* denotes member present

 

Clerks:

Craig James Kate Ryan-Lloyd

[ Page 1537 ]

The committee met at 8:37 a.m.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We'll get started here.

The first item on the agenda today is the consideration of the draft committee report on training and development in the British Columbia public service. No doubt it's very, very good management by this committee that we're reviewing this report today in Public Service Week.

Kelly, maybe you could walk us through this draft report.

K. Dunsdon: Yes, thank you. This draft report covers work done by the committee in October and early November 1999. At that time the committee heard from the auditor general's staff, the Public Service Employee Relations Commission and the Ministries of Transportation and Highways, Agriculture, Food and Fisheries and the Attorney General. Copies of the draft report were distributed to all committee members about a month ago and again at last week's meeting.

Since the draft report was distributed, I've received comments back from the office of the auditor general and also from Mr. van Iersel. They can speak to those comments if they like. They were just minor changes to the report -- nothing drastic. The report that you have in front of you now reflects those changes. What I've done is underline the changes just to draw your attention to those so that you can distinguish between the first draft and the second draft. Also, since the draft report was circulated, the Ministry of the Attorney General sent in some additional comments, and that information has been included in the report as well.

What I'll do now is just go through the report section by section, and if anyone has any comments about the report, please let me know. In keeping with the recent discussions about the format of reports, this report is quite brief and focuses on areas where members had specific comments about certain issues or any concerns, rather than on each and every aspect of the audit. You'll also see that the draft report does not contain any draft recommendations. Instead, when I drafted the report, I highlighted areas that were of particular concern to members to assist the committee in identifying issues that could form the basis of committee recommendations.

The report has been broken down into four main sections. The first is a cross-government overview of training and development in the B.C. public service. The remainder deals with three specific ministries that I discussed earlier. So just to give a brief overview of the report, the introduction, which begins on page 1, gives a brief overview of the role of PSERC, the results of the audit, the concept of human capital and the work of the committee.

The cross-government overview begins on page 2 of the report. This section discusses training and development generally in the B.C. public service, the committee's discussions about shifting demographics in the public service, fiscal pressures, training and development in other jurisdictions and the need for an overall human resources strategy. Certain cross-government issues that were of particular concern to the committee I've tried to highlight on your copies, and I hope that highlighting showed up. I noticed that on some copies it was a little bit faded.

[0840]

The committee received information about initiatives in other jurisdictions to improve training and development. The top of page 6 refers to the need to continue examining training and development models in other jurisdictions. The second full paragraph on page 7. . . . The committee received evidence that PSERC had some problems getting ministries to comply with the requirement to enter training and development data into the CHIPS system and was of the view that this needs to be closely monitored and alternative strategies need to be developed to gain compliance.

The first full paragraph under the bulleted list on page 8 of the report discusses concerns members had about the attrition of managers and executives in the public service due to an aging workforce and the need to implement executive and management development programs.

Page 8 of the draft report, under the heading "Reporting to the Legislative Assembly," discusses the need for PSERC to develop more comprehensive reporting on human capital issues.

The last paragraph on page 9 of the cross-government overview discusses the trend in government to contract out delivery of services and the resulting need to ensure that staff have appropriate contract management training.

The discussion of training and development in the Ministry of Transportation and Highways begins at page 10 of the draft report. There are some specific issues of concern to committee members. I've highlighted those, as I mentioned. One of these, again, was contract management training, particularly regarding highway maintenance contracts in more rural areas of the province. Another area of concern was the relatively low amount of money invested by that ministry in training and development. You'll see that issue highlighted in the first full paragraph on page 12.

The discussion of training and development in the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries starts at page 12 of the draft report. The committee determined that although the training budget had increased quite a bit over the last few years, a large proportion of the money was going towards IT training rather than training and development in other areas. This issue is highlighted at the bottom of page 13. Members will also recall, when ministry representatives attended to talk about actions they were taking, only very preliminary progress had been made at that point.

The discussion of training and development in the Ministry of Attorney General begins at page 14 of the report. The focus of the committee's work on this topic centred around succession planning in the ministry and the need to train and develop future managers. Also discussed were the lack of refresher training for deputy sheriffs in the court services branch and the amount of financial resources being dedicated to training and development in the ministry.

[ Page 1538 ]

W. Strelioff: We support the contents of the committee's report. As you know, our conclusions on our examination of the state of training and development indicate that we have a long way to go in building a continuous learning organization. This road will be particularly difficult, given our demographic profile of an aging workforce. So your explicit and public support for building the capacity of the public service is particularly important -- particularly during this Public Service Week -- as well as your support on an ongoing basis.

For our part, we are beginning to assess how best to examine the extent to which the government ensures a good working environment for the public service. As you know, a good working environment is an essential ingredient to a public service that is client-centred, responsive, and that provides quality services to British Columbians. With me today are Les McAdams and Jane McCannell, who lead our work in this important area and are here, ready to answer any of your questions. So we support the committee's report.

[0845]

What I recall from the testimony that was given to this committee is that there was some problem around what you measure and how you measure it. Is there a workshop or a conference. . . ? How do you measure what is training or other kinds of professional development? There seems to be some question around that. Have you determined in your work how best to measure that?

L. McAdams: I think what we were looking for in CHIPS was recording of formally provided training. The limitation that CHIPS had, I think, was that it was confined to cross-government training in areas such as harassment and so on. We were looking for PSERC to expand to all the other forms of formal training that were there. I don't believe we wanted CHIPS to include mentoring or informal means of training at this stage.

J. McCannell: That's correct.

L. McAdams: That would be our definition.

A. van Iersel: If I may try to respond a little bit on behalf of PSERC, I believe they are looking at the definition of what qualifies for an entry into the CHIPS system. They did have some arbitrary cutoffs. I believe it was that training had to be at least half a day's duration in order to be put in, plus some other parameters. Since presenting to this committee, they've gone back, and it's my understanding that some new policy will come out in terms of what kind of training should get entered, making it easier in terms of the process by which that gets put into the system. So it is in a process of change.

P. Calendino: We just mentioned mentoring. Are you familiar with how much mentoring of new employees takes place in any of the ministries, in any of the offices? I realize that when people are in the technology field, there's a little more, perhaps not just mentoring, but more direct training in the technology aspect of it. But people get employed in other ministries, and it's a new job for them. Besides the half-a-day initial training, I think that continued mentoring would be very beneficial, at least for the first couple of months. How much of that takes place?

L. McAdams: We did ask in the survey, and Jane is just looking for the data on mentoring processes right now. What we found was that it was very uneven, that managers were not encouraged to mentor their employees. It's not something that they're recognized for doing in the culture that exists in the B.C. government. We did find that there was a fair amount of mentoring going on, but it's very hard to measure, because obviously it's not something that you keep a time record on. The culture needs to shift to recognize mentoring as a valuable management activity. Was that the essential message we got from the survey, Jane?

J. McCannell: Yeah, 57 percent of employees reported receiving informal training, and mentoring would fall under informal training. Of those 57 percent of the employees, 81 percent felt that that type of training was as valuable or more valuable than formal training. So that suggested to us that informal training should be considered more often as an effective means of getting people trained, on-the-job training.

Mentoring was one of the key things in terms of development. The most common types of development -- and only one in five government employees received development -- were attending workshops, followed by working on secondment and reviewing job-related Internet sites. So mentoring wasn't that common at the point when we did our study, even as a form of development.

[0850]

L. McAdams: I think the major step will be the establishment of competencies for managers across the B.C. government. Included in those competencies will be a requirement that they mentor and develop the people that are coming along behind them. That's treated as a valuable part of their skill set.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Les, in your estimation, in the work that your office and colleagues have done. . . . You talk about the need for a cultural shift. How's that all going to happen?

L. McAdams: I think it starts with incentives. Just going back to the competency question, if you create an expectation of senior management that a culture of learning be established, then you'd start to move the culture there. It has to come from the leadership.

[ Page 1539 ]

I would be interested in hearing comments as to whether the deputy ministers' council is looking at the occupations. My fear is that a good percentage of those are nurses and teachers. We've only got seven years. If we're going to have a shortage of that proportion in those two areas, we'd better start gearing up the universities to graduate both of those professions at quite a substantial increase from where they are. Whether that council is looking at professions as the number of people who will be eligible for retirement potential and just not being able to get nurses and teachers, for an example. . . .

L. McAdams: Well, you know, the report called for some succession planning to go on in the B.C. public service. I believe the deputy ministers' council is moving towards that, and PSERC is part of that story as well. They'd be better positioned to speak to that.

A. van Iersel: If I may, I'll try to provide a little further information. My deputy minister, Mr. Chris Trumpy, heads up the deputy ministers' committee on human resources. I know that they have discussed this topic.

In terms of the Ministry of Finance, I could speak a little more clearly. We have been asked to identify all critical positions within the ministry -- critical in the sense that they are key functions that have to be performed and also critical in another sense, in terms that we expect that individuals who are now filling those positions are about to leave. There's one clarification in terms of leaving. When they say up to 51 percent, it's my understanding that that's the earliest point at which they could retire. It doesn't mean they have reached the maximum retirement age of 60. Some may choose to go beyond that, but that's presenting it in the worst light, I guess, if you want to put it that way.

So all ministries, I believe, have been asked as part of their business plans to put together succession plans as to how these key jobs will be filled. I cannot comment with respect to schools and hospitals. I haven't had any personal exposure to that. We'd have to ask the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Education.

M. Coell: May I follow up on that? I guess the concern I have is that we might have the planning being done, but unless it's connected to how we get those people -- whether they are nurses or teachers or social workers -- into the system, you could have. . . . We're going to need 800 by the year 2008. It hasn't gone that extra step. Where do we get those people from?

R. Thorpe (Chair): Is someone answering or commenting?

J. McCannell: I think that's an important part of it. But as part of that, it's also looking at the work environment and making sure it's a work environment that will be attractive to people. That's something that we'll be looking at in our next audit.

L. McAdams: I attended my daughter's graduation on Friday, and the valedictorian speaker asked all the graduates to consider the public service as a place to work -- that it wasn't as bad as its reputation. I think there is a certain amount to overcome there.

D. Streifel: I want to focus on the scope of the report a little bit in more general terms. This is about training, not just education. Is that correct?

L. McAdams: Training and development.

D. Streifel: Training and the upgrade of CEOs within the job force -- that would be technological upgrades, management upgrades and personal upgrades. These will all be rolled into training; it's not just the education of nurses and teachers.

J. McCannell: Yes.

[0855]

I just want to focus and get my mind set on this -- that this is about training within a whole job structure, a work structure, where there would be technological upgrades or management upgrades or interpersonal skills within a workforce. It's not just an educational focus here and a need to educate nurses and teachers. The first line here, on the eligibility for retirement -- if I could get Mr. van Iersel to clarify that as the worst-case scenario. So that would be the first possible date an individual would be eligible for a pension within the public service. Is that how that's factored in?

A. van Iersel: That's my understanding. This would be based on a retirement age of 55 rather than 60 for most people.

D. Zirnhelt: I think the report does what I think we wanted to do, but I am concerned that in reading it, you could infer that we need to spend more on training. I think that when there is a cost implication, we really ought to comment on that. You know, the conclusion of virtually everything is that you should and could spend more, and it's true. But it won't happen in all cases.

In the case of the Ministry of Agriculture, I think I recall when a decision was made on training to put it into information technology. We needed to provide information, and it was highly sophisticated, and extension moved into information presentation and making it available. So that was a choice within the training budget.

I mean, we almost imply in this report that there was a wrong decision, and I don't think it's right or wrong. It was the priority of the day, and if now there is a need for training in something else, then we need to do that. But if somebody can find a way to do more training with the same dollars through mentoring or whatever, so be it. I guess it needs to. . . . I guess it helps in the debate, but. . . . I'll just close with the comment that I think that where it's a case of resources, we ought to identify that. Then maybe the managers can take that and comment on it. I'd like to see a report like this have some response from the deputy ministers, who had to go through these decisions time and time again.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Les, would you like to comment?

L. McAdams: Sure. Our report was very careful not to recommend a certain level of expenditure. We think the

[ Page 1540 ]

R. Thorpe (Chair): Anyone else?

M. Coell: If I can just follow up and maybe get some feedback from other members, it would strike me that it would be worthwhile for this committee to have a report back from the deputy ministers' council on that year 2008 -- what we're going to see for holes in areas in the civil service. And then we could possibly make some recommendations back to government as to what programs they would need to initiate to make sure those holes are filled and that we have trained people coming up through the system.

We've talked a lot about our aging population. There is a real aging population in the civil service that we've got to get a handle on. Eight years, believe it or not -- when you look at technical schools and universities and nursing schools -- doesn't give you a lot of time to gear them up for the potential of an increase. I don't know whether others would like a report back by the end of the year on that, so we can make some recommendations to the government in the following year.

D. Streifel: Following upon that, I think it's an excellent point. That would give us the opportunity to put a bit of meat around this "2008 -- 51 percent." I'm not aware of any surveys done across the public sector that would give an early indicating number of how many people plan to leave early, because that also has an effect on demographics.

[0900]

R. Thorpe (Chair): Arn, did you want to say something?

A. van Iersel: I don't believe a survey was done. I believe it was done using the CHIPS system itself in terms of keeping track of how many years of service various individuals had and therefore when they could potentially retire. As I said earlier, my understanding is that these are the earliest dates, not the date that the individual may select themselves. I presume, or I understand, it was based on 55 rather than going to the full age of 60.

L. McAdams: If I may comment, the data from the CHIPS system show that the average retirement age is from 57 to 58. It's been coming down from 60; I believe it's in that range. So we have a past pattern to go on. The typical employee is going to walk out from the public service at age 58 or so.

R. Thorpe (Chair): I'm just wondering, since Dennis and Murray appear to me to be agreeing that we need some more information. . . . Eight years isn't very long, and knowing that our review period that we've put in place is October and March, I wonder if it makes any sense to take your comments -- Murray's and Dennis's comments -- and ask that to be dovetailed into our October 31 follow-up. Does that fit with your intention, and yours, Dennis?

D. Streifel: Yeah, if I'm allowed a question or two in the interim.

R. Thorpe (Chair): You're always allowed questions.

D. Streifel: I'm curious. The CHIPS data that says the retirement age is coming down. Does that reflect the strategies that have been implemented through some collective bargaining processes, where early retirement has been artificially induced within some of the professions in particular to move out older workers?

That's not reflected in the CHIPS. It may be gatherable through a survey process or more in-depth work, and that might tell us what we need to do to keep those workers there longer. A large number in the public service, of course, has collective agreement provisions that already include training, and they're very easy to cost. We could factor in the non-collective agreement aspects of the cost of training as well, to pick up on Mr. Zirnhelt's point. It would give us a little bit of an idea of where we're going and the numbers we need to address and the cost of addressing those numbers. I don't think it would be all that difficult.

P. Calendino: I've been in the public service for 25 years now, and I don't want to minimize the challenge that the government and the public service face. But I think that in all this part there is a certain degree of exaggeration, because the deadlines we set are artificial deadlines -- 2008. Maybe we'll have a whole bunch of people retiring at that time -- maybe not.

In my profession, the teaching field, some years there are incentives to allow teachers to retire early. When the shortage comes, those incentives are taken away, which means that people don't retire anymore. So the expected number of people that were going to disappear from the teaching force doesn't really take place. The people remain in place because there is no incentive to retire early.

[0905]

[ Page 1541 ]

L. McAdams: I don't believe we characterized it as a crisis, but we did characterize it as something that needed attention as a strategic issue for the public service. I think eight years is probably a medium-to-tight length of time around succession planning, especially if you're looking at 83 percent of the senior managers leaving in the next five to eight years. They aren't people who come out of nowhere; they have to be groomed and brought up through the public service. I agree with you. It's something that will need a long-term approach. I don't necessarily mean that we have to treat it as an immediate crisis that's happening this weekend.

R. Thorpe (Chair): We should decide, perhaps, what we're going to do here beyond recommendations. The auditor general's report. . . . I believe the count is 27 recommendations. So is the committee going to move forward to endorse those recommendations? And we also have the possibility of another recommendation from this committee as a result of the discussion of Mr. Streifel and Mr. Coell with respect to the deputy minister. So what is the wish of the committee with respect to the recommendations of this report? Staff have left that open for the decision, as always, of this committee. So what would be the wishes of the committee members?

Do we have a motion from Mr. Calendino to move the 27 recommendations of the report? We will take a vote on that.

Motion approved.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Are there any other recommendations that you want to put in this report?

M. Coell: Kelly can draft a recommendation further to what Dennis and I have commented on. We have a request for a report back from the deputy ministers' council in October -- to add that one in.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Is everyone in agreement with that?

P. Calendino: Isn't that our standard practice that we normally do? We want to report back without having to make any recommendation.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Pardon me?

P. Calendino: I said that we can do that without having to make formal recommendations in the report.

R. Thorpe (Chair): No, actually what we should do is make a recommendation in the report. That's what we have done with previous reports. When there's an additional recommendation other than what's in the auditor general's report, we have put that in. In fact, it was in the drinking water report that we tabled last week -- I guess it was.

P. Calendino: Yes, but what I'm trying to say is that this is not a recommendation that affects the report. It is simply that we want a report back from the deputy ministers' council; that's all it is.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Yes, but I think it would be a good thing for the committee to formally. . . .

D. Streifel: If I could, Chair, and if Mr. Coell would agree or disagree, my comments were focused on filling out our report. This is a draft report. To see if we get a report back from the deputies' committee on this, to determine whether or not that satisfies some of the concerns we have around what's inside that box called demographics, and what it would take to respond to it. . . .

[0910]

M. Coell: I would think that we would still be going ahead with the report -- with the 27 recommendations plus this one -- and then it would come back. Because of the recommendations that we've talked about, it would come back to the committee for further discussion in October. We'd still be presenting a report in the near future.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Is everyone in agreement with that, then? I guess silence is an endorsement. Okay. Then we'll move on finalizing the report.

I'm advised that we need a motion to accept the report as per these recommendations and the second recommendation that Mr. Coell has asked Kelly to draft up and include. Do we have a motion to approve all of that?

Motion approved.

M. Coell: Further, Chair, possibly yourself and the Deputy Chair can look at the recommendation. If you're both happy with it, then I suspect the rest of us would be.

R. Thorpe (Chair): That's fine. Okay, let's move that -- thank you -- and a motion to present the report to the House.

Motion approved.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Thanks, Jane and Les, for coming this morning. We appreciate it. We'll move to some progress report on the follow-up process and over to the auditor general, please.

W. Strelioff: This morning we provide you with three follow-up reports on topics previously discussed by your committee. We ask that you consider the reports and, between now and our next meetings, decide how best you wish to proceed.

With me today is Morris Sydor, who has a few comments on the follow-up process we are putting in place to serve this committee.

[ Page 1542 ]

We started this process a little over a month ago, I guess, at the beginning of May or the end of April. We started drafting letters and sending those out to the first group of auditees that we wanted to hear responses from.

This morning Kelly distributed to everybody a two-page follow-up status report. What I'd like to do is just quickly go through that and give you all an update as to where we are.

The first page actually consists of all the follow-up requests that we have sent out. That totals ten of the 21 individual projects that we were looking at.

B.C. Ferries. We didn't receive a response from them, actually. The committee asked B.C. Ferries staff to come in and give them an update; that actually happened. At this time, we're not going to be doing any further work. That will fall into the next six-month cycle, if the committee wishes a further follow-up. What we'll be doing with each of these is communicating with committee staff to see what the committee's wishes are after they've deliberated on the responses received.

As the auditor general just indicated, the next three that we have on the list -- Crown Corporation governance, Vancouver Island highway project and executive severance -- were passed on to the committee this morning. They are available for you to look at and decide whether you want to have a meeting on them or whether those responses are sufficient to meet your needs.

The next two will be ready shortly: loss reporting in government and Motor Dealer Act. We have the responses in. We're doing our review work on it. It has to go through the quality-assurance process within our office; they'll likely be ready to be passed on to the committee sometime next week. So there'll be two more coming very shortly.

The next two on our list are quite large: overdue accounts receivable and human capital training. Both of those are government-wide reviews, so we're looking for four to six individual responses on each. While a number of them have come in, we're still waiting for some of them to come in before we're able to complete our review on the entire report.

Woodlot licences. The response has been received. We're looking at staffing the review for that particular one. We hope to be able to do that later on this month or in early July.

Social service tax. Although we've communicated with the staff involved in that, we still haven't received a response. We're trying to get that to come in as soon as possible, so we can get to work on that.

Those are the ten that we sent letters out on. About half of those will be provided to the committee by the end of this month. We're still going to have to do some work on a number of others and wait for responses to come in.

On the next page there are three reports that we didn't send a letter out on. "Trucking Safety." ICBC in fact sent in updated information sometime in April, so we had that available. We've carried out our review on that information, and again, that package will probably be ready next week to pass on the committee. The trucking safety report will be available shortly.

"Earthquake Preparedness." The Public Accounts Committee initiated a meeting with the staff involved in that, so we didn't send out a letter. Again, we don't see any role for us at this time. We'll look at it in six months if the committee still wishes that to be followed up further.

"Waste Management Permit Fees." When we looked at it, all the recommendations were fully implemented, so there was no requirement to follow up on that particular one.

Then there's a group of seven projects, which we'll be following up on later this summer. We found that the amount that we've sent out has really stretched our resources in terms of our ability to try to do all the work in the time that we had anticipated. As well, a number of these are audits where only an initial review has been done. So the follow-up will be the first one coming. All the recommendations will be responded to on a number of those particular audits.

The last one that we have is the Y2K final report. I guess we have a little bit of difficulty with this one in terms of our particular role. This is a report that staff from the information and technology office provided to the committee a couple of months ago. It's a report that deals with issues that aren't necessarily ones that the auditor general has examined or developed recommendations on. It's also a report that isn't tabled in the House. From that standpoint, in terms of our role, we're not sure what we can actually do with that -- whether we have a mandate to look at the particular issue and how that would be presented to the Legislative Assembly. At this time, we see that as something that doesn't fall within the follow-up process that we've established, as it's not following up on a report that was initiated by the auditor general's office.

[0915]

A couple of things. I think we have to expect some flexibility in the process that we established. I think we're generally able to meet the two-week turnaround time if we have the resources available to look at those issues as soon as they come in. The difficulty comes with the cross-government review, such as training or accounts receivable. It's very difficult within a two-week period to go out to five or six ministries and do the review that's necessary. So I think for cross-government reviews we're going to look at probably not being able to meet the two-week turnaround time for those particular ones.

[ Page 1543 ]

[0920]

That's generally the status. If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

R. Thorpe (Chair): I think we should call that process continuous learning.

M. Sydor: Yes. Well, that's right. I mean, we're learning; I think the auditees are learning. We're seeing where that process, as we set out, isn't going to necessarily work as well as we had thought.

R. Thorpe (Chair): I think we should all remember what the thrust was for that follow-up. It was the concern of a vast number of committee members that things move forward and get done, as opposed to staying on the plates forever.

D. Zirnhelt: I wasn't sure what you said. Did you say the "auditees" or the "oddities" are learning?

M. Sydor: Well, I think everybody's learning. We're learning -- the auditees, the committee, auditors, oddities.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Any other questions or comments? Arn, do you have any comments from the government's perspective?

A. van Iersel: Two other things I would say. One is that I've had some feedback from individuals, including my own deputy, that the time line is rather tight. That is a function of where we're at in terms of the time of year and also what else is happening. I think two weeks can work for the less-demanding reports, but as Morris has said, for the large one. . . . Our example is overdue accounts receivable, which involve five ministries plus ourselves. That's a little harder to coordinate within a two-week time frame, but we did get our response back as quickly as we could. So I think it's working.

I guess the question that remains with the committee is: what now happens as a result of reading these reports? That's another feedback I'm getting. People are understanding that by doing this they may not now necessarily have to come back to the committee, unless there's a particular issue that the committee wishes to address, which I think was part of the original thinking. That question is still left unanswered in the respondents so far.

R. Thorpe (Chair): I think that was the intent of the committee. I guess what we should all commit to, as members of this committee -- now that we have these three reports, three updates, in front of us -- is that all members take the time, make the time and review these. I would strongly suggest that committee members' input and discussions take place on these three items at our next committee meeting, so that we can give direction and feedback to the people that have worked so hard to get us to this point. So we could do that.

Wayne, do you have anything to say from your office's perspective?

W. Strelioff: No, I don't.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Okay. Any questions of Morris by any committee members? Thank you very much, Morris. We appreciate it.

Kelly, did you want to say something about agenda item 3, or was Craig going to talk about that?

K. Dunsdon: Craig actually was going to speak to that.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Okay. So why don't we move to agenda item No. 4? Well, why don't we just go back to 3, since Craig's here now? Agenda item No. 3 -- Craig, did you want to say a few words about that?

C. James: The invitations for the Canadian Council of Public Accounts Committees annual conference, being held down east in Halifax this September, have been sent out. If I could get a list of the names of members who have an interest in attending, and if they could supply that list to me over the course of the next week or so, then we could at least register members and secure the accommodation and then deal with the transportation arrangements at a later date. But the sooner we know, the better we are able to secure your accommodation at the conference.

D. Streifel: If I could get the dates of this conference. . . .

R. Thorpe (Chair): I think it was September 17 to 19, but I'm not 100 percent sure.

C. James: It's September 17, 18 and 19 -- the 17th being a Sunday. There's usually a joint reception with the Conference of Legislative Auditors, who hold their conference at the same time in the same place. There is a joint session, ordinarily, between the two conference organizations occurring usually on Monday or Tuesday. The conference tends to wind up on Tuesday afternoon to enable members to return to their constituencies. So it's really a day and a half to two days' worth of conference -- three nights, possibly.

[0925]

C. James: Yes.

[ Page 1544 ]

Okay, we'll move along to agenda item 4. Kelly, do you have something to distribute?

K. Dunsdon: Yes, I have the next draft committee report, which is the report on management of the woodlot licence program. I'll just hand that out today, and I look forward to getting comments back from members about the report.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Did you want to try to walk through any of that report, since we actually do have some time today?

K. Dunsdon: I could do that. I didn't have anything prepared; usually I would prepare a little presentation. But I could go through it just quickly.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Maybe you could distribute it and then walk through it.

K. Dunsdon: Okay. This is the fifth report that the committee has considered this session. It's based on work that the committee did back in November of last year, when representatives from the Ministry of Forests came to talk about the woodlot licence program. Just to lead you through the report, again, it's a fairly brief report, in keeping with the new practice of brief reports.

The introduction on page 1 just gives a background to the woodlot licence program, a bit of the history of the program and the work of the auditor general's office and of the committee on the topic. Page 2 of the report includes a discussion of the goals of the program. The committee, when it considered this topic in November, had quite an extensive discussion about the social, economic and environmental benefits of the woodlot licence program. That's included in this section.

Beginning on page 3 is a discussion of expansion of the program. Everyone knows that back in the mid-nineties the program was expanded considerably and received some extra funding from FRBC. There's a discussion of that expansion here and of some of the difficulties that were encountered during that expansion.

Administration of the program is discussed beginning on page 5 of the report. There's a discussion here of the Forest Practices Code of B.C. Act and the planning requirements that are included in that code and their applicability to the woodlot licence program. Also, there is a discussion of the costs of the program during the period '94-95 to '98-99. Some of the specific issues that were examined by the auditor general's office were woodlot licence transfer, woodlot size, woodlot licence top-up policy and cut control policy. There are brief discussions of those from pages 7 to 10 of the report.

[0930]

Page 16 of the report includes our discussion of collection of program information, performance measures and reporting issues. When Ministry of Forests officials attended, they discussed the information systems that they use to collect data on a program. There were some concerns about the financial information that had been collected, in that it wasn't extensive enough to provide a lot of information about the performance of the program. So that's discussed on pages 16 and 17.

Finally, on page 18 of the report there's just a little discussion of the forest policy review report that was issued in March 2000. That report actually contains some recommendations regarding the woodlot licence program as well. That's it.

R. Thorpe (Chair): I don't know if anybody has any quick comments. I don't think we should perhaps get into a debate today about the report, other than I'd like to make sure that all members get some inputs back to staff or at least review it. Our intent would be to have a revised draft ready for final discussion and approval at our June 27 meeting, which gives us a fair amount of time. I really would encourage all members to get their inputs back to staff on this item as quickly as possible.

Does anybody have any comments at this point in time, or should we just move forward here? I would also like to note that prior to this discussion taking place today, the member for Cariboo South advised the Chair and the Deputy Chair that he would be excusing himself from the discussions. That did take place prior to the discussions of this report. I just wanted to note that.

Does anyone have any other business? I do. You have all received a document that advises that there's going to be a seminar on water quality. The Ministry of Health is going to be involved, and it's going to be on, I believe, Friday, June 23 in Surrey. I don't know whether any members can attend. What I'd like to do is ask for the committee's support. I think it's very important that this committee have a representative there. If members can't be there, just as a safety factor, I think it's also good for our staff to then be able to report back to us. I would like the support of the committee that we send Kelly to this meeting. So, Kelly, you can attend and report back to this committee at our June 27 meeting.

K. Dunsdon: I will report back, yes.

R. Thorpe (Chair): Thank you. If any members are interested in attending, just see the Clerk's office, and they'll make the necessary arrangements. Is there any other business today?

R. Kasper: We should encourage the Minister of Environment to attend.

A Voice: You talk to her.

R. Thorpe (Chair): You could perhaps make that statement later today in the House.

J. Weisgerber: Maybe you get a question on Thursday.

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R. Thorpe (Chair): Anyhow, in the spirit, it's nice to report that it's 25 to ten, and we've completed our work without panic here this morning. So on that, a motion to adjourn. . . . So moved. We're not meeting next week, and we'll see everybody again on the 27th at 8:30.

The committee adjourned at 9:35 a.m.

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