Watch video of Guy's Response to Budget Speech:
http://bcleg-ds1.insinc.com/ibc/mp/md/open/f/8/8/20100309wv150en?f=w&m=v...

2010 Legislative Session: Second Session, 39th Parliament

HANSARD
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The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

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Official report of
DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)
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TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 11, Number 4

G. Gentner: It's a pleasure here to rise again to represent my constituents in North Delta. You know, it's also fitting that I follow the minister of Tourism B.C. responsible…. Oh no, that's no longer here — is it?

However, I'd like to thank my constituents in North Delta. I have to begin by telling you that this is a constituency that really is a working community that plays and has fun. Hard-working families are involved with recreation. They're volunteers. They're homeowners. North Delta is a good gauge. It's sort of like the average constituency, suburban-like, in the province. Statistics Canada bears that out year after year. Having spent some time talking to my constituents, I want to share with you some of what I'm hearing at street level and on the doorstep relative to this budget, which I do not support.

We're into the post-Olympics. You know, it was a wonderful time, and we are also now going to be excited about the Paralympic Games coming. But relative to Budget 2010, you know, the party is over. The party is over, and it's time to turn out the lights and really look at what this government is all about. It's budget time.

I've been stuck for some time trying to give this budget a theme. Is it a slash-and-burn budget? Are they into cutting? But it seems to also be a major money grab. I thought it may have been a "spend out of the recession" budget. Well, maybe it's kind of like what Imelda Marcos once said: "Hey, win or lose, we go shopping after the election." Who cares about election promises and statements once you're elected? Before the election, there's no HST. All of a sudden after the election — poof! — here we are. We have an HST. A deficit of only $480 million before the election, but here we are after the election, six times larger.

Let's go shopping. Let's forget about the economy. I mean, it's blustering. It's a phony budget. But I don't think it's quite right. Yes, it's a cavalier approach, what Marcos said. But it doesn't quite grasp what this budget is. So how do we give this budget a theme? The B.C. Liberals are void of anything new. We keep hearing the same rhetoric over and over. Even their multi-million-dollar public affairs bureau can't spin it.

What do we call this budget — the budget of scarcity? Or is it of hardship? Is it of recession? I think that would be too kind, calling it a budget dealing with recession. No, it can only be called what it truly is. It's the pickpocket budget. They're sticking their hand in the back pockets of the working people of B.C. This is a government that's picking pockets without a person's knowledge. They're sneaking around.

It's almost as though it's kind of a crime, a form of political larceny which involves the stealing of money and valuables and services from the person of a victim without them noticing the theft at the time. It requires considerable dexterity and a real knack for misdirection.

Someone who picks pockets is a pickpocket. Pickpockets and other thieves, especially those working in teams, sometimes apply distraction. Oh, I remember those 4:30 Friday afternoon press releases that the B.C. Liberals are so famous for and so coy about. When the media have gone home just before the weekend, then — zap! — out come the press releases. Distractions, just like that of a pickpocket. A pickpocket will masterly distract you by asking a question or bumping into the victim. These distractions sometimes require sleight of hand, speed, misdirection and other types of skills. This is the pickpocket budget.

[1715]

You know, Jack Dawkins, better known as the Artful Dodger, is a character in the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist. We all know the dodger. A dodger is a pickpocket. Which ministry over there is the dodger? The Premier's office, with its ability to download all its costs to other ministries and then plead austerity? The Minister of Health? Oh, the quick of hand. He's the fixer. Now you see it; now you don't. "Everything is just fine. Look over there. There's a hospital bed. Oh, and thanks for the MSP. Oh, and by the way, that bed is now privatized."

The Minister of Finance — he's the fastest pickpocket in the west. Surely Dickens was thinking of him as the dodger, the continuous denier. Dickens said the following of the dodger:

"He wore a man's coat, which reached nearly to his heels. He had turned the cuffs back halfway up his arm to get his hand out of the sleeves, apparently with the ultimate view of thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers, for there he kept them. He was, altogether, as roistering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood 4 foot 6, or something less, in his bluchers."

Or is it the Minister of Housing development, notorious for his knowledge of what poverty is? Perhaps he is Fagin, shopping with what hand is in your pocket. That is what this budget is all about. Pickpockets are slick, when you can hardly notice them.

The B.C. Liberals are pickpockets thrusting their dirty little hands into the linings of all working people, small business people, the aged, the young, the pockets of university students and the jobless. They are ever so quick. Why, they can turn an HST into a health services tax with a sleight of hand, totally oblivious to what little people, everyday families are trying to cope with.

What we are witnessing is once again, in this decade of major tax shift, shifting the burden of paying for services by cutting, paying for deficits because of an economy run into the ground, run amok. This budget is pickpocketing.

After many, many years — seven years — British Columbia is still No. 1 when it comes to child poverty, worst in the country. Ranking of purchasing power of minimum wage — we are the worst in the country. Decrease in medium income between the years 2001 and 2010 — the worst in all of Canada. Minimum wage — now, there's a curled lip over there of once the proudest province of labour legislation.

And what do we have to look forward to? More years of continuous 6 percent increases to Medical Services Plan premiums. Can you imagine? No wage increases, and year after year 6 percent increases to MSP, yet no protection for your medical records. Now, that's wonderful planning, isn't it, with your money.

The living wage reflects what people need to support their families, based on the actual costs of living in a specific community. The calculation of a two-earner family with two young children includes basic expenses such as housing, child care, food, transportation and government taxes, as well as credits, deductions and subsidies.

The B.C. Liberals have an abysmal interest in the priorities that really matter to British Columbians, and it shows. Our lowest wage earners have not had a raise in nine years. Affordable housing is dwindling. Homelessness is at a record high, and we have the highest child poverty rates in all of Canada. The unfair HST has families digging deeper into their pockets just to put food on their table, heat their homes, use transit and travel on B.C. ferries.

Each parent must work full time at an hourly wage of $17 in Metro Vancouver, and much the same in greater Victoria, in order to pay for necessities, support the healthy development of their children, and participate in the social and civil life of their communities. A staggering 40 percent of families in Metro Vancouver fall well below the living-wage calculation of $17 per hour.

[1720]

B.C. Ferries are up again. Just make sure we snuck it in before the HST. No, I'm sorry, it's probably the carbon tax that's going to hit us again. Since 2003 B.C. Ferries have gone up 60 percent. Well, look over here. They say it's all revenue-neutral. That's the B.C. Liberal distraction, while they artfully slide a hand into your pocketbook. "Oh, here, let me dangle another $100 bill for your carbon efforts." That's supposed to be neutral. But they're going up again.

How do they raise taxes and lose money? How is it even possible to introduce new taxes and take a loss? Easy. The budget shows that in the upcoming 2010-11 year the HST, scheduled to be imposed on July 1, will actually lose $113 million.

Payment for hydro resource giveaways. Hydro increases by 8 percent per annum every year until 2020. By then it will be double what it is today, while at the same time they're giving away one of our last assets — our rivers.

B.C. Hydro rates will rise by 33 percent over the next four years. But don't despair. Look at the privately owned run-of-the-river projects. The Californians will have lots of energy and in the sleight of the hand for another 7 bucks per month, at least for this year. Next year the B.C. Liberals will find a different ruse to once again dip into your pocket. What is it next year — 9 bucks more a month? They're a sneaky bunch over there, Madam Speaker — a sneaky bunch.

Then there are those property taxes going up. Utility rates are going up and up and up. Whatever happened to the B.C. Liberals promise of water meters? Sewage and garbage rates are going up, and recycling rates are going up. The recycling market is supposed to be dead, yet get this. The government's faith in the globalized economy is ensuring that the recycling industry, that the old newspapers are being shipped and recycled in China, for heaven's sakes.

Hon. K. Krueger: What's wrong with that?

G. Gentner: "What's wrong with that?" he asks. We've lost our pulp industry, the only recycling pulp we have, and they're shipping it to China. He says: "What's wrong with that?"

Then we have the larceny at ICBC — the hand in the ultimate socialist cookie jar. The ripoff of $780 million from ICBC insurers. That's robbery. That's outright robbery. The shift of $780 million from reserves in the optional side to generate revenue not only means robbing the shareholder, the motorists of B.C. who are covered by ICBC, but it also provides less assistance for optional insurance, which is where the competition is jawing at.

I don't see an equal grab on private insurers — perhaps an across-the-board insurance tax on ICBC and Canada Direct, another way of gouging the consumer — but a means to allow even greater competition at the optional side.

The whole clawing makes a mockery of BCUC. Instead of a well-deserved rebate for consumers, a means of really stimulating the economy, they steal. I mean, it's really a matter of who you want to stimulate, Hon. Speaker.

Deputy Speaker: Member, one moment, please. I would like to caution you about your use of language. You are bordering on the unparliamentary and have been thus far, so I'd like to just caution you that you do maintain a parliamentary tone in your remarks. I'd like other members to give the member the opportunity to continue his remarks.

G. Gentner: Thank you, hon. Speaker. Well noted.

Then we have the distraction of the deferred property taxes for the first-time buyers. Beginning July 1, homeowners with children under 18 with at least 15 percent equity in their homes will be able to defer their municipal taxes. Seniors and those with financial hardships have been able to it for years. Interest on deferred taxes would be charged based on a prime lending rate, which will be reset twice a year until the amount is paid back or the house is sold. So let's pray that there are no major interest rate increases.

But don't forget that property insurance rates are going to be going up as well. Heating costs are going up. Costs are going to go up and up. Strata fees are going up. Maintenance fees are going up, in part because of the HST. Property deferral is another distraction by the pickpocket.

[1725]

You can pay for the HST and other increases by deferring your property taxes. We know the real estate agents aren't happy about the HST, so the dodger says: "We'll give first-time condo buyers a property tax deferment so they can pay the HST." Young families won't have any equity when they're done, but who really cares over there when they are gingerly slipping their hands into the people's pockets? Clever people, these B.C. Liberals.

The B.C. Lottery Corporation — $347 million to enhance gaming. More baubles and distractions for those who have lost hope so that the government can once again slip their hands into unsuspecting pockets.

Now, let's talk of recovery, the economy and the HST. The HST will bite much into the retail restaurants along where I live in the south Scott Road corridor. In 2009 B.C. retail sales decreased by 6 percent — that's according to the B.C. Business Council — and it's anticipated that consumer recovery will be slow in 2010. We will be tough, and with the pending implementation of the HST along Scott Road, an eight-kilometre commercial stretch straddling Surrey and North Delta, much of today's retailing along this corridor will be in the ditch because of the HST.

There's no doubt that many businesses, especially restaurants, will be forced to close. This government doesn't care about small business or the mom-and-pop shops. Along Scott Road in less than a year there has been a 10 percent decrease in businesses, with an overall vacancy rate of over 25 percent. In some older strip malls vacancy rates are as high as 42 percent. Now, that's alarming.

What North Delta is witnessing is not comforting. As North Delta's commercial district erodes, so does the community's tax base. Although many economic forecasters may be upbeat for 2010, the commercial vacancy rates tell a very different story. With all the commercial vacancy rates along Scott Road, one has to question the timing of the B.C. Liberals' implementation of the HST itself. The HST will effectively kill many of the 80 various restaurants in North Delta.

Not only will the HST reduce consumer spending, along with this government's endless download of services to municipal and regional governments, thus forcing higher property taxes or higher rents, higher utility costs and utility rates, higher user fees, but all these added costs to daily spending, and now this insidious, hurtful tax will mean consumers will have far less to pay for many routine expenditures such as clothes, shoe stores, retailing outlets, etc.

However, the HST increase will directly affect restaurants, and many of my constituents will have to forgo their occasional dining experiences. The HST will kill restaurants. About 17 percent of all retail businesses in North Delta are restaurants. In B.C. 7.5 percent of the overall B.C. workforce works in restaurants and hotels. It represents 22 percent of all B.C. youth employment. That's according to the B.C. Restaurant Association. I think it's fair to say that many of our young people in North Delta and throughout all of B.C. will be adversely affected on July 1, 2010, when the HST is implemented.

The B.C. Restaurant Association anticipates that in the one year of implementation from July 1, there will be a $747 million drop in restaurant sales alone there B.C. Think of it this way. A $20 meal after taxes will cost you $25.40. The additional 7 percent on the present PST will break a lot of businesses, a retail downfall Delta cannot afford.

Now, briefly, on the economy in my constituency. I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about that ever-disastrous South Fraser perimeter road. I found it very interesting that the Minister of Transportation referred to it as the "Simon Fraser" perimeter road. The minister didn't even know, couldn't even tell you that it was the South Fraser perimeter road. We're talking about a $1.2 billion expenditure, and she calls it the Simon Fraser perimeter road. Shows you how much she knows about her file and how little she knows about my community.

[1730]

B.C. now has a $15 billion trade deficit. You know, the glorious, self-indulgent prophecies of globalization — building a road to accommodate that trend. The South Fraser perimeter road is being built when we are undergoing huge deficits in the next three years — humongous deficits — and cuts to schools, health care, seniors and school services. They continue to foolishly spend on a road that we don't want or need, building a multi-billion gateway road system to accommodate future port traffic, yet the overall port tonnage declined 11 percent compared to the previous year.

According to Robin Silvester, president and CEO of Port Metro Vancouver…. He states that on the export side the only sign of recovery was from grains, specialty crops and crude oil. So why all the fuss about the South Fraser perimeter road? How many trucks are used and how much freeway pavement is necessary to get those commodities to a ship? Nada. Commodities such as these are transported by rail and through something called a pipe.

Interesting, though, how one of the only stable sectors is agriculture. Yet this government continues to put it on the chopping block. The Minister of Agriculture should be completely humiliated with the cuts to his ministry. Grain exports increased by 33 percent, but this hardly expresses the Chinese November 15 ban on Canadian canola. How do the Chinese get away with it anyway? Globalization for us and the importation of goods and exportation of jobs, while the rest of the world protects their economies. That's very interesting — isn't it? Protectionism elsewhere but not here.

Back to North Delta, the so-called rationale for the South Fraser perimeter road. Overall container volume for Port Metro Vancouver decreased nearly 14 percent for 2.2 TEUs — that's 20-foot equivalent units — on the year. The downturn in the economy and the erosion of
the consumer confidence in 2009 led to an almost 19 percent decline in laden container imports.

I ask the B.C. Liberals opposite: don't they know the value-added industry that could be invested in our community with this wasted $1.2 billion South Fraser perimeter road? Think of what we could be investing in. The port's annual report on cargo statistics shows that the decline in B.C.'s industrial activity in 2009, particularly in the forestry and construction industries, produced a sharp negative impact on the port's overall domestic volumes.

Domestic shipments of logs were down 42 percent, paper and paperboard down 19 percent, wood chips down 18 percent, caustic soda down 43 percent. If you want to see how the economy is doing, you only have to study our ports, because they tell the real story — economic output weighed against our inputs. Our inputs declined by about 4 percent, while our exports declined by 28 percent. To reach 2008 levels of activity, it will take our ports many, many years — another ten years. In fact, we may never get there again.

With the growing efficiencies at Prince Rupert, the new-to-open widened Panama Canal and the potential innovative transportation means to ship goods cost-efficiently through the Lower Mainland, the South Fraser perimeter road is a wasted proposition, a proposition that defies economic logic and defies the agricultural base and that of the environment.

The warning signs have been there for years of what a colossal mistake this project is. North Delta and South Delta did not vote for a B.C. Liberal MLA because of it. That would say something, but this government is devoid, I believe, of any common sense. It's stuck in the '50s and the '60s when it comes down to innovative transportation. They talk the talk about climate change initiatives, but they never walk the walk.

As homeowners in North Delta continue to lose their homes and the cannonball smashes a century of history, they roll over with bulldozers some of the most special indigenous history in all of North America — in fact, one of the oldest recorded settlements on this continent, an area of history within the post–ice age era 10,000 years ago, along a foreshore of one of the world's most productive and significant salmon-bearing rivers, the mighty Fraser — destroying the farming community and the fragmentation of the farming.

[1735]

I'd like to say thank you to all my supporters who thought we could stop this hideous road to oblivion, but I'd also like to say how awfully sorry I am that I could not convince this government — and, I dare have to say, even some of my own colleagues — for not fully appreciating what an incredible place the lower Fraser River estuary and basin truly is, a place we call home.

I want to move to talking briefly, with the few minutes I have, about a young person who came into my office a few days ago who was looking for legal aid. I told him that I was not a lawyer and couldn't help him in that role. You see, he had been drinking and driving. He was charged, and he blew well over .08, and he knew he shouldn't have done it, and he was charged. We were fortunate that there was no harm done from his act of stupidity.

What he did was wrong. He has a part-time job and is looking for work, but he needs a defence. He needs some legal help, but he cannot afford it. The legal aid regional office in Surrey is now closed. He cannot phone Law Line. It's a once-free phone service of the Legal Services Society designed to help people who don't qualify for a legal aid lawyer to represent them, but it has now been eliminated.

In the September budget the Legal Services Society has been cut by $27.5 million, 28 percent. Now, in this budget six months later, the Legal Services Society is being cut by a further $2.1 million. All these services have been cut.

If you are rich and powerful and you are charged with impaired driving, you can afford a lawyer, and you will have a defence, no matter how much more dangerous and careless your action may have been than that of the young man who came to my office. He will be stained by his actions for the rest of his life. A person not of privilege or of any influential prowess, he will not only have less representation than that of the powerful and the rich, but he will have no representation at all.

The cuts in this budget have consequences that will affect the lives and opportunities of so many of our citizens — people who, unlike many of us, cannot buy a second chance. We can talk about mental health and addictions, what's happened on the Eastside, and we can talk about substance abuse, which I want to. We've seen the response of this government regarding homelessness.

Some of the homeless who are addicts and refer to themselves as dope fiends may even have started on crack or heroin and saw the transition to homelessness as some sort of short tenure. As individuals are bounced in and out of single-room-occupancy hotels and the homes of ever-dwindling networks of friends and family, they eventually end up on the streets. They see homelessness as only a temporary situation, are ready for something better.

Why many addicts and those who are mentally ill don't live in shelters is because they don't find them welcoming. Some will tell you that housing or rentals in the Eastside are not safe. Some rental areas are vessels of greater criminal activity, where addicts are intimidated to work in gang-like activities themselves.

Many addicts will tell you that there are cliques or social strata within the housing precincts. Many will tell you that they are isolated and that staff does not know what is really going on. There's a certain amount of disdain and fear regarding the housing accommodation that is being provided.

The street can be a violent place, and this government has no strategy for a theoretical approach to social suffering. It doesn't care. People here are, after all, people. They deserve some dignity and respect and help.

I asked the members opposite to read an interesting book called The Righteous Dopefiend, by noted anthropologists. They go on the ground level, and they actually talk in the field to those who are shooting up and find out what's going on. The only way they can get through their day is by shooting heroin into their bloodstream. It will turn their physical pain and psychic distress into relaxed comfort, even bliss, for a few hours.

I raise this because the budget doesn't talk about heroin addiction. It's not simply a psychological dependency or an emotional craving. It is a physiological dependency deeply embodied at the cellular level of functioning. Ecstasy and agony play deep leapfrog with chronic high-dose opiate use. Every five to eight hours organs run amok, and people are screaming in pain.

This budget does not talk about the anguish, the negligence or treatment or lack of strategy to address the stain we wear as a society, whereas some media did pick up on it during the Olympics.

[1740]

We can spend hours of platitudes and bathe their side in the glory of the games, but we must also come to grips that for many of our society with mental illness, those who have psychological wounds of abuse or abandonment have long since been subordinated to the demands of daily heroin addiction. We have got to come to grips with that, hon. Speaker. I live in the suburbs, somewhat detached from it, but I also see it now. What we tolerate, unfortunately, has to do with societal status. I hope we will address this growing problem.