2000 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 36th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS Tuesday, May 16, 2000 6:37 p.m. � 8:29 p.m. Birch Committee Room Parliament Buildings, Victoria

Present: R. Thorpe, MLA (Chair); E. Gillespie, MLA (Deputy Chair); P. Calendino, MLA; R. Kasper, MLA; S. Orcherton, MLA; D. Zirnhelt, MLA; G. Farrell-Collins, MLA; M. Coell, MLA; 

Unavoidably Absent: D. Streifel, MLA; E. Walsh, MLA; J. Weisbeck, MLA; J. Weisgerber, MLA

Officials: W. Strelioff, Auditor General; A. van Iersel, Comptroller General

1. The Chair called the Committee to order at 6:37 p.m.

2. The Committee heard testimony on the report, 1999 Follow-up of Performance Audits / Review (1999/2000 Report 1) reviewing Earthquake Preparedness (1997/98 Report 1). The following witnesses appeared before the Committee:

Office of the Auditor General:
o    Tony Timms, Senior Project Leader, Performance Audit Unit

Ministry of Attorney General:
o    Merv Harrower, Director, Provincial Emergency Program

Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations:
o    Richard Jarvin, A/Director, Seismic Mitigation Branch, Capital Division
o    Phil Grewar, Director, Risk Management Branch
o    Leon de Wet, Director, Financial and Corporate Sector Policy Branch

Ministry of Health:
o    Paul Gotto, A/Executive Director, BC Ambulance Service
o    Bill Douglas, Director, Emergency Preparedness Branch

Ministry of Energy and Mines:
o    Victor Levson, Quarternary Geologist, Exploration Services and Information 

3. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 8:29 p.m.

Rick Thorpe, MLA Chair

Craig James Clerk of Committees and Clerk Assistant

TUESDAY, MAY 16, 2000

* denotes member present

 

Other MLAs present:	Doug Symons (Richmond Centre L)
Clerk:	Craig James

[ Page 1497 ]

The committee met at 6:37 p.m.

R. Thorpe (Chair): First of all, thanks to everyone for coming out tonight; I appreciate it. We'll work through this agenda as best we can. I guess we'll start with the auditor general's office.

W. Strelioff: Good evening, Chair, members and colleagues. With me is Tony Timms, who's going to give us an update on a report on earthquake preparedness.

T. Timms: Members of the committee, good evening. You should have in your possession a copy of a document we prepared in connection with this meeting this evening. It's information provided by the office of the auditor general regarding follow-up of recommendations in the 1997-98 report No. 1, "Earthquake Preparedness Performance Audit."

R. Thorpe (Chair): Excuse me, Tony. Not just you but everyone who is speaking tonight is going to have to speak up just so that the Hansard staff can get it. Thank you.

T. Timms: The document is similar in design and intent to the one that you looked at last week in connection with the follow-up audits of ferry safety and ferry maintenance. On page 2 we have set out the audit purpose and overall conclusion from the original report that we issued. And on page 4 we have a short summary of some of the events to date in connection with the issuance and discussion of the reports on earthquake preparedness.

Maybe just to quickly run through the events. . . . Our office issued its report on earthquake preparedness on December 18, 1997. It contains 60 recommendations; nine strategic recommendations, which basically dealt with what we felt needed to be done in connection with the infrastructure for earthquake preparedness, and 51 operational recommendations dealing with specific elements of the emergency management system model.

This report was reviewed by the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts on the morning of October 21, 1998. In the afternoon there was a public hearing held for interested members of the community in Victoria to express their views on the topic of earthquake preparedness. There was a further public meeting held in Richmond the following week, on October 26, 1998, for the same purpose. During the period between March and June 1999 the Public Accounts Committee met to discuss its own report on earthquake preparedness.

During this period of time our office did issue a follow-up report, which basically dealt with the nine strategic recommendations contained in our original report. The Public Accounts Committee finalized its report as of June 7, 1999, and this was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on July 7, 1999.

[1840]

I should say that because some of the events you're likely to hear about shortly have taken place in the last year or so, we will not have had an opportunity to actually review evidence of these events from the point of view of providing some assurance on them at this particular time.

If the committee has any questions on the document or anything like that, I'd be happy to answer them at this time.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Does anyone have any questions at this time? No? Okay.

M. Harrower: Chair and members, we were here approximately a year ago, in May of last year, and reviewed. . . . Someone presented with respect to recommendations.

This evening we are prepared to give you a status report on what's been accomplished. I am accompanied this evening by representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Energy and Mines, who have responsibilities in accordance with the recommendations. I would ask the Chair to give us some direction with respect to whether or not you want these various ministries to make a short presentation to start off.

I'd call on the Ministry of Finance first, and I'd ask their representatives to introduce themselves, if they would, please.

L. de Wet: My name is Leon de Wet. I am the director of the financial and corporate sector policy branch in the ministry. I will only be speaking to recommendations 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3. The other recommendations will be spoken to by other members of the ministry.

With respect to recommendations 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3, the Public Accounts Committee recommended that the government consult with the insurance industry and other stakeholders for the purpose of developing an earthquake insurance regime that meets certain policy objectives: that the earthquake insurance remain affordable and available but also encourage risk mitigation. In short, that regime has not yet been developed, and we are in consultation with the insurance industry.

We have had some meetings with the industry, which is represented by the Insurance Bureau of Canada. Their local representative, I understand, made representation to this committee during your hearings. The ministry and the Insurance Bureau of Canada have agreed to go away and do further research in what types of regimes are being developed worldwide, particularly in earthquake jurisdictions. That is still ongoing.

With respect to 8.2 and 8.3, the Insurance Bureau is of the view that any action on those recommendations should not precede the development of an appropriate regime. The ministry has not necessarily agreed to that, but it has indicated that it will consider those recommendations once the parties

[ Page 1498 ]

R. Thorpe (Chair): I don't know if other members have questions, but the obvious question, Leon, is: when will the regime be ready? What is the target date?

L. de Wet: There has been no set target date in terms of an agreement with the industry. The ministry's target date is that the ministry would like to produce some options for the minister's consideration by the end of the summer. However, we don't know whether. . . . We assume we'll get direction once we produce those options, and then we'll be able to better consult with the industry. But it would be inappropriate for staff to consult with the industry on options without getting ministerial direction, and we're still developing those options.

[1845]

L. de Wet: Yeah. What the industry would like to see is the government make a legislative amendment to the Insurance Act which would enable the industry to put all types of earthquake coverage in a distinct policy. Currently what you have in a homeowner's policy is fire coverage for an earthquake and fire coverage for any other cause of fire. What the industry would like to do then is take that fire coverage and put it in the shake supplement, which you normally buy as an attachment to your homeowner's policy.

The concern that has been expressed by the ministry staff to the insurance industry is that if the government agrees to make that kind of amendment, there is a significant risk that then the industry will properly price the earthquake policy. In some instances, some insurance companies may decline to offer earthquake insurance altogether. That would have a significant impact on the Public Accounts Committee's policy objectives of earthquake insurance that is affordable and available.

The problem also with moving the fire following over into a comprehensive earthquake policy is that we're unsure, at this stage, whether that would provide sufficient incentive for people to take mitigative steps. The insurance industry, like the Ministry of Finance staff, is very keen to see that earthquake insurance is linked to some form of mitigation on the part of homeowners, because mitigation will benefit the industry and will also benefit society at large.

E. Gillespie (Deputy Chair): That certainly lines up with what we heard in California, where you have insurance coverage for one earthquake, but when the next earthquake comes, that coverage is not affordable; people don't purchase it. But people who have found themselves in that situation who have done the mitigation, who've done the strapping down and those kinds of things, have found that that's more effective and more cost-effective than. . . .

Interruption.

R. Thorpe (Chair): We think it's just a call. You just keep going.

E. Gillespie (Deputy Chair): Well, that's the end of it.

R. Kasper: One question. In your deliberations with the industry -- and I say industry, i.e., insurance industry and also the financial institutions, lending agencies for mortgages -- has the subject been brought up about where a number of them are making it mandatory for people who are taking out a mortgage to actually have an earthquake insurance rider or provision for earthquake insurance? So that's point number one.

The second point deals with these very large deductibles that the insurance companies are saying are mandatory to pay for damages occurring as a result of an earthquake. But the industry. . . . I think there were questions raised around the fire-earthquake. Their stated position is that they would still collect the large deductible if you happen to have a fire and there was an earthquake, which hardly seemed fair considering the fact that you already bought fire insurance. Are those points going to be resolved in the discussions, what I'm assuming, to the satisfaction of the consumers? And where are the consumers represented in these discussions? Because I haven't heard anybody mention consumers during these deals that are being cut.

[1850]

Dealing with your other issue on the deductible, insurance companies generally have various ways in which they can control their exposure to risk. They can price the product appropriately, or they can raise their deductibles, or they can have a combination of both. Or alternatively, they can not offer the product at all.

The insurance industry to date has generally taken the approach of raising the deductible, as opposed to increasing the premium. They've only raised the deductible for fire insofar as it relates to earthquake, because they also raised the deductible -- and I'm saying this generally; not all insurance companies have done this -- insofar as it relates to the shake supplement. Because they did that, they also raised it for the fire component or fire following coverage.

The government does not regulate the activities of insurance companies when it comes to how much money they charge for their premiums or how much deductible they are requiring consumers to pay. There is no intrusive regulation in that regard. We let the market dictate, largely, what is the appropriate price and what is the appropriate deductible.

R. Kasper: Fair enough, and in some ways, yeah, government can be accused of getting too much in people's faces. But if the insurance industry is wanting certain legislative amendments to be made that give them a greater degree of comfort, then I think the industry perhaps should come clean as to

[ Page 1499 ]

The reason I mention this is because they all agree that the vast majority of damage as a result of an earthquake will be fire, and people have already bought fire insurance. The fire insurance does not clearly define -- in your policy -- as to how the fire starts. The only thing they care about is: did you torch it yourself?

I would hope that somebody would be encouraging consumers to be part of these discussions. I'm very hesitant and concerned about some side-bar deal getting cut because the insurance companies came whining to this committee -- and they did. They said: "Oh, we're all going to go broke, we'll never be able to pay." And I thought. . . . I won't say it, because we've got mixed company here. But this whining that came from the industry -- and it was whining -- really threw me for a loop. They're busy dictating what the hell people should pay as far as premiums.

I think it's incumbent on the committee and you people, who are doing the good work, to perhaps deliver a message. I hope they read my Hansard, write me a rude letter and give me a thrashing. But I could care less; I think they have to be delivered a message.

In many respects, what I'm saying right now is no different from comments people have made, including myself, during our past deliberations on this issue. You shouldn't have asked me to speak.

[1855]

G. Farrell-Collins: I think Rick is right -- that is something that's been up for deliberation before. What we're doing here is supposed to be an update. I'm wondering what's happened in the last year -- doesn't sound like anything to me. It sounds like there have been some discussions but really nothing has been accomplished. Can you convince me otherwise?

L. de Wet: The direct answer to that is that we have not developed the regime, if that's what you're saying is the accomplishment that is being sought. We have some ideas of what is being done in other jurisdictions; what options are available. But there are significant policy implications and economic implications with each of these other options. At this stage we're still pursuing our research on some of these implications.

So no, we have not accomplished the objective of designing the regime. But we are working hard towards achieving that.

G. Farrell-Collins: How many meetings have you had with the industry in the last year?

L. de Wet: Several. I can't. . . .

G. Farrell-Collins: Twenty or three or. . . ?

L. de Wet: No.

G. Farrell-Collins: Ballpark.

L. de Wet: Probably fewer than ten.

G. Farrell-Collins: Significantly fewer than ten?

L. de Wet: No. Some in person; some by telephone.

G. Farrell-Collins: Do you have any idea how many more years it will take?

L. de Wet: Certainly we hope it won't take more years. What we would like to do is develop some policy options, and produce them for the government's consideration. Then, once we have some options on which we can consult on, we can proceed further.

G. Farrell-Collins: Does it normally take. . . ? This issue has been out there for two and a half years -- I think since the auditor general's first report. Is that an unusual length of time to develop policy options for government?

L. de Wet: I don't think I'm in a position to answer that question generally. Perhaps with respect to this particular issue -- because of some of the complexities involved -- it may not be considered to be an unusual time. But I cannot answer that question in a sort of generic way.

G. Farrell-Collins: That's fair. I know the committee has lots of work to do. They're backing up ever more every meeting. I'm not necessarily advocating it, but perhaps if we had an update every month or every two weeks at Public Accounts, we might actually see some progress. Otherwise, I think we're going to actually have the big one -- the one-in-1,000-years earthquake -- before we have the policy in place.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I'm certainly not directing this at yourself. It's just a general comment that when it takes this length of time. . . . From what I've read from last year, where we are this year -- it seems to be really no different. Personally, I don't want to spend my time coming back and rehashing what we did the year before if nothing's changed. It's pointless for us; it's pointless for staff. So I think government should either decide to do something or tell us they're not going to do something, and then we can move on to other things. To play this game where we come back year after year, really having accomplished nothing, isn't a good use of our time, the ministry's time or industry's time, quite frankly.

I don't know what the Chair wants to do, but from a member's point of view, I'm not pleased to find that a year later, for all intents and purposes, nothing's been done. There are certainly no measurable results. There may have been some communications, some education and some study, but in my opinion, it shouldn't take a year or two and a half years to put those sorts of policy options together. But maybe I'm wrong.

[ Page 1500 ]

L. de Wet: I would say that it is one of the top priorities for my section. I cannot speak for the rest of the ministry.

[1900]

L. de Wet: It certainly is one of the several priorities in my section, but I cannot speak for the ministry as to how it ranks in terms of others. . . .

R. Thorpe (Chair): I was asking about your area.

L. de Wet: Yeah. In my section it is certainly one of my several priorities.

D. Zirnhelt: My suggestion is that we ask that the ministry come and tell us if it's realistic to expect significant progress by September.

G. Farrell-Collins: Or tell us that there's no need for progress -- they don't want progress, or it's not an issue on the agenda.

D. Zirnhelt: Or they can't, or there's a reason that's too complex or whatever.

G. Farrell-Collins: But this is sort of silly -- the way we're doing it now.

R. Thorpe (Chair): It's a waste of a lot of human capital.

So David, did you want to suggest the first of September?

D. Zirnhelt: Well, we would like it to be after the first of September, wouldn't we, if we were to consider it? So. . . .

R. Thorpe (Chair): So the first Tuesday after Labour Day?

D. Zirnhelt: Something like that.

R. Thorpe (Chair): So if we can have a report. . . . If it's not going to happen, just tell us it's not going to happen, and people can get on with the rest of their lives -- providing there's not a big earthquake.

G. Farrell-Collins: In that case, they'll all be reaching for their policy, and they won't know what it means.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Does it make any sense, given what's just happened here with this witness, to have any of the other witnesses from the Ministry of Finance comment?

L. de Wet: Again, I can't comment on that; I'm not quite sure what questions you want to put to the other witnesses.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Are the other witnesses here?

A Voice: Yes.

G. Farrell-Collins: I guess the big question is: do they have any progress to report in the last calendar year? I see some nodding heads, so come on up and fill us in.

R. Jarvin: My name's Richard Jarvin. I'm here to deal with recommendations 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4, where the committee urges the government to make seismic upgrading of the provincial infrastructure a priority in British Columbia. I am happy to report that the government last year, before January 2000, approved a program for the upgrading and the seismic mitigation of existing buildings in the provincial inventory, which includes all the buildings funded by the provincial government, such as schools, office buildings, hospitals, universities, colleges and institutes, as well as the buildings managed and operated by the B.C. Housing Commission. In all, that amounts to about 14 million square metres of floor space that exists in the high seismic areas of the province near the coast.

The program approved by the government last year set out four things: there were some specific goals that were approved in terms of life safety, protection of property, ongoing operations and progress. Along with that was a multi-year budget, both for capital and operating, to see the plan through to March 31, 2003. That capital amounts to $133.5 million. The idea of that was to provide enough to show, on a pilot program basis, that this kind of work was possible over a wide inventory and that it would solve some of the questions that were outstanding in terms of the accuracy of the information provided at that time as to the state of these buildings for further continuance after March 31, 2003.

The other parts of the program include a new set of guidelines and standards for the engineers and practitioners to follow, both in non-structural and structural mitigation, which has been subject, I know, to the committee's concerns over time -- you got different people saying that different standards ought to be applied. These have been developed and are available on the capital division web site. They're in draft form, and practitioners are urged to follow those and make comments on them over this pilot program period so that by the end of the period there'll be something to recommend to government for the future.

[1905]

The program to date is a success. The reason it's a success is that it's been endorsed by the Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils on their web site. You can read their issues report there. They endorse this program.

It's been received very well by over 150 participants in our workshops that we've conducted since January 1 of this year. It's also been received by approximately 250 participants

[ Page 1501 ]

We're starting off this year with a very small budget of $10 million for non-structural upgrading. That has already been announced and allocated to every hospital district, every school district, every college, university and institute, BCBC and the B.C. Housing Corporation, according to the size of their building inventory. They're very happy to receive that, and they'll be putting in plans to deal with it.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Thank you, Richard.

Does anyone have any questions?

Well, thanks for bringing us some good news, and thanks for bringing us progress.

Who is next -- Al or Phil?

P. Grewar: My name is Phil Grewar. I'm the director of the risk management branch. I would like to comment on recommendations 18.1; 18.2; part of 19.1, which is a shared responsibility with the Ministry of Attorney General; and 19.2.

The work of business continuation planning was a very, very hard sell for governments. It's planning for things which may or may not happen -- contingency planning -- it's not planning for results. However, as a result of the year 2000 issue, there was an enormous push by government to implement business continuation planning across government, and that was achieved. We managed to have all ministries identify mission-critical and essential business programs and produce business continuation plans for those programs. Additionally, we exercised 30 mission critical programs successfully before the year 2000, and we managed to prioritize the essential government services, so we knew that if an event did occur, what order the services had to be brought back up again in order to ensure that orderly government business was continued. That was a success from our perspective.

To keep going after the year 2000 is the issue we're faced with now. We do have active committees in every ministry dealing with business continuation planning. We are currently putting together an RFP for a consistent platform for producing business continuation plans across government that will roll up into individual ministry plans and also roll up into an overall plan for government. That will be implemented during the current financial year.

With regard to additional work that we've done on business continuation planning, our role is one of leading government in this. Of necessity, it involves some coordination with PEP. Because PEP is the emergency response arm, our role is basically, at some time after a significant event, to kind of take over the continuation of government. So after the emergency response is there, there's the need to get the government back up and running.

The recommendation regarding the province preparing for mitigating its financial liabilities is under the disaster financial assistance program, which is a program between the federal government and the province. Perhaps Merv could speak to that.

[1910]

P. Grewar: With regard to the provincial government, for its own infrastructure, it depends upon this agreement to fund for catastrophe. There is no possibility of the government buying insurance for all of the assets the government is responsible for. We feel that the sliding limit -- it's just over $20 million, where the federal government is paying 90 cents on every dollar -- is a reasonable risk for the province to take.

With regard to the recommendation concerning educating British Columbians about the fact that public funds will not be available, this has been addressed. It has not been addressed completely. One of the previous Ministers of Finance, the Hon. E. Cull, did make such a statement. The insurance industry has also made these statements.

The issue is one of availability of insurance coverage. If insurance coverage is readily available, then the provincial disaster financial assistance program does not kick in. Indeed, people can buy earthquake coverage, and that will become an issue if and when an earthquake happens. There have been government pronouncements concerning this, but perhaps there needs to be more done to educate the populace. However, along with the initial comments of Leon, there has to be the ability of the insurance industry to respond to a disaster.

D. Zirnhelt: Picking up on the suggestion of one of the previous witnesses -- I think it was Leon, or maybe it was Mr. Kasper's comments -- insurance might be available once, but the next time around, if it happened in any reasonable short period of time, it wouldn't be available. Have you looked into the actuarial calculations about that?

P. Grewar: Insurance is a marketable commodity, and market conditions basically extend to pricing and availability. It's difficult to say -- because we've never had a severe earthquake here -- as to whether insurance would be available or not. But if insurance was not available, then the disaster financial assistance program would kick in to fund the loss.

M. Harrower: I don't want to mislead this committee in that regard. The citizens benefit from disaster financial assistance, but the amount they can benefit from is very limited; the maximum is $100,000 on the loss of your residence. The average home in this province exceeds $100,000, so this is not full coverage for citizens, particularly in flooding. We went out and tried to educate the public that it pays to mitigate the flood risk to your home because you're not going to get a lot of money from the government, even if you are eligible for disaster financial assistance.

Because earthquake insurance is available in the first instance, you would not get any disaster financial assistance, so we would not be able to cost-share that payment with the federal government. It wouldn't be eligible. If in fact they

[ Page 1502 ]

R. Thorpe (Chair): When we discussed this issue before, was there not an indication from government and the insurance industry that they could work together in some kind of a joint format to attempt to educate people on this issue? Or is that just a thought I had in my mind?

[1915]

M. Harrower: With all due respect, and I have to be a little careful how I say this, the insurance industry is profit-driven. It's a private organization, profit-driven, and they have other interests in this regard.

R. Thorpe (Chair): I think that's why I recollect that people working together might offset some of that in some kind of an educational program -- but perhaps not.

L. de Wet: As I indicated previously, we have been in discussions with the insurance industry. As part of those discussions the insurance industry proposes to do a road show around British Columbia this summer, using students to go to malls to educate the public on the risks involved in insurance.

R. Thorpe (Chair): With their video and all that kind of stuff?

L. de Wet: That kind of stuff, and telling people what the risks are and what's available in terms of insurance. The concern of the ministry staff is that doesn't guarantee people will buy it. Studies done in the United States and elsewhere in the world have indicated that people are generally apathetic towards high-risk disasters that have a low probability. So they don't buy it, no matter what education you give them.

G. Farrell-Collins: They buy lottery tickets, though.

R. Thorpe (Chair): For the record, I live in Penticton. I've had earthquake insurance for a number of years, and I continue to have it, so. . . .

M. Harrower: PEP is also working with the Insurance Bureau and with the eight students that are doing the public education campaign this summer, as well, and will continue to do so.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Phil, is there anything else? Any other questions for Phil?

Thank you very much for that update; we appreciate it.

M. Harrower: If we could have representatives from the Ministry of Health.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Just a sec. Does anyone from the auditor general's department have any questions of these officials that were here from Finance?

W. Strelioff: No, we don't.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Okay, thank you.

G. Farrell-Collins: Mr. Chairman, while we're waiting for the next witness. . . . The meeting we've set with Finance for September. . . . I would suggest, if you think it's worthwhile, that we invite the industry representatives too, and they can tell us how much they've accomplished in the past year and how well that's been going or hasn't been going.

R. Thorpe (Chair): They have appeared, and I think that's a good idea.

G. Farrell-Collins: It might be good to have them back.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Staff will take that down. Thank you.

B. Douglas: Good evening, Chair, committee members. My name is Bill Douglas. I'm the director of emergency preparedness for the Ministry of Health.

I'd like to start with a couple of general comments, if I may. What we have to offer from the Ministry of Health is essentially good news. It's good news in the context of a problem of quite enormous magnitude, as I'm sure you will have appreciated, having read the auditor general's report.

If I might presume to take a minute and just refresh the committee's memory on the substance of its recommendations in the last report. The committee recommended that the ministry continue to strengthen its earthquake response capability and to consider the adequacy of the ambulance service capacity, and to consider legislative or policy impediments to EMA training and certification. These would be recommendations 12.3 and 16.2.

Since our last report to this committee, the Ministry of Health has continued to improve its readiness to manage during a major emergency. We don't necessarily distinguish between earthquakes and other catastrophic events, since planning for one of them pretty much leads us down the earthquake path anyway. So when I use the term major emergency or disaster, please read earthquake.

There were a number of quite valuable lessons we learned and a useful legacy from our significant investment in Y2K preparations. Quite apart from anything else, we learned that it takes considerable human and intellectual resources to plan for potential disasters and that the commitment necessary to sustain readiness is significant. Building on our Y2K experience, our first priority has been to enhance the technical and managerial capacity of the ministry to recover our internal operations after a disaster. Associated with this are training and awareness initiatives to foster a culture of disaster awareness and preparedness at all levels of the organization. The Ministry of Health here in Victoria directly employs about 1,200 people. We have, in the last 13 or 14 months, had 400 of those staff go through a variety of forms of training ranging from basic earthquake and disaster awareness and personal preparation to incident command system training at relatively advanced levels for managers.

[1920]

[ Page 1503 ]

With respect to emergency health services provided by health authorities, part of the legacy of the Y2K work is that all the health authorities have engaged in a contingency planning process. We've learned there is considerable variation in the state of preparedness and capacity of health authorities to respond to major emergencies. We'll recall that the auditor general commented that some hospital administrators they interviewed expressed rather grave doubts about their ability to recover in the event of a major disaster. They have now all been through a major contingency planning exercise linked to the Y2K threat. So the threat is different; the outcomes are potentially similar, however.

On the near horizon for the ministry is the commencement of a joint planning process involving the ministry, health authorities and the B.C. Ambulance Service. The intention is to develop policy and planning tools based on the best and most practical examples of good disaster planning that our service partners can identify.

There are some specific initiatives along that way that I'd like to mention to the committee so that you have a sense of what exactly it is the ministry is doing. Our ministry strategy has three essential elements. First, to develop a culture of awareness and preparedness. To that end we've launched a fairly significant training initiative. Second, the whole issue of corporate preparedness. That relates to our capacity to restore operations to the point that we can provide leadership and coordination to an extended network of disaster response organizations in the event that's necessary. Finally, to implement a sustaining strategy for the ministries to have infrastructure that is dedicated to responding to an emergency. That includes creation of the branch that I head; setting up of an emergency operations centre and resourcing it appropriately, training all the personnel who would ever participate in it in their roles and responsibilities; and regular exercises.

And finally, with the health authorities, it's a process of engaging health authorities, community agencies and the ministry's agent commissions; and developing, maintaining and routinely testing a comprehensive plan.

With respect to corporate preparedness, the emphasis so far has been on planning, and because of the work that went on around Y2K with risk management branch, the plans are largely focused on business continuation, which begs the question of disaster response. This is a continuing tension between those of us who are concerned about reconstruction of the operations of a ministry and those who are more concerned with actually dealing with pulling people out of the rubble and getting on with the provision of emergency health services. Those latter responsibilities reside at the municipal level and in our agent health authorities.

Part of our planning and consultation process with them is to ensure that their response plans go beyond recovery and in fact anticipate recovery by addressing the issue of what do they do if their hospital is rendered inoperable, unusable? How do they activate the emergency hospitals positioned around the province? How do they resource these with appropriate staff? How do they deal with the supply-chain issues?

We anticipate that the consultation process necessary to start producing the necessary answers and building blocks will take the better part of this next year. So in about this time next year, I expect that the health authorities and the ministry will be looking at a fairly comprehensive, somewhat cohesive set of plans, policies, operating frameworks and procedures so that we can start the endless process of refining and testing.

A Voice: Can I ask a question?

R. Thorpe (Chair): I think he's just about finished. Let him. . . .

[1925]

Most of you, I assume, are aware that the B.C. Ambulance Service operates as a separate commission appended to the ministry, and they have been very aggressive in sorting out their response capacity.

One of the first things we were asked to consider was the capacity of the Ambulance Service. The Ambulance Service has 3,300 paramedic staff around the province. They're normally to be found in 450 ambulances, either on the road or parked at a station, serving 169 to 173 communities, depending on who's counting. It's important to note that these ambulance units are pretty much locally commanded. If one of those units or several of them get cut off from the centre, they are quite able to carry on functioning locally using their own resources. But where a wide-area disaster occurs and broad provincial direction and coordination is needed, that is supplied centrally out of Victoria or any of another couple of alternative operational sites. The ambulance service also has extensive radio linkages around the province.

Your recommendation spoke to the issue of the adequacy of the capacity. That's a very difficult issue to address, in much the same way as will a particular building withstand the earthquake? We don't know until it happens. We do know that the present ambulance capacity is more or less adequate most days for what it needs to do and that because of the central coordination and direction capacity, resources from peripheral and distant operations can be drawn into an area of impact in the event of a wide-area disaster. We have good reason to believe, at least at first blush, that we have the ability to deploy an impressive amount of resource, if need be.

With respect to evacuation, which is a significant part of what the Ambulance Service can be called on to do in a disaster -- in particular, air evacuation -- the Ambulance Service has fixed-wing charter contracts in Vancouver, Kelowna, and Prince George and helicopter charter contracts in Victoria, Prince Rupert and Vancouver, with access to numerous small, private charter operators throughout the province. So there is a fairly well established and somewhat tested capacity to airlift people away from an impacted area if necessary. In addition, further aircraft can be requested through the provincial emergency program.

[ Page 1504 ]

In the event of a very significant wide-area disaster, supply-chain issues become of paramount importance to a service that's dependent on fuel and medical supplies. The ambulance service has a supply management arrangement with the government product distribution centre, which will handle the ordering and restocking as necessary. At the local level they have redundant arrangements for the supply of fuel, should one supplier not be able to deliver. And the Canadian Forces will assist if the province requests.

The final issue that the committee invited the ministry to look at was the issue of emergency medical assistant training and certification, and in particular, are there unreasonable policy or legislative or regulatory impediments to the training and certification of emergency medical assistants?

[1930]

First responders are trained first-aiders. Typically, they come from the cooperating response agencies -- most notably fire departments. Should one ever need to augment the emergency medical assistant capacity of the province by using first-aiders, there are approximately 6,600 first responders certified around the province who are available to assist in the provision of first aid and emergency medical service. Those first responders include industrial first-aid attendants, registered nurses, obviously physicians, St. John Ambulance attendants and various search-and-rescue groups.

In the event that the ambulance service becomes overtaxed, you access these resources through section 10(1)(e) of the Emergency Program Act. It enables the minister to authorize additional resources.

Because of the delegated medical functions performed by EMAs and the need for that group of personnel to maintain professional currency at all times, it's not really practical -- nor is it in the public interest -- to train and equip and attempt to maintain the certification level and medical competence at the EMA level of a broader spectrum of individuals who can provide that service. It would take an enormous amount of infrastructure to maintain the certification.

In summary, I believe that what the ministry has to report is essentially good news. We are proceeding apace and conscientiously with the recommendations made by the auditor general and by this committee. I'm open to questions.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Mr. Kasper, do you have some questions?

R. Kasper: Just a question in regard to this one-year time frame to assess the emergency plans. I'm assuming you said. . . . You made reference to the health care facilities around the province.

B. Douglas: I did. The issue goes beyond facilities. Most reasonably large facilities have contingency plans anyway, as a condition of their accreditation. We need to build on that for two reasons. The first is because we are now looking at a health care system which is regionally deployed and where the response we expect will be regional.

Second, we need to consider that of all medical services, fewer of them are being provided in hospitals now than ever before. More are being provided in community settings, with people convalescing in their own homes. Those people, in the event of a very significant disaster, become a very serious problem for the health authority, because they require the equivalent of home support provided in some other centre. Those patients -- because they are nothing else but that; they just happen to be in a different location -- are likely to find their way into emergency social services reception centres. They're going to present a very real challenge for providing care and making connections to the emergency social services personnel.

R. Kasper: So it's been a year since the report, and then you figure it's going to take another year. As a layperson, I would have assumed that in the capital health region, for example, there are already plans in place that would deal with the facilities that you named -- without being specific and naming them all. I'm assuming that similar plans are in place elsewhere -- Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Nanaimo, etc. Why would it take a year to go over what these people, I'm assuming, have already got up and running and in place -- and to what end? I don't know if my question is out of line or off the wall, but I thought it would be a lot easier to coordinate. I think you used the term "evaluate" or "coordinate." Correct me if I'm mistaken, but it's going to take an additional year to go over that information.

[1935]

B. Douglas: Actually, it's not necessary to go over the information. The issue is not whether or not a hospital in a community has a contingency plan. Most do; in fact, virtually all do. And if they're accredited, they most certainly do. The issue is working with the regional health authority to get them to take the concept plan which supports emergency operations in a hospital and to develop something appropriate for the larger community care, home care, community service framework that is evolving within the health authorities today.

Interestingly, as we might reasonably expect, the larger, better-resourced health authorities are really very advanced in a lot of this work. I'm quite comfortable saying that the capital health region and most of the lower mainland health authorities are a very good distance down the road in their emergency preparations. None of us will ever be at the end of the road until we have to deal with the catastrophe, but they're very well developed.

Our problem is some of the further-flung regions, some of which have had some difficulty in even conceiving how they can work as a region because of the geographical separa

[ Page 1505 ]

R. Kasper: My last question deals with the training of the additional staff or people. Why is there reluctance on the part of the service to actually expand the numbers of accredited people other than people who have first-responder training? I find that curious, because it was noted in the report. . . . The original report made reference to the training issue. Then last year, as a coincidence, there was an extensive lobby by the firefighters in the province.

I always assume that when we're talking about emergency planning and emergency preparedness, there's a very strong education component to what people should and should not be doing. But there's also a generally accepted rule that people of all vocations should receive a fairly high level of training or look to get additional training in whatever pursuit, perhaps wrapped up with their professional duties, that could be utilized in the event of an emergency.

So I'm concerned by the fact that there is a reluctance, that the Ambulance Service, emergency planning division, or whatever you want to call it, of the province. . . . They're just too hard pressed to train additional people outside of the people who are currently accredited. There still is a bit of doubt in your words -- and I read doubt. You don't know how the Ambulance Service would respond.

[1940]

I think that with just that alone, there has to be some ability for those who are in a certain sector or field professionally to not have what I view as roadblocks put in the way of getting training to provide some form of licensed service above and beyond the traditional first-responder service. I just pass that out as a comment; I'm not an expert on any of this stuff. You're there where you are because you are an expert -- but I just thought I'd raise that.

B. Douglas: Actually, Chair, if I may. I can't profess expertise in matters related to the Ambulance Service. I am accompanied this evening by my colleague, Paul Gotto, who is the executive director of the B.C. Ambulance Service. If it's the committee's pleasure, he could come forward and speak to the issue just raised.

P. Gotto: There is no reluctance on the part of the Ambulance Service to have additional people trained in first aid. The recommendation was fairly specific, in that it recommended that policy and legislative barriers be removed to enable training of people to the EMA 1, 2 or 3 level. The EMA 1, 2 or 3 levels, as previously described, contain delegated medical acts and contain function, knowledge, expertise and skills that go to the provision of ambulance services, not first aid.

They are long courses. The EMA 1 course, which is the basic course, is 235 hours. That's a lot of time to get the average citizen to put forward in any sort of way, as far as voluntary. . . . Somebody having to pay for it would break the back. EMA 2 is another five weeks of training on top of the 235 hours. EMA 3 is another year to 18 months' worth of training, depending on how the course is structured. So they're very, very intensive programs designed for ambulance attendants.

Just to go back, that doesn't mean that the ambulance service in any way wants to be parochial around first-aid knowledge and first-aid expertise. As has already been said, we believe that through the authorities vested in PEP, we can access a significant number of people who do have knowledge -- physicians, nurses, industrial first-aid attendants, first responders, our own paramedics. I think it's realistic to think that with all of those resources -- through the offices or the authority of PEP and through the communications network that the B.C. Ambulance Service has -- being pulled into an area where there is a crisis, we will handle most crises. In addition -- I haven't mentioned this yet -- in longer response times, there's some capability of the military to help as well.

[1945]

P. Gotto: I suspect not. The B.C. Ambulance Service, the Emergency Health Service Commission, doesn't own knowledge. It doesn't own those first-aid skills. It's packaged them for its own attendants and delivers training programs. Those training programs could be delivered, in part or in whole, to other groups of people. I suspect it wouldn't necessarily lead to those people being licensed as EMA 1, 2 or 3, because those are the licence levels for ambulance paramedics. And we're not talking about ambulance paramedics here; we're talking about people with medical knowledge to respond in the event of a disaster, not necessarily as an ambulance attendant.

Certainly I think your question is valid, in that the body of knowledge or the content could be transported and put into a package that some people might wish to avail themselves of. There would be a lot of work in doing that, but that's not an issue. What's work -- right?

R. Kasper: But they could be licensed to do the work, or they could be licensed to perform the same duty. But they would not have the same title or recognition as a paramedic employed in the B.C. Ambulance Service.

P. Gotto: When you start talking about licensing, you start talking about programs that are accredited, programs that are constantly monitored and evaluated. Licences have to be issued. The competency of the individual who is licensed needs to be regularly checked for maintenance of that competency and knowledge. So when you start talking about training programs that are licensed, you're starting to talk about quite a detailed, complex process as opposed to putting a

[ Page 1506 ]

R. Kasper: The only reason why I'm raising this is because we're dealing with a way to best handle an event. So if there's a way that people could be trained to perform a duty and still have some protection so that they're not going to be sued for performing a duty in the event of an emergency, then there should be an ability for these people to be trained to carry out those practices, whether it's EMA 1, 2 or 3. That's all.

P. Gotto: I might suggest that. . . . I'm not a lawyer, but where somebody might need to take a look at it -- maybe it's us, or maybe it's the Ministry of Health -- is the Good Samaritan Act and see whether or not that would provide the appropriate protection for somebody who's taken some training and applies it in good faith and good knowledge.

G. Farrell-Collins: I think that's already there in legislation. I think I'm correct on that.

M. Harrower: The Emergency Program Act protects from civil liability anyone acting under the act itself in response to an emergency.

G. Farrell-Collins: What I heard in the response to the questions and previous to even asking the questions was that there are enough people out there in the community who happen to be doctors, nurses, first responders, etc., and that PEP and the Ambulance Service believe that in the event of a disaster, there would be sufficient people around or accessible in a reasonable length of time to be available to provide care to people. Is that correct?

P. Gotto: It's going to take a lot of coordination, a lot of effort and a lot of long hours, but there's a large body or group of people -- or groups of people -- out there that we can draw upon. We're not going to get all of them all at once in one area.

[1950]

M. Harrower: We don't have an inventory of individuals because it changes so quickly. We do have plans in place to draw on medical personnel from other provinces in Canada -- relocate medical personnel within the province as quickly as possible. Even in a large earthquake, you're going to get damage areas which are not going to be consistent across the whole province. In addition to that, we have plans in place with the Canadian military, and through the federal government we can draw on the U.S. military resources. They have a 1,000-bed hospital ship plus other hospital ships on the west coast.

G. Farrell-Collins: I'm just curious because I know that in my constituency alone I've got four hospitals. I think there are now over 5,000 people in my constituency who are health care providers. Some of those are nurses, some are doctors, and some are custodial people -- maintenance people. It would seem to me that because of the hospitals, it's a pretty large density. What I found in traffic accidents is that almost within 30 seconds, it seems, there's somebody there who has some sort of training, just because there's so many people out there. It seems to me that's sort of what you're relying upon -- the generic, domestic people who are just out there. I wonder if we have any sort of inventory of who those people are and where they live, in the event that there is a disaster.

P. Gotto: I can speak on the narrow scope. As far as the B.C. Ambulance Service, yes, we know who the first-responder agencies are. There are 279 agencies that the first responders volunteer for -- the 6,600 volunteers work for. We know where all our EMAs are -- another 3,300 people. So as far as the Ambulance Service is concerned, we know where those resources are.

M. Harrower: PEP has 13,000 volunteers; 4,700 are SAR with first-aid training that we would draw from other areas within the province and relocate into a damage area.

G. Farrell-Collins: Okay, thanks.

R. Thorpe (Chair): I have a couple of quick questions here. You're going to set up an emergency operation centre. A location has been identified, with renovations commencing in early 2000. Where is that location? I'll give you several questions here, and you can just rip right through it. Where is it located? What's the cost, and when will it be completed?

B. Douglas: The primary emergency operation centre for the Ministry of Health -- we actually have two within the ministry -- is at 1515 Blanshard, in the basement, surrounded by concrete. It is complete; we're just adding some computers and paper at this point. The cost has been less than $15,000. The second site is B.C. Ambulance, located in the Jack Davis Building. It's fully operational as we speak, at very modest cost. We're now looking for alternative sites in the event that our primary office buildings are sufficiently damaged and we can't occupy them.

R. Thorpe (Chair): The B.C. Ambulance Service also has made supply and management arrangements with the government's product distribution centre in Vancouver. Where is that distribution centre located? What degree of earthquake can that centre withstand?

P. Gotto: I apologize. I cannot answer on the earthquake standards for the building. I think the product distribution centre is in Port Coquitlam. Again, I apologize. I don't know.

R. Thorpe (Chair): If someone could get back to us on that, I just want to make sure that if that's supposed to be ready for an emergency distribution, it withstands the earthquakes. Any answer to this -- send it through the Clerk's office, please. Does anyone else have any other questions?

M. Coell: Just to Merv, The federal government has announced cutbacks to the militia. I know the militia are very much part of your emergency planning. The cutbacks, I believe, are here and in the Vancouver area. Have you analyzed the potential cutbacks as to how it will affect you?

[ Page 1507 ]

[1955]

M. Harrower: The DND has assigned a new general; I can't give you his name. He's been ordered in the next six months to revamp the militia program -- not necessarily to cut it back but to look at reorganizing it to make it more effective. We are in fact working with them to a larger degree, because the militia are the only Canadian military on site. We've been working at various plans and coordinating what we're doing with them as well. It helps to have their commander in my office as well.

P. Calendino: You've been talking a lot here about the emergency plans and emergency teams and how well they're organized, etc. But one of the recommendations was directed at the updating of communications equipment and plans as well. I wonder if you can comment on how you're doing in that field.

M. Harrower: Prior to Y2K, we took a serious look at what we call our amateur radio volunteer groups. We have five volunteer groups in PEP. We have SAR, search and rescue; we have amateur radio, PEP air -- which does air searches -- and highway rescue.

We looked at amateur radio, and to be frank with you, it needed some work. We have put some effort into that. We now are in the process of staffing a new position that will be their liaison with amateur radio. We ran an exercise, one of the first in the province, just prior to Y2K with amateur radio. We were able, around the province, to make contact with 400 other amateur radio operators in the province. So as a result of Y2K, we encompassed amateur radio in our communications system.

Are we satisfied with where we are now? No, we're not. We have some more work to do. We have to make some decisions on frequencies. We have to work with the federal government, which we do on an ongoing basis, to make them more effective. And we have to use those people that are volunteering, because if we don't use them, they lose interest. So we have to make sure they're a valuable resource that we use, and we need to continue working with them. I think we've made some progress in that regard.

P. Calendino: I realize that cellular phones are the thing to do, but there are other forms of wireless technology coming in. Are you also exploring that road for the communications plan?

M. Harrower: I get a presentation about once a week on GIS and new technology and wireless stuff. We are in fact looking at a whole series of things. I got the idea that this committee would like me to tell them what we've been doing for the last year, when it gets around to my turn. I intend to tell you right now that we looked at the communications into the PEP headquarters and into our other operation centres in the province. We put in redundant communications, which means we put in fibre optics lines and additional telephone lines. We've also put in wireless capability there. We've improved our amateur communications thing.

If you look at Turkey and Taiwan, within seconds of the earthquake cellular phones were not usable, because they were simply backed up. Oftentimes the regular phone systems are not usable.

Yesterday we had a presentation from some federal people. They can put a banner across the middle of your TV, no matter what channel you're watching, to give you an emergency message. We're working with the federal government to do that. The most important emergency message that we would want to get out after an earthquake -- to eastern Canada -- is: "don't use the phones; don't call B.C." They'll simply tie up the phones, and we won't be able to use them for emergency response. So we are looking at communications. It's a big area, and the technology is changing very rapidly.

P. Calendino: That should be more helpful, because you don't depend on electricity.

M. Harrower: It's more helpful if you have the money and more helpful if you know what to buy. We recently had a company approach us to buy a bunch of cellular satellite phones, and now this company's gone bankrupt. Their phones were $2,700 each. We didn't buy any. But if we had, we would have been out that money. So it's difficult to determine which direction you should go and how you should use scarce taxpayer dollars.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Are there any other questions of officials from Health or B.C. Ambulance?

Thank you very much for taking the time to come tonight. We appreciate it very much.

M. Harrower: Would the Chair like to hear from Energy and Mines for just a moment? It's the last other ministry representative.

[2000]

V. Levson: I'll be brief, seeing as the time is so late. My name is Vic Levson. I'm a geologist with the Ministry of Energy and Mines. I'm here to report on an earthquake hazard mapping program that we conducted in the greater Victoria area and just released last week, I believe. You may have seen the maps on the front page of the Times Colonist or heard us on TV or on the news.

[ Page 1508 ]

We looked at three different hazards that are most important in the Victoria area. One is the landslide hazard. This is an obvious one where you have steep slopes that might fail in an earthquake. We quantified that hazard and mapped it.

The second hazard that we looked at is something called liquefaction. That is a hazard that's created particularly in sandy, wet soils, which essentially turn to liquid and make very poor foundation conditions after an earthquake, obviously.

The third hazard, which is the one that's most significant in Victoria, is amplification hazard. That's simply that certain types of ground amplify ground motion; they increase the amount of shaking that occurs relative to other areas in the city. The colours that you see on the map I just handed out show red, being areas where amplification hazard is highest, down to the greys, which is where it is lowest. Yellow is moderate. So you can see that quite a bit of greater Victoria has a fairly high amplification hazard. I can see a lot of you are looking: "Now, where's my house on this map?" The reason that map is printed so small is so you can't figure that out.

I have half a dozen copies of the full-sized map here. I could roll out one if you want to see it. I don't know if you want to take the time to see a rolled-out version or not.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Why don't you just leave those copies with the Clerk, and then he could hand that out later.

V. Levson: Yeah. I'll do that. And I can provide more if the committee wants them.

R. Thorpe (Chair): So what zone is the Legislature in?

V. Levson: The Legislature's in a relatively high-hazard area.

There's a couple of qualifications on this map. The first one is that it's a ground hazard. It's not a building hazard map. So the next layer of information that you would want to put on that map would be the superstructures -- the built environment on top of the ground. This shows how the ground will perform. It does not show how particular buildings will perform. That's the main qualification that's on that map.

P. Calendino: Obviously if you have shifting ground, the buildings on that shifting ground wouldn't hold.

V. Levson: That's right. But some buildings can be designed, and are designed, to accommodate that type of hazard. The Building Code, for example, has provisions to deal with different types of hazards that recur during an earthquake. In some cases, some buildings are designed adequately, at least according to the engineers, to deal with that hazard. Of course, older buildings which predate seismic hazards in the code don't have that, and certain types of buildings -- for example, houses -- don't have any seismic provisions in the code either.

My last comment is that this is the only map of this type that's been produced in British Columbia, other than a pilot project that was done in Chilliwack, and the program is at present inactive.

G. Farrell-Collins: What does that mean? Are you here asking for more money? Is that what it means?

V. Levson: I'm only here as a representative of the ministry. I'm a scientist. I don't know the politics behind this, but. . . .

G. Farrell-Collins: It was just sort of this hanging thing left out there, and I was wondering what it meant.

V. Levson: The ministry doesn't have funding to continue the work is what I've been told.

G. Farrell-Collins: Can I ask you. . . ? Sorry, Mr. Chairman.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Yes.

G. Farrell-Collins: So what do we do with that?

V. Levson: The maps are designed to be used by emergency responders and land use planners. Right now, for example, the map's in the hands of the CRD, and they're using it in their growth strategies development plan for the areas that it covers.

[2005]

V. Levson: They'd use it to prioritize, for example, where they're going to put developments. They could allocate certain things to relatively low-risk areas. For example, if they were going to put a new housing development in, why put it in a high-hazard area? Why not put it in a low-hazard area, if other factors are equal? Emergency planners can use it in a whole variety of ways -- obviously to identify the areas where the hazards are greatest and where there's going to be most potential for disruption. You can use it for prioritizing retrofits, for example. All the schools in Victoria are not on equally hazardous ground. There are some on very high-hazard areas and some on very low-hazard areas. So it could be used as a component in prioritizing retrofits.

G. Farrell-Collins: And industry could use it to calculate premiums.

V. Levson: Yes, we have had talks with the insurance industry. Unfortunately, these maps are really too detailed for their use. The talks that we've had. . . . At least as of a couple of years ago, they deal with postal codes. Postal codes can cover a large area, and generally they default to the highest hazard, so the end result is that Victoria is high. So these maps really don't help insurance companies -- unless they change their system.

[ Page 1509 ]

V. Levson: Yeah, we gave a presentation when we released these maps, and we invited Richard and all the people that we could think of that were major stakeholders -- we probably missed some, but we tried to be as comprehensive as we could -- and presented that information to them. It's available to them anyway they want it, digital or however.

G. Farrell-Collins: It would seem to me, if one knew your estimation of what the conditions and hazards were for a particular building site, that when building on that site, one could either ramp up or ramp down in advance the types of engineering you would require -- or soil treatments or ground preparation or pilings -- knowing the risks that were there. Would that not be a cost-saver for government at some point in building hospitals or schools or. . . ?

V. Levson: That's very true, but when a large building -- for example, a hospital -- goes up, the Building Code already has provisions. They do a whole bunch of boreholes, for example, and they look in a very detailed way at what the ground conditions are underneath that building. So in that sense this map doesn't really apply to things like hospitals that are going to be built in the future, but it could apply to structures that do not have seismic provisions right now -- for example, houses in high-hazard areas. There could be some increase in provisions in the Building Code. The problem with that, of course, is that we've only got Victoria mapped, and the Building Code is a provincial thing. We don't really have maps for other areas.

G. Farrell-Collins: Not knowing the science -- I'm sure you do; I don't -- that was used to make these determinations. . . . I currently represent an urban riding, but I used to represent an urban-rural riding in the Fraser Valley. One of the big issues that continually occupied my time as well as that of my constituents was whether or not ALR land was ALR land or a gravel pit. I know it doesn't relate directly to this, but it seems to me that if you have the data and the ability to make this kind of map, there is data and science available for government to evaluate the value of agricultural land. To my knowledge, there hasn't been an inventory done of the ALR since it was first brought into force.

V. Levson: You mean a geologic inventory -- is that right?

G. Farrell-Collins: This is just geologic. You're also dealing, I assume, with soil types.

V. Levson: That's right. Yes, the basis of that map is a geologic map. There's actually a series of maps that go with that. There's a technical package. One of those is a geologic map, which we anticipate could be used for things like you're talking about -- where you could identify where there's gravel, where there are relatively good soils for agricultural uses and so on. There have been various types of geologic mapping done for much of the province.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Any other questions? Thank you very much, Victor. I appreciate it.

M. Harrower: I'm going to be very brief, because we're eating up a lot of time here for the committee.

R. Thorpe (Chair): It's a very important subject, so you take the time you need.

[2010]

The day I started was March 8. That was the day Thunderbird started. That same week I was down talking to this committee, so it was a sharp learning curve. What I discovered right off the start was that we needed to improve the emergency response capability of the province. The province did not have the capability of doing an immediate emergency response, so I developed a series of strategic objectives for my program. I'm going to just walk through some of them.

First off, the program had no capability of immediately responding after an earthquake or any kind of an emergency. Our emergency operations centre was an empty room used for coffee. We had no computers; we had to go and rent computers for the exercise. After an emergency we would have had to find, borrow, beg, steal computers. We would have had to find software; we had no adequate phones; we had no emergency generator for the building that adequately ran it.

What I did was to put forward a series of objectives to improve the capability of immediate response within the province. I now have that capability at my headquarters. I have what we call the provincial regional emergency coordination centre, and I would invite yourselves or any group that wants to come through. . . . We'll give you a tour; we'll explain how it works; we'll walk you through. I believe it's quite impressive.

One of the things we're doing right now, and one of the things we started then -- and it's in the middle of implementation -- is develop an information management system. We had no computer management system that would track requests for assistance, then follow that up and let us organize things. We've done technical assessment of what computer programs were available; we purchased one, and it's being installed. I hope to have it up and running by June of this year.

The second major response issue was BCERMS, the British Columbia emergency response management system. It was approved by the Interagency Emergency Preparedness Council in 1992. When I watched Thunderbird operate, we were inadequately trained; we didn't have the proper manuals to implement that management system. I will sign off the manual on BCERMS tomorrow. I looked at the final version today, and I had to make some corrections. That will go out. We have developed a training strategy, which will be implemented across the province by September. It's being redeveloped; we redeveloped all of our training strategy, through the Justice Institute, to emphasize the B.C. emergency response management system and give us the proper training to implement that system.

[ Page 1510 ]

We cannot afford the costs of setting those centres up nor the time it takes to set them up in response to an emergency. So I've established permanent centres in Prince George -- for very minimal cost, by expanding some of the rooms in our present building -- in Nelson and, as I said, in Victoria for the Island operations. I'm negotiating on possible sites in the lower mainland, because that's a critical area in a major earthquake. We have to be able to be up and running that centre -- doing damage assessment, providing support -- within half an hour or an hour, not days or weeks.

So I also signed off this morning the plans for the establishment of a permanent provincial regional emergency centre in Kamloops. It's being installed into the back half of the ambulance building in Kamloops, which was vacant. Kamloops is a critically important staging area for us. If Victoria is hit hard and the lower mainland is hit hard, Kamloops would automatically activate and start to manage the response in the province. It would be the staging area for incoming support from other provinces and international support and from the federal government. We need that capability; we should have that up and ready to operate by September.

[2015]

So we have put a proposal to the deputy ministers' committee on emergency preparedness, and we're going to sign agreements with various ministries to go out and identify volunteers in advance and train them. We're going to call them TEAMS -- temporary emergency response management system. We will then have a resource pool of trained, experienced people in the province that can immediately attend an emergency operations centre and provide that management expertise which we've never had before in the province. So we have made some progress on a number of issues. I could go on and on.

One of my major objectives was to improve the level of earthquake preparedness within the province. I'm going to go back to that in just a moment, as to where we're going in the future. We have made some progress on various aspects of it, but I think we're going to be able to make more in the future.

We also enhanced the volunteer search and rescue programs. We enhanced our ability to manage disaster financial assistance, which is a major cost implementation for the province if we're slow in doing that and a number of other things.

Going back now to earthquake preparedness, what we found with earthquake preparedness. . . . I have one earthquake preparedness senior analyst, David Gronbeck-Jones, who is here with me -- one person. What we started to do is look around the province to see what everybody else was doing. You've heard that some of the other ministries are doing some pretty good things and moving forward. Many of the non-government agencies are also doing good things: the Insurance Bureau of Canada -- we're helping them go out with the eight summer students -- B.C. Gas, B.C. Hydro and many of the private companies. Pacific Coast Savings Credit Union has a tremendous employee program going forward, where they help employees buy first-aid kits.

You do get a government cheque, so maybe you saw the notice that went out with the government cheques this month that helps individuals purchase first-aid kits and encourages that and gives them a break; it's called office lifeline. So there are many things being done.

The hard fact is that we at this present time didn't really know what was actually being done by everybody. It was just sort of. . . . Sometimes you heard something, and you'd go and check into it; sometimes you wouldn't, because there was no coordinating body.

As a result of that, we were very anxious to establish a seismic safety committee. One of the major recommendations of this committee was to establish a seismic safety commission. On February 29 of this year we received authority to establish a seismic safety committee. We received funding for that committee for a three-year pilot. In addition to that, I will be able to hire expertise to work and support the work of the committee. A committee is great; we can talk about it; we can determine where we're going to go.

But if you're going to set objectives and goals, we need to support the work of the committee with resources. I will have five staff, I hope, hired by September. It takes about four or five months to hire staff and fill those positions for a seismic safety committee. The committee will be made up of experts, both government and non-government, and will submit an annual report to the deputy ministers' emergency preparedness committee and develop a long-term earthquake strategy for this province, including a B.C. mitigation strategy.

I propose to support this seismic safety committee with five subcommittees. The key subcommittees are the preparedness and prevention subcommittee. . . . We want to run a public education program as recommended by yourself and the auditor general, a multi-year one that's a public awareness program with respect to earthquake preparedness. What we've found in researching the principles of adult education is that you have to drive this concern home; you have to tie it to an earthquake in Taiwan and ask: "Are you now prepared?" You have to tie it to other things.

[2020]

[ Page 1511 ]

Emergency response and recovery subcommittee -- I will chair that. We've done quite a bit of work, but we need to do an awful lot more work with amateur radio; we need to tie that in for that response. We need to tie many other things in that give us that capability of response after the emergency occurs; we can't just sit here waiting for it. A plan is really not much good; it's a nice document, a nice piece of paper. But if you can't implement the plan and you haven't exercised the plan, you're really not prepared. We're going to work on that further. We plan to have major exercises like Thunderbird 4 every three years.

The third subcommittee would be safety of public and private buildings and infrastructure. We put together a subcommittee reporting to the seismic safety committee, drawing on the expertise that's already available within government and outside of government. One of our staff people will be a qualified engineer in seismic safety protection.

The fourth subcommittee would be on science and engineering knowledge. We need to expand and draw on the knowledge and the expertise available in other jurisdictions, such as California. We don't have to reinvent the wheel; we just need to go out and start accessing this information. Not only do we need to access the information, but we need to develop goals and objectives to implement that knowledge and make it pay off for us. If we don't have it, if we don't take some action in implementing those sorts of things, we don't really gain much as far as being prepared.

The last subcommittee would be an earthquake vulnerability subcommittee that would look at the vulnerability of B.C. Clearly the capital region and the lower mainland are the two most vulnerable areas, although the rest of the province is susceptible to earthquake -- preparedness. So we are moving ahead. The seismic safety committee will be seized with many of the recommendations made by the auditor general and made by this committee. Now that we have the resources, we need to start to implement those recommendations.

I want to go back and deal with the nine major recommendations, just very quickly, from the auditor general: Recommendation 1 dealt with the seismic safety commission. I've explained that as we speak here.

Recommendation 2 was related to the development of a long-term strategic plan. What we found with PEP is that PEP is a small program in a large ministry. Earthquake preparedness involves -- across government -- ministries, agencies, non-government agencies. So we need to have a focal point of the expertise, as we would have in a seismic safety committee, in order to develop a long-term plan and in order to get people to commit themselves to following the goals and objectives of the long-term plan.

"The province should provide more focus to the earthquake preparedness program." We believe that recommendation has been met.

"The provincial emergency program, regional and local governments should extend the development of earthquake planning scenarios." PEP is heavily involved in planning groups. The JELP -- joint emergency liaison committee -- is composed of senior people from the GVRD and many other committees, as well as the capital regional committee and other committees located in various regions throughout the province.

"The provincial government should reposition the provincial emergency program." The Ministry of Attorney General has determined that we're properly positioned where we are, and I believe our ADM expressed that view at the last meeting we had.

" The provincial government should increase funding for the provincial emergency program." It has increased funding with respect to the support of the seismic safety committee.

"The provincial emergency program should report annually on the state of earthquake preparedness in British Columbia." We agree with that. We think there's a need for an annual report. That will be one of the major objectives of the seismic safety committee: to prepare an annual report on the state of emergency preparedness in B.C.

"The provincial government should raise the profile of the Interagency Emergency Preparedness Council." Does everyone here understand what that council is?

[2025]

M. Harrower: Okay. It's representatives from all of the various ministries and Crown corporations that meet for planning purposes with respect to emergency preparedness. The committee has not, according to the auditor general, been well focused and has not accomplished what the objectives of the committee are.

We formed a subcommittee, and we've had a series of meetings. I'm not sure what the meetings accomplished, but we've had a series of meetings. We are working to better focus that multiministry emergency preparedness working group. We want to have presentations, for example, from B.C. Ambulance and from B.C. Health on pandemic flus and other things, and have an open discussion that involves various ministries and Crown corporations and what their commitment would be to moving that issue forward. So we're still working on that. We haven't made as much progress as we should.

R. Thorpe (Chair): How often does that council meet?

M. Harrower: It meets every three months.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Who's in charge?

M. Harrower: I'm the co-chair. The chair at the present time is rotated. The chair is from the Ministry of Highways.

R. Thorpe (Chair): So a subcommittee is going to try to focus the committee. Have I summarized that?

M. Harrower: They're going to try to come up with and develop a new long-term strategy, new objectives and a new focus for the committee.

[ Page 1512 ]

M. Harrower: I hope so.

I could go on to many other recommendations, but I think we've covered a lot of ground here.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Does anyone have any questions of Merv? Do the comptroller general or the auditor general have any comments?

A. van Iersel: No, thank you, Chair.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Well, Merv, the one thing I want to say is that when you first started -- about a year ago, it was -- I think you made the comment that everything was possible with resources, and shortcomings would be because of the lack of resources. But I think, at least from my perspective in hearing your presentation today and, for the most part, the presentations of others, with one exception, it seems that we're moving forward here. So I congratulate you on your enthusiasm that you bring to the job. I wish you well in focusing the council to its functions. It seems like you're making good progress.

Does anyone have any other questions or comments?

To all of those who came tonight, thank you very much. Obviously, by the hour, we're not going to get to the review of part 1 on the financial accountability for the year 1998-99. The Deputy Chair and I have agreed that what we'll do with parts 1 and 2 of those reports is that we'll start on May 23. That meeting is also scheduled for the evening, 6:30 to eight. We'll start there, and, hopefully, work through those reports through the meetings of May 23, May 30 and June 6 until we're completed those, part 1 and part 2. We'll also attempt to consider draft reports, time permitting, etc.

So if no one has any other comments or questions, to all those who came tonight, thank you very much; it's appreciated.

Interjection.

R. Thorpe (Chair): And apologies, yes, for keeping those other folks that perhaps had other things that they may have wanted to do on a lovely evening like tonight. We thank you for your commitment to the committee. No other business?

The committee adjourned at 8:29 p.m.

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