite its claims of a bright golden decade…. None of that gold is destined for the people who raise our kids every day. This government announces $150 million for schools at every opportunity they can, after they close more than 100 schools. Where's the math there? This government has cut school funding back so much that districts like Vancouver, where I live, are forced to raise $680,000 from parent fundraising. Some school districts are unable to raise money from parent fundraising, and those school districts pay the price. Those kids pay the price.

There are all kinds of solutions. I want to move to solutions for a minute, Madam Speaker, for this government's impasse. Mr. Connolly's report points to solutions. Meet with teachers; start with that. Involve other stakeholders. For all the rhetoric, we have not heard anything about parents. Have parents been involved in this? No. Actually allow negotiations — Mr. Connolly again — instead of panicking at the first sign of trouble and intervening. Actually allow negotiations.

This government has a foul history of intervening and not allowing negotiation to take place. They are the contract-rippers. These are legislators, and they take that a little too seriously. They legislate before talking. This government has interfered with the rights of thousands of British Columbians trying to bargain collective agreements, to the extent that countless local, national and international labour organizations have condemned this government for its blatant disregard for fair and honest collective bargaining.

Is this government proud of its record? Is it proud of the black mark on B.C. internationally for its disregard for fair collective bargaining? I certainly hope not.

The hon. member opposite has suggested by this legislation that this bill is the only option to fix the mess the government has made of negotiations. "Here's the solution. This will settle it." The government has other options. Let's be real here.

Basically, the government has three options in negotiating with its public educators. First — don't jump too quickly on this — they can take an adversarial approach by instructing the BCPSEA, the British Columbia Public School Employers Association, to demand teacher concessions at the bargaining table. I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet. They have taken this approach, tying the employer's hands with a narrow and unreasonable bargaining mandate that has left no room for constructive negotiation or compromise.

The second option here is that they can take a legislative approach by imposing compensation and working conditions unilaterally through legislation. We've seen this before. Several days ago the government chose to take this approach by proposing Bill 12 and arguing that it has no other choice.

But the government does have another choice. There is a third way. They can take a cooperative approach to the labour relations process. What a notion — cooperation. They can operate openly and supportively, meeting with the B.C. Teachers Federation representatives directly, establishing the extent of the problems and challenges facing our education system, and jointly attempting to resolve those problems and overcome those challenges. We can all be grownups here.

This type of constructive, cooperative approach has been taken by New Democratic governments in B.C. It has been used in other provinces such as Ontario. The current Liberal government has the option to take this approach. This government has chosen to be confrontational. It has chosen to work against teachers instead of working with them. It has chosen to work against parents and against children instead of working with them. This government is not creative and supportive enough to use the process properly and negotiate.

I want to just ask a rhetorical question here. Why was there no progress at the bargaining table to date? Teachers bargain with BCPSEA — the bargaining agent for the school districts in B.C., the lone bargaining agent. The government controls the mandate that BCPSEA operates under very tightly. BCPSEA has made it clear that they do not have the resources or the mandate to address the issues that are paramount to teachers: learning conditions and a salary increase. The government and BCPSEA have stated that teachers must accept the net zero mandate and the fact that they

I want to talk about this net zero mandate, because I think it flies in the face…. Nothing is lost — the detail is not lost — on the people of this province when you say to hundreds of thousands of British Columbians: "That's what you get: zero-zero-zero."

"Oh, and over here, fine corporations doing business in British Columbia: you get a 12 percent increase that you weren't bargaining for. We're giving it to you anyway. You guys, zero- zero-zero."

Corporations — this was last week — get a 12 percent gain this year, $143 million a year now, and everyone else in B.C. gets zero-zero-and-zero.

The government has told teachers to bargain at the table with BCPSEA but has laid out a mandate that dooms this bargaining to failure. The government has said that it cannot interfere in bargaining between BCPSEA and the BCTF, yet it has repeatedly run interference in the bargaining, in public and in the press, saying that a deal can't get done.

Well, again I come to how the situation gets resolved. I talked about the options. It's all about the government taking the opportunity to sit down with the teachers directly and come up with a workable process — not force them back to work under the same conditions that were unacceptable and hope for the best in the months ahead, but sit down now and work it out. This has been the teachers' request of government all along, and it remains so. Parent and public support is solidly behind the teachers' goal to achieve a negotiated resolution. I've been hearing this for days. That's a solution that meets our students' needs and that provides teachers with a salary increase.

Four years of legislation aimed at teachers and the public education system has only resulted in more instability in the education system, worsening conditions in schools and a negative climate in school districts. It's time for the government to problem-solve, not to legislate more problems.

Let's be really clear here with some facts and some numbers about what this government has done to education over these four years. This Liberal government reduced the number of teachers by 7.7 percent. Enrolment declined by only 3 percent. That's a lot more teachers gone than students. It laments the decline in the number of special education teachers — 17.5 percent of special ed teachers gone. Teacher-librarians. As many of my colleagues have pointed out, 23.4 percent of the teacher-librarians were cut. English-as-a-second-language teachers — one in five gone. It maintains that the closure of 113 schools was necessary and warranted.

Enough of the numbers, though the numbers do speak the truth. I'm standing up here for teachers. Their passion and inspiration are really what sustains the system and what makes it exceptional. When you disrespect and demoralize the teachers, you lose those people. They take their passion and their talents elsewhere, and they pull the heart out of the system. The impact of the ads that this government ran on Monday was like a body blow to the teachers of this province. Everyone opening the paper, seeing those ads with partisan rhetoric, did the math — it wasn't complicated — and figured out that those ads were written and placed before the fact-finder even came back on Friday last. When you combine the deterioration of resources and the passion, when you demoralize teachers in this way, you doom our education system.

This government says they want to ensure that kids are in the classrooms. What kind of classrooms are you talking about? What kind of classrooms result from demoralized teachers who have had enough? I'm a parent. I have three kids. Do I want my kids to go into a classroom and endure whatever they face there, from whoever ends up showing up to do the work of the teachers? That's not right. That's not investing in our kids. That's not investing in our future. That's not being the most well-educated and literate jurisdiction on the continent. If you really want to put kids first, deal with class composition and class sizes first. If you really want to put kids first…

G. Robertson: …Madam Speaker, make the changes that parents and teachers have been calling for, for years on class composition. But deal with pay equity. Make sure the teachers are paid commensurate with their peers in other provinces. This has to be addressed. It's not rocket science. Pay equity for teachers in this country needs to be achieved here, or the teachers will go elsewhere — where they're wanted, where they're needed, where they're respected, where they're paid well.

For teachers to put their spark, to put their passion, to put their commitment into our kids…. That's what makes our schools what they are today. When you disrespect and demoralize these teachers, you put out the spark. You snuff it. Madam Speaker, you tear the heart and soul right out of our schools.

I want to just read a little note here from the Vancouver school board. The school trustees issued a press release several days ago, and probably a lot of people haven't seen it. The media wasn't as eager to pick it up as they should have been. I want to pass this along so that everyone knows that school trustees, who in years past have negotiated with teachers more directly, certainly negotiate with a lot of the other employees in the school district — successfully, I might add.

Allan Wong notes that settlements have been imposed on teachers for more than ten years. He says: "It's time for that to stop and for teachers to have the right to reach a freely negotiated collective agreement with the employer bargaining agent."

The Vancouver school board has worked tirelessly to try and make the situation better in Vancouver in the schools that my children attend, in the schools in the community that I represent. They deserve full kudos and praise for the work that they've done. They're at the breaking point. When you have school trustees at the breaking point, when you have the administrations, when you have the teachers, when you have the parents all at the breaking point, maybe the approach is wrong. Maybe it's time to rethink the approach. Maybe it's time not to legislate Bill 12 and to take a more cooperative approach.

I'd like to read from a teacher who wrote some very moving words to me yesterday, and this is a teacher named Natalie Pritchard. She says:

What a question. I wonder if the government has an answer to that question. How are they attracting young talent to our schools? How are they attracting the people who will teach the children of this province, who will build the economy of our future, who will build the communities of our future? How is this accomplished with this legislation? It's not, simply stated.

I'll read from another teacher. This is a teacher I know well, because he's my brother — Patrick Robertson. He teaches in the riding of the member for West Vancouver–Garibaldi. He teaches at Westcot Elementary. Patrick says about teachers in West Vancouver:

The amount of communication that I've had from parents in my community, from teachers in my community, from teachers around the province — who are very, very disappointed in this government and the actions it's taking, legislating the teachers back to work — is unprecedented — the phone calls, the e-mails, the letters. Morale is at an all-time low, and the times are tough.

I don't see in the faces of the government benches across from me a whole lot of concern for the teachers and the parents and the kids of B.C. and what they're going to go through starting tomorrow morning. I don't see a whole lot of concern. I don't see them standing up to speak to this bill and saying: "You know, maybe this isn't the right direction. Maybe this isn't what we should be doing. Maybe we should be valuing the teachers and the parents and the students of this province. Maybe we should be building the most-educated and literate jurisdiction in North America. Didn't we say that's what we were going to do? Isn't that what we're committed to? Isn't that our vision?"

Back your vision up with actions. It's not difficult. These actions are actually very straightforward, and they involve clear communication, cooperation and a willingness to find solutions.

I beseech this government to reconsider the legislation that they're putting forward, to reconsider the impact that it's going to have — in fact, that it's already had — in destabilizing our educational system and destabilizing the trust right through the system and the impact that it's going to have around this province, starting tomorrow morning and running in perpetuity until this is dealt with, until there is a spirit of respect and cooperation, until there is a willingness to work together to find the solutions.

In closing, I want to harken back to my days in school in North Vancouver, where I graduated from high school, and the teachers there who I know treasured every moment of their hours spent with students, with me in the classroom, with me on the rugby field, with me on the stage where the band rehearsed and played. A lot of those things have been taken away. A lot of those things don't exist anymore. The support for music, in particular, and for the arts in those schools is a fraction of what it was when I was so fortunate to have that support. The teachers were so fortunate to have that support entrusted to them by the government of this province.

Again, this is about trust. This is about valuing. This is about valuing our future, valuing our kids, valuing the people that raise and take care of our kids. Invest in these teachers; invest in our kids.

S. Hammell: I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to rise to speak to this bill, because public educa-

tion is a fundamental service that the provincial level of government delivers on behalf of citizens of this province. When the separation of powers was discussed among the architects of our country, they decided that the province was the best vehicle to effectively deliver education to our children. Therefore, in the context of this debate, it is instructive to look back at the history of the public education system in our province. So in my remarks I will draw directly and often to a Royal British Columbia Museum publication called the British Columbia Education History Project of 1993.

When Vancouver Island was declared a colony in 1849, James Douglas, the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, invited the Reverend Robert Staines, a Church of England minister, to become both the company chaplain and the schoolmaster to the children of the company officers. Shortly after his arrival, the Oblate mission delegated Father Honoré Timothy Lempfrit to teach the children of Roman Catholic parents.

As settlers arrived, Douglas supported other schools, most of which charged fees. Girls could be sent to a school for young ladies, but if parents could not afford it, girls stayed home. So the first schools were delivered by the religious institutions that were active and established in the colony.

Few of the textbooks from that time have survived, as the books were made out of cheap materials, and other things simply wore out. As we all know, the schools were sparsely furnished, and education supplies were considered a luxury in an economy with little cash. Things were handed down from parent to children and to younger children. The teachers at the colonial school in Nanaimo noted several times in the register that a student was not attending school because his or her parents could not afford to purchase the reader.

Now in our schools in some cases, students do hand down textbooks from student to student, and in some of our schools now, we don't even have enough textbooks for the students in a classroom at the school. We also have situations, and it has been mentioned in the House before, where students cannot attend a class because they cannot afford the extra costs the parents are expected to cover so that the child can take the class.

But I do digress. I'll go back just a bit to the history. In 1858 new settlers poured in, and the private and Methodist churches set up schools in competition with the Church of England and the Catholic school systems. It is possible that the competition for students in the fledgling city of Victoria contributed to a willingness to adopt new subjects and set high standards. In a letter in 1859, Bishop Demers says the parents of the children want to learn music: "Can we deny them this request? We must be up to date, and we must follow the trends."

By the mid-1860s, there was strong support for free common schools. The argument was led by the editors of the two leading newspapers on Vancouver Island and in New Westminster. Both men advocated free, public, non-sectarian education based on the principle of opportunity — of equality of opportunity — and both gained public support for their positions.

When the Common School Act became law on Vancouver Island, Amor de Cosmos, one of our Premiers — he became our Premier and was the editor of the Colonist — wrote: "We are not deposed to cavil at the imperfections of the bill so long as the two great principles, free schools and a non-sectarian system of education, are enunciated." And so came our public school system.

However, there was a glitch in the meantime, because Governor Seymour refused to support the public schools and withheld funding. At that time many schools closed, and they closed up to 1869, when another bill, the Common School Ordinance, was brought forward. The public schools again flourished.

In 1872 the Public School Act provided for education from the general revenues of the province and allowed the government to appoint a board of education and a superintendent. The object of the act was "to give every child in the province such knowledge as will fit him to become a useful and intelligent citizen in years after."

I labour through this just to make clear that our education system has grown over time from a commitment of the leadership of this province to provide a free, universal public education system, because they felt strongly that this was the best system for the citizens of our province.

They knew they had to "give every child in the province such knowledge as will fit him to become a useful and intelligent citizen in the years after."

Over time the curriculum changed and grew. The teachers grew stronger in number, and eventually the school districts organized so that we had what we have now: a universal, free education system.

Now that system is centralized yet localized, with school districts disbursing the money given to them by the provincial government. That is actually a fairly recent phenomenon, because in the '80s the power to impose taxes by school districts was removed. The funding then moved to the provincial government.

Regardless of that, what the past leaders of our province have clearly understood is that a quality, universal public education was one of the primary responsibilities of the provincial government. They understood that they needed to give that child the knowledge that will fit him to become a useful and intelligent citizen in years after. That's because a strong, vibrant democracy demands a quality, public education system.

One of the major responsibilities we have as an electorate and as citizens of our country is that we have to choose the government that serves us. To be intelligent and to make good choices, we need to have an educated population. A democracy allows us that freedom. It allows us the freedom to choose, and we choose who govern us from our neighbours, our friends and our families. We must choose wisely to

ensure that our country is governed well. Peace, order and good government are what our country is based on. It requires an educated population.

But a strong economy also demands a quality, universal public education system. We cannot nor should we rely on importing our professionals, entrepreneurs and tradespersons from other industrialized countries or from developing countries. Our children need to be educated so that they can compete for the jobs in the future, and those jobs are becoming increasingly demanding, with over 50 percent of those jobs requiring some post-secondary education.

A strong economy also needs to replace the people that are leaving. We in this country or in this province have a wonderful environment, but to be a strong economy in the future, we also need that strong, capable workforce. We all know there is a demographic bulge leaving the workforce. This bulge is positioned to leave in the next few years, and we need to replace ourselves with well-educated and literate young people who are prepared to support this bulge through a productive work ethic.

All of us need a strong education system that is developing that strong student who is prepared to step out into the workforce. Who have we asked to be the guardians of this education system? We have teachers that we have entrusted with the task of delivering these citizens in our future. We expect them to teach the basics and more.

I can go back into history and show you, as we added and added more and more tasks and expected our teachers to take on each task we asked them…. Not only that, we expect our teachers to have their students meet or exceed every single benchmark we put in front of them. To boot, we expect our teachers to volunteer their time for extracurricular activities.

We, as parents of these children, want the best for our children, and we know that good teachers will deliver the best. We want them to teach the skills to our children so that our children will be successful in life. We want our children to be the very best that they can be and realize their full potential. We want our teachers to help deliver.

Let me describe to you what those teachers are facing every day of the week, hon. Speaker. I have a sister that's a teacher. I have a mother that was a teacher. I have a sister-in-law that is a teacher. Let me talk to you about some of the situations that teachers in general find themselves in. There is a grades one-two classroom in Surrey. They have eight students in grade one and 12 students in grade two. In grade two, one of those children is reading a novel. They are in grade two, and they can read. Another one of those children cannot read at all and is extremely dependent on the teacher. That is just in the grade two classroom.

In the grade one classroom, they have a child who needs a care worker because that child has social behaviour that needs assistance. Also in that classroom is a child who needs a counsellor, who had counselling last year but is currently not getting counselling because there is none at the school. One child is developmentally delayed, and two children have ESL. I am talking about 20 kids in a classroom, and seven of them have some very special needs that need some kind of assistance and support. There is also a child in the classroom who's lost a parent and is very needy as a consequence — needs a lot of attention.

Another classroom that I can describe has 28 students. One of those students is epileptic. Another has Asperger's, which is a form of autism. That child is aware of his condition and is actually able to articulate the fact that he cannot control his anger at times but is aware that that's a problem. There is another child that is ADHD, gifted. That is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There is another child that is just ADD, which is attention deficit disorder. There is a learning disabled child who was born with a cocaine addiction and has low coping skills.

In this same classroom there is a child who is a musical prodigy, gifted and very bright, not necessarily someone that needs particular special support but who certainly needs a teacher that has enough time to meet the individual needs of that child. There's another child in this classroom who is organizationally challenged, who is very gifted in art but who has great difficulty keeping generally organized and has trouble with classroom routines.

There's another child with hearing problems and another child who possibly has an eating disorder. Then there are two ESL students. All of these children are in one classroom of 28.

Now, there is an issue with our teachers over the composition of classrooms. You cannot have a split grade with eight to ten particular children that need special attention. You cannot ask teachers to do that; it is over the top. They cannot do it. You must deal with class size. If a system is going to be created that meets the needs of our children, it has to hold at its core class size.

You cannot mainstream the children of this province, which everyone has agreed we should do…. We do not believe in a system that segregates and ghettoizes or isolates the children of this province. We are all in this together. Our classrooms have every single one of us — every shape, different size, every character you can believe — in our classrooms. We must give the teachers the support they need to deliver education effectively to these children, and you cannot do it with large class sizes.

I think that every single one of our children in our province is special. There is not one of them that doesn't have individual differences that we as legislators and the educators in our classroom…. There is not one of them that doesn't need special attention. They need individual attention, but they cannot get individual attention when you start having class sizes that start moving up into the 28s, the 30s, the 33s, the 35s, the 36s. It is not good enough for us here in this House to abdicate our responsibility and say: "We don't have

any responsibility for what the class size is in the classroom. We give that over to someone else."

Class sizes are our responsibility. If we are going to have small class sizes to meet the individual needs of the children in this province, we have to make sure that they are funded, and the funding comes from the provincial government. This chamber took away the right of school boards to tax the taxpayers in their school districts. We took it away — we in this chamber — and therefore we in this chamber are responsible for funding the education system.

If we looked into a perfect classroom, we would see a teacher who is able to cope with the individual differences of the children within his or her classroom. I did spend 15 — I think it was around 15 — years of my life in a classroom. I can tell you that one of the most critical factors in a classroom is that there are bumps. As a teacher, you are never away from the needs of these students — the voices, the touching and the need for them to have your attention to meet their needs.

Teachers do a very, very special job that many of us could not and would not do for a long, long period of time. If they are going to develop those citizens that we agree we all need, we have to give them the resources to do their job and to do it well.

Another area that I just find extremely distressing when we talk about the school system…. To be quite frank, it distresses me that one of the great goals is to be the best-educated and the most literate society, and we have the system in our schools where we have libraries that are closed up to 50 percent of the time. When I taught, we had a library that was available to our students all the time. You could send your child down to the library to get books. They could be sent down to the library to do a novel study. They could be sent to the library to be taught. They could borrow books constantly.

Hon. Speaker, our libraries are black. The lights aren't on. Half the time the libraries are closed. They are closed. If we genuinely want to — and I think we do; I think every person in this House wants to — ensure that our children are the best that they can be, we have to have librarians.

You know, I've always said to students that if they want to read well, they've got to practise. It's no different than going out and playing soccer or baseball, or any other skill. Once you've learned the basics, you've got to get in there and practise. Therefore, you need to have books. If you want a literate society, you have to have the students surrounded by and able to get books whenever they can. To close our libraries, to reduce our librarians is unacceptable. If we want a system that serves our kids, we fix it.

To kind of try to close this off, I want to touch on or think about it from the point of view of the teachers. I understand that it's easy to blame, and it's easy to point the finger and say who's at fault or to blame out or to do whatever we do when we don't want to assume some kind of responsibility. But the ball is in the government's court. The government has the power to come to some kind of resolution of this dispute. This ball has been over in that court for five years. It's the responsibility of the government to come to some kind of resolution with the teachers.

You know what? If we were in the private sector, you don't get to bring a bill in and bang, you got a settlement. The only place you can do that is in the public sector. I just don't think it's on. It's not good enough. We can resolve confrontation with skill and persistence.

I could not leave this without saying that I was around in the '90s. What I know is that teachers made a sacrifice to get smaller class sizes. Do you know what? I talk to my sister, and what can I say? In the '90s she made the choice that they would go with class sizes rather than a high or a strong wage increase. In fact, I think they took zero-zero-and-zero. The trade-off, the quid pro quo, was that they got smaller class sizes. That's how strongly teachers believe in smaller class sizes. They know the benefit.

In 2005 they are in a lose-lose. They were stripped of their ability to bargain class size. They got reduced support for the class sizes as they went up, and they didn't get a wage increase. I don't think that's quite fair. I think they came to the table. They were willing to make a sacrifice on behalf of the students of our schools — our future citizens — and that sacrifice was not respected.

Now we're at 2005, and we're saying in this House: "Go bargain." I've heard time and time again that they've been to the bargaining table 35 times, but I'm not quite sure what they can bargain. They cannot bargain working conditions. I mean, whoever heard that you cannot bargain working conditions? Only in the public sector. Nowhere else would you be able to say to a bargaining unit: "I'm sorry, you can't. That's off the table." Only when you have the hammer of bringing in a bill. It's easy. Bang — there's a bill.

You can't bargain your working conditions. Fair enough; you can't bargain working conditions. You know what else you can't bargain? You can't bargain your wages. Now, we have 35 meetings. I don't know what they talked about. Maybe they kept asking: can we bargain working conditions? No. Can we bargain wages? No. I'm not exactly sure what they could have bargained.

As I think about the situation, it seems to me the bottom line here is that in all of this, we make choices. A democracy requires that we do make choices, and what the government side has chosen to do is give the corporations a tax break. What we've decided to do on this side of the House is say that you need to revisit…. You need to go back to the table with the teachers of our province, because they are the ones who have the future in their hands. They are the ones that look after our children. They are the ones that teach our children, and they are the ones that we are deeply indebted to as we look forward to our future.

I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to speak to this bill. But I have to say that I'm deeply disappointed

that we're not in this House talking with our teachers and getting back to the bargaining table to come up with an agreement that we can all live with.

I know it's tough. Negotiations are never easy. There's all kinds of history. But the teachers of our province deserve our respect, and they deserve to hear that we value what they do. They deserve to hear us say that we're there and willing to negotiate with you.

C. Trevena: I rise to speak against Bill 12, which is now, as my colleagues have said and as the hon. member next to me said earlier on, legislation through exhaustion.

What I find quite interesting is that this government has said all along that they have the interest of kids at heart. So I would like to start my speech in opposition to this bill by reading a letter I received from a retired teacher in Campbell River. He writes:

I would like to ask members opposite how they do feel when…. That is the worst case, but there are lots of other, smaller cases where children's needs are not being met because of what has been happening. You often can't see it — collateral damage. It's a good term; it's a military term. The damage is there, but you don't see it. It is the innocent ones that get hurt.

I would suggest that members opposite talk to counsellors in schools, if they are still funded in your school district, and hear about the grade sevens who have depression and are suicidal because of the pressures of overcrowded classrooms. Or maybe the members opposite would like to talk to kids trying to get into university, who don't get the academic attention they need in classes of more than 30 — at a time when they need it most.

I would suggest that there is something very wrong in our society, where kids are suffering in our classrooms because of these conditions and where teachers are often too depressed because they have to try to deal with huge classes. Then, also because of government changes, they cannot get leave for that depression. There is no stress leave. They can't claim it under WCB. That isn't the case for this bill, but it is something that adds to their pressures.

Teachers are angry, they are frustrated, and they are depressed because they can no longer negotiate, talk about the learning conditions, the classroom conditions, their working conditions. As my colleague from Surrey–Green Timbers mentioned earlier, their working conditions cannot be negotiated, because this government has stripped them of that right and because this government is refusing to negotiate. Instead, it is imposing the extension of an already-imposed contract.

I would suggest that we all do agree on one thing — that teachers are essential. They inspire our children. We have heard many stories from members about those special teachers in their lives, the ones who made the difference, who were there at a certain point in their education. Everybody has a memory of a special teacher. Those special teachers are out there. They lead our children. They inspire our children. They engage them, and they teach them.

Madam Speaker, you yourself have talked eloquently about this. I must admit I get quite frustrated, because what I hear from the opposite benches often appears to be platitudes about their commitments to education. What greater commitment is there to our children's future than investing in their education?

It has been said often in this debate that children are our society's future. I don't think anyone can challenge that. But a solid, well-rounded education gives them what they need to fully contribute to our society and to make our society a better society. It's not just the number of children who graduate, who leave school, who get through the various stages of school and pass the various tests. It isn't a numbers game. Education isn't about statistics. Education is about children, and it is about the way that we want to see our society in the future.

Our teachers recognize this, and this is why they're so frustrated. As I said earlier, we've heard a stated commitment to education from the members opposite, from this government — one of the golden goals. But teachers see huge classes, no support, and they see, recognize and know that there needs to be an improvement in the conditions.

Government's reaction? To bring forward this bill — a bill which destroys the possibility of negotiation, ends the chance of finding a mutually acceptable way of going forward for our children's sake. Instead, they're putting forward this bill, this self-declared settlement.

As the member for Vancouver-Fairview said before: "What settlement? Zero-zero-and-zero? What sort of settlement is that?" Not only is that an insult at the best of times — an insult which it's fair to say is directed at the public sector — but it's an insult where we've just seen the introduction of a budget with massive corporate tax cuts — tax cuts that were not expected, not asked for and, frankly, not necessary. We've heard from people on the street. I don't know if the hon. members opposite have been talking to anyone outside this House. But if they had, there have been many people talking in the last few days, as this debate has continued, about why that money is going to corporations and why we don't just resolve the problem with the teachers right now.

This so-called settlement that has been questioned throughout the debate also offers nothing for our kids. Teachers are realists. They're not just after the money. They also want to negotiate conditions for our children's best interests. That's why teachers have been wanting to see learning conditions in negotiations — class size and class makeup on the table when they bargain. Teachers are realists, and they can see, in the classroom, who is suffering.

It's our kids who are suffering. Our kids are not suffering at the hands of militant teachers but with teachers who are burning out, who are overstretched because the class sizes are just too big and the support is not there.

The members on this side of the House are not making this up. Again, I wonder how many teachers the members on the other side have talked to. I was talking to a middle-school science teacher the other day from Lake Trail Middle School in Comox Valley. She is a science teacher in a middle school. Think of the age. In her science class she has 32 children — one science class, one teacher. Among those 32 children are 14 with special needs. I would say not just that it's not providing good quality education; it's simply not safe.

How are they, or other children, going to get the education they need, the assistance they need, the ability to work that they need? It's so essential to have special needs kids in the classroom so we have every child. As the members earlier have said, "Every child is special." We need to have every child in the classroom, but we also need full support for them and for the teachers who are there to educate them. Otherwise, it just hurts everyone.

I was talking to a teacher in Campbell River earlier today who was telling me that there are classrooms — again, in middle schools — where there are kids in the position with learning disabilities who can't function. They don't have the support they need, the teachers don't have the support they need, and all the children in those classrooms suffer. This settlement doesn't offer support. It doesn't help get around those issues. It doesn't make the educational environment better for these children. There is no reduction in class size if we are not talking about class composition and about teachers' learning conditions.

Again, I will give members opposite some examples, because I'm not sure how many teachers they have talked to: Grade 12 math at Carihi high school in Campbell River, 42 kids in the class — 42. Bright students are going to survive. They're going to carry on. They're going to get challenged and just go ahead and work on their own, and maybe the poor ones will get some assistance. As a teacher told me, it is the middle ones that fade away. "They just get lost," she said. What can you give 42 children? Three seconds each?

Also, at middle schools — some of the most formative years for young people — the overcrowding is ridiculous. Because of cuts in funding, because of downloading, we have a lack of space in the classrooms. You often see kids in the hallways, eating their lunch, and in the classrooms, so many children.

Again, an example: I'll use Campbell River in my own constituency. Middle schools in Campbell River have woodwork classes — 30 students in a woodwork class in a middle school. You have tools in woodwork class. Like the science class example earlier, you have tools. It's the shop. How are you going to not only teach children in a middle school, but how are you going to supervise them adequately when you have 30 children in a class? A teacher there told me: "You actually get to hope that some of the kids aren't going to come to class." That is an indictment of this government's policies.

I can carry on with examples of overcrowded classrooms. The examples go on and on in every single school where I have been talking to teachers over the last many months. They all have long, long examples of their classrooms being too crowded to be able to teach their children.

This comes down to something that was suggested in the budget: that government has to make choices. School trustees and school boards also have to make choices. They have limited budgets, as the government said in its own budget. These trustees, these boards — these local representatives who have had the costs downloaded on them — have to choose whether they support a school librarian or the band program. What sort of choices are these? These are real choices. This was one of the choices made at Sunset middle school in Port McNeill. What are you going to do?

These are not frills in children's education. These are part of what should be a good, well-rounded education in our public school system. They're not luxuries; they're not frills. But those choices are forced onto school districts, because they've had these costs downloaded on them by the government. They now have to pay their MSP, pensions, hydro — there's a long list. It means a choice between having a teacher or a teacher's assistant working in the classrooms with our kids or paying the bills.

I have three school districts in my constituency. I have to admit that the downloading costs really hit rural communities very hard and maybe in a different way than in some of the urban centres. At one school there is a full-time counsellor, and 40 kilometres down the road the counsellor teaches halftime. One of them is a high school, so you don't have a full-time counsellor in a high school perhaps one of the essential times when you need a counsellor in a school. In another district there is only one full-time counsellor at one of the schools — out of the whole district, one counsellor in one school.

Then in other areas there are teachers trying to teach four different subjects in one classroom because of blended grades. Now, this might seem a very nice image of the old schoolhouse where everybody is in the room together and all are learning together, but let's look at this realistically. Imagine teaching grades four to seven in one classroom with one teacher and all the different needs of all those kids, the different areas and different levels. This is what teachers are trying to do.

I've seen the impact of classes not being taught in some high schools. I've earlier told the House about some classes not being taught in Port McNeill at North Island Secondary. Port Hardy Secondary School doesn't have grade 12 math. It doesn't have chemistry or physics 11 and 12. This is, obviously, a huge problem for children.

Then of course, there is — as many of my colleagues, other members, have mentioned — the issue of teacher-librarians — one of the keys to literacy, which, as I think we are all well aware now, is one of the great goals of this government. Teacher-librarians guide students. They guide them in reading and research. They underpin the work done in the classroom. They let students explore new avenues. We've heard the statistics of teacher-librarians down almost 25 percent across the province.

What does this mean in reality in local schools? Well, in the three school districts in my constituency…. School district 72, which is Campbell River and Sayward, had a 42-percent cut in teacher-librarians, and school district 84, which is Gold River and Tahsis, Zeballos and Kyuquot, a 50-percent cut in teacher librarians — halved. In that school district, by the way, the number of students went down by only 11 percent, but the number of teacher-librarians was halved. School district 85 with Port Hardy, Port McNeill, Alert Bay, Sointula and Woss — wide cross-sections of communities a long way apart from each other — had a cut of 60 percent. That's 60 percent. So much for the golden goal of literacy.

Yesterday, as we heard, was World Teachers Day, and it was very nice to be able to talk to the House about teachers. Unfortunately, it's such a sad time. On that day Heather Reisman, an entrepreneur, a businesswoman, had a piece in the Vancouver Sun about the importance of literacy. As we know, she runs a chain of bookstores across the country, and I quote: "Early literacy is the very basis of self-esteem and confidence. It's a clear indicator of future success. Yet many of the…school libraries and classrooms are in dire need, mainly the result of underfunding and cutbacks."

These are the issues that the teachers wanted to be able to address, wanted to be able to negotiate. They wanted to be able to negotiate conditions. They wanted to be able to make sure that they could ensure that our kids got the best possible education so that our kids actually did get the opportunity to grab the golden goal, to reach for the golden goal of literacy instead of being shunted aside.

This government really does not care. I just don't think that with this bill the government can care about what is happening to our children in the classrooms, because teachers aren't childminders. They are professionals. Even the Minister of Education recognized this, although this was after the settlement was announced.

Teachers share their knowledge. They provide educational stimulus. They are mentors. As was said earlier, we all have memories — often fond — of our teachers. They have guided all of us, and we hope that they will guide the coming generations.

How many teachers dedicate hours to their work beyond the school day — elementary school teachers in the classroom on weekends, getting ready for their kids? These are their children, and that's why they want to make sure that learning conditions are right in the classroom for their children. High school teachers work with students as they go through some of their most formative and most difficult years. They work voluntarily out of school with clubs and with teams. They coach. They work on drama projects or yearbooks. They lead band — that's if the band program hasn't been cut.

But teachers have been pushed to the limit by this government. They spend hundreds of dollars each out of their own money — out of the money for which there is no negotiation for an increase — for school supplies so they can make sure that their kids get the best quality education that is possible. They want to make sure that children's learning experience is as rich as possible.

In rural communities this is a huge…. Teachers work so hard at it. I know an elementary school teacher in Sointula, at the north end of the Island, who wanted to make sure that her kids got the supplies needed to carry out school projects. So she got on the ferry from

Sointula on a weekend and went over to Port McNeill. Port McNeill didn't have it — had to go to Campbell River. Campbell River didn't have what she needed, so she had to go down to Courtenay. We're talking about a commute on a weekend as well as a ferry ride, with the ferry fare increases — a round trip of about 600 kilometres — to buy supplies so that she, out of her own money, could make sure that her kids got good quality education.

This is the sort of commitment that we see across the province from teachers who are dedicated to their children. That is why imposing a settlement, as this bill does — this refusal to negotiate — is so wrongheaded.

If I may, I'd like to quote some examples from teachers. I've been getting, as I think many members have, many e-mails from teachers, much correspondence. I think one of the saddest ones I've had is from a high school teacher who has been working for about 15 years. It starts:

Teachers are concerned. Teachers are writing. I find it very dispiriting, because one of the things is that we are getting so many disillusioned teachers, so many teachers….I've talked to a number of teachers who have worked for many, many years. Some have retired, and some are on the brink of retirement. What is truly frightening is where are the young teachers going to come from? Where are the teachers going to come from when they can see how demoralized their colleagues are, how badly treated they've become?

If they see this bill being pushed forward, an imposed contract re-imposed, with the government acting like the bully in the school yard just pushing and pushing and pushing until they have their way, how are we going to get new young teachers in? How are we going to attract people to make sure that our children do get the quality education they need? Because what teachers know, what I know my colleagues on this side of the House know, and what parents know is that our children are our future. This is not said lightly. If we don't give our children the fullest opportunities, if we don't give them the chance to fully learn and to have the experiences and the mentoring, the leading — what good teachers can offer — we are going to be so denuded as a society, there will be nothing left.

That's why I, too, as the member for Vancouver-Fairview said earlier, implore this government to think again, to think about what it is doing, about how it is pushing people to a brink at this stage. Whatever happens at this stage, think of the next stage, think of how we are going to carry on, because I know young people, as well as talking to teachers about to retire….

I heard that the Minister of Labour says that he's sad and that he's disappointed that he has to bring this bill, the Teachers' Collective Agreement Act, before us. I heard him say that he had no choice but to do this. He says that his associate deputy, the fact-finder assigned to meet with the employer and the teachers to see if common ground could be found to move negotiations forward…. Through that process the minister says there was no common ground to be found. The Minister of Labour says that the two parties had met 35 times and did not come to an agreement on one term or one item. From there, the minister and this government drew the conclusion that Bill 12 must be brought in, that the legislative hammer must be brought down, and that is the end of the concept of free collective bargaining.

Since the release of the report, the tabling of this legislation, I went back, and I went to look at the fact-finding report. I read it again with a lot more care, I must admit, than the first time I read that report. I must say, what I took from that report is that there is common ground. The fact-finder said both the employer and the teachers have priorities, and the common ground where the priorities meet is around working and learning conditions. Now, some may say: "What exactly are working and learning conditions? What does that mean?" You may ask: how does that relate to the best interests of students?

Let me just go through some of those items in this House. First, we've heard from other members that there is the issue of class size. Let's just visit history a little bit. In 2002 the B.C. Liberal government, the Premier, removed the upper class-size limit of 30 and made 30 the average class size for students in grades four to 12.

The government will have you believe that class size is not an issue. The government will have you think that the students' opportunity to learn will not be affected by class size. Well, I sat on the Education

Committee in the last four years. In 2001 the committee went out to meet with educators, students, parents, administrators and other British Columbians who are interested in the issue of education. We received many, many submissions from members of the public. They took the time out. They came and spoke to the committee — young and old, and people from all walks of life.

Now, at one point — as you can imagine, hon. Speaker — the issue of class size surfaced. As it happens, one of the members of the committee is a retired principal, the former member for Delta North, Mr. Reni Masi. Recognizing his profession and his knowledge base in the area, I asked Mr. Masi whether or not there is an optimal class size. People talk about it. I've heard all sorts of debate about it. I asked: "From your experience as a principal and a former teacher, what are your thoughts on that?" Mr. Masi responded by saying that yes, there is. So I asked: "What is the optimal number in terms of class size?" He said to me: "Sixteen." That's what he said: 16, 17 maybe. Some members might think it's funny, but that's what the member said. You can check the record, because what he said is on record.

I raise this point because all too often you hear from the government that…. When the issue of class size is raised, you are led to believe that those seeking lower class sizes are unreasonable in their demands, that somehow teachers who are fighting this fight are just doing it for some bizarre, selfish reason.

I know that some will say: "So what? This is anecdotal." Let me just say that Mr. Masi was a former member of the Liberal government caucus — not an NDP caucus member but a Liberal caucus member — who said the optimal class size is 16. Now, I didn't sort of just take Mr. Masi's word for it. I thought, okay. Here's what he said, and because everyone's talking about it and it is an important issue, I thought, you know, maybe I should just go look it up, maybe do some research, check it out and see what it says. The library — full of books out there, although underfunded as it is, dwindling as we speak…. But never mind that. So I went to check and see what the research says.

Let me tell you about a specific research project that was done that I came across in my reading: a project called student-teacher achievement ratio — for short, STAR. In the STAR project students and teachers were randomly assigned to various class-size conditions in grades K-to-three: small class sizes of about 13 to 17, regular class sizes of about 22 to 26, and regular class sizes of 22 to 26 with full-time teacher assistants.

The results show that students in smaller class sizes for the first four years of school performed better on nationally normed and criterion-referenced tests. Moreover, students who had been in small classes continued to move ahead of their grade level as they continued on through to grade 12. The study didn't stop there. It found that a greater proportion of those students wrote entrance exams for post-secondary institutions, that a smaller proportion of students who began in small class sizes were charged with criminal offences and that a smaller proportion of those students applied for income assistance.

Now, you may say that's just one study, Mr. Speaker. I might add and just point out for the members of the House that this is by far the largest and most comprehensive study that has been done around the issue of class size. It has been noted by the experts in the field that not one study since 1904 to the present contradicts this finding on the issue of class size. So what is the lesson learned here? Class size matters. Is it any wonder that teachers who enter the profession — whose hopes and dreams are to help young people maximize their potential, to see the flowers grow and blossom, if you will — fight this tooth and nail, that they put their heart and soul in it like you have never seen anything before?

You know what? It isn't just about the teachers or, if you say, their working conditions. It is also about benefiting the students in the class. At the end of the day if we invest in that now and believe in the study and the research that's been done, it will pay dividends for all of us in our society.

There are about 1,800 public schools throughout British Columbia. Every one of them is the heart of our community. We know how much young people benefit when parents, teachers and community members are all helping to provide them with opportunities to learn at home, at school and in the broader society. Teachers work hard. They work hard to meet the unique needs of all of our students. But you know what, hon. Speaker? They cannot do it alone, and they are getting tired in this process. They feel that they don't have the support that is necessary for them to do the best job that they know they can, that they feel they can and that they want to do.

They need resources, and they need support, and I am very sad to say that they're not receiving it from government. The government stripped from the last collective agreement the teachers' ability to ensure that there's certainty on the question of class size. We have seen class sizes go up in many districts across the province. The average class size for grades four to 12 is 30. But you know what? That's the average. There are many, many classes with more than 30 students in the classroom.

That's just one issue on the issue around learning conditions. Class size is not the only issue. The other issue is class composition. Now, I must admit before I entered into this Legislature, I didn't know what class composition was. What is class composition? Well, let me tell you. Simply put, class composition means the makeup of students in a particular classroom. Class composition is the other component that is vital for the educator and the student.

In today's diverse makeup of our community there are a variety of different students with different needs and different strengths. What that means for teachers is that they must develop an educational program that will meet the needs of all of the students in the class-

room. I have a number of inner-city schools in my riding, the riding of Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, and we have students from all walks of life. Some come to school hungry and scared. Some come to school with English as their second language and don't speak one word of English.

I was one of those students, by the way, when we first immigrated here. I walked into the classroom. I didn't speak a word of English — didn't know what the heck anybody was saying. Thank goodness for those teachers and the special attention I received that I have now learned how to speak English — some say not very well. Nonetheless, I've learned the language. But with English, when it's not your first language, you need special assistance.

Some come to school with a knowledge base that's above the average norm. They are specially gifted or talented in their own area, and they excel beyond the average student in their classroom. Some come with other special gifts, special gifts where they need special help — children with some difficulties, perhaps, in learning or processing, with developmental challenges — and they need extra assistance in that learning environment.

As you know, between 2001 and 2004 the number of special education professionals in our education system declined. As our communities are getting more complex, as the challenges are increasing in the classrooms for both the educators and the students, the number of supports specializing in assisting those children actually went down — not by one, not by two, not by three — by 740. That's 28 percent of the total reduction of teachers in our system.

Now, you will hear the government say: "Yeah, but enrolment also went down. The number of students also went down." Well, let me tell you this: the enrolment went down by 5 percent. I'm not a mathematician, but I can do simple math. A reduction of 28 percent versus a reduction of 5 percent of students is a huge difference.

What that means is that in the education system somebody is doing without. Students are not getting the attention they need, and that means their learning outcomes are compromised. That means they don't have the best opportunity to maximize their potential. That means the teachers who see this every day, the front-line workers, if you will, who see this every day — I know it breaks their hearts. They entered into the profession because they want to see the students and the children excel.

It is in this context that you will understand why teachers desperately, desperately want certainty in the classroom around class size and classroom composition. Teachers are expected to provide special support to students with special needs, the gifted children, the average children. These students need individualized education plans, those who need extra help. I believe that students with unique needs should get individualized education plans, because they are different, and we want to make sure that how they're being educated fits their exact needs.

I know that very well. I know of one youngster who needed that help. Because of the cutbacks and shortages in the education system, he had to leave the school he was accustomed to. He was in grade four. He had to move to another school and leave his friends behind because of that special need, because the school he had been attending didn't have those kinds of supports. Some schools now are forced to amalgamate their supports into one school in a region or area because they can't afford to ensure that kind of support is everywhere.

The student went there. You know what? The teacher who met this young student and the family was fantastic, and I've seen the development of this young person since that time. His confidence grew. He learned. He excelled. He learned that he wasn't a dummy but that he just learns differently. Now that school is offering it — not in his home school but somewhere else. Some children don't have that luxury, because their parents can't get them to a school outside of their district.

I know of another child who is in exactly that situation. Because that family has two kids, it was impossible for the family to manage having the two kids go to two different schools. As a result, the one who needed the extra help is not going to the school with the extra help outside of the district. That's a true story. It happened just this September.

Now, if you are a teacher in a classroom, as another example the teachers and educators and families have told me, where you have a split class…. Some people call it a blended class, which is that you're in a classroom that has perhaps two different grades, grade fours and fives gather in one classroom — a split class.

On top of that, you have some students with ESL needs. On top of that, you have gifted students who excel in their unique way above average and far above average in some instances, and then you have the other spectrum of gifted children who have special needs. They excel differently, and they have particular demands and teaching techniques that are required for them to reach average.

When you have a variety, a varying degree, of children in that classroom, you've got one hour to teach a lesson to two different classes, classes with a blended variety of children in their composition of learning capacity, and you as the teacher are supposed to come up with an individualized education plan and deliver this in one hour.

Do you think that's an easy job for a teacher to do? Do you think that in those circumstances the teacher could do the best job they can? Do you think the students get the attention they need? I don't think so. I've heard from parents who see that situation go on with their own child. I've heard from teachers who say: "I'm at wit's end, and I don't know what to do anymore." Some have said to me: "I think I'm going to go and find another profession, because this is just too hard, and I

can't take it." It's not because the work is hard but because they see the children falling between the cracks, and they can't take it.

So with fewer support workers, teachers are being forced to make very difficult decisions about the kids in their class with different needs. How many special needs students can a teacher reasonably be expected to teach in a single class? What happens to the quality of instruction when a teacher is forced to respond to special needs students? Let me be clear: teachers support integration. They want to see a variety of children, different children in the schools. But they also need the necessary supports, teaching supports, in the classrooms. The provisions for support for teachers with special needs students — that was a collective bargaining issue — were stripped. That means the certainty of what that class composition looks like is gone.

With fewer support workers, fewer specialists, fewer ESL teachers, teachers are being forced to make very difficult decisions about which kids in their class are most needy and how they go about doing their job. This government made that decision to take that certainty away. I heard the member for Peace River South say he supported that, and I think he said it with such bravado that it made me think he was proud of that. I hope I heard wrong, but I don't think so.

But I'll say this. When teachers are fighting for this issue, yes, some will say it is for them, but more importantly, we all believe — even though we have different points of view — in providing the best education system that we can. I would ask members before they speak with such absolute conviction on this decision of government that perhaps they step back and try their very best to look through these issues with a set of different eyes, and maybe they will see something different.

Now, Mr. Speaker, let me say this. I want to thank the teachers for speaking up on the issue. They are raising the alarm because of the damage that is being done, and they see it before their very eyes. They're putting the needs of their students first. Make no mistake about that.

The government will respond that they have put more money back into the system, that the average all works out, and they'll cite examples of one student being left out of a classroom because of those limitations, because of those restrictions, in the collective agreement. They will say that, but in reality, we know that there are ways to actually address the one student who might not be able to get into a class because of bargaining-rights limits on class size. We know that, and there is flexibility already built in, even if you have class-size limitations and class-size compositions in the collective agreement. Members should know that. I've heard it from teachers, I've heard it from parents, and I've seen, with my very own eyes, how that works.

For people to say that there is no flexibility, that this must be done and this is how it must be done and why it must be done, that students somehow should not be the political football the government often accuses teachers of when they raise the issue of class size and bargaining in the bargaining process and composition in the bargaining process…. They are just using that as an argument. They don't have, in my view, the real facts to actually back it up. The reality is that there is already built-in flexibility to address those very things.

Those are the two issues I raise that teachers feel passionately about and that I saw in the fact-finder's report as one of two priority issues that they want dealt with. I can understand why they would want it dealt with. It makes complete, logical sense to me — because they know it matters in the lives of students. That is why.

I want to add another component to this picture, and that is the issue of funding. Let us be clear: the government froze the education budget in 2001. Yes, as a result of community pressure, as a result of parents speaking up, as a result of educators speaking up, the government has added a few dollars to the education budget on a one-time basis here and there in the last four years. But let us not forget that the government has also increased the costs of education — things like increased MSP premiums imposed by the government into the education system, things like increased fuel costs imposed by the government. I might add that fuel costs are continuing to rise with no sign of relief — not from government, not in the minibudget, not from anywhere.

School boards will have to bear the brunt of that. They will have to make those tough decisions of trying to figure out how we're going to get those yellow school buses running, the buildings heated, the classrooms warm and so on without having to take out programs. They will be stuck with that decision once again.

I know that the government side…. Certainly, the former Minister of Education felt very good about it. Christy Clark — she used to get up and say things like, "I'm not making those decisions; I'm funding students' education adequately," when we know very well that programs are being slashed right and center and that school boards and school trustees are at their wit's ends. As a result of that, some 112 schools closed.

Do you think those schools closed because teachers or educators wanted to close them, or because school trustees or parents wanted them closed? Absolutely not. They had to close those schools because they couldn't fund them and because the government wouldn't fund them.

Just when the government members are congratulating themselves, they might just pause and take a moment and remember the facts. The fact is that the government has underfunded the education system, and they continue to underfund the education system. More than that, what they're doing today — and what the government has done by introducing Bill 12 and by wanting to debate this legislation through exhaustion, by making members go into the middle of the night — is adding fuel to the fire. They're not trying to help de-

Just when the government members are congratulating themselves, we must pause and think back. Now, I heard earlier today that the member for Peace River South said that when he was in school, he had to share books when he was growing up, that classroom conditions weren't optimal, and that somehow why should we be so shocked today when we hear some of these issues because some of us grew up with that experience. Well, I have spoken with parents who remember that a class size of 40 was once the norm.

Let me say this. I come from a family where my parents sacrificed everything just so that their children — namely, me, my brother and my sisters — could have better opportunities than they did. My mother has a grade six or, at best, a grade seven level of education. My father has a grade 11 or, at best, a grade 12 education from China. My brother, my younger sister and I are the first generation in the Kwan family to have the opportunity to attend post-secondary education.

I now have a 2½-year-old daughter, and I wish and I work like crazy every single day with my husband and my extended family to make sure that she has the best opportunities in the world. I desire nothing else but the very best for my child, and let me tell you, I desire that for all the children.

I sure as heck hope there are enough books in the classrooms for all of the children. I sure as heck hope that the learning conditions improve so that it's better than what it was when I was growing up or when the member for Peace River South was growing up. We see the situation. Instead of improvement, we see things actually declining.

Now, it may be okay for the government to move things backwards, for that's what they have done in the last four years, and they feel very comfortable with that. We've seen it. We've seen it in the last four years. After all, we now have children as young as 12 working with very little regulation, and that somehow seems to sit okay with the government members.

We somehow think it's okay that people who are in greatest need don't get the help they need, and we see a huge amount of people become homeless in our communities. The government will say: "Oh, but we're doing more than anybody else." Well, there's a fallacy in that response, and I won't take time to go into that today, because it is a debate for another day. But it is false to pretend that homelessness is being addressed when the government's actions and policies have increased homelessness in our communities. Research after research has shown that.

Now, what we want on this side of the House is to see progress. We want to see things get better for the next generation. We don't want to see things move back in time. Isn't it interesting that for a government that is so zealous in their support for test standardization, so zealous that they're almost…. Let me just say zealous; it might be unparliamentary if I use the other word. They don't seem nearly as interested in standards for resources and classroom support. How is that possible? Why is that?

Let me just turn to another issue, and that is the issue of teacher-librarians. There are no set standards in British Columbia around this issue. In fact, according to Statistics Canada, only two percent — and let me repeat it so every member can hear this clearly: only two percent — of schools in this province have a full-time librarian. Put another way, 98 percent of the students do not have librarians. School libraries have had their hours reduced and their staff cut back. Meanwhile, this government proclaims it wants B.C. to be the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent.

Deputy Speaker: Can I remind the members that there's no comment when you're not sitting in your chair, and all comments have to be directed through the Chair.

J. Kwan: Between 2002 and 2004 teacher-librarian staffing dropped by 25 percent. Statistics Canada says that the budget for new acquisitions for elementary schools was $11.13 per student, and for secondary schools, it was $13.21 per student. I can tell you that you cannot buy much in a bookstore for $13.21 today. I was just in the bookstore the other day and bought my little kid a bunch of books. I walked out of there; I got three books, and it cost me 60 bucks.

Now, the government wants to spend millions to give students a book to take home — they say — yet they will not pay for someone to teach kids how to use and get the most out of the library system. Well, isn't that typical of the Liberal spending priorities, and isn't it interesting that the Minister of Finance would rather spend tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars on partisan ads rather than investing those dollars in the education system?

Conservative estimation. I don't know how much those ads cost. The Minister of Finance won't tell us.

J. Kwan: Oh, I think she knows. I think she doesn't want British Columbians to know how much money at

this time the government is spending on partisan advertising. After all, before the election, they only blew $7 million overbudget on partisan advertising to benefit their political gain. They wouldn't want to blow the whistle on that — wouldn't want anybody to know that until after the fact, in the hopes that people might forget.

Well, let me say this. A conservative estimation of the cost of a day of advertising…. I'd say it's probably about $54,000 a day, keeping in mind those ads appeared in all of our major papers and the community papers across the province. It's a lot of papers. I don't know; I'm just doing a conservative estimation. It's not like me to do a conservative estimation, but I'm doing it right here, right now. I say $54,000 a day.

On the basis of the Statistics Canada figure on the cost of books, one could buy approximately 4,500 library books that will benefit 4,500 students at the minimum. Rather than investing in books, staff and the education system, the government would rather spend the money that will benefit their political gain.

Now, in my district, 30 percent of kids show up on the first day of school speaking not a word of English. Their parents are often not able to teach to them or read to them in English. Many of them are challenged because these families face their own difficulties: poverty, to name one; childhood traumas; addiction; prostitution. The list goes on. I ask: how will these kids have the opportunity to best maximize their potential? How will giving these kids a book and leaving them to their own devices help them learn by themselves?

Libraries should be an equalizer to help level the playing field between those kids who have resources at home and those who don't. But this government doesn't believe in levelling or equalling the field. For that matter, this government, I don't think, believes in libraries, in teacher-librarians and special assistants.

Across the system, stresses are becoming sharper and more pronounced. Illness and sick leaves are up, and people and teachers and students are doing their very best to cope. In particular, low-income families are struggling to cope, and the wave of cuts of social services compounds things. Community resources, which my office used to refer families to, have been cut back. Children are falling through the cracks. When we lose the opportunity to intervene in a struggling child's education in the early years, we know that the problems compound, and we know that it is much more difficult to fix later. These learning problems are magnified when the supports are not in place. A child's confidence and self-esteem are not easily repaired, and lost ground is not easily regained.

Then, there is the issue of the responses of the government. Was this the only way to deal with the issue — Bill 12? Were there other options available? It seems that there were other options available. The fact-finder report makes it clear that there is an opportunity to address learning and working conditions such as class size, classroom compositions, teacher-librarians and so on. By moving constructively on these issues, I believe that government would have helped to break the logjam. They could have sent a message to the teachers that their issues are important, that the government will address them, that the teachers do have an opportunity to respond and work with the government and really become a partner in the education system.

Parents would have known that the government actually cared about the issues that affect the quality of education, that the government has shown them with action that they actually care, and that they were seeing a government acting as a partner instead, as my other colleagues have said, as a schoolyard bully.

Instead, the government has chosen to pick another fight and to ignore the issues in the classroom that are getting progressively worse as a result of their policies. Well, I am sad to say that the government needs to stop blaming others. If the government takes on that responsibility for its record on education, we probably would have an opportunity to stem the crisis that's before us.

But maybe what the government really wants to do is to distract people from the issue at hand. If that's what they're doing, then I am sad to say that the reason why Bill 12 is before us is for other reasons than in the best interests of students. The government's attempt to pick fights, to blame others…. I heard members say: "Maybe we should stop with the blame." Maybe the government should show some leadership on that front and stop the blame and stop pointing fingers.

I think that British Columbians do expect more from their government. They expect their government to be adults here. They expect the government to bargain in good faith, to think of the public interest first in the longer term. That's where the government has failed to date. They have failed the children and the parents of British Columbia. The fix on Bill 12 will not address the issue in the long term. The pain will come, and we will see it. Sadly, we will see it in the children, because they lack the opportunities that they deserve.

You know, as a wise teacher once told me, failure is not final. It is a success waiting to happen. I do believe that there is a better and more respectful way to handle the teacher bargaining process and that Bill 12 is not the way. I believe we can tackle the challenging issues in our schools as partners and not as adversaries.

The motion that I move gives us the opportunity to do that, because it's asking us to not pass second reading at this time, and that, at least in the minimum, we defer it for another six months. Let's get out there and listen to the teachers who are hurting. They are hurting in every aspect. Let's get out there and talk to parents, because parents want us to solve this problem for the long term.

There is the possibility to do that. To do that we must show respect in this House, and we must begin to act in the direction that sometimes feels counterintuitive. For the government, that means: go against your ideological grain, and look at the bigger picture into the longer term and the opportunities that are before the government today.

I know that teachers want the dialogue. It is sad, I must say, that this government in the last four years under the leadership of the former Minister of Education, Christy Clark, who happened to not take the time to meet with teachers in her entire term as the Minister of Education…. In fact, it wasn't until just before the election that the new then Minister of Education, the now Minister Of Aboriginal Relations, met with the teachers. It is a shame that the government shows such disrespect for the teachers by poking a finger in their eyes, by saying to the teachers that they didn't have the right to self-govern their own profession. Every other profession has that right, but the teachers did not.

On top of that, as they were taking away the rights of teachers, they went and gave those rights to car dealers. They're saying to car dealers that they deserve the right to self-govern but that the teachers do not. Then, in that process, the government brought in legislation that says to teachers: "You know what? Our trust and respect for you has so much declined that the government decided that educators should not sit on school planning councils."

They put it in legislation to forbid that as though somehow the teachers are going to go in there and contaminate things. I find that shocking. Is that the way that we show respect? Is that the way we want to show people we want a dialogue? Talk about these ingenuous offers. The government says, oh, but there is the dialogue table now that we want to offer to the teachers. Well, after we stick our fingers in your eyes and poke you several times, and then we say: "Hey, will you come and sit with me and be friends…?" Guess what. That kind of approach is, quite frankly, not helpful.

That was the lesson I thought the government learned from this election: that we don't want to be confrontational, that we want to be consensus builders, that we want to reach out to work with people, and that we actually want to bring them together instead of dividing and pitting people against people. You know what? Bill 12 does exactly that. It pits communities against communities, and meanwhile, the government is saying hurray for us.

I can't tell you how dismaying it is. I have seen this movie played many a time, and the government will say: "Well, you guys did it too when you were in government." Well, let me say this and be very clear on the record: if the minister says that the system is broken, that we need to fix the system, then what the government should do is to bring forward a system that works, and then, in that process, invite the experts in the field to the table to talk about how to fix the system instead of alienating them and then, after the fact, saying: "Oh, but let's play nice together."

How could the government believe that is the right way to go? I move this motion because it gives us the opportunity to delay and to further do harm to what has already been done by the government's actions to date. I do not think it's too late. I think that the educators will come to the table. I think the government should stand down Bill 12. I urge the government to stand down Bill 12.

Now, I know that the Minister of Labour will agree with me, and let me quote this on record:

That was the comment from the now Minister of Labour, the then critic, on a bill that was tabled back in October of 1992, on the Labour Relations Code.

The principle that the government…. I know they have the logic to process the motion that I tabled. They could apply that logic they used when they debated Bill 84. They could do the same here today. We could use that very same logic that the now Minister of Labour used back in October of 1992 today as we debate Bill 12.

I urge all members of this House to enter into the debate about this hoist motion to delay action, to reflect back on the actions to date and to think about the future of children and what it could mean if we could stem the escalating crisis before us. Now, I will say this. I know it is difficult for this government to do that because, historically, they have taken the confrontational approach. The government has embarked on a course that at every turn shows that they didn't support the educators in our system and that shows they have other priorities at hand.

The government was elected in May of 2001. In August of 2001 the government enacted Bill 18, the Skills Development and Labour Statutes Amendment Act, 2001, which made education an essential service under the Labour Relations Code. And the government feels very proud about that. The members of government feel very proud about that.

Guess what. The International Labour Organization, under the United Nations committee in Geneva, condemned the B.C. government for this action. The committee said in March of 2003: "Recalling that the right to strike is one of the essential means through which workers and their organizations may promote and defend their economic and social interests, the committee concludes that the provisions of Bill 18, which makes education an essential service, are in violation of freedom-of-association principles and should be repealed."

Not only did they ignore that, the government went on to enact Bill 27, the Education Services Collective Agreement Act, and imposed a collective agreement and contract on the teachers. At the same time the government brought in Bill 27, they brought in Bill 28. The Public Education Flexibility and Choice Act they called it. Bill 28 essentially removed the ability of teachers to

Teachers could no longer negotiate class size, school days, assignment of courses, class composition or staffing ratios for teacher-librarians, ESL teachers, counsellors and learning resource teachers. And any provisions in their existing contracts that addressed those matters were ripped up.

The ILO condemned this action again. Here's what they had to say: "Such a unilateral action by the authorities cannot but introduce uncertainty in labour relations which, in the long term, can only be prejudicial."

Now you'd think this would be enough for the government to back down. Well, not so — another legislative hammer, another condemnation from the United Nations body and another blow to our education system, another blow to the teachers and their morale, another signal sent to the teachers.

Most recently the B.C. Court of Appeal agreed. In February 2005 the highest court in this province stated that class size is a "condition that affects the employment relationship." and the Hon. Mr. Justice Lambert of the Court of Appeal said:

After removing the teachers' right to negotiate classroom matters, the government then appointed an arbitrator to decide which contract terms would be stripped from the teachers' contracts. The arbitrator ruled that hundreds of pages of class sizes and composition provisions should be removed, and that was a flawed decision. Teachers took that to the courts, to the B.C. Supreme Court, and they won. Mr. Justice Shaw quashed the arbitrator's decision, ruling that it contained fundamental errors on points of law that are important to the education system in British Columbia, including to the teachers, the school boards and the students.

That's the history of it. This is why I say that the government will change the law when they feel like it, when they see fit. I really do wonder what the Attorney General thinks of that, because that's exactly what the government has done, and justices in our court system have condemned the government and ruled them in violation of the law. But the government proceeds, and they plunge ahead anyway.

In April 2004 the government introduced Bill 19, Education Services Collective Agreement Amendment Act, 2004, which then overruled Justice Shaw's decision, to ensure there could not be contractual guarantees of class sizes and services to students with special needs or support from specialist teachers in the school system. That's what the government did. At every turn, when they're challenged, they turn around and write new laws to outlaw the Supreme Court decisions. They think somehow that's cool. Somehow that's okay. That's something we don't teach our children: to make up rules as you go along. But that's exactly what the government is doing, and you think somehow that's a good thing. I don't think so. I do not, I have to say.

Now before us is Bill 12. The government has shown after the election that they've learned nothing from the electorate. Conflict and confrontation is their approach. They rip up agreements, and you know what? To add insult to injury, they rip up laws whenever they can, just because that's their ideological belief.

It is time now that we set all of that aside and put students first — put the future of students first. It is time. And I promise I will not do this if the government stands down Bill 12: I will not say I told you so. I will simply offer, all of us — I'm sure every one of us on this side of this House will offer — our hands to the government and say let's work together to build an education system that will benefit the children, that will ensure families feel comfortable and feel good about our education system.

Let's make sure that the educators in our system are valued and respected. Let's send them a signal that it is time for a new partnership to begin. We can begin that today if the government stands down Bill 12.

R. Fleming: A few minutes ago I had an opportunity to meet with a number of students, parents and teachers from Greater Victoria schools — Claremont, Reynolds, Mount Douglas high school.

Virtually every one of them told me about the concerns they have about a year in education coming up — a potential year, following life after Bill 12 — a year of school where they'll have no sports, where they won't enjoy club activities or school newspapers, where large, overcrowded classrooms are the norm and are legitimized by the province and its actions on public education. That's what they're worried about outside this very institution tonight. I would encourage the members opposite, especially, to maybe talk to them and explain their rationale behind Bill 12 and their actions to date, their collective failure to resolve this dispute.

It's clear now that this government's plan for education bargaining, I think, is going just as was predicted and hoped for by the government's side. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy that they put into motion. Unfortunately, it represents politics at its worst in British Columbia. I'm quite sure the public affairs bureau has been updating the ministers responsible daily with polling information about how the government looks in the battle that they've set in motion, the battle that they've proudly stoked up between parents and teachers in this province.

You know, the members opposite have tried to display the position — to hide behind rhetoric — that they're in fact looking out for parents. But make no mistake. It's the government that's put parents through so much difficulty over the past 72 hours, and indeed, in the days and weeks to come.

This government doesn't want a secure, stable school system. Their actions over the past four years don't speak to that. Once again, they want to force their will and to impose settlements on teachers that will keep parents and students, yet again, in a state of limbo. They want to maintain the status quo of larger class sizes, fewer resources, less resources for special needs classes, with ineffective rules about class composition — all of those concerns that are legitimate and valid and just and are not able to be discussed at the table. They want to defend that state of affairs.

Well, let me tell you that this side of the House deeply regrets that we have to live through this situation. We regret the strain that the government is putting on hundreds of thousands of families right across B.C., on the children of those families, on tens of thousands of teachers — let's not forget them — on the support staff, the trustees, the administrators in our school system — the anxiety and strain put on all those people.

The government has almost made it a point of pride to admit over and over again the obvious: the system is broken. I've heard it from a number of ministers across the aisle. They crow on about it almost as if it's a bold type of admission. But it's not owning up to a responsibility. It's not demonstrating a commitment to fix it by saying that the system is broken over and over again.

Their actions over the past four years and in particular the past 18 months, in fact, demonstrate a lack of commitment and a lack of hard work to find solutions. Their so-called admission that the system is broken is merely a launching pad to attack and to assign blame to everyone else but themselves. They absolve themselves. They point fingers at teachers, at school boards, and most of all at the opposition, at previous administrations. They've done it over and over again. That is, in fact, exactly what has brought us to the brink of this crisis — that attitude.

At the heart of where we are today is the matter that teachers aren't being respected in this province. They aren't being respected as professionals. They aren't being respected as guardians of our children's learning, nor just as basic people who are dedicated, who on a daily basis put their lives into the love of teaching other people to learn. That really is it. Because teachers aren't respected by this government, parents and kids aren't being respected either. In fact, they're being used as pawns in a political game.

This government knows full well that it is disrupting lives, that it is disrupting families. What a cost to learning that is. What a cost to the economy, for parents who are busy right now, probably, and next week may be asking their employers for a day off to cope with the chaos in their working lives — the chaos in their lives that's caused by this government's failure to find any solutions at all, failure to even look for any kind of 11th-hour compromise that could have made this holiday weekend not a time of high anxiety that it will be.

Imagine the talk — maybe the members opposite would like to imagine this — around the table this Thanksgiving. You think anyone's going to be having thoughts for this government during grace? I don't think so. I'm sure there are going to be a lot of opinions about this government's calculated, cynical record and their recent actions on education in our school system.

If parents are taking days off, if they're asking for time off to care for their kids, if they're going to go through all that stress and anxiety and turmoil this week and next and beyond, you know, it would be nice if they could at least know that maybe there would be some good at the end of it — that it was for something, that maybe it will actually lead to a system that isn't broken, or that this government will actually do something to reduce the exacerbation and tensions in our school system. But they won't get that assurance at all. It will be all for naught, because this government has no commitment to fix this broken system.

Hon. Speaker, I would submit to you that this dispute isn't about the B.C. Teachers Federation anymore, if it ever was. It's gone well beyond that. The members opposite have said, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and talked about movies seen before, etc.

But it actually is different this time. There are no bogeymen of 32 percent wage increases. The minister can't say that teachers are being greedy, and that's the root of this dispute, like her predecessor Christy Clark delighted in doing to no end. This dispute is about the desire to actually talk about teaching and learning conditions. That's the difference.

It's a cumulative process. This dispute is about four years now of disrespect by a government that has gone out of its way to dump on teachers, to strain and provoke our education system.

It's not 1993; it's not 1996. I've heard those dates repeated ad nauseum here in October 2005. I can't tell you how many times I have heard those dates this week from the members opposite. It's not even 1998. I took the liberty of pulling out an article about 1998, about the teachers' tentative agreement then, because 1998, while there were bitter feelings around that, to be sure, did create 1,200 new teaching positions as part of the agreement. It did include an additional $75 million for smaller class sizes for the kindergarten to grade three students. It did include $75 million toward restoring libraries, counsellors, support teachers in the system. That's a pretty significant difference to what we have on offer, here and now in October 2005, which is exactly nothing but a worsening education system.

It is indeed 2005, and for four years we've had a government that has gone out of its way to increase class sizes. It has expanded the workload of teachers

and laid off thousands of teachers. It has reduced the education workforce. I have some numbers around here somewhere. Between 2001 and 2004 the school system lost 2,609 teaching positions. Only about 700 of those can be attributed to declining enrolment, and 1,900 positions were simply reduced services to students through larger classes and fewer support teachers.

School districts have reported to the province that they're hiring 630 more teachers this year. The minister said that repeatedly. Do the math. That restores less than one-third of the number of teaching positions cut beyond those related to declining enrolment. That's their record. The government can talk about the past all it wants, but the people of British Columbia are going to judge this government on its own record, and it's becoming clear to more and more British Columbians that this government epitomizes disrespect to the profession of teaching.

We remember the government's fiscal framework that they set out at the beginning of the last mandate. They pointed to deficits. They pointed to the need to embrace restraints to get to better times, but now that we have a better fiscal position, now that the business cycle has come around and improved, the message is exactly the same from the government. Basically, the message is that in good times and bad, this government will not help fix education. Teachers don't matter, in good times or bad.

It would seem that this government has no capacity to change with the times — to change its policies, to change its priorities, to change its resource allocations and its budgets. Nor does it have the capacity to see beyond its solution to difficulties. They're using the same extreme legislative mechanisms today, again, instead of good-faith bargaining. They're still prohibiting discussions from the very people who are in our classrooms day in and day out — the teaching professionals, the administrators — about what it's like in the classrooms of this province and about what improvements could be made to have a better school system.

You know, in good times I think what this proves is that this government is squandering an opportunity to turn the corner on education in British Columbia. They've not even made any effort to find a compromise that most people could live with — teachers, parents and, yes, the government, a reasonable government, that they could all live with. That is an opportunity that is being squandered and it will be our kids who pay the price.

Who knows? Its impact may be felt for years to come. It will be. I'm certain of that. The kids I spoke to outside this building half an hour ago said to me they think this year is a write-off and maybe next year, because they don't see change from this government. They can't expect action on class sizes or improved resources in the classroom or in their libraries or extracurricular activities for themselves, but a lot of these bright young people articulated to me that they can at least hope that the kids coming after them will see that. That's exactly who they feel they're standing up for in this dispute.

Instead of recognizing the new opportunities, the new times, even the way forward that was pointed to in the Connolly report dated September 30, only five days ago…. The opportunity that was identified in the report for provision of a parallel table to discuss class sizes, to discuss teaching and learning conditions, is being squandered, and it's a shame. Instead of seizing opportunity, we have no dialogue. We have no real bargaining at all from the government and haven't had for well over a year.

There have been 35 pretty much useless meetings where the government's bargaining agents came to the table with an empty folder to present to the other side. Imagine that. The government wouldn't even empower their own bargaining agents to talk about basic classroom issues. What a waste of time and money. What an exercise in frustration and disrespect that is — to call that bargaining.

Real bargaining should start with a credible, sympathetic set of shared goals, a set of shared interests that can be articulated by both parties who come together and talk about what is at the heart of our education system: our kids. Real bargaining should start with the assumption that both sides can contribute to making relations, to enhancing the learning potential in our school system. Those would be some shared goals and assumptions that would really put the province on a different footing.

The minister has labelled her predetermined, inflexible position as one of tough choices. Tough choices. It's kind of a way of patting oneself on the back when they fail to find any breakthrough — to say: "Aw, it's tough choices now. Didn't do anything; didn't accomplish anything. It's down to tough choices."

But mature governments here and everywhere else in the world, in every other province and democratic jurisdiction, have to directly face the people who work for them all the time: the civil servants, the teachers, social workers, prison guards or what have you — all kinds of people who provide important services. And the most important services are to our kids, to our society. Mature governments have to do that all the time. It's a matter of course for any government, and B.C. would be a better place if we had a mature government that could do this, as well, could do what every other government does.

This government knew during the election last May that the situation we have today was in the offing. Of course they did. The teachers' contract expired in June 2004. I'm afraid it's now clearly looking like this government was looking forward to this fight all along. They wanted it. They've baited; they've schemed; they've cajoled for this preplanned outcome to take effect. They've gotten us to exactly where they want us to be tonight.

They have articulated, if you want to use that word, their vision of how best to act in situations like this. They've articulated, once again, that force always

Now, maybe the government side has an idea of what will happen next week, as we all wonder through Thanksgiving weekend exactly what's going to unfold next week. But the parents across British Columbia and the school children — they have no idea. They have no idea what this government's predetermined clockwork plan for provocation and conflict is. This whole dispute really is looking more and more like a deliberate, calculated distraction, hon. Speaker — a distraction.

Instead of parents being able to talk about class sizes, and they would…. After September it's a new school year. They are talking about that; they were talking about that. Instead of being able to talk about class sizes and about the learning potential of their kids to be improved, they're distracted into how their family is going to cope next week if the schools aren't open.

That's part of the plan, isn't it? It was part of the government plan on the other side, all along. The government may think it has hatched a clever, pollster-inspired plan to pit parents against teachers, but here's where they're wrong. There is going to remain a serious question for them next week and well beyond. The question that people are going to ask, if not already, of this government is: what are you going to do for the school children of B.C.? What are you going to do for the school children of B.C. families? What are you going to do to improve learning conditions and class sizes in our schools across this province?

Another question that will be raised right across B.C. is: what are you going to do with the demoralized and disrespected teaching profession that doesn't trust you? Yes, this government is going to reap what they've sown from their tough choices. They will indeed. Bad choices — that's what they are.

How is bitterness throughout the school system going to make British Columbia the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent? That's one of the great goals for a golden decade. How is bitterness going to do that? This isn't a great goal. It's a purely cynical, political calculation and nothing more. It's another lofty bit of hyperbole that hopes to gloss over the quagmire that we're headed into. Next week, instead of lessons in school that would support the creation of a better-educated, literate jurisdiction, instead of those lessons in schools that would promote those goals in drama, languages, mathematics and reading, the lesson the government is providing to our kids is one of conflict.

They're going to learn about the use of power and authority to force an outcome, and they're going to live with the consequences, unfortunately. It's their education that's being affected. Kids are learning that the people they trust most in their lives — and those people are parents and teachers; those are the people that kids trust most in their lives — are being set against one another by the government.

These trusted people are the very people that school children need in their lives if they're going to succeed in school, complete school and do well. They're the very people they need to succeed in life beyond school.

You know, teachers are — and they remain, whatever this dispute will do — dedicated to students. They are passionate in their desire to see their students succeed, but our teachers, too, need our support, hon. Speaker. They need our support if we want, as a province, to create a culture and environment that allows and encourages our teachers to work the magic they do with our children. If we want that, if we want to try and achieve the goal that the government has set out and that I quoted earlier, then we have to teach teachers fairly and, most importantly, with respect.

Teachers need to know that they are respected. They need to know that the public, through our government, are there for them to back them up and help them with their jobs, but this government can't seem to grasp this.

This legislation undermines the very foundation. It attacks the heart of what is fundamental to a successful public education system. For that reason, it must be withdrawn. Again, I go over some of the facts — the tragic circumstances, I guess — around this dispute. In B.C., rightly so, parents expect the government to work with teachers, not against them. They expect the government to improve education for their children. The sad reality — the spectacle of Bill 12 — is that this government has let parents and their children down.

The government didn't need to take this confrontational approach. I talked about the new times we're in, which the government is unable to see. They're unable to see the failure of the logic they presented four years ago in so-called bad times, so they still continue to offer that up as the excuse for not finding a way through the impasse today, in 2005 — to not recognize the new circumstances we're in. They didn't need to take this confrontational approach.

This legislation increases the level of confrontation, and unfortunately, it does nothing at all to improve learning in the classrooms across British Columbia. It was there; the fact-finder did provide an opportunity for some substantial progress to get us through this week, and perhaps to have further, fruitful discussions next week, to maybe get some trust back between both the parties that there was encouragement for them to talk and things being talked about that were important to both sides.

The rhetoric on the opposite side is very good at times about the goals they have for this population. They should be talking to teachers — they're important stakeholders — about how they're going to put their resources in to make it happen. It won't. It's cheap talk in this House and elsewhere if the government's going to say one thing and do another. The unfortunate thing, though, is that this mandate so far is continuing on very much like the last mandate of the government. It is a government that, unfortunately, chooses confrontation.

C. Wyse: As I begin tonight, I am going to reflect very briefly upon a small part of my conversation with

the House from last night, which I would simply like to point out to the hon. members across from me, in case they were not in the House when I spoke.

I would remind the House that I am a retired school teacher of 35 years. The first year that I taught was in 1969. I taught seven classes that averaged…. Pardon me. They didn't average; there were more than 40 students in each one of those classes. I mentioned to the House that it was my opinion that no one in this House would describe that situation as an ideal learning situation for students. I did point out that that was 1969. I then went on and drew — through other pieces of correspondence that I received from Cariboo South — from a variety of different sources that were now reporting that those numbers of 40 students in classes had once more reappeared in the year 2005.

I mentioned last night, and I repeat it here tonight, that it has been my experience that if the teachers did not demand learning and working conditions for the students, no government — and I repeat, no government — ever offered to improve the classroom situation for the child. That was the bottom line. That was the end of the story, and there were no exceptions.

I speak in favour of this motion that we have in front of us. But before I go there and further develop this rationale, I would like to recognize the people that are in the gallery here tonight. At this particular late time, I find it interesting — and I draw the attention of my hon. members here in the House — that we actually do have people that are here following this particular debate. I would also like to recognize the people following this debate on TV.

Personally, being a rookie, I have been somewhat surprised at the correspondence in all the different forms and the number of people that, in actual fact, have been following the debate in the House around this particular issue. I did find it somewhat surprising, the great amount of scrutiny that the community here in B.C. does have us under as we go through the important debate here around Bill 12. I would like to invite the public to come down and join us here while we continue on with this important debate.

Now, I do wish to go back and discuss with the House why I'm in favour of the motion that is here in front of us. I accept the golden rule, number one, which the government has placed in front of us. I have listened to it many times over the last several weeks to months, and I am absolutely, positively convinced that the hon. members opposite sincerely and truly believe in the goal that they have set. It's their number-one goal, and I will read it: "Make B.C. the best-educated, most literate jurisdiction on the continent." As I've mentioned, I am convinced that my colleagues here in the House do believe that, and I believe everyone around the table does. However, the situation we have here is the methodology with which we attempt to gain and achieve that particular goal, and that is where the difference remains, in my mind.

That's where the debate and discussion is here tonight. It is on Bill 12. I support the motion to remove it. I encourage the government to reflect upon the rationale for not proceeding further with this particular motion. I encourage us here to find ways out of this confrontational situation that we find ourselves in.

I would like to read some reports from two different sources that are reporting what is going on around this particular situation here in British Columbia. I have chosen one from Toronto, and I have chosen one here from Victoria.

Mr. Speaker, I've taken a little bit of liberty here. I'm trying to learn the rules of politeness in the House, so I have chosen to remove some names that have been mentioned in the article to put it into what I understand to be the correct form here in the House. I do wish to advise that I have taken a little bit of liberty here as I put the direct quote into the record. If I've missed some, I very much request your guidance to make sure that I get back on the straight and narrow.

I was very pleased this morning to hear a report in the House from the Minister of Labour to indicate that, in actual fact, the teachers have shown a willingness to move in improving that particular relationship, and I will come back, later on, to why I believe it rests with the government to also move in that area.

If the teachers don't like what they're offered at the bargaining table, that's too bad. It's take it or leave it. And if they leave it, the government introduces legislation to impose the contract on them anyway. That is a horrible system and one that has contributed significantly to the present lamentable and quite serious state of relations between the two sides.

In the last deal the teachers signed with the New Democratic Party government, they accepted a zero-zero-and-two-percent wage increase over three years.

Now to Victoria, from the Times Colonist. The headline is: "Teachers, B.C. Government Locked in Ideological Warfare." My understanding is that as a member of the opposition, I fit somewhat into that phrase of "B.C. government," so I am here attempting to convince my hon. members across the table to change their position on what we are debating here on Bill 12 and voting for hoisting the bill.

Now, I mentioned earlier I was also going to introduce one piece of correspondence that I received from my riding back in Cariboo South. The intent of this piece of correspondence is to set the tone on why I'm in favour of this particular motion to have the bill hoisted. I read a letter that had been sent to one of our hon. ministers of the government that we share here. It reads:

Back to the motion on why I wish to encourage this government to support the motion. We require some time in order to deal with this situation. We require some time to address the issues that affect the conditions of the learning environment for our students. We require some time to provide for the needs that are requested by our parents of those very students that have elected us here to serve after these needs.

When we have a look back over the situation and why we're here, the responsibility for this crisis rests with the decisions that have been made by the government over the last number of years. As I mentioned yesterday, the government has, to now, chosen a method of solution, of conflict and confrontation, as the first option. For a number of years this government has deliberately pursued actions that provoke the conflict with teachers. I wish to mention four or five of them.

The contract was torn up in 2002. Teachers were stripped of their self-governing body in 2003. There was a B.C. Supreme Court decision overruled on classroom composition in 2004. The teachers were used as political pawns in the 2005 election. There was a refusal to meet with teachers when the Premier had a chance to make progress.

This legislation here, Bill 12, clearly, in my opinion, increases the level of confrontation with teachers and does nothing to improve the learning conditions in the classroom. That very much is my opinion. I have shared the experience with you, and I bring that most sincerely in front of you.

The government's record on education over the past four years has hurt education. I mentioned these last night, but now, in trying to convince my colleagues, I would remind once more of the 2,500 teaching positions and increased class sizes across B.C. as a result of decisions made here in this House, over 113 schools closed all over the province — a dozen of which were in single-school communities. If I have time, I am going to take this House to Cariboo South, and I will describe some of these communities to you, because I happen to be representative of school districts that, in actual fact, have many single schools in them. They had more of that type of a situation a very short time ago.

I'm hoping that I will have time to get there, but unfortunately, they've only given me half an hour to make my case. But I may get another opportunity to come back and discuss this further. I sincerely hope that I am going to have that opportunity, because this issue is important for us to be debating and discussing for as long as necessary in order to get this confrontation out of the discussion that is represented here in Bill 12.

Now, back to my case. I get distracted too easily. I'm sorry, Madam Speaker. I apologize for that.

Education funding was frozen for three years while the downloading of millions of dollars of costs onto the local school boards required the local school boards to make a number of forced cuts in programs to pay for the necessary anticipated costs in other areas, since they are not allowed to plan for a deficit budget. Makes sense to me.

The results, though, don't make as much sense to me. I wish to now remind the House of some examples of increasing cost pressures here. Teachers' salary increases that were legislated were not funded, and those are ongoing costs. They have to be made up by the local boards on an ongoing basis. I do know that many of the hon. members on the other side of this House, with their business experience, understand very clearly the significance of being given an inflationary cost that was never funded to begin with, and the liability that stays with a group right throughout each year. It is compounded as each year passes. The cuts become more severe in order to deal with that set of financial circumstances.

The ongoing salary creep that takes place as teachers move up their salary grid. MSP increases that were a result of legislation passed by this House here — a huge increase of costs that the boards had to pick up. Not minor costs of a few tens of thousands of dollars; we're talking of hundreds of thousands of dollars in this particular case. Again, a creeping inflationary cost that has an effect that goes on and on and on.

Utility increases. When I was looking at doing this, I wrote down "hydro" here. I have absolutely no idea what I was doing when I wrote down just simply "hydro," because where I'm from, the hydro in some of our places has to be made with gasoline in order to deal with the school. In a district like where I'm from and represent, Cariboo South, that becomes even more inflationary.

Then of course we have the transportation costs. As we are well aware here, as is everyone here in British Columbia, the price of fuel has accelerated extensively. Our districts like Cariboo South that have winters in

them that require heating costs are going to have further inflationary aspects that come into place.

I would like to come back to the situation around the declining enrolment coupled with the declining number of teachers. The student enrolment decline has been about 3 percent overall. However, the situation we have with the reduction in teachers is about 8 percent. That has led to over 2,500 fewer teachers now than in 2001. In specific areas there have been noticeable reductions. I mentioned those last night, but I intend to repeat them here once more for the record. Special education teachers are down by 17.5 percent. Teacher-librarians are down by 23.4 percent. Counsellors are down by 9.5 percent. ESL teachers are down by 20 percent.

Changes made by the government mean that there is no longer automatic reduction in class size when special needs students in the classroom reach a certain number. Combine this with the reduced number of special education teachers, and there's a real problem with support in our schools.

When we talk about class size and learning conditions, it is not simply an issue of the number of students that are found in a class. It also includes the mix of what the grade composition is, as well as the individual needs of the students that are contained within it.

I do not believe for one second that the hon. members do not understand that particular piece of information I share with them. But in ignoring it, with Bill 12 and the effect that it has upon the situation, the learning conditions for the students that are expected by the parents here in British Columbia no longer remain acceptable.

Bill 19 in 2004 — that's the Education Services Collective Agreement Act, 2004 — overturned a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that said classroom composition should remain as part of the collective bargaining process. This government threw that court decision out so it wouldn't be caught breaking the law.

It all adds up to bigger class sizes around the province and less individual attention for all students in the classroom. Through a freedom-of-information request, we know of the provincewide total of 487 science eight classes. I will give you that number again. Of a provincewide total of 487 science eight classes, 137 have 30 or more students. We're going back to 1969. I point out that year that nobody has debated. It was not an ideal learning situation. Of 454 social studies nine classes, 189 have 30 or more. Of 455 English 11 classes, 126 have 30 or more, and the list goes on and on and on.

These are some of the reasons. I hope I'm not running out of time. I'm just getting going. Madam Speaker, maybe you could help me here. Can I ask for somebody else's time? Apparently not, so I hope I've got a lot of time left.

Our commitment. I believe it's fair that we put a solution here in front of the House. We are committed to ensuring B.C. children's success in the classroom by such novel things as reducing class sizes to give students more support and attention; increasing teacher-librarians, counsellors and special education support; increasing funding for kids with special needs — I know the next one is very much within the tone and feeling of this particular House here, as we have heard in the throne speech — improving opportunities for aboriginal children and inner-city kids; stopping arbitrary school closures and creating a dedicated fund to help school boards deal with declining enrolments and large geographical disbursements; connecting high school students to apprenticeship and training programs while in high school.

C. James: I think you can hear the passion with which our members on this side of the House are here debating this legislation and debating the amendment to the second reading to hoist Bill 12.

I want to start off by talking about our education system in the broadest sense, because Bill 12 has a huge impact on our education system, and I think it's important for all of us in this House to reflect on what our education system truly means. Danton, the revolutionary French leader who helped give birth to the first French republic, said more than two centuries ago: "After bread, education." Danton's famous quote reminds all of us that education is the most basic necessity after those that are vital to life itself: food, clothing and shelter.

Education is key to our development, to our democracy, to alleviating poverty and to ensuring a future for our children, our families and our communities. Education truly is the cornerstone of our society, and the fact that we're here tonight to argue about the imposition of a bill, Bill 12, speaks to the fact that we can't take support for our education system for granted.

History's greatest minds have recognized the supreme importance of education. For John Adams, a founding father of the American republic, the liberty of a people could not be preserved without it. The American President John F. Kennedy said: "Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain." To Nelson Mandela, education is the most important and powerful weapon you can use to change the world. Around the world, a strong, accessible public education system drives positive social change.

That's true for economic growth as well. Education drives human and social capital growth and fuels direct economic advancements. "National innovation is related to spending on education," said Porter and Martin for Industry Canada in 2001. "Jurisdictions that invest in education will be the ones to succeed in this

We know that our education system plays a critical role in the social and economic fabric of our society. What saddens me tonight is that the critical role of education in B.C. is being undermined by this government and its confrontational approach to our education system.

In my first response to Bill 12, I noted the importance of the partners in our education system and how critical it is to make sure that all the partners work together to make our schools the best they can be. Locally elected school boards, administrators, support staff, parents, students and, yes, teachers all have a necessary role in ensuring that our system works well. What helps those partners work together? What are the keys to a successful team, whether it's in the education system, a business or an organization?

I'd like us to just take a minute to look at the needed ingredients for a successful team: clear goals, a vision, effective communication, address issues and resolve conflicts, and build trust and respect.

I want to focus just for a moment on the last item in this list: build trust and respect. If this government cared about supporting our education system and ensuring that all the partners in our system are working together to support our students, a goal we should all be working towards, then I have to tell you that they have a very strange way of showing it. This government has failed to meet that necessary ingredient for our education system in so many ways, and Bill 12, sadly, is one more example of that failure. Bill 12 has done more damage to an already damaged relationship between this government and teachers, a damaged relationship that this government has yet to accept any responsibility for.

I've heard this government say that they've supported education, so I'd like us to just take a moment and look at the facts. This government began their mandate in 2002 by ripping up the teachers' contract with no discussion, no debate and no conversation with the people who were directly impacted by that decision. What was the result of that decision? Some 2,500 teaching positions were lost around this province, 113 schools closed in just four years and education funding was frozen for three years while this government downloaded costs onto school boards.

I'd like to share with you just a few comments from teachers in the school district that I represent, which will show you the personal impact of these decisions. This is from a teacher of 25 years:

And another comment, Madam Speaker: "Too many students in each class with too many diverse needs, combined with too few essential resources like textbooks and too little support, is a disgrace. It's not fair to my students, and it's not fair to the families that we are accountable to. The changes I've seen are astounding, and the last three years, in particular, have been incredibly stressful."

Those are personal stories from teachers who know first hand the impact of this government's decisions. When we all know the importance of an education system, when we all recognize the importance of all the partners in the system working together…. This is the record of this government. This is the government legacy in education, despite what the government's throne speech documents say.

This government puts words to paper but doesn't seem to recognize that actions speak louder than words, and that people appreciate hearing the words, but the words don't help that student who isn't getting the assistance that they need. The words don't help that library with no teacher-librarian. Words don't help that student without a textbook or the student with special needs who can't attend school on certain days because the assistant time isn't there. Words alone don't do the job, and this government needs to understand that.

What could have happened, Mr. Speaker? If this government truly cared about education, what could they have done? I've heard the Minister of Education, the Labour Minister and other government members speak to the fact that the system has been broken for a long time and that they're sad we're at this place again. Well, leadership means facing a challenge and doing something about it. Leadership doesn't mean accepting what is. It means seeing the challenge and finding solutions — something that this government doesn't understand or perhaps doesn't wish to understand.

Teachers offered to meet with this government. Teachers offered to not escalate their job action but sit down with government and find a solution. Teachers offered to meet all day today, all day tomorrow, all evening and all weekend, if necessary, to find a solution. What's the result? We're here in the Legislature debating the only solution that this government seems to see, which is using the legislative hammer. That's not good enough for the students and the parents of British Columbia.

That doesn't build trust and respect, which I talked about earlier as being a key ingredient in building a successful team. That certainly doesn't support students. And it doesn't build the best education system possible. It's a sad day in British Columbia that the government is going down this path again. It's even

sadder when we look at what an amazing education system we have here in British Columbia, an education system that could be the best in this country, with some respect and some support from government.

I'm incredibly fortunate. I attended school right here in Victoria in this riding that I proudly represent. Both my children attended school here in Victoria in this riding that I represent. I was also a foster parent for 20 years, and many of the children that I cared for also attended school in this riding that I represent. As with all children, my children and my foster children had different strengths and different needs. Teachers had a huge impact on their lives.

I want to talk about the schools in my riding of Victoria–Beacon Hill for a moment. I think of the teachers at Vic West Elementary and believe they might have a thing or two to share with this government. The teachers at Vic West have established an amazing program with their students to educate them about conflict resolution — something that the government might want to pay attention to — training students in the art of mediation and resolving playground disputes before they turn into something more serious. It's something, as I noted, that the government might want to pay attention to.

I also think of teachers like Allan Guvender at Sir James Douglas Elementary School. He's just one example of educators who dedicate hundreds of hours every year to extracurricular activities. Allan can always be seen working behind the scenes, helping with the annual musical or organizing recess or basketball to help kids stay healthy.

Keeping kids healthy is something that the teachers at Margaret Jenkins Elementary spend a great deal of their time outside class hours doing, whether they're going on swim-club nights, early morning starts for cross-country practice…. I can tell you that living in the neighbourhood, you can see — and I'm sure many of the MLAs who travel to this Legislature every day will see — children out exercising early in the morning. We must remember it's a teacher who showed up on that early morning to make sure those students were out there enjoying themselves and getting healthy.

I admire our teachers at Central Middle School, who not only inspire our students academically but also encourage a strong sense of social responsibility in our students by encouraging them to give back to the local community, through projects like those in aid of the homeless. In the past few weeks many Central teachers have shown their sense of fun by letting the students dye their hair red and purple and green to raise money for Cops for Cancer — again, an area where our students are giving to the community. They're doing it with the help of our teachers in our school district.

The teachers at James Bay elementary school have also formed a true bond with their students and their community. James Bay elementary school is James Bay Community School, designated as a community school, one of the first in the province. A number of teachers, even having been transferred to other schools in the city, have continued to volunteer time serving on the James Bay Community School board. The teachers have done that because, as we know on this side of the House, teachers care about their community.

At George Jay Elementary School, a wonderful school in Victoria's inner city, teachers have had a dedicated focus on improving literacy. Teachers have worked together, changing lunch hours and recess breaks, to make sure that their students receive an uninterrupted block every day to have the whole school working on literacy. It's made a profound difference to student achievement. I also know that at George Jay Elementary we have a chess club where members from Rotary come in and work with teachers and students in the school to provide an opportunity for students that they wouldn't have otherwise — again, a teacher making a difference in the lives of our students.

At Vic High, teachers are passionate about increasing the graduation rate of their students. This school population is incredibly diverse, and it's a sad truth that a number of students in this school find themselves living on their own. That creates huge challenges for students who are determined to finish their education. Teachers at Vic High, many on their own time, make sure that their students are taken care of by ensuring that they are connected with the right community resources and counselling, and sometimes by the simple gesture of phoning them in the morning to make sure they're okay and coming to school.

Teachers making a difference in the lives of students — that's why we're here today. That's why we are here on this side of the House. That's why we'll continue to be here, because it's critical for all of us to remember that our lives have been hugely impacted by teachers. It is Bill 12 that is damaging the relationship with teachers and that will ultimately create difficulty for our education system, which we should be working to improve.

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the teachers of South Park Elementary School, which is just a stone's throw from this building. In fact, many of the members probably walk by South Park Elementary School as they head to the Legislature each day. This school has a special place in my heart. It's a school that I attended, that my children attended and where I began my political career. I began my political career at South Park Elementary by taking the students out on strike in grade seven when students weren't allowed to wear pants to school on a rare day that it actually snowed in Victoria. The members on the opposite side have South Park either to blame or to thank for my political career beginning in Greater Victoria.

As I mentioned, my children attended there, and I was an active parent volunteer as well. It's a school where the children and the teachers work closely together, where parents have a direct impact on the lives of their children. This tradition continues in this school, and this year the school's curriculum at South Park has

In classrooms in Victoria–Beacon Hill and throughout this province, it's very clear that for our educators, teaching is more than just a job. Teaching is a passion and a commitment for students and the community. It's a culture of passion and commitment that must be nurtured, not trampled. We can do that in many ways. But there's one simple way, and it has been mentioned over and over again in the debate on this bill over the last few days, and I'm sure you'll hear it again tonight. A way to resolve this issue is to show some respect for our teachers.

The bill before us does anything but show respect. The lack of respect inherent in this proposed legislation is a direct attack on the culture that has helped encourage the wonderful success stories that I have referred to today.

I rise to speak to this amendment because I know from personal experience — in my own life, in my children's lives, in the lives of the foster children I looked after — the difference that teachers have made. I know how important it is to nurture the relationship of everyone in the education system.

As I've mentioned in this House before, I served for 11 years on a school board. I know the importance of supporting a team of people to make the education system work. This bill, Bill 12, does nothing to help build that relationship. It does nothing to improve the relationships that are necessary for the success of an education system that is, as I talked about at the start of my talk tonight, critical to the success of us as a society, critical to positive social change and critical to our economic success.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I would once again urge all the members on the other side of the House to take some time tonight, when they will have the opportunity to think, to think about a teacher that has made a difference in their lives, to think about the impact the education system has had on their own families and to think about their responsibility in making sure that we improve our education system and that we work together to make that happen.

J. Horgan: I want to thank everyone for that rousing applause for my leader and also for the beginning of my remarks on the motion before us today. It's been a long week. I recall starting this debate with the Minister of Labour on Monday. Here we are on Thursday, and as I was advised by our House Leader, Thursday will last until Thursday ends.

It's an interesting way to conduct business. We find ourselves in a situation where we're going to have legislation by exhaustion. I know, Mr. Speaker, you'll be with us to the end, and I thank you for your contribution and your steady hand — and that of Madam Speaker as well.

It's been an interesting week, and it's been a long week. We've had a lot of discussion, a lot of emotion. I want to take a few moments to comment on the words of the member for Peace River South earlier today. I have a great deal of respect for that member, and he spoke with passion and conviction about his personal perspective on this issue.

I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that he and other members on the other side of this place feel strongly about this issue. They feel strongly about education, about teachers, students and parents.

However, where we divide on this question in this Legislature is on where we should proceed from here. We've heard a lot about history. I was here for some of that history. I played a role in it. I'll acknowledge that — a minor role, but I played a role in it. What we need to do today, in unison as a Legislature, is look at the situation we find ourselves in.

At the start of the week the Minister of Labour introduced legislation to impose, for the second time in this government's mandate, a contract on teachers in this province. For the second time in the mandate of this government, the Legislature was asked to use a blunt instrument, when hard work, negotiation, tact and diplomacy would have produced a better result.

We are here this evening proceeding to legislation by exhaustion because those on the other side, although they speak passionately and eloquently about their golden goals, as we have heard so many, many times from this side of the House…. We share the view that education must be the highest priority of this Legislature

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY


	YEAS — 40

Falcon	Reid	Ilich
Chong	Christensen	Les
Richmond	Bell	Bennett
van Dongen	Roddick	Hayer
Lee	Jarvis	Nuraney
Whittred	Horning	Cantelon
Thorpe	Oppal	de Jong
Taylor	Bond	Hansen
Abbott	Coleman	Hogg
Sultan	Hawkins	Krueger
Lekstrom	Mayencourt	Polak
Hawes	Yap	Bloy
MacKay	Black	McIntyre
	Rustad

	NAYS — 32

S. Simpson	Evans	Fleming
Farnworth	James	Kwan
Brar	B. Simpson	Cubberley
Hammell	Coons	Thorne
Simons	Puchmayr	Gentner
Routley	Fraser	Horgan
Dix	Trevena	Bains
Robertson	Karagianis	Ralston
Krog	Austin	Chudnovsky
Chouhan	Wyse	Sather
Macdonald		Conroy